College

For weeks I’d been pretending not to notice his looks, his legs spread on the sofa, the bulges he made so obvious. That night I came home early and stopped pretending.

We were alone in the weights room when he took off his shirt and told me to touch. I never imagined how far we’d go after closing the locker room door.

He offered him a drink with a mischievous smile and a wink, and in that instant the professor knew the distance between them was about to disappear.

They had spent their whole lives inseparable, but that afternoon, alone on the sofa, neither of them wanted to pretend that kiss had been an accident.

His hand slid from my knee to my thigh without haste, as if he already knew I wasn’t going to push it away. And I didn’t.

For months I’d been pretending not to look when he came out of the bathroom in his underwear. That Christmas, alone in the flat, I opened his dirty laundry bag.

Ten minutes off, a soccer video game, and a ridiculous bet were enough to unravel everything Bruno thought he knew about his friend in one afternoon.

It took only her catching me on my knees beside her bed for friendship to break and something else to begin: obeying every one of her whims without a word.

When she grabbed my arm on the way out, I understood she wasn’t looking for an apology. She was looking for a slave, and I was already on my knees before she asked.

For weeks I’d been admiring her feet from the back row. The day she slipped off her sandals and pinned me with her gaze, I knew there was no turning back.

It took three months of patience to reach Mariana’s sofa, slowly remove her shoes, and discover whether she really minded that I couldn’t stop staring at her feet.

She boarded the bus barefoot, sneakers in hand, and at the back a stranger couldn’t tear his eyes from her bare feet on the seat.

That night, on the drive home, I knew that behind her teasing smile there was a new idea. And I wasn’t going to get it out of my head.

My whole life I believed I belonged only to him. The afternoon he walked into the dean’s office and found me on the desk, I discovered how much he liked seeing me with another man.

I knew that blouse would make him nervous. What I didn’t imagine was how far I’d be willing to take it that afternoon, with the apartment empty and the door closed.

I left home in a sweater that showed everything, wearing nothing underneath. My boyfriend walked behind me as strangers’ eyes roamed over me.

She grabbed my arm in the middle of the street and whispered that if I let her go, she might disappear. I had no idea how far that night would go or what price I’d pay for following her.

That witching night, he wasn’t expecting company. But something cold materialized at the foot of his bed and whispered his name as if it knew all death.

She entered uninvited, with a smile that promised pleasure and concealed hunger. That night, every body she touched stopped belonging to itself forever.

She spent her whole life being the strong one, the one who cared for everyone. That afternoon, a stranger told me to get in his car and, for the first time, I stopped deciding.