She thought she understood herself.
She believed she knew where her limits were, how much closeness she could allow, how deeply she could be affected by another person. That night proved her wrong.
At first, everything felt familiar—comfortable even. His presence was calm, almost reassuring. He wasn’t rushed. He didn’t push. He simply stayed close, close enough that her breathing began to change before she noticed it herself. It was subtle, the way control slipped away. It always is.
She told herself she could stop whenever she wanted.
But something shifted.
Not in her mind—in her body.
Her reactions came faster than her thoughts. Heat rose, tension followed, and with it a strange weakness she hadn’t expected. She had imagined strength would come from surrender, but instead there was a trembling she couldn’t hide. When it was over, she lay there quietly, staring at the ceiling, her heart still racing as if it hadn’t received the message that everything had stopped.
Later, she would struggle to explain it.
It wasn’t pain.
It wasn’t regret.
It was the realization that what he gave her reached deeper than she had prepared for.
The next day, she felt drained in a way sleep didn’t fix. Her body moved slower, her thoughts softer, as if something inside her had been rearranged. Friends asked if she was tired. She smiled and said yes. How could she explain that she wasn’t tired—she was affected?
What unsettled her most was not the weakness itself, but how easily it had happened. How willingly her body responded when her mind believed it was still in charge.
And somewhere in that quiet confusion was a truth she didn’t want to admit:
Part of her didn’t want to handle it better next time.
