The mirror fogs near my mouth where my breath hits it. My thighs tremble. My hand moves quicker, harder, and I’m past pride now, past embarrassment, past the version of me who wants to be good.
I’m just a girl in a locked bathroom, trying to remember what it feels like to be in control of at least one thing.
The orgasm hits me sharp and fast, making my belly clench and my breath break, a silent gasp that turns into a shaky exhale. My hand stills, then slows, then pulls away as the aftershocks roll through me like a tide.
For a second I just stand there, forehead to the mirror, eyes closed, breathing like I ran a mile.
Then the shame tries to rush back in.
I wipe my hand on toilet paper and wash it like I’m scrubbing evidence, like I can clean myself back into the kind ofgirl who doesn’t do this after a nightmare about a married man. An older married biker.
The water runs warm over my fingers. The soap smells like cheap lavender. It doesn’t matter. Nothing feels pure in this town. Not my reputation. Not my fear. Not my want.
I look at myself again.
My face is flushed now. My eyes are still wide, but there’s something steadier in them. Not confidence. Not yet.
Resolve.
Because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep walking into public and pretending I don’t feel the whole county’s gaze on my skin. I can’t keep getting cornered by whispers and threats and polite warnings that ain’t polite at all.
I can’t keep being seen.
Not for a while.
I unlock the bathroom door and step into the hallway, and the house is still too quiet, but the quiet feels like a choice now instead of a trap.
I grab my phone from the bed and open my calendar app like I’m making a plan for survival, because that’s what this is. The smallest kind of survival.
One week.
Seven days.
No Hollar Dollar. No salon. No gas station at night. No wandering around like I’m invincible just because I’m too stubborn to admit I’m scared.
I will do my classwork.
I will stay inside.
I will let Hell get bored.
I will let the whispers move on to somebody else’s sins.
I swallow hard and stare at the dark window like it might stare back.
“I’m not leaving the house for a week,” I say out loud, because saying it makes it real, and I need something real right now. Even if I know I have to go to work.
Then, softer, like a threat I’m making to myself.
“And I’m not thinking about him.”
My body betrays me with a small, aching pulse between my thighs, like it’s laughing at that promise.
I ignore it.
I crawl under the covers, phone in my hand, doors locked, lights on, and I listen to the house settle around me like an animal trying to decide if it can sleep.
Outside, Hell, Kentucky keeps breathing.
