by John Herrick
Not a word spoken. Yet it spoke volumes to young Hunter.
Here at his desk, Hunter craned his neck around the entrance of his cubicle and caught a glimpse of sunshine through a nearby window.
Hunter recalled one Friday afternoon when he was seven years old. He had gotten home from school and had holed himself up in his bedroom. Sitting on the floor, thumbing through his collection of baseball cards, he separated his Cleveland Indians cards from the rest of the pack. He picked up his new Orel Hershiser card and admired its crispness, ran his finger along its firm edges. Its sharp corners took him by surprise as he tapped his finger upon them. His friend’s father had said the team was on the road to improvement and might even make it to the World Series in a year or two. Hunter’s eyes gleamed at the thought of going to a World Series game with his dad, though even at his young age, he knew his father wouldn’t be able to go.
He’d heard a shout outside the house. Then laughter. The voice of someone several years older than Hunter. A voice, Hunter had noticed of late, that had developed a deeper timbre. Then he heard the voice of an adult who had joined in the fun.
Hunter made his way to the bedroom window. From his vantage point on the second floor, he looked down upon his backyard and saw Bryce, his fifteen-year-old brother, throwing a baseball to their father. From the sight of Dad’s dark suit coat and blue, striped tie resting at the edge of the patio, Hunter figured his father must have just arrived home for the weekend a few minutes earlier. Bryce had caught him before he’d had a chance to walk into the house.
Donned in baseball gloves, father and son tossed the baseball to each other, back and forth. A rare sight, given Dad’s constant travel.
Bryce’s face beamed. He shouted something at their father, then planted his feet on the ground to ready another pitch. A sophomore in high school and a gifted pitcher, Bryce had qualified for the varsity team since his freshman year. He was that good. And Dad mentioned it often.
When he’d wound up for the pitch, he released the ball. A breaking ball! But Bryce hadn’t given Dad advance warning. By the time it reached their father on the other side of the lawn, it had caught Dad by surprise. He reached to grab the ball—and took hold of it at the last possible second.
“Ooh!” Bryce’s voice boomed. “You got it, old man!”
Dad laughed. “Almost threw my back out doing it! Great pitch. I used to pitch those back in school. Seems like a lifetime ago …”
Looking down from the window, Hunter wished he could be his big brother.
With a surge of energy coursing through him, Hunter raced to reassemble his baseball cards and return them to the shoebox he kept under his bed. If he hurried, he might get downstairs in time to get some tosses in. The sun would set before they’d finished with—
“Dinner time!” He heard his mother’s voice bellow from the open window in the kitchen. A moment later, he heard her voice from the stairwell. “Hunter! Time for dinner!”
His heart sank.
He couldn’t believe he’d missed the rare chance to play catch.
Hunter had never shared that memory with another soul. It struck him as random. Meaningless.
So why did he ache each time he recalled it?
Staring at his computer monitor, Hunter shook himself out of his stream of consciousness.
Doesn’t matter, Hunter thought to himself. If he didn’t focus on finding new clients, he might end up with a lot of time to play catch. And that would make the bills difficult to pay.
As he browsed through a list of results on a search engine, he dug the knuckles of one hand into his back, just above his waist, and moved them around in tiny circles. When he’d awakened that morning, his back had already felt sore. Now it really hurt. The discomfort ran from his lower back to his below his waistline. It would feel better if he got out of his chair and walked around the office, giving his muscles a chance to stretch, but he couldn’t spend his whole day doing that.
Hunter thought back to Ellen’s suggestion at the restaurant on Saturday night.
Maybe a massage was worth a try. It couldn’t make matters worse.
Embarrassed at the notion, he started to think it through anyway. He could keep it discreet. He didn’t need to tell anyone, did he? It wouldn’t be the first secret he had kept in his life.
Did he still have the phone number Ellen had given him? He forgot where he had placed it, but his best guess would be his wallet.
Retrieving his wallet from his back pocket, he rifled through it, checking behind his credit cards, frequent-customer reward cards, business cards. He didn’t find it. Then he remembered: Ellen hadn’t given him a business card. She had written it on a cocktail napkin.
He fingered through the section in the back of his wallet, where he kept his cash, and—there! Stuck between a twenty-dollar bill and a five, he found a thin napkin folded in quarters. With one final glance around him, as if an informant had sneaked into his cubicle, he picked up his phone and dialed the number. A receptionist answered and asked if she could help him.
Hunter kept his voice low. He hoped the person in the next cubicle wouldn’t hear him. He’d never hear the end of it.
“Hi, I’d like to, uh, make an appointment, please.”
“I’m sorry, sir, could you please repeat that? I couldn’t quite hear you.”
Oh brother. Hunter sealed his lips tight. No, I don’t want to say it louder!
“I’d like to make an appointment, please,” he said, his voice a tad louder. “A massage one.”
“We can do that. Have you visited us before?”
“No. Never,” he replied, making sure she heard the second word.
“So you probably don’t have a particular massage therapist you’d like to see. I can schedule you with—”
“Actually, a friend of mine goes there. Her name is Ellen Krieger. She told me to let you know she referred me. Whoever she sees is fine with me.”
