Mature

It had been an eternity since a man had touched her. Two strangers and a crowded train were enough for her body to betray her without permission.

I went out for a walk along the trail without imagining who I would meet. I never thought a walk in the country would end like that, and I still find it hard to tell the story.

I agreed to my boyfriend’s fetish and went out dressed to be stared at. I never imagined I’d end up alone with a police officer who watched me too closely.

I asked him not to come back. But when I saw him again on my porch, I knew I would be the one setting the rules for the game we shouldn’t be playing.

I kissed him in the car as if I had wanted him all my life, and only then did I realize that the boy I had watched grow up was no longer a child.

Bored at home, I agreed to have a drink with him. I never expected that beer to end with me on my knees—and later in his hotel room.

It was meant for Andrés, my boyfriend. But the blue double check appeared three seconds later, and I realized, my stomach turning cold, that I’d sent it to the wrong man.

I spilled the oil on purpose, dialed his number, and waited. At my age, I had learned that opportunities aren’t waited for: they’re made.

We were dancing when he leaned to my ear and reminded me what he’d seen that other night. Half an hour later, I was climbing into his pickup at the end of the driveway.

The first time Carla crossed her legs in the back seat, I knew those drives were going to complicate my life far more than I ever imagined.

I arrived with my tape measure and my nerves frayed. All I wanted was to avoid the west wing, but he had already asked for me at reception.

I thought the house was empty, but the murmurs were coming from upstairs. I stood frozen on the staircase, unable to go up or leave.

When I climbed into the passenger seat and he said, “Look what you’re doing to me,” I knew I wouldn’t leave that taxi the same person I was before.

I took off my sweatshirt on the stairs, waited to hear the shower running upstairs, and returned to the kitchen determined to stop that man from looking at the refrigerator.

For years, everyone had treated her as invisible. But that night, trapped by the storm in a cabin, my mother-in-law stopped being my father-in-law’s wife and became something else.

I like provoking people, I admit it. But that morning, when I picked them up in the truck with nothing beneath my leggings, I knew the weekend would get out of hand.

The apartment was an icebox, so I knocked on her door to ask about the heating. She came out in pajamas and offered me coffee—something I wouldn’t forget.

My boyfriend thought I wouldn’t dare. He bet I’d only get the gardener worked up from the window, but that afternoon he ended up on his knees in front of me.

I looked up at the professor everyone feared, and my blood ran cold: it was the woman I’d masturbated with on camera for two years.

They sat on either side of me, sure they were going to undo me with their games. I let them believe it all through dinner, and took control in five minutes.