Seduction

Widowed, out of date, and alone, Rodrigo just wanted to blow off steam on a Saturday night. He never expected the stranger at the bar to offer him something he’d never considered.

We’d spent five days giving ourselves over without taboos, but it was that last morning by the water, with her trembling in my arms, when I understood what had really happened.

I’d spent months hiding what I felt for her. Then she asked me for a kiss in front of her fiancé, not knowing it would spark something far more dangerous between us.

As a teenager I used to lock myself away and imagine her breasts and jet-black hair. Thirty years later, her voice on the phone lit me up just like before.

I thought it would be a little innocent peck, just to laugh. But her mouth stayed on mine longer than it should have, and I knew that night we weren’t going to sleep as friends.

She arrived at the house on Saturday at noon, sat down across from us, and before speaking took a deep breath like someone about to leap into the void.

She laughed at my jokes, touched my arm, and I thought I had her in the bag. I never imagined she’d be the one taking control that night in the hotel room.

I crossed my legs slowly until my knee brushed hers in the neighboring seat. She never took her eyes off my thighs, and I knew we wouldn’t finish the movie that night.

Two weeks had passed since the defeat, and she still couldn’t figure out how a skinny, provocative rival had brought her to her knees. Her sister did want to find out.

She arrived at dinner thinking it would be a quiet evening among friends. She had no idea that night would teach her, in a stranger’s arms, everything her body had kept silent for years.

She lowered the blinds, locked the door, and stood behind me. “You just need to relax,” she whispered. What came next wasn’t on any exam.

My aunt lowered her voice as she told me that afternoon at Pilar’s house: the door had been left open on purpose, and she couldn’t look away from what was happening inside.

I hadn’t touched anyone in two years when she answered my message with one question: “when are we meeting?” I never imagined how that night would end.

The Rio girl sat between them like the night belonged to her. “Soft or the kind that break things?” she asked. Neither of them knew what was still waiting to be discovered.

I moved my body a little closer, pretending not to understand the chart, and watched her hands tremble over the papers.

I’d never thought about another woman like that until her white coat brushed my knee and I knew this exam would be unlike any other.

She had never imagined what it would be like to be with a woman. That afternoon, with her blouse half open, she stopped wondering.

We’d talked about swapping partners for weeks, but neither of us imagined that crossing that red-upholstered door would make us forget who belonged to whom.

No one said aloud what was going to happen, but when the clothes began to come off, all four of us knew we wouldn’t return home that night as the same people.

Noelia looked at us over her glass of cava and asked the question no one expected: how did we manage our sex life after so many years together?