Forbidden

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about crossing that hallway, but it was the first time my feet moved before my head did. The whole house was asleep and I wasn’t.

When my son went upstairs to sleep, he got up from the sofa and looked at me as if he had spent the whole night waiting for us to be alone.

A proposal made amid laughter in front of the cabin TV opened a door my sisters and I could never close again.

When we arrived at my father-in-law’s house, I thought the send-off would be like any other—until I saw my mother-in-law coming down the stairs with that look I already knew.

That afternoon at the mansion, my parents made me choose between my privileges and a fantasy I never imagined I’d pay for with my own body.

I was naked on the balcony, smoking in front of the sea, when I saw the stranger on the bench across the street. And instead of covering up, I let him watch.

She arrived at my apartment with her cheek still bruised. That same night she stepped into the bathroom wrapped in a towel and dropped it when she saw me.

The robe barely covered her legs when she approached the sofa. Tobías was no longer pretending to sleep, and everything I’d been keeping quiet for months was showing.

Nora’s flowers arrived at Carla’s office every Monday. I told myself it was admiration. The night we invited her to dinner, I stopped lying to myself.

When I whispered in his ear what I’d been imagining for months, his silence lasted seconds. Then he smiled. And I knew that night we were crossing every line.

The living-room sofa had already seen too much, but nothing like the slow smile with which my sister-in-law waited for me that afternoon while my father-in-law pretended not to notice.

When Carolina came out of the bathroom, her mother still had my hand under her skirt. She didn’t take hers away. She just closed her eyes and looked at me from somewhere much darker.

My mother tried on three outfits in front of me and, before choosing one, casually dropped the black thong question like it was the most natural thing in the world.

At five in the morning, heels in hand and her dress sliding off her shoulders, Renata got into the car with me and made me a proposal I shouldn’t have accepted.

We’d been hiding our affair for years behind fake relationships, until the girl who was my cover told me she loved me and everything went sideways.

I’d been Camila’s boyfriend for two years. That night, her sister Antonella turned eighteen, and I understood that nothing in that house was forbidden.

The moment I shook the newlywed’s hand, his wife held my gaze a second too long. That night she whispered to find her after the trip.

For months, I had been posting anonymous fantasies on a forum. When he messaged asking to meet me, I knew I would obey long before I agreed to the date.

I heard my twin sister moving in the shower. When I went into the bathroom, I saw her panties on the floor, and everything got complicated that very morning.

I was alone on the sofa when the door opened. It was Marina, my sister’s friend, and what she saw made her smile. What happened next took me by surprise.