None of it feels real.
My body is moving, but my thoughts are somewhere else — a dark bedroom, a silhouette in my bed, the warm exhale of a stranger on my pillow.
I gag.
I need…
I need him off me.
Even if he’s not here. Even if it’s a memory. Even if it was years ago.
The need slams into me so hard I stagger toward the bathroom.
I turn the shower on full blast — hot, too hot — and steam fills the room almost instantly, coating the mirror, the tiles, the air. Myclothes hit the floor in seconds. I step under the water before it’s even ready, before my skin can tell me to stop.
Heat burns across my shoulders.
Good.
I grab the soap. Scrub.
Hard.
Harder.
“I need him off,” I mutter, voice cracking. “Get off… get off… get off…”
My fingernails dig into my skin. I drag the washcloth over my arms, my chest, my stomach, everywhere he ever touched, everywhere he breathed near me, everywhere that memory lies dormant like a disease.
The water scalds. My skin turns pink. Then red.
But it isn’t enough.
It’s never enough.
“Get off me,” I choke, scrubbing harder, nails biting through the cloth. “Get out. Get out. Get out—”
Tears mix with the water. I can’t tell where one ends and the other starts. My breath comes in stuttered bursts, shallow and sharp. The steam thickens until the whole room feels like it’s closing in.
My legs give out first.
I drop to my knees with a wet smack against the tile. The sound echoes. Something inside me cracks with it.
I curl forward, arms wrapping around my stomach, forehead to the slick floor. The water pounds down on the back of my neck like punishment.
“I can’t—” The words dissolve into a sob. “I can’t do this again. Please. Please just stop.”
But my body doesn’t listen.
My mind doesn’t listen.
The memory has me by the throat, dragging me under.
His weight.
His breath.
His voice in my ear.
