Forbidden

The fourth round of daiquiris lowered everyone’s defenses, but nobody expected Daniela’s confession to end with all of us tangled up on the living-room rug.

A hole no bigger than a pea was enough to watch her pass naked on the white horse. Roderic opened that hole, and from then on he could never close his eyes in peace.

Her anniversary gift was waiting for her on the other side of a hole in the wall. There was only one rule, and it was that I stayed to watch.

Forty-three degrees, four in the afternoon, and her on the balcony with the camisole stuck to her body, knowing full well I was going to climb five floors.

Three days had passed since the first time. Three days of imagining him, of feeling the burn every time she closed her eyes. That afternoon the club would be empty.

While they stayed in the water, he proposed what I’d been imagining for a year. I set my beer down on the counter and said yes before I could change my mind.

When the air returned to my lungs and he turned on the red camera, I knew that night of domination had only just begun and I could no longer go back.

When he showed up at my door thinking he was coming to help me, I already had everything planned. He was twenty and as naive as someone who doesn’t know what’s waiting for him.

When I walked into the kitchen that morning, she was standing with her back to me in a T-shirt that barely covered her thighs. Three years change people a lot.

When Camila turned off the movie and told me, “sometimes I watch gay porn when I’m alone,” I knew that line was going to split my life in two.

For three years I read every word he wrote without a like, without a comment, without daring to do anything. Then one night everything changed when his message appeared.

When Lucía whispered her birthday fantasy to me, I knew there was no turning back: she wanted to be auctioned among our closest friends for one whole night.

When he opened the wrong door and saw me fresh from the shower, his eyes never looked anywhere else again. What happened that night wasn’t in anyone’s plan.

I didn’t need to touch her. Just to be there, half a meter from her back, breathing the same air. And to see, once again, that she wasn’t going to turn around.

You’ve been swallowing midnight sighs for years. That night someone was watching you from the doorway, and your body knew before you did.

When we reached the harbor and she got off the bike, her hands were still on my waist. Neither of us pulled away right away.

Six years ago, I went into my older brother’s room one August night. I didn’t go to talk. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

Every time I crossed my legs in class, his eyes went down on their own. It took me two Tuesdays and one Friday to get him to invite me to the private reading room.

At eleven-thirty I went down to the laundry room with an excuse. She was turned away, and didn’t turn when she heard me come in. That changed everything.

It was five-thirty when I heard her voice on the other side of the door. What I heard next left me frozen in the hallway for ten minutes.