Eliza’s room was hazy and dark, a curtained gloom that pressed in around her and made the air seem tighter and her own breathing louder. Music spilled out softly from her phone on her bedside table. Piano, Nuvole Bianche by Ludovico Einaudi. An artist with long fingers and quick movements.

Eliza liked to think there was just something sexy about pianos music. Perhaps it was the long boxy keys? Perhaps it was the sharp, high notes and low baritones you could feel in your guts?

She didn’t know.

She was hot under her thick lavender comforter and the cloth prickled against her skin uncomfortably. The room smelled of the apple cinnamon candle she had just blown out. The piano played on with hectic sweet notes and whispered to her in heavy tones: just get on with it.

“I know, I know.” She muttered to herself. Because she was also naked. In her own bed. And that fact alone was making her squirm.

She shifted under the comforter, lifting her hips up, tossing her hair to the side, huffing dramatically as she looked up at the ceiling. She wiggled her fingers under the covers and frowned up at her ceiling fan.

Her fingers were warm. There was lube on her bedside table. Her stomach was full of hot tea and whatever the cantina next door had been selling that was fresh. Her fingers remained poised underneath the covers. Hovering. Ready.

Eliza kept staring at the ceiling.

What does it mean to be a modern woman? Does it mean having your own bank account? Having access to birth control? Being able to build a deck or change a tire? Being called “Doctor” without anyone hesitating around the word like a question covered in glue?

Was it wearing heels? Was it wearing tennis shoes? Was it a bumper sticker that said “Lean in”?

There was a voice in the back of Eliza’s head. It was from a fifty-seven year old woman with iron-grey hair cut short and large jowls. She walked around the room in impressive circles and made eye contact with all the students like a threat that their parents paid for.

Eliza sat in that class with her pencil out and her back straight and body completely taut and leaned forward.

It’s all about the body! The professor yelled out so that God himself would know she was angry with him. It’s about the body… Who gets a say in where it goes and what it gets to do! Who gets to think about it, consume it, touch it, own it! That’s the issue and don’t let anyone tell you it's about anything else.

Eliza was a modern woman. Eliza was sex-positive woman. Eliza wanted to reclaim her rights and get a say in her sexuality. She squeezed her eyes shut, forgot about whatever her priest might think and shifted in bed one last time.

Her lower belly was already tight and hot and her face flushed. She had been reading some sexy-nothing story for hours now.

She listened to the soft piano music and she thought of those hands touching the keys and those hands alone. She imagined them pressing against her, searching her curves, probing across her hips and a husky musical voice telling her she was, telling her she was---

Eliza tried to summon some dirty talk.

Hot. Really hot. She was… the hottest? She had hips. And breasts. And hair that only sometimes smelled like burnt ham.

“Ugh,” Eliza shifted in bed and started the fantasy all over again.

“You’re so beautiful, Eliza,” a voice said to her in her head in some unknown accent caught between Spanish and Russian. “You make my heart flutter. No. You make me so hard.”

She nodded to herself and reached for the lube. She slathered her hands up and tried to warm up the transparent goo with her fingertips. She took a deep harsh breath like she was getting ready for a test in a class she was barely passing.

Eliza dove her hands under the cover and imagined a faceless someone kissing her neck. She imagined them biting her jawline. She closed her eyes and sighed into the feeling. She imagined the night sky above her and someone lightly grazing her thighs with their fingertips and trailing their hands across the soft of her skin.

She bit her bottom lip.

They wouldn’t even notice her stretch marks or the fact she hadn’t shaved down there. They wouldn’t even care! Even though her stretch marks and lumpy ass were two things she had to force herself to look at in the mirror and not curse at like a--

She tried to focus again. She was a sex-positive modern woman. She was horny.

She tried again.

She roughly trailed her hands down her open legs. “Uh,” she gave a soft sound at the first electric touch. She tried to make a small circle around her clit. And then she tried again. And again.

“Come on,” she pressed her palm flat to her clit and worked it up and down. A thrill of fire went up her spine. “Come on! Little bastard.” It was too much fire. She furiously tried to work herself over, up and down, up and down.

Mostly it just hurt. She jerked her hands back.

Eliza stretched out in bed with sweat beaded on her forehead from frustration and thoughts spiraling. “Goddammit!”

She wasn’t a very good modern woman.

Eliza took a deep breath in through her nose and lowered her hands again. She tried to just slowly ease her fingers down into herself and curl them up into the soft opening of her body. And it hurt again, a dull spiky ache that was not sexy.

She groaned and tried not to imagine some angels looking down at her and shaking their heads. Perhaps condemning her for the fact she was too sexually incompetent to even get herself off. Or maybe because masturbation was a sin and she was definitely going to hell and not even going to get an orgasm out of it.

Eliza starfished out over her covers. Her throat was tight and her body felt like grey mush.

She blinked a couple times and tried to remember the articles she read about the “clock technique.” And then a soft call interrupted her thoughts. “Ah.”

Eliza looked toward the opposite wall.

“Uh,” a voice moaned lowly and Eliza’s eyes went wide. The voice groaned, “Oh yeah…”

Eliza’s mouth went very dry as she made out the very breathy sounds coming from next door. Her roommate was either frantically moving furniture or having some fun.

Eliza hadn’t gotten to know Mickey very well in the last two months they lived together, but they certainly weren’t at a point where it would be alright to listen to her do… that.

“Right there,” Mickey gave a sharp cry and Eliza’s ears burned. Had she seen another person come over that night?

Hell, had she even seen Mickey once in the last couple days? Eliza spent most of her nights at the library and it was only after a very embarrassing conversation with her therapist that she penned in an “attempt at an all-natural solution to stress” in her calendar.

“Yeah, yeah, baby,” Mickey’s voice carried through the cheap walls like a breeze Eliza should really close the window on. She turned away from the noise. Mickey was in her senior year of college just as Eliza was and was a trim young woman with business-like straight black hair and sharp grey eyes.

She was lean and thin-boned and had a certain self-possessed poise to her that Eliza respected.

“I like that, do me like that,” she called out with rust in her vowels and Eliza jumped at the sound.

She reached to turn up her piano music a little higher to drown out the sounds of love-making or whatever Mickey was doing in the next room over.

“Oh God, touch me there.”

Eliza paused and for a moment her mind nose-dived straight into the department of wondering what exactly Mickey was doing. She summoned an image before she could stop herself. Mickey with her long neck extended and face contorted and body down on all fours as someone drilled into her--

Eliza turned over in bed and rubbed her legs together.

No! She thought just as she reached down and pulled the covers up all the way to her chin. I’m not going to get off from my roommate moaning.

“I want you,” Mickey murmured, wound-up, spent, and wispy in a way that made Eliza twitch. “I want you so badly, won’t you cum for me?”

Eliza’s hand brushed against herself and her heart jumped. She gently touched in between her legs and her fingertips came back damp.

“FUCK!” Mickey called and Eliza froze. “RIGHT THERE!”

Eliza squirmed. She jumped out of bed, grabbed a robe, and ran to the shower like there were spirits of the dead chasing after her. She jumped in without even letting the water warm up and let the cold rainfall cool down her burning cheeks. Oh God.

That was the first night of learning new things about her roommate.