Memories

It was late, we were alone at home, and Mom began talking about something she never should have told us. By the time I wanted to stop her, I no longer wanted her to stop.

I’d go down in the middle of the night to the mattress on the floor where he slept, pull the sheets over us, and stay there until he finished. We were almost never caught.

I was bleeding inside my torn stockings, but I kept walking to his door. I needed to look him in the eyes and know whether what I felt was mutual.

Climbing seven floors on foot in heels was no joke. What I didn’t know was that the doorman had been watching me for weeks as if I were a promise waiting to be fulfilled.

My shoes had worn holes through my pantyhose, and every step burned like penance, but I didn’t stop until I rang his bell.

Every morning I wake up with the same fire. It isn’t love, not exactly. It’s something more urgent, and no relief lasts long enough to put it out.

I knew it wasn’t sensible. I circled the bridge anyway, climbed down the wall, and found him sleeping exactly where I’d left him.

I went into the game to make friends. I stayed because there were men there who wanted the same thing I did: something real, nameless, and without a future.

I woke up in his room with no memory of how I got there. He was in the kitchen, half-naked and calm, like everything was perfectly normal.

I kept his texts in a private folder, rereading them at night with the lights off. I’d been doing it for months before I dared to write him.

I never liked him. Never commented. I just read his texts at midnight and wondered if he was thinking of someone like me too.

When I covered her with the blanket and my hand brushed the curve of her hip, I knew it would take me a long time to pull it away.

He was carrying a confession he had never told anyone. So was she. That rainy night, with hot chocolate in their hands, they told each other everything.

I’d been ignoring his looks for weeks. That night at the hotel, after the pool and dancing with strangers, I couldn’t keep doing it.

There were nights when I didn’t look at the face of whoever came in. I counted the money and waited for it to be over. But once, everything was completely different.

I’d walked for hours, my dress torn and blood on my legs. I couldn’t stop. I had to see him, even if everything I did that night destroyed me.

The test had been on the bathroom shelf for twenty minutes when he opened the door. One look at his face was enough to know everything between us had changed.

I saw him walk through that door and my heart started racing. I wore the reddest dress I owned. I wanted the first thing he saw to be me.

I went up to the garage with the envelope in my backpack, dark glasses, and my skirt blowing in the wind. That morning, I didn’t know I’d leave as someone else.

For five years we met every January. She ran the spa, I always booked the same room. Nobody suspected a thing.