wicked28

I pulled down my coffee-stained pants convinced this was my big moment. I didn’t count on her older sister walking through the door right then.

I crossed my legs slowly until my knee brushed hers in the neighboring seat. She never took her eyes off my thighs, and I knew we wouldn’t finish the movie that night.

She lowered the blinds, locked the door, and stood behind me. “You just need to relax,” she whispered. What came next wasn’t on any exam.

I moved my body a little closer, pretending not to understand the chart, and watched her hands tremble over the papers.

They weren’t mine, and that was exactly what made them irresistible. I picked them up off the laundry-room floor knowing that night I would do everything with them I’d spent months imagining.

When the widow undid her bodice to nurse her son, Aurora stopped breathing. What burned through her body that night had no name, but it would never let her sleep again.

While he boiled the tea, the two men tied to the table were beginning to realize that no one would leave that living room tonight the way they had entered.

I’d never looked at another woman that way until she pressed against my back during squats and I stopped counting the reps.

My husband gave me a spa massage for our seventh anniversary. What he never imagined was that another woman would teach me how much I still had to discover.

I boarded the train resigned to spending my birthday alone. When she sat across from me and lit a cigarette, I had no idea what would happen next.

I was forty-four, had two daughters, and a recent divorce when the girl from across the street looked at me differently and said what I didn’t dare think.

Sofía dragged me down a path, not knowing that beyond the last pine tree lay a tiny cove, two naked strangers, and an invitation we weren’t going to refuse.