It’s one of those November days where the sun doesn’t come out at all, shrouded behind a thick curtain of drab grey fog, so Anika is bundling on the sofa, drinking mugs of ginger tea laced with lemon juice and sugar cubes, a splash of full-fat milk, ignoring her work, burrowing like a mole into the realm of memory, knifing open duct-taped boxes in her mind, rifling through pieces of the past like she would a rack of charity shop garments to find a hidden gem, an authentic vintage silk slip, a cashmere cardigan, looking out the window at the gloomy clouds, omen-like if one were so inclined, and she knows she should get up and check her laptop, see if anyone has emailed her something that really can’t wait, but instead she lets herself get lost in the haze of a bygone summer, closes her eyes and sees the sun again, feels its heat lick over her skin until the insides of her elbows tingle, breathes in the scent of salty air and sunblock and fresh strawberries dipped in honey, the dunes around her glinting, the sky streaked with cirrus clouds and her hand clasped over Ophelia’s knee, her thumb circling and circling the yellow-haloed bruise on the inside of her thigh, sneaking glances at her face and looking away, shy all of a sudden, as if she didn’t clamp her teeth into her skin just last night and soaked up the allegretto of her breathing, those sharp intakes of air when the pain sharpened and the cut-off little moans and sighs when it crescendoed, this memory between them so fresh that she can scarcely look directly at her now, the flimsy house of desire burning so brightly between them, but her finger seeks it, the mark of it, and when she presses it Ophelia sighs again, her leg twitches, but she doesn’t bat Anika’s hand away; she curls into it, almost feline, and asks in a whisper if she won’t give her another and Anika’s everything blushes, her heart and her skin, her cheeks, her chest, and she looks over her shoulder, gazes at the long stretch of beach and sees people, girls in bikinis tanning and little kids with their plastic rakes and bucket hats and an old man walking his dog, an unleashed fluffy Australian shepherd, and she looks back at Ophelia’s face, admires that challenge in her eyes, how the risk is turning her on, which in turn is turning Anika on too, a heat in her core that spreads so stickily, and she presses her mouth to a bare spot of her thigh, wets it with her tongue before she gets it between her teeth, sucks and bites and she can feel Ophelia’s body tense and she bites harder and Ophelia is making no sound at all; she’s darling quiet, she’s trembling-tense everywhere, until the last moment before Anika pulls away when she grits out a noise, a noise that’ll stay embedded in Anika forever, that she’ll try to lock away in a box in a box in a box in a brain and never look at, never think of, but which will resurface on every gloomy day, a noise so thin and precious, accompanied by a little bodily earthquake as she comes, just like that, Anika’s hand nowhere near her cunt, no pressure on her clit and nothing to fill her but the pain radiating from her inner thigh, from Anika’s teeth, from their shared fever, and she blinks and blinks and slumps back on the sand and Anika looks around them again, out at the sea, back at Ophelia as her thumb draws itself to the fresh mark and digs in her nail—above them a gull swirls and shrieks, maybe searching for French fries to steal, or a starfish to swallow whole, and the sun glints in approval—until Ophelia’s mouth opens like a tulip, so pink, and puffs out another noise, another moan that’ll live in Anika’s blood for the rest of her life just as the sun does, this entire summer full of tectonic experiments, forever she will remember the taste of Ophelia’s skin, the velvety notes of her perfume and the way it blends with her shampoo, her body lotion, green apple and grapefruit and something minty, something sharp, the soft give of her body and her vulpine, wanting smile, her watermelon lip tint, the snare in her eyes, enticing spasms of her muscles when she hurts, when Anika hurts her to make her come, no, she’ll never forget this even if she tries, even if she digs holes in her head, builds coffins for containment, salts the earth and whips out a wooden stake, even then the heat of that summer will return to her when it’s cold outside, when the sky is hazy with funereal clouds, when she’s got to tug on thick woolen socks and bunch herself up in a blanket on the sofa, the heat not only of the sun, which was blistering, but the heat of Ophelia’s body and her own, of their discoveries, the burning new knowledge of what her teeth could do, what her fingers could inflict, when she sips her tea and it burns the roof of her mouth, she will indulge in nostalgia, go astray in her own mind, remember Ophelia and the things she wanted, the things she made Anika realise that she wanted too, how willingly her skin bruised, how electrifying it was to watch, how can she think of emails or doing her job or getting up from the couch when there’s the memory of the girl she used to be and Ophelia, that summer they shared, sand stuck to the backs of her knees, hair stiff from sea water, heart full of raw want and heat everywhere, in her, between them, around them, the taste of her skin and the miracle of pain blurring between their bodies.

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Thora Dahlke’s fiction appears in Wigleaf, Barrelhouse, X-R-A-Y, Best Microfiction 2026, and elsewhere. She lives in Berlin.