Masturbation

I only wanted to watch the sun go down and photograph the sea. Then I heard another bicycle approaching through the sand, and I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end like the others.

The door has barely closed and already his mouth is finding mine, still with the taste of the night between our teeth. Now the bed is ours alone.

The headboard of his bed was hitting the wall at a steady rhythm, and I, awake in the dark, could no longer pretend that it didn’t affect me.

The moment he heard the key turn in the lock, Nico knew his cousin’s arrival was going to change everything, even if neither of them said it out loud.

I waited naked beside the olive tree, my backpack at my feet and my phone in my hand, never imagining that cold night would leave me with two different tastes in my mouth.

I pulled down the jumpsuit zipper in the dim light, convinced I was alone. Then I felt the weight of a bony hand settling slowly on my knee.

I couldn’t stop looking at Bruno’s body under the water, and when he turned around with his eyes closed I knew that afternoon we were going to cross a line we’d avoided for years.

He walked in thinking the showers were empty, but the steam was hiding someone else. His teammate hadn’t heard him arrive, and he couldn’t look away from what he saw.

For months I’d been pretending not to look when he came out of the bathroom in his underwear. That Christmas, alone in the flat, I opened the bag of his dirty laundry.

I’d sworn we were only going to watch. But when that stranger put his hand on Eduardo’s shoulder, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay still either.

The carriage was empty that late at night. When that man sat almost across from me and started looking at me without hiding it, I knew the ride would be different.

I knew his schedule, the sound of his boots, the exact moment he took off his shirt because of the heat. What I didn’t know was how far that obsession would take me.

She left them by the mat, still warm from her bare feet. It only took my daughter being distracted for a moment for me to commit the madness.

Her feet on the edge of my chair were only the beginning. That night I found out how far I was willing to go to please her.

The first time she ordered me to paint my toenails, my hands shook. Not from fear: from wanting to obey her.

I told her to bring the most outrageous outfits she had. I wanted to parade her through the city and, back at the hotel, lose myself between her feet for hours.

It was enough for her to look at my bare feet on the cold tiles to understand, before I did, what kind of man I could become if she ordered me to.

I went to the bathroom with a simple urgency and found her there, soaped up and smiling, already knowing the order I was about to give her.

It took me three months of patience to get to Mariana’s sofa, slowly take off her sneakers, and find out whether she really minded that I couldn’t stop looking at her feet.

I told her I liked her feet and she laughed. She had no idea that that afternoon, while she was looking after her nieces, I’d be on my knees in front of her bed with her sneakers in my hands.