Seduction

No one knew my truth. I went to the matches just to watch his legs, until that afternoon he looked up and held my gaze as if he knew everything.

Marisol was sitting on the edge of the bed with the baby at her breast, completely naked, when I pushed the door open. Milk was dripping from her and she didn’t ask me to leave.

We went downstairs following moans and found them. That night I learned by watching what the next day I’d dare to try.

They came home at midnight in short dresses, fishnet stockings, and a perfume that hit me like a punch. In three weeks, my house became something else.

When I sat next to her in that workshop, I had no idea that the sad, discreet woman would end up whispering, naked in her bed, that she had never felt anything like it.

I went out to get some air while he slept. The lights in the apartment across the way were still on, and then I heard a moan that wasn’t mine and knew I was going to keep watching.

By day I signed as Tomás and no one suspected a thing. That folder accidentally opened on my boss’s tablet was going to shatter eighteen months of silence in one blow.

The first time I aimed my sons’ old telescope toward the window across the street, I knew I had become something my husband would never imagine.

Mariana asked me whether I’d ever been curious about kissing another woman. I answered with an impulse that changed what we were forever.

When she asked what it felt like to be with another woman, I told her she’d have to try it herself. I didn’t expect her to stand up and climb onto my lap.

I hit send and left the phone face down. I wasn’t expecting a reply that same night. When he answered, I knew there was no going back.

I crossed the street convinced she wouldn’t recognize me. She smiled at me, and I knew that afternoon something was going to change forever between us.

When I walked into the bathroom and found the flowers and that card, I knew that summer would mark me forever, even though I still had no idea how it would end.

When we turned off the lights and climbed under the same blanket, I never imagined that silly question about kisses would end with her fingers seeking mine in the dark.

In primary school she loved me more than I could love her back. Twenty years later, her voice on the phone sounded the same, and my hands shook.

It was the first time I saw her in person. I meant to tell her about the pool and the lifeguard, but her hand on my thigh changed the conversation before I finished the sentence.

“Don’t rush,” she murmured against the wall. “I want to feel everything you do, slowly, until the whole night feels too short.”

I never said this out loud. This is one of those things: what my cousin planned with me that January, without my realizing it until it was too late.

I got off the bus with my head full of class and my body full of something else. Twenty minutes later I was in a stranger’s car, learning what I’d never dared to ask.

When I walked into the teachers’ lounge, hands wrapped around me from behind and lips slid down my neck. I recognized her perfume instantly.