After my court appearance and kiss with Ryan, I drove for a half hour along the beach up north to Santa Barbara and went back to work. The life of a lawyer sucked sometimes. Actually, it sucked most of the time. No wonder I was clueless when Ryan asked me about passion. I wouldn't know what passion was if it sent me a text. Nevertheless, I managed to get more trial preparation done and felt confident that I was on track for the following week.

After wolfing some pretzels in the break room at work for dinner, I finally stumbled in to my house in the hills at 11 at night. My house welcomed me as it always did. It was an adorable adobe with two bedrooms and one mint green vintage tiled bath, but cost a fortune because of where it was located. It had white stucco walls and a red roof on the outside, with turquoise green trim around the windows. The yard was small and cute and the gardener certainly kept it in order.  But I was never around to enjoy it.

Inside, I had a comfortable living room with dark brown leather couches and cushy twill armchairs--that I never sat in because I was working all day. I had a galley kitchen with small, high-end appliances--that I never used because I was working all day. And I had a luxurious bed that I had shared for only part of one night in the last several years. And this was only partly by choice.

Yeah.

No wonder I was depressed.

When I walked in, still, I felt good to be home. All day I had ignored the throbbing between my legs that had been steadily increasing. Even though I was working, I kept having daydreams about Ryan and his kiss. And his abs. And his tented pants. All. Day. Long.

Dammit.

I felt so sexually frustrated. Okay, I had been sexually frustrated for a very long time. At least I admitted it. Today, Ryan certainly brought it to a head. Now I did not know what to do.

Frankly, I was tempted to take care of it myself. I never did. That's against the rules.

Okay, so about my rules. I realized that they were, well, prudish. They were arbitrary too. I didn't care. I came up with my rules to keep my feminism and my dignity and my badassery and I was not about to change them. I had sex. On my terms.

At least that's what I told myself when I came up with those rules.

Okay, so I came up with those rules in high school when I still thought French kissing was gross. I had been too stubborn to change them.

Maybe there was more going on with my rules than I admitted to myself.

Fear.

Guilt.

A need to keep myself safe and protected.

A need to not be vulnerable with anyone.

A need to not trust anyone.

No one ever talked to me about sex. I mean, yeah, I had sex education in school, but I did not have anyone to talk to about it. And I felt that I should not do certain things.

This contradicted some very strong hormones that lead me to lose my virginity when I became legal. Um, yeah, lawyer. And there were a few guys in college. And then him. But I didn't want to think about him.

So there. Yes, I had sex. But I had never been too creative or allowed any guy to be too creative with me. Like at all creative. Like oral sex creative. Which I admit was not really pushing the bounds of sexual creativity at all.

Frankly, at my age, it was embarrassing, but I still felt guilty about sex. I was raised Irish-Catholic. I was raised to believe that anything pleasurable is bad. It was like a woman was not supposed to be openly sexual. When that belief was ingrained in you, it was hard to believe anything else. If it felt good, it must be bad.

Therapy had helped me deal with some of this. I was starting to realize that I had been limiting myself. I had been starting to open up to new things. But these were new things like not blaming myself for everything that happened and trying to understand my past.

But today, this feeling between my legs and in my brain--I couldn't ignore it.

In the past, I'd tried masturbating and it never got me anywhere. The combination of the guilt--even if I did not acknowledge it--and the lack of interest for anything sexual made me not even go there.

Today, though, I was suffering. I was really suffering and I needed a release. More than I ever had. Those damn antidepressants just couldn't rule me like this. It had been a year. At least. I could do this. I had to get some something. Even if I gave it to myself.

A decision made, then.

I just stood there, in my house, staring without seeing, and then, as if an invisible force was propelling me forward, I headed straight for my bedroom and crashed into my bed, all in. If I could have sex with men, with or without guilt, I could have sex with myself, and guilt had nothing to do with it. My new breed of feminism.

Not bothering to take off my clothes or high heels, I stroked my hands down my body noting the fleshy curves. Yep. All me.

Those breasts? All me. That little pouch on my belly? All me.

I noticed that my skin was very soft.

I had never noticed how soft before.

I kept going, uncertainly touching my pubic hair. Idly, I wondered if I should remove it and be bare. That was not something I'd ever considered, but now it seemed to be in the way.

Wait. Focus. Masturbation. Yeah, what a word. Almost as good as manflesh. Or mansmell.

Focus, Amelia.

My last thought was, oh hell, I'm going in.

With a tentative graze, I touched myself, realizing that I was all wet and had been all wet all day. My panties were soaked. For Ryan. But also just for me.

