Category

Public & Discreet Stories

Explore stories shaped by tension, discretion, and the thrill of being discovered. This category focuses on moments in shared spaces like cafes, trains, galleries, offices, and social settings where privacy is thin and every decision carries risk. These narratives are about control under pressure, subtle signals, and the charged edge between composure and release. If you enjoy scenes built on social proximity and high-stakes secrecy, this collection is your fastest route into that mood.

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Stories in this category

58 total

5 views

Frozen Lake, His Flannel

outdoor · late_night

The lake house is frozen quiet at midnight, the rabbit vibrator buzzing low against her while she holds his flannel shirt to her face and thinks of the last time he drove up here with her, three...

#exs_flannel_shirt#outdoor#tasting#winter

Preview

The lake makes no sound at midnight in February. That's the thing she forgot — how the ice takes everything. No lapping. No give. Just the wind finding the gaps in the cabin siding and, underneath it, a silence so complete it has texture, like the flannel she...

2 views

Coat Check, Last Call

wedding venue · late night

The coat check corridor is empty and her bridesmaid dress is still zipped — she presses the wand through the satin, thinking that this, right here, is already better than anything he managed in three...

#bridesmaid_gown#spring#wedding_venue

Preview

The corridor was the kind of dim that venues use to suggest intimacy without providing it — one overhead bulb, the yellow of old hotels, and the row of numbered coat hooks holding nothing by this hour except a forgotten pashmina and someone's rain jacket. The...

3 views

Six Fifteen, Undecided

hotel_bedroom · dawn

Six-fifteen and his alarm goes off in twenty minutes — she pulls the wand from her bag before she has fully decided to, works it against herself and then inside, annoyed at how badly her body wants...

#hotel_bedroom#hotel_robe#winter

Preview

Twenty minutes. I know because I checked his phone before I got up, the screen still showing the alarm set for six thirty-five, and now I am sitting on the edge of the other bed — the one neither of us slept in — with the robe half open and my bag on the...

14 views

Three Minutes from the Reception

wedding reception venue · evening

Three minutes stolen from her own sister's reception — summer dress still wrinkled from the ceremony, wrist-deep in her clutch for the bullet she packed on purpose — she braces against the coat-check...

#summer#summer_dress#wedding_reception_venue

Preview

The band is doing something slow now — she can feel the bass note more than hear it, a low pulse coming through the wall behind the coat-check shelf. She has been feeling it for twenty minutes. That is why she is here. The corridor is fluorescent and narrow,...

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Forty Minutes Before the Keynote

hotel_bedroom · morning

Forty minutes before the conference keynote, she lays the wand against the inside of her thigh beneath the hem of her sundress and works through the settings with the same precision she'll bring to...

#hotel_bedroom#summer#sundress

Preview

Thirty-nine minutes. I checked the clock before I sat down on the edge of the bed, and I will check it again before I stand up. This is not indulgence. It is allocation. I have given myself a window and I intend to use it precisely. The curtains are half...

6 views

What Midtown Taught Her

hotel room · night

The hotel vanity catches her from three angles — skirt hiked, knees apart on the bench — and she watches herself the way she'd study a diagram, learning exactly which touch makes her breath change.

#hotel_room#short_skirt#summer

Preview

Three versions of me sit in these mirrors and I keep looking at all of them at once, which is something I've never been able to do before. The center panel shows me straight on. The left and right panels catch my sides, slightly behind, the angle that no...

6 views

Twelve Minutes, Tights Still On

conference_hotel_bathroom · midday

Twelve minutes into the lunch break, I'm locked in the conference hotel bathroom with the bullet vibrator I told myself I wouldn't bring, pressing it through my tights while the keynote slides still...

#autumn#conference_hotel_bathroom#tights

Preview

Twelve minutes. I know because I checked my phone before I locked the door, and I'm checking it again in my head the way you count down a parking meter — not because you're leaving, but because the number makes the whole thing feel contained and therefore...

4 views

Before the Cabin Woke

outdoor · dawn

The cabin is still dark at five in the morning, her breath fogging faintly above the quilt, and she slides her hand between her thighs for the first time in four months — slowly, like something she...

