Missing Her Fiercely

She wrote me a love letter and she said I love that hazy, crystal clear kind of focus you get from drinking coffee on airplanes.

She wrote it out long-hand with a pen that balled up little ink globs around the tops of her o's. She said, "I think up new ways to fuck you. Just daydream to whatever music I have on my phone, shit from years ago. I stare straight ahead and my stomach spins. I'm always so horny on planes. Never flying with you though, and the bathrooms are disgusting anyway, so I don't know where we'd do it. You're too loud to get fingered with a jacket over your lap, but that wouldn't stop me from trying."

She wrote me a letter that didn't say much but made me miss her fiercely. It had that sort of perfect lack of urgency you swim through like syrup when you know you'll be with someone for decades. There's no hurry to get your words out. There's no rush to make it mean something, to reach a conclusion, to proclaim, or promise, or renounce.

She just is and I just am. She lets me get so close without trying to stitch each beautiful, strange quilt square of her personality into one continuous tapestry. She lets me see the spaces in-between. The impatience. The anger. The childish fantasies of power and revenge.

I know her better than a person knows another person. I know her like the only suitcase I've ever owned. The exact size and shape, all the little nooks and crannies, some with fuzzy memories tucked inside. I know her texture, and where the leather has worn through to canvas. I know her so well I can see her. I can see that sleep crusted, shallow breathing moment. I can see her pen looping over the page. Sitting there, trapped in space by a lap belt, but really rocketing along through the air above the Earth. Thinking of me.

She wrote me a love letter and put it in an envelope and mailed it back over the ocean she'd just crossed.

She says coffee and sleep deprivation catch her at her most creative. They draw her into a thin line and suddenly she can see the route—like those simplified subway maps—from where she is to where she's going.

I felt like she felt. I knew exactly how she thought about things in that moment. How she thought about me. I felt my heart tipping up and over that arc, hanging in the weightless peak. That's love. And love is reaching it again and again. It's not the euphoric high of falling, of "falling in love." It's realizing and realizing and, ten years later, realizing that you're still falling. Your feet never hit the ground. And you can still get that dizzy tip. Just look. Just look at her. Read her words. Touch your chin. Smile at nothing.

She wrote me a letter and mailed it back and the paper smelled like her fingertips. I taped it to the fridge, didn't read it again, and tried not to recite its lines in my head.

I sent her a text to ask how she thought about fucking me, matching her eloquence with my own blunt question mark. I went to sleep with an old sweater of hers balled up where her pillow should have been.

I woke up to a voicemail, time stamped 2:07 am, that started with a crackly rustle of fabric. Then her voice came through, breathy and out of rhythm. She was already so far gone. I knew her head tipping with her words, rolling loose on her neck. I didn't need to see her to know her face was flushed and her eyes were dark, eyelids heavy.

She was talking about eating me out and her voice kept catching. Catch—pause—gasp. The kind of noises that tug on the delicate thread that runs from my throat to my gut. The noises that make me melt and rewind the message to listen again. She told me just how she wanted to hold me down and fuck me. She said, "Two fingers in your pussy and my tongue in your ass—" her voice faltered into a moan and she slurred, "Fuck, I want you." She made herself come and muffled the noise with something thick, maybe a pillow. So considerate of the neighbors.

I listened to it three times through, then replayed her thickest stutters a few times with my eyes closed. When I got out of bed to take a shower, I felt the slick slip of my pussy between my legs.

I was so wet that my body was sending up emergency shivers. Want prickled up the back of my neck and flushed down my arms. My legs felt heavy and clumsy.

I turned on the water, stepped inside, and slid the shower door closed. With my hand against the glass, I sank to the ground and opened my knees. An incredible wave of arousal washed through me and my mouth dropped open on its own accord, triggered by the tame act of spreading my legs. I let my shaky hand settle light on my skin and slid it lower. Thick lips, the goo was pulling away in strands. I ran my nails over the length of my pussy and moaned, then slid one finger inside just to feel the heat. I curled it up, stroking nerves through that engorged mess, and bent forward, shaking my head. It had to wait.

So, I pulled my finger out and found my razor. I shaved my pussy bare and covered it with aloe. The cool wetness made me zone out on the bus. I listened to her message again with my phone pressed to my ear and thought about her fingering me with a jacket over my lap.

At work, I mirrored her airplane reverie. I sat at my desk and stared straight ahead, my face carefully blank. I sent her a text and told her I was thinking of her.

She texted back immediately, "Send me pictures."

I said, "Be patient."

Arousal walked around with me. It sloshed in my stomach and never quite faded. When I had to pee, the pressure made my pussy swell. When I sat on the toilet, I saw white streaks in my underwear. I sent her a picture.

When I got home, I dropped my bag—couldn't even eat, I was so horny—and headed straight up the stairs. I propped my phone up against a shoe and pulled a few sex toys out of our bathroom drawer. We've got one that's a slim dick with a heavy, wide base. I set it flat on the carpet and kneeled over it.

