Mature

That afternoon four men came to visit me. None knew about the others. I was the only one who had the full picture, and I felt no guilt at all.

I hadn’t come to Málaga looking for anything. And yet Mateo showed up with his twenty-eight years and those eyes that make you feel the world owes you something.

When Rodrigo crossed the threshold, Valentina looked at him with the calm of a woman who knew exactly what she had in mind—and that night, neither was innocent.

When she dialed maintenance for the second time that night, she already knew it wasn’t to ask him to clean anything.

At five in the morning, the hallway in my house should have been empty. But there I was, back against the wall, unable to move and not wanting to.

She wore knee-high boots and the kind of look women have when they already know exactly what they want. I got up to give her my card before the moment slipped away.

We were four forty-year-olds who’d never broken a plate. Raquel said we had to do something we couldn’t tell anyone about.

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.

When I opened the door and saw him there, with that good-boy look and those defined arms, I knew that afternoon was going to change something for both of us.

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, my thong already soaked and my dress clinging to my sweat, I knew that tequila wouldn’t remain just tequila.

For five years we met every January. She ran the spa, I always booked the same room. Nobody suspected a thing.

She went into Diego’s room wearing 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.

I parked half a block away so I wouldn’t make noise. The door was unlocked and the lights were off. What I found at the end of the hallway changed everything.

The afternoon Diego showed up sweaty from the game and took off his shirt, everything changed. The tattoo Carmen had zoomed in on the night before.

He smelled of tobacco and the countryside. He wasn’t handsome, but from the moment I first saw him, something in me stopped working normally.

When she dragged me to the bathroom with one hand in my sweater, we stopped being boss and employee. There was no turning back.

I went down to the kitchen at midnight never imagining he was still awake. He was in the garden smoking, with that effortless air. He looked at me and I made no move to leave.

I climbed the gate at three in the morning, with my dress torn and my stockings bloodied, just to look him in the eye and ask whether I was making it all up.