Mature

I’d been imagining it for weeks. That dawn I opened the gate, stepped onto the asphalt, and knew I wouldn’t stop until someone saw me.

My tutor had just fallen asleep when I discovered the half-open drawer of her bedside table. Inside, something was shining that was about to change everything between us.

When he put my hand on his crotch while driving, I knew there was no going back. That night I stopped pretending and gave myself to him completely.

When she came out of the bathroom with her robe tied carelessly and her nipples pressing against the fabric, I knew I could never look at her as just the cousin from summer beach trips again.

I arrived in a black dress and hairpins. She was waiting in red silk, with a jeweled pendant and a question: what do you expect me to offer you?

He was almost forty, lived door to door, and one day invited me for a drink. That night I stopped being the girl on the landing and became his desire.

I sent my secretary home, turned up the heat, and left only my blazer over my sheer bra. I wanted Mariela to see everything I’d been craving for weeks.

No one knew my truth. I went to the matches just to watch his legs, until that afternoon he looked up and held my gaze as if he knew everything.

When I sat next to her in that workshop, I had no idea that the sad, discreet woman would end up whispering, naked in her bed, that she had never felt anything like it.

The first time I aimed my sons’ old telescope toward the window across the street, I knew I had become something my husband would never imagine.

I crossed the street convinced she wouldn’t recognize me. She smiled at me, and I knew that afternoon something was going to change forever between us.

For days I had felt eyes fixed on the back of my neck while I played. That Friday I locked the doors and came down from the stage determined to find her.

I’d been drafting the ad in my head for months; it took me twelve minutes to write it, and half an hour later I already had seven replies. His was the fifth.

Three hours reading stories on my phone were enough to make me accept Iván’s proposal. The next day, that hidden camera changed my whole life.

Dressed like a man, but lace is hiding under my pants. That morning, in the last subway car, someone noticed and couldn’t take his eyes off me.

When I got into the car that morning and saw that she was alone at the wheel, I knew the weekend wasn’t going to be innocent.

When she walked into the office with those hips, I knew the appointment wouldn’t be routine. What I didn’t imagine was how far her exam would go.

I dialed her number when I figured he’d have her down by then. I wanted to hear her moan while another man paid for her, never knowing I was part of the plan.

I’d spent months watching her pass by in the back with another masseuse. That afternoon, just as the clock struck six-thirty, her name appeared on my schedule for the first time.