#outdoor#tasting#thermal_undershirt#winter

Preview

Outside, the cold is absolute. The wind moves through the spruce trees in long, low surges, and the cabin walls answer with a faint creak, and then silence resumes — the specific silence of deep winter in the Rockies, the kind that has weight. She has been...

3 views

Counting Breaths Through the Wall

airport_hotel · night

The bathroom tile is cold through my socks and the wall between me and the next room is thin enough that I can hear the television — I keep the bullet vibrator on its lowest setting and count my...

#airport_hotel#travel_socks#winter

Preview

Through the wall, someone's television is running a weather segment. I can't make out the words, only the cadence — a newscaster's measured rise and fall, the kind of voice designed to sound calm during bad news. I know that voice. I use that voice. The...

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Forty Minutes, Folded Washcloth

airport hotel bathroom · night

The wand is muffled inside a folded washcloth against the tile floor — she is bent over the bathroom vanity, one hand braced on the edge, the other pressing the head of the vibrator between her...

#airport_hotel_bathroom#travel_trousers#winter

Preview

The fan comes on with the light — that flat, institutional hum that fills the room before she has set her bag down. She stands in front of the mirror for a moment and just lets it cover her. Thirty-eight minutes now. She checked the board on the way past the...

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What Denver Nights Finally Allow

home_private · night

Alone in the Denver hotel room for the first time in a year of business trips, she unpacks the wand vibrator still in its box — kneeling on the bed, bent forward over the duvet, pressing the head...

#autumn#home_private#hotel_robe#tasting

Preview

The box has been in my suitcase for six weeks. I know that precisely because I packed it the morning after I bought it, which was the morning after I finally admitted to myself that I was going to buy it, which was approximately eleven months into a streak of...

8 views

Still Dressed at Nine

hotel bathroom · morning

Still in the bridesmaid dress at nine in the morning, the sash half-undone and last night's hairpins scattered across the hotel bathroom counter, she bends over the vanity and slides her hand between...

#bridesmaid_dress#hotel_bathroom#summer#tasting

Preview

The mirror above the vanity is the same mirror it always is — hotel-sized, slightly cold in its frame, showing her everything she already knows. The dress. The hairpins in a scatter across the counter like something gave way. The sash hanging from her left...

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Cold Enough to See Her Breath

outdoor · late_night

The Maine cabin is cold enough that she can see her breath, but she has pushed the flannel nightgown up and is bent forward over the pillow with two fingers inside herself — thinking of him, using...

#flannel_nightgown#outdoor#tasting#winter

Preview

The woodstove had been dying for an hour. She could see her breath now — small white shapes that formed and dissolved above the pillow, lit faint by the moonlight coming off the snow outside the window. The cold had settled into the room the way cold does in...

7 views

Twelve Minutes, Indiana Flat

Amtrak train · midday

Twelve minutes at a corner table in the Amtrak café car somewhere between Columbus and Indianapolis, the silicone dildo already warm inside me beneath my jeans — I press my knuckles to my mouth and...

#amtrak_train#dark_jeans#tasting#winter

Preview

The farmland out the window is the same as it was twenty miles ago. Flat. Pale. A tree line so thin it barely interrupts the grey. I keep my eyes on it because it requires nothing from me, and right now everything I have is going toward the other thing. The...

6 views

Six A.M., Locker Still Open

gym locker room · dawn

The locker room empties after the 6 a.m. spin class and she stands at her open locker for a moment too long — the bullet is in her gym bag where she put it deliberately last night, and she counts the...

#gym_locker_room#sports_bra_and_leggings#winter

Preview

She starts counting before she means to. The last footstep — heels on tile, unhurried, someone who has nowhere to be at six-fifteen on a Tuesday — and then the soft hydraulic sigh of the outer door, and she is already at three before she decides that counting...

6 views

Two Miles In, Cedar Shade

forest trail · morning

Two miles from the trailhead and no one behind me on the switchback — I step off the path into the cedar shadow, back against a trunk still damp from last night's rain, and work my fingers inside my...

#forest_trail#hiking_shorts#spring#tasting

Preview

The cedar shadow falls across the path and I step into it without deciding to. The trunk is still damp from last night's rain — I can feel it through my shirt the moment my back settles against the bark, a cold that spreads between my shoulder blades and...

