Forbidden

I went up to the garage with the envelope in my backpack, dark glasses, and my skirt blowing in the wind. That morning, I didn’t know I’d leave as someone else.

When I opened the door and saw him there, with that good-boy look and those defined arms, I knew that afternoon was going to change something for both of us.

She got on my bike in that tight leather outfit and told me to go slow. But neither of us wanted to go slow that night.

I climbed the metal staircase with my skirt pressed to my body and my backpack full of bills, feeling every gaze in the garage crawling up my legs.

She went into Diego’s room wearing only a black thong under her robe. He was asleep. She sat on the edge of the bed and her hand went there on its own.

When I went into the truck to check the pallets, he climbed in behind me. No one else was in the warehouse. And we both knew exactly what was about to happen.

They grabbed me from behind before I saw it coming. In seconds I was on my knees in broad daylight, with the whole park watching.

I went down to the hotel bar telling myself it was only for a drink. Without panties. With my blouse unbuttoned. Still not knowing whether I chose it or he decided it for me.

I parked half a block away so I wouldn’t make noise. The door was unlocked and the lights were off. What I found at the end of the hallway changed everything.

I have a gift that lets me know people just by looking into their eyes. That night I used it to destroy a lie.

The afternoon Diego showed up sweaty from the game and took off his shirt, everything changed. The tattoo Carmen had zoomed in on the night before.

I went to that club in a bad mood. Nicolás came looking for his sister and left with me. No one knows yet, and I don’t regret it.

We put on quiet music, turned off the lights, and promised that whatever was said that night would stay there. The hardest promise to keep.

Seven in the morning, my husband still asleep, and I already feel that heat settling between my legs without asking permission. Another day like this. Or worse.

Crossing my legs at just the right moment was all it took for him to stop pretending he wasn’t looking at me. The rest was only a matter of time.

He smelled of tobacco and the countryside. He wasn’t handsome, but from the moment I first saw him, something in me stopped working normally.

She looked at him as if she’d known him all her life. He smiled too much. And I, sitting across from them, was thinking about what I had done with each of them separately.

When she dragged me to the bathroom with one hand in my sweater, we stopped being boss and employee. There was no turning back.

When the lights came back on, I saw what my husband had between his hands and knew the proposed partner swap hadn’t been spontaneous.

I’d been under the same roof as my father’s wife for four days when she left her bedroom door ajar and told me, without words, to come upstairs.