Female Friends

She walked into the classroom slowly, her face pale and a flash of pain on her face when she sat down that she couldn’t hide. It took me days to get the truth out of her.

She arrived looking at the floor, buttoned to the neck. It was she who gave the instructions as soon as they closed the door to room six.

When Sofía lowered herself into the chair and I saw her face twist in pain, I knew the flu was a lie and that what had happened was far worse than I imagined.

We had gone to that apartment telling ourselves we were just going to have a drink. By the time the poker deck came out, it was already too late to be honest with myself.

The first time I was fifteen. I got home early and found the two of them in the bedroom. Sandra face down on the bed, Mom massaging her back. They were both laughing softly.

He was my best friend’s boyfriend: hot, shy, religious. Too perfect for me not to do something about it.

I was fifteen when I caught them the first time. Now, at twenty-two, I can’t look at those memories the same way.

I’d been fantasizing about her for months. When she came down from the stage and put her mouth on mine, I understood that fantasy was never going to disappear.

That afternoon everything seemed normal, just a get-together with friends. Until she opened my bedroom door and looked me over without asking permission.

Valeria was twenty-five, my father’s wife, and she looked at me as if she didn’t know whether to hate me or devour me. I didn’t know either.

They had spent their whole lives being the responsible mothers. That night, in a house smelling of salt and wine, they decided to stop.

I closed the fridge slowly, a syringe in my hand. Only I knew what I was about to do in that kitchen.

When the stage lights hit her, I stopped seeing her as my friend. I only saw the woman I’d wanted for years without daring to tell her.

Fifty-four years old, suitcase packed, and a week on the coast. She wasn’t looking for anything. But a blue-eyed waiter had a way of looking at her that changed everything.

Lucas made the proposal over drinks, as if it were a joke. But no one laughed. And that silence said everything.

The villa was perfect for an affair: four bedrooms, husbands fishing offshore, and two men due at seven. Until the gate rang at six.

There were seven women in that apartment, the wine had done its work, and Camila started talking. None of us expected what she confessed that night.

I hadn’t come to Málaga looking for anything. And yet Mateo showed up with his twenty-eight years and those eyes that make you feel the world owes you something.

We were four forty-year-olds who’d never broken a plate. Raquel said we had to do something we couldn’t tell anyone about.

When she arrived at the party in that dress, I knew something was going to happen. No one imagined we’d end up in her apartment, the four of us, teaching her everything.