Gay

When I saw his socks lying on the hotel bathroom floor, I knew I was about to cross a line I could never uncross with my best friend.

I bit the pillow when he said her name. And then everything I had hidden for years began to unravel between the sheets, blow by blow.

When he told me to lower my pants and lie face down, I could hear in his voice that this exam wasn’t going to be routine.

When I put my hand on his chest and didn’t take it away, I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end like the others. He was twice my age and smelled of cold beer.

For months I kept running into him in the elevator, knowing he was out of my reach. That night I found a yellow sign with a phone number and a binding spell.

I closed my eyes in the empty locker room and let the fantasy carry me farther than I’d imagined. When I opened them, there was no going back.

The prince’s convoy rolled in unannounced between the cranes. He got out of the second car, took off his sunglasses, and I knew those three months of silence would break tonight.

When I opened the door, he wasn’t alone: behind him, wearing that practiced rent-boy smile, he had brought a man I had never seen in the neighborhood in my life.

I told Mateo to stop, that my sister was sleeping three meters away, but he kept going in silence. I never imagined she’d open that door right then.

When his hand settled on my hip and he whispered “Hi, baby,” I thought he meant one of my friends. When I turned around, I knew the night wouldn’t end as expected.

When I came out of the bathroom that afternoon, I saw him pull his hand out from between his pants. And the TV was lower than usual. It wasn’t a coincidence.

I wanted to play a prank by lighting the candles in front of the pool house. When we pushed the door open, no one was laughing: my son was against the cabinet, and his friend’s father wouldn’t stop.

I went to the bathroom on a night with no electricity, convinced I was alone in the house. A phone light lit up the kitchen and I understood why the two of them had been acting so strange.

He came to the apartment of a stranger promising not to hold back. He still had no idea how big the cock was that would take his virginity, or how far that paddle could go.

Five cousins, one friend, and a secluded sauna. That send-off was going to start in a jacuzzi with two mouths taking turns on my cock and end at dawn.

Our eyes met in the service-area café. I knew he’d follow me into the bathroom, and I knew I wasn’t coming out the same man who went in.

He’d wanted those lips in silence for years. That night, fighting over the console controller, his mouth fell on mine and everything shattered.

When he took off his shirt to change clothes, I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything he said about screws and shelves.

I thought the dark of the movie theater would distract me from how badly things had gone with her. I didn’t count on that same man who’d surprised us months earlier washing his hands beside me.

I’d spent months with the app open without writing. When I finally replied, a discreet hotel and a man named Iván were waiting.