Oral

For years he treated other people’s minds without being able to get close to anyone. Then the doll arrived—and with it, the obsession that would consume him.

When my parents left for the village, my uncle Andrés took off his trunks and asked if I minded. I didn’t mind. Not at all.

Roberto humiliated me for years in front of everyone. When the Association offered to train him, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with him.

Valeria was waiting for me in the kitchen in a T-shirt that barely covered her and a smile that no longer belonged to my little sister. I tried not to look. I failed.

Marco thought they were going to the cinema. He had no idea she had planned every detail weeks in advance, including which pocket he kept the key in.

The doorbell rang just as I was starting to get bored of my perfect life. It was him—the neighbor my husband hated—with a clumsy excuse and a gaze that wasn’t clumsy at all.

I’d spent twelve years pretending that what happened in her apartment that afternoon meant nothing. My own wedding’s open bar proved otherwise.

Twenty-two years keeping her composure behind the hotel desk. One guest in red heels was enough to reveal what lay beneath her uniform.

When Ataq explained that Inuit hospitality included sharing wives, my wife and I looked at each other in silence. That night, the heat came from somewhere else.

The fourth round of daiquiris lowered everyone’s defenses, but nobody expected Daniela’s confession to end with all of us tangled up on the living-room rug.

She had just had her first experience with another woman when two strangers appeared through the zipper, and she realized the night was only beginning.

Her anniversary gift was waiting for her on the other side of a hole in the wall. There was only one rule, and it was that I stayed to watch.

I wore a dress that was far too short and the look of someone who had already made up her mind. His door stood ajar, exactly as we had agreed.

Seven years of friendship pretending to feel nothing. That night, between two cars in an alley, we both stopped pretending.

They were my son’s friends. They were twenty years old and looked at me like I was the only thing they wanted in the world. I should have gone upstairs alone. I didn’t.

When I saw my grandmother kissing that man in the hallway mirror, I should have gone back to my room. Instead, I stayed and watched.

Three days had passed since the first time. Three days of imagining him, of feeling the burn every time she closed her eyes. That afternoon the club would be empty.

When the two of us knelt on the rug, it was no longer about the bet. That was the first time I knew what I wanted to do with my body.

When I boarded the ship in Luxor, I thought I was going to rest. Three nights later I was naked on a terrace over the Nile, not knowing which body would take me next.

When I saw him come in with the other two, I knew I wouldn’t hold back that night. My red heels and his gaze were enough to change everything within minutes.