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She's thought about Elliot intimately before. Physical want and yearning? Absolutely. However, the whole needing of someone that resides in the most private and guarded part of her soul? That she isn't so sure of.
It's the need part that goes well beyond her wants. The part that actually needs someone there at the end of the night to make this all easier. Someone to make it less lonely and less daunting but it's the very intimate part of depending on someone and turning to them when vulnerable and leaving yourself exposed that she's never really dwelled on. It's that very deeply foreign part of intimacy she's never had with Elliot or with anyone really.
She's never allowed her brain to wonder off into a sea of what if's, where he's her boyfriend or anything more than an accidental one time lover at most if she does slip. She tries not to let her mind drift over there lately because it's all within her reach now but it's not easy, none of it is or was. It's complicated but in new ways because now he seems interested too and maybe that's what it is that makes it all so different now. She isn't falling for the Elliot that she shared meals with and memories both horrific and some even wonderful. It's this Elliot now. He's hurt, and healing and being honest and he's single. He also won't stop trying with her and it's something she is getting used to. Somewhere between the Elliot she loved and respected that was by her side and the one that vanished this reincarnation of him is the one that really scares her because it's the one she is letting herself fall for without consequence. It's reality and no longer a fantasy.
She isn't sure if it was her therapist or Amanda or she just that she rushed out of places to run to that her mind couldn't escape the idea of him if she tried. Now it won't turn off when she lays down at night and tries to turn her brain off. There he is at the forefront of her fantasies, flashes of very graphic images only ignited by the type of yearning that extends far beyond sexual. She wonders if he would want to cuddle her to sleep or if he would be a good dad for her son, or if her son would like to have siblings, and even tiny nephews to play with. It all makes her chest ache and her body throb.
Her therapist talked about intimacy and she thought of sex right away when she got in her car and began to process it all. Sex was really the only intimacy she's ever really known with men. But Elliot was more than just another man but at the end of the day she knows he wants more from her than friendship. She thinks about that part and tries wrapping her mind around the fact that he's pursuing her because he finds her sexually attractive and maybe he always has. The sex part she is sure he would be interested in because he's single and a man and she's almost sure that he would at the very least be somewhat attracted to her or maybe it's intrigue or just curiosity for what was once forbidden. She just doesn't let her mind stay there for too long on the attraction and sexual part of it all. The part that she's tucked down so deep and so far that's now manifested so visibly that even Amanda- ever so the subtle southern belle had told her to go for it.
She wonders now freely late at night what he would think if she asked him to get a hotel like she got teased to do. She sits in her dim room alone with nothing but the thought of him in her mind oozing it's way to the forefront because she's in bed now and cozy in nothing but a long t shirt thinking about him as she crosses one leg over the other, trapping her hand in-between cupping herself over her cotton panties. She can think about him now in a way she never has been able to and that's in those final seconds when she needs to push herself over her crest- there he is. Elliot her friend, her father figure, her best friend, her partner - and now in this life with this new reincarnation of them that has him as her lover and soulmate. She finally lets herself enjoy him, all of him in the moments of bliss she brings herself.