Beach

It was my daughter’s wedding, but it was him I searched for in the crowd. A ballad, sand underfoot, and suddenly he was no longer just my son.

Thirty-two degrees, the child asleep, and only one deck 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.

Iván rented the beach house to surprise Marina. What he didn’t tell her is that that night his best-kept secret would sit on the sofa between them.

I had a secret date with the lover from that rooftop party. What I didn’t expect was for the other woman to show up behind the rock, determined not to just watch.

“If you stay, you stay to play,” he said, looking at my friend. I only wanted him for myself, but a dark part of me wanted to see how far she’d go.

We’d spent years looking for the right woman for our bed, until the girl across the hall came to clean the house and started eyeing my magazines with too much curiosity.

He had known for a month that he wanted her more than a friend should. When she opened her apartment door, he realized he could no longer keep pretending.

When she came out of the shower and took off the scarf, I discovered Daniela was hiding something that was going to change our beach weekend completely.

We went to Formentera so people could watch her. I never imagined how far she’d be willing to go when that foreigner spread his towel just a few meters from us.

I boarded the catamaran to lose myself for a while. I never imagined I’d end up naked, surrounded, and the one who didn’t want it to stop.

We’d spent years summering together, seeing each other topless without thinking anything of it. Until that first day at the beach, when her hand slipped inside my bikini and everything changed.

Noelia looked at us over her glass of cava and asked the question no one expected: how did we manage our sex life after so many years together?

I accepted the dare without suspecting that the fifth photo would lead me to a deserted cove, facing a stranger stretched out under the last ray of sunlight.

I offered to massage her feet without knowing she’d place hers exactly where I didn’t dare ask for it, and that neither of us would say a word.

I thought she was telling me those stories to make me jealous. It took me a while to understand that what was turning me on was something far darker and harder to admit.

They thought the cove was empty. I stayed behind the rock, holding my breath, watching her move on top of him as the sky turned orange.

I found an old photo tucked away in a drawer, and all at once I knew exactly what I wanted to ask each of them for that vacation.

He met my gaze with the note in my pocket, not yet knowing that that same afternoon I’d dial his number and find out how far his offer went.

She went down to dinner without panties or a bra. She said she didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I was starting to understand: that day she was going to cross every line.