Oral

When my husband shut the door at three and found me in the kitchen with tea between my fingers and black lace clinging to my body, I knew he wouldn’t stay silent.

Four envelopes of money, four gifts on the table. Valentina knew exactly what she was worth, and that night they were going to prove it.

Marcos told her it would be a different night. What Laura didn’t know was that her friends were going to bet chips to win favors from her.

I got to the door first. I leaned against the wood with my eyes closed, and when I heard him coming down the hallway, I knew that night we’d do it in silence.

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 I covered her with the blanket and my hand brushed the curve of her hip, I knew it would take me a long time to pull it away.

When I saw his name on the screen, my stomach clenched. Two weeks remembering his mouth and his hands, and there he was again, as if nothing had happened.

When the smuggler told us the price, we all looked at one another. It wasn’t jewelry or money. It was us, our bodies, twelve hours a day in front of his cameras.

Marcos arrived under the pretense of divorce. The moment Mateo’s parents left, he took off his swimsuit and asked whether his nephew minded.

Three weeks keeping the secret. When I knelt behind the lattice and heard his voice, I knew I had to tell him everything, down to the last detail of the sin.

I went down to the hotel lobby in my pajamas to pick up a package and found him there: a huge man with hands the size of my head and a smile that wasn’t entirely innocent.

He was carrying a confession he had never told anyone. So was she. That rainy night, with hot chocolate in their hands, they told each other everything.

The door opened in the middle of the storm and the woman looked us over before making her offer. It was direct: five hundred for everything, paid in advance.

She opened the door with the baby in her arms and a smile that said more than it should. I was only going for coffee.

Valeria sent me a lingerie photo before he arrived. Just wanted to warn you, she wrote. I stayed at the window, staring at her door.

I crossed the bar with trembling legs, took his face in my hands, and kissed him without saying a word. What came after can’t be told in daylight.

After two hours of staring at the ceiling, I decided I wasn’t going to keep waiting. I moved in behind her and started where the process always ends.

The water poured over us and I was on my knees. Those three days taught me that there are pleasures you can’t repress no matter how hard you try.

Valeria walked into the bathroom with her backpack and came out in a white blazer with that smile she never lost. What followed, I never forgot.

There were seven women in that apartment, the wine had done its work, and Camila started talking. None of us expected what she confessed that night.