Chapter 4 #2
I'm leaving the spa late, because a client ran over and I stayed to restock the oils and wipe down the tables because Mr. Green does spot checks and I'd rather be tired than sloppy.
The staff corridor on Deck 5 runs past the Tranquil Antique Gallery, and the gallery is dark except for a single lamp at the back, throwing a yellow circle across a table I haven't seen before. Not a display table. A working table.
Artem is sitting at it.
I stop walking. I don't mean to, but my feet make the decision for me, the same way my hand stops mid-stroke when it finds a knot, an involuntary response to something that requires attention, and oh chops, does he require attention.
He's in the same dark shirt, sleeves pushed up, and he's leaning forward with his forearms on the table and something spread out in front of him, papers and a laptop, and his face is different.
Not the guarded blankness of the massage room or the corridor.
He's focused, intent, the lines of his jaw hard, his mouth set, and he looks like a man doing work that matters, real work, the kind that furrows brows and locks jaws, and something about seeing him like this, when he doesn't know I'm here, when there's glass between us and he's not performing anything for anyone, does something to my chest that I don't have a planner entry for.
Add to planner: 23:15, brief cardiac event caused by man reading documents behind glass. Duration: unknown. Recurring: probably.
Mila is beside him. Standing, leaning over his shoulder, one hand resting on his arm while her other hand points at something on the screen.
She's talking. I can't hear her through the glass but I can see her mouth moving, quick and animated, and I can see his head turn slightly toward her, listening.
Her hand is on his arm.
It's nothing. People touch each other's arms all the time. It's a gesture, friendly, professional. Colleagues do it. Friends do it. I do it to clients when I'm explaining where I found tension. It's meaningless.
Except Mila's hand doesn't rest on his forearm the way you'd touch a colleague. It rests there comfortably, without asking permission, a hand on its own kitchen counter, its own sofa arm. And Artem doesn't move away. He lets it stay.
I stand there for three seconds. Maybe four.
And then I keep walking, because the girl who picks up ancient necklaces and gets choked up about craftsmen and schedules her own emotional breakdowns in planner format is standing in a corridor pressing her fingertips against nothing and she needs to get a grip and go to bed.
My flat shoes don't make any sound on the carpet.
They don't notice.
THURSDAY. EIGHT PM. Session two.
He's already on the table when I come back in, face-down, towel across his hips, the room warm and dim, and my hands are already oiled with cedarwood because at this point I should just tattoo a sign on my forehead that says I CHOSE THIS SCENT BECAUSE IT SMELLS LIKE HIM AND I'M NOT COPING WELL, but admitting that would mean dealing with it and I'm not ready to deal with it so we're going to continue the fiction that cedarwood is my professional preference and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the man on my table.
I place my hands on his back.
His skin is just as hot as before. The scars are exactly where I mapped them last week, every ridge and line in the same place, because of course they are, they're scars, they don't move, but my fingers trace them with this ridiculous sense of recognition, like they're greeting old friends, which is insane, I've known this man for eight days, I should not be on a first-name basis with his scar tissue.
But this session is different. Not in technique. In him.
Last week there was resistance in his muscles, that braced-for-impact quality, the body that decided to stop relaxing between hits.
It's still there, but underneath it, something has loosened.
Just a fraction. Most people wouldn't feel it, but I'm not most people and my hands are the smartest part of me, and what they're telling me right now is: the muscles along his left shoulder blade give a half-degree more than they did last Thursday.
His rib cage expands a little wider on the exhale.
And the fist, when I work the burn scars on his lower back, doesn't come. His fingers stay open.
He's letting me in. Physically. One degree at a time.
And that thought, that specific thought, is the most dangerous thought I've had on this ship, because "letting me in" is not a phrase you're supposed to use about a client.
"Responding to treatment" is what Madame Gilles would say.
"Reduced guarding" is what the textbook would say.
"Letting me in" is what a girl says about a man, and I'm not supposed to be a girl right now, I'm supposed to be a therapist with a certificate and a professional demeanour and a planner that works, except my planner hasn't worked properly since the corridor encounter and at this point I think it might be permanently broken.
