Forbidden

Don Salvador had been in the building for a month when I caught him hiding his phone. I didn’t see what he was looking at, but from the way he stammered, I imagined it right away.

I had barely dragged her into the courtyard when she started bleeding. But the wound wasn’t the strangest secret that woman kept beneath my roof.

I met him at an awards show neither of us wanted to be at. I gave him a light in the back hallway and, without knowing it, I gave him everything else too.

That afternoon I didn’t go to play soccer. I went to lose something I had already decided to lose, never imagining my mother would arrive too soon.

She said she couldn’t fasten her seat belt. When I leaned over to help, her hand went somewhere else—and everything changed course.

My friend finished his last drink, looked at me from the armchair, and began to tell me why he had left his wife one June morning without warning.

When Camila whispered that the girl was already in the house and watching us from the hallway, I thought she would stop. She did the exact opposite.

I came down wearing nothing but a towel, and on the next-to-last step I discovered the room was full of people who had already seen me completely on the screen.

He was twenty years, two months and fourteen days old when he filled the tank, rode up into the sierra, and pushed open the door of the only open butcher shop in Risca Alta.

When I asked my ex for a favor, he thought I wanted sex. What I asked was much worse: help me destroy my best friend’s marriage.

On the strip she faced her without mercy; in the locker room, with the medal still warm on her chest, she only wanted to feel her arms around her again.

When the neighbors left, she was still there, motionless among the tall grass, violets pressed to her chest and her eyes fixed on Marisol.

For weeks she slept in another bed, swearing she’d stopped thinking about her. Until I saw her on the other side of the glass, soaked and looking at me like she never had.

I stepped out of the car with my coat open, wearing nothing underneath, and from across the street they started pointing at me. My husband watched from far away, waiting to see which one I’d choose.

I stormed out, my face covered in tears and my heart burning. I never thought a stranger in a cabin could teach me so much in a single afternoon.

I watched her get out of the car to brush crumbs from her skirt, and without knowing it, I knew at that instant we still had many kilometers left and very few excuses.

When my boss suggested we go up to his apartment to keep the party going, my wife hesitated. But curiosity and alcohol outweighed caution that night.

When she pointed me out in the sea of people, I knew that night was going to break something I’d spent years trying to keep intact.

He had gone weeks without news of her since discovering what had happened between his stepmother and him. When he came through the door, he carried a suitcase and an unreadable expression.

My boyfriend used to call the electrician who fixed the wiring “Mustache.” That afternoon, when everyone left, I was the one who asked him for forgiveness in the living room.