Page 46 of Sunny Undone

I look back at the video. My mom is on her knees, swaying, and laughing to herself. Drunkenly, she crawls to the front door, shakes the handle before her hand slips off, and collapses in a heap. Our hair is so alike. Same color. Same mix of waves and curls that can’t decide what it wants to do. Only, mine is clean, recently cut to the length I like. Hers is greasy and unkempt.

I guarantee she smells something awful. And that’s sometimes the hardest thing to take. Because alcoholism can strip even the most basic self-respect you should have.

“Yeah,” I mutter. “But she’s the only mom I got.”

14

DELLA

“Oh,” I gasp as I dip my finger into my wetness and try to beat back the inexplicable shame I’ve always felt when I masturbate. I’m a ridiculously lapsed Catholic, raised in a deeply Catholic household. And even though I haven’t set foot in a church in a decade, for some reason, I still think that Jesus and all his disciples are watching.

Even Judas, the traitorous one, is judging.

But this is the second morning in a row that I’ve woken with the most vivid dream playing on repeat. It’s the delicious moment Sunny dipped just the tip of his bare erection between my lips.

I spent much of the previous day trying to rationalize why that was so hot. Even when I was sitting in the clinic getting a rushed sexually transmitted disease panel to make sure I didn’t catch anything from it, it still turned me on. And the most logical answer as to why is, actually, the most illogical option.

There was something illicit in doing something that railed against the safe sex rules I was raised on.

I wanted to feel Sunny skin on skin. Nothing between us. I could feel the way his muscles strained beneath my fingertips. All that power and control being held back from me. For my safety.

He was the one who remembered we needed a condom. And he was more right than he knows. I don’t take the pill because I’m mostly single and don’t really like putting chemicals in my body, unless I really need them.

Like the morning after pill that I took purely as a precaution.

Or vaccines, because I’m a scientist and not that reckless.

But Sunny’s thick head breaking my lips apart?

I clench around my finger as my hips lift off the bed. In my head, I imagine him nudging in farther. Telling me how I’m squeezing his cock. Telling me how good it feels. Hearing the desperation in his voice as he speaks to me.

I add another finger, and my abs tighten as I press the heel of my hand over my clit and grind.

Dream Sunny runs his tongue down my neck, biting and sucking. Feels dirty, fucking you without protection. Want to pump you with my cum.

I close my eyes, blocking out the reality of my bedroom and the pile of folded laundry on the chair that still needs putting away.

Because if I can’t see anything, I can let my fantasy be just that. I don’t have to reconcile whether I was a bet. Or block out the words I heard. I can just let myself be this newly sexual woman I want to be.

Even if I’m solo.

So, I focus on the way his thighs felt pushing mine open wide. The way his tongue brushed over mine. The way he looked at me like he felt this was something more than ordinary too.

And when I come, it’s with a soundless sob. One that rattles through my entire body, leaving me breathless and shaking in bed.

As I lie here, catching my breath, my hand gently caressing my breast, I know I’ll have to stop doing this to myself eventually. Or maybe…

I attempt to dismiss the thought, but it grabs hold. Perhaps I should have asked him about what I heard before I ran.

Before I can dissect it further, my phone rings. And it’s Mina, who never makes a phone call unless she can’t help it.

“Mina,” I say, trying to sound professional and not like I just gave myself an orgasm when I answer it.

“I think the lab was broken into,” she says.

I scramble to sit up as my heart gallops. “What? Were you or Evan inside? Are you okay?”

“No. No. Neither of us was here. I got in early, since I want to get a jump start on the day. Things have been moved. But the refrigerator with the plates you set up from the samples you got on Friday is switched off.”