Lingerie

Renata slept pressed against my back in a thong while I was naked. When she opened her eyes, I knew that morning wouldn’t end as it should.

I brushed her cheek, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them, my hand was still there because I didn’t want to move it either.

I went down to the garden to smoke in my nightgown and ran into two of my partner’s friends. Half an hour later, I was naked on a table, eyes wide open.

I had swallowed his insults for two years. That afternoon I found the file that changed everything—and knew exactly how I would make him pay for every humiliation.

Standing before the mirror in red lace, I knew that night I would stop hiding. All that remained was for him to open the door and truly see me.

I came home with my body still trembling from the night before. I never expected to find him sitting on the sofa with my laptop open on the table.

He left the sheet on the bed, folded in four, with my new name written at the top. Every line was an order, and I already knew I would obey them all.

I thought my future would be decided by the owner of the coast’s most expensive club. I never imagined the final test would be given by his right hand, a woman seasoned by years in the trade.

The night before leaving, we turned on the screen, played the videos from that mansion, and let the memories prepare us for what the island had in store.

I kept it as evidence for the case, but that night, alone, I slipped the silk over my body and saw in the mirror someone who had been waiting years for me.

It was meant for Andrés, my boyfriend. But the blue double check appeared three seconds later, and I realized, my stomach turning cold, that I’d sent it to the wrong man.

I came downstairs in the set I’d hidden for weeks, and from the way he looked at me, I knew there would be no turning back that night.

In front of the mirror, adjusting my garter and blonde wig, I allow myself the most dangerous luxury of all: imagining someone who stays afterward.

I texted him, “Door ajar, if you dare,” and turned off almost all the lights. When he came up the stairs, I knew there was no turning back.

Her husband spent months at sea and she was climbing the walls. I only went to move some furniture, but that afternoon the house was empty and the door was open.

Before the mirror in that room, a box of unfamiliar garments opened, and each one he put on erased a little more of the man who had entered.

Most of the time I’m the man I was born as. But some nights I put on the wig, look in the mirror, and let Sabrina go out looking for what she really wants.