Memories

Her white T-shirt soaked with sweat, her nipples pressing through the fabric, and the question thrown between two glasses of wine: is what they say about you and Lucía true?

Years had passed since I last saw her. When she sat down across from me at that bar and rested her hand on my thigh, I knew that night would not end the way my cousin imagined.

For two days I had been lowering the curtains to hide what I was doing. That last morning I decided to leave them open, and the woman in uniform stayed planted on the other side of the courtyard.

Tomorrow marks eight years since that last night with him, and I still wonder whether I was brave or just selfish to ask him for that.

The doorbell rang after midnight and I opened it expecting pizza. It was a stranger with a bottle in his hand and the truth about my wife on his lips.

I bit the pillow when he said that name. And then everything I’d hidden for years began to unravel between the sheets, blow by blow.

We talked for weeks without sending each other a single photo, until she told me she wanted to be the first to do it to me, in person, in her bed.

I innocently asked whether I’d been her best lover. Her laugh was the first sign I shouldn’t have opened my mouth that night.

I went up the stairs, opened the main bathroom door, and there she was, in the tub with the baby, barely covered by a thin layer of foam.

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.

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.

I was still dripping from the shower when she walked into the bathroom without knocking, wearing that crooked smile she’d been avoiding me with for weeks.

We were alone that March siesta, and she was still in her uniform. I don’t know how we went from tickling on the sofa to something else.

I saw the bus driver watching us in the rearview mirror and, instead of covering up, I let him pull down my top. At three in the morning, my ex and I were a free show.

Catalina came into the room at three in the morning, took off her dress without looking at me, and said she didn’t want to sleep alone in the cold.

When he opened the door wearing only his shirt, I knew we weren’t going to talk much that afternoon. And I wasn’t wrong at all.

That afternoon, while the movie kept playing in the background, her sweaty hand found mine under the blanket and I knew something between us was about to change forever.

Four weeks watching her move between the tables, wanting what I didn’t dare name. After that, nothing was ever the same.

We were sworn enemies since we were five. No one would ever guess that the girl who made my nose bleed would also be my first woman.