“Oh sure, I love Ellen! She always makes us laugh.”
“Do you have an opening this evening? I’d like to stop by on my way home from work, if possible.”
CHAPTER 5
The small lobby reminded Hunter of a sunrise.
From the framed prints on the wall to the color of the chairs, the room featured early-morning pastels in blues and pinks and sherbet oranges. On any other day, Hunter wouldn’t let anyone catch him dead in a place like this.
Ellen better be right, he thought. At the sound of spa music coming from speakers overhead, he sighed to himself. Then the discomfort in his back caused him to shift at his waist toward his left, and he remembered why he’d come in the first place. He took a quick look around the room and breathed a sigh of relief to find it empty. No one would see him here.
He made his way to a receptionist’s glass-topped desk. At the corner sat a glass globe filled with sand and seashells. A starfish sat atop the contents, as though a perfectionist had left it behind in her haste. Kara would have loved it here.
“May I help you?” asked the receptionist, who had wispy, sandy-brown hair and a winning smile. From a few feet away, Hunter could detect the scent of bath oils on her skin.
“My name is Hunter Carlisle. I spoke to someone on the phone this morning about a massage thing.”
“Ellen’s referral?” she said as she slid a sheet of paper into a clipboard. She grabbed a pen from a cup on her desk and handed both items to Hunter. “This is a client intake form. We’ll need your name and address. Please also note any past injuries, health problems, or if you have a specific area of discomfort you’d like us to focus on.”
Hunter filled out the form, noting the discomfort in his back as the reason he had made his appointment. He picked up a chill in the room but attributed it to self-consciousness about showing up in such a place at all. He returned the form to the receptionist, who started typing its details into a computer, and he took a seat on a plush chair.
A minute later, the receptionist waved him over to follow her.
“You caught us at a good time, between the afternoon appointments and before a lot of people show up after work,” she said. She opened a door and allowed Hunter to lead the way inside.
Hunter swept the quaint little room with his eyes. “Do many guys show up here?”
“You’re not the first,” she replied with a smirk that implied she understood the self-conscious origin of his question.
Hunter’s eyes went straight to a massage table in the middle of the room. Covered by a striped bed sheet, the table appeared a few inches longer than his height. One end had what looked like a cushioned doughnut, which Hunter assumed was for his head, with a hole for him to look through.
“Would you like the table warmed up?”
He had to grin at the thought. No one had ever pre-warmed a bed for him.
“I guess that’s fine. Does it come with the package? I’ve never been to one of these places before.” As if she couldn’t tell by now.
She flipped a switch beside the table, took a final perusal of the intake form on the clipboard before leaving it on a small desk. As she did this, Hunter turned around and noticed a small bookshelf behind him. He examined its shelves and found books on various topics, from massage techniques and anatomy to healthy-living cookbooks and inspirational literature. A small boom box sat on top of the bookshelf.
On the other side of the room, certificates hung above a small desk. Hunter noticed two taller bookshelves accented with candles, lotions and oils. The room had a lightness to it. Tinted windows lined one wall, the kind where you could see outside but outsiders couldn’t see you watching them. The receptionist adjusted the blinds that covered the window before getting ready to leave.
Hunter returned his attention to the massage table. How was he supposed to ask the most obvious question without appearing insecure or flat-out ridiculous? He decided to go the laid-back route.
“So how, uh, how much do I take off? You know, for the …” He nodded toward the table.
“Oh, that?” she said, her voice nonchalant, as though she answered that question more than any other. “Whatever you prefer. Half the clients stay in their undershorts, the other half gets fully undressed.” With another perusal of the clipboard, she said, “Lower-back pain? How far down can you feel it reach?”
“Down to my waist.” Then he clarified, “Farther below my waist.”
With a nod of understanding, she replied, “It’s up to you. It’s easier to address the pain if you’re fully undressed. It allows the therapist to make direct contact with the flesh. If you’ve ever tried to give your girlfriend a back rub, you might have noticed how the fabric, to an extent, blunts what you’re doing.”
She was right about that.
She pointed to the corner of the massage table, where a folded, pastel-green towel sat.
“You can cover up with a towel.” She took a final glance at Hunter and winked. “It’s not as awkward as you’re thinking. When you’re ready, go ahead and lie down on the table and make yourself comfortable. It’ll be just a few minutes.”
And with that, she walked out the door, closing it behind her.
Hunter took another look around the room, then closed the blinds a little more. He examined the tinted windows closer and tried to recall an instance where he could see in from the outside of one of these buildings, but nothing came to mind. His heart thumped. Why was he nervous? It was an appointment, that was all—albeit an appointment far outside his comfort zone.
With an exhale, he began undressing, tossing his clothes onto a chair in the corner of the room. As the layers came off, he was thankful he’d agreed to the table warmer. And the feeling of his bare feet on a carpeted floor that wasn’t his home struck him as odd.
He put his fingers to the waistline of his boxer shorts, then second-guessed whether he wanted to take the plunge. But if Ellen was right and this would relieve his discomfort, then in the end, awkwardness wouldn’t matter.
