Desire

I stormed upstairs to scold her for the noise, but when I opened the door and saw her like that, I was the one left speechless and powerless.

I got home and she threw herself into my arms in front of everyone. No one suspected that the kiss on the cheek was hiding the desire we’d been holding back all week.

With the house all to ourselves and him turned away among the rose bushes, I knew that afternoon I wouldn’t be satisfied with just watching him from the window.

Her father watched her from the pool’s edge, and for the first time she wondered what hid behind that gaze that followed her with every stroke.

When I saw her come down through the lobby at six in the morning, with a suitcase bigger than she was, I knew that summer would be unlike any other.

She leaned over the railing to watch my uncle’s car disappear, and I came up barefoot behind her. I’d been looking at her like that for years. That morning I stopped just looking.

The moment the elevator doors close, my sister kisses me like she’s been waiting all week for it. Truth is, we both had.

It had been eight years since I last saw her. She came back as a woman with one idea in mind: to provoke me until I gave in.

By day the perfect daughter, by night my own mother’s lover. I learned to fake it in front of everyone, until my sister came back and I had to choose between them.

When the plane jolted and she suddenly fell onto me, I felt her hips press against my body. Neither of us said a word, but something had changed.

I grew up hearing her through the wall, hating every man who passed through her bed. That dawn, with the house silent and the national team on TV, she was the one who closed the distance.

I thought it would just be a few more photos in exchange for a few dollars. But when I got on all fours in front of the camera, I knew tonight the desire would be mine alone.

That first week under her roof changed everything: a hug that lasted too long, one drink too many, and the certainty that she felt the same thing I was hiding.

Ever since I returned to his life, every shower was our ritual. But that afternoon I offered him something no mother should offer, and he didn’t hesitate.

My friend couldn’t take his eyes off her. I pretended to be annoyed, but the truth is I understood perfectly what he felt when he looked at her.

I cornered her on the sofa amid drunken laughter, and when my fingers slipped beneath her kitten pajamas, the ice woman finally gave in.

The first thing I remember from that summer is the counselor’s cracked hands and the girl with the fringe’s eyes. The last, what I saw among the trees before dawn.

He came back from the pool hall with that crooked smile and a story about my brother he shouldn’t have told me. That night I learned how far he could push me.

When I looked up and saw her sweeping the living room, I knew my cousin was the only one who could save me. I never imagined how far we’d go that afternoon.

My sex life had become predictable, so that night I texted my fuck buddy a proposal neither of us could have imagined where it would lead.