Pedro05

I'd seen the way he looked at me whenever I went to his house. That week at the beach, away from everyone, I decided to find out how far my boyfriend's father would go.

I always hid my body beneath loose clothing, until the early morning when my friend’s dad opened the bathroom door and stared at me a second too long.

I passed by his desk, slipped him a note without anyone seeing, and went out to the courtyard to smoke. By the time he knocked on the door, I'd stopped thinking about what was right.

We were dancing when he leaned to my ear and reminded me what he’d seen that other night. Half an hour later, I was climbing into his pickup at the end of the driveway.

I’d spent weeks watching her from the corner of my eye as she emptied the wastebaskets. That night, alone together in the office, she was the one who asked me to help her.

I peered around the waterfall expecting an empty cave. What I found inside changed my entire afternoon.

Sonia was waiting for me at the restaurant door in a dress so short that every time she breathed it told a secret. And I had come ready to tell mine.

At midnight I went to the bathroom and the half-open door revealed something I never imagined: my mother, whom I thought was asleep, wasn’t alone in the shower.

She came upstairs with two containers and a smile that was far too sweet. He was twenty-two, had the whole weekend free, and an idea he knew he shouldn’t have had.

I spotted her in the back of the bar and my heart lurched: it was her, the teacher who stole my sleep when I was just a kid. And this time I was no longer that child.

I was soaping myself when the curtain opened and there she was, smiling, not a stitch on, determined not to leave even when I told her to.

Renata called me to ask for a favor, but the one who left me breathless that afternoon was the woman who finished cleaning and waited for me by the elevator.

I’m writing this knowing you’re going to read it, even if you pretend you didn’t. And knowing, too, the exact way your body used to respond when you thought no one was watching.

I’d been a widow for fifteen years and sexually asleep. Then that man, nearly twenty years younger, looked at my lips and I knew the morning wouldn’t end in notes.

Marisol was sitting on the edge of the bed with the baby at her breast, completely naked, when I pushed the door open. Milk was dripping from her and she didn’t ask me to leave.