Andrés Villarreal

I thought I had the situation under control. I thought an old man with no strength couldn’t do anything to me. That was my first mistake of the morning.

When she got into her trusted cab wearing a short dress and nothing underneath, neither she nor the driver imagined how far the game would go in the rearview mirror.

For three weeks I watched before I understood she was watching too. That night she turned her head, smiled at the glass, and I knew she’d been waiting for me for months.

I’m 41, and that early morning I accepted a much younger couple’s invitation to a rehearsal space. What happened changed my idea of desire.

I told myself it was just curiosity. I uploaded four photos, used my fake name, and waited to see if anyone still looked at me. That same week, Matías appeared.

When I looked up from the grass, two headlights went out thirty meters away. Inside the car, a motionless shadow kept watching us.

When she came back from the bathroom without any panties on, I knew that night we were going to cross a line neither of us would want to erase.

When Damián offered me the body of his model, I knew the bill was coming due. And it came, on his bed, with my wrists cuffed behind my back.

All I meant to do that night was eat light and sleep. Then he came in with the tray, looked at my underwear, and said the line that changed everything.

Every time she squeezed my hand, I understood it: she was crossing and uncrossing her legs so he could see everything.

I’d promised her a different kind of anniversary gift. What she didn’t know was that my surprise was waiting on the other side of a hole in the wall.

When I saw him walk into the bar with his two friends, I knew that night I wouldn’t go home the same woman. And I wasn’t wrong.

The back curtain didn’t close properly, and the voice I heard from the bedroom wasn’t the neighborhood Carla who greeted me every morning.

I knew he’d come home late and jealous. I waited in the kitchen in black lace. When the door opened, I knew the night was just beginning.

I went into the game to make friends. I stayed because there were men there who wanted the same thing I did: something real, nameless, and without a future.

She came out of the bathroom in a white blazer that barely covered anything, a red pacifier on her lips and that smile of hers. I knew that night would be different.

When I heard the moans mingling with the sound of the water, I should have turned around. Instead, I crouched among the bushes and moved closer.

When I entered his apartment, the smell of freshly brewed coffee was the only innocent thing left in the place. I knew I wouldn’t leave the same.

We had spent two years sitting across from each other without knowing we were both keeping the same secret: a parallel life full of desires no one would have guessed.

Sandra had never surprised me like that. But that afternoon in the pine grove, with Lucía and Marcos just a few meters away, she decided it was time.