Fragmented by Eliza Lentzski

the sensitive nub and moved in tiny, slow circles.
    My fingertips trailed over my outer lips, collecting my arousal. One finger, then two, slid into my wet hole, and I spread my legs wider apart to accommodate the intrusion. Water beat down from the showerhead and my hair clung to the sides of my face. I felt the telltale tightening in my lower abdomen and in my clenching sex. I pushed harder and faster, pulling and pushing my two fingers in and out. Small sighs and grunts tumbled from my lips.
    I thought about Jenn—smooth and chiseled, like a statue of a Greek goddess. It was an ethereal beauty, both masculine and feminine at the same time. I thought about Raleigh. Even in her wheelchair I could tell that she was soft where Jenn was hard. I thought about her perfect mouth and perfect teeth and the perfect way she formed her words. Her hair always looked a little wind-blown as if someone followed her around with a fan or like she’d just stepped off a beach. Soft, almost tangled waves tumbled down the front of her shoulders. It made me want to wrap my fingers around the strands. It was hair that begged to be touched and played with.
    I had wanted to kiss her, sitting in my car in front of her aunt’s house after Harvestfest, but I didn’t like what that suggested about me. I had never cheated on a significant other before, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Raleigh. I knew that if I wanted things to work with Jenn, I needed to forget about the gorgeous, complex blonde who I would see in an hour’s time in anatomy class.
    I leaned my head forward until my forehead pressed against cold tile. I felt Raleigh’s lips at my tight nipples. I felt her silk soft hair brushing down my stomach and tickling against the heated flesh of my sex. My hips thrust forward and my fingers bottomed out. My knuckles mashed against my throbbing clit. My eyes closed, and my lips parted in a silent prayer.
    As soon as my climax hit, I felt ashamed. I had masturbated to orgasm thinking about someone who wasn’t my significant other. On top of that, she was someone I barely knew. We’d spent one evening together, and now I was coming undone by my own fingers with thoughts of her mouth in the forefront of my mind.
    I turned the shower hotter and stepped more directly into the spray, hoping the scalding heat would absolve me of my sins.
 
    + + +
     
    I fidgeted on the lab chair before my first class of the day. I opened my notebook and tried to relax, writing the date in a careful scrawl at the top of a fresh page. The lab chair beside me screeched against the floor and my hopeful eyes jumped off the college-ruled page.
    “Hey, Harper. Mind if I sit here?” Andrew—a boy I’d had a few classes with over the years—stood in the space beside me, his hand on the back of the empty seat. His handsome, earnest smile was trained on me.
    The pen twirling between my anxious fingers nearly snapped in half. “I do actually.”
    I watched a kaleidoscope of emotions pass over his face: good humor, then confusion, followed by a stoical mask of indifference. “Oh. Ok.”
    I frowned and glared back down at the blank notebook page. Where was Raleigh? I glanced at my phone, noting the time. Class was going to start any minute now.
    Not thinking, I typed out a quick text to the missing girl: Where are you? I pressed send before I could second-guess the reason behind my curiosity or begin drafting multiple versions of the same, probing text.
    I stared at my phone screen, willing it to text me back. Too many scenarios, each more dire than the last, flashed through my thoughts. Maybe she had another physical therapy session today and had to miss class again. Maybe she’d had a horrible time with me at Harvestfest and was taking a personal day to get over the trauma of my company. Maybe she had changed her class schedule so she wouldn’t have to see me again. Maybe she knew what I’d done that morning in the shower.
    Professor Berry blustered into the