Mature

I was forty-four, had two daughters, and a recent divorce when the girl from across the street looked at me differently and said what I didn’t dare think.

I was ready from four in the afternoon, soaked and aching, when that short man knocked on my door, never imagining I’d force out his nickname.

That morning, when I half-opened my eyes on the mattress pushed up against the balcony, she was already there on hers, smoking, waiting for me to turn over.

I used the gap in the curtain to spy on her, but she caught me in the mirror and, instead of covering herself, began undressing for me again.

We were up in the cherry tree stealing fruit when Hugo confessed the obsession he’d carried since childhood. That same afternoon, his mother still had no idea what was coming.

When she walked into her room naked except for the blouse, those white hips swaying, I knew I would never sleep in that house again without thinking of her.

At five to four I was naked in the armchair, staring at the window across from me and waiting for her to come out and close hers.

My sister was laughing while I told her what I’d read on my son’s WhatsApp, and I never imagined that afternoon would end with me kneeling in front of him.

When my mother and her friend showed up unannounced, my boyfriend was still naked in the pool and I was topless. What happened next still makes me smile.

I had kept my secret hidden at the back of the closet for months. That night I opened the door in a pleated skirt and red bow—and never wanted to turn back.

When I walked into the bar and saw her at the back, I knew I wasn’t sleeping that night. Three months without her hands weighed more than I was willing to admit.

At forty-eight, in a Miami bar, my best friend grabbed me by the neck and kissed me. It was my first time with a woman, and I knew I could never go back.

I followed her upstairs with my eyes fixed on her skirt, never imagining that I wouldn’t be the one making the decisions that night.

I arrived at the square expecting a polite coffee with the woman who taught me to read poems at seventeen. What happened next wasn’t in any book.

She was twenty-one and the daughter of my best friend’s partner. I taught her equations; she taught me not to ask where she’d been on the nights she disappeared.

I was wearing my favorite dress the day those two men understood, without me saying a word, exactly what I was willing to give them.

When she told me her mother was an idiot for leaving me, I still thought it was an innocent compliment. Five minutes later I was kissing her.

That October Sunday we came down from mass soaked by the rain. We went into her kitchen to dry off. And there, against the wall, I kissed her the way I’d wanted to kiss her all my life.

That afternoon on the beach, all I wanted was to switch off. When the blonde woman in the bikini came over asking for a light, I knew my plans for solitude had just changed.

Don Salvador had been in the building for a month when I caught him hiding his phone. I didn’t see what he was looking at, but from the way he stammered, I imagined it right away.