Office

When she leaned over my desk to show me the file, her skirt rode up two inches. I couldn’t hide a thing anymore. She didn’t want me to.

Diego’s voice in the audio sounded defeated. When I heard her name, I knew he’d been cheating on me from his office for months.

I thought the party was over when I closed the door. But she was still barefoot on my sofa, glass on her knee and another box in her hands.

I was her assistant. We worked twelve hours a day. That night, barefoot on her sofa, she looked at me like never before, and I knew something had changed forever.

I heard it through the ajar door: the laborer was fucking the secretary in the storeroom. That afternoon I went back to the office for more than documents.

When I saw her walk into work in the same black leggings from the day before, I knew that day wasn’t going to end like the others. Not like I thought it would, either.

Four days remained until my father returned. Four nights to decide how to tell him his wife was sleeping in my arms in his own bed.

Under my button-down there’s lace. Under my dress pants, fishnet stockings and garters. My coworkers see Matías. I know who I really am.

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

When she turned off the hallway lights and closed the door, I understood we weren’t going to talk about my record. Something had changed in the office.

I dressed to impress no one, or so I thought. Two guards stopped me with a smile that said they knew exactly who I was.

That morning Rodrigo closed his office door and pulled out a small gold bag. Inside was something that would change the office mornings forever.

As soon as the last classmates left, she went upstairs. She took off her skirt first. Then her blouse. Then everything else.

I’d been watching him cross the hallway for weeks. That afternoon he called me to his office, and something inside me knew everything was about to change.

We had planned Saturday, but she called on Friday: come tonight, I’m anxious. When she opened the door, I could no longer pretend this wasn’t serious.

When the scissors finished their work, the mirror gave him back a gaze that was not quite his own. And the voice he heard in that salon would not leave him alone.

When the camera came on that afternoon, Camila was sitting in her office in a very short skirt, hiding a secret that had no business fitting in that room.

Three weeks after discovering the hidden monitors in my father-in-law’s office, the screen flickered on by itself, just as he was already behind his daughter.

Nadia squeezed my hand before we went in. I thought: either we get fired or we get married. We came out with a wedding date and an urgent desire to celebrate.

Three coworkers invited her to stay behind when the building was empty. Sofía said yes, but on her terms.