I pressed into the flesh at the front of my pubic bone instinctively, because it felt good there. I could feel a vein throbbing. I stopped stroking and let go for a moment and then realized that I would feel better if I kept going than if I stopped. Maybe this was where my cute, little orgasm has been hiding. Not with my antidepressants or with Paul the accountant, but with me, with my desire.

I had never felt such desire before. There were hormones when I lost my virginity. And I certainly felt something for him. Ugh, him. But then my desire left, my depression entered, and my orgasm was nowhere to be seen.

Now, I desired Ryan. The Sun God of my dreams. Mr. Passion.

I reached down further and explored. I could see Ryan's green eyes and freckles. His golden skin. Those abs. The V.

The V did it. Sexy fucking body. That kiss. Cool skin and hot mouth. I started to pant. Oh my God, I made myself pant.

I felt like I deserved a trophy for panting.

Setting aside an errant thought of my repressed past (why oh why do I think of things at times like this?), I went to town, stroking and caressing, pressing my folds, moving my fingers wherever it felt good.

After a bit I added another hand and inserted it inside me.

Because I was so sensitive and desperate from being shattered by Ryan all day, I got a little wetter, my muscles got a little tighter, my world closed in so that it was nothing but my own pleasure, and lo and behold, an orgasm arrived. Shuddering.  Release.  Finally.  I brought it on home.

Ta-da!

Now I really wanted a trophy.

The orgasm was good although not earth shattering, but I was almost in tears because my body still worked.

I was alive!

The Prozac had not stolen my orgasm.

Still, it surprised me and took me over so quickly that I stopped stroking and then realized, with some embarrassment (to myself that only I would notice), that I had to keep going. So I did. I felt my sex convulse and contract. That felt very good. Frankly, it also felt naughty. 

I could get over that. 

 Okay, so I looked around as if someone was going to catch me. It broke a rule. 

 But wow. I should have done this a long time ago. I could almost feel the power of the release in my brain. The good hormones or whatever the fuck it is that gets released when you had an orgasm, were bathing my brain with the good shit and I felt relaxed. Sated. Whole. Hmmm. The fucking antidepressants didn't own me.

I wondered how many other rules I should break?

#

So I knew that it was late and that I should go to sleep, but I needed to figure out where I knew Ryan from. He clearly seemed to know me. Did I meet him at Harvard? If so, what was he doing managing a coffee shop. I didn't mean to be a snob, but still.

Yeah, I was a snob. Deal with it.

Maybe he was a friend of my parents? No.

A friend of a friend? No. I have friends, but not that many. And I would remember him.

So did I know him from childhood? I had no idea. I grew up around here.

Maybe he went to Waterford High?

I went to my bookshelf and pulled out my high school yearbooks. I started with my freshman year and went through the names, looking for all the Ryans. I found a few but they were not him. I looked in the sections for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. While there were some Ryans, I didn't see him.

Maybe he was younger than me. It can be hard to tell. I pulled out another book. And another.

Finally, I got to my senior year.

Now I was getting distracted. It was way past midnight, after I had been working crazy hours and I was reading things that people had written to me more than a decade before. My back was tired from sitting on the floor surrounded by yearbooks and I was remembering people and pictures and events. There are a lot of memories in those yearbooks. Yeah, I was the bomb in high school. I wonder what I am now?

Finally, I paged to the freshman section of my senior year and there he was: Ryan Kyle Fielding.

He looked little and sweet, with big eyes and a tan and surfer hair even at that age. He was adorable. But I did not remember him.

I wondered why he remembered me?

On that thought, I crawled into bed, hoping to sleep some before I had to get up early and start being a lawyer again.

#

The institutional fluorescent lights overhead sped by as I was pushed down the bright, white hospital corridor, strapped to the gurney.

One light. Two lights. Three lights.

I stopped counting as I looked up at the nurses' faces as they rushed me to the operating room. Two women and a man, pushing me down the hospital. There was a sort of rail along the walls, so you could hang on to it if you fell.

I couldn't even walk.

They wheeled me in to the operating room with an enormous light--high powered wattage, illuminating everything.

I had never seen a light so big.

I was prepped for surgery. They gave me a shot in my arm. I didn't know what it was. They added something to my IV. I didn't know what it is.

The anesthesiologist said that it was morphine and I would soon start to feel it.

I did.

The anesthesiologist asked me if I could feel my belly.

What belly?

No, I couldn't.

Then it all went black and I could not see any more lights.

And then I woke up in my room, sweating. 

Another fucking nightmare.