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Twelve Minutes, Blazer Still On

office_bathroom · midday

Twelve minutes before the all-hands resumes — she locks the single-occupancy bathroom on the 34th floor, sets the rabbit on the lowest setting, and tracks the second hand on her watch with the same...

#office_bathroom#winter#wool_blazer_and_pencil_skirt

Preview

The second hand passes twelve and she starts counting. Eleven minutes, fifty-nine seconds. She knows the number because she counted the walk from the conference room — forty-one steps, one elevator bank, one locked door — and she knows the number because she...

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After the Call, Austin Rain

parked car · afternoon

Parked in the H-E-B lot in the rain, Austin, she pulled the wand from her gym bag because the conversation with her ex went twenty minutes longer than she had body for — now she's in the backseat,...

#gym_clothes#parked_car#spring

Preview

The windows had already started when she climbed into the back. Just at the edges first — a soft erasure working inward from the corners of the glass — and she watched it happen the way you watch something you didn't ask for arrive anyway. She hadn't planned...

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Green Light, Tentmate Gone

Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, Washington · midday

The Hoh Rain Forest campsite is silent at noon, her tentmate gone to the river, and she is on her sleeping bag in the green light that comes through the rain fly — she works her fingers inside...

#hiking_shorts#summer#tasting#washington

Preview

The green is not one color. She noticed that first — the way the rain fly turns noon into something underwater, something that belongs to a different taxonomy of light entirely. Olive where the nylon doubles at the seams. Pale where it stretches thin over the...

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Lights On, Echo Park

home_private · night

Twenty-nine years old and I've never done this with the lights on — the Echo Park bungalow, the bullet vibrator, the bathroom mirror I turned to face the bed three weeks ago and haven't turned back,...

#home_private#nothing#summer

Preview

The mirror is still there. I keep expecting to have turned it back. Three weeks ago I carried it out of the bathroom on a Thursday night, set it against the baseboard across from the bed, angled it up. I don't know what I thought I was doing. I told myself it...

5 views

Springfield Behind Me, Still Moving

Amtrak sleeper car · late_night

The Amtrak sleeper between Chicago and St. Louis, curtain drawn, the car swaying like a slow argument — I've been awake since Springfield thinking about the woman in the dining car and I slide my...

#amtrak_sleeper_car#autumn#tasting#travel_clothes

Preview

The curtain moves when the car sways, a slow drift left and then correcting, left and correcting, like something that cannot decide. I have been watching it for forty minutes. Since Springfield. Since the lights of the platform slid away and left only my own...

6 views

Six A.M., Steam Still Rising

gym · dawn

The Portland gym steam room is empty at 6 a.m. and she is already doing something she will not categorize — she's between the bench and the wall, fingers working quickly, and when she's done she...

#gym#tasting#towel#winter

Preview

The steam valve hissed and stopped. Hissed and stopped. She had been listening to it for four minutes, which was long enough to know no one was coming. She had not planned this. That was the part she kept returning to, sitting on the lower bench with the...

9 views

Standing Room, F Train

New York City subway · evening

Rush hour on the F train, her coat buttoned to the throat, the bullet vibrator at the bottom of her bag pressed against her hip through the fabric in a way that is almost — not quite — accidental,...

#autumn#new_york_city_subway#wool_coat

Preview

Four stops to Carroll Street. She has been counting since Jay. The F train holds her upright without her having to try — bodies packed close enough that the sway of the car moves through all of them at once, a collective tilt at each curve that she does not...

6 views

Forty Minutes Deep in Cedar

cedar grove, Vancouver Island · midday

The cedar grove off the Vancouver Island trail is forty minutes from the nearest car — she unzips her pack, takes out the silicone dildo wrapped in a bandana, and leans against the widest tree she...

#hiking_leggings#spring#vancouver_island

Preview

Every sound was a variable. She had been doing this long enough — negotiating with uncertain situations, reading the room before the room knew it was being read — to know that you don't commit until you've assessed all the exits. The cedar grove had taken her...

9 views

Across the Table in Silver Lake

restaurant · evening

He slips the wearable vibrator into place before they leave the Silver Lake bungalow for dinner, keeps the app on his phone, and she sits across from him at the restaurant watching him scroll through...

