Forbidden

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.

At twenty, my world was diapers and silence. Then my boss left me a note with the coffee and started looking at me like I was another woman.

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 looked up from the grass, two headlights went out thirty meters away. Inside the car, a motionless shadow kept watching us.

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.

When Camila came out of the room dressed as a devil with a trident in her hand, I knew we weren’t going to sleep virgins that night.

I was half asleep, my nightgown hiked to my waist, when I saw the silhouette of the man leaning into my window in the vanity mirror.

I’d waited all summer for the cove to empty. It was deserted, yes—but moans behind the dunes drew me in, and I couldn’t help becoming a voyeur.

My husband couldn’t stand seeing me like that, cut off from my own body. He asked the gynecologist for help. What he prescribed that night changed everything between the three of us.

When I went up to the library to fetch some files, I didn’t expect my stepbrother’s hands on my waist as if he had every right to touch me.

I reached the northern hotel expecting to rest before work. That night, sitting across from him in a robe, I knew we wouldn’t sleep until dawn.

I went down to the living room after midnight and found them both naked on the sofa. My mother turned her head, and there was no shame, only annoyance.