Valentina Ferrer

Every afternoon she moved the box that served as a door and sat beside me, as if that cramped corner were the only place we could be someone else.

I never imagined that one night in front of a screen, with my partner’s voice in my ear, would unravel everything I thought I knew about myself.

We exchanged a single glance between the clothing racks, and I knew I wouldn’t go home that afternoon the same woman. Neither did he know it yet.

The idea was his: to look for a stranger who would do to me what he didn't dare. What he didn't calculate was that I'd never look at him the same way again.

I watched him train every morning and pretended not to look. Until one day I went over, and that decision led me to the most intense night of my life.

At three in the morning she was still awake, her head on my arm, waiting for the exact moment I opened my eyes to begin.

She came home every morning smelling of American tobacco and new perfume. I kept silent and hid my suspicions—until the night I followed her.

At forty-nine I thought I’d seen it all, until that soaked stranger took off his shirt in my patio and I knew the afternoon wouldn’t end with gardening.

We went looking for a new dildo far from home, where no one knew us. What happened in that booth left the toy forgotten on the floor.

Three days without thinking about anything except the smell of hot rubber and his hands on me. And my husband, without knowing it, gave me the perfect excuse to go back.

I went down to the loneliest cove to enjoy the sun, but behind that umbrella lying on its side there was something I wasn’t supposed to see. And an idea came to me.

When that stranger’s fist put my boyfriend on the canvas, I knew I was about to do something I could never fully regret.

They arrived at the ranch looking for a mattress to spend the night. What they didn’t expect was the story the two brothers had kept for years, or how eagerly they’d tell it.

A guy rummaging through a dumpster whistled at me in the street, and when he told me why, I wanted to disappear. What I never imagined was how I’d end up thanking him.

She boarded the carriage after midnight, sat across from me, and began telling me things no stranger should ever confess in the dark.

I opened it without thinking and couldn’t stop reading. My mom had written down everything: every detail of how she started feeling alive again after hitting bottom.

I’ve never done it, but I know every detail: the café, the elevator, his hands. This is the fantasy that repeats and that I never dare say out loud.