Chapter 3 #2
I WORK HIS BACK, HIS shoulders, his neck, his arms. Ninety minutes.
Somewhere around the forty-minute mark I stop counting and start just listening, the way Madame Gilles taught me, and that's worse because listening means feeling and feeling means I notice things I absolutely shouldn't be noticing, like the way the muscles along his spine release a fraction when I slow down, or the way his body tracks my hands even when I lift them between strokes, this tiny micro-tension running through him, an awareness, like his skin is asking where did you go.
I should not be noticing that.
I should definitely, definitely not be cataloguing that under "Things That Make Star's Heart Do Backflips" in my mental filing system, and yet here I am, filing away, because apparently my filing system has gone rogue and is now accepting entries it was never authorised to store.
When I reach for his left hand to begin the hand and forearm work, he moves it. Not a flinch. A withdrawal, smooth and complete, tucking it close to his body before I've even made contact.
"Not the hands," he murmurs.
His voice. Low and rough around the edges, the first words he's spoken since I entered the room, and they travel through me like warm water poured down my spine, and my fingers actually stutter on his shoulder for a half-second before training kicks in and I recover, and I'm praying, I'm praying to whoever is in charge of maintaining a therapist's dignity, that he didn't feel that half-second hesitation, because if he felt it then he knows that his voice just short-circuited my nervous system and that is NOT the professional impression I'm going for here.
"Of course," I manage, and my voice comes out level, which proves that miracles are real and I'm currently living inside one. "Is there anywhere else you'd like me to avoid?"
A pause. His ribs expand once. Then: "No."
Great. Wonderful. Good talk. That's our entire conversation so far: four words from him, nineteen from me, and my pulse is behaving like I've just sprinted up twelve decks. Excellent professional conduct all around.
I finish the closing sequence. Long strokes from shoulders to lower back, gradually lightening pressure, the touch equivalent of lowering the volume until there's nothing left but warmth and then nothing at all. My fingers trail off the last point of contact and I step back.
And I stand there. One second. Two. His shoulders, his scarred back, the hands he won't let me touch, and Madame Gilles's voice in my head, saying what she said once when I asked her why some clients refused hand work: The hands are the most intimate part of the body, étoile.
More than the face. More than the throat.
The hands are how we reach for things. Some people cannot bear to have that witnessed.
I wanted to reach for his. Not professionally.
Not to work the tendons or release the locked knuckles.
I just wanted to hold his hand, which is so wildly inappropriate and so completely unlike me that I need a moment to be horrified at myself before I open my mouth and say, in a perfectly calm and perfectly normal voice:
"I'll step out while you dress. Take your time. There's water on the side table."
I leave the room. Close the door behind me.
Press my back to the corridor wall and slide down about two inches before I catch myself, because I am NOT going to have a crisis in the hallway, I am NOT going to dissolve into a puddle outside my own treatment room, I am a professional with a certificate and Madame Gilles's highest practical scores in nine years and I am going to stand here and breathe and wait for my client to get dressed and I am going to be completely, utterly, boringly fine.
The heat of his skin is still in my palms. The texture of the long scar is still mapped across my thumbs.
And my hands are tingling and my face is burning and I just spent ninety minutes touching a man covered in scars who won't let anyone near his hands and whose body is so starved for contact that his fingers curled when I was gentle with a burn on his lower back, and I'm supposed to do this again on Thursday, and the Thursday after that, and every Thursday, weekly, recurring, and oh chops, add to planner: Thursday 8 PM, have complete emotional crisis, duration 90 minutes, recurring.
Seven AM restock. Eight-thirty, Mrs. Dumont. Don't think about the fist. Ten o'clock open. Don't think about his breathing. Eleven-fifteen—-
It's not just another back. It's his back. And I'm an idiot.
THE DOOR OPENS.
He's dressed. Dark shirt. His hair is slightly disordered from the face cradle, darker at the temples where the oil from my hands transferred, and I am aggressively, violently not going to think about the fact that he's carrying cedarwood out of my room on his skin.
