Instead of getting in the car, I turned toward him. Things were going so well. I didn’t want to cut it any shorter than absolutely necessary. “I don’t want to go home yet.”
He leaned his arm on top of the door frame. “We could go back to my place.”
I cut my eyes at him, knowing that phrase could have many different implications.
“Just to have a place to hang out. I remember your opinion on booty calls.”
I kicked my toe into the dirt. “Do you think I’m a prude?” I asked, self-conscious. I’d been called that several times in college. It never bothered me because I’d never respected the guys who said it. But if that was what Jonas thought…that would be harder to take.
“I think you know what you want and you respect yourself enough to ask for it.”
My heart fluttered and my attraction to Jonas went up another notch. I nodded and got in the car.
He had a small house on the other side of town from me. It was old, but I could tell he’d taken care of it, maybe even done some renovations.
He opened the front door and let me go in first, reaching in to turn on the light. “What do you think?” he asked with a nervous curve of his brow.
“I think it’s great.” I also thought that now would be a good time for him to kiss me. We’d only had the one short, sweet kiss at the end of our first date at Roy’s. It had been great, but I was ready for another.
He side-stepped to shut the door and stumbled, sucking in a breath through his teeth. “I’ve got to do something about my knee. I’ll be right back.” He tossed his keys on a table by the door and disappeared down the hall.
I wandered around, turning on a few more lights and setting down my purse when I found the living room.
He came back quickly, wearing shorts instead of jeans and carrying a small plastic bin full of stuff. My curiosity piqued. I had expected him to just grab some pain killer, but he seemed to have other ideas.
“So.” He set the bin on the coffee table. “I know you said you don’t like needles, but I need to treat my knee. Is it going to freak you out if I stick needles in my leg?”
“Um…” I was suddenly hot and cold and sweating.
“Here.” He took my upper arms and backed me up so that I could sit in the chair across from the couch. “Just, don’t faint. Maybe if I show you how it works, it won’t freak you out so much.”
I seriously doubted that.
He stepped back toward the couch, his limp even more pronounced than before. I took a deep breath. I could do this. He was in pain and I didn’t want that. He wanted to show me something that was important to him, and I did want that. I nodded.
He picked up a small container and pulled out a needle, holding it up for me to see. It was thin. Way thinner than I thought it would be. He put his finger on top of it and showed me how it bent easily, explaining the size and how they worked. “I put them in this hollow tube when I’m ready to needle a point. See how it’s a little shorter than the needle?”
I nodded.
“That means that when I press the tube to my skin”—he scooted back on the couch and put his leg up, placing the tube with the needle in it on the side of his leg—”I can just tap the top of the needle and it will only go into the skin a quarter of an inch because the tube stops my finger.” He demonstrated and then proceeded to insert needles all around his knee. I winced each time, but he didn’t even flinch.
“There are energy meridians throughout your body,” he explained as he took yet another needle and tapped it into his calf. When he pulled the tube off, the majority of the needle stuck out of his skin, swaying slightly when he moved. It was super creepy but also fascinating. “Meridians are like highways running through your body that your energy travels on. And those meridians have hundreds of points along them that can be treated using needles, pressure, laser, electricity. They can get your energy moving if it’s stagnant, or it can release some if there is too much.”
“How did you get into this?” I interrupted to ask. “Did you one day think, Hey, I bet stabbing needles into my skin will lessen my pain?”
He chuckled. “Not quite. Two years into my time in the army, I injured my knee. I went to a regular doctor, who sent me to a physical therapist, who suggested a chiropractor, who had an acupuncturist who worked in his same office. The PT and chiro helped, but the acupuncture really helped. I was fascinated by it and started learning more and more. By the time I got out of the army, I knew I wanted to be certified to practice it.” He was now messing with the needles he’d already placed in his knee. Moving a couple up and down, twisting others. Once in a while his foot would twitch.
So. Weird.
I shuddered involuntarily.
He tried to hide a little grin. He was getting a kick out of my squeamishness. “Come here.”
I looked at him. Come over there? With the needles?
“Come on.” He waved me over.
I got up and sat carefully on the coffee table beside his torture devices.
“Can I see your hand?” he asked.
No. “Are you going to stick a needle in it?”
“Not without your permission.”
I kept my hand to myself. He tried to explain about diagnosing someone using their pulses (how can that be plural?) and looking at their tongue. It was all very bizarre. But when he offered to treat me using pressure instead of needles, I relented.
“No needles?”
“None at all.”
I held my hand out to him, still suspicious. “I feel like I’m on a hidden camera show.” He treated points on my hands and arms, always pushing his finger into my skin over a certain area until he found the exact spot he was looking for. The idea of locating an energy point by touch seemed a little nutty, but he was very clinical about it all. I could tell he’d gone into professional mode. He wasn’t looking at me like the semi-girlfriend I was. Instead I was the patient.
He was the healer. Seeing him this way opened up another facet of his personality. Just one more facet that I liked.
After he was done treating me, he took the needles out of his knee (no blood, by the way), then rubbed some strong-smelling lotion onto it.
“This probably wasn’t the evening you were expecting,” he said as he got up to wash the smelly stuff off his hands. He was barely limping now.
“I’m good,” I assured him. “I’ll be interested to see if your voodoo works on me.”
“Keep in mind I’m still learning. I’m familiar with the protocol for my knee out of necessity. I treated you more for general stress than anything specific.”
“I didn’t tell you I was stressed.”
“Your pulses told me you were stressed.”
He came back and reached for my hands. I gave them to him, letting him pull me up and lead me over to the couch. “Now you can sit with me.”
Hmm. I liked that plan. I curled up on the couch, facing him. “How did you hurt your knee?” I wondered if it was some daring soldier escapade.
Jonas grimaced. “Just by being stupid.”
“So, not a daring rescue?”
There was one stunned second of silence and then he burst out laughing. “Is that what you were hoping for?”