Beach

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.

When she clung to me in the water and I felt her breathing change, I knew the summer we turned eighteen would be unlike any other.

When I woke on the wet stone and saw her slipping off her swimsuit, I knew that blow to the head had taken me somewhere I’d never come back from the same.

When Marcos closed the apartment door and asked whether they were going to sleep with their “new partner,” the four of them fell silent and said everything.

At two in the morning I went downstairs barefoot for a glass of water and heard them arguing in low voices about me, with that married-couple tone.

When Lucía came out of the water and looked at them from the shore, they both knew that afternoon wasn’t going to end in their sun loungers.

Valen rested her hand on my thigh halfway down the highway. We’d been driving forty minutes and both of us already knew how the day would end.

Laura carried her anger in her skin, and I knew exactly how to help her let it go. That night in the apartment was unlike any other.

For months I’d been fantasizing about seeing her with another man. When I suggested the trip to Valeria, all three of us knew something was about to change forever.

When I saw him looking at her that way, instead of jealousy I felt something I hadn’t expected. That first day at the resort, we were no longer the same couple who had arrived that morning.

We’d barely had two beers when Valeria took off her sandals and told me it was time to fix the fact that I hadn’t stepped on sand in years. That night I learned a lot of things.

When Roberto’s car disappeared around the bend, Sofía looked at Raquel. They had three hours, two men waiting, and a plan that seemed foolproof.

The air lifted my dress and I did nothing to stop it. I wanted to be seen. I needed to be seen, even if I didn’t quite know why.

When the captain anchored in that deserted cove and Rodrigo opened the second bottle, we all knew the agenda had been officially canceled.

We were drinking wine when she told me, “I never told you everything about Punta del Este.” What followed left me speechless for hours.

The sun burned our naked skin while Damián split me open without mercy, and in the water, a few meters away, my mother discovered that she was hungry too.

Carla came out from between Lucía’s thighs with shining lips, looked at me from the sand, and I knew my quiet afternoon was over for good.

I closed my eyes on the wall and spread my legs a little farther. The wind did the rest. I knew they were watching me, and that was exactly what I wanted.

While they stayed in the water, he proposed what I’d been imagining for a year. I set my beer down on the counter and said yes before I could change my mind.

She had always been shy, but that afternoon on the beach, naked beneath the sun, something awakened in her that I had never seen before.