The first time Donna touches herself, she's sixteen. It was Carly Becker's birthday and the girls got a little tipsy from wine stolen from her parents. There had been talks of boys and sex and all the grown-up things naïve teenage girls think they're old enough to understand. Donna got home and thought to herself, Why not?

She slipped beneath the covers and slipped off her pajama pants. At first it was all very tentative, mapping the territory. She mostly just wanted to know what was down there.

Obviously nothing very exciting happened. She prodded and rubbed and, Huh. Okay.

It had been more about self-discovery than pleasure and that's why she didn't do it again until she got a boyfriend her junior year. Ricky Jenkins was a good athlete and an okay guy, but a so-so lover. He was very much about buttering the biscuit and not much else, did just enough to get her wet enough for it to be comfortable. She loved him dearly and never thought any ill of any of it.

Boy, was she in for a surprise in college.

Liberal arts school exuded sex 24/7. Either as a means of fun or self-exploration, a way to get into character or out of it, everyone was either having it or trying to have it.

Donna had never been shy about anything in her life, not her goals and aspirations, not her body, not her desires. She took that opportunity with all the curiosity of someone dropped into uncharted land and being given freedom to explore. She tried it with guys and girls and both at once, always conscious and responsible but never ashamed.

And inbetween all that, she touched herself more and more, got acquainted not only with her body but with what it could do - what she wanted it to do. At the end of her first year she was able to pinpoint exactly seven spots that would drive her completely crazy in about 2 minutes and 43 seconds, and she wasn't shy about giving directions either.

Donna enjoyed the favorable position of liking sex, but not needing it, so she always had ample room to decide when to have it and who to have it with - or if she would just have it with herself.

And then she graduated and moved out into the real world and between auditions and waitressing she just didn't have much time for dating. Everything else took a backseat to her drive to make it as an actress and her nightly activities became few and far inbetween. But that was alright because she was pursuing her dream.

Except suddenly she wasn't anymore. It was a smooth transition, a pondered decision to just let it go and keep it as a hobby. She started going out more, either one-night-stands or semi-serious flings. She began enjoying herself again, enjoying her own company.

Until came Harvey.

Donna had been used to fleeting fantasies, imagining certain mouths and certain fingers, remembering whispered words and warm skin. But she never pictured someone specific. She had sex with who she wanted to have sex with and didn't want to have sex with who she didn't. Even by herself, all she cared for were these snippets, just enough to get her there. She didn't need more, and anything further might make her feel awkward.

But Harvey was a keen observer and a remarkably fast learner. He was proud, too; refused to let her show him the ropes, prefered trial and error based on her reactions. And he didn't err much.

What surprised her most was his versatility and his generosity. Harvey was an asshole out in the streets, no one would ever dispute that. But whatever cocksure, impatient, sleazy attitude she might have expected in the sheets simply wasn't there.

He was cocky, and his smirk was infuriating, sure. But he was patient, held his rhythm to build her up, switched tactics when she lacked sufficient response, didn't leave her feeling abandoned as his hands roamed her body tenderly.

It didn't take too long for her to be happily sated, body sticky with whipped cream and his smug grin between her legs.

What came after was even better. It was like everything fit; their legs intertwining perfectly, their hips moving in unisson, their fingers lacing and separating to roam over each other's skin. Their breaths were in sync, moans forming a harmony in the quiet of her bedroom. He was over her and beneath her and inside her and it was wonderful, overwhelming in the best way. Donna and Harvey both individually had chemistry with practically anything that moved, but together they were a force of nature, all rumbling thunder and sparkling lightning.

It wasn't that he had been her best yet, not exactly. But no other guy she'd ever slept with had felt like as much of a... man, really. He was mature in bed, willing to give and take, playful but committed, ridiculously skilled in every way imaginable (ways Donna herself had not imagined). His grip on her was tight but not possessive; he handled her like he knew he had her. It had never been like that with anyone else. Possibly because she had never known someone else as well as she knew him - and he knew her.

And then nothing further happened and she came up with the stupid idea to put it our of their minds and how the hell could she do that now that she knew exactly what coming around any part of him felt like.

It took her a while, after that, to get back on her game. And to unsee his face every time she closed her eyes in the dark of her bedroom. There were a lot of nights alone, pressing her fingers more firmly against herself to simulate his hands, trying to knead her own breasts the way he had.

Bit by bit throughout the months she managed to push most of him out from her mind's eye. She essentially went back to the bits and pieces and flashes. When she was with someone else, she was with them, engaged and enthusiastic.

But whenever she was alone, the bits and pieces and flashes were always, always his.

She went on with her life and Harvey became mostly a useful memory. Except with the years it became harder, not easier.

The feelings that used to bubble under the surface, simmering on occasion from all the flirting and looks but mostly managed, started to spill over.

There started to be too much pressure, too much tension. Dangerous memos and mentions of need and threats of prison and duels. What had once been a light, if slightly longing, affection now became something much, much more.

But no matter how fervently Donna's feelings started burning in her chest, no matter how much she tried to search for an opening, for a chance, Harvey kept everything airtight. On the night he came to her house for dinner after Liberty Rail, she genuinely thought he might be ready to take the plunge. But whatever happened crashed and burned a few days later when he tried to explain away his declaration.

In a surge of clarity, Donna realized that their relationship might never actually bloom into anything else. They were like a tide that rises up but never fully crashes against the shore. The constant push and pull, which she once might have dubbed as flirty or slow-burn, was now just the evidence of their repeated demise. And she got tired of being swept away by the undertow.

