Chapter 53: Sisterly Devotion
The silence after the door clicked shut had a density to it, a weight that pressed down on the rumpled silk. Channah stared at the ceiling, tracking a hairline crack in the plaster she’d never noticed before. Her body was a map of used places, each ache a coordinate. The deepest throbbed inwardly, a hollow pulse where he’d filled her.
Hannah shifted beside her, the sheets whispering. She propped herself up on an elbow. Her eyes, in the weak morning light bleeding around the curtains, were uncharacteristically soft.
“You okay?”
“Define okay,” Channah said, her voice flat. “My ass feels like it’s been rearranged by a benevolent god. My sister’s taste is still on my tongue. And the love of my life just walked out after leaving an engagement ring on the nightstand. So. Peachy.”
Hannah didn’t smile. She reached out, her fingers tracing the faint, already-yellowing bruise on Channah’s hip from Ryan’s grip. “He left the ring.”
“He did.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Channah finally turned her head. The velvet box was a dark smudge against the pale wood. It looked accusatory. “What are you going to do?”
Hannah’s gaze followed hers to the box. A complicated shadow crossed her face. “My flight’s at noon. Back to Portland.” She paused. “He’s not mine, Channah. He never was. Last night was… a convergence. A gift.”
“A gift.” Channah let out a short, hard breath. “It felt like a demolition.”
“Sometimes it’s the same thing.” Hannah sat up, the sheet pooling around her waist. She looked tired, beautiful, real. “You need to get up. You need to shower. Again. And then you need to decide if you’re going to call him or throw that ring out the window.”
Channah didn’t move. She felt paralyzed, glued to the bed by the literal and metaphorical mess. Hannah sighed, swung her legs over the side, and stood. She walked, naked, to the window and tugged the cord. The grey, unforgiving light of a Brooklyn morning flooded the room, exposing everything: the streaked sheets, the empty whiskey glasses, the used condom wrapper glinting on the floor. The sacred sanctuary was just a bedroom again, stale and sad.
“Up,” Hannah commanded, her therapist-voice echoing Channah’s own professional tone.
Mechanically, Channah obeyed. Her muscles protested. She felt the slow seep of fluid down her inner thigh and ignored it. She followed Hannah back into the bathroom. This time, there was no steam, no erotic charge. The water was hot, cleansing. They washed separately, silently, like strangers in a gym shower. Hannah washed Channah’s back once more, but it was just help, not a prelude.
Wrapped in towels, they stood in the wreckage of the bedroom. Hannah began dressing, picking her clothes up from where they’d been discarded hours—a lifetime—ago. Channah watched her, the ring box burning in her peripheral vision.
“You’re really just leaving,” Channah said, not quite a question.
“I have a life. A practice. A cat who’s probably pissed.” Hannah zipped her jeans, not looking up. “So do you.”
“It feels empty.”
“Then fill it.” Hannah finally looked at her. “You have the number. You have the ring. You have the fucking memory of him splitting you open while I ate your pussy. What more clarity do you need?”
The crude summation was a slap. It worked. Channah’s spine straightened. “You’re a real poet, Han.”
“I’m a realist.” She pulled her sweater on, tousled her damp hair. She looked like herself again, the wildness of the night tucked away. She walked to the nightstand, picked up the box, and handed it to Channah. The weight was negligible. The significance was crushing. “Hold it. Open it. Or don’t. But stop staring at it like it’s a live grenade.”
Channah took it. The velvet was soft, worn. She didn’t open it.
Hannah shouldered her bag. She paused at the bedroom door. “For what it’s worth… I’m glad it was you. I’m glad it was us. For him. For me.” She gave a small, sad smile. “Don’t fuck it up by overthinking it. You deserve a happy ending. Even if it’s a filthy one.”
And then she was gone, her footsteps echoing down the stairs just as Ryan’s had. Another door opened and closed. The brownstone was now truly, oppressively silent.
Channah stood there for a long time, dripping onto the floor. She opened the box.
The diamond was not huge. It was elegant, antique, set in a simple platinum band. It winked in the grey light, a captured tear. It was perfect. It was a question.
She snapped the box shut. The silence pressed in, a physical weight on her eardrums. It wasn’t the quiet of peace. It was the quiet of absence. The quiet after the symphony, when the ringing in your ears is just the memory of sound.
