Lesbian

It took only a fraction of a second —a towel slipping, her wet skin under the balcony light— to understand I’d never be able to look at her the same way again.

I heard her in the shower that first morning and, for no reason I could name, I froze in the doorway. When she turned and looked at me, I didn’t look away.

When she gave me the keys to her apartment and left for work, I already knew that night we were going to debut much more than the bottle of wine I had packed in my suitcase.

We were coming back to the hotel at three in the morning, having gotten nowhere with the guys. What happened once we closed the door changed our friendship forever.

When she came through the salon door, I knew that session was going to break something inside me. And I wasn’t wrong.

For years, Romina had imagined her mother while making love to her boyfriend. That night, with wine loosening her tongue, she could no longer keep it inside.

The voice on the other end of the headset gave me a simple order: I couldn’t finish until she decided. Then she disappeared, with no warning when she’d return.

When she walked into the office with those hips, I knew the appointment wouldn’t be routine. What I didn’t imagine was how far her exam would go.

After a decade of bad sex with men, I met Renata, her drawer full of toys, and a finger where no one had gotten before.

When she rang the bell with two bottles of wine and that smile, I knew the unfinished conversation at the bar was finally going to end on my couch.

I used to dream about men. Now it’s only her: the stranger who touches me under the table and slips into my bed every night, even though my partner sleeps beside me.

When she asked me to put sunscreen on her, my hands already knew what my mouth hadn’t dared to say yet.

When my mother finally decided to marry, I never imagined the trip to the island with my future stepsister would reveal the family’s deepest secret.

I served her the four o’clock coffee as always. Only this time I’d added something that wasn’t on any schedule.

I crossed the parking yard, hungry and with a sharp hatred for humanity, and then I saw her hit the pavement. It was my boss.

I went in with the key he’d left in the planter. What I didn’t expect was to find her waiting for me, arms crossed and jaw clenched.

I accepted the invitation with my lingerie tucked in my bag. I never imagined there’d be no camera, and that the real plan was me.

Under the morgue lights her hands never trembled. But when she closed her eyes, she felt her again against the locker-room tiles, sweaty, biting her neck.

The theater was almost empty and the movie was an excuse: what mattered to me was her hand sliding up my thigh in the darkness of the back row.