#restaurant#summer#sundress

Preview

The restaurant noise arrived before she was ready for it — the specific layered hum of other people's evenings, silverware and low laughter and a server calling something toward the kitchen — and she walked through it with her shoulders level and her face...

6 views

Twelve Minutes, Loop Tower

office_bathroom · midday

Twelve minutes of lunch break left, her office bathroom stall locked, the silicone dildo she's been carrying in her work bag for three days finally unwrapped — she times herself against the sound of...

#office_bathroom#pencil_skirt#winter

Preview

The hand dryer in the outer room cycled on, ran its eight seconds, cut out. She counted without deciding to count. That was the thing about her — she was always counting something. She had twelve minutes. She had planned for eleven, built in one minute of...

8 views

Gold Light, Back Forty

outdoor · dawn

The barn smell and the light coming up gold over the back forty — I am sitting on the tailgate of his truck in a sleep dress that belongs to no particular decade, and I press my fingers inside myself...

#outdoor#sleep_dress#summer#tasting

Preview

The light is still deciding what it wants to be when I come out. Not sunrise yet — something before that, a pale reddening along the mesquite line that turns the back forty into a held breath. I have been holding mine since four a.m. The tailgate is cold...

4 views

Still Angry, Downtown

transit · late_night

The argument ended an hour ago and I am furious with him and my body is responding to the fury in the absolute wrong direction — I stand on the empty downtown platform at midnight and slide my hand...

#transit#winter#winter_coat

Preview

The board says four minutes. I look at it the way I have been looking at everything since I left his apartment — like it might explain something, like if I stare long enough it will tell me what is wrong with me. The platform is empty. That is the first thing...

7 views

Eleven Minutes, Fourteenth Floor

office_bathroom · midday

Eleven minutes into her lunch break in the office bathroom — she notes later in her phone, in the notes app she keeps for exactly this: *fluorescent buzz overhead, left heel against the tile, the...

#office_bathroom#winter#work_trousers_and_blouse

Preview

She is already writing it before she has done anything. That is the thing about her — the part she has never explained to anyone and does not intend to. The entry exists in draft form somewhere behind her eyes while the fluorescent light buzzes its single...

7 views

Six Weeks Free, Chicago Tile

gym changing room · dawn

Six weeks out of a ten-year marriage and I am standing in the Chicago gym changing room in a sports bra at 6 a.m., the showers running three stalls over, and for the first time in longer than I can...

#gym_changing_room#sports_bra#tasting#winter

Preview

The showers are running three stalls over. I can hear them — one continuous sound, the kind that fills a room without filling it, that gives you something to be inside of. I am standing at the far end of the locker room in my sports bra and nothing else below...

3 views

Seven AM, Cedar and Silence

Capilano River Regional Park trail, Vancouver, BC · morning

The Capilano trail is empty at seven on a Tuesday in November, cedar smell thick and cold, and she unzips her rain jacket just enough — silicone dildo from her pack, back braced against a mossy...

#autumn#bc#rain_jacket#tasting

Preview

The cedar gets into everything here. It comes through the cold air before she has walked a hundred metres — thick and resinous, older than anyone who uses this trail, older than the trail itself. She breathes it in and something in her chest loosens that she...

4 views

Twelve Floors Above the Party

rooftop building · afternoon

Twelve floors above Midtown, I slip away from the rooftop birthday party in a fitted wrap dress and find the service stairwell — door propped, bass from the speakers bleeding through the wall — and...

#rooftop_building#summer#wrap_dress

Preview

The bass comes through the door like a second heartbeat — not music exactly, just the low end of it, the part that lives in the sternum. I can feel it in the metal door frame where my shoulder rests. I found this stairwell the way I find most things: by...

6 views

Three Miles, Grey-Green Silence

Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia · midday

Three miles into the Garibaldi trail and the autumn cedars are so thick the path has gone grey-green and silent — I've been thinking about her hands since the trailhead, and by the time I reach the...

#autumn#british_columbia#sage_maxi_dress#tasting

Preview

The cedar-scented silence arrived before I noticed I had stopped walking. Not silence exactly — the trail still held the soft collapse of my footsteps in wet duff, the occasional water-tick of something dripping through the canopy far above. But the cedars...