Plus he thought about the massage therapist. Despite the receptionist’s claim, he still didn’t believe she had many male clients. Would it be as awkward for her as it was for Hunter? In that case, the scenario gave them a level playing field. It would be no different if Kara had decided to become a massage therapist and started practicing on him.
He stepped out of his boxer shorts and tossed them on top of his other clothes. The chill of the air against his skin seemed strange. Then again, how many times had he changed clothes in a locker room? Same thing, he figured.
He climbed onto the table, face down, and managed to drape the towel over the area his boxer shorts had covered. He crossed his arms and buried his face in them, ready for a nap. He melted into the table’s heat.
A minute later, when Hunter had all but dozed off, he heard a quick, quiet knock, followed by the click of the door as it opened. The massage therapist walked in and closed the door, back turned toward Hunter.
Hunter hadn’t expected the therapist to be another guy.
Okay. Hunter braced himself mentally. He couldn’t exactly race out the door. How stupid would that look? His mind raced in a matter of two seconds.
Hunter looked up again to take in the sight of the person as he turned around. Dressed in short-sleeved, navy-blue scrubs, the guy was a slender six feet tall. His short, blond hair carried a hint of red. Combined with his fair skin, it suggested a Scandinavian background. Hunter was a sucker for light complexions and that hair color.
“Hello, I’m Gabe Hellman.” The therapist extended his hand for a handshake.
Hunter wriggled his arm from under his chin.
“Hunter … Carlisle.”
As they shook hands, Hunter noticed Gabe’s forearms boasted a solid bulge, the type that develops when you spend a lot of time lifting heavy materials. He attributed this toned feature to the result of applying massage pressure day in and day out.
Gabe smiled and headed to the desk. In a split second, on his way there, his eyes flicked back to Hunter a second time. Something in that glance hooked into Hunter, caught him somewhere within. In that moment, Hunter wondered why the second glance had occurred, then assumed it was because Gabe didn’t receive many male clients. Maybe the sight of a male client had taken him off guard. That made sense. After all, hadn’t Hunter felt awkward coming here in the first place? And seeing another male enter the room for the appointment had brought Hunter himself to a halt. Maybe it had had the same effect on Gabe Hellman.
No, on second thought, Hunter was positive he’d seen something else in Gabe’s glance. But he also knew how these situations went, how mixed signals occurred. It always turned out that way, as far as he could tell. So, in line with how he approached this type of scenario, he resigned himself to not read anything into what he thought he’d seen.
Reading between the lines left him disappointed every time, as it had with Jake Geyer a few days ago. And it reminded him of how alone he felt.
Immediately Hunter felt guilty for thinking such a thought about another man in the first place. He shook the notion from his mind. Hunter willed himself to appear indifferent, to hide any clues about what had tiptoed through his thoughts.
“So, Ellen referred you?” Gabe dragged a stool toward the massage table and sat down. “I love her. Any friend of Ellen’s is a friend of mine.” Gabe struck him as a guy-next-door type, but of a creative variety. He appeared confident, comfortable in his own skin. His voice carried a lilt, a subtle one, not overbearing. His enunciation contained precision beyond the norm, each word a dainty morsel.
“Yeah, she’s … This was her idea. This massage.”
Gabe gestured toward the clipboard with his thumb. “You’re having back discomfort?”
“It comes and goes. Intensity changes by the day.”
“And you mentioned on the intake form that it occurs in your lower back?”
“It starts a few inches above my waist and stretches south from there.”
“Many people make appointments for that type of issu
e. For the vast majority who come here, massages help relieve the pain. Oftentimes, it’s nothing medical, just stress-related.”
“I figured the same thing.” Hunter relaxed. He realized Gabe’s conversation had eased him into comfort, though Hunter hadn’t noticed it happening step by step. “I was an athlete back in my teens. Lots of pulled muscles, never a medical emergency.”
If ice caught fire, it would take on the color of Gabe’s blue eyes. A trace of bashfulness ignited inside Hunter. It melted the courage to look directly into Gabe’s eyes, which left Hunter frustrated as he slipped further into the attraction zone.
But those eyes also communicated compassion, like Gabe understood—or, at least, wanted to understand—what Hunter told him. That alone caused Hunter to relax further. Hunter didn’t experience that comfort often, especially among friends. Men didn’t seem wired that way. Although Hunter didn’t consider himself to need it often, he had wished for that connection every once in a while. And that subtle yearning had grown in the four years since he’d graduated college.
More than that, Gabe struck Hunter as familiar. Had Hunter met him before?
“What’s your idea of heaven on earth?”
“Huh?”
“Heaven on earth,” Gabe said. “If you could escape today, leave your life behind and go anywhere, where would that place be? What would it sound like?”
Was this his attempt at conversation? Nonetheless, Hunter contemplated his answer. He drew his arms tighter together beneath his chin, and his biceps flexed before returning to their mode of rest. “I’d drink a Red Stripe on the beaches of Jamaica. Or any island down there. Hot sun, hot sand, ocean.”
Gabe shut the blinds completely, then dimmed the lights to a snug glow. He walked to a bookshelf and thumbed through a row of compact discs. “And the ladies, right?”
