Seduction

When he arrived that night, I was already on the other side of the glass with the lights off, watching her greet him with a smile she had never shown me.

When the whiskey spilled on my pink dress, I knew that wedding wouldn’t end the way I thought. I didn’t know the bride’s uncle would be waiting for me in the darkest hallway.

I’d been trying for years to get her to give in again. That afternoon, between joints and caresses on the couch, she sat up and kissed me like before.

That morning, her husband left on patrol without looking at her. By nine, she had already chosen the clothes she would wear to open the door to another man.

I came out of the shower wrapped in a towel, knowing my father was alone. That night I wanted to see how far he’d dare go without alcohol.

When I moved her panties aside to tend her wound, I thought she’d protest. But she only pressed her face into the pillow and opened her legs a little wider.

I went down to the garage ready to cry alone, but the hand that tapped my car window that night wasn’t bringing comfort: it was bringing an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Everyone in the neighborhood wanted her, but that birthday afternoon she discovered just how far she was willing to go to be the center of her own family again.

For weeks I’d been pretending everything was fine, until that night a man looked at me the way my husband had stopped looking at me, and I chose not to resist.

The dress hugged my body, the stockings brushed me with every step, and when that man held out his hand to dance, I knew I wouldn’t be going home the same.

When he opened his shirt and I felt his cologne fill the kitchen, I knew that breakfast with my nephew wasn’t going to end with a quiet coffee.

I only knew Beatriz because she was my wife’s friend. One night she came down to the kitchen with an unexpected proposal.

I arrived thinking we’d drink beer and celebrate his promotion. Carla opened the door in a tiny skirt and a sheer blouse. Damián still hadn’t arrived.

I crossed the living room to get a glass of water, forgetting the curtains were still open. On the other side of the glass, his eyes had already found me.

My boyfriend was snoring like a log in the back room when she came up to me. Her southern accent and those black eyes told me everything before her hands did.

I looked in the mirror with my wig on and my sheer dress, and I knew that night I was going to let a stranger do everything to me I’d been imagining for weeks.

I was forty-four, had two daughters, and a recent divorce when the girl from across the street looked at me differently and said what I didn’t dare think.

Carolina said she was bored of men. But when I dropped my pants beside her pool, her eyes never left me for a second.

When he got into the car and smiled at me, I knew we weren’t going to make it anywhere decent that night. It had to be ours, even if it was only on a dirt road among almond trees.

It was six in the morning and the bar was empty. He poured me a tequila, looked at me the way he’d been looking all night, and told me he wouldn’t let me leave that fast.