Lesbian

We were alone in front of the mirror. I was fixing my lipstick; she was staring at me with an intensity that was no longer friendship. And then she came closer.

I thought we were only going up to the pine grove to eat omelet and drink red wine. I never imagined my cousin would ask me to touch her among the trees that afternoon.

That October Sunday we came down from mass soaked by the rain. We went into her kitchen to dry off. And there, against the wall, I kissed her the way I’d wanted to kiss her all my life.

I had barely dragged her into the courtyard when she started bleeding. But the wound wasn’t the strangest secret that woman kept beneath my roof.

Lucía was the most proper girl in the school crowd. That night I saw her walk into the birthday party in a miniskirt and realized the Sunday-Mass girl was gone.

I was twenty-two, with a curiosity kept under lock and key and the address of a hotel where no one would ask awkward questions. Antonella was waiting with a book in her hand.

I got out of the car with numb legs and saw her waiting in the doorway, barefoot, biting her lip the way she did when she couldn’t take it anymore.

I entered that room thinking I was in control. I left knowing exactly who I owed my silence to.

On the strip she faced her without mercy; in the locker room, with the medal still warm on her chest, she only wanted to feel her arms around her again.

On the curve where the trees formed a tunnel of light, I reached out and laid my hand over hers. No words were needed to say yes, that I wanted to try.

I opened the wrong drawer by mistake and discovered my best friend was hiding things I didn’t even know how to name. That afternoon, she decided to explain them to me one by one.

When the neighbors left, she was still there, motionless among the tall grass, violets pressed to her chest and her eyes fixed on Marisol.

For weeks she slept in another bed, swearing she’d stopped thinking about her. Until I saw her on the other side of the glass, soaked and looking at me like she never had.

No one in the family imagined what happened between Lucía and me when the lights went out and we disappeared for a weekend in some downtown hotel.

I checked the terrace cameras and discovered that my neighbor’s daughter had been watching us in silence from behind the curtains for weeks.

She counted to ten before pushing the bathroom door open. Steam covered everything, and for the first time, she chose not to run from what she felt for her.

When she pointed me out in the sea of people, I knew that night was going to break something I’d spent years trying to keep intact.

I arrived at the concert expecting him to take me to bed. It never crossed my mind that it would be his girlfriend who would drag me into the bathroom after the third song.

Renata had been watching her for two years in the office halls. One night, after closing a big bid, she finally let the tension turn into something more.

I had forty-seven messages from her when I came back to the game, and they all ended with the same screenshot: her avatar on the empty bench, waiting for me at different hours.