Seduction

He told me to go upstairs and get myself ready just for him. That night, I was finally going to win the respect of all the girls in the house.

I sat in the passenger seat just out of curiosity, but that night I learned some decisions are made without thinking too much.

When I realized I didn’t have my wallet or my phone, the taxi was already too far. And the driver started looking at me differently through the mirror.

I picked the emptiest screening to be alone with my exhaustion—until she crossed the theater and sat two seats to my right with a smile that promised trouble.

He opened the door in jeans only and I knew we weren’t going to watch any movie. I looked him up and down and my mouth watered.

I was forty-one and had spent months pretending nothing was happening every time he looked at me. That dawn, I stopped pretending.

He stopped the car in front of the building with shaking hands. She was waiting behind the window, and both of them knew that glass of wine was only the beginning.

By day he was the atelier’s perfect assistant; by night he tried on lace in front of the mirror. One photo was enough for someone to discover who he really was.

My friendship with that rough but good-hearted old man took a turn one afternoon over wine, in a lost village, when he whispered what he planned to do with me.

I was always the pretty, skinny green-eyed boy. Until I walked into a gym and someone looked at me like no one ever had before.

She climbed the ladder in front of me, wearing nothing under her nightgown, and I knew I wasn’t leaving that house the same man.

I waxed everything, put on the blonde wig, and crossed the province with my backpack full of hope. What I didn’t pack was a shielded heart, and that was my mistake.

I spent weeks thinking about her every night, until that dinner ended in the car seat, with her hand finding what I could barely hide.

Every night a different car arrived at the house across the street and the lights went out, all but one. That night I went to the window—and couldn’t stop looking.

When I started teasing Diego inside the tent, Camila had her eyes closed. But her hand was already moving under the sleeping bag, and I knew she wasn’t asleep at all.

I’d been in a five-year drought, and my husband had just proposed a threesome in which he’d take part dressed as a woman. The wild part: I already knew who to invite.

That afternoon his mother wasn’t home and he had a surprise ready. I still didn’t know those minutes would awaken a taste I never let go of.

I’d been running into her in the garage for weeks with that smile. The day she pressed against me in the elevator, I knew it wouldn’t stay a neighborly hello.

I only wanted to breathe away from the smoke and the jokes. I never imagined I’d watch, from the back seat of my own car, what that stranger dared to do to my wife.

I went into that gray office ready to beg for a document. I came out knowing that night the one begging would be him, on his knees in his own home.