Mature

When he hugged me from behind and I felt his body against mine, we both knew it had a name no one dared to say aloud.

We had spent three months coordinating every detail. When Diego opened the door and I saw his mother behind him, I knew there was no turning back for any of us four.

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

Rodrigo watched my ass in the office every day without daring to do anything. Until I read what his wife thought of me and decided she was right.

When that twenty-year-old boy appeared in my doorway for the second time, hands trembling and voice breaking, I knew the night was about to change.

When I passed by the bus stop, Don Rodrigo saw me from the bus. What started as a birthday beer ended in a way I never expected.

I’d been putting up with his looks in the office for months. The day I read his private messages, I made a decision his wife should never have provoked.

The door opened in the middle of the storm and the woman looked us over before making her offer. It was direct: five hundred for everything, paid in advance.

The villa was perfect for an affair: four bedrooms, husbands fishing offshore, and two men due at seven. Until the gate rang at six.

When I went down to the garage, Valeria was waiting for me in leather pants and a smile that was anything but maternal.

He’d come in looking for the bathroom and stayed standing in the doorway, staring at me. Twenty years old, nervous as hell, and asking me something I hadn’t expected.

She got on my bike in that tight leather outfit and told me to go slow. But neither of us wanted to go slow that night.

When I stepped out of the elevator with my thong already soaked and my dress clinging to my sweat, I knew that tequila wasn’t going to stay just tequila.

She entered Diego’s room with only a black thong under her robe. He was asleep. She sat on the edge of the bed and her hand went there on its own.

The neighborhood boy looked me over shamelessly while I tried to keep my voice from trembling. I was forty-six, and I had a son to save.

A half-open door was the beginning. Then came the mirror I installed in her room so I could watch her better, night after night.

They meant to humiliate them in front of their children. They didn’t count on Beatriz’s black belt, or on Silvia always carrying rope in her bag.

When I walked into that garage without warning, I found two women with wrapped hands, their breasts bare, and years of rage built up between them.

The message came the night before: “Tomorrow you’ll be my teacher. Bring a uniform.” I held the phone in my hand, unable to sleep.