Seduction

I heard him pull up in the driveway and I didn’t cover myself. I spread my legs on the sofa, moved my thong aside, and started touching myself before he even came in.

I’m not the kind of girl who sleeps with strangers in a club bathroom. Or I wasn’t. That night in Barcelona, a short skirt and a mistake changed everything.

I crossed the palace threshold wearing a golden mask and with my heart racing. That night, masked hands awaited me while he watched from the shadows.

When I woke on the wet stone and saw her slipping off her swimsuit, I knew that blow to the head had taken me somewhere I’d never come back from the same.

My cousin had gone to the beach with her friends. When I rang the bell, my aunt opened the door wearing her apron and a smile I’d never seen before.

When Marcos closed the apartment door and asked whether they were going to sleep with their “new partner,” the four of them fell silent and said everything.

I wanted him from my first lovers and never dared to tell him. That afternoon, in front of his camera, I discovered my brother had been holding the same thing back for years.

He showed up at the door unannounced, looking for a fight and carrying a bottle under his arm. By three in the morning, nothing I knew about him was true anymore.

When the car wash brushes erased the world outside, my sister leaned over the seat, moved my hair from my forehead, and whispered something I could no longer ignore.

I’d been in a coma for a month when a warm hand slipped under the sheet in the dead of night. Only when I opened my eyes did I learn who had decided to wake me.

At two in the morning I went downstairs barefoot for a glass of water and heard them arguing in low voices about me, with that married-couple tone.

I came home early with the image of my freshly showered sister-in-law Renata stuck in my head. An hour later, she knocked on my door wrapped in a robe.

When Lucía came out of the water and looked at them from the shore, they both knew that afternoon wasn’t going to end in their sun loungers.

I’ve spent years thinking about that moment: Valeria in the empty classroom, her finger pointing at my crotch and that smile promising everything that never happened.

I went to his house thinking I was doing a good deed. I found my photos on his phone, and what I did next I haven’t told anyone until today.

Nine months of failed independence sent her back to her father’s house, to Carmen’s rules and Marcos’s gaze, which from day one made her feel things she shouldn’t.

I went to that party alone, thinking I’d dance for a while and forget. I never expected Diego or what came after to change my night completely.

She wore fishnet stockings and a black skirt. I stood two meters away playing the stranger while he devoured her with his eyes from the floor.

The moment he shut the taxi door, his hands were already under my blouse. What came next the driver watched from the mirror, not missing a thing.

I had waited months for that Saturday. High heels, lace lingerie, the estate all to myself. No one was supposed to see me. Then Roberto from the estate across the way arrived.