The Unzipping

(Kate, alone. Late. The party is over.)

The room smelled of perfume and candle wax, with the faintest whisper of someone else’s cologne still clinging to her skin. That was the thing about evenings like this — they stayed on you, long after the car door closed, long after the last smile, the last look. They hung in the air like silk.

The dress was clinging. Heavy now, from the way her body had warmed it. She stood in front of the mirror, bare feet on the floorboards, one heel kicked toward the bed, the other still near the door where she’d stepped out of it mid-sigh.

Her back to the glass, she let herself look.

The fabric caught the light, champagne-gold, tracing every curve. Her hips — full and unapologetic. Her backside, round, high, the kind that turned heads without meaning to. The gown was low-backed, dangerously so, showing the soft, smooth expanse of her back all the way to the waist. The zipper had been tugged up earlier by someone else's fingers — clumsy and eager — and now, alone, she reached for it with one arm, fingers fumbling slightly at the catch.

She didn’t rush. There was a strange kind of pleasure in the stretch of her body, the vulnerability of it — half-naked, half-held together, one strap already falling.

The zipper came down slowly. The sound was intimate. She heard it as if through her own skin:
zrrrppp.
Not quite undone. Just… yielding.

The silk parted as it slid, opening at the base of her spine, revealing the soft indent at the small of her back — a place that had once made someone gasp against her shoulder when they first touched it.

Her reflection watched her. Eyes hooded. Lipstick blurred at the edges. She didn’t smile.

The dress slipped lower. Caught on the wide curve of her hips.

She held it there, not letting it fall. Not yet.

Because there was power in this. In the moment before. In seeing herself: tall, blonde, heavy-breasted and strong in the way that only comes after everything — marriage, divorce, the slow realisation that you are not done. Not even close.

She thought of texting him. Or her. Or someone new.
She didn’t.

Instead, she turned — the gown still half-on — and stepped away from the mirror. The silk puddled behind her in a slow, whispering sigh.

She was alone.
She was radiant.
And she was wanted — by herself, first and always.

On the chair, her robe waited. But for now…
She let the night touch her bare skin one more time.