Seven AM restock. Eight-thirty, Mrs. Dumont. Ten o'clock, open. Don't think about how his body trusts your hands. Eleven-fifteen—-
...his body trusts my hands.
Oh chops.
Delete that. Don't think about it. DO NOT add that to the filing system.
Too late. It's filed. It's filed under "Things That Are Going to Ruin My Life" right next to "His forearms" and "How he whispered 'not the hands'" and the file is getting very full and I need a bigger cabinet.
I work in silence. He lies in silence. The ship hums beneath us and the heated floor is warm under my feet and the cedarwood fills the room and I think: this is the most intimate thing I've ever done with another person and we haven't exchanged a word and he doesn't even know my name.
That thought makes me sad in a small, specific way.
Not heartbroken, not dramatic, just... the particular ache of holding something beautiful that doesn't belong to you and knowing you have to set it back on the velvet.
He's a ninety-minute appointment on Thursday evenings, and I'm a pair of hands attached to a girl he's never asked anything about, and that should be fine because that's what professional means, but it's not fine, it's the opposite of fine, and I'm finishing the closing sequence with a lump in my throat that has no business being there.
My fingers trail off his shoulder. I step back.
"I'll step out while you dress."
"Wait."
I stop. My hand is on the door. My heart is suddenly in my throat, which is very crowded because the lump is also still there, and I turn around because he just asked me to wait and his voice, even face-down, even muffled by the face cradle, even at practically a whisper, goes through me like someone just ran a tuning fork down my spine.
He turns his head. Just enough. One dark eye, half his jaw, the edge of his mouth.
"What is your name?"
And oh, how he asks. Not offhand, not tossed over a shoulder while putting shoes back on. He asks it carefully, like requesting something precious from a high shelf, something breakable, and he wants to make sure his hands are ready to catch it.
My brain does a frantic inventory. He's asking your name. This is a normal question. People ask their therapists' names all the time. This is completely unremarkable. SAY YOUR NAME, STAR. OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SAY—-
"Star," I manage. "Star Thornton."
A pause. Long enough for me to hear the hum of the ship. Long enough for the cedarwood to fill the silence. Long enough for me to contemplate, briefly and wildly, whether I should have given a fake name so he couldn't use it to destroy me later.
"Star," he repeats.
Just that. My name. One syllable. He says it low, and he says it like he's tasting it, rolling it across his tongue to see if the flavour matches what he expected, and apparently it does because the corner of his mouth does something.
Not a smile. Not even close. Just a movement, barely there, the ghost of an expression that a less attentive person would miss entirely, and I'm not a less attentive person, I'm a person whose entire career is built on noticing micro-movements, and what I'm noticing right now is that Artem Almazov just almost-smiled at my name and I need to leave this room immediately or I'm going to do something unforgivable like smile back.
"Goodnight, Star," he murmurs.
Oh no. Oh no no no. He cannot just... he can't just say my name like THAT and then put "goodnight" in front of it as if those two things belong together and that's not a direct attack on my cardiovascular system—-
"Goodnight, Mr. Almazov," I reply, and my voice comes out approximately normal, which is the greatest achievement of my twenty years on this planet, greater than my practical scores, greater than Madame Gilles's recommendation, greater than getting hired on the fourteenth ship, because I just pronounced his surname without wobbling when what I wanted to say was Artem and what I wanted to do was stay and what I wanted to know was everything.
I leave. Close the door. Walk to the staff corridor and press my back to the wall and put my hand over my mouth because a sound is trying to come out and I don't know what kind of sound it is, a laugh or a whimper or something in between, something that doesn't have a name yet because I've never made it before, because no one has ever spoken my name like that before, like it was a word he'd been waiting to learn.
Okay. Okay. Let me just... let me check the planner. Six-thirty prep. Seven o'clock first client. Eight-thirty Mrs. Dumont. Thursday 8 PM, recurring: Artem Almazov says my name and I die. Duration: the rest of my natural life. Flag: red. Status: CRITICAL.
People ask their therapists' names all the time.