I’d been a girl who rode things since before I understood why it made heat pool between my thighs.

At thirteen, it was the curved arm of my mother’s reading chair—smooth walnut worn soft by years of elbows and teacups. I’d straddle it when nobody was home, that dull pressure against my cotton shorts stirring something nameless. By sixteen, I’d graduated to the padded edge of the bathroom sink, the gearshift of my first boyfriend’s Honda, the fat armrest in my father’s pickup truck. Anything with a firm crest I could press myself against until my breath caught. Until my vision speckled. Until the knot low in my stomach unraveled in a silent, gasping spasm.