Stewart kept talking a mile a minute, her head in the cradle and her voice muffled. She winced as I applied extra-firm pressure. She was always full of knots, but she could handle the pain better than most of the people I’d had on this table.

“I’ve heard the housing on post is really nice, and very affordable.” I shared what I knew from my father and a couple other clients.

“I reminded Stacey that we’re going to be living by the post, since it wouldn’t be easy to live on post,” Stewart said between her deep breaths absorbing the body work. “I did find a cute house only a few miles away. It has a small garden for the dogs.”

I felt bad for not thinking about what I had just said before I said it. I knew that, in reality, gay couples weren’t particularly welcome living on post together. It blew my mind that Stewart could serve her country the same way a straight woman or man could, but she might be denied the community support that a straight soldier would have. Seemed to me the “don’t ask, don’t tell” protocol really meant “don’t care, won’t respect.” The military needed to catch up with the times. Things were changing slowly, but overall, the Army hadn’t been very supportive of the LGBTQIA+ community. Too many men in charge still believed that being homosexual had no place in the military. These were sometimes the same men who swept sexual assault under the rug, not to mention an overwhelming number of disappearances and suicides of service members in every branch. I worried about all of the challenges that Stewart and Stacey would face, even if Hawaii seemed like a more accepting place to live than some other military bases. I listened to Stewart talk for the rest of our session, but underneath her every word, I felt a sense of sadness. I wished this world were more fair for Stewart and her partner and for all the other people I didn’t know, but who were suffering for their own reasons.

I felt a little guilty that I was eager for the massage to finish so I could check my phone and see if Kael had texted me. I needed to connect with him any way I could. I needed to feel closer to him. Even just to see his name on my phone screen. To reread old texts he had sent me.

Three more minutes.

That seemed excruciatingly long. I didn’t think Stewart would notice that I was already doing a sort of cooldown on her, gently moving my hands over her skin to relax her after the deep-tissue massage.