Her body, however, remembered a different rhythm. The ache between her legs, the tender bruise on her ass, they weren’t just pains. They were echoes. They were calls. A hot, shameful throb started low in her belly, entirely separate from her swirling mind. Her mind was grief and confusion. Her body was pure, simple hunger. It had been awakened, starved for decades, and given a feast. It wanted more.
She let the towel drop.
She walked to the full-length mirror leaned against the far wall. She looked at herself—really looked. The pale skin was a canvas of marks: the blush of beard burn along her inner thighs, the faint bite on her breast, the grip-bruises on her hips. Her red hair was a damp, chaotic tumble. Her eyes were dark, hollow, hungry.
Her hand moved of its own accord, down her stomach, through the coppery curls. She was still swollen, sensitive. She touched herself, a single finger sliding through the slickness that had nothing to do with the shower. It was her body’s own memory, weeping.
She turned, looking over her shoulder at the mirror’s reflection of her back, the curve of her ass. She imagined the shadow of him behind her, the heat of his chest against her back, the press of his tattoos against her skin. She remembered the brutal, perfect fullness.
“Fuck,” she whispered to her reflection, her voice ragged.
She needed to feel it. Not a memory. The thing itself.
She went to the top drawer of her dresser, rummaged past folded silks, and found it: the obsidian-black silicone dildo, thick, realistically veined, a purchase from a lonely, curious night years ago that had felt clinical. It had a suction cup base.
She carried it to the mirror. She didn’t go to the bed. She needed to see. She pressed the base against the cool glass, where it stuck fast. The shaft jutted out, obscene and promising.
She reached for the lube on the nightstand, the same bottle they’d used. She slicked the toy generously, the sound absurdly loud. She coated herself, her fingers pushing inside, stretching, preparing. It was nothing like his stretch. It was a pathetic imitation.
But it was all she had.
She turned her back to the mirror, then looked over her shoulder again. She guided the thick, blunt head to her asshole. Even with the lube, the initial pressure was intense. She pushed back.
It was a slow, burning invasion. She watched her own face in the mirror—eyes wide, mouth open in a silent ‘O’. She saw the muscles in her back tense, saw the toy disappear inch by terrible inch into her body. It was too much. It was not enough.
She sank down until she was fully impaled, the fake cock buried to the hilt inside her. A broken gasp finally escaped her. It felt huge, unnatural. It felt nothing like him. It was cold. It was inert.
She began to move, rocking back and forth on it, fucking herself on the thing. Her hand flew to her clit, rubbing frantic, tight circles. She needed to come. She needed to exorcise the ghost.
“Ryan,” she hissed, her forehead now pressed against the cool glass. She fucked herself harder, the suction base slapping against the mirror. Her reflection was a mess of frenzied motion and torment. “Fuck me. Like that. Just like that.”
She imagined it was him. She imagined Hannah kneeling before her, watching. She imagined the ring on her finger, catching the light. The images collided, pornographic and tragic. Her climax, when it slammed into her, was a violent, solitary seizure. It wrenched a sob from her throat, her body clamping wildly around the inert silicone. It was pleasure edged with razor-blades of regret.
She slumped, spent, her weight held up by the toy still embedded in her. She caught her breath, her sweat painting foggy blossoms on the mirror.
In the blurred reflection, she saw the ring box, still sitting on the rumpled bed.
She pulled off the toy with a wet, unpleasant sound. She left it stuck to the mirror, a stark monument to her desperation. She walked to the bed, picked up the box, and opened it again.
She took the ring out.
She didn’t put it on. She held it, feeling the metal grow warm in her palm. She looked from the ring to the toy on the mirror, from the symbol of forever to the tool of solitary need.
The phone was on the nightstand. His number was in it, a digit string holding the potential for a future, for a answer.
Her body was sated, temporarily. Her heart was a raw, open wound.
She closed her fingers around the ring, the diamond biting into her palm. She picked up the phone.
The city hummed outside, indifferent. The bedroom waited. The story wasn’t over. It was just beginning, again, from a place of devastating clarity. She had the ring. She had the need. She had the number.
Now, she needed the courage to use one of them.