I fuck people in my head more than I care to admit.
Not strangers in bars. Not Instagram thirst traps. Real people. I fuck...
Like her.
Garden center. Saturday mid-morning. She's in worn baggy shorts and an old tank top, the kind with paint stains and one fraying strap. Her sports bra flattens more than it lifts, but it doesn't matter. Her figure still shows through.
Not because she's showing off. Because she can't help it.
Everything about her says busy. She's not here to browse. She's on a mission. Loading plants, dragging soil, probably building something in her head while she moves.
And that body?
Yeah, she probably hits yoga a couple times a week. Maybe the gym. But even if she didn't, she's built from motion. From hauling bags of mulch and rearranging patio furniture and lugging groceries in one trip because she refuses to go back to the car.
She's strong because she lives that way. You can see it in her shoulders when she lifts, in the line of her back when she turns the cart.
And I watch her. Not like a creep, not to undress her. To imagine what it feels like to be near someone that sure of themselves. That real.
I wonder how her skin tastes when it's sun-warmed and salty. I wonder what sound she makes when she exhales, stretched out and spent after a long day. I wonder if she talks while she fucks, or if she just grips tight and lets her body speak.
And then I think. Fuck. It can't just be me.
Do we all do this? Do we all fuck each other in our heads? Quietly. Respectfully. In line at the hardware store, in the elevator, at the dog park.
Does she? Is she two carts back wondering about the guy who keeps watching her load soil in the Saturday heat? Does she slow down just enough to find out?
That guy with the calloused hands and the faded wedding ring. He's probably imagined bending someone over the bed of his truck. The woman at the café counter in bike shorts and a hoodie. She's probably wondered what it'd feel like to let someone push her up against the door before she even sets the coffee down. The barista. The neighbor. The woman from yoga. You. Me. All of us.
Walking around with full shopping lists and hard-ons no one knows about. Fucking each other silently in our minds.
Not out of loneliness. Not even out of desperation.
Just because it's human. Because something about watching someone exist in their own little world, focused, unaware, alive, is the filthiest, most beautiful thing imaginable.
And sometimes I think she knows. That when she looked back once, just to check, and found me still there, something passed between us that neither of us will ever say out loud.
I tasted salt on her shoulder in my head before I even knew her name.
