Memories

I loved him as a teenager, but life separated us. Twenty years later he appeared beside me in the garden, reignited the night, and everything came rushing back.

I had half a drink in me and an engagement ring on my finger. When that guy started complimenting me, I knew I was about to do something I’d never talk about.

We had worked side by side for years without anything happening. One afternoon alone among metal shelves was all it took for me to understand what I’d ignored.

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.

I threw the curtains open at two in the afternoon with my hair still wet and thought no one in my town would dare look toward my window at midday.

Marcos asked me to look gorgeous by the time he got home. While Carla was doing my hair, I remembered everything I did to be his—and what I’m still willing to give.

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.

The first time barely hurt; this time I climbed on top and set the pace, determined to show him everything I had learned to feel.

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.

She said she’d be home late, but when I opened the bathroom door, candlelight revealed her favorite lie: she was naked, waiting for me.

She showed up in my rest room at three in the morning, married and dangerous, and I knew that night was going to wreck my whole life, one look after another.

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.

He knew me when I was a shy boy. Years later I opened the door to him dressed and made up, and in his eyes I saw there was nothing left of the friend he thought he knew.

He made me wake at an exact time without an alarm, with only his words inside my head. And I obeyed while my boyfriend snored beside me.

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.

The old neighbor gave me the betrayal photo before I said goodbye. I could only think about Sofía’s door and whether she’d let me back into her house.

“Nice ass,” she said behind me. I didn’t turn right away. That voice couldn’t be hers, not after four years of silence.