Page 46 of On Fire

Chapter Eleven

Nic Silvano

I feel like someone’s beaten me with a two by four. Every muscle aches. I don’t understand why the questioning was so ungodly stressful. I almost asked Keller to drive, but the need for distraction proved too much. I had to focus on the road, focus on something other than Henry, the bombings, and the feeling of being under a microscope.

Now I’m back at his Hobbit house, sitting on the sofa while he’s banging around in the kitchen. He’s refusing to cook—it’s too hot—so he’s laying out some fantastic looking charcuterie board. He’s also got a plate of smeared yogurt and hummus with veggies on the side. I offer to chop but he declines, so now I’m sitting on a barstool watching him dress everything.

I almost can’t move. We eat in near silence. It’s so good, I probably overeat. The food hits my stomach like water on a hot pan.

“Do you just want to go to bed?” he asks slipping plates into the sink.

I shake my head. “It’s barely nine o’clock. That would be pathetic.”

“Take off your clothes,” he says.

“Oh—I can’t—”

“Just take them off. You don’t have to do anything.” He pauses and grins. “I promise.”

We both go upstairs and peel off clothing.

“Here,” Keller says taking my hand. He leads me naked down the staircase and out the back door. On the way out, he grabs two towels. There, under a full moon and twinkle lights, is the outline of a hot tub.

He lifts the lid with one hand and flips a switch. A light golden light comes on at the bottom and jets churn. He reaches for the thermometer. “It’s only 102 degrees,” he says. “Just above body temp.”

“I don’t know,” I say, my voice thick. I’m exhausted.

“It’ll feel good. I get in this thing five out of seven nights of the week.” He steps into the tub. It’s small and round, but there are two seats. He splashes himself with water and sits.

For someone so talkative, he’s being remarkably quiet tonight.

I lift a leg and then the second and ease myself into the water. It’s warm and the jets feel good, they pound muscle unrelentingly, and I rotate arms and legs in position. I end up sitting with both arms thrust up on the rim.

“This is awesome,” I say, lifting one eyelid, I realize my eyes have been closed for a good five minutes while I nearly fell asleep.

“Lean forward,” Keller commands. I drop an arm and do as he says. Two large hands start kneading my shoulder blades, then my neck, working their way down each space between my vertebrae.

“Keller, you’re reallygoodatthis.” My speech sounds slurred to my own ears.

“It’s all those sport medicine classes I took when I coached.”

Water churns between us when he shifts his position. I slide up against the edge of the tub and hook both arms back across the top.

Then his voice cracks. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that today.”

A sigh, dislodged from someplace deep in my psyche rumbles up and releases. “Many people go through a lot worse.” I think of the children, women, families, young men with such fear and anger in their eyes in Afghanistan. I think of my first lover, Alan Shirard, who died of AIDS like so many of his generation. I think of families at my parent’s church who couldn’t talk about their sons when they got AIDS. If they did talk, they’d get kicked out of their congregations and lose the only community they’d cultivated. “I’m good, now,” I say. “I’m here.”

“I know that,” he says. “But I’m talking about you, today. What you had to go through in that room.”

I try to move my arm off the lip the tub, but it actually hurts. Keller’s heavy hand does this for me, then my other arm slides down into the frothy water.

“This feels amazing,” I mumble again and another more contented sigh reaches my ears.

Two large wet warm hands start fanning the muscles across my chest, then lifting my neck, moving down across pecs, then out to my shoulders and down both arms.

It feels so good, I almost quiver, stretching out my legs as far as I can.

Now hands wrap at the base of my spine, moving over buttocks, kneading deep, going into the sides of the trochanters and then then down, circulating back up, pressing on my groin, palming pressing against abs, moving up my chest to my throat and then it starts all over. I moan and open one eye again.

“I’m so sore and this feels so good.”

“You’re sore because you were holding yourself together in there like a rock. That Sessions had no right to—”

“He had to ask.”

“It’s how he did it. Even Finn was pissed.”

This makes me smile a sloppy smile. “Finn’s a good guy.” Suddenly a wave of nausea rises. Saliva fills my mouth and both eyes open. I push his hands off me and stand, but then the ground seems to tip sideways and all the blood rushes from my head.

“Kel—”