Page 6 of The Burning
“So have you or not?”
He shook his head. “Every day that goes by makes it harder. I don’t want to face her right now.”
“Have you ever thought about how she must feel?” I sat my bowl down on the pile of dirty dishes as Fischer leaned up to face me. “It’s for the best. You know that. If you explained to her why you did it, I think she would be more understanding. She wants the best for you, truly. She’s probably so hurt now that it’s been so long and you’ve avoided her.”
“What does it matter to you how she feels? You hurt her, too, so don’t give me that shit about thinking about how she feels when she’s really probably more heartbroken by you than me.”
A small hole opened up in my chest as he spoke. I knew he was wrong, but the idea of hurting her and betraying her trust had been feasting on my corpse for the last two weeks.
“This isn’t a competition of who is worse. We both fucked up, but you’re her brother, her twin brother, and I’m just a guy she halfway dated and hates now.”
He stood all the way up. “Bullshit. You know you’re not just a guy to her. We should have told her and you’re right, I’ll be the one who has to face her and deal with her pain, and you’ll be able to run off to Atlanta soon. I’ll have to see the disappointment in her face, and you’ll never see her face again.”
I reached for his shirt and balled my fist around the fabric. His green eyes went wide and he raised his hands up in the air.
“Sorry. Fuck. Sorry, Martin. I just feel like shit about it and am pushing it onto you. I’ll go to her house tomorrow. I don’t know how much longer I can avoid her, anyway. It’s killing me day by day.” He sighed and I let go of him.
“I don’t think just showing up at her place without a warning is a good idea?”
“If I call her, she might be working or not answer. She’s texted me too many times for me to say sorry over the phone. I need to just face the music.” His voice was shaking and I knew even though his words sounded like he barely cared, he absolutely did and hated disappointing her. We had that in common.
As selfish as it was, I felt like I knew Karina more than he did, which I knew wasn’t true, but it made something inside of me feel satisfied or fulfilled. Like the time I spent with her wasn’t a dream or a waste of time. I would rather have felt that feeling at least once in my pathetic life than never at all, and since people like me didn’t get a fairy-tale ending, I would take what I could get and leave it at that. I was already pushing my luck by having someone like Karina give me the time of day, and now the time had run out and I needed to get over her. Having her brother around me constantly didn’t help me forget her, but maybe that’s why I decided to spend my time helping him make his life better. I couldn’t do that for her, so maybe doing it for him would help me repent for some of my sins?
I needed to work on controlling my temper and I knew my anger wasn’t directed toward Fischer, just like his anger wasn’t directed toward me. We both hated ourselves. That was the thing we had the most in common.
Chapter Three
Karina
Ding-dong. The bell on the door of the spa rang and I sprang up from the rolling chair I was lazily circling in. We hadn’t had a customer in almost an hour and not one of us had anyone on the books, so I was tending to the spa alone. I had dusted and vacuumed and filled up the oils in everyone’s rooms. There was literally nothing else to do except scroll on my phone, and I was purposely trying to avoid that. I went through my typical pattern of typing Kael’s name in, and as usual, there was nothing new. He had completely disappeared from my life. No apology, no trying to make excuses. Nothing. I blocked and unblocked him twice before tossing my phone onto the desk. The door opened forcefully and I had a potential customer to relieve my boredom. The man walking up to the counter had a sharp, square jaw like a pit bull, and an Alabama State cap covering dark hair and hooded dark eyes. He was tall, ungodly so.
“Hi, how can I help you?” I asked him, looking up at the clock on the wall and out the glass door behind him. It was dark and that gave me chills. I hated being in the spa alone lately. I couldn’t tell why, but I’d had this anxious, dreadful-as-hell feeling in the pit of my stomach for the last couple of weeks and just couldn’t shake it. All I could think about was my brother going to basic training and being screamed at by drill sergeants. I couldn’t stop imagining him with his hair buzzed off, in ACUs doing push-ups and obstacle courses in the scorching sun. Visions of him dodging IEDs and gunshots overseas consumed me, making my brain even more chaotic.
By the time the man spoke, I had mentally left the lobby and was on a different planet. I was becoming so detached from my daily life that I wasn’t sure if I was in the right headspace to be giving treatments to clients.
“Do you have any openings right now?” he asked in a husky voice.
My stomach dropped for the third time.
“Uh . . . ” I thought about telling him no, that I was booked for the rest of the night, but I really needed the money and my electricity was due the next week. And he most likely wouldn’t try to murder me. He didn’t know I was alone here and that was good.
I wished I didn’t have to think that way, and even though I knew that I was more paranoid than most people, I also knew as a woman there were dangers around me all the time.
“Yeah . . . what sort of treatment are you wanting?” I asked him, pointing up at the menu on the wall.
The laminated posters were all curled up at the corners, and some of the prices were barely legible because of Mali’s scribbly handwriting that had been fading since the spa opened. Every once in a while, I tried to use a Sharpie to trace over the faded sign, since Mali couldn’t care less about it. She rolled her eyes every time I told her I would gladly make a new one since it seemed to only bother me.
“Like, an hour? I need a massage bad. My back is all fucked up right here.” He rubbed his hand on the top of his hip, twisting his body slowly.
“I can do an hour treatment. This is your first time here, yeah?” I recognized every regular client, mine and everyone else’s.
He nodded and I slid the clipboard with the new client sheets over to him. His fingernails were dirty and his hands were so dry that his knuckles were cracked and had white rings around them. His face looked younger than his hands, but even looking straight into his almost black eyes, I couldn’t guess how old he was. I could tell he worked hard and either was from Alabama or just liked the team.
As he filled out the paperwork, I slid my phone from my pocket and discreetly checked it. A notification popped up right as I went to unlock the screen. It was from Instagram; I had two new followers and three likes on my latest post, which was a picture of a dandelion peeking up from blades of grass. Two followers, huh? I might as well be an influencer with my three hundred followers and twenty likes on some of my posts. My fingernails on a chair got hundreds of likes, though, so it clearly didn’t take much to impress the people of the internet.
“Here you go,” the man said, interrupting my daydream of being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to post aesthetically pleasing photos on an app.
“Thanks . . . ” I looked for his name. “Thomas. When you’re ready, I’m all set.”
