A shiver races down my spine. My skin is tight, flushed, and restless, like he only just left me wanting. I curl onto my side, knees drawn up, pressing my palm low against my belly as if I can hold onto the pulse he left behind.
Regret knots in my chest, twisting tighter every time I breathe. He was never supposed to touch me. I was never supposed to want him.
And yet my body still hums for more.
Why does doing the right thing have to hurt so much?
I roll onto my back, staring at the ceiling I've known since childhood. The same cracks, the same shadows. But I'm not the same Janie who left for college four years ago.
My body yearns for more of Warren's touch, electric currents running just beneath my skin.
My hand slides down my stomach before I can stop it. The sheets are cool now, his warmth long gone, but my body doesn’t seem to know the difference. I find the faint trace he left behind, the ghost of heat that still makes me tremble.
This is wrong.
But I can't stop. My fingers move in slow, uncertain circles, chasing a rhythm that isn’t mine. Every touch is an echo, a poor imitation of the way he found me. I press my palm to my mouth to smother the sound that wants out.
It's not the same. Not even close. But I need this, I need to chase the ghost of what we shared.
My breath comes faster as I imagine his hands instead of mine, his mouth at my ear whispering my name. The pressure builds quickly, a desperate edge to it that wasn't there when he touched me.
"Warren," I mouth silently against my palm as my body tightens, then shatters.
I bury my face in the pillow to muffle my cries. When the release finally comes, it’s thin and brittle, breaking too fast. The ache that follows lingers, heavier than before.
This wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t just sex.
As my breathing slows, my stomach turns. The sheets are still warm, smelling like him. I pull them higher, but it’s useless. Even alone, I can’t escape what he awakened in me. The worst part is, I don’t want to.
I roll onto my side, curling around the hollow ache in my chest. In a few hours, I'll finish packing. Tomorrow, I'll board a plane to Chicago and leave all of this behind.
Chicago will wipe the slate clean. It has to.
I repeat the words like a mantra, even as my body still pulses with the lie.
Five daysinto my new Chicago life, and I'm buried in moving boxes. My tiny one-bedroom apartment near Northwestern looks like a cardboard fortress.
Outside, gray morning light filters through bare windows, casting shadows across the scuffed hardwood floor.
I position a framed photo of Mom, Dad, and Blake on the table beside the kitchenette. My family smiles back at me, frozen in Palm Beach sunshine, while I prepare myself for the very different Chicago scene.
The radiator clangs and hisses, fighting against the chill that seeps through poorly insulated windows. I wrap my cardigan tighter and attack another box labeled "KITCHEN."
This place is nothing like home. The walls are thin enough that I know my neighbor's alarm goes off at 5:30 AM. The bathroom sink drips no matter how hard I twistthe handle. But it's mine. My first real apartment, my first real job, my first real escape.
I shake my head, forcing Warren’s name back into the mental box where I’ve tried to lock it. Chicago is going to be my stepping stone into my adult life. Five days and 1,200 miles should be enough distance to forget the brush of his hands on my skin.
It hasn't been so far. Shit.
I told myself we could still be normal. That we could slip back into the easy rhythm we’d always had. I sent him a few dumb texts since that night, but nothing. Not even a thumbs-up.
I keep telling myself he’s busy, that he’s giving it time to cool off. That’s what grown-ups do after a mistake, right? They move on. Pretend it never happened.
So why does the silence feel like punishment?
A siren wails outside, followed by car horns and the rumble of the L train. I crack the window, letting the frigid air rush in. The cold burns my lungs, shocking me back to the present. Palm Beach never felt this raw, this alive.
I lift a secondhand couch pillow from a box and fluff it, arranging it carefully on my thrift store sofa. "See? Totally adult apartment. Totally put together."