Sabrina lay in her "
femme-y
" dorm room, with the color-changing LEDs of a content creator casting a soft, surreal glow over her wall decor. She hadn't moved all day, sprawled across her floral sheets, her long, messy black hair fanned out like a dark halo. Her tank top clung to her sweat-dampened skin, her panties still stained from the night before. She stared at the ceiling, replaying that moment -- waking atop that Jacob guy, her body shuddering through an orgasm, then doubling in intensity as she felt his hot, creamy release flood her
most sensitive and private place
, soothing her pains. The memory sent a shiver through her, a confusing mix of shame and warmth she couldn't shake. Something deep inside her felt... good. Comfy.
Safe.
And she hated herself for it.
Unbeknownst to her, the hormones in Jacob's semen were at work, weaving a chemical thread of attachment into her fragile psyche while her body
greedily
absorbed them. She didn't know why she kept thinking of him -- his beefy frame, his shy stammer, the way he'd looked at her with such soft, hurt eyes when she'd accused him of rape. No one at this Midwestern hellhole of a university had ever looked at her with anything but
scorn
. The only non-white girl in her dorm, she was a target for their jeers-- "slant-eyes", "fortune cookie", lots of gibberish insults meant to sound like a vaguely Asian language -- cruelty she buried beneath her Instagram facade. Nothing about last night or today made sense, and she didn't understand why her body betrayed her like that.
Jacob, meanwhile, sat in his cluttered room, hentai muted on his laptop, his collectible Transformers staring down from their shelves. He wanted to text her, to check on her, but he didn't have her number. No one invited him to the dorm floor group chat -- he was the big fat nerd, the loser, the invisible. So he knocked on her door, his knuckles tentative against the wood. No answer. She was inside, he knew, but silent. Defeated, he slid a letter under her door, scrawled in shaky handwriting on a torn notebook page.
"Sabrina,"
it read,
"It's okay if you don't like me. I don't think anyone does so its fine. I just always thought you were really special. Your posts, your smile, everything. I'll never hurt you or treat you badly, no matter how much you think I'm a loser. But you make me want to be a better man. Whatever guy you're with will be the luckiest. Well, bye, I guess, and I promise I won't tell anyone what happened ever. --Jacob."
He mumbled to himself saying he had no one to tell and who'd believe a loser like him, anyway?
Sabrina found it later, her fingers trembling as she unfolded the paper. Relief washed over her, tinged with empathy. No one here had ever said anything that kind. She'd expected him to mock her, to recoil from what she'd done in her sleep--grabbing his private area, straddling him like some feral thing. Instead, he'd offered tenderness. She clutched the letter, tears pricking her eyes. Why had it happened? She grabbed her phone, Googling "
sex while sleeping
," but the state's strict decency laws blocked the results, flagging them as pornography. "This action has been logged."
Frustrated, she tossed the phone aside and stayed in bed, skipping meals, her stomach growling but her mind too tangled to care. Yet that strange, cozy feeling lingered, from near her bladder to her heart, a warmth she couldn't name.
At dinnertime, another note slipped under her door, this one she couldn't pull because it was taped to something. He'd attached to a brown paper bag.
"I thought you might be hungry. It's not much, but I hope you like it. --J."