Seduction

At the New Year’s dawn, Camila asked for a kiss. What looked like a drunken game ended with a vibrator and a confession kept for twenty years.

When he knocked on my door at midnight, I knew he’d lied to his wife again. And I knew, too, that tonight would be mine alone.

I saw my own face on his phone screen, lost among the hair on his torso, and understood that the afternoon in the sauna hadn’t been as anonymous as I’d thought.

“I’ll help you,” Lorena said before going upstairs to change. When she came down in that fitted skirt, neither of them imagined how far that morning would go.

The first time I entered his office I did it with my head down and a borrowed dress; I left feeling, at last, like myself.

My parents said that neighbor was trouble. I only knew that every time I ran into her in the elevator, I struggled to breathe and didn’t know why.

I wore the red dress with nothing underneath. He walked behind me with his phone on, and every stare that lingered on me ended up saved in his gallery.

She knew exactly what that dress would do; what she didn’t expect was for him to dare whisper it in her ear, right in front of the whole family.

That night I heard a low noise in the hall and pressed myself to a badly drawn curtain. What I didn’t know was that someone barefoot in the garden had been watching me for six minutes.

For months he’d pretended her uniform didn’t affect him. That afternoon, with her thigh bandaged and his hands trembling on her skin, he knew he couldn’t hold back anymore.

My husband had been away all week and I was still carrying the guilt from the last time. Then that man in line smiled at me like he knew everything.

It had been weeks since I’d set foot in her apartment, but that night, with two half-finished beers and her hand sliding up my thigh, I knew my vacation was off to a very good start.

The grocery tab was maxed out, my husband watched TV, and the grocer watched me from across the counter with blue eyes that seemed to strip me naked.

Every time we went back to Grandma’s old house, the same game started all over again: one hand brushing another and nobody watching.

When he slipped his bare foot beneath the tablecloth and brushed my thigh, I knew the boy I’d been ignoring for weeks was going to get what he’d been asking for.

I handed her a blouse one size too small without telling her why. When I heard her muffled cry from the fitting room, I knew I was going in and I wouldn't come out the same.

I’d spent two weeks unable to get my girlfriend’s sister out of my head. That night I went downstairs for water and found her awake, waiting for me.

I never imagined that an ordinary afternoon waiting for my wife to return would end with me seeing through a window what I never should have seen.

I wore my cowgirl hat with no intention of going home alone. I never imagined a stranger would suggest something I’d never dared to try.

I came to a luxury island to rest with my teenage son. I never imagined it would be him who kept me awake that stormy night.