Masturbation

Thirteen kilometers on foot, thick socks, and closed sneakers. That night I was going to give him the gift I’d been preparing since I boarded the plane.

I’d bought the toy weeks earlier and hidden it in my drawer out of fear. That night I decided it was time to stop waiting for someone else to do it.

The whole family thought Andrés was the good brother who sacrificed himself for me. No one knew he was also the father of my children and the only man I’ve ever loved.

I’d spent years teaching that taboo never disappears; it only disguises itself. I never understood that better than on that night at the motel.

That night I walked into the living room with my heart racing. I knew what I wanted and I knew he wanted it too. All that was left was to make the first move.

By the time Sebastián finished describing the process, I already had to invent an excuse to go to the bathroom. I never imagined that the next day I’d be the one asking for it.

When I told her I couldn’t focus, she came around my desk, stopped beside me, and said the one line that changed everything between us.

The door to my room didn’t close all the way on the left side. She knew it. I knew it too. For weeks we pretended not to.

He crouched behind the dumpster in the alley, and what he saw beyond the curtain left him speechless. The Córdoba night held secrets he was never meant to discover.

I rested my forehead against the bedroom door, trying not to make noise, and then I felt his breath on my neck and knew we weren’t sleeping yet tonight.

When Marcos described how he wrapped his lovers in stretch film, I had to escape to the bathroom. Not for the reason they’d think.

He was older than my father, had the hands of a man used to getting what he wanted, and looked at me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

Her perfume was still following me when I opened the card in the taxi. An address in Recoleta. The door will be unlocked, she had told me.

The plaid skirt, the thigh-high stockings, the smeared makeup. That afternoon alone at home, I became who I most wanted to be, and my body surprised me in a way I never expected.

I never gave him a like. I never wrote to him. But his stories chased me into bed, and one night I realized I could no longer ignore how I felt.

Ten years without seeing each other, and one champagne dinner was enough to bring everything between them to light. Some friendships hide something more.

He paid in cash, took the key without a word, and went upstairs. The room was dark and the screen flickered, waiting. Diego knew exactly why he had come.

I arrived at her parents’ house and saw her in the doorway wearing the short dress that drove me crazy. Nothing underneath. Exactly as I’d asked.

When he got there first, she was already looking at the shelves with a book she wasn’t reading. They were the only two. And neither pretended to be surprised.

Every Friday he took her home, pretending they were just friends. She knew it. So did he. But neither dared say it aloud.