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Charm asked for time.

I give it to her, even when restraint feels like another way distance can hurt.

The compass needle remains pointed north

32

Ryan

Three mornings after Charm tells me the distance between wanting my voice and being ready to hear it no longer feels impossible, I wake with her voice inside my bedroom.

The sound is close enough that I reach across the mattress before consciousness returns and reminds me nobody has slept beside me in more than a year. My hand meets cold sheets while her laughter remains trapped between the dream and the dark.

For one disorienting second, I believe she is here.

My body believes it longer.

Sweat cools across my chest while the erection beneath my boxer briefs presses painfully against the fabric. I close my eyes, trying to find the dream again, but her voice has already taken another shape.

Charm laughing at the Book Nook while pretending not to understand something so I will keep teaching her. Charm threatening to dismember hypothetical women inside a letter demonstrating emotional growth. Charm saying my name in front of the mirror while every barrier between us burned away.

My hand moves beneath the waistband before good judgment has a chance to become involved.

I wrap my fingers around my cock and stroke slowly, still half lost inside the dream. The room remains dark, but memory gives me Charm beneath my hands. Her wild hair across my pillow. Her lips parted when my thumb finds her clit, the only place capable of stealing every intelligent thought from her. The breathless sound she makes when I press deeper and the sharper one that follows when she stops trying to remain quiet.

My grip tightens, and I drag my fist higher along my shaft.

I think about her laugh until it becomes a moan. I remember the weight of her breast in my palm, the softness at her waist, the taste of her pussy on my tongue and the way her thighs tremble when she is close. My hand moves faster while I imagine her looking back at me through the mirror, no longer searching her reflection for something to hate.

I hear her say my name.

Pleasure tears through me before I can slow it down. I come across my stomach with her voice lodged inside my head and one hand twisted into the sheets where her body should be.

The silence afterward feels personal.

I remain on my back while my breathing settles and dawn begins turning the windows gray. Milwaukee stretches beneath me, cold and distant, while Charm exists almost four hundred miles away with no idea she woke me from a dream and finished inside a memory.

Paper waits on my desk.

I shower before writing because I have enough dignity remaining to avoid composing a letter with come drying across my stomach.

Barely.

Charm,

I woke up thinking about you today.

I was dreaming, but your voice sounded so close that it pulled me awake in a sweat. For a few seconds, I thought you were here. I reached across the bed before remembering I sleep alone.

My body remained confused after my mind caught up.

I started thinking about your laugh, your no-filter moments, and every threatening thing you have written while attempting to demonstrate personal growth. Then I remembered the sounds you make when I touch you.

I put my hand inside my boxers and stroked my cock while imagining you beneath it.

I thought about your breasts filling my palms, the softness at your waist, and the way your thighs shake before you come. I remembered your mouth opening around my name and the sound that escapes when you stop caring whether anyone can hear you.

I came across my stomach while thinking about you looking at me through the mirror.