Seduction

I promised him this time would be different. I kept it up for exactly three weeks, until the bar bouncer arrived an hour early.

I’d been crossing paths with him in the water for months without saying a word. That Sunday, when his hands brushed my waist on the ladder, I stopped pretending I didn’t want him.

When I knelt in front of him while he was driving, I knew those last miles of road would stay with me far more than I admitted.

I’d spent weeks holding him off with a smile and a “not yet.” That night, when his hand found mine, I knew I didn’t want to wait anymore.

I put on the red heels, the baby doll, and the wig, placed a random order, and waited for a stranger to knock on my door in the rain.

I found a glass of wine, a black blindfold, and a heated text on the screen. I read it slowly and understood that that night my husband had decided to fulfill his greatest desire.

He ordered me to go into the confessional in my finest lingerie and whisper my sins to the priest. What I didn't expect was for him to decide to punish me.

I wore a white dress for a night with my boyfriend that never came. At 3 a.m., the only one who answered my call was my tenant.

I’d been watching her train for months without daring to do anything. That night she invited me to her place, and I discovered the shy woman from the gym was hiding someone very different.

He was pretending to wait for someone at the entrance when the three of them approached laughing. One asked if he was free that night. I had no idea how far it would all go.

I had watched her through the peephole at exactly 7:15 every morning. What I didn’t know was that she counted my footsteps behind hers whenever she went downstairs.

The first morning I found her in the kitchen almost naked, moving as if I didn’t exist. That’s when I understood her husband’s game had only just begun.

She was forty-two, newly buried in a marriage, and desperate to feel desired again. That night, at the bar, someone was watching her.

I spotted her in the back of the bar and my heart lurched: it was her, the teacher who stole my sleep when I was just a kid. And this time I was no longer that child.

I went looking for a bar job at a roadside club. Three weeks later I was serving drinks in a thong, heels, and a new name: Adriana.

I paid the entrance fee, found the back stall, and thought it would be a minute. Then I heard that deep voice asking if anyone was on the other side of the wall.

I said yes to the game for one night only: a dress, a wig, and a name that wasn’t mine. I never imagined the girl in the mirror would look back as if she’d been waiting for me.

Marcos thought he was in charge of the game. His wife looked at me over her shoulder, let the towel fall, and I understood that she set the only rule.

I told him he’d left a T-shirt behind just to get him to my table. What he found that night bore no resemblance to the wife he left.

She came over to ask about the printer and ended up staring at the screen with a question on her lips that changed everything between us.