Forbidden

I told myself it was just curiosity. I uploaded four photos, used my fake name, and waited to see if anyone still looked at me. That same week, Matías appeared.

I went upstairs thinking I knew the fifteen-year-old girl who no longer existed. The box under her bed made it clear: my daughter was someone else—and so was I.

When he saw the door ajar and recognized his sister inside, against the wall, the last thing he expected was to stand there watching, unable to move.

Her white T-shirt soaked with sweat, her nipples pressing through the fabric, and the question thrown between two glasses of wine: is what they say about you and Lucía true?

I went barefoot down to the bathroom and the half-open door let me see him in the shower. What happened that night on the living-room mattress was my first time with another man.

He was forty, with rough hands and a mustache I’d never liked. Until I found him lying in the bed in my son’s empty room.

The phone rang, I said I was going running, and drove to his house. When I came back to my block, the sirens were already waiting for me.

I turned off my bedroom light so I could watch him better without being seen. One dawn he turned toward my window, smiled, and I knew I’d never been the only one watching.

I used to go downstairs to comfort her when she cried. What I didn’t know was that her tears would lead me to her neck, her skin, and the realization that I wanted her differently.

When she took off her dress in the middle of the clearing, her huge belly under the sun and her son’s three friends staring at her, I knew that afternoon wasn’t going to be a bike ride.

I recognized her the moment she crossed the threshold. That twenty-three-year-old girl had been undressing for me on screen for months and didn’t even know it.

She was 20 and had never had a real orgasm. That sticky January night, with half a bottle of rosé, my French cousin decided it was time.

I turned off the music and pressed my ear to the wall. My mother’s moans came from the other side, and I understood why she moved in silence during the day.

When the hallway lights went out, the moans started on the other side of the wall, and I knew I’d never forget that week at my aunt’s house.

When her fingers brushed mine across the table, I knew that night I was going to recover something my girlfriend had been making me forget little by little.

When the referee blew the final whistle, I knew there was no turning back: I’d have to pay up on the bet in front of my friend, right at the bar.

My husband spent the day at his conference while I melted away alone by the pool. When the waiter asked if I wanted something, I knew exactly what I was going to ask for that afternoon.

Tomorrow marks eight years since that last night with him, and I still wonder whether I was brave or just selfish to ask him for that.

When she came to sweep the empty house, I told her to go back to her town спокойно. Three hours later we were in my bed, and my wife still hadn’t landed.

I was her assistant. We worked twelve hours a day. That night, barefoot on her sofa, she looked at me like never before, and I knew something had changed forever.