Mature

I arrived with my tape measure and my nerves frayed. All I wanted was to avoid the west wing, but he had already asked for me at reception.

I thought the house was empty, but the murmurs were coming from upstairs. I stood frozen on the staircase, unable to go up or leave.

When I climbed into the passenger seat and he said, “Look what you’re doing to me,” I knew I wouldn’t leave that taxi the same person I was before.

I took off my sweatshirt on the stairs, waited to hear the shower running upstairs, and returned to the kitchen determined to stop that man from looking at the refrigerator.

For years, everyone had treated her as invisible. But that night, trapped by the storm in a cabin, my mother-in-law stopped being my father-in-law’s wife and became something else.

I like provoking people, I admit it. But that morning, when I picked them up in the truck with nothing beneath my leggings, I knew the weekend would get out of hand.

The apartment was an icebox, so I knocked on her door to ask about the heating. She came out in pajamas and offered me coffee—something I wouldn’t forget.

My boyfriend thought I wouldn’t dare. He bet I’d only get the gardener worked up from the window, but that afternoon he ended up on his knees in front of me.

I looked up at the professor everyone feared, and my blood ran cold: it was the woman I’d masturbated with on camera for two years.

They sat on either side of me, sure they were going to undo me with their games. I let them believe it all through dinner, and took control in five minutes.

I thought I was only going to delete those photos and return to my life. The moment Don Marcial opened the door, I knew I’d come for something very different—and that he knew it better than I did.

I went up to the apartment alone to shower before the others. What I didn’t expect was someone across the courtyard waiting for exactly that moment.

Bored in front of the television and alone in a bed that was too large, she closed her eyes and let her hand do what she hadn’t allowed herself to do for two years.

I arrived at his house in a skirt that was too short, with passing as my excuse. He never stopped looking at me, and I hadn’t come exactly to study.

I’d spent weeks watching her from the corner of my eye as she emptied the wastebaskets. That night, alone together in the office, she was the one who asked me to help her.

Her husband opened the door of his home with one intention: to watch two strangers make his wife come. She pretended to hesitate, but her eyes had already decided.

I was the serious girl with the ponytail and notes tucked under my arm. He was twice my age, with a calm that undid me whenever he looked at me.

I recognized her between the supermarket aisles: fuller, more confident, with the look of someone who still remembered what happened between us in that empty classroom.

She avoided looking him in the eyes when she opened the door, afraid he would discover what she had kept silent for months: she desired the man who dominated her own daughter.

When her boss offered to take me out to buy the drinks, my husband was left looking like a fool. I already knew that outing wouldn’t be innocent.