First Time

Her hand slid up my forearm as I tried to pour her more wine, and I knew the drink wasn’t the only reason she had invited me home.

I boarded the train resigned to spending my birthday alone. When she sat across from me and lit a cigarette, I had no idea what would happen next.

I arrived thinking we’d drink beer and celebrate his promotion. Carla opened the door in a tiny skirt and a sheer blouse. Damián still hadn’t arrived.

I crossed the living room to get a glass of water, forgetting the curtains were still open. On the other side of the glass, his eyes had already found me.

I went in looking for lingerie to please another man and came out discovering that a woman’s hands can make tremble what I had never felt tremble with myself.

We’d been talking for five months by chat. When she opened the hotel door barefaced, in a black shirt, I knew no screen would ever be enough.

I was forty-four, had two daughters, and a recent divorce when the girl from across the street looked at me differently and said what I didn’t dare think.

I had spent years imagining it: getting dressed up, putting on my stockings, and giving myself to a man for the first time. That afternoon, in a hotel room, I stopped imagining it.

When I ran into him on that beach after three years without seeing each other, he was no longer the boy who used to throw sand in my hair. Something in his look told me this wasn’t going to end well.

I walked past the booth five times before daring to look inside. The gray-haired man looked up and motioned to me without saying a word.

Her post on the book app said “looking for a baby.” I answered without thinking, and for almost a year I learned to obey every word she said over video call.

I carried her boxes up, made her coffee, and before I finished it, I already knew that neighbor was going to change every night I spent in that building.

We started with stupid stickers at the end of the shift. Then came the nickname. Then the fantasy. That night he texted that my place was closer, and I couldn’t say no.

I didn’t go up to that motel thinking I’d be the one ending up on all fours, begging her not to stop. But she knew exactly what I hadn’t dared admit.

That morning I shaved my legs, put on the white platforms, and got out of the car knowing everyone on the street would look at me. And look at me they did.

I’m married. I’m straight. That was me when I walked into the mall bathroom. What I was fifteen minutes later, I’m not so sure anymore.

I walked in looking for a corner where no one would look at me. I looked up from my book when I heard her laugh, and I knew I wouldn’t leave there the same.

When the other students left and the evening light came through the windows, she locked the door and asked me to play for her—just for her.

I'd spent a month watching her nipples show beneath her blouse and pretending to think about equations. That afternoon she complained about her neck, and I knew I had my excuse.

I arrived at his door trembling, unaware that a cheap dress and plastic heels would change everything I thought I knew about myself that night.