”Then think of her,” she felt for Lauren’s hands and wrapped them around her waist, ”as you fuck me.” The woman then, gently, cupped Lauren’s face with her hands and waited with an expression that Lauren interpreted as a mix of appreciation and acknowledgement that there had been love in the woman’s eyes once, once upon a time—and in this moment of solidarity, yes, a yearning for more.

Lauren felt tightness in her chest and whatever resistance harbored in her heart was sliced open. She fought hard but the tears came just the same. The girl kissed the tears from Lauren’s eyes cooing words of comfort and encouragement. She moved against her with more force, urging Lauren to give in, give more, to yield.

”Yes,” Lauren whimpered and grasped at the woman’s hips. There.

The realism of the memory charm surprised Bo as she stood in the shower, turning up the water to a temperature that made her skin flush pink. It wasn’t just the water she felt against the back of her neck but Lauren’s very breath, the softness of her lips and then, yes, then, the pressure and friction of Lauren’s whole body against her back, riding her, pushing. Bo palmed her hands against the shower tiles to steady her as she received the thrusts of her lover. She sensed the secret language of their bodies returning like the lyrics of a familiar love song: I crave you, I miss you. There.

There, she heard again Lauren’s passion uttered in a low, secretive tone; locks of Lauren’s hair brushed against her shoulder and tickled her skin. These words exchanged, surely Bo could not have imagined that, words that fondled the heart, made limbs tremble, and their voices cry, cry in rapture. Out of instinct or perhaps habit, Bo reached behind to grasp at Lauren’s hips to force them closer. Another tiny death, her heart shattered to find the space there impossibly empty. The heat that consumed her? Hot water once more. The only weight she experienced was the depth of her loneliness and then, while the hot water continued to rain against her flesh, Bo realized she hadn’t uttered the charm at all. What she had intended to be a cry of frustration came out as a labored sob, as if the act of feeling anything at all was the greatest burden she’d ever known.