Neighbors

The first night in the new apartment, I heard the neighbor on the other side of the wall. I had to go to the bathroom to finish while Laura slept.

You’ve been swallowing midnight sighs for years. That night someone was watching you from the doorway, and your body knew before you did.

At eleven-thirty I went down to the laundry room with an excuse. She was turned away, and didn’t turn when she heard me come in. That changed everything.

There had been something in her eyes when she turned away that should have worried me. It wasn’t an annoyed neighbor’s anger. It was a promise.

When the two neighbors from downstairs knocked on my door with a bottle of wine, I’d been alone in the house for ten days with a body in a state that was anything but calm.

When I realized she had seen everything, the first thing I felt wasn’t shame but something much harder to control.

First we heard their moans from upstairs. Then they heard ours. None of the four of us stopped.

Ernesto hadn’t looked at me like that in years. Then the neighbors moved in, and one dinner lit something we thought had been asleep forever.

When she caught me in her room with the slipper in my hand, her look mixed surprise with something darker. That day changed everything between us.

When I stepped out of the elevator, my thong already soaked and my dress clinging to my sweat, I knew that tequila wouldn’t remain just tequila.

I have a gift that lets me know people just by looking into their eyes. That night I used it to destroy a lie.

Seven in the morning, my husband still asleep, and I already feel that heat settling between my legs without asking permission. Another day like this. Or worse.

When I called him to fix the fireplace, I already knew something was going to happen. My chest told me so every time his eyes lingered on me.

I saw her on all fours over the dry grass, with the fluffy tail swaying between her cheeks, and I knew that Sunday afternoon was going to be unlike any other.

When Marcos came down from the roof, soaked in sweat, Carmenza already knew she wasn’t going to let him leave. She’d been waiting too long for a man like him.

He asked what the other men had been like. What he didn’t expect was that every answer brought him closer to the edge—and me too.

I told myself I only cut past the lot because it was the shortest way. But when his eyes followed me and his hand brushed my hip, I couldn’t lie anymore.

When Nicolás came upstairs to complain about the music, he found Valentina on the balcony in a wet slip and a smile that promised nothing good.

I went down to help him wearing what I had on. I hadn’t guessed what would happen when I sat beside him in that room.

I heard her moans through the wall on our first night. I couldn’t have known that the older couple would end up at my dinner table asking for much more.