College

The first time I heard her through the partition, I lay perfectly still, holding my breath, pretending to be asleep while she believed she was completely alone.

We went up to hang the laundry under any pretext. Among the water tanks on the rooftop, I discovered she was as impatient as I was to stop pretending.

I found her panties on the hallway floor, with a note on top. From that night on, we played a game neither of us wanted to end.

That Thursday I didn’t have classes and the morning was mine. I turned on the water, closed my eyes, and let myself go... not imagining boots would appear in the window.

I knew he had wanted me for months, and I wasn’t going to stop until I had him in my bed. What I didn’t count on was who would catch us afterward.

I had never smelled another woman’s desire until that afternoon, standing in the hallway with my flatmate’s soaked garment in my hands and my pulse racing.

It began with a twisted ankle on the court and ended many weeks later, one night when her house was empty and there was no longer any reason to hold back.

I first saw her cheering from the stands, with wet hair and that easy laugh. Ten days later, behind the fronton, she taught me something I’ve never forgotten.

We’d met to review for finals, but by six o’clock the books were closed and no one wanted to leave. What came after still makes my pulse race.

Everyone at the university knew what I was like, and the guard at the gate only needed a smile to understand that that afternoon, after cleaning up, I wouldn’t be leaving so fast.

I’d been a widow for fifteen years and sexually asleep. Then that man, nearly twenty years younger, looked at my lips and I knew the morning wouldn’t end in notes.

All my classmates sighed over him, but none of them knew what I hid beneath the masculine uniform the world forced me to wear.

We were never friends, but she looked at me with contempt every time her boyfriend lingered too long staring at me. So I gave her a real reason to hate me.