Chapter Text
Osha stares at her monitor, the lines of the CAD drawing swimming across her field of vision.
She’s been looking at this elevation for way, way too long, she knows she has. But the client changed their mind about the cladding again, and their next design review is on Monday. So here she is, spending her Friday night painstakingly redrawing the building’s façade.
All around her, the massive open office sits quiet and empty. Outside the glass curtainwall, night has long since fallen, the Coruscant city lights casting everything in an artificial, yellow glow.
The whole exercise feels a little pointless. Whatever contractor they end up with is just going to try substituting these fancy Naboo-sourced panels anyway—
Except, there won’t be any contractors, she reminds herself. Not anymore. It’s all handled in-house, because she works for Structural Integration Technology Holdings now, the biggest planning, design, and construction firm in all of Coruscant. She has been for weeks, ever since the acquisition. She has got to get her mind wrapped around that.
That just makes it even more important to get the drawings done on time, and done right. It’s not like with an outside contractor, who always seems to end up in an antagonistic relationship with the architect, the contractor trying to construct the building for the lowest cost possible while the architect tries to safeguard their artistic vision. At SITH, they’re all supposed to be on the same team. So if the company’s construction division sends feedback that the drawings are sub-par, she could lose her job.
And it could be worse, she supposes. At least she graduated from laying out bathroom floor plans. One of the best parts of the merger was the fleet of interns that came along with it, who get to handle that particular monotonous task. There are only so many ways to arrange toilets and sinks in a rectangular space, and Osha long ago exhausted those options.
Taking a sip of her Monster energy drink, she refocuses on the screen. The new panels won’t draw themselves, and the sooner she gets done the sooner she can go home to her apartment. The one that’s been empty ever since Mae moved in with her girlfriend.
Because that’s so much better than sitting in the dark, quiet of the office.
Osha sighs just thinking about it, but even as she forces herself to lock in, her screen suddenly flickers. Her hand lifts away from her mouse like it burned her. But the mouse isn’t the problem, because the screen flickers again and then suddenly goes dark as the laptop abruptly loses power.
“No,” she says, feeling her eyes go wide. “No, no, no, no, no.”
She rises from her seat, like she can somehow summon life back to her computer if she just changes the angle she looks at it from. But of course, the screen stays dark. She reaches for the mouse, wiggling it to see if the computer will wake up, then taps a few keys on the keyboard, but nothing happens.
“Shit,” she breathes. “Shit, shit, shit.”
In a panic, she picks up her desk phone and punches the button for the IT department, even though there surely won’t be anyone there at nine o’clock—
“This is Qimir.”
Osha’s breath catches. She hadn’t expected anyone to answer, but for it to be Qimir of all people.
“H-hi,” she stammers, willing herself to not clam up, to continue speaking. The result is that her next words come out in a rush. “I’m sorry, I know it’s late, but my computer just randomly shut down and I don’t know if my drawings saved—”
“No worries, Osha,” Qimir interrupts gently. “I’ll come up and take a look, give me five minutes.”
Osha swallows hard, wondering how he knew it was her. But there must be some kind of caller-ID on their intake system, reporting that the call was coming from her workstation.
“Great.” She takes a shaky breath. “Thanks.”
Heart beating hard, she hangs up the phone.
For five agonizing minutes, she twirls in her ultra-modern ergonomic chair, trying to calm down a little. If it’s possible to recover the drawings, she tells herself, Qimir will know how.
As if Qimir isn’t a source of anxiety all on his own.
And then footsteps sound from the direction of the elevator bank. A few moments later a figure wearing jeans and a black, zip-up hoodie, standard IT-guy attire, appears at the end of the long table where half a dozen workstations are set up on either side, since cubicles inhibit collaboration.
Not that Osha has collaborated with a single one of her colleagues since the merger.
“Hey, Osha,” Qimir says with a smile as he stops beside her station. “You’re working late.”
It’s still so strange, even unsettling, seeing Qimir again. Before her boutique architecture firm got bought up by SITH, the last time she’d seen him had been eight years ago, at a frat party. She’d been an eighteen-year-old freshman who didn’t know how to handle her liquor, and he’d been the resident grad student. They’d made out, probably would have done more if he hadn’t realized how drunk she was and insisted on walking her home.
And she had been very drunk, but she still remembers his deflated expression when she told him their destination was the freshman dorms.
He’d walked her home, like a gentleman, but that was the last time she saw him. Osha hadn’t even really thought about him in the time since. Architecture was a demanding major, and it’d been followed by an even more demanding internship. She’d stopped having time to go to parties soon after their encounter.
