The Casino Cougar Was Waiting for Me on the Sand
She cried drunkenly on my shoulder saying nobody wanted her anymore. She had no idea that the very same night, out on the sand, I was going to prove exactly the opposite.
She cried drunkenly on my shoulder saying nobody wanted her anymore. She had no idea that the very same night, out on the sand, I was going to prove exactly the opposite.
I never thought that seeing another man look at my naked girlfriend, legs spread open on the sand, would be the most arousing thing I’d ever feel.
We woke up naked, all three of us, and laughing, I remembered the exact moment everything changed: when I learned what Mariela was hiding under her skirt.
My wife pulled a brochure from her purse and told me we had a meeting that afternoon. I had no idea that saying yes meant giving up being the only man in her bed for fifteen days.
When I got into the car that morning and saw her alone at the wheel, I knew the weekend wouldn’t be innocent in the slightest.
When she asked me to put sunscreen on her, my hands already knew what my mouth hadn’t dared to say yet.
She came out of the changing room with her back to me, wearing a bikini she had never shown me. I felt jealous. And, without knowing why, I started to feel something else too.
In the hotel mirror, that bikini did not fit me. Nothing fit me since they decided what kind of body I deserved.
When I knelt in the sand with the sun beating on my back, I never imagined someone was watching every move from the other side of the crag.
When I took off my bikini top in front of Carolina, her face changed. And then I knew I wasn’t leaving the beach that afternoon as just her friend.
Every first Tuesday of the month he rang the bell with the water drum on his shoulder. I greeted him each time wearing less and less, hoping he’d stay longer than necessary.
I thought I was alone at home. I left the bathroom door open, closed my eyes, and said her name out loud, never imagining she’d already come back.
I didn’t go to the beach to swim. I went to remember her, inch by inch, until the memory became so real my body answered on its own.
When she came barefoot down the hall in that transparent robe, I knew neither of us was going to pretend nothing had happened.
The steam came out with her wrapped in a tiny towel, and for the first time in months I felt like picking up a brush. What came next should never have happened.
When I saw her come down through the lobby at six in the morning, with a suitcase bigger than she was, I knew that summer would be unlike any other.
Sharing a room with her in that house by the sea seemed harmless, until the heat, the mezcal, and her body pressed against mine changed everything.
It was my daughter’s wedding, but it was him I looked for in the crowd. A ballad, the sand under our feet, and suddenly he was no longer just my son.
Thirty-two degrees, the child asleep, and a single deck of cards between them. When she asked what he wanted to bet, he answered with the one thing he’d spent the whole week not daring to say.
There were no waves, no breeze, no reason to move from the towel. Until she sat up, looked at both of them, and said what neither dared to say out loud.