Nerea97

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.

I left before dawn with my body ready and one thought in mind: reaching the other side of the highway after giving myself to every driver willing to stop.

I’d go down in the middle of the night to the mattress on the floor where he slept, pull the sheets over us, and stay there until he finished. We were almost never caught.

When Bruno put out the joint and looked at me that way, I knew the night would end very differently from how it had begun. Neither of us regretted it.

Outside, the snow kept falling. Inside, on the other side of the wall, someone was moaning. And I had my aunt asleep beside me, her robe barely closed.

As soon as we left the parking lot, she undid her trouser button and whispered: find an empty lot, an alley, anything. I can’t get home like this.