First Time

He’d spent three days in Cartagena paying for encounters that ended with the same surprise, until she walked into the bar and everything changed.

When I opened the bathroom door and saw Sandra in that little skirt and red-painted lips, I knew the original plan no longer existed.

He came to help me with the new TV, with his marked arms and that look that kept avoiding mine. He was twenty, and I already knew what was going to happen.

Andrés had spent months looking for a way out and found it where he least should have: in his own wife’s body.

When I walked into his room that night, he was already waiting for me. There was something different in his gaze, something I had never seen in my son’s eyes before.

When I went up to his room to see why he hadn’t come down for lunch, my son asked me to close the door. He had something to show me on his cellphone.

When the wooden door of my cell creaked open after midnight, I knew it was him. I closed my eyes. I didn’t come to the convent fleeing the world: I came fleeing what I felt for that man.

Three weeks of voice notes negotiating limits. That night I arrived at his loft with my wrists ready for rope and a yes that would learn how to be nuanced.

My grandmother, my mother, and I thought that trip to the mountains would be the break we needed. Until the storm trapped us with two strangers.

When Valeria slipped on the gold sandals and looked at me that way, I knew I wasn’t leaving with just a watch.

When he showed up at my door thinking he was coming to help me, I already had everything planned. He was twenty and as naive as someone who doesn’t know what’s waiting for him.

When I walked into the kitchen that morning, she was standing with her back to me in a T-shirt that barely covered her thighs. Three years change people a lot.

We played strip poker with my neighbors. Nobody said what else was being played for, but when I was left naked in the middle of the living room, we didn’t need the cards anymore.

I went to their apartment hoping for beer and a way to kill time. I left with a sore ass, a mouth tasting of semen, and a smile I couldn’t hide.

When Camila turned off the movie and told me, “sometimes I watch gay porn when I’m alone,” I knew that line was going to split my life in two.

When he opened the wrong door and saw me fresh from the shower, his eyes never looked anywhere else again. What happened that night wasn’t in anyone’s plan.

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.

No one had ever touched my body like that. When his hands closed around my waist, the textbook ceased to exist and something entirely different began.

Romina walked into that party with a confidence few women have. The next day, when she took me to pick up her daughter, I realized the night before had only been the beginning.

When I saw them on the roof terrace, everything changed. My cousin was looking at me from the dark and asked me something I hadn’t expected to hear that night.