Seduction

When I was left alone with Marcos, the lifelong neighbor, something shifted between us. He came closer slowly and kissed me without asking permission or forgiveness.

An ordinary man discovered that beneath his wife’s clothes lived another version of himself, ready to emerge when lockdown came.

When she opened the door in that tight dress, I knew that afternoon was going to change everything I thought I knew about myself and my limits.

Soaked clothes clung to their bodies, rain hammered the barn roof, and they had no excuse left to keep their distance. That was how their affair began.

I was alone in my bedroom when I heard the door open. He hadn’t knocked or announced himself. And I was barely dressed.

Daniela slipped a condom into my pocket before she left. I knew I was a virgin, and Marco was too. That afternoon was going to change all that.

Three months alone in Singapore for work, a free Saturday, and a masseur who didn’t ask too many questions. That’s how the afternoon I never planned began.

When I told him I could call someone to keep him company, he went out to buy cigarettes. Thirty minutes later, Sofía came down the stairs in heels.

I had known her for years. That afternoon at the bar, when she came over to greet me, something in her eyes told me it would not end with a simple hug.

The brothers surrounded me in the stable and told me what nobody in town knew. Their sister belonged to everyone. Their father gave the order. And I was eighteen, with my eyes wide open.

I only went to pick up the bra I’d forgotten the night before. Sofía opened the door with that smile, and I knew I wasn’t getting out of there any time soon.

When his mother came down the stairs in that tight dress, Marcos knew that trip to the movies was not going to end the way he expected.

The shop was empty and the boy was young. I’d been imagining that exact moment for days, and I had no intention of wasting it.

I was wearing the wig and heels when I saw someone waiting at the door. It was Germán’s nephew. I froze half a block away, not knowing whether to keep going.

We were lying there naked, still smelling like what we’d just done, when Sofía told me she had something to confess. Something about Elena. Something that would change how I saw her forever.

Diego looked at me before turning off the engine. We both knew what it meant if I invited him up. Even so, I opened the car door.

We slept badly that entire week. We knew what awaited us on Saturday, and that certainty turned every night into an anticipation of something neither of us dared name aloud.

The first time I saw her, her husband was in the next room. The second, her lips were on me. I couldn’t think about another woman for weeks.

I had never gone out dressed for the street before. That Friday I decided it was time: miniskirt, heels, and the year’s most crowded subway car. What happened surpassed anything I had imagined.

When she invited me up to her apartment, I knew I couldn’t say no again. She was almost seventy and I was thirty-six, and that had never mattered so little.