Close enough to know that they did not abandon me. That they will never abandon me.
I push myself upright slowly, my body tired, the sheets sliding down my skin in a whisper as light spills through tall windowsand paints everything gold. Then I notice the clothes at the foot of the bed. A khaki bodycon dress. Simple and elegant.
And beside it, small and devastating in its meaning, is a black thong.
My lips part as a smile rises, fragile and unguarded, because he remembered.
He remembered me.
My chest tightens around the quiet devotion contained in the reminder of who I am, and I swing my legs over the side of the bed, my feet sinking into soft carpet, and I stand there for a moment simply breathing.
The bathroom is vast and beautiful in a way that feels almost undeserved, marble and glass and light stretching endlessly around me, untouched and clean. I place the clothes carefully on the counter before stepping into the shower, and when the water begins to fall it surrounds me instantly, warm and steady, pouring over my skin like praise.
I close my eyes and let it touch every part of me, lifting my face toward it, letting it run down my throat and over my shoulders, and my arms rise slowly before I turn beneath it, once, then again, the movement hesitant but real, and something inside my chest loosens, something that has been held too tightly for too long.
My gaze catches on the bottles mounted along the wall, and at first they don’t mean anything to me, just shapes and colors blurred by water and distance, until my eyes focus properly and recognition begins to take hold, slow and disbelieving, raspberry and vanilla shampoo beside its matching conditioner, and then, just to the right, the vanilla body wash.
I stop breathing.
My hand lifts without my permission, drawn toward it by something deeper than thought, something instinctive and aching, and my fingers close around the bottle carefully, becausealready my chest feels too tight, already my heart knows what this is.
The lid opens with a soft click that disappears beneath the sound of the water.
I bring it to my nose, and the moment I breathe in, the world tilts.
Vanilla.
Warm and soft and devastatingly familiar, filling my lungs until it pushes everything else out, until it becomes the only thing I can feel, the only thing I can remember.
Suddenly I am somewhere else.
Not here. Not broken.
I am standing inhisbathroom, laughing as Trey stands behind me with his hands on my hips, his chest to my back while he placed wet open mouth kisses on my neck, dragging his teeth along the shell of my ear.
I remember the way his fingers slid over my skin, unhurried, worshipful, the way he pressed into me.
“You always smell so fucking good,” he murmured against my throat, his voice low and certain, like it was a truth he carried.
I remember laughing softly, turning my head just enough to look at him.
“It’s just body wash.”
He kissed me again, slower this time.
“No,” he said.
“It’s you.”
The memory fades as quickly as it came, dissolving back into the present, leaving me standing beneath the falling water with the bottle clutched tightly in my hand and tears spilling down my face.
He remembered.
He remembered something as small as this.
Not because it mattered.
But because I mattered.
