Office

Thirty candidates, a rector with too much power, and me at thirty-eight with all the experience in the world. I thought I could handle it. I was half right.

Valeria didn’t want expensive gifts. She wanted to be the main course of a night where everyone bet on her and her husband watched with pride.

The wig, the dress, and the heels were in my desk drawer. My boss had known for months. And that changed everything between us.

My heels were killing me when Andrés leaned over the counter and whispered that the conference room would be empty all night.

For two years I ignored my boss’s stares and his wife’s silent insults. That afternoon, when the last employee turned off the lights, I stopped ignoring everything.

Four years in the same office without knowing who we were to each other. The day we found out, everything changed.

Valentina showed up in the red dress and smiled when she saw the blackjack tables. That night was the highest bet in her husband’s private casino.

My boss’s wife called me a bitch in her private messages. If she thought it was true, that afternoon I was going to prove her right.

When she locked her office door and looked at me like that, I knew the document boxes were just an excuse for what was coming next.

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

Rodrigo watched my ass in the office every day without daring to do anything. Until I read what his wife thought of me and decided she was right.

I’d been putting up with his looks in the office for months. The day I read his private messages, I made a decision his wife should never have provoked.

When she shouted my name in the parking lot so everyone could hear, I knew the whole week of office tension was about to explode.

When I went into the truck to check the pallets, he climbed in behind me. No one else was in the warehouse. And we both knew exactly what was about to happen.

We had spent two years sitting across from each other without knowing we were both keeping the same secret: a parallel life full of desires no one would have guessed.

Three coworkers invited her to stay after ten. They didn’t know Camila had her own rules for nights like that.

When she shouted my name in front of everyone and told me to drive her home, I knew Sunday wouldn’t end with a simple goodbye in the parking lot.

Her perfume was still following me when I opened the card in the taxi. An address in Recoleta. The door will be unlocked, she had told me.

As soon as we left the parking lot, she slipped her hand down and closed her eyes. I looked for a dead-end road. We’d spent a whole week unable to touch each other.