Lovers

I promised him this time would be different. I kept it up for exactly three weeks, until the bar bouncer arrived an hour early.

When I knelt in front of him while he was driving, I knew those last miles of road would stay with me far longer than I admitted.

For weeks I kept him at bay with a smile and an “not yet.” That night, when his hand found mine, I knew I didn’t want to keep waiting.

She was forty-two, newly buried in a marriage, and desperate to feel desired again. That night, at the bar, someone was watching her.

I had watched him for days from the terrace, pretending I wasn’t. That hot afternoon I decided to stop pretending and went down with a glass of lemonade in my hand.

I never thought being watched by complete strangers would turn me on so much. That night, behind glass, I discovered what I really liked.

She caught me looking at her while she leafed through a Cortázar. She held my gaze for three seconds, smiled crookedly, and I knew that afternoon in the bookstore wasn’t ending among books.

He came up behind my son with Bruno pressed against my back, holding my breath. I knew it was wrong, and that was exactly why I couldn’t stop.

The request came from a shy boy, my nephew’s friend. I took weeks to answer him and a month to admit I wanted him in my bed.

I had spent half a year clinging to a memory and to my nights alone. On Friday I took off my panties at a rest stop and drove the rest of the way shaking.

When she told him she was “hanging in there,” Tino understood that word weighed the same as his own: years of cold sheets. And in the middle of the street, they decided to fix it.

I never imagined that the elegant, serene woman who raised me was hiding, at two in the morning, another completely different woman on the living-room sofa.

The first time I walked into her apartment, I found a thong hanging in the shower, and I knew that food-for-hot-water deal was going to cost me far more than a few empanadas.

I dressed in my plainest clothes so I wouldn’t give anything away. What I didn’t count on was that I wouldn’t be alone in that apartment—and that I was still the same girl as before.

Three women, one huge house, and a pool in the sun. One look between them was enough to turn an innocent afternoon into something else.

I was the one who encouraged her to accept her lover’s proposal. I never imagined she’d come back that dawn surrounded by the memory of strangers.

When she opened her eyes and Damián’s bed was empty, she knew the night wasn’t over yet for anyone in that house.

One look in the supermarket was enough for me to drop my bags and follow her upstairs. I didn’t know her name, but I already wanted her.

When she told me she’d been on her period for three days, I didn’t pull my hand away: I drew her closer, because her honesty was the beginning of everything that came after.

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.