Mature

I was eighteen and had never been with anyone. My mother’s aunt ended up sleeping beside me that night, and everything I thought I knew about desire broke in silence.

My mother had sent me to ask her for a couple of eggs. Doña Marisol opened the door in her robe, her hair still wet, and looked at me in a way I would never forget.

I spent twenty-eight years married to a man who treated me like furniture. At fifty-two, a delivery man rang the bell and gave me back things I didn’t even know were lost.

I opened the curtains, turned on the corner lamp, and knew he’d be peering in from the next terrace over. That night, we were going to give him something he’d never dare ask for.

I went up to the third floor to eavesdrop and ended up locked in a closet, spying on an early-morning secret that changed everything I thought I knew about desire.

Lucía never told that part. That Thursday she dressed the only way she knew how and made sure that virgin nephew wouldn’t leave without leaving something inside her.

There were five empty seats on the bus and she still chose mine. She smiled, settled the shawl over her lap, and I knew something was about to begin before we even left.

She’d been watching me for weeks from her corner table, with that calm that unsettled something inside me. When she sat across from me during my break, she wasn’t alone.

Whenever I enter a fitting room, I leave the curtain slightly open. The woman watching never knows I’m looking for her—and almost always, one of them plays along.

I went down to the living room after midnight and found them both naked on the sofa. My mother turned her head, and there was no shame, only annoyance.

When I went barefoot to the kitchen at three in the morning, my son was already there shirtless, looking at me like a man, not a boy, and I knew I’d give in that night.

No one expected me to come back so soon. What I saw in that garage—my mother, shirtless, with her fists wrapped—could never be unseen.

I thought the nap would leave the beach empty. When I returned from the sea, she had one hand inside her bikini, eyes closed, unaware I was watching her.

I went into the bathroom with Camila’s underwear still warm in my hands. I never imagined that minutes later her mother would be kneeling in front of me.

I’d been up all night studying with coffee, until a squeak in the wall beside me made me lower my pillow and realize who was making that noise.

I went downstairs barefoot for a drink of water and found her sprawled on the sofa, her legs braced against the backrest. She never turned her head. I didn’t move.

The first time I found the wrapper in the trash, I thought I was mistaken. By the fourth time, I knew exactly what was happening in that room.

I thought Sonia was the past. Until I saw her getting out of that car with a stroller, and realized nothing had ended the way I thought.

I went to visit my submissive, but it was her maid who opened the door. Something in her look made me forget exactly why I’d come.

Tomás watched her from the living room with a calm that was anything but innocent. Lorena knew it. And instead of ignoring him, she kept cooking without stepping away.