Chat 4: Jeff, I thought the door was closed

Jeff,

It’s been a month since it happened, and I honestly thought that was enough time. Time to let it settle. Time to put it behind me. Time to believe that whatever Chris and I opened… we’d closed it again.

And in a way, we had.

Chris and I went back to normal. Work, routines, evenings on the sofa. No tension. No arguments. We even laughed together again. He told me he didn’t regret it. He said it once, calmly, like a statement of fact, not a challenge. And I believed him.

I believed myself too.

Until yesterday.

We weren’t supposed to see him again. The town isn’t small, but it’s not big either, and yet I still thought the chances were slim enough to feel safe.

Chris and I were just walking through the centre when I saw him first.

Terry. His name is Terry.

He didn’t approach us straight away. I noticed him before he noticed us, and in that brief moment I felt something shift inside me — not excitement exactly, more like recognition. A recognition that… he’d been inside me. That other man, over there—he’d fucked me. Had me for one night only, but he had. Chris was there too.

It didn’t make it right. It didn’t make it wrong either. But it was something I believed I’d parked safely away — something meant to stay a distant memory.

I was wrong.

Seeing him, it was as if a part of me had woken up before the rest of me could react.

He smiled when he saw us. Polite. Easy. Normal.

He invited us for coffee.

I knew we should’ve said no. Not because of him — he hadn’t done anything wrong — but because of me. Because of what my body still remembered, even if my mind insisted it was over.

Chris nudged me gently, the way he does when he thinks I’m being too cautious. It’s fine, his touch seemed to say. We’re fine.

So I said yes.

And on the surface, it was exactly that. Fine.

We talked about work. About his business. About nothing that mattered. He never hinted at the past. Never brought it up. Never crossed a line. If anyone had watched us from another table, they would’ve seen three adults having an ordinary coffee.

But Jeff, it wasn’t ordinary for me.

I felt it in the way he looked at me — not openly, not boldly, but with a quiet certainty. As if he knew something about me that couldn’t be taken back. As if once you’ve seen someone that way, you never quite unsee them.

When our hands brushed briefly as we reached for our cups, it was nothing. An accident. A fraction of a second.

And yet my body reacted before my thoughts did.

That scared me.

I told myself I was imagining it. That it was memory playing tricks. That time had softened things and this was just an echo. But sitting there, listening to the two men talk, smiling and nodding at the right moments, I realised something I hadn’t wanted to admit.

The door I thought I’d closed wasn’t locked.

It wasn’t wide open either. It wasn’t inviting anything in. But it wasn’t sealed. It was still ajar — just enough to let something through, if it wanted to come.

Chris was relaxed. He touched my hand once, casually, familiarly. Wrapped his arm around me for a moment, the way husbands do without thinking. I think part of him was reminding himself as much as me: she’s mine, we’re solid, this is over.

And I love him for that.

But bodies don’t always follow the same logic as love.

I wasn’t thinking about doing anything. Not really. I wasn’t planning, or hoping, or wanting him to say something. I just knew that if he had — if he’d leaned a little closer, lowered his voice, reminded me of that night, of how he’d been inside me — I’m not sure I would’ve felt the strength I expected to feel.

That’s the part I don’t know how to explain to Chris.

He says the door is closed. He says what we did doesn’t define us.

And that’s where my certainty breaks down.

Because I realised yesterday that it isn’t about Terry specifically. It’s about what he unlocked. About what my body learned once and hasn’t forgotten.

Once someone has been that close, Jeff — once your body has crossed that line — it doesn’t pretend it never happened. It doesn’t reset just because time passes and life resumes. It remembers. It remembers the feeling, the sensations, the shape of him, the squirming, the orgasms.

I don’t know if the door will open again. I don’t know if I want it to.

All I know is that it isn’t as firmly shut as I believed. And now that I’ve seen that — now that I’ve felt how easily it stirred — I don’t know whether the hardest part is telling Chris…

Or admitting it to myself.

Chris said once, carefully, that maybe one day, with someone else, under different circumstances, it could happen again. Not with Terry, he said. Another man. Another experience. No attachment. No feelings. Once in a while.

That would make it safe. Prove it had been just sex — nothing more.

I don’t know if he’s right.

But I’m willing to believe him.

And maybe… I’m willing to try it again.