Hotel

I stopped to fix a bike chain and kept walking to the office, not knowing that stranger would cost me my job... and give me a lot more than a bad day.

I went into that hotel just to dry off. I left hours later with shaky legs and a secret I’ve been carrying ever since.

I never thought I’d be capable of something like this, but the bank ultimatum was on the table and I could only think of one way out neither of us would ever forget.

They had traveled to close a deal, not for this. But in the elevator of that hotel, Lucía understood they had been pretending not to want each other for months.

The show was over, the drums had gone quiet, but the fire carnival had lit between her legs was only just beginning to burn.

I was about to get into the jacuzzi when someone knocked on the door. It was her, with my card in hand and the smile I’d been imagining for months.

While the guests toasted in the ballroom, she tied the apron over her white dress and plunged her hands into soapy water. It was her way of saying: I’m yours.

She had a girlfriend and I was dragging along a relationship that was fading fast. We went to the coast as friends. What happened in that room with two beds was not in my plans.

When the power went out and we were trapped between two floors, I knew those hours in the dark would change everything. And I did nothing to stop it.

Twelve months had passed since the last time. I turned a corner downtown and collided with her: the same perfume, the same look, the same desire I thought I’d forgotten.

When the coach asked her to observe the boys, she agreed with a smile. No one suspected the woman in the blue suit had already chosen her two favorites.

The motel terrace connected to his, and from the dimness a deep voice called me “pretty.” I should have gone inside and locked the door. I didn’t.

Damián saved half the city and took the rookie up to his suite to celebrate. Tomás admired him like an idol, until that night he discovered who was really in charge.

I offered the bus window seat to the old lady and she didn’t even look at me. I had no idea the real journey would begin in the hotel dining room, across from two strangers.

I pretended to be asleep so I could watch him. What I saw that night in the other bed completely changed the course of the trip.

I put on the lingerie she’d never wear and wait for him to knock on the motel door. I know he’ll return: there’s a man starving in his home.

He lowered his voice to a rough whisper on the other side of the partition, and I knew I’d never sit across from him in a meeting again without remembering it.

I’d been at the company three weeks when he leaned over the table and told me I had something that caught the eye. That afternoon I followed him.

When that man put his hands on my back, I knew it was no longer about the fever or the exhaustion from the trip, but about something I had been avoiding for years.

I told her to bring the most outrageous outfits she had. I wanted to parade her through the city and, back at the hotel, lose myself between her feet for hours.