Fantasies

When Matías and I came back from the corner store with cigarettes, Camila and Renata were already too close on the sofa, whispering in each other’s ears.

I want to put on my wig, do my makeup, and surrender to a stranger who has read my stories. One night, no commitments, before it’s too late.

I reached down without thinking, phone in the other hand and her photo filling the screen. I’d never wanted a woman like that before, and she didn’t even know I existed.

I met her through pixels and long-distance promises. She never knew that every night, alone in my hotel room by the sea, I imagined her beside me.

Three in the morning. A short nightgown. Nothing underneath. And the feeling that every park lamp was a curious eye, waiting for me to go one step too far.

At three in the morning, two men knocked on the door. What neither of them knew was that Camila had been asking me for that night for weeks.

I had barely dragged her into the courtyard when she started bleeding. But the wound wasn’t the strangest secret that woman kept beneath my roof.

I met him at an awards show neither of us wanted to be at. I gave him a light in the back hallway and, without knowing it, I gave him everything else too.

When I found the neighbor peering over the wall, I didn’t cover up. I dropped my bikini top under the patio shower and let him see as much as he wanted.

When I saw his socks lying on the hotel bathroom floor, I knew I was about to cross a line I could never uncross with my best friend.

Adela had always avoided being touched. That January night, a translucent-skinned stranger sat on the edge of her bed and knew she could not send her away.

I tied him up so he wouldn’t bite me. I washed him among the ruins. What I discovered that night between the empty shelves changed who I was forever.

I went down to my room wanting to escape the noise. I ended up with my legs open in front of the mirror while everyone toasted a few feet away, suspecting nothing.

For months I kept running into him in the elevator, knowing he was out of my reach. That night I found a yellow sign with a phone number and a binding spell.

The prince’s convoy rolled in unannounced between the cranes. He got out of the second car, took off his sunglasses, and I knew those three months of silence would break tonight.

That morning I decided to go out with nothing under my skirt. I didn’t want to be touched, only watched. And in the second-floor ice cream shop, someone noticed.

I got off the plane knowing I’d have to look him in the eye. What I didn’t know was that that same night, through tears, I’d ask him for something I had never dared say aloud.

My husband couldn’t stand seeing me like that, cut off from my own body. He asked the gynecologist for help. What he prescribed that night changed everything between the three of us.

When I went up to the library to fetch some files, I didn’t expect my stepbrother’s hands on my waist as if he had every right to touch me.