Nerea97

We’d spent months inventing excuses not to be alone. That early morning, the excuses ran out, and the kitchen stopped being just a kitchen.

He was the last person I expected to see that afternoon. I opened the door half-asleep, and when I saw him standing there with that crooked smile, my mouth went dry.

A burst pipe forced the men to sleep together. Toni on one side, me on the other, and between us, Sergio... who wasn’t sleeping quite as soundly as we thought.

We hadn’t spoken in six years when his message lit up my screen. That tent, that shared blanket, still makes me tremble.

I had tried it before and felt nothing but pain. That night, in a hotel room with a stranger, I discovered how wrong I had been.

He called me as evening fell to warn me he’d be late. By then I’d already started getting ready: the wig, the makeup, the plug. Only him was missing.

Our eyes met in the service-area café. I knew he’d follow me into the bathroom, and I knew I wasn’t coming out the same man who went in.

By the time I got into the taxi heading out of town, I could still have turned back. I didn’t, and hours later I would regret it with my wrists tied to his headboard.

They were an uncle and his nephew, two gym beasts who had been watching me for weeks. That Sunday, something in the air changed forever.

I saw him on the harbor terrace: tall, bearded, broad-shouldered. Marcos glanced at me, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing.

We’d spent years avoiding those childhood games, until one winter afternoon I asked him to take me on his bike and my hand landed where it shouldn’t.

I’d been glancing at him for half an hour when he spoke to me. Behind the rocks, neither of us had any intention of getting dressed again for the rest of the afternoon.

I solved a customs crisis and the consul invited me to his residence. I had no idea what was waiting for me at the end of the garden, or what would come after.

We’d been talking online for months before we met in person. When I saw him at the theater entrance, I knew that night wasn’t going to end the way I’d planned.

That Friday afternoon, with a second glass of wine in her hand, Valeria looked at me differently and began telling me what she did on weekends.

I was there, champagne bucket in hand, listening to every moan, every creak of the bed. And I couldn't bring myself to walk away.

I went to their apartment hoping for beer and a way to kill time. I left with a sore ass, a mouth tasting of semen, and a smile I couldn’t hide.

She walked into the classroom slowly, her face pale and a flash of pain on her face when she sat down that she couldn’t hide. It took me days to get the truth out of her.

We were two married business partners, a pricey SUV, and two hundred kilometers ahead. They were twenty and had an attitude that changed everything.

It was just the two of us in bed, the light low, her legs over mine. I told her I’d spent weeks thinking about something I didn’t know how to ask for.