Jorge_Mza

Tied under the lights with his gaze fixed on my back, I understood that tonight the real show was him: forced to watch everything he refused to give me.

I got on the most crowded car to escape hands I didn’t want, never imagining I’d end up wanting other hands in full view of the platform.

We went to Formentera so people could watch her. I never imagined how far she’d be willing to go when that foreigner spread his towel just a few meters from us.

She went into the fitting room in front of me with seven bikinis. The curtain didn’t quite close, and by the third one she knew I was watching.

When he arrived that night, I was already on the other side of the glass with the lights off, watching her greet him with a smile she had never shown me.

At five to four I was naked in the armchair, staring at the window across from me and waiting for her to come out and close hers.

My husband doesn’t need to touch me first. He needs to see how other men look at me without permission, how they falter when I pass. Then he comes, and desire no longer fits in the bed.

My friends were strolling past the display windows laughing. I stopped in front of hers and, by the way she looked back at me, I knew that night wasn’t for them.

I saw the bus driver watching us in the rearview mirror and, instead of covering up, I let him pull down my top. At three in the morning, my ex and I were a free show.

I was half asleep, my nightgown hiked to my waist, when I saw the silhouette of the man leaning into my window in the vanity mirror.

The glassed-in terrace lets my silhouette show from the outside. That morning, while I was hanging laundry naked, I heard two girls’ voices laughing right below my window.

We’d spent two nights watching without touching. On the third, as two couples mixed one meter from us, my girlfriend squeezed my arm and whispered something to me.

She was telling him about her breakup when the couple below started kissing. They looked before they meant to. Then they couldn’t stop.

We’d been married for three days when Adrián whispered in my ear in a Roman café what was about to happen. I should have said no. I didn’t.

Behind those boxes, I thought no one could see me. The red camera on the ceiling and the footsteps at the door told me otherwise.