Seduction

I walk between the lockers with a towel over my shoulder and I feel every gaze. They pretend not to look, but their bodies answer me before their words do.

I always knew my mother was different from the others, but not until that dawn did I understand how different — or how far I was willing to go.

He insisted on walking me all the way to the entrance that I ended up inviting him up. At eight in the morning his phone rang and everything I believed changed in an instant.

When I got into the car and saw that man in the front seat, I never imagined my lover had brought me there to hand me over to someone else.

It took me two weeks to admit I wanted it to happen again. And one dawn, instead of running away, I sat on that stair and waited for them.

When I felt his body against my back in the kitchen, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist. What I didn’t know was that my husband had planned it all.

I opened the door wrapped in a towel, still wet, convinced it was a package. It was him, with flowers in one hand and a smile that promised nothing innocent.

I’m not telling this to ease my conscience, but to confess how far I was willing to go that afternoon, with him asleep on the table and her only feet away.

That night I lost my money, my underwear, and the idea I had of myself. What happened afterward in that empty park is something I had never told anyone.

We’d been neighbors for years and barely exchanged a hallway hello. That night, when I put my sweater over her shoulders, I knew we were done pretending.

It began as an academic interest in the brightest student in the group. What ended up happening in my office is still hard for me to put into words.

I picked up the fork she had dropped and, bending under the table, discovered something none of the adults suspected. That night everything changed.

I let my guard down the moment he walked into the stall. I hadn’t come looking for any of it, but his voice ordered me to kneel, and I no longer knew how to say no.

I waited for the doors to close. Diego was already kissing his girlfriend without a care, and her sister kept glancing at me, biting her lip, not knowing what to do with her hands.

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 scrap of paper into my hand as he cleared the plate. 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 all of that stops mattering. 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 and that I never dare say out loud.