And so wistfulness turned into bitterness and distance became the only way to breathe. Except in the refuge of her sheets, it wasn't just bits and pieces and flashes anymore. It was full stretches of memory. It was fantasies, her brain feeding off her extensive knowledge of him and the limited but powerful imagery the other time had provided to spin scenarios in her head until she was crying out his name into the quiet of her condo.

It felt twistedly ironic that she felt too raw to go out with anyone else and yet kept coming back to him at night.

It wasn't even a conscious effort, it was just that her brain and her whole body were so consumed by their new normal of sort-of-friends, sort-of-colleagues, sort-of-who-knows that the moment she closed her eyes he flooded her mind. It was easy and familiar and it soothed something in her chest and made her come fast and hard if she wanted to, so she let herself be fooled that it didn't mean anything.

With time, she wasn't sure if it was age or experience or what, sex just for sex sort of lost its appeal. She wanted it with someone who mattered or no one at all. Some boyfriends filled that slot throughout the years, lovely and patient and distracting. They made her feel good about herself, worshipped her body as it should be worshipped. But it never took, and when they broke up she went back into herself, nursing a wounded pride and a scarred heart and the realization that she'd be meeting Harvey in her bed once again.

It was no longer a choice, so much as an inevitability. They'd have a heated fight or a particularly significant moment - him wanting to fall on his sword, Jessica leaving, the wedding - and Donna would be writhing to the imagined feel of his fingers inside of her, of his teeth against her neck, of their hearts beating next to each other.

Year after year after year she always fell back into this, a never-ending circle of need and a nagging feeling of abandonment and the thrill of orgasm didn't quite cut it anymore. She was tired of feeling like this, tired of being tethered to him, tired of feeling like she was a ticking bomb and cutting him off seemed like it would set her off. She felt trapped by the constant pursuit of her memories of him.

Donna had never been hesitant about sex, about touching herself and having solo or accompanied fun. But this wasn't that anymore. This was a way to keep the spark alive, to keep up pretense that she could ever have that for real again, his body next to hers, his hands pinning hers down on the mattress. And that made her feel ashamed in a new and disconcerting way.

It became somewhat of a dirty little secret, how her mind insisted on coming back to him no matter how many times he pushed her away, blew her off or let her down. She could be absolutely fed up of him and he would still visit her. She felt stupid and humiliated and still, sex was now less about fun and more about him.

With time, Donna just embraced the unavoidability of them in her brain. She embraced the grins and the thrusts that, no matter how many years it had been since that night, still seemed as vivid as if it had been yesterday. She accepted the distinct impression that she would never be able to get rid of it and she started to welcome it with a resigned complacency. She didn't question it anymore, she just let him kiss her into oblivion.

It became almost a ritual, the nights with him. It gave her a paradoxical feeling of fullness, of finally having everything, and of emptiness. She felt more connected and more alienated from him than ever, because no matter how vivid her memories, no matter how hot her fantasies and how soft the idea of his hand on her skin was, it wasn't him. It was her, and her own hands, and her own tongue, and her own fingers.

It was just her and this notion had never, ever bothered her before, "just her" had never sounded wrong since she was 16. But now it did, and she suspected it was because "just her" was synonym to "no him".

She hated it, hated herself a little bit for it, and him and his emotional unavailability and his stubborn and unwitting refusal to just walk into her arms for once and for all.

And so her nights with herself became a broken picture of her need and her love. They became disappointing and frustrating because it felt like she was no longer chasing a high, she was chasing Harvey. And she could come fifty times and scream and gasp and her body could feel completely sated and spent and swarming with happy hormones but in the end it always became starkly evident that she was alone in her bed, forced to pretend the weight of the sheets between her legs felt even remotely close to his.

That's why in the beginning, now that they're here together, she always wants him on top. He may flip them occasionally, or she may start the whole thing by straddling him, but when she comes she always wants him to be above her, always wants him to be the one pushing into her.

Because when she's under him, his legs between hers, their stomachs sliding against each other, his hands holding her ankles high against his sides or pressing into her hair or rubbing tight little circles on her clit, she feels held.

She feels almost trapped against the bed and the weight of him is real. She can look into his eyes and watch him fall apart, can trace his moles and his lips, can feel the puffs of air that escape him and hear his moans against her ear like he's telling her a secret.

When she's under him, she gets to feel his body relax and slacken, weighing her down even more, as he takes a moment to recompose once they're done. She gets to feel his chest pushing hers down with each pant, and his hands lightly resting on her waist, and his muscles making dents on her skin.

The void of him took up so much space in her life for so long that she now wants him to crowd in on her, surround her and fill up every nook and cranny he can find. She wants to feel almost suffocated by him, by his need and his love and the millions of words they never say but always know. She wants him to press her down onto her bed, or his bed, with enough force and enough frequency that the memory of the weightless sheets gets replaced by the certainty of him.

And, with time, he does.

Donna doesn't touch herself too much these days. It's usually to help them along or when he's teasing her and she wants to relieve tension or tease him back, or on the odd chance someone's out of town or running late. He's here now, the literal embodiment of her fantasies and wet dreams, and she doesn't want to pass on any opportunity to be with him, to have him be the reason she sees starts and white-hot light.

Sex with herself is great. But now that she can have it and finish hearing he loves her, sex with Harvey is better.