Confessions

I’d filtered through dozens of profiles before getting to Marcos. Everything I asked for, and the patience that’s never in surplus. But someone always shows up too early.

Someone was touching me in the dark, with a slowness that had nothing urgent about it. I opened my eyes and Valeria’s voice said: “Are you enjoying that, baby?”

I’d been left three weeks earlier. That night I walked into the bar wanting nothing and left knowing I knew nothing about pleasure.

The first time I put on someone else’s heels, I knew the image in the mirror was the most honest version of myself. It took me years to accept it.

We had planned Saturday, but she called on Friday: come tonight, I’m anxious. When she opened the door, I could no longer pretend this wasn’t serious.

They were cousins, they rarely saw each other, and that night they were alone in the living room while everyone slept. Nothing should have happened. Almost nothing did.

I had to sleep on the floor of my own room. My sister and her husband were in the bed. We’d been waiting for the moment for months. That night was the moment.

I stood in the doorway with my wine in hand and looked at him from far away. He looked up. I smiled. No more words were needed.

Natalia and I shared a room. That was all. But when we turned out the light and our bodies were inches apart, the plan changed.

She went into the confessional to talk about her dreams. When she left the sacristy, she was no longer the same. She was eighteen and had just discovered what her body had been asking for for months.

When Rodrigo arrived with “him,” it took me several minutes to understand that that perfect body and those hips belonged to a man. That night everything changed.

When the storm cut the lights and thunder shook the walls, she curled up against me. It had been years since she’d felt anyone’s heat. That changed everything.

We’d been talking online for months before we met in person. When I saw him at the theater entrance, I knew that night wasn’t going to end the way I’d planned.

I dialed his number with trembling hands. Three rings. When he answered, I knew there was no turning back, even if I hung up before speaking.

We had been talking for three weeks without meeting. When I finally crossed the door to his apartment that night, I knew I wouldn’t come out the same.

When I crossed the bridge and saw the woman in the black coat waiting for me, I knew nothing I wrote in my piece could tell the truth of that week.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about crossing that hallway, but it was the first time my feet moved before my head did. The whole house was asleep and I wasn’t.

That night, while I was stroking him in bed, he stopped me and asked me to tell him what the other man was like. I never imagined my confession would change our bed.

When I whispered in his ear what I’d been imagining for months, his silence lasted seconds. Then he smiled. And I knew that night we were crossing every line.

I only wanted something temporary while I finished high school. I never expected those late-night voices in a virtual world to teach me so much about desire.