Forbidden

My body was still burning from the weekend with him. I never imagined that same night I’d hear, through a door, the conversation that would break me apart.

That hot afternoon, Lucía sat beside him on the couch and confessed something no brother-in-law should ever hear. Damián knew he was lost before he answered.

She dissected other people’s minds for a living; so did he. Sharing a table was enough for them both to stop pretending they only wanted conversation.

She climbed the stairs knowing that, once she crossed that door, the naive woman she had been until then would cease to exist forever.

I went up the mountain alone under a red alert, running from my husband. I wasn’t looking for shelter: I was looking for impact, for something to finally crack the glass I lived trapped inside.

He sat on the sofa, a handspan from me, with that repentant-boy face that worked so well for him. And I, after weeks without sleep, knew I was going to forgive him again.

That morning she looked at her hands and no longer recognized them: they had signed a commitment and betrayed everything for him.

For years I pretended not to understand why she lingered when passing that shop. The afternoon I followed her inside, I understood my mother had already stopped belonging only to my father.

A single photograph on the studio wall was enough for the professor to realize he could never look at her as just a student again.

She told herself she was only helping him feel better. But every afternoon, with her boyfriend out of the house, the distance between them grew shorter.

“She came to see her boyfriend, the doctor,” the receptionist told him. Damián had no girlfriend. But when she described the visitor’s blush, he knew exactly who was waiting inside.

When he went down to the supermarket for beer, his uncle cornered me against the freshly painted wall and I knew my boyfriend wouldn’t be the one breaking in the bed.

Adrián fell asleep ten minutes after takeoff. The man by the window waited until he heard his steady breathing before leaning toward Marina and whispering in her ear.

I started by telling him made-up dreams about other men. What he didn’t know was that every word that made him moan had really happened that same week.

I took off my ring before getting into the water. I didn’t want any souvenir photo to give me away, or for him to get ideas that weren’t his to have.

Marisol couldn’t sleep. She left the hut, leaving Gonzalo among dreams, and walked to the campfire, where the silent guide was waiting. That night she would cross a point of no return.

Every insult shouted by that masked stranger was aimed at one person: the man beside me who slept believing I was his.

He did not look at the frescoes; he looked at her, as if she were the material he had to break. And for the first time, she wanted something in her life to collapse.

It’s been seven years since we signed the divorce papers and I never stopped looking for him. What I miss isn’t him: it’s what he does to me when no one else is watching.

I bought a tiny bikini without letting her choose it, counted the hours until dawn, and lay down on the small mattress, praying she’d stay alone with him.