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CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

My shift that afternoon was long and I could barely keep my eyes open. It was now evening and I had already had three scheduled appointments; Stewart, who was one of my favorite clients, would be the last. Going to the mall this morning with Kael had depleted most of my allotted daily energy, but the way he’d held my hand the whole drive home had replenished it. I wondered what he was doing now. I hadn’t heard from Kael since he dropped me off at home. He mentioned he would be going back to his place, and I wished we had had time to go there together. I wanted to see where he lived, where he slept—I just didn’t want to miss a chance to know more about him. But now I was feeling self-conscious about texting him. I didn’t want to seem clingy. It wasn’t such a big deal to text him a quick “hi.” I knew that, but I didn’t, of course, and I watched the screen of my phone and the clock on and off until Stewart finally came in.

During her treatment, Stewart told me all about her upcoming move to Hawaii. On top of the perk of getting to live there, her long-awaited promotion to staff sergeant had also come through. And she spoke enthusiastically about her partner, Stacey, who ran a small business, designing and selling these cute floral dresses.

“She’s going to set up one of those little shops right on the beach. She’s convinced she’s made for beach life,” Stewart said and beamed. She was optimistic that Stacey’s business would surely do better in a year-round beach town than it did here near the border of Georgia and Alabama, almost five hours away from the coast.

Stewart kept talking a mile a minute, her head in the cradle and her voice muffled. She winced as I applied extra-firm pressure. She was always full of knots, but she could handle the pain better than most of the people I’d had on this table.

“I’ve heard the housing on post is really nice, and very affordable.” I shared what I knew from my father and a couple other clients.

“I reminded Stacey that we’re going to be livingbythe post, since it wouldn’t be easy to liveonpost,” Stewart said between her deep breaths absorbing the body work. “I did find a cute house only a few miles away. It has a small garden for the dogs.”

I felt bad for not thinking about what I had just said before I said it. I knew that, in reality, gay couples weren’t particularly welcome living on post together. It blew my mind that Stewart could serve her country the same way a straight woman or man could, but she might be denied the community support that a straight soldier would have. Seemed to me the “don’t ask, don’t tell”protocol really meant “don’t care, won’t respect.” The military needed to catch up with the times. Things were changing slowly, but overall, the Army hadn’t been very supportive of the LGBTQIA+ community. Too many men in charge still believed that being homosexual had no place in the military. These were sometimes the same men who swept sexual assault under the rug, not to mention an overwhelming number of disappearances and suicides of service members in every branch. I worried about all of the challenges that Stewart and Stacey would face, even if Hawaii seemed like a more accepting place to live than some other military bases. I listened to Stewart talk for the rest of our session, but underneath her every word, I felt a sense of sadness. I wished this world were more fair for Stewart and her partner and for all the other people I didn’t know, but who were suffering for their own reasons.

I felt a little guilty that I was eager for the massage to finish so I could check my phone and see if Kael had texted me. I needed to connect with him any way I could. I needed to feel closer to him. Even just to see his name on my phone screen. To reread old texts he had sent me.

Three more minutes.

That seemed excruciatingly long. I didn’t think Stewart would notice that I was already doing a sort of cooldown on her, gently moving my hands over her skin to relax her after the deep-tissue massage.

I waited it out for one more minute and ended her session with two to go. I made a mental note that I would add five extra minutes to her next session. I grabbed my phone from the shelf the moment my hands left her body.

No new messages, but I did have a missed call from my dad. Well, that could wait. I didn’t feel like talking to him. The only thing on my mind was how Kael’s mouth tasted like his coconut ChapStick and how hard he laughed when I tripped over a piece of tile in my bathroom that he promised to help me fix. Our scrambling bodies had moved from my bedroom to my bathroom, to the kitchen and back to bed, still not able to let go, to stop touching, to stop exploring each other. We had become masters at intimacy, without crossing the line into fully hooking up.

“Karina?” Stewart’s voice made me jump. Talk about the real world. My phone dropped to the floor, the picture of Kael and me open on the screen. Bright as hell in my dark room.

“Oh my god, sorry!” I hid my face under my hair as I bent down to grab it. “I’ll let you get dressed. See you in the lobby,” I told her, leaving her in privacy.

When I stepped into the hallway, I had to bite my lips to stop myself from laughing. Typically, I would freak out over something like that and die from embarrassment. Was Stewart uncomfortable or thinking that I had lost my mind? This time, my brain didn’t go there the way it normally did. It naturally thought about how obsessed I was becoming with Kael and how big his smile would be when I told him about my phone mishap with Stewart.


Tags: Anna Todd Romance