Seduction

Her white T-shirt soaked with sweat, her nipples pressing through the fabric, and the question thrown between two glasses of wine: is what they say about you and Lucía true?

I went barefoot down to the bathroom and the half-open door let me see him in the shower. What happened that night on the living-room mattress was my first time with another man.

We went up to her room with our hearts racing, knowing her parents were asleep on the other side of the hallway and that any noise could ruin everything.

I came out of the bathroom with my mouth smeared and a new pulse between my legs. She, with my red lipstick on her lips, didn’t know her boyfriend was already watching.

He was forty, with rough hands and a mustache I’d never liked. Until I found him lying in the bed in my son’s empty room.

The phone rang, I said I was going running, and drove to his house. When I came back to my block, the sirens were already waiting for me.

I turned off my bedroom light so I could watch him better without being seen. One dawn he turned toward my window, smiled, and I knew I’d never been the only one watching.

I used to go downstairs to comfort her when she cried. What I didn’t know was that her tears would lead me to her neck, her skin, and the realization that I wanted her differently.

When she took off her dress in the middle of the clearing, her huge belly under the sun and her son’s three friends staring at her, I knew that afternoon wasn’t going to be a bike ride.

At three in the morning, I asked her to open the tent door. I never thought she’d say yes—or imagined what would happen afterward on the beach.

I recognized her the moment she crossed the threshold. That twenty-three-year-old girl had been undressing for me on screen for months and didn’t even know it.

Years had passed since I’d last seen her. When she sat across from me at that bar and placed her hand on my thigh, I knew the night wouldn’t end as my cousin imagined.

Camila was waiting for me seated on the edge of the bed, and I didn’t know where to put my hands. I only knew that night I was going to learn something no man had ever taught me.

She was 20 and had never had a real orgasm. That sticky January night, with half a bottle of rosé, my French cousin decided it was time.

When she got out of the car and every man in the ballroom turned his head, I understood that my wife wasn’t mine that night: she belonged to whoever dared look at her.

When the hallway lights went out, the moans started on the other side of the wall, and I knew I’d never forget that week at my aunt’s house.

When her fingers brushed mine across the table, I knew that night I was going to recover something my girlfriend had been making me forget little by little.

When the referee blew the final whistle, I knew there was no turning back: I’d have to pay up on the bet in front of my friend, right at the bar.

When I saw his naked body on the blue towel, I knew I wouldn’t leave without fulfilling your dare. I hadn’t touched him yet and he was already starting to react under my gaze.

My husband spent the day at his conference while I melted away alone by the pool. When the waiter asked if I wanted something, I knew exactly what I was going to ask for that afternoon.