I'm not. I'm so not thinking about it that I'm thinking about not thinking about it, which is still thinking about it, which means I've already failed, and it's been three seconds.
He's taller standing up. I keep forgetting this.
Somehow, on the table, he was manageable.
A body. A client. A collection of muscle groups and scar tissue that I can categorise and treat and remain professionally detached about.
Standing, he fills the room the way he filled the corridor four days ago, and all the categories collapse and he's just..
. him. Taking up all the air. Wearing a dark shirt with oil at his temples.
Smelling like cedarwood and clean skin and my own professional ruin.
I've poured his water. Frosted glass, cucumber wedge, spa protocol. I hold it out, because this is what therapists do, we hand our clients water, this is normal, this is fine.
He takes it.
His fingers close around the glass where mine were.
Not beside, not above. Where mine were. His grip fitting over the shape of mine, thumb settling into the condensation my thumb left, and I don't know if he's doing this on purpose, I don't know if this is just how he picks up a glass or if he's deliberately placing his hand in the exact imprint of mine, but the room gets very small and very warm and my heart is doing something that's probably medically inadvisable and I need him to drink this water and leave before I say or do something that gets me fired.
He drinks. Sets the glass down. And those eyes find me, the iron ones, cooler than the rest of him.
Everything warm about this man lives in his body and everything guarded lives in his face.
He gives me nothing. Not a smile, not a thank you, not the polite murmur that most clients offer at the end of a session, and I'm standing here with my hands clasped behind my back so he can't see that they're still trembling, waiting for him to say something or leave or both, preferably both, and preferably soon, because my composure has about forty-five seconds left in it.
"Thursday," he tells me. "Same time."
"It's already in the schedule," I reply, and my voice comes out so professionally level that I almost believe I'm a real adult with a real handle on her emotions. "Weekly."
He nods. Once. And then he walks past me, and the air he displaces carries warmth and clean soap and cedarwood on his skin and I hold my breath until he's through the door because if I breathe him in one more time I will make a sound and it will not be a professional sound.
Gone.
I stand in the doorway and my eyes fall to the glass he left behind. The condensation is drying. Two sets of fingerprints in the fog, overlapping, mine and his, layered on the same surface. Already disappearing.
I pick up the glass. Wash it. Dry it. Put it back on the shelf.
And then, because I am alone and the door is closed and no one on this ship can see me, I press my palms to my face for one second, just one, and breathe in cedarwood and his skin and the ninety minutes that are still living in my hands, and then I put them down and I go clean my room because I'm a professional, that's what I am, that's what I do.
Highlight this, self: you survived. Session one, complete. No spontaneous combustion. No inappropriate touching. No audible sounds of emotional distress. Gold star, Thornton. Now do it again next Thursday.
And every Thursday after that.
For the foreseeable future.
With your hands on his scarred back and his heat in your palms and his voice saying "not the hands" in a way that made your entire spine melt.
...add to planner: investigate career change. Deadline: before next Thursday.
I'M LOCKING UP THE supply cabinet when I hear heels on teak.
A quick, confident rhythm. I step out into the spa reception and a woman is crossing the floor toward me, and she is so beautiful that I actually stop what I'm doing, which I never do, because I notice hands and posture and tension patterns, not beauty.
But this woman doesn't give you a choice.
Dark hair, glossy, past her shoulders. Olive skin.
A wine-coloured dress that fits her the way his dark shirts fit him: like the clothes know their job and are doing it well.
Early thirties. She moves through the spa reception the way this ship moves through water, smooth and certain and like the room was expecting her, and I'm suddenly and painfully aware of my creased uniform and my rolled-up trousers and the oil stain on my left cuff that I've been pretending isn't there for the last two hours.
"Oh!" She stops when she sees me, her whole face opening up into a smile so warm it feels like being handed a blanket. "You must be the new girl. I'm Mila. From the gallery?"
"Star," I offer, and then, because apparently I've forgotten how introductions work, I add, "Star Thornton," as if she asked for my full government name and I'm at passport control.