Forbidden

I barely passed the entrance exams and had never touched a girl. In four days I found out why two teachers keep secrets.

That Friday afternoon, with a second glass of wine in her hand, Valeria looked at me differently and began telling me what she did on weekends.

For three years I sold my body for money. What I’m about to tell you I never told even my closest friends. Some clients weren’t clients: they were predators.

I read the letter in the dressing room with trembling hands. The offer was indecent, the sum obscene. I showed my husband, expecting fury; he smiled and told me to accept.

Three years ago I accepted a stranger’s request—an erotic writer I’d never heard of. Since then, I’ve read him every night in the dark and never once written to him.

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.

When the two of us knelt on the rug, it was no longer about the bet. That was the first time I knew what I wanted to do with my body.

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 I faked the fainting spell, they knew they had me. But it was exactly then that the balance of power changed hands and the hook began looking for another body.

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.

I went down to the park with the bills ready, but he demanded something different. If I said no, they’d break my son’s face again tomorrow.

When I saw him come in with the other two, I knew I wouldn’t hold back that night. My red heels and his gaze were enough to change everything within minutes.

When I went to the park to confront the boy extorting my son, I never imagined I’d be the one paying the most intimate price.

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.

I had been alone with my son for two years when the bank sent me the letter. The manager had a proposition. I accepted. What I didn’t expect was what I would discover about myself.

The hallway was dark when I finally decided to push open his door. I knew what it meant to walk in. And I went in anyway.

I didn’t do it for the money. I did it because I didn’t care about anything. Seeing her happy with another man in that bar triggered a period I should never have lived through.

When I went 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.

I knew he was my friend’s father. I knew it was insane. But my feet took me anyway, mile after mile, to his door.

He arrived freshly separated, with a suitcase and too much free time. From the morning by the pool, I knew that week wasn’t going to be boring.