17. Juliette #3
My fingers find the wet before I’m even ready for it.
I’m soaked - all that being good, and my body did not get the memo.
I make a sound I hate, thin and ruined, pressing the heel of my palm against the ache and rocking before I’ve planned a strategy.
I circle my fingers through the slick, slow, gathering it up, and my hips tilt into nothing - greedy, ashamed, and unable to stop.
“Traitor,” I hiss at my own hand, and then I use it.
I imagine his voice before I mean to. It’s behind my ear, low and wrecked, the way it gets when he’s been holding himself back: There you go. I knew you’d do this the second I left.
“Shut up,” I whisper to the memory of him. “I am not doing this.”
You’re doing it. His voice is so close I can nearly feel the breath of it. This is the shop, the day the wall came down, his mouth at my collarbone while we were supposed to be building a shelf. You haven’t touched yourself since the pantry, have you? You’re not going to last, Juliette.
“I am not - I’m not some-”
Last how long? He’d laughed low against my skin, and I’d wanted to hit him. I’d wanted to kiss him. I’d done both. Thirty seconds. Forty, if you’re stubborn.
I am stubborn. I slide one finger inside myself instead of answering.
The stretch is a shock - tight and hot, embarrassingly wet - and I bite my own shoulder to keep quiet.
The clock in the hall keeps ticking. The ceiling keeps its mouth shut.
Only I am making sounds, muffled, animal, as I push in and pull out in a slow, obscene rhythm.
The room is too cold and the quilt is too warm and none of it matters.
I don’t have him here. I have the ghost of him between my legs, and I hate how well the ghost knows me.
You said you needed room, the memory of him says, the words turning rough, half-raw. You sent me back to the bed and breakfast to give it to you. And now you’re in your mother’s bed, fingers inside yourself, thinking about my hands on your hips. Tell me I’m wrong.
“Close,” I gasp, curling my fingers, searching. “Trial. Not wrong. Both.”
I’m what?
I want to lie. I can’t. The want is stronger than my pride, hot and liquid between my thighs, and it has been for months.
“I want to lie my head on your chest and sleep,” I say to the dark, and my voice cracks, because it’s true and I can’t have it.
“But I can’t. We can’t. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? That’s the whole-”
I pull my fingers out, push back in. Oh, fuck. There.
That’s it, he’d said once, and maybe it’s memory, maybe it’s imagination - the seam is gone now. That’s my good girl. I can hear how much you need it. Fuck, you’ve been fighting me for so long, Juliette. Stop fighting. Let go.
“I’m not fighting you,” I gasp, pressing harder, grinding my palm against my clit while my fingers work inside. “I’m fighting the part of me that would give you everything.”
It’s too late for that. I let him say it. I want him to have said it. In this room, it’s true. You already gave me everything. You just haven’t admitted it yet.
I am wet and aching and furious about all of it.
Furious that he’s not here. Furious that my body only heats up this way for him.
Furious that I asked for space and then filled the space with him anyway.
I roll my hips into my own hand and imagine his instead - the weight of his thigh between mine, his palm flat across my sternum to pin me down, the catch in his breath when I say his name.
I am saying it now, held between my teeth, trying to make it last, and I am not going to last.
The heat coils low and tight, spreading through my thighs and belly.
I press two fingers deep and curl into that spot, over and over, relentless, and I am so close, close enough to hurt, close enough to pass for grief.
I’m scared of the love I have for him, because I know it will ruin me, and I also know there’s a small part of me that will let it.
That will open every door in this whole empty house and let him in and let him stay.
That part of me is the one doing this. It’s the only one in control.
Go on, the voice says, low and full of praise, proud of me, and the pride is what undoes me. That’s my girl. That’s it. Fuck, you’re so beautiful like this - don’t stop now -
I come with my face turned into my mother’s quilt and my fingers still buried inside myself, his name locked behind my teeth where it can’t get out and do damage.
The orgasm hits hard - a rough, blunt stunning that doubles me over, heels pressing into the mattress, knees trembling.
It peaks and breaks and keeps breaking, ripples pulling through my thighs, and I ride it into my own cupped palm until it softens and goes still.
After, I lie in the dark with my pulse ringing and take the honest inventory.
These are my hands. I used the space for this.
“God. What the fuck is wrong with me?” I ask my own body, which is still humming, still wet, entirely unrepentant.
I’d do it again. I’ll probably do it before morning.
The want was supposed to leave when he did. That was the arrangement.
Nobody honors their arrangements anymore.