Lovers

The day they lowered Rubén’s coffin into the earth, Mariela already knew that night she would seek out Damián in the back room, and that no one in the house would judge her for it.

He dismissed the woman who offered to help without a second glance. An hour later, he discovered she was the one deciding whether his career survived.

Bruno let me kneel in front of him, but he never kissed me: he said that wasn’t something you did with just anyone. I just wanted to stop being just anyone to somebody.

We’d spent months fucking under the rule that he was straight. That night, with my plan on hold, he looked at me in silence and I knew something was about to break.

Adrián measured every gesture with me, as if he knew something I didn’t. It took me a while to discover that the boy I was kissing already had his suitcase packed and a life waiting for him in another city.

The blacksmith had gone to see the earl. We only needed a few minutes behind the woodpile to forget the whole world condemned what we had.

For weeks I’d been pretending everything was fine, until that night a man looked at me the way my husband had stopped looking at me, and I chose not to resist.

“Nice ass,” she said behind me. I didn’t turn right away. That voice couldn’t be hers, not after four years of silence.

I drove at night transformed into another woman and no one knew. One slip at a stop was enough for him to discover who I really was.

I lit only the red candles, adjusted my babydoll, and waited. When the doorbell rang, I knew that dawn would remind me who I truly was.

Daniela had disappeared without leaving me a number. I was still counting the days when I saw her at the café, smiling at him the way she never smiled at me.

Three hours earlier I’d bitten her neck under warm water. Now another man held her arm like she was his, and she didn’t pull away.

When I opened the door and saw her there, barefoot with her mascara running, I knew she hadn’t come to talk. She had come to reclaim what she’d abandoned.

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.

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.