First Time

I had never kissed a woman. In the mirror of her foyer, I understood that afternoon would involve far more than watching.

I always hid my body beneath loose clothing, until the early morning when my friend’s dad opened the bathroom door and stared at me a second too long.

I came downstairs in the set I’d hidden for weeks, and from the way he looked at me, I knew there would be no turning back that night.

I was the serious girl with the ponytail and notes tucked under my arm. He was twice my age, with a calm that undid me whenever he looked at me.

The sandstorm swept away the entire caravan. Alone among the dunes, he was rescued by a dark figure whose secret awakened a forbidden desire.

When I went down to the kitchen at three in the morning, she was already there waiting for me, wearing a nightgown so thin it left nothing to the imagination.

She screamed at me in the elevator, and ten minutes later she was dragging me into her apartment. I was a virgin, clumsy, and terrified; she knew exactly what she wanted from me.

I arrived at the temple half dead, convinced my body was a curse. That same night the priest whispered that I was actually the chosen one.

Everyone hated her before she returned to the neighborhood. I only drew her tattoos from my side of the wall—until she decided to make me pay for being her muse.

I was curious and a little scared, but when I knelt in front of him I knew I wasn’t going to back out. That afternoon I learned something new about myself.

That morning I woke with one fixed idea in my head, and for the first time I didn’t push it away. What I did alone is still hard to confess aloud.

I was twenty and had never seen a naked man when Mariela took my hand to the back wall and whispered that I should look through the crack.

I was twenty-four and thought I knew my desire, until her hands guided mine over her oiled skin and I realized that afternoon would change everything.

I arrived at his door with a backpack, no family, and no way back. He got home from work at five-thirty, and all I wanted was to be the woman I had always known I was.

I’d dressed up a thousand times in front of my bedroom mirror, but that night, for the first time, it wasn’t just for me. Someone was waiting for me on the other side of the door.

I watched him through the window while he touched himself, thinking no one could see him. The next day I went down with the excuse of using the bike, and I wasn’t leaving without trying him.

I only wanted to sweet-talk him into raising my grade, playing the pickpocket who distracts to steal. I never imagined how far my own bluff would take me.

What we had was already over, but that summer night I discovered how far I was willing to go just to feel him inside me again.

I was always the pretty, skinny boy with green eyes. Then I walked into a gym and someone looked at me like no one ever had before.

That afternoon his mother wasn’t home and he had a surprise waiting. I still didn’t know those minutes would awaken a taste I’d never let go of.