Forbidden

I innocently asked whether I’d been her best lover. Her laugh was the first sign I shouldn’t have opened my mouth that night.

I kept their numbers in the drawer and knew I would never call. But I also knew my husband would never touch me the way he had before that night at sea.

I set the cup on the bedside table, knelt beside the bed, and understood that that morning nothing in this house would ever be the same again.

I went up the stairs, opened the main bathroom door, and there she was, in the tub with the baby, barely covered by a thin layer of foam.

I was eighteen and had never been with anyone. My mother’s aunt ended up sleeping beside me that night, and everything I thought I knew about desire broke in silence.

My mother had sent me to ask her for a couple of eggs. Doña Marisol opened the door in a robe, her hair still wet, and looked at me in a way I would never forget.

I ripped the dress, tossed a shoe, and rubbed my thighs until they were red. When I called him crying from the phone booth, I knew he’d come without thinking.

When I saw her get off the bus with the pink backpack on her shoulder, I understood she had already decided everything, and I was only going to do my part.

I dressed to blow my boyfriend’s mind. The one who opened the door was his older brother, and his eyes ran over me before he even said hello.

Lucía never told that part. That Thursday she dressed the only way she knew how and made sure that virgin nephew wouldn’t leave without leaving something inside her.

We happened to meet in the elevator by chance. She was carrying boxes and I had my hands free. I agreed to help her without knowing that storage room would close with both of us inside.

I got out of the taxi half a block from the hotel, as always. The receptionist no longer asked my name: she handed me the key to 304 without looking at me.

I was still dripping from the shower when she walked into the bathroom without knocking, wearing that crooked smile she’d been avoiding me with for weeks.

He’d wanted those lips in silence for years. That night, fighting over the console controller, his mouth fell on mine and everything shattered.

I opened the door convinced it was my husband. I was in my underwear, hair messy, and barefoot. When I saw who it was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to shut it in time.

We were alone that March siesta, and she was still in her uniform. I don’t know how we went from tickling on the sofa to something else.

I was the invisible director of a forbidden play: I watched my wife transform before the painter, knowing I was spying on her from behind the camera.

I came back from months in Patagonia and found her sitting in the kitchen at one in the morning, glass in hand, with that look that promised a fight.

I got off the plane knowing I’d have to look him in the eye. What I didn’t know was that that same night, through tears, I’d ask him for something I had never dared say aloud.

When I saw her walk into work in the same black leggings from the day before, I knew that day wasn’t going to end like the others. Not like I thought it would, either.