Oral

“Come at five. We need to talk about Saturday. Alone.” I wrote that to her in the morning, and since then I thought of nothing but hearing her come down the stairs.

I close the storage-room door, change clothes, and turn into someone else. No one on my street suspects what I’m going to do tonight, and that’s exactly what I like most.

I sat on the edge of the dock not looking for anything, but his gaze, the gaze of a man who knows what he wants, undid me before I said a single word.

We always played at being girlfriends in front of everyone, until the heat, the river, and a few beers erased the line between the game and what we really wanted.

I was drying my back when the door flew open. She saw me completely, apologized, and ran out. I never imagined I’d cross paths with her again that same morning.

He had only done his job as a doctor. She walked in unannounced, closed the door, and told him that tonight she hadn’t come to talk about her sick son.

I saw him crack the door open while I was on my knees. I could have stopped. Instead I winked at him and let him keep watching.

We agreed to meet early, when nobody was there yet. What started as another of our texting games ended up being something I couldn’t get out of my head all day.

She had been married for twenty years to a man who prayed before every meal. That afternoon, beneath the park tree, she confessed who she truly missed.

I was alone at the bar, bored and two drinks in, when he sat beside me and looked at me like he already knew everything we were going to do that night.

At three in the morning she was still awake, her head on my arm, waiting for the exact moment I opened my eyes to begin.

In front of the mirror, with my lips painted and my heels on, I didn’t see anyone in disguise: I saw the woman I’ve always wanted to be when I let myself go.

I walked through the bar door in new heels and with my heart in my throat. I had no idea that night someone from my past would walk in.

The first afternoon, I still hadn’t unpacked, and I already knew no one there would take their eyes off us. And the worst part was this: I was starting to like it.

She came to their door soaked by the rain, with no pride and nothing to offer but her body. They looked at her, looked at one another, and she knew everything was beginning again.

I knew Professor Aníbal watched my body every time I said goodbye. That afternoon I walked into his classroom ready to use that look to my advantage, whatever it took.

She came into the maintenance room without warning and caught me without my shirt. That shameless laugh of hers was the beginning of something I took years to admit.

The divorce didn’t break me: it gave me back my breath. That night, with a button-front dress and a poured drink, I let a much younger stranger make me feel alive.

I’d been sleeping with men for five years, and kneeling there again, I did the exact math of how many had gone through my mouth. That night I realized something had broken.

There was one boundary Marisa never crossed, and I had learned to respect it. Until one morning at breakfast, I thought of a way to get around it without hurting her.