Party

For weeks I’d been imagining a night like that, without names or promises. What I didn’t imagine was that he’d be watching me from the bar like he already knew everything.

They said the night was just getting started and that their flat was two streets away. Neither of us said no, and that changed everything between us.

I’d spent hours searching for a spark in other people’s eyes and found nothing. Until I decided to cross the room and put the whole game in his hands.

He came in uninvited, wearing a smile that promised pleasure and hid hunger. That night, every body he touched stopped being theirs forever.

I went upstairs to lock myself away, thinking no one had seen me. I had my fingers between my legs and my eyes closed when I felt the door give way slowly behind me.

I told him I wasn’t going out that night. Then he knocked on my door holding a pink dress and that smile that already knew he was going to win me over.

I thought I was going to beg her to keep my secret. I never imagined that when she came back into the living room, she’d be holding a crop and wearing high heels.

I thought I was only going to have some fun and make a little money. I never imagined that night, between blows and caresses, I’d find exactly what my body had been crying out for.

I was the serious guy in the suit and SUV. All it took was for a woman to challenge me with her eyes for the animal inside me to wake up, and that village fair set him loose for good.

I came back from the bar with a beer in hand and saw her dancing with him. Nothing happened… or did it? The question lodged itself in me and, to my shame, it turned me on too.

He was my best friend, my confidant. That night at the fair, between wine and laughter, his hand on my waist ignited something I had never felt for him.

My friend promised me a wild costume night. I put on the sexiest outfit in the sex shop and headed out, not imagining what was waiting for me at that bar.

From the dance floor we were already sneaking our hands to each other; what we didn’t finish in the car, we continued in my room, unhurried and unclothed.

When they carried him to bed asleep, I knew that night wouldn’t end like the others. And I regret nothing that happened after.

We’d been neighbors for years and barely exchanged a hallway hello. That night, when I put my sweater over her shoulders, I knew we were done pretending.

My sister was abroad and I had to attend in her place. When my nephew demanded his gift in front of his friends, I knew I wouldn’t go home the same.

I hid on the locker-room mezzanine with Bruno pressed against my back. Below, my mother and her friend were undressing among the workers, and I couldn’t look away.

I was furious, trembling, with an almost empty bottle beside me. I dialed his number at three in the morning just to hear him breathe on the other end.

At six in the morning, with a plate of tacos in my hand, I decided to sit at the table of two strangers who had been watching me for a while.

When he had us go up on the stage and people started betting on what we were wearing under our dresses, I knew the luxury party was no longer normal.