“It should be fine.”
I pull the sheet up over him and get him to lift his hips to remove the pillow situated there. Then I lift the sheet. “If you can shimmy down and turn over, I’ll be able to work on your neck.”
He follows the directions, army-crawling down the table. His feet hang way off the end now. I rearrange the sheet once he’s lying on his back and work on tucking it in around his legs. “Let me know if your feet get cold, and I can put a heating pad on your legs.”
“I’m good right now, but thanks.”
I fold down the sheet so I have access to his shoulders. They’re massive, like every other part of him—well, the parts I’ve seen so far. Then I pull up my rolling chair so I can get comfortable while I work.
Lance’s eyes are on me as I squirt more oil into my palm and rub my hands together. “Ready?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He gives a curt nod, and I use my thumbs to adjust the angle of his head, making sure it’s lined up straight with his spine before I assess the worst areas of tension, which seem to be everywhere based on the way his muscles lock up.
His eyebrow looks a lot better today than it did the last time I worked on him, and the bruises around his eye have faded a little, yellow and green replacing the edges of black and blue. The matching split in his lip has scabbed over. His lips part as he exhales slowly.
I put pressure on his shoulders, kneading a little before I start in on the muscles that need the most work. Everything is knotted and tight in there. It’s amazing he can even turn his head.
When his shoulders don’t feel like they’re full of stones any more—just rubber balls—I move on to his neck.
Turning Lance’s head to the side, I glide my thumb along the side of his neck. The muscles there are tight, as expected, and the ones I’ve just loosened in his shoulders bunch at the contact. I settle a gentle palm on the side of his neck. I can feel his pulse, strong and rapid beneath my hand.
“Just relax for me, okay.”
“Sorry.” The tightness in his shoulders eases a little.
“That’s better.” I follow the muscle with my thumb again, find the knot, and start working it out. “Do you grind your teeth in your sleep?”
“I don’t know.” His teeth click together, and his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. “Probably.”
“I can massage your face, if you’d like.”
His eyes flip open, and he tilts his head up until I’m met with pale green. “My face?”
“Have you had a lot of headaches recently?”
He frowns. “I guess.”
“You’re carrying a lot of tension in your neck and shoulders. That can cause headaches. There are some small muscles in your face that might contribute to that. If you don’t like the way it feels, you can tell me, and I’ll stop.”
“Yeah. Okay. That sounds good.”
He closes his eyes, and I shift his head so it’s straight again, then start by smoothing my thumbs across his forehead, erasing the lines of tension with gentle but firm pressure. I work my way down his face, over the bridge of his nose. He has so many freckles. They’re everywhere.
With his eyes closed like this, he looks almost sweet. Like the boy who pulled my ponytail in the hallway in grade school. Like the one who kissed me in a closet more than a decade ago.
I wonder if that boy is still in there, hiding. I don’t want to believe the man I met a year ago is who Lance really is—the man who was too wasted to remember having met me, more than once.
The rumors seem to conflict with the person on my table, I’m beginning to wonder if the hard exterior is Lance’s wall, and beneath it is a man with secrets and insecurities, like his admitted aversion to touch.
I try to focus on the names of the muscles as I move my fingertips over them, but I can’t stay in the present. I’m pulled into the past, back to a time when innocence disappeared one new experience at a time, and the night I fell in love with a moment I can’t ever get back, even though the person responsible for creating it is right here with me.
My sister had disappeared fifteen minutes ago, and I couldn’t find her anywhere. She’d given me two options tonight: stay home by myself or come with her to the party. My thirteenth birthday was the next week, and she’d said this would be like an early birthday party, but better. Sometimes I wanted to be exciting like her, so I’d said I’d come.
I held a red cup of purple Kool-Aid that burned my throat every time I took a sip. I walked into a low-lit room where a group of teenagers were playing a game. The lights were off; there was just the glow of the TV in the corner. Music videos flickered on the screen. Women with hardly any clothes on were dancing to a song I didn’t like all that much. My mom never allowed me to watch that, but sometimes my older sister, Cinny, would let me when she had to babysit me.
No one was paying attention to the TV, though. The teenagers sat in a circle, an empty beer bottle in the middle. I scanned their faces, most of them unrecognizable, although the blue glow didn’t help.
I knew one girl. She had been talking to my sister earlier, so I moved into the empty space beside her, just as a boy with strawberry blond hair leaned forward and gave the bottle a spin. He was beautiful. I thought I knew him. I looked back at the bottle when he caught me staring. I watched it twirl—quickly at first, then slower until it stopped. It was pointed at me.
“Oh my God,” the girl beside me said. “You lucky bitch.”
The boy across the circle lifted an eyebrow, a slow smile spreading across his face as screams and hollers of excitement followed. He downed whatever he was drinking and passed the cup to the boy beside him as he stood.
The girl beside me took my cup. “Get up! Go!”
I obeyed, because I didn’t know what was going on. I’d na?vely thought this was a game of Truth or Dare—that someone would ask me a question, and I would get to choose—but apparently I was wrong.
A chant began, and a flush crept up my neck as I realized I was very, very wrong about what was going to happen.
The girl I’d sat beside sniffed my drink. “Your sister’s going to kill you.” She was laughing, though.
I was ushered across the room, and the screaming got louder. Seven Minutes in Heaven. That’s the game we were playing, not Truth or Dare. I’d never kissed anyone.
People patted the boy on the back and made lewd, suggestive comments. I suddenly felt panicked as he stepped into a closet and someone shoved me in there with him.
There was no way to avoid touching him as the door slammed closed and darkness swallowed us. I felt around, trying to make space among the winter coats. My hand connected with soft cotton and hard muscle. I was exhilarated and terrified at the same time.
“Hey, hey, relax.” He covered my hand with his. It was warm. Clammy. “Are you afraid of the dark?” he whispered. He smelled like the same drink I’d had, but sharper, and I could taste cologne on my tongue. It was familiar.
The small space was suddenly illuminated by the glow of his phone as he flipped it open.
“No,” I croaked.
“Me neither. But I don’t like small spaces.” He rested his shoulder against the door.
I reached for the knob, but he stopped me. “Don’t bother. They locked it from the outside. We’re trapped in here together.”
The word trapped sent a shiver down my spine. His gaze was lazy and a little unfocused as it traveled over my face.
He pressed a bunch of buttons on his phone. I did know him, I realized. Last year he’d gone to my school for a little more than a month at the end of the school year. He used to flick my ponytail when he passed me in the hall. Not in a mean way, more in a gingers-stick-together kind of way. He’d winked at me once. I didn’t know if he remembered. Even though he’d showed up late in the year, he’d been popular—with the teachers and all the students. Maybe because of his thick Scottish accent.
He’d gone on to high school this year, like Cinny, and I was still in seventh grade.
“What are you doing,” I whispered.