And so, she’d put the greasy but still somehow hot grad student out of her mind.
Until her first day at SITH, when he’d been there to help her get her account set up on her new work computer.
Eight years later and sober, he’d looked far better than she’d remembered. Definitely no longer greasy. His hair was kept shorter and expertly styled instead of hanging lank and limp across his face. His mouth was still pink and lush, but his jawline was even sharper than she remembered, his eyes darker and more intense.
He’d even remembered her name, and where he knew her from, but had been so casual about it. Like what happened between them all those years ago was no big deal.
Well, to him it probably wasn’t a big deal. It was just making out at a party, after all. He has no way of knowing that just kissing is all she’s ever done with anyone, to this day.
Looking like he does, she highly doubts he can say the same.
Seeing him again had felt a little like having the wind knocked out of her. Suddenly she hadn’t known how to speak, or what to do with her hands. Which is ridiculous, because she’s an incredibly competent, grown woman.
But all at once, she’d remembered what it felt like to have his lips on hers, as if it happened yesterday instead of eight years ago, and the memory had awoken something in her.
In the weeks since their reunion, she’s thought a dozen times about asking if he’s seeing someone. Asking if he might want to go out with her, now that their age difference is a little less pronounced—though she doesn’t actually know how old he is.
But then she thinks about what could happen if he said yes. If things went well and they decided to go back to one of their places. Eventually, she would have to admit that she’s still a virgin at twenty-fucking-six years old.
What if it freaked him out? What if he didn’t want to bother with someone who has no experience, no clue what they’re doing? The idea is just too much to bear, especially since they work together and would see each other around the office. Not all the time, the IT department is a few floors down, but any amount of time would be too much if she were to put herself out there like that and he were to reject her.
And so, she never asks.
Competent she may be, but confidence she sorely lacks.
Still, she can’t stop the way her heart beats too hard whenever he’s around. The way her eyes instinctively find him when he’s in the room, even if he’s working with someone else. But he always gives her those gorgeous smiles, and it makes her feel sick to her stomach with nerves and self-annoyance, because it shouldn’t be so hard to just talk to him.
Even now, she finds herself staring longer than she should, captivated by the way shadows catch in the hollows of his face there in the office’s dim after-hours lighting, and she realizes she owes him a response.
What was it he said to her? Oh yeah—working late.
Swallowing hard, Osha forces a smile. “I could, um, I could say the same about you.”
Qimir just shrugs, nonchalant, folding his arms in front of his chest. “We’re running system upgrades and someone has to babysit. It mostly just means watching Netflix and checking the status every fifteen minutes, there are worse ways to spend a Friday night. But what about you? You’re young, why aren’t you out partying or whatever it is twenty-somethings do on Friday nights?”
Osha almost snorts in response. Qimir can’t be that far away from his twenties himself, though if he was a grad student when she was a freshman, that makes him thirty at least.
But the fact is, even at the ripe age of twenty-six, Osha almost never goes out anymore. Her friends are all in committed relationships, and she’s not, so any time they go out she ends up playing third or fifth or seventh wheel and she’s honestly just exhausted.
Besides, she’s married to her job. Mae likes to give her shit about it, but Osha legitimately loves her work.
Just maybe not so much at nine p.m. on a Friday night, when she’s already been busting her ass for this ridiculously demanding client all week.
“I don’t really do the going-out thing,” Osha admits, and god, does that make her sound incredibly lame? Well, she is incredibly lame, a twenty-six-year-old virgin with no life outside of work. “And the client changed their mind about the cladding for like the fifth time since we started working on the building envelope.”
Qimir purses his lips. “You know you don’t have to cater to their every whim.”
Osha’s face flushes at the gentleness of his tone, like he’s somehow concerned. But he clearly doesn’t understand.
“I mean, yeah, that’s exactly what I have to do,” she explains. “That’s my entire job.”
“Not if the client is being unreasonable,” Qimir argues, and his insistence surprises her. It certainly doesn’t sound like he lacks understanding, or an opinion on the matter, clearly. “You’re the designer, it’s your design. They should be taking your recommendations, not forcing you to change things multiple times.”
Osha blinks at him, a hint of annoyance creeping in because she takes her job seriously. She’s good at it, and she doesn’t appreciate being lectured on how to handle her clients.
“Sorry, when did you become an architect?” she asks, the awkwardness of moments before forgotten. And maybe it comes out a little harsher than she’d intended, but really.
