Beach

My wife whispered in my ear that she wanted that young body too. That night, on the living room sofa, everything forbidden stopped being forbidden.

When her bikini shifted on the shore and the men on the beach started staring, she didn’t fix it. She just kept walking slower.

Pablo and Laura arrived at the resort thinking about tennis. Eight adults, a terrace overlooking the sea, and one extra bottle of wine changed every plan.

That afternoon on the beach, I knew the four of them were watching us. What I didn’t know was that that night everything Roberto and I had imagined would come true.

I suggested she sleep in my room so she wouldn’t be alone with her fear. I had no idea what would happen when she got into my bed.

He came back from his evening run and found her in the dunes. She wasn’t alone. She never had been.

Valeria was 26 when we went on vacation together. I’d spent days unable to stop looking at her, and neither of us knew what was about to happen.

Three months without seeing each other, and the moment she stepped off the plane I knew something was going to happen. What I didn’t count on was witnesses on the beach that night.

My mother opened the changing room door without warning. What she found on the other side changed everything between us, even if neither of us could name it that afternoon.

We arrived at the hotel as mother and son, pretending to be lovers. By Sunday, there was no pretending left.

I saw him for the first time across the pool while Marcos signed papers. Something in the way he looked at me told me that night would not end like the others.

He sat off to the side, looking at the water with resignation. He was shy, he was a virgin, and he was perfect for what my friend and I had been thinking about all afternoon.

We went from client and prostitute to something with no name. On that beach vacation, she broke the taboos she had carried all her life.

I went in to get my phone and found him there, silent, looking at me in that way that said he knew exactly what it meant.

I’d carried that nameless curiosity for years. When Diego appeared in the cove, alone and with time to spare, something changed before the day was over.

She was 59, blonde, with curves that made no apologies. I was her favorite nephew, and for days I’d been glancing at her sideways, unable to stop.

I knew them from when I dated their daughter. Years later I ran into them on the coast, and something in Valeria’s eyes told me that summer would be different.

I saw him come out of the bathroom with the towel at his waist, and everything changed in an instant: I stopped seeing him as my son and started planning how to make him want me.

I arrived at the Cancún hotel a day before my sister. Nearly two days alone with her husband: the nudist beach, the lingerie fitting room, the tequila. Something was going to happen.