Memories

I found an old photo tucked away in a drawer, and all at once I knew exactly what I wanted to ask each of them for that vacation.

I woke up not knowing how I would ever justify what they forced me to do that night, or how I could look the man I still loved in the eyes.

He had spent years perfecting an expression that revealed nothing. But that afternoon, in the hotel lobby, his eyes betrayed the one thing he must not feel for her.

Adrián measured every gesture with me, as if he knew something I didn’t. It took me a while to discover that the boy I was kissing already had his suitcase packed and a life waiting for him in another city.

She went into the fitting room in front of me with seven bikinis. The curtain didn’t quite close, and by the third one she knew I was watching.

Every Sunday, when she left, I opened her wardrobe and became someone else in front of the mirror. That afternoon she forgot her keys and came back early.

I thought nobody had seen me that afternoon at my grandfather’s house. I was wrong: there were a pair of eyes behind the door, and they took fifteen years to speak.

I’d been trying for years to get her to give in again. That afternoon, between joints and caresses on the couch, she sat up and kissed me like before.

When he got into the car and smiled at me, I knew we weren’t going to make it anywhere decent that night. It had to be ours, even if it was only on a dirt road among almond trees.

That morning I shaved my legs, put on the white platforms, and got out of the car knowing everyone on the street would look at me. And look at me they did.

Vera approached before the bout, brushed her cheek, and spoke to her about Dafne. On that strip, Renata wasn’t just fighting for an Olympic berth: she was fighting for the right to feel again.

I never thought an avatar in a video game would give me back the urge to desire another woman, or that desire would stay with me long after I shut off the console.

I had barely gone a few steps when my phone started vibrating nonstop. It was her, and she wasn’t going to let me get away that easily that night.

It was our first sleepover without her parents home. When she turned off the light, her hand found mine under the sheets, and I understood she’d been waiting for that gesture for years.

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.

I turned the living-room light down so she wouldn’t see me, but when the sheet started moving beneath her hips, I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping that night.

She went down to dinner without panties or a bra. She said she didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I was starting to understand: that day she was going to cross every line.

I had forty-seven messages from her when I came back to the game, and they all ended with the same screenshot: her avatar on the empty bench, waiting for me at different hours.

When I started drifting off on the couch, I felt her hand climbing up my thigh. I looked up and Camila was staring at me with a smile I didn’t know yet.

I went upstairs thinking I knew the fifteen-year-old girl who no longer existed. The box under her bed made it clear: my daughter was someone else—and so was I.