Forbidden

I walked into the bathroom by mistake and found him under the water. Ever since, I return to that image every night I’m alone and can’t get it out of my head.

I’d watched her for years in ways I shouldn’t have. That night, after catching her with another man, she got into my car not knowing I had secrets of my own.

When her number appeared on the screen as a missed call, I knew that night in the mountains was going to break something in her that could never be put back together.

I came to Buenos Aires to save up a little money for my family. I never imagined the nicest house in the neighborhood would change my life the way it did.

I’d spent weeks avoiding her, convinced what we had was over. Then the phone rang and her voice was enough to tell me I’d fall again.

For months he forced me to obey in his bed. When I finally spoke, I never imagined justice would repay every blow by turning him into what he hated most.

I came home at six in the morning with her perfume clinging to my body and my ass still red. My wife was waiting, smiling, suspecting nothing.

He kept saying it was wrong, that he shouldn’t touch me. But his hand was already seeking my waist, and we both knew nothing would stop us for those five days.

She was old enough to be my mother and married to a man who barely looked at her. I only wanted to return to that kitchen every afternoon.

What we had was the secret we carried everywhere, but that night, far from the city, we decided to share it with someone else.

We had spent three years living by one rule between partners. That cold night, in her green dress and the dark office, we knew we were about to break it.

She was her father’s wife, but that dawn, sitting in the sand and pressed to his chest, I stopped knowing where affection ended and something else began.

I’ve spent thirty years pretending to be the modest wife my husband thinks he set free. What he doesn’t know is that on this cruise, I’m the one pulling the strings.

On the last night before becoming mortal, she curled up between her two divine mothers, knowing that at dawn she would have to bury everything she was under layers of plain cloth.

I turned fifty, I’ve been married for thirty years, and I’ve never been faithful. These are the secret getaways that kept my marriage alive.

I stopped my bike in front of Andrés’s house not knowing his mother was waiting for me in the doorway, and that that empty afternoon would change everything between us.

She lowered her dress's zipper in front of the entryway mirror and, seeing herself surrounded by his arms, knew there was no going back that night.

From below, while she pushed the guide line at the top of the ladder, her T-shirt parted from her body and Adrián realized that summer was not going to be like the others.

I asked her to dress to provoke, and on the fourth day she came home with a trembling voice and a story she couldn’t tell me with her clothes on.

I learned early that my body was worth more than any degree. What none of them knew is that I never felt a thing while they paid me.