Chapter 5: Hard Thoughts
The comfortable silence stretched until it began to thin, becoming a membrane that real life was pushing against. Jordan’s stomach growled, a loud, vulgar sound in the quiet room.
He chuckled, patting his abdomen. “Right. Signaling the end of the dream sequence.”
“Reality’s a jerk,” Riley mumbled, but she sat up, holding the sheet to her chest. The cold air hit her skin, raising goosebumps. The movement made new aches announce themselves.
Jordan swung his legs out of bed, his back to her. The sight of him, naked and unselfconscious in the gray light, was jarring. His shoulders, the line of his spine, the casual way he stood up and started looking for his boxers. It felt wildly intimate and strangely formal, like watching a stranger in a documentary. He found them, stepped into them, then located his jeans in the heap by the desk.
Riley stayed put, a statue wrapped in a floral-patterned sheet. The getting-dressed part. She hadn’t brained this part.
“You good?” he asked, pulling his t-shirt over his head. It was inside-out, the tag poking near his collarbone.
“Yeah. Just… slow.” She forced a smile. “Tractor-remember?”
He grinned, but his eyes were watchful. He finished dressing, then just stood there, hands in his pockets, looking at her. “I should probably… you know. Vanish before the neighborhood wakes up and sees me doing the walk of shame.”
“It’s not shame,” she said, too quickly.
“The walk of mild triumph, then.” He came over, knelt by the side of the bed. Up close, she could see the sleep crust in his lashes, the tiny red mark on his neck from where the sheet had creased. He kissed her, soft and closed-mouthed. “Thank you,” he whispered against her lips. It wasn’t charged. It was solemn.
Then he was gone, the soft click of her bedroom door like a period at the end of a very long sentence.
The emptiness he left behind was a physical presence. The room felt colder, bigger, echoey. Riley listened to his footsteps recede down the stairs, the faint groan of the front door, the finality of the latch.
Alone.
She let the sheet fall.
The morning light was different now. It wasn’t the forgiving dark of last night, or the soft pearlescent glow from the pink memory. This was high-definition reality. She stood, her body protesting, and walked to the full-length mirror on the back of her closet door.
There she was. Pale. A faint red blotchiness on her chest and throat—from friction, from heat, from crying. The gentle curve of her stomach, the dark hair between her legs, the slight puffiness there that was new. A small, yellowing bruise on her hip from who-knew-what. Her hair was a rat’s nest. She looked… used.
Well, she thought, the word flat and cold in her mind. That happened.
Headquarters was a quiet storm.
Joy was staring at the console, at Riley’s reflection. “Okay. Okay, this is a moment for… self-care! We should feel proud! And… clean! A shower. A shower will be good. Let’s initiate Warm Water and Vanilla Body Wash protocols.”
But her hands hovered, not touching the controls. The feed from Riley’s thoughts was a messy, staticky signal.
It didn’t happen for me.
The thought dropped into the control room like a lead weight.
“What didn’t happen?” Fear asked, pulling up a schematic of Riley’s pelvic floor. “Is there muscular damage? Nerve dysfunction? I knew we needed more lubrication! Slide 47!”
“Not that, you idiot,” Anger snapped, but he was clenched, a red furnace of frustration. “She means the big finish. The fireworks. The thing all the movies promise.”
Sadness nodded slowly, her blue light pulsing in sympathy. “She feels cheated. Even though she knows it’s common. Even though it was still… everything else.”
On the screen, Riley’s thoughts scrolled, brutal in their clarity.
He came. I didn’t. He got the whole… experience. I got the weird, sore aftermath.
It’s stupid to care. It’s patriarchal bullshit to think that’s the only point.
But he thanked me. For what? For letting him?
It felt good. Parts of it. The holding after. But during… it was just a lot of feeling like I was doing something wrong, waiting for a feeling that never arrived.
I faked those last little noises. Just to give him a clue. Was that pathetic?
“We need to overwrite this!” Joy insisted, sparks flying from her. “This is a toxic thought spiral! We need to focus on the connection, the emotional bond, the new island!” She gestured frantically to the pink glow of Intimacy Island on the horizon.
“You can’t just paint over this, Joy,” Sadness said, her voice soft but firm. “She needs to feel it. If we shunt it aside, it just gets bigger and uglier later. This is part of intimacy, too. The disappointment. The mismatched expectations.”
Riley turned away from the mirror. The shame was hot and sticky, coating her insides. It felt stupid. It felt ungrateful. Jordan had been sweet. He’d checked in. He’d held her. It wasn’t his fault her body had decided to be a locked temple.
She pulled on the first clothes she found—an old pair of sweats and a soft, worn-out t-shirt from a 5k she never ran. The fabric was a relief. Armor.
She started stripping the bed.
The sheets smelled like them. Like sweat and cheap deodorant and the faint, musky scent of sex. She balled them up, a heavy, guilty bundle, and shoved them into the hamper. Out of sight. She opened the window a crack. The cold morning air rushed in, diluting the smell.
The physical evidence was gone. The condom was trashed. The sheets were buried. He was gone.
So why did she feel like she’d failed a test she hadn’t known she was taking?
Anger kicked the console. “That’s it! This is that bullshit cultural programming! All those songs, those shows, making it seem like it’s some earth-shattering event for the woman, every single time. It’s a lie! A setup! And now she feels defective!”
Fear had pulled up a new slide: Long-Term Consequences: Sexual Incompatibility & Relationship Dissolution. “What if this is a sign? What if they’re fundamentally mismatched? What if he realizes she’s too much work and—”
“Shut up, Fear!” Joy and Anger shouted in unison.
Joy was trembling now. She looked at the pearlescent memory orb, then at Riley’s slumped shoulders as she sat on the edge of the bare mattress, staring at her stuffed bunny. “How do I fix this?” she whispered, desperate. “How do I make this right for her?”
Sadness walked over and placed a calming hand on Joy’s shimmering arm. “You don’t fix it. You just let her know it’s okay that it’s broken right now. That the broken feeling belongs, too. It goes on the island with everything else.”
Riley picked up the bunny. Its fur was matted from a childhood of tears. She hugged it to her chest, not crying, just holding on. The guilt was still there, a dull stone in her gut. But around it, other things were settling. The memory of his laugh that morning. The weight of his arm. The safe, quiet darkness after the tears. The pink orb pulsed gently, not erasing the stone of guilt, but just… holding space for it.
It wasn’t a happy ending. It was just a morning after. A complicated, sore, quiet morning where one thing became painfully clear: the story she’d been sold and the story she’d lived were two different things. And now she had to figure out how to live inside the one that was real.
She let out a long, shaky breath that wasn’t quite a sob. Then she stood up, bunny still in hand, and headed for the shower. The water would be hot. It would wash away the sweat and the smell. It wouldn’t touch the stone, or the memory, or the new, fragile land inside her. But it would be a start.