CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I walked into the lobby and only Mali was there. She wasn’t paying any attention to my arrival and was busy cleaning. I was waiting for Kael when I got Elodie’s text with theBuzzFeedlink. She was the queen of “Is It Your Fault You’re Single?” quizzes, and “Are Women Taking Over the Self-Employment Industry?” articles. This one was “25 Things You Need to Know AboutTwilight.” Trust me, I already knew every detail of those books and films and enjoyed crushing all the “hardest” quizzes. Elodie didn’t share my love for vampires falling in love with humans, so she mostly took the “What Kind of Toast Are You?” or “Choose a Day of Meals and We’ll Tell You Where to Travel” ones.
I started scrolling through the list and wasn’t surprised by how basic these “facts” were. It was public knowledge thatNew Moonwas Robert Pattinson’s favorite book in the series. I kept reading, smiling at the pictures.Twilightwas my comfort series and had been since I was a teenager. I had all the merchandise and my mom let me see each of the movies at midnight the night they released. I cried in my room when Kristen and Rob broke up. As I zoomed in on a picture of them in the quiz, I caught something moving from the corner of my eye. My phone fell out of my hands and Kael reached for it. He looked at the screen and then at me. I was mortified. Kristen’s stunning face stared up at me, even more zoomed-in than it was when I’d dropped it.
“Sorry, I—” I started to say.
“Do you apologize every time you speak?” he interrupted me. My cheeks burned.
“Um, no. I just . . .” I paused. He was right.Sorrywas probably the most overused word in my vocabulary.
“What are you apologizing for? Being aTwilightfan?” he was laughing at me, biting his lower lip as it curled.
I joined him, smiling even though I was still slightly embarrassed.
“My sister started reading the books last summer and read them all in one week.”
A sister! My brain created a spreadsheet of questions to ask him.
“How old is she?” I started with one question instead of twenty.
“Fifteen.”
I wondered what she was like. If he was a sweet, protective older brother, and if she was as beautiful as he was.
“Aw. Does she live close?”
He shook his head. “Yes and no. Closer than most soldiers are to their families. But her and my ma are in Riverdale. Here in Georgia.”
“Ah, like the show?”
He nodded, smiling a little. I really, really wanted to see him smile like he did on my table a few minutes ago. That big smile made me crave another.
A phone started to ring, and I pulled mine back out of my pocket. It wasn’t mine. Kael swiped his finger across his phone and put it back in his pocket.
“Well, I hope everything was okay with your treatment today.”
“Thanks,” he said, but didn’t answer my question.
I rang him up and handed over the credit card slip to sign. I’d never felt anxious seeing a client scribble his name across that little black line before, so this was new. And, of course, Kael wasn’t giving anything up, which left room for me to fill in the blanks. First, I wondered if he’d come back for another massage. Then it wasWhat’s going to happen after he stops crashing on my couch?
He left me a twenty-dollar tip on a forty-five-dollar massage. It was more than generous. Certainly more than I usually got. I felt a little weird about it, like he was giving me charity or something. Or paying for my time, which I guess he was. But I did need the money, so I took it with a smile. Okay, the smile was mostly forced, but he couldn’t tell. At least, I didn’t think he could.
I thought about how I had talked through half of his massage. It probably didn’t make for the most relaxing experience.
“Sorry I talked so—”
Kael cut me off before I could finish. “No,” he said, and offered me a friendly shrug. “No more sorrys. It’s cool.”
Moving on to something else, I pointed to the dark green walls. “I want to change the color.”
He studied them and asked, “Well, what color do you want to paint them?”
“Something more neutral and modern. Do you think it’s overly decorated in here?” I asked.
He looked perplexed.
“Do you feel like you’re in an expensive spa in a big city, instead of here, in this strip mall?”