What I never told my husband

Two months before my wedding, I slept with someone who was not my fiancé. It happened once. Nobody did anything wrong. That's the part that makes it worse.

It was a work trip. A colleague I'd known for years, the kind of familiar that sneaks up on you. There was wine and a rooftop and a conversation about our futures that somehow turned into a conversation about what we wanted right now.

He kissed me in the elevator and I let him, and I remember thinking: this is a test and I am failing it on purpose.

We spent the night together. It wasn't dramatic or cinematic. It was warm and slow and completely unearned, and when I flew home two days later I looked at my fiancé at the airport and felt a guilt so clean it almost felt like excitement.

I never told him. Not because he'd be angry — he wouldn't — but because I couldn't explain it without it sounding like a bigger deal than it was, and the more time passed the bigger it got.

Now we've been married six years. He's a good man. And once a year, on a rooftop somewhere, I think about a night he'll never know about and smile in a way he can't quite place.