“Right,” Qimir says slowly, obviously aware of her change in demeanor, “I’m not. I just think it’s important to have boundaries. Limits.”
For a long moment, silence hangs between them, uncomfortable and stilted. The office seems to stretch around them, so big and so empty, emphasizing the fact they’re alone. Osha shifts in her chair, wishing she’d stood up when Qimir first arrived so she wouldn’t be so far below him. But it would be weird if she did so now.
And then Qimir continues. “Anyway, I doubt the company owner would consider this a good use of his employee’s time.”
Osha raises both eyebrows. “You know what the company owner thinks?”
She seriously doubts it. No one even knows who the company owner is. Whoever it was bought SITH and Temple Designs, the boutique firm Osha worked for before, at the same time, with the intent of merging them.
“I’m just saying,” Qimir clarifies, “if I owned the company, I wouldn’t think it was a good use of my employee’s time.”
And then he turns to the laptop, looking at the blank screen.
“So I have to ask,” he says, obviously ready to leave the previous conversation behind, and Osha’s grateful for that. “Did you check to make sure it’s plugged in?”
Heat stains her face. She’s not an idiot, but she feels like one at the moment, and she runs a hand over her shoulder-length locs, which are loose today. “Honestly, I just kind of… panicked and called you. Well not you, the IT department.”
God, now she even sounds like an idiot.
But Qimir just nods. “Hopefully it’ll be an easy fix, then.”
And then he leans down to check that the power supply connector is fully seated in its port on her laptop. He brushes near, and Osha gets a whiff of his cologne, something masculine and spicy that does absolutely nothing to help with the awkwardness raging inside of her. God, why does he even have to smell good?
Satisfied that it’s properly connected, he ducks down under the table, the hair across Osha’s body standing on end at unexpectedly finding him on his knees beside her. But he just follows the power cord down to the outlet.
“It’s plugged in, so that’s not the issue,” he says as he climbs back out from under the desk. “Though it’s possible the power supply went bad.”
He moves over to the next workstation, where her desk neighbor had left their power supply, though the laptop is absent. Since the company has standardized IT equipment, the charging cable plugs into Osha’s laptop without issue. And then he leans over the laptop again, so close that Osha has to roll her chair back a little to avoid touching him.
With how strongly she reacts to just being around him, accidental physical contact seems like a really bad idea. She might spontaneously combust.
Nervous, she reaches for her Monster, taking a sip.
Qimir’s eyes flash over to the can with its bright green M. “You know, those things are really bad for you. All those chemicals.”
“Don’t IT guys like live on energy drinks and Cheetos?” Osha asks, a little annoyed by the judgement in his voice.
She’d gotten hooked on the admittedly chemical-laced beverages in architecture school, where they regularly had to pull all-nighters to get their drawings and models ready for jury—the panel of teachers who reviewed and graded each design assignment. In theory, they had enough time for each assignment that it shouldn’t have been necessary to pull all-nighters for every project. But the reality was that their Studio Crits ended up pushing them to refine their designs further and further until the last possible moment, resulting in a frantic scramble to get their final products done.
“Maybe some of them do,” Qimir says, then presses the power button on her laptop.
Nothing happens.
“But not you?” Osha asks.
“Not me,” he confirms, looking down at the laptop, messing with the charging cable, then trying the power button again.
Still, the laptop doesn’t respond.
Sighing, Qimir folds the laptop closed, disconnects the power supply, and then picks the laptop up, turning back to Osha. “It looks like it’s not going to be an easy fix after all, sorry Osha. I’m going to have to take this downstairs and check it out a little more thoroughly.”
Osha wants to die. All of her drawings, all of her hard work, potentially gone, and her meeting with the client looming ahead.
Standing above her, Qimir peers down at what must be her stricken expression as she fights the urge to put her head in her hands and scream.
“Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling you to take a break,” he says, careful, like he understands what a devastating blow this is to her. “I’ll have it fixed or a replacement ready for you on Monday morning, but I don’t want to see you in here before then.”
Osha opens her mouth to argue, because it’s really not his place to tell her when she can and can’t work. But the fact is, if her own laptop isn’t functional, he would have to provide her with a spare. And he’s clearly not going to do that.
The alternative is asking one of her coworkers if she can borrow theirs, but the idea is laughable. She doesn’t even have any of her coworkers’ phone numbers to ask, because she’s not exactly great at socializing.
