Desire

She had spent months imagining his hands, his cologne, his voice. She never thought a storm would be enough to make them stop pretending they didn’t want each other.

I never knew my grandfather, but his final wishes bound me to an unexpected woman and a house where everything eventually changed.

I woke to the smell of coffee and knew that those two days with her, shut inside while the rain fell outside, would stay with me forever.

When she told me she hadn’t enjoyed sex in years, the sensible thing would have been to leave. Instead I reached for her leg and she didn’t pull away.

When he stayed to practice a few poses, I could feel him looking at me. I hadn’t had a partner in months, and my body had decided for me long before my head did.

On the outside I was the perfect girlfriend, the one who turns off the light and moans softly. That morning I came home fired up from the dance floor and decided I was done pretending.

I went upstairs to see why the girl in the back room was screaming. I never imagined she’d drop the towel and ask me to look, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

She spent years kneading dough with her eyes on the floor—until one summer afternoon, she was left alone with the man who looked at her differently.

I offered her a job and a roof, nothing more. But that first night in the house by the river, neither of us pretended it was still just an arrangement.

I’d put on the shortest skirt I owned, and when that college student rested his hand on my thigh, I knew the journey would be far longer than the ticket said.

The rustle of the sheet woke me, and when I turned my head I found her asleep beside me. I remembered nothing from the night before, but my body did.

He had never seen a naked woman until that afternoon by the waterfall. What he did not know was that desire would carry him to the end of the world.

I thought I was the most disciplined man at the faculty. Then she leaned against the empty classroom door and made it clear she knew everything I hid.

I met her in a dive bar, and at thirty I thought I knew everything about sex. That woman proved in a single night that I knew nothing.

I met him among paintings that seemed to whisper, and two hours later I was against the door of his apartment, wondering how I’d come this far without saying a word.

I looked toward the window opposite and understood that night, among parked trucks, nobody was going to draw the curtains.

I never thought that a comment about how obedient her dog was could ignite something like this between two old acquaintances on her sofa.

I put on the red dress with nothing underneath and thought it was just a thank-you dinner. I had no idea how the night was going to end.

I took an empty shot glass with me when I left the dance floor. I didn’t even understand why, until we were alone in his car and I knew exactly what I was going to do with it.

An old ballad comes on the radio and I stop listening to the lyrics. I start seeing something else, a scene I shouldn’t tell you about, but I confess anyway.