Confessions

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 thought I was alone among the hanging laundry. Then a voice behind me asked if I liked her panties, and I knew there was no turning back.

I only meant to be nice and carry her grocery bags up to her apartment. She offered me a soda, changed clothes, and left her bedroom door ajar.

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.

I’m naked while I write this. And I want you to know exactly what goes through my head when I shut the door and no one can hear me.

I kept it to myself for over a decade. It all started with a pair of white stockings and ended in a car at two in the morning, with the last person I should’ve gotten involved with.

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 wanted to surprise him in the shower, like every afternoon. I slipped naked behind that broad back and, when it started to turn, I realized it wasn’t my boyfriend.

I went looking for Bryan, but it was Andrés who stopped me in the street, grabbed me without shame, and set a date for the next day. I already knew what would happen and did nothing to stop it.

I went into the bathroom by mistake and found him under the water. Since that afternoon, every night I’m alone I go back to that image and can’t get it out of my head.

I was furious, trembling, with an almost empty bottle beside me. I dialed his number at three in the morning just to hear him breathe on the other end.

I had gotten used to being looked at, but that afternoon, alone at the waterfall, I decided I wouldn’t cover up this time when I found him hiding among the trees.

I’d watched her for years in ways I shouldn’t have. That night, after catching her with another man, she got into my car not knowing I had secrets of my own.

At six in the morning, with a plate of tacos in my hand, I decided to sit at the table of two strangers who had been watching me for a while.

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.

He shut the room door with all my clothes in his hands and left me on my knees, naked, with one order: “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

We had arranged to exchange some photos. What neither of us said out loud was that this reunion had been waiting months to happen.

I’d spent months imagining it and couldn’t bring myself to admit it. That afternoon, an ordinary conversation was enough to send everything out of control.

I thought I controlled everything at home, until the woman I married made it clear who really ruled the three of us.

When her number appeared on the screen as a missed call, I knew that night in the mountains was going to break something in her that could never be put back together.