Silicone Dildo in an LA Bungalow, Partner Sleeping

The fan makes three rotations for every breath he takes. I have been counting.

He's been under for twenty minutes — I know the sound of real sleep, the way his exhale goes slack at the end, no more performance in it. The bungalow holds the day's heat in its walls even now, past midnight, and the air coming through the slats is the same temperature as my skin. The fan doesn't cool anything. It just moves the warmth around, cutting slow shadows across the ceiling, across him, across me lying still beside him with my eyes open.

I've been awake since before he went under. That's not unusual. What's unusual is how long I've been aware of the weight beneath my side of the mattress — the slight ridge of it, the specific density of silicone through the fitted sheet. I put it there three days ago. Tonight is the first time the timing has felt right.

The cotton of my underwear is thin enough to be almost theoretical. I bought this pair years ago, washed it so many times the elastic at one hip has given up entirely, and what's left is something that presses against me with almost no pressure at all — just the fact of fabric, just the reminder that there's something between me and the air. I've been aware of that reminder for the last hour. The heat between my thighs is my own, held there, patient.

I turn my head and look at the fan. Three blades. One wobbles very slightly on the left rotation — a flaw I've never mentioned to him because mentioning it would mean looking at it together, and this is mine. This specific dark and this specific wobble and this specific patience.

I move slowly. The mattress is old enough to know how to stay quiet if I stay quiet, and I slide my right hand beneath the sheet toward the edge, toward the ridge I've been aware of all week. My left hand stays flat against my stomach, feeling it hold, feeling it not yet release.

The silicone is warmer than I expected — it's been here long enough to take the room's temperature, and when my fingers close around it the warmth is almost indistinguishable from skin. Almost. Not quite. The difference is the point.

He exhales beside me. The fan makes three more rotations.

I keep my knees together. The cotton pulls slightly across both thighs as I shift, a small resistance, and beneath it there is already a warmth that has nothing to do with the LA summer. My right hand holds what it's holding. My left hand stays where it is, pressing lightly, not yet.

The moment before I let my knees part is longer than it needs to be.

I let it be long.