Confessions

When she adjusted his posture for the third time and he felt the pressure under his shorts, he decided that morning’s session was going to be very different from the others.

He’d spent three days in Cartagena paying for encounters that ended with the same surprise, until she walked into the bar and everything changed.

That night I shaved, washed, and waited for Lucía, knowing exactly what I wanted. She arrived with her backpack, her red lollipop, and that smile that never faded, no matter what we did.

When I got into the truck with him that night, I knew something was going to happen. What I didn’t imagine was ending up on my knees in the dark looking at him like that.

When I handed him the envelope with the offer, I expected anger. What I saw in his eyes was something else: a hunger that had been hiding behind his calm gaze for years.

When I walked into his room that night, he was already waiting for me. There was something different in his gaze, something I had never seen in my son’s eyes before.

I went down to the restaurant with the red lingerie safely hidden under my dress and one decision: if he didn’t get to see it that night, what we had would never leave the screen.

The message came in in the middle of the afternoon. Three words: “Try them on. Photo.” I went upstairs and opened the drawer where he keeps the bikinis.

When I opened the door for him, I felt his eyes lock onto the black strap peeking over my jeans. He smiled before pushing me inside.

When I opened my eyes in that black marble suite, she was there, naked, looking at me like she’d known me forever. And maybe death was my best accident.

When Ricardo explained what he wanted to do with me and his five friends at the country house, I should have said no. I thought about it for six days before saying yes.

I was only going to try on some jeans. She was on the other side of the curtain, with a smile unlike the one she gave any ordinary customer.

It started like any other night in front of the screen, but when I hit send on that message, I knew there was no turning back.

She’d been dimmed for years by a deep pain, until that grave voice filled the room and I saw her eyes shine again like when I first met her.

I was looking for something temporary while I studied. But that night, when he left the avatar and called me with the camera on, I knew I could never go back.

When the wooden door of my cell creaked open after midnight, I knew it was him. I closed my eyes. I didn’t come to the convent fleeing the world: I came fleeing what I felt for that man.

I’d promised myself a quick one before getting back to work. We came twice, with his taste still in my mouth when I went downstairs for coffee.

I left it on the table, next to the keys, and sat down on the living-room sofa to wait. I wanted to see how long it took him to realize his life had just split in two.

Her anniversary gift was waiting for her on the other side of a hole in the wall. There was only one rule, and it was that I stayed to watch.

Three days had passed since the first time. Three days of imagining him, of feeling the burn every time she closed her eyes. That afternoon the club would be empty.