She could call Sol, who was her boss before the merger and was given an appropriately high-ranked position at SITH after. He could definitely pull some strings. But he has enough on his plate navigating post-merger politics, and she doesn’t want to interrupt his weekend.
Her last option would be to do the drawings by hand. But the mere idea gives her nightmare flashbacks to freshman year of college and trying to prepare for jury before they’d been allowed to use CAD for their designs.
The reality is, hand drawing wouldn’t help in the long run anyway because the contracting division needs the drawings to be digital to import into their clash detection software.
Taking a deep breath, Osha forces herself to quickly come to terms with the fact the situation is now out of her hands. She hates it, loathes the feeling of anything being out of her control, but she doesn’t know what else to do.
Her shoulders slump in defeat. “I guess I’ll just… go home and do laundry.”
“Is that your idea of a break?” Qimir asks, amusement clear in his voice.
Her face goes suddenly hot but he just grins down at her, and it’s arresting, how attractive it makes him look.
“Says the man who’s going to spend the weekend trying to fix my laptop,” she manages.
The grin just grows. “Touché. Enjoy your laundry, Osha. I’ll see you Monday morning.”
With that, he turns and shuffles back toward the elevator bank. Osha watches him go, taking in the logo of four cursive Ls imprinted into the back of the black fabric, barely visible in the low light. Honestly, the fact she can see it probably means she’s looking too closely, but she can’t make herself look away.
Eventually he vanishes from view.
A moment later, the cleaning crew appears. Osha sighs. Qimir was right that it’s time for her to get out of here. Without a laptop, there’s literally nothing she can do about the state of the drawings anyway.
And honestly, it was pretty unreasonable for the client to request the change on a Friday afternoon when they knew the next design review is scheduled for Monday.
So, Osha gathers up her things and makes her way to the elevators. She still doesn’t love the idea of going home to an empty apartment, so she shoots a text to her twin. It’s late, but Mae and Jecki keep late hours and if she’s lucky, they don’t have any plans.
Osha: Do you and Jecki want to come over for dinner and trash TV?
Her sister’s response comes quickly.
Mae: You order the pizza, we’ll bring the beer.
Smiling, Osha tucks her phone into her bag and steps into the elevator.
An hour later, Osha finds herself sprawled on her lumpy, blue couch, wearing her coziest pajamas. A half-finished slice of pizza sits on a paper plate in her lap—not because she can’t afford real dishes, she has them, she’s just perpetually behind on washing them. At least neither her twin nor her twin’s girlfriend care; they’re used to how Osha lives by now.
Sex And the City plays on the TV, but none of the three women in Osha’s tiny living room are actually watching it.
“It sounds like you need to tell that client where to shove it,” Mae says with her usual sensitivity, from where she and Jecki are intertwined on the other end of the couch, her purple stiletto nails tracing patterns in Jecki’s short, blonde hair.
Osha sighs, lifting her Blue Moon to her lips to avoid having to answer right away. But her twin just gives her that knowing look that tells her she’s not getting off so easily, the look made all the more intense by Mae’s fiercely winged eyeliner.
“You know I’m bad at confrontation, MaeMae,” Osha protests as she sets the beer bottle back on the water-stained coffee table that’s covered in issues of Architectural Digest, before taking another bite of her pizza. “And honestly, it would’ve been okay if my computer hadn’t died. I could have gotten the drawings done tonight and then had the rest of the weekend to relax. Now I’m going to be sitting here, stressed out of my mind because I don’t know if the drawings can be recovered at all, let alone finished in time.”
Mae makes a thoughtful sound, as Osha grabs her beer and raises it once more to her lips.
“Well then maybe you need to get laid instead.”
Osha almost spits out her drink. Barely, she manages to swallow it down, before shooting a glare at her twin. Mae is well aware of why Osha can’t just go out and get laid, but that’s probably exactly why she said it. Because they might be twenty-six, but they’re still sisters.
“Babe, you know it’s not that simple for Osha,” Jecki says evenly, trying to moderate, which is sweet of her but ultimately futile.
“I don’t see why not,” Mae says with a sniff, wrapping her arm tighter around the petite blonde. “Picking girls up in bars always worked out well for me. Just look at us.”
Jecki beams at Mae, and the two kiss, and it’s disgustingly cute and not helpful at all.
When they pull apart, Jecki helps herself to another slice of pizza from the box on the coffee table.
“You’re forgetting that straight men aren’t just lesbians in male bodies,” Jecki points out, looking back at Mae over her shoulder. “It’s not like going to one of our bars where you know you’ll at least get off with whoever you go home with.”