6 views

Midnight, Twelve Floors Up

rooftop bar · late_night

Twelve floors up on a Chicago rooftop bar that closed an hour ago, her black maxi dress pooled around her thighs on a concrete ledge, the lake wind loud enough to cover anything — she works the...

#black_maxi_dress#rooftop_bar#summer

Preview

The lit grid of Michigan Avenue stretched below her like something that had been waiting — the amber lines of traffic signals, the white verticals of the towers, all of it holding perfectly still while the wind up here did not. She had stayed after the bar...

16 views

Still Water, Eight Minutes

outdoor · morning

The lake is flat and no one comes this far up the trail before eight — the cotton sundress is bunched at my waist, the silicone dildo I packed beside the sunscreen finally in my hand, and I bring my...

#cotton_sundress#outdoor#summer#tasting

Preview

The birch trees are absolutely still. I noticed that first, before anything else — the way they stand without moving, white trunks catching the early light, not a single leaf turning. No wind. The lake is the same: flat, grey-green, holding the sky without...

12 views

Twenty Minutes, Level Three

parking structure · morning

Parked in the structure under her office building, twenty minutes before she has to be upstairs for the all-hands meeting — the sundress has ridden up her thighs in the backseat and her hand is...

#parking_structure#summer#sundress

Preview

Twenty minutes. She knows this because she checked her phone before she climbed into the backseat, and she is still checking it in her head — the countdown running somewhere behind everything else, a second track beneath the hum of the parking structure's...

19 views

Still Composed, Mirror Row

gym locker room · evening

The wearable vibrator has been in since the spin class and she hasn't turned it off — now in the locker room with three other women drying their hair she stands at her own mirror and wonders what her...

#gym_kit#gym_locker_room#winter

Preview

Three blow dryers. That is the only reason any of this is possible. She knows their sound the way she now knows her own pulse — as cover, as permission, as the specific frequency that makes the rest of it invisible. The dryers run at different pitches, the...

17 views

Illinois at Two A.M.

Amtrak sleeper train · late_night

The Amtrak berth from Chicago to Denver rocks through an Illinois cornfield at two in the morning — she's been cataloguing every detail since boarding: the exact pitch of the rail join, the thermal...

#amtrak_sleeper_train#summer#travel_leggings

Preview

The rail joins come every few seconds — a low, percussive thud that travels up through the bunk frame and into her spine — and she has already counted enough of them to know the interval is not quite regular. Four seconds. Sometimes three. The irregularity is...

17 views

Fourteen Minutes, Thirty-First Floor

office_bathroom · afternoon

Fourteen minutes until the all-hands meeting resumes — I've already catalogued the risk: single-occupancy lock, tile walls that amplify sound, the wand vibrator I keep in my laptop bag on its lowest...

#dress_slacks#office_bathroom#winter

Preview

Thirteen minutes, forty seconds. I checked before I locked the door. The fluorescent light in here does what fluorescent light always does — flattens everything, makes the mirror clinical, makes me look like a deposition witness rather than a woman who has...

8 views

Grey Shore, Three Days After

transit · morning

The Amtrak northeast corridor, three days after her mother's funeral, the Connecticut shoreline grey and fast outside the window — she turns her face to the glass and works her fingers inside herself...

#tasting#transit#winter#winter_coat_as_cover

Preview

The Connecticut shoreline moves past the window in long grey strips — water, then marsh, then a white house gone before she can decide if she liked it. She has been watching it for an hour. Maybe longer. Time on the train does something strange, pools and...

7 views

Twenty-Third Floor, Last Night

hotel_room · night

The conference ends tomorrow and she is alone in the twenty-third-floor hotel room with the Chicago skyline pressed against the window like an audience — she turns the wand vibrator to its highest...

#hotel_robe_open#hotel_room#winter

Preview

The skyline doesn't blink. That's what she keeps coming back to — forty floors of lit windows stacked against the winter dark, and not one of them looking away. She knows they can't see her. The physics of glass and distance and twenty-three floors of...

9 views

Twelve Miles, No One Coming

Olympic National Park · midday

Twelve miles into the Olympic Peninsula backcountry with no one behind her on the trail for two hours, she steps off the path into a stand of old-growth fir — hiking pants around one boot, fingers...

