The Kingdom of Childhood

Judy nodded. “How’s she feeling these days, your mom?”

“Tired of being pregnant. She’s going stir-crazy. The mid wife warned her if she doesn’t settle down she’ll hurt herself and won’t be able to have the baby at home, and that kind of freaked her out. She doesn’t want to go to a hospital.”

“I can understand that. Maggie and Scott were both born at home.”

“I was, too. So she wants that, but she also believes in wellness over illness and she says being in bed all day is terrible for her circulation. She’s always talking my dad into giving her foot rubs to get her chi moving.”

Judy sighed and leaned back, both hands around her coffee. “I wish someone would do that for me. The only time I sit down all day is for storytelling. It’s like being a waitress.”

“I can rub them,” he offered.

She laughed. “I don’t think so. The point of this coffee run is to lay out some professional boundaries, not to get my feet massaged by you.”

“Don’t make a big deal out of it. I give them to my mom all the time. I know reflexology. My dad taught me.”

She gave him a doubtful look.

“Nobody’s watching,” he said. “C’mon.”

He turned in the seat to face her and held out his hands. With a sigh, she slipped her foot out of its shoe and set it on his knee. He pulled it onto his lap and began with his thumbs beneath the first and second toes.

“The different areas correspond to different parts of the body,” he explained. He moved his thumbs around, demonstrating. “Lungs. Liver. Stomach. Massaging removes obstacles that block your chi.”

“There’s definitely something blocking my chi these days.”

“Maybe it’s your kidneys.” He rubbed a spot at the center of her foot. “The Chinese believe the kidneys hold massive amounts of chi. Do you feel anything?”

“I don’t know about my kidneys. It feels good, though.”

He worked his way down to her heel, then back up, rubbing between each toe. She relaxed against the door and closed her eyes, shoulders easing backward, and he grinned.

“See, it’s working,” he said. “You’re starting to melt.”

She laughed. “It must be my kidneys.”

Her foot arched in his hand; feeling the response of her body aroused him. He moved his fingers lightly up her Achilles tendon to her ankle, massaging around the small bones. She did not twitch or pull away; instead, she stretched her calf to give him more room to work.

“You know you can give a woman an orgasm if you rub a certain way?” he asked, and her eyes opened, following her rising brows. He walked his fingers around her foot in the pattern he had read about. “It’s like, ankle, stretch, thumbnail up the arch. Repeat.”

“Have you ever done it?”

He grinned and rubbed the back of her calf. Still, she didn’t flinch. “No. Do you want me to try?”

“Let’s not,” she said, but left her foot where it was.

He ran his nail up the midline of her foot, and her toes curled. “Come on,” he pressed. “I won’t tell anyone if it works.”

Her gaze drifted to the customers outside the Starbucks. He realized, with an electric thrill, that she was considering it. Teasingly he added, “I bet that’s what’s blocking your chi.”

One of her eyebrows went up. “If it was, would it be any of your business?”

“I don’t know. Do you want it to be?”

She smiled, but it looked thin, even bitter. “You don’t pay much attention to the news, my friend,” she informed him, and the familiar phrase caught him by surprise. Quietly she continued, “And this is what I wanted to talk to you about. People go to jail for things like this, Zach. Women do. Teachers do. Somebody always finds out.”

“They go to jail for getting their feet rubbed?”

“No. They go to jail for getting involved with students. And only one party ever gets blamed, no matter who instigates it. Do you know which party that would be?”

“You’re not involved with me, though.”

Her cheeks lifted in the slightest hint of amusement. “You just propositioned my feet.”

“They’re just feet.”

“But that’s not the kind of foot rub you give your mother, now is it?”

“No, but my mother doesn’t stick her tongue down my throat, either.”

Her smile grew weary and she tugged her leg from his grasp. “I need to take you home. I don’t think your mother would want to have any role in this conversation.”

“You might be surprised. She’s not as uptight as you think.”

Judy slid her foot back into her shoe. “Well, I know a little more about mothers than you do.”

The condescension in her tone made him feel small. He knew a thing or two about adults and their secrets, and