Thank you, Jecki, Osha mouths to her friend, who gives Osha a thumbs up and a nod, before leaning back against her girlfriend.
“Even putting the orgasm part aside,” Osha says, setting her now empty paper plate on the coffee table. “I’m just not comfortable with the idea of hooking up with a random stranger. Not for my first time.”
“But you said yourself you’re too busy to date,” Mae counters.
It isn’t untrue, just not the whole truth. But Osha’s not ready to tell her sister that aside from being busy, she’s also afraid to tell the one guy she’s ever been really interested in that she’s never done more than kiss.
“Don’t you want to just get it over with?” Mae presses.
“Kinda, yeah,” Osha admits.
She’s twenty-six and still a virgin. Most of the time she can put that fact out of her mind, pretend it’s not an issue. But the reality is that her inexperience is actually a major deterrent in her life, and she would love for that to no longer be the case.
But the process of getting to a non-virginal state seems more daunting than climbing Appenza Peak.
“That still doesn’t mean I want it to be with some random guy I don’t know,” Osha finishes.
Mae lets out a heavy sigh that clearly says then prepare to die un-fucked.
For a little while, silence falls, and it feels like the conversation is about to turn. Osha even glances up at the TV, where the four main characters are debating the merits of anal sex, which seems particularly unfathomable to Osha when she’s never even been fingered by anyone but herself.
But then Jecki sits up, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees as she looks at Osha.
“You know,” she says like she’s sharing a secret, big brown eyes taking on a strange light. “I was on Reddit the other day, and I saw this post about a girl who auctioned off her virginity.”
It takes a second for Osha to process the words, and when she does, her mouth falls open. “What?”
“Yeah,” Jecki continues, her voice low, conspiratorial. “She was debating going through with it, basically talked about how she was nervous about who she would end up with, but she really needed the money. And I’m pretty sure she was local, or at least the service she used was based in Coruscant. Anyway, she did a follow-up after it happened, said it was a really good experience for her. ”
Osha’s breath slows as she listens, her mind churning as she processes this idea that she can honestly say she’s never thought about before in her life.
Is that something she could do? Would she even want to? She can’t say, not so soon, not after just being introduced to the idea. But it’s a possibility she’d never considered. With how stuck she feels in regard to her virginity situation, any new ideas are worth at least contemplating.
She swallows hard. “Did she… did she give the name of the service?”
Jecki’s eyes go even brighter. “She did. Hold on, let me look it up.”
“Oshie,” Mae hisses as Jecki pulls out her phone and starts scrolling. “Don’t tell me you’re actually considering it.”
Osha flashes an annoyed look at her twin. “I thought you were on board with me losing my virginity.”
“And I thought you didn’t want to give it up to a stranger,” Mae counters. “At least at a bar you can get a sense of the guy’s vibes. If you do an auction, then you have to sleep with whoever wins, no matter what.”
It’s not an unreasonable point. Osha would still be losing her virginity to a stranger, a stranger she wouldn’t get to pick for herself, which isn’t ideal. But something about the idea still feels better than the idea of going out to a bar. Safer, maybe? Because there’s a service involved? Because it takes some of the pressure off of her to pick the right person?
“Okay,” Jecki says brightly, bouncing in her seat with excitement. “Okay, here we go. So the basics are exactly what it sounds like: you submit your information and a body picture, they post it up on their site, and people bid. But the cool part is, everyone involved has to sign contracts. What you agree to do with the auction winner, that kind of stuff. You both have to get tested, and you have to be on some form of birth control.”
Osha nods as she listens, feeling encouraged. The birth control is no issue, she got an IUD to help with her heavy periods a few years ago. Testing is also a non-issue, for obvious reasons. And a clean bill of health is certainly something she wouldn’t be able to guarantee with a random guy at a bar.
“You can put restrictions on who you want to bid,” Jecki continues. “Like if you’re only interested in men, or if you want to put an age restriction on the bidders—though it says that can bring down the final price. It doesn’t say how much they usually go for, but the girl on Reddit said hers went for two-hundred grand, that it was the highest the service had ever gotten, and that she thinks ten grand is more typical. Not that you’d be doing it for the money.”
She isn’t doing it for the money—if she’s doing it at all—but it’s still a staggering amount. Even ten thousand dollars is a lot in this economy.
“Well I don’t think she should do it for any amount of money,” Mae grumbles, folding her arms over her chest and looking away, like she can somehow pretend the conversation isn’t happening in front of her.
