Seduction

We went up to hang the laundry under any pretext. Among the water tanks on the rooftop, I discovered she was as impatient as I was to stop pretending.

I heard him on the phone say, “This old lady is ready.” I should have been offended. Instead, I felt myself get soaked right there against the bar.

He slipped a little note into my hand when he took the plate away. I read it in the room: it was his number. And I knew I wouldn’t be alone that night.

It started with a message about one of my stories. It ended with me in bed, in the dark, obeying every thing she wrote from the other side of the screen.

I don’t lie about my age or about the gym, but in that reclining chair none of it matters. All that’s left is the soft pressure of her body against mine.

I’ve never done it, but I know every detail: the café, the elevator, his hands. This is the fantasy that repeats itself and that I never dare say out loud.

She’d go up to her room, open the closet, and change knowing we were watching from the street. I was the youngest in the group, but I was the first to go through her door.

I’d sworn her virginity was nonnegotiable. That morning, in the apartment a friend lent me, she showed me just how far she was willing to go.

I was sixty and my marriage was asleep when I noticed the boy next door spying on me through the hedges. I didn’t cover up. I played along.

I had seen him only once and couldn’t forget his body. When I learned he was looking for me too, I waited for my mother to go to work and let him in.

I thought the picnic area would be empty in that rain. Then she appeared, asked for a light, and two hours later let her dress slide to the floor.

I knew he had wanted me for months, and I wasn’t going to stop until I had him in my bed. What I didn’t count on was who would catch us afterward.

I thought I was alone among the hanging laundry. Then a voice behind me asked if I liked her panties, and I knew there was no turning back.

I only meant to be nice and carry her grocery bags up to her apartment. She offered me a soda, changed clothes, and left her bedroom door ajar.

I kept it to myself for over a decade. It all started with a pair of white stockings and ended in a car at two in the morning, with the last person I should’ve gotten involved with.

It began with a twisted ankle on the court and ended many weeks later, one night when her house was empty and there was no longer any reason to hold back.

I wanted to surprise him in the shower, like every afternoon. I slipped naked behind that broad back and, when it started to turn, I realized it wasn’t my boyfriend.

I went looking for Bryan, but it was Andrés who stopped me in the street, grabbed me without shame, and set a date for the next day. I already knew what would happen and did nothing to stop it.

I was furious, trembling, with an almost empty bottle beside me. I dialed his number at three in the morning just to hear him breathe on the other end.

I had gotten used to being looked at, but that afternoon, alone at the waterfall, I decided I wouldn’t cover up this time when I found him hiding among the trees.