The Door Left Open

The house had gone quiet, in that particular way old homes do. A slow tide of silence drifted through the halls, brushing its cool fingers over everything it found.

We’d spent the whole day together, all of us, scattered across big tables and small corners with our notebooks, our laptops, our careful creative hopes. But she had been something else entirely.

She wasn’t obvious about it.
She never turned her head fully.

But every so often, I’d look up and catch the flick of her gaze before she returned her attention to her journal, to the way her fingers traced the spine, to the soft curl of her lips when she thought no one saw.

By dinner, I’d convinced myself I was imagining it.
By dusk, I wasn’t so sure.

Now the house slept.
Old wood settled.
I moved down the hallway toward my door.

That’s when I saw it.

Her door.
Left open.
Just a sliver.

A warm slice of lamplight cut the dark, falling across the floor like an invitation no one had spoken aloud.

I slowed.

Inside her room, something shifted. Fabric against skin, slow and present. A woman in a room by herself, moving the way women do when they think no one is watching.

My breath caught, suspended between sense and something softer. The door wasn’t open wide. Barely an invitation. Barely a permission. But there was a feeling to it; an intentional looseness, as if someone had left it open for the moon to slip through.

Or for me.

My pulse tapped at the hollow of my neck.

We’d barely spoken today beyond polite retreat small talk. But every glance she gave me had felt like a thread she was tying somewhere beneath my ribs.

I edged a little closer. Just enough to touch the thin spill of lamplight with the toe of my sock.

Inside, her silhouette moved, half reflected in a mirror, half swallowed by shadow. She wore something loose, silky. The kind of fabric that follows the body without clinging. I could see the line of her bare shoulder, the curve where her arm rose to tuck her hair behind her ear.

She didn’t turn.

Did she know the door was open?
Did she know I was standing there?
Did she want to?

The thought brought heat low in my stomach.

I stepped closer. The air from her room curled toward me, scented with something soft and difficult to name. Skin, maybe. Warm sheets. A woman unwinding.

Her movement stopped.

Slowly, she lifted her head.

I didn’t know if she could see me.

But something in her body language changed. The stillness sharpened between us.
She’d felt it. Felt someone there. Felt me.

“Your door,” I said, my voice barely carrying. “It’s open.”

A beat of silence, warm as breath on the back of the neck.

“Is it?”
Her voice was low, dusky.
Aware.

My hand rested on the frame, though I didn’t let myself lean in. “I wasn’t sure if you meant to leave it that way.”

Another shift of fabric. Another outline of her shoulder, her back, the line where her spine disappeared into the silk.

“Maybe I did,” she murmured.

The words stirred something molten inside me.

A floorboard creaked beneath my foot. The house felt too intimate, too old, too willing to witness this.

She slid her fingers over the lamp switch. Just touching it. Waiting. Considering. Her shoulder angled just enough that I could see more of the long line of her neck, the soft shadow where silk met skin.

“You can go to bed,” she said. “Get some rest. Forget this happened.”

I didn’t move.

The lamplight deepened around her, warm and soft.

She didn’t look directly at me, but the tension in her posture made the truth clear: she felt the thin, humming thread we had woven all day.

“Or,” she said, “you can stay a moment.”

Heat slid down my spine, slow and certain.

“How long is a moment?” I asked.

Her smile showed only in the angle of her shoulder, the tilt of her head.

“As long as you need.”

I stepped closer, closer to the glow, to her, to the possibility curled in the air.

I shut the door.

And neither of us hurried.