#hiking_pants#olympic_national_park#summer#tasting

Preview

The raven called from somewhere above the canopy — one flat, declarative sound that moved through the firs and disappeared — and that was when she knew she was alone. She had known it for two hours, really. The last boot prints in the mud behind her had been...

8 views

Bloor Station, Buttons Closed

Toronto subway system · morning

Rush hour on the Toronto subway, her coat buttoned to the throat, the wearable vibrator cycling through its third setting while she stands pressed against strangers, keeping her face entirely...

#toronto_subway_system#winter#wool_coat

Preview

Six stops. She had counted them before she boarded at Woodbine, the way she counted line items before a board presentation. Six stops to St. George, then the walk, then the elevator, then her desk — a sequence she could manage. She stood near the centre doors...

7 views

Nine Stops, Wool Coat

transit · morning

The 6 train is crowded enough that no one's face is near hers — she's gripping the overhead bar in her wool coat, the wearable vibrator humming inside her at the setting she chose at the 59th Street...

#transit#winter#wool_coat

Preview

She has both hands on the bar. That is the first thing she noted when the doors closed at 59th — both hands, the cold steel already warming under her palms, the train lurching north into the tunnel. She had made a rule of it. Both hands. Something to hold...

8 views

October Fog, Half a Mile

outdoor · midday

Half a mile from the Acadia trailhead, the October fog so thick she can't see twenty feet in any direction, she steps off the path and leans against a granite ledge — the bullet vibrator still...

#autumn#hiking_base_layer#outdoor

Preview

The fog had been thickening since the first switchback, and by the time she was half a mile out it had swallowed everything — the birches, the trail markers, the grey shape of Cadillac in the distance. Twenty feet of visibility, maybe less. The world had...

7 views

Before the Lake Wakes

outdoor · pre_dawn

Pre-dawn in late October, the dock boards frost-cold under her bare feet and the New England lake perfectly black, she kneels on the wool blanket she carried from the cabin and works the glass dildo...

#autumn#outdoor#tasting#wool_blanket_wrap

Preview

The lake held no sound. Not the absence of sound — something more deliberate than that, the way water goes perfectly still when the temperature drops below a threshold and everything on the surface stops negotiating with the air above it. She had watched it...

9 views

After Hours, Eleventh Floor

office_after_hours · evening

Eleven floors up in a Seattle high-rise, the office empty since five, she retrieves the silicone dildo from her desk drawer and works it into herself slowly against the cold glass — the city grid...

#office_after_hours#tasting#winter#work_blazer

Preview

The glass held the city at a remove, rain sheeting down the outside of the window so the grid of streets eleven floors below dissolved into something impressionist — orange smears, white threads, the slow pulse of a traffic signal going red. She stood close...

8 views

Five AM, Pewter Lake

outdoor · dawn

The New Hampshire lake is flat and pewter at 5 a.m. and she's been sober three months — standing at the end of the dock in her swimsuit coverup, she slides her hand beneath the fabric and finds...

#outdoor#summer#swimsuit_coverup#tasting

Preview

The lake is flat and pewter at five in the morning, the surface so still it looks like something poured and left to set. She has been standing at the end of the dock long enough that the cold coming off the water has worked through the coverup — thin cotton...

9 views

Saturday, His Pocket, Her Dress

restaurant · evening

Her own idea, drunk last Tuesday — now it's Saturday and she's at a West Village dinner table with her partner's hand on the remote in his jacket pocket, and her body is doing this without her full...

#dress#restaurant#winter

Preview

His hand is in his jacket pocket. It has been there for four minutes. She knows because she stopped tracking the conversation about co-op boards somewhere around minute two and has been watching his pocket instead, the way the wool pulls slightly where his...

8 views

Same Rattle, Different January

Amtrak train · late_night

The Amtrak sleeper berth through Montana in January is almost identical to the one she shared with her ex-husband in 2011 — same narrow curtain, same particular rattle at speed — and with her fingers...

#amtrak_train#sleep_shirt#winter

Preview

The rattle comes in the same rhythm she remembers — three short, one long, the chassis finding the same argument with the rail joint it always finds at speed. She recognized it before she was fully awake. Lay there in the dark of the upper berth with her eyes...