Jecki just ignores her girlfriend.
“And,” she says with emphasis instead, like she’s reached the most important part. “There’s a clause in the contract that you can back out at any time. The money gets refunded if you don’t go through with it, of course, but if you show up to your de-flowering appointment and you don’t vibe with the guy, you can just leave.”
A little breath of relief whispers from Osha’s lungs, but her heart is beating harder now. Like, for the first time, she’s seeing a possible solution to this problem.
She truly doesn’t need the money, though she definitely wouldn’t say no to two-hundred-thousand-dollars. Her job may be demanding but she’s well compensated, especially since the merger—bigger firms are able to pay bigger salaries, apparently. So it really is a no-lose situation. She can’t guarantee that she’ll like having sex with whoever her auction-winner is, but she can’t guarantee that she’d like having sex with anyone, even if she was in a relationship.
Even if it was Qimir.
Jecki sets her phone aside.
“You don’t want to hook up with someone random, but you’re too busy to date,” she says, ticking off fingers like she’s making a list. “You get to have sex with someone who values the fact that they’re taking your virginity, the service does a background check, and there’s a contract so if the guy does anything you don’t like, he gets sued to hell and back. Plus you can make a bunch of money. Honestly, it sounds like a perfect solution.”
It’s not quite a perfect solution. She would ultimately still be having sex with a stranger. But it wouldn’t be a random stranger, it would be a deliberate stranger, with boundaries pre-established.
Suddenly, Qimir’s voice floats through her mind. I just think it’s important to have boundaries. Limits.
She pushes that thought aside.
The fact is, it does sound a lot better than hooking up with someone at a bar, for all the reasons Jecki mentioned.
It’s just also completely insane.
“I need to think about it,” Osha says, pulling her hands into the sleeves of her sweatshirt and her legs up to her chest, before wrapping her arms around her knees. “This is like… a lot. A lot, a lot.”
The other girl shrugs. “I mean, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s your body, your life. Just making sure you know you have options.”
“No, I get that. I appreciate it, really,” Osha says, and she does. She feels like a door has been flung open wide, now she just has to deal with everything she’s found on the other side.
But Mae is clearly ready for a change of subject. “So what did the IT department say about your laptop? Think they’ll be able to recover your drawings?”
Osha flushes. God, she doesn’t even want to think about her conversation with Qimir. What had possessed her to snap at him like that? He was just trying to be helpful, even if his words of wisdom were unsolicited.
She’s not sure if her response was better or worse than the usual tongue-tied stuttering that happens around him.
Either way, she’s mortally embarrassed.
But she hasn’t mentioned Qimir to Mae and Jecki yet, hasn’t told them that she’s now working with a guy she made out with a million years ago. That he’s gotten even hotter in the intervening years, to the point where she can’t think straight around him. That she sometimes—okay, often—fantasizes about him when she’s alone at night.
“Fingers crossed,” she says, hoping she sounds casual. “I’ll find out on Monday morning.”
After that, the conversation turns to Mae’s job as an assistant assistant’s assistant to the editor-in-chief of one of the biggest fashion magazines currently in publication, and the major industry event they’re sponsoring tomorrow.
Eventually the other two women depart, leaving Osha to clean up alone, beer bottles clinking as she lifts two at a time, the apartment otherwise silent with the TV now off. She’s still getting used to not having her sister here with her; Mae had even taken their cat, Pip, when she moved in with Jecki a few months ago.
Sometimes she loves the quiet. After twenty-six years of being constantly around her sister, having the place completely to herself had been such a novelty. But tonight it just leaves her without anything to distract her from her whirling thoughts.
Could she really auction off her virginity? Is she the kind of person who does something like that?
She doesn’t know the answer yet.
But that night as she lays in bed, she can’t stop thinking about it. The idea of finally losing her virginity, and to someone who actually likes the fact that she’s a virgin instead of seeing it as some big burden? Yeah, there’s temptation there.
Closing her eyes, she imagines finally feeling a man’s hands on her bare skin, a mouth tracing down her throat to the swell of her breast, and then lower still. To feel something other than silicone or her own fingers moving inside her.
Her body grows hot and tight at the imaginings, and she reaches into her bedside drawer for some battery-powered assistance, letting her mind wander as she moves the vibrator between her legs.
And so what if the hands she imagines are a particular shade of gold, the mouth soft and lush and pink? It’s just her imagination.
It doesn’t mean anything.
But she comes almost embarrassingly quickly, and drifts off to sleep soon after.