Seduction

My roommate was asleep when he knocked with a bouquet of freesias. I opened the door in a sweater and barefoot. That night I promised myself I’d never let another man into my bed.

He left the door open for me. All I had to do was arrive, dress up as Valeria, and forget forever the boy I no longer wanted to be.

When I went into the kitchen she already had the lasagna in the oven and two glasses poured. I pressed her against the marble before she could set the dish down.

The drawer was jammed by a handwritten notebook. Inside were the most intimate pages of a stranger and his eight-year lover.

When I knelt in the sand with the sun beating on my back, I never imagined someone was watching every move from the other side of the crag.

I ordered a piña colada at the beach bar and the waiter brought it with a smile. By day two, I knew his service went far beyond the bar.

The first customer asked for something that wasn’t in my contract. When I got back to the room, Salvador was breathing like he’d been awake for hours.

We started talking by messages. We ended up seeing each other naked under the same red moon, each in our own city, each with the other’s breath on the screen.

Her boyfriend played with his phone a meter away while she left the fitting-room curtain half open and, every time she undressed, checked that I was still there.

I got into the car with my heart in my mouth and told him, almost without thinking, that I finally understood what a woman feels when she’s on her way to give herself up.

When he turned around in that little town store, I thought he was a woman. He wore white jeans, painted nails, and a secret I wouldn’t discover until we were stranded on the road.

I opened the door expecting dinner and found a slight girl with red-painted nails and a smile that said much more than “good evening.”

Her white nightgown with lavender flowers barely covered her thighs, and I knew that night I’d undo it all, button by button, in silence.

I rarely send photos: it’s dangerous. But that boy gave me confidence, and between black stockings and midnight messages I became the star of his hottest fantasy.

I thought the bathroom would be empty. Carolina was standing at the mirror, and her gaze wasn’t surprised: it was the gaze of someone who knew exactly what I had just done.

I thought I’d put her in her place. That afternoon, as I came out of the bathroom, I heard a zipper coming down behind the half-open office door.

That night I put on the skirt, tights, and heels I kept hidden in the wardrobe. I had no idea someone across the hall had been watching.

Caro was six years older than me, with a life that seemed perfect and a secret she meant to take to the grave. That night, she decided she couldn’t take it anymore.