Masturbation

I was alone on the sofa when the door opened. It was Marina, my sister’s friend, and what she saw made her smile. What happened next took me by surprise.

Just turned nineteen, a thirty-eight-degree afternoon, and my aunt by marriage mopping my room in tight jeans. That day I couldn’t take it anymore.

Alone at home, wearing a thong and red lipstick, I looked in the mirror and felt no shame. I felt something far more interesting.

He was the quietest one in class, wore glasses, and never talked about anything except studying. For weeks I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d seen by accident.

She was telling him about her breakup when the couple below started kissing. They looked before they meant to. Then they couldn’t stop.

When my friend took her by the waist to guide her into the kitchen, something ignited in me. It wasn’t jealousy. It was something darker that I chose not to put out.

We’d barely had two beers when Valeria took off her sandals and told me it was time to fix the fact that I hadn’t stepped on sand in years. That night I learned a lot of things.

That night I shaved, washed, and waited for Lucía, knowing exactly what I wanted. She arrived with her backpack, her red lollipop, and that smile that never faded, no matter what we did.

I loved her more than I had ever loved anyone, but I couldn’t stop imagining another man inside her, moaning louder than she ever moaned for me.

When he confessed his fetish that night, I knew I could never look at him the same way again. I told him it would happen only once. We both knew that was a lie.

It started like any other night in front of the screen, but when I hit send on that message, I knew there was no turning back.

I’d promised myself a quick one before getting back to work. We came twice, with his taste still in my mouth when I went downstairs for coffee.

Daniela’s voice narrated the locker-room encounter while, around her, her friends’ bodies tangled shamelessly and without limits.

Every time I crossed my legs in class, his eyes went down on their own. It took me two Tuesdays and one Friday to get him to invite me to the private reading room.

It was five-thirty when I heard her voice on the other side of the door. What I heard next left me frozen in the hallway for ten minutes.

I had access to every screen in the place and never should have looked. But when I saw what they did with my photos, something in me lit up.

I’d been fantasizing about her for months. When she came down from the stage and put her mouth on mine, I understood that fantasy was never going to disappear.

When I realized she had seen everything, the first thing I felt wasn’t shame but something much harder to control.

I wasn’t sleepy. He came up behind me, kissed my neck, and put his hands where I couldn’t allow myself to moan. The bedroom door was still closed.

Under the shower, her fingers finished what he had started in that room. And she knew three days would not be enough.