5 views

Glass Wall, Chicago After Hours

office · evening

The bullet vibrator is in her jacket pocket and the glass wall of the Chicago conference room is behind her — she notes, clinically, that the cleaning crew has started on the floor below, that her...

#blazer_and_trousers#office#winter

Preview

The glass wall behind her showed the city — or what the city had become at this hour, which was mostly the dark and the cold pressing flat against the building's face. She had noted the reflection twice already: once when she sat down, once when the monitor...

10 views

Three Kilometers Up, Visible

Garibaldi Provincial Park · midday

Three kilometers up the Garibaldi trail and she's found a granite ledge above the tree line where she can see the parking lot far below and anyone below can see her — she unzips her shell jacket in...

#garibaldi_provincial_park#hiking_shell_jacket#summer

Preview

The parking lot was a grey rectangle three kilometers below her, small enough to cover with her thumbnail. She could see both cars — her own, and one other — and the thin line of the trailhead sign, and the two figures who had gotten out of the second car and...

8 views

Three A.M., Colorado Dark

California Zephyr, Amtrak sleeper car · late_night — 3 a.m.

The California Zephyr crossing into Colorado at three a.m., her partner asleep in the lower berth — she eases the bullet vibrator from her toiletry bag and holds it against herself in the upper bunk,...

#amtrak_sleeper_car#sleep_shorts#winter

Preview

The train had its own rhythm through the mountains — not the steady click of flatland miles but something more uneven, a syncopation she'd felt in her sternum since they crossed into Colorado. It came up through the thin mattress and into her hips and did not...

8 views

Three Miles, No One Behind

Garibaldi Provincial Park · morning

Three miles into a Garibaldi Provincial Park trail and no one behind her for twenty minutes — she steps off the path into the Douglas firs, unzips her hiking shell, works her fingers inside herself...

#autumn#garibaldi_provincial_park#hiking_shell_jacket#tasting

Preview

The fog had settled on the ridgeline the way it did in October — not moving, not lifting, just sitting there above the treeline like it had always been there and always would be. She had been watching it for twenty minutes. Or she had been watching it since...

11 views

Chicago Still, Eleven PM

office_building · late_night

Forty-first floor, the Chicago skyline fully lit at eleven p.m., the open-plan office empty except for her — she retrieves the rabbit vibrator from her work bag with the same composure she uses for...

#blazer_pencil_skirt#office_building#winter

Preview

The elevator call button across the floor held its amber glow, the same dull steady light it had held for the last forty minutes — no movement, no summons, no one coming. Nora had checked it the way she checked everything: once, assessed, filed. She knew its...

8 views

Seven A.M., Still Learning

gym_changing_room · morning

The gym changing room at the Vancouver YMCA at 7 a.m. — she has watched a tutorial twice, bought the bullet vibrator specifically to understand what direct clitoral stimulation is actually supposed...

#gym_changing_room#sports_bra#winter

Preview

Somewhere past the row of lockers, a shower ran — that specific YMCA sound, the pipes slightly too loud, the drain slightly too slow. She had been listening to it since she sat down on the bench, and then she had moved into the stall, and now she was still...

9 views

Last Weekend, Shallow Water

outdoor · afternoon

Alone at the Okanagan lake house on the last weekend of summer, thirty-four years old and finally understanding what everyone has always meant — she floats on her back in the shallows with her hand...

#outdoor#summer#swimsuit#tasting

Preview

The lake made a sound at the dock's edge — not a wave, just water finding the wood again and again, patient, the same small slap it had been making all weekend. Claire had stopped hearing it by Saturday. Now, lying on her back in water that came only to her...

10 views

Twelve Minutes, Thirty-Fourth Floor

law firm office building · midday

Twelve minutes between the deposition and the client lunch, the law firm's single-occupancy bathroom on the 34th floor — she locks the door and is already strategic about it, already calculating when...

#law_firm_office_building#tasting#winter#wool_blazer

Preview

The ventilation hum finds her the moment the lock clicks — low, continuous, the sound the building makes to itself all day while everyone inside it performs. She has eleven minutes. She counted on the walk from the conference room, heels on marble, the...