Memories

I went downstairs barefoot for a drink of water and found her sprawled on the sofa, her legs braced against the backrest. She never turned her head. I didn’t move.

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.

The first time I found the wrapper in the trash, I thought I was mistaken. By the fourth time, I knew exactly what was happening in that room.

I’d been staring at her without hiding it for two hours, and she knew it. When she asked me to go up to the third floor for garlands, I knew that Christmas wasn’t going to be like the others.

I thought Sonia was the past. Until I saw her getting out of that car with a stroller, and realized nothing had ended the way I thought.

He barely remembers that night. Only the pain when he woke up and the certainty that something in him had changed forever.

On the drive, she put her hand on my thigh and didn’t take it away. At dinner, she looked at me as if I were dessert. Going upstairs was only a matter of time.

He arrives, turns me around, and pulls down my pants. Without saying a word. That’s how it began, and that’s how it’s worked ever since.

She was 67 and had the smile of someone who’d seen it all. When I got her into bed that New Year’s Eve, I never guessed I’d end up watching her for hours.

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

I’d been counting the hours for seven days. When I saw him come through the airport doors, I barely cared that I was on my period: that night, I wasn’t waiting for anything.

They were an uncle and his nephew, two gym beasts who had been watching me for weeks. That Sunday, something in the air changed forever.

I’d been keeping that curiosity to myself for years. In the dark, with him a meter away, I felt that if I didn’t ask then, I never would.

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.

We’d been together in front of the screen for months, each on his side. The afternoon Marcos reached out to me changed everything between us forever.

When she came in soaked with her friends, I knew that night was going to wreck all my plans. And when she called me by name, I understood the past never really disappears.

It was two in the morning, it was the anniversary of my dead marriage, and I was crying on the couch. Marcos wrapped his arms around me and said he wasn’t going anywhere.

He asked me for directions and I walked with him without thinking. I never imagined that minutes later I’d be against the wall of a building under construction with my pants at my ankles.

Daniela slipped a condom into my pocket before she left. I knew I was a virgin, and Marco was too. That afternoon was going to change all that.

I had known her for years. That afternoon at the bar, when she came over to greet me, something in her eyes told me it would not end with a simple hug.