Seduction

At forty-eight, in a Miami bar, my best friend grabbed me by the neck and kissed me. It was my first time with a woman, and I knew I could never go back.

She was my assistant at the office, an impossible beauty who kept stealing my gaze. One night, over chat, I discovered everything her tight clothes had been hiding from me for weeks.

I arrived at the square expecting a polite coffee with the woman who taught me to read poems at seventeen. What happened next wasn’t in any book.

When I reached the clearing, Iker was already waiting, leaning against the rock, with that nervous smile he only ever gave me when we were alone.

When my phone buzzes at four in the morning I know it’s him, that no one else wanted him tonight, and that he’ll pay anything if I show up.

I was wearing my favorite dress the day those two men understood, without me saying a word, exactly what I was willing to give them.

When Diego closed the van door and disappeared toward the supermarket lights, I knew I had half an hour to do everything I’d been imagining for months.

When the lights went out on the 22nd floor and I knew we’d be alone with him for hours, I had no idea how far he’d be willing to go.

He met my gaze with the note in my pocket, not yet knowing that that same afternoon I’d dial his number and find out how far his offer went.

I thought the party was over when I closed the door. But she was still barefoot on my sofa, glass on her knee and another box in her hands.

I met her through pixels and long-distance promises. She never knew that every night, alone in my hotel room by the sea, I imagined her beside me.

The phone rang just as he walked through the door. It was my boyfriend. I couldn’t hang up. And my ex wasn’t about to wait for me to finish the call.

I thought we were only going up to the pine grove to eat omelet and drink red wine. I never imagined my cousin would ask me to touch her among the trees that afternoon.

Diego always turned me on and I avoided him because of my boyfriend. Until that afternoon he took me to the gym sauna and I realized I couldn't keep lying to myself.

I thought it was a secret date with my girlfriend’s cousin. What I didn’t know was that the phone beside the bed was streaming everything live.

I met him at an awards show neither of us wanted to be at. I gave him a light in the back hallway and, without knowing it, I gave him everything else too.

My friend finished his last drink, looked at me from the armchair, and began to tell me why he had left his wife one June morning without warning.

Lucía was the most proper girl in the school crowd. That night I saw her walk into the birthday party in a miniskirt and realized the Sunday-Mass girl was gone.

When I asked my ex for a favor, he thought I wanted sex. What I asked for was much worse: help destroying my best friend’s marriage.

On the curve where the trees formed a tunnel of light, I reached out and laid my hand on hers. No words were needed: none were needed to say yes, that I wanted to try.