Martín Reyes

I thought I’d put her in her place. That afternoon, as I came out of the bathroom, I heard a zipper coming down behind the half-open office door.

I went upstairs to use the bathroom and he was waiting for me with his fly open. What I didn’t count on was someone opening the door just when we were on all fours.

I shared a flat with two university girls who went around the house half-naked with no shame in front of me. It took me weeks to understand why.

Bruno introduced me to his friends with a conspiratorial smile, and before I understood what was happening, I knew I wouldn’t leave the cabin the same woman.

I’d been married to her for eleven years and thought I knew her completely. That night, with my best friend still in the house, I discovered a side of her I’d never imagined.

Adrián thought he was just going up to a friend’s place. He didn’t count on Lucas being awake in the living room, or on the need he’d spent all night holding back.

I crossed the room with my heart racing, knelt beside her, and knew that after that night my mother would stop seeing me as the little girl of the house.

She laughed at them, naked and victorious, convinced she had used them. She never saw the hatred grow in their eyes until it was too late.

There I was on the sofa, whisky in hand, realizing I no longer needed to take part: it was enough to watch someone else do what I’d stopped doing.

When I went down to the lobby looking to escape the corporate party, I never expected the bartender who would look at me like he knew exactly what I needed that night.

“Here we can do whatever we want. Nobody knows us, nobody judges us.” She said it with a glass in her hand, and I knew summer was going to change everything.

Marina stretched her hand toward him from the sofa, palm open, an invitation that said nothing and everything. Tomás set down the glass and rose from the armchair.

I threw the curtains open at two in the afternoon with my hair still wet and thought no one in my town would dare look toward my window at midday.

When she walked into her room naked except for the blouse, those white hips swaying, I knew I would never sleep in that house again without thinking of her.

Every morning I picked her up for work. That dawn, out in the middle of the fields, I discovered she could no longer hide what she felt when she looked at me.

I had the house to myself, four drinks in me, and the certainty that four men were watching me from the scaffolding. I wasn't going to waste the morning.

The bed creaked to the rhythm of restrained moans. I walked barefoot to the crack in Camila’s door, and what I saw left me frozen in place for an hour.

The image was crystal clear: her lying on his lounger, in a bikini, with a smile that wasn’t for me. What came next left me speechless.

Pablo and Laura arrived at the resort thinking about tennis. Eight adults, a terrace overlooking the sea, and one extra bottle of wine changed every plan.