Sergio00

I’d spent years looking after her, paying for everything, putting up with her screaming. That dawn, in front of the empty alleyway, I decided that for once she was going to give me something in return.

Tomás came out of the shower naked and said why should he get dressed if we were going to strip him anyway. That night in the cabin, none of the four of us thought about sleeping.

I arrived at two in the morning with a dry mouth and one idea in my head: that night I wasn’t going to set any limits, no matter what happened among the pavilions.

Since I was widowed, my nieces spoiled me and looked after me. That afternoon we were left alone by the pool, and I knew nothing between us would ever be the same again.

He came out of the shower with the towel at his waist, as always that afternoon. But that neighbor’s look wasn’t the usual one, and he knew it before he even opened his mouth.

It was eleven and I couldn’t focus anymore. I opened the app without hope, but thirty minutes later I was walking to his building with a box of condoms in my pocket.

It was after one when he knocked on my door. He lived two blocks away, with his boyfriend, and swore it would only be a quick blowjob. Neither of us kept the promise.

Marina had spent months being invisible to her husband. Her nephew looked at her the only way she needed to be looked at. That night, the cards made a decision.

Matías was burying himself in me slowly while I tried not to make a sound. Then I heard the door open and knew she’d come back earlier than expected.

The last time I saw her we were twelve. Now she was dancing pressed against me in a red skirt and with a look that wasn’t a cousin’s.

That afternoon I found one of his movies. That night he came back drunk, opened my bedroom door, and I knew something was going to break forever.

The living-room sofa had already seen too much, but nothing like the slow smile with which my sister-in-law waited for me that afternoon while my father-in-law pretended not to notice.

Nine months of failed independence sent her back to her father’s house, to Carmen’s rules and Marcos’s gaze, which from day one made her feel things she shouldn’t.

Valeria sat between Matías and me without asking permission. When she turned her face toward me with that smile, I understood we’d been avoiding the inevitable for years.

When I went into his room and saw him, with my underwear in his hands and my name on his lips, I knew what was coming had no way back.

When I arrived late to the locker room, he was already coming out of the shower. I shouldn’t have looked. But I did. And he saw it. What happened next wasn’t in any script.