Mature

I thought the picnic area would be empty in that rain. Then she appeared, asked for a light, and two hours later let her dress slide to the floor.

I thought I was alone among the hanging laundry—until a voice asked if I liked her panties, and there was no turning back.

I only meant to be nice and carry her grocery bags up to her apartment. She offered me a soda, changed clothes, and left her bedroom door ajar.

I wanted to surprise him in the shower, like every afternoon. I slipped naked behind that broad back and, when it started to turn, I realized it wasn’t my boyfriend.

She was fifteen years older than me, drove a red convertible, and knew exactly what she wanted that night. All I had to do was obey and enjoy it.

At four in the morning, locked under the sheets with my mother’s phone, I started opening folder after folder, unaware that nothing would ever be the same.

At eighteen I entered medical school with the country’s highest score. At twenty-four I still didn’t know what an orgasm was. This is my story.

She was old enough to be my mother and married to a man who barely looked at her. I only wanted to return to that kitchen every afternoon.

We had spent three years living by one rule between partners. That cold night, in her green dress and the dark office, we knew we were about to break it.

“I want you to give her what my mother never had,” she said with a smile. And when I saw that mature woman, I knew I wasn’t going to say no.

I turned fifty, I’ve been married for thirty years, and I’ve never been faithful. These are the secret getaways that kept my marriage alive.

I stopped my bike in front of Andrés’s house not knowing his mother was waiting for me in the doorway, and that that empty afternoon would change everything between us.

I’d been a widow for fifteen years and sexually asleep. Then that man, nearly twenty years younger, looked at my lips and I knew the morning wouldn’t end in notes.

From below, while she pushed the guide line at the top of the ladder, her T-shirt parted from her body and Adrián realized that summer was not going to be like the others.

I took my time handing her coat over, enjoying the way men looked at her. I never imagined one would dare that much in front of me.

She cried drunkenly on my shoulder saying nobody wanted her anymore. She had no idea that the very same night, out on the sand, I was going to prove exactly the opposite.

When the downpour flooded the city, everyone ended up at my place. I never imagined I’d feel Damián inside me again that night—or that we wouldn’t be alone.

I put on the white apron and the little cap, did my makeup like a slut, and called him to let him know the room was ready. We had the rest memorized.

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.