First Time

I rang his bell with trembling hands. Twenty years older, a declared sadist, no mercy. And me, a virgin, begging him to begin the moment he closed the door.

She smelled of clean skin and expensive perfume. My tongue moved before my mind did, and when she turned and looked at me, I knew there was no turning back.

I thought the vodka had clouded my head, but when she closed the hotel room door I knew she’d been waiting for that exact moment for years.

It was our first sleepover with her parents away. When she turned out the light, her hand found mine beneath the sheets, and I understood she’d waited years for that gesture.

At forty-eight, in a Miami bar, my best friend grabbed me by the neck and kissed me. It was my first time with a woman, and I knew I could never go back.

I followed her upstairs with my eyes fixed on her skirt, never imagining that I wouldn’t be the one making the decisions that night.

I’d known him for years, and nothing had ever happened between us—until that afternoon in the park, when he looked at me differently and everything began to change, very slowly.

When I felt his cock against my ass in the darkness, I knew neither of us would sleep that night. Fifteen years later, I still think about it.

Camila wouldn’t meet my eyes from the far side of the pool. That night, when I went out to get some air among the orange trees, she followed me into the dark without me asking.

He met my gaze with the note in my pocket, not yet knowing that that same afternoon I’d dial his number and find out how far his offer went.

We’d been waiting for months. My parents finally left, she arrived in dark blue lingerie and both of us trembling, and then the body decided otherwise.

We were alone in front of the mirror. I was fixing my lipstick; she was staring at me with an intensity that was no longer friendship. And then she came closer.

I went back to the club for a second escape looking for pleasure, and a new guy chose me. What promised to be an easy lesson left a mark I didn't expect.

That afternoon I didn’t go to play soccer. I went to lose something I had already decided to lose, never imagining my mother would arrive too soon.

Lucía was the most proper girl in the school crowd. That night I saw her walk into the birthday party in a miniskirt and realized the Sunday-Mass girl was gone.

I was twenty-two, with a curiosity kept under lock and key and the address of a hotel where no one would ask awkward questions. Antonella was waiting with a book in her hand.

He was twenty years, two months and fourteen days old when he filled the tank, rode up into the sierra, and pushed open the door of the only open butcher shop in Risca Alta.

I opened the wrong drawer by mistake and discovered my best friend was hiding things I didn’t even know how to name. That afternoon, she decided to explain them to me one by one.

I checked the terrace cameras and discovered that my neighbor’s daughter had been watching us in silence from behind the curtains for weeks.

I arrived at his apartment convinced I was going to penetrate him. I left realizing my body had always wanted the opposite.