In Public

I wake up beside Lorena thinking about everything that’s happened this week, never imagining the last day would hold the most intense surprise of all.

When we crossed the door of that dimly lit club, I knew that night we would share something neither of us would ever forget.

I woke up with Lina rubbing cream into my back; none of us imagined that by that morning at the pool we’d be six bodies with no rules or shame.

Amid the smoke and the crowd’s screams, Soledad no longer knew where she ended and her daughter began. She only knew she didn’t want the night to end.

We swore a hundred times that nothing would happen with them. We swore it until we convinced ourselves. Then they called us to their room and she was waiting for us naked.

Five men, an empty bus, and a route that veered off course. I recognized every face and knew that night I wasn’t getting home early.

When the whole town was asleep for siesta, Camila stood in the middle of the empty street, bit her lip, and asked which of the five wanted her first.

She told her husband she’d sleep at a friend’s house. In reality, she was naked in the bed of a truck, listening to the line forming outside.

I’d gone a week without hearing from him when he waited for me after class, took me to a secluded corner, and let three strangers watch everything.

In the car, the only light came from a distant streetlamp and a stranger who grabbed my ass the second I closed the door. The night had barely begun.

We went out to sunbathe with no tan lines and no one around. What we didn’t imagine was how many would be on top of us before we got back in the water.

When he blindfolded me in the doorway, all I felt was a drop slowly running between my thighs and my heart about to burst out of my chest.

I thought I’d just have something typical to eat before bed. I never imagined those two guys from the bar would lead me into the most uninhibited night of my life.

“Be careful what you wish for,” they say. I wished for it so hard that one night, in the darkness of an empty theater, a stranger showed me what I’d been pretending not to want for years.

I thought the steam room was mine alone, along with my toys. Then the door opened and a very tall stranger looked at me without any hurry to cover herself.

She had spent years going to that club alone, waiting for a glance that would stay on her. That night, unknown fingers took her hand and dragged her into the dark.

We queued for the slides all morning, but it was in the water, with her hand sliding over my waist, that I understood what she really wanted from me.

I was in my forties, married, with two children, and I had never once looked at another woman. That night, leaning on the bar in a pub, everything I thought I knew about myself came undone.

We got turned on in class and couldn’t wait until we got home. The vacant lot behind the college was the first of many places where we shouldn’t have touched each other.

I didn’t know anyone at that girls’ dinner, until she walked through the door and our eyes got stuck on each other over the plates.