Seduction

We were alone that March siesta, and she was still in her uniform. I don’t know how we went from tickling on the sofa to something else.

I thought the dark of the movie theater would distract me from how badly things had gone with her. I didn’t count on that same man who’d surprised us months earlier washing his hands beside me.

I saw the bus driver watching us in the rearview mirror and, instead of covering up, I let him pull down my top. At three in the morning, my ex and I were a free show.

I was the invisible director of a forbidden play: I watched my wife transform before the painter, knowing I was spying on her from behind the camera.

The beer had made us affectionate and the terrace seemed empty. Until I saw the flash of binoculars trained on us from the hill.

I came back from months in Patagonia and found her sitting in the kitchen at one in the morning, glass in hand, with that look that promised a fight.

The shop was empty at three in the afternoon. When he pulled the shutter down and led me to the fitting room, I knew that siesta wouldn’t be like any other.

I got out of the car just to pick up a package, and there he was—the skinny boy who used to watch me in a bikini—now a man, looking at me like he still had a thousand questions.

When I looked up from the grass, two headlights went out thirty meters away. Inside the car, a motionless shadow kept watching us.

When I saw her walk into work in the same black leggings from the day before, I knew that day wasn’t going to end like the others. Not like I thought it would, either.

I had never really noticed another man until his eyes met mine in that bar. Three drinks later I was in his apartment, not knowing what to do with my hands.

I booked the room three weeks early. When she bit her lip on the second-floor landing, I knew there was no going back for either of us.

I was half asleep, my nightgown hiked to my waist, when I saw the silhouette of the man leaning into my window in the vanity mirror.

When I went up to the library to fetch some files, I didn’t expect my stepbrother’s hands on my waist as if he had every right to touch me.

I reached the northern hotel expecting to rest before work. That night, sitting across from him in a robe, I knew we wouldn’t sleep until dawn.

When I bent down to pick up a magazine from the lowest shelf, I felt the cold air rush between my legs. Three pairs of eyes rose at once. I didn’t pull down my skirt.

Whenever I enter a fitting room, I leave the curtain slightly open. The woman watching never knows I’m looking for her—and almost always, one of them plays along.

I went in naked and walked among bodies without knowing what I was looking for. When I climbed into the hammock with a glass of wine, a forty-year-old man settled beside me and asked if I minded.

I asked her to palpate the muscles in my neck to study anatomy. I didn’t expect her to end the lesson by turning my face and kissing me as if she’d been wanting it for years.

I was sitting in the round sofa in the back, my legs crossed and my glass half empty, when I saw the curly-haired guy set down his drink and walk straight toward me.