Desire

Marcos introduced him as a cousin’s son, staying for a few days. But Elena quickly noticed the way the boy looked at her when no one else was paying attention.

Twelve months had passed since the last time. I turned a corner downtown and collided with her: the same perfume, the same look, the same desire I thought I’d forgotten.

I asked my neighbor for help with a pipe I could have fixed myself. The truth is I just wanted to see him walk into my house knowing we were both alone.

She came out into the hall to look for me, stared straight at me, and said she had a question. I had no idea what would happen when she closed the door.

For eons I knew only the silence of the void. Until I hooked a signal in a blue world and, without asking permission, slipped into the body of a woman on fire.

I’d wanted it all summer and never dared. That afternoon, with the pool silent and no one nearby, Adrián jumped in naked and looked at me from the middle.

His cold hand closed around my arm like a grip. I was ninety kilos of muscle, and yet in front of him I felt small, inspected, bought.

I had the pen in my hand and a lifetime of debt on the table. All he asked in return was that I leave my pride at the door.

The order was simple: kneel. My body obeyed before my mind could resist, and I knew that night would take me past a point of no return.

The rule was simple: when the elevator doors closed, I stopped being a person and became part of his furniture.

That afternoon, with the fan roaring and the house empty, my cousin looked at me differently and said he had something to prove to me. I had no idea how far he'd go.

He chose the urinal next to him without thinking. When their eyes met in the mirror, he knew neither of them had gone in just to wash their hands.

I recognized his devil’s smile leaning on the bar, with the black towel and red harness, and knew that night the whole sauna would witness what was ours.

When the door shut and swallowed the last of the light, there were only the hands, the mouths, and Mateo’s voice saying that night I was his.

When we went in naked and dripping, the three guys soaping themselves stepped aside without a word and left us the center, as if they knew the night still wasn’t over.

Iván was still asleep in my arms when a noise in the hallway pulled me out of bed. I had no idea the last day would be the hottest of all.

He had a girlfriend and acted tough, but that night, locked inside the bathroom stall, he was the one who grabbed my neck and asked me to suck him properly.

Andrés kept his card for two days without daring to write. When he finally did, he never imagined that that same night he’d be naked against the wall in his own entryway.

The headboard of his bed hit the wall in a steady rhythm, and I, awake in the dark, could no longer pretend it didn’t affect me.

We sat there like any two friends, but we both knew why we’d come. When the door closed, neither of us dared take the first step.