I did not imagine it.
The deeper register. The rough edge. The rumble I remember against my skin.
And just like that, I’m turned on—as if someone flipped a switch I didn’t know existed.
It's only been a few days and I am sitting at my own desk in my own office and my body just staged a full-scale insurrection over a voice message about a meeting with his coach.
I close the voice message. Open it again. Close it.
I stare at my laptop like it personally betrayed me.
This is fine. Proximity withdrawal. Bodies do this. It'll pass.
It does not pass.
Lunchtime. Home. Standing at the counter making a cheese sandwich.
Spreading mustard. Knife flat against bread. Thinking about nothing—truly nothing, a beautiful vacuum of nothing—when the memory arrives uninvited.
His mouth against my ear in the casita.
The exact register of his voice when he saidyou made me need you.
The vibration of it against my skin. The warmth of his breath. The want and desperation in it
The knife stops.
I stand there. Mustard half-spread. Staring at the refrigerator like it has answers.
I was minding my business. I was making a sandwich.
I put the knife down. Pick it up. Put it down again.
This is unacceptable.
I was a formerly functional adult.
Now, I cannot complete basic food preparation without a sensory flashback ambush.
This feels like a workplace violation—except the workplace is my kitchen and the violator is a man two hundred miles away who probably doesn’t even know I’m thinking about him.
I finish the sandwich. Eat it standing. Eat it dry, and swallow hard.
It will pass.
Saturday afternoon. Office. Valentine's Day.
I'm three paragraphs into editing a client proposal when the laundromat downstairs hits maximum spin.
The vibration travels up through the concrete floor. Through the office chair. Into my thighs.
I become suddenly, profoundly aware of my body in a waythat is entirely inappropriate for eleven in the morning.
This is not my fault.
The fault belongs, in equal and non-negotiable parts, to Whirlpool Industrial and one West Prescott, NHL captain, currently two hundred miles away, who apparently decided that spending Valentine's Day apart wasn't enough suffering and supplemented it with adelivery.
Two live Maine lobsters arrived at seven this morning.
