CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
My morning at work was the same as always: two elderly retirees and one married soldier who came in at the same time almost every week. He never made an appointment, but I always kept the spot open for him. He was nice and easy, tipped well, and didn’t groan and moan while I did my job.
I now had “free time” to help clean up around the spa and avoid walk-ins—as much as they could be avoided. I didn’t like the uncertainty. It was always uncomfortable, and those clients hardly ever came back. It didn’t matter what their body looked like; all types of bodies came through those doors. I found it refreshing and hopeful on those rare occasions when women didn’t put themselves down during a treatment. I wanted them all to let their insecurities go while in my room. It was both comforting and disheartening to know that other women thought of their bodies in the same harmful way that I did. We always suspect that others are thinking or talking about us, when most of the time everyone’s too worried about themselves to focus on anyone or anything else.
I was pulling out my second round of towels from the dryer when I thought of how uninteresting a part of my job this was—“side work” is what we called it when I was waiting tables. I’m constantly running out of towels, filling the fridges, loading the washer. I spend probably as much time on freaking towels as I do actually treating people.
Mali popped her head into the break room.
“That guy came here for you,” she told me while we folded towels.
“What guy?” I immediately thought of Kael.
“The one you used to like,” she said. The way she wrappedlikearound her tongue made me feel like a child.
Oh. Brien. Great.
“When?” I asked.
“About ten minutes before you got here.”
I dropped a towel onto the pile before I folded it. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She snickered. “Because I can’t have you getting back together with him. He’s bad news.”
She shrugged. I gaped at her, grabbed the towel, and threw it at her.
“I’m not going to call him, by the way.” I may have been a little defensive. But, I didn’t think I would, even if I was curious. We had literally nothing else to talk about.
Okay, so maybe Mali was right.
“Mhmm.” She nodded yes with her lips jutted out sarcastically. The deep wrinkles on her bronzed skin made her look extra-serious. I knew she was mostly teasing and she was also right about him. She’d never liked Brien, and even cut off the electricity in the lobby when he came to see me the first time after our breakup. In her defense, I was crying, and he was accusing me of something that I couldn’t even remember anymore. That must’ve meant I was innocent, right?
Truth was, I wasn’t as sad as everyone thought I should be after we broke up. And another truth was, I’d used him to fill something missing inside of me. That’s what most relationships actually boiled down to.
Mali interrupted my sour memories of Brien. “We have a walk-in,” she said.
Her back was hunched so she could see the little security television screen. I couldn’t make out whether it was a man or a woman, but I knew Elodie had just started on her two-thirty appointment, and we were the only two working until four. Two more therapists, Kandace and Joanie, would be working the evening shift, which meant I wouldn’t have fresh towels in the morning, because the two of them did the bare minimum when it came to closing. Again, the damn towels.
“I’ll take the walk-in.” I jumped up. “I don’t have any more appointments today and I really don’t want to fold any more towels.”
I pushed through the curtain in the lobby to find Kael walking around the small space, almost pacing. There were only a few chairs, and along with the front desk, furniture dominated the entire lobby space. I watched him walk back and forth before I moved past the curtain. He was wearing gray sweats and a gray T-shirt. Seeing him in normal clothes meant that he’d gotten his stuff from whoever had the key to his truck.
“Hey,” I greeted Kael. The Thai food Mali brought us for lunch was now jumbled with nerves in my belly.
“Hi.”
We stood there, enveloped by the thick smell of incense and the dim lights of the lobby. The old PC tower on the floor hummed between us.
“Is everything okay?” As I asked, it dawned on me that he might be there for a reason.
“Yeah, yeah. I came to get a massage, actually. I didn’t know if you had time or not.” He held up his hands.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Do you have time?” His voice was soft, an unsure question.
I nodded and brought my hand up to my mouth. I didn’t know why I was smiling, but I was, and I couldn’t stop.