Shower thoughts

You sleep like the dead. No dreams this time—or if there are, they dissolve before reaching consciousness, swallowed by the deep, boneless exhaustion that follows good sex. The silk sheets tangle around your legs and your face presses into the pillow, and for six hours you are nothing but warmth and stillness.

LUXE's voice arrives like a gentle sunrise: "Good morning, Miss Chloe! It's 8:15 AM, and your Makeup Mastery Module Two is queued and ready. Would you like to begin your morning session?"

You groan into the pillow. Your body feels heavy and loose, the pleasant ache of last night still humming through your pelvis. You peel yourself from the sheets—still slightly damp in places you'd rather not examine—and pad to the bathroom.

"I'll take a shower first," you tell LUXE, voice rough with sleep.

"Of course! I'll have your skincare prep ready when you emerge. Module Two covers eye techniques—smoky eyes, winged liner refinement, and blending gradients. So exciting!"

The shower is hot and relentless, steam filling the glass enclosure. You stand under the spray with your eyes closed, water sluicing over your skin, and your mind drifts where it always does when you're alone with running water—into the quiet spaces where real thinking happens.

Last night. The fingers. The dream before that. Theron's mouth.

You soap your chest, your stomach, your thighs, and you think about how it felt to want him. Not abstractly, not as a theoretical exercise, but viscerally. The heat in your belly. The way your breath caught.

But I've always liked women.

You think about the girls in your dorm. The way you noticed their collarbones, the curve of a hip in yoga pants. That was real. That wasn't performance.

So what does that make me?

The answer arrives with the same quiet certainty as everything else this week. You were always this. You just... compartmentalized. The same way you compartmentalized your gender—the same locked drawer, the same key thrown away.

You think about women differently now, though. Not as someone standing beside them wanting to be close, but as someone who sees them and feels desire from a different angle. Complementary rather than aspirational.

And then—unbidden, the way memories always surface in the shower—a face from high school. Elijah.

Elijah Webb. Senior when you were a freshman. Played lacrosse and ran track. Tall, with sun-darkened skin and a laugh that carried across the cafeteria. He wore his hair short on the sides and longer on top, pushed back with product, and he had this way of leaning against doorframes with his arms crossed that made your fourteen-year-old stomach do something complicated.

You never spoke to him. Not once. You watched him from across the courtyard, tracked his movements with an attention you told yourself was admiration. He's just cool, you'd thought. I want to be like him.

But the memory plays differently now. You remember the specific way his forearms looked when he rolled his sleeves up. The way his jawline caught afternoon light. The flutter in your chest when he walked past your locker close enough that you could smell his cologne—something cedar and clean.

That wasn't admiration. That was a crush.

You press your forehead against the cool tile and let the water run down your back. Fourteen-year-old you, already bisexual, already transgender, already burying everything beneath layers of "just being observant" and "I just appreciate aesthetics."

Seven years of suppression. Both things at once. Gender and sexuality, locked in the same closet.

You don't feel sad about it. You feel the same relief you've felt all week—the relief of finally naming something that was always there, waiting.

"Miss Chloe? Your shower has been running for eighteen minutes. Would you like me to adjust the temperature?"

"No, I'm good. Almost done."

You rinse the conditioner from your hair, turn off the water, and step out into the steamy bathroom. The mirror is fogged. You wipe a section clear and look at yourself—bare-faced, wet hair plastered to your shoulders, skin flushed from the heat.

Bi and trans. Both. Always.

You wrap yourself in a towel and head toward LUXE's chamber, where Module Two and whatever outfit it has planned await.