Neighbors

Three weeks without hearing from him, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I texted “hiii,” and his reply reminded me of the only thing I was to him: his obedient slut.

I opened the wrong drawer by mistake and discovered my best friend was hiding things I didn’t even know how to name. That afternoon, she decided to explain them to me one by one.

I checked the terrace cameras and discovered that my neighbor’s daughter had been watching us in silence from behind the curtains for weeks.

It was seven in the morning, I’d just broken up with my girlfriend by text, and my neighbor was still face down in my bed. I wasn’t about to waste the morning.

When I found the neighbor peering over the wall, I didn’t cover up. I dropped my bikini top under the patio shower and let him see as much as he wanted.

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.

I went for water at two in the morning and the blue TV light stopped me cold. My son was on the sofa, and I couldn’t look away.

A blue robe, a book, and one careless moment. One look through the window across the street was enough to change my morning forever.

I turned off my bedroom light so I could watch him better without being seen. One dawn he turned toward my window, smiled, and I knew I’d never been the only one watching.

I’d only been in the alley for a month when I was put in charge of the punch with house 207. I didn’t expect the woman who opened the door and her husband to change my idea of desire that very night.

His hands were no longer seeking the pain in my back. I knew it, he knew it, and still I said nothing when they traveled down the cleft to places they had never reached before.

Thirty-two years old, red nails, and a way of looking at women that seemed like a greeting and a question. I was a married woman. That is, until the night I forgot my keys.

When I saw my underwear on the glazier’s nightstand, I knew he’d been watching me for weeks. Instead of exposing him, I decided to give him something better to remember.

For days I hid among the bushes, watching her ride another man every night. When he was laid up with a fever, I took his place.

When I leaned out the car window to see if my sister was still awake, I found him in his window, smoking. And I knew he wasn’t going to look away.

She told me a thousand times that she liked me; that night she came down with wine, turned off the TV, and said what she’d been wanting to tell me for two years.

For months I kept running into him in the elevator, knowing he was out of my reach. That night I found a yellow sign with a phone number and a binding spell.

I had the house to myself, four drinks in me, and the certainty that four men were watching me from the scaffolding. I wasn't going to waste the morning.

We saw him among the lilies, watching us from the shadows. Daniela knelt without warning, and I knew that night would change everything we were as a couple.

My mother had sent me to ask her for a couple of eggs. Doña Marisol opened the door in her robe, her hair still wet, and looked at me in a way I would never forget.