Forbidden

The Saturday the house was empty, my mother-in-law came into the kitchen barefoot, wearing lingerie that wasn’t for her husband, and smiled like she already knew the ending.

When she opened the door and found us, I thought the family was over that afternoon. What I didn’t expect was to hear her confess, right in my ear, desires she’d kept hidden for years.

Marina was already soaked when she demanded the second round: both of them at once, no barriers, with the action movie still blaring in the background.

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.

Three weeks after discovering the hidden monitors in my father-in-law’s office, the screen flickered on by itself, just as he was already behind his daughter.

Friday yoga started as a silent game of looks and ended with her body pressed against mine in my father’s game room.

I booked the same Airbnb where I first made love to my cousin. This time we weren’t alone: each of us brought our partner, and all four of us knew it.

The dress was French-blue voile, almost transparent. My father was in front of me. My husband to the left. And the French guest still didn’t understand what was going to happen that night.

Monday morning. Adrián’s suitcase disappeared through the door and, before the coffee was even done, we already knew that week was going to be different.

My cousin had gone to the beach with her friends. When I rang the bell, my aunt opened the door wearing her apron and a smile I’d never seen before.

When Marcos closed the apartment door and asked whether they were going to sleep with their “new partner,” the four of them fell silent and said everything.

When the screen came on, my sister-in-law was welcoming her two relatives in the living room with a smile I’d never seen at Sunday lunches.

He showed up at the door unannounced, looking for a fight and carrying a bottle under his arm. By three in the morning, nothing I knew about him was true anymore.

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

The moment he shut the taxi door, his hands were already under my blouse. What came next the driver watched from the mirror, not missing a thing.

The package arrived on a Tuesday without warning. Inside, three bikinis he’d chosen himself. The note said: “Try them on this afternoon. Two photos of each. Don’t improvise the angles.”

Three days unable to use the bathroom, a luxury office, and a trans doctor who charged me her own way. What happened inside there isn’t forgotten.

When I suggested to Valeria that she share my boyfriend and my brother, she was left speechless. What happened next in the dungeon was impossible to forget.

Valentina said she was going grocery shopping. That afternoon, Nicolás canceled his meeting and came home early. Marcos’s jacket was hanging on the coat rack.

I pushed the door open, holding my breath. He was asleep on his side, the sheet fallen to his waist. If I left then, nothing had happened. I didn’t leave.