My hands felt too light, like puppet hands with the strings snipped, when I unscrewed the lid from the jar of coconut oil that lives next to our bed. I scooped out a glob and pressed it between my legs. My fingers slid back and forth in a familiar rhythm as I waited for the pulpy white to melt to clear oil.

I hit record on my phone and fucked myself, lifting my hips and dropping them slow. My pussy was so worked up that I could hardly feel the friction of the silicone. The strongest sensation was on the other side of the skin, the unbelievable ripples chasing each other back to my spine.

I was talking to her, talking to thin air, "Is this how you want it? How you want to fuck me? You gonna fill me up?" I braced one hand against the floor and said, "How do you want it? Fast and rough? Or slow so you can pull all the way out and fuck back in again?" I lifted off the toy and pushed back onto it, getting off on the sound of my own voice.

I was so full that I felt inflated. Just surface sensation mumbling beyond the deep swirl and rush. My body pulled into perfect alignment, and I slowed down. I stopped breathing and let the moment stretch. Just before orgasm, my body was a hollow tunnel. Then I tipped over the edge, silent at the peak, overwhelmed with feeling, before the long, loud slide down the back side. I opened my mouth and let my throat shape the sounds. It felt like heat painting my insides, rewarding me for finally giving my body what it wanted. I curled forward, still rubbing my clit, rising and falling on my knees. I chased it all the way to the end, panting and gasping little sounds for her, trying to turn every feeling into a noise that could travel around the world.

I lifted up, moved the toy, and sat back on my hips. I let my legs splay for the camera and touched myself. My pussy was so big, pushed out like it wanted more. I gave her a few more pleased sounds as my fingers explored. I moaned her name the I way I would if she was looking down at me, dark brown eyes flitting over my face with the proud look she gives me every time she makes me come.

The video was almost half an hour long. It took me forever to figure out how to send it to her. Then I ate dinner sitting on our bedroom floor, with no pants and no underwear on, and I missed her. I wrapped myself up in three blankets so the heat kept the loneliness at bay. I played music too loud and sang along. The neighbors must have thought I was having a mid-life crisis.

I went to sleep with the lights on, because fuck the electricity bill.

Today, when I wake up, she's sent me a video back. I run downstairs to get my laptop and open the file as I trip back up to the bedroom. The video starts and she's sitting in front of her laptop in a hotel room. She has on a tank top with no bra and looks like she hasn't slept much. She tells me, tells the camera in an empty room, that the yogurt is super sour but it's the only breakfast food there that's not a pastry. She eats a spoonful from a little glass jar and starts clicking around. I watch her eyes follow her cursor and hear the rustling at the beginning of the video I recorded last night.

Her eyes widen and soften. She looks right at the camera and gives it a crooked grin. My heart stops.

Then restarts itself. She watches me get ready. I can tell what's going on from the tinny sounds coming back at me through her computer's microphone. She eats another spoonful of yogurt and sets it aside. Her head rests against the side of one forearm and the other arm disappears behind her screen, like she's holding my image.

I watch her eyes trace the long lines of my inner thighs, one of her favorite things about me. I chose that pose, on my knees, straddling the toy, just so I could give her what she wanted to see.

Her face relaxes into that slack look I only get to see when we're fucking. It feels even more private to see her like that when she can't see me too, can't see the effect it has on me. I hear my breathy too-high voice asking her how she wants it and see her eyebrows knit together.

I can hear myself saying, "You want it like this? Take it slow for me. So slow I'm—" my voice falters on a wordless sound, "So slow I'm begging for it?" She's nodding for the camera with her eyes still on the screen. I say, "Will you fuck me like that? You tell me when to come." Her mouth drops open a touch and she leans in. I can see the flush of her cheeks in the screen's blue light.

My recorded self is getting close to coming and I can hear her breathing picking up, see her chest rising and falling. My words are just breathy sounds and she's whimpering over her keyboard. She starts talking back, the way she does when we're breathing the same air, faces pressed together, our noses and lips just nudging and kissing. "Yeah, fuck, like that," she's shaking her head and sliding her hand over her mouth, pulling at her bottom lip.

When I come, in that brief silence when I'm cresting the top of the wave, I see her exhale in a rush. And when my loud sounds start to rise through the speakers, she closes her eyes and presses her face to her open palm. The video stops and she's still breathing heavy. She pants for a second like that, sitting still with her eyes closed.

I watch her draw a deep breath and pull herself together. She sits back in her chair and stares at the camera. I feel my skin shiver. Her eyes aren't hungry, but so lonely. She misses me too.

That's want. And want is wanting it again and again. It's not the first roar of lust that lights up your insides. It's realizing and realizing and, ten years later, realizing that you still want. You're still hungry. You can never get your fill. Just look. Just look at her. Watch her face. Bite your thumb. Close your eyes.

That long look is all she gives me in return. I want to write her a love letter that says I know how she feels, but she wouldn't look at me like that if she didn't already know. Silence takes a lot of trust. She shows me she knows me by saying nothing.

I turn over and bury my face in my pillow. My stomach lurches. I can smell her hair in the fabric.