First Time

We’d been talking online for months before we met in person. When I saw him at the theater entrance, I knew that night wasn’t going to end the way I’d planned.

I walked with my legs apart, loaded with a pain I didn’t know how to ease. When she came into my room and asked what was wrong, I knew there was no turning back.

When I opened the door to my uncle that afternoon, no one else was home. What I confessed to him after that, on his sofa, I had never told anyone.

We were having dinner like any other Sunday when my father dropped the line. Three hours later, my brother and I were closing the door to their bedroom, not knowing what we’d be by morning.

I hadn’t seen her in years. When she got off the bus, she was no longer the girl I remembered, and that night we ended up sharing much more than a sheet.

For months I charged strangers, until a girl called to lose her virginity with me. That afternoon, I understood almost everything.

She arrived at my apartment with her cheek still bruised. That same night she stepped into the bathroom wrapped in a towel and dropped it when she saw me.

At five in the morning, heels in hand and her dress sliding off her shoulders, Renata got into the car with me and made me a proposal I shouldn’t have accepted.

When I saw the message in my inbox, I had no idea that saying yes would lead me to an afternoon with two strangers in the park and the most intense night of my life.

The first was my physics teacher. The second was my French teacher. They both summoned me alone during their final days in Valencia, and I learned that goodbyes can be very different.

When I asked him to tie my wrists with a silk scarf, I didn’t know the real game began with a three-letter word: red.

At eleven we turned off the movie. At midnight I curled up against his chest. At one he kissed me in a way he never should have. And I, a virgin, knew I was his.

When she clung to me in the water and I felt her breathing change, I knew the summer we turned eighteen would be unlike any other.

I’m not the kind of girl who sleeps with strangers in a club bathroom. Or I wasn’t. That night in Barcelona, a short skirt and a mistake changed everything.

I’ve spent years thinking about that moment: Valeria in the empty classroom, her finger pointing at my crotch and that smile promising everything that never happened.

Alone at home, wearing a thong and red lipstick, I looked in the mirror and felt no shame. I felt something far more interesting.

He was the quietest guy in class, wore glasses, and never talked about anything but studying. I had spent weeks thinking about what I’d accidentally seen.

I always knew I wanted to surrender completely to someone. What I didn’t know was that someone would be a huge stranger who hit me by mistake.

She was telling him about her breakup when the couple below started kissing. They looked before they meant to. Then they couldn’t stop.

Camila arrived in a white linen dress and a smile I knew by heart. But that afternoon there was something different in her eyes, and we both knew it.