Seduction

It’s eleven, I’m alone again, and your last message is still glowing on the screen. I turn off the light, and then my mind —and my hands— decide for me.

A month went by without hearing from him. When he finally wrote, I knew that night I was going to give him something I’d never dared to give before.

The light stayed red, his latest photo stayed on my screen, and my hands had already stopped asking permission. I just had to get home. Or not.

We’d been sharing an apartment for two years, and she had never looked at me like that. That summer afternoon I found out what she was really hiding on her phone when I walked in unannounced.

I thought she wouldn’t come. But the doorbell rang, I looked out the window, and there she was, with that innocent face that had kept me up for years.

That warm stain on my dress changed everything: for the first time I understood what it meant to desire and be desired, and I never wanted to go back.

The first night I only wanted to look. By the third, I could no longer stop my hand. When she turned in the darkness and smiled at me, I knew I was lost.

She had been with Rodrigo for two years and told herself it was only a drink with a coworker. When she stepped into Lautaro’s apartment, she knew there was no going back.

Marcos let me go in first, like a gentleman with a crooked smile. Inside, on some planks, two strangers were looking at me, their hands already at their zippers.

When her cousin came back drunk that night and started telling me details, I realized my wife had only given me half the truth.

I only dress up when I have a date, always in a hotel room, and that night the stranger waiting for me had no idea what he’d find under my dress.

As soon as I heard her keys fighting the lock, I knew I’d have to play it cool. What I didn’t know was that she’d come home determined not to let me off the hook.

That kiss on the cheek turned toward my mouth, and though I didn’t open my lips, I felt his tongue. That was when I knew stopping my own son would cost me more than I admitted.

She stood in front of her bedroom door, holding her breath. One step more and reason would have burned away between us.

I offered to massage her tired feet and, without realizing it, crossed the only line I should never have crossed with her that night.

A single innocent remark from Lucía on the terrace brought every gaze down on us, and Marina’s hand found mine under the table.

I went downstairs for a glass of water at three in the morning. What I found there, with the house silent, should never have happened.

I’d spent two months pretending to go to the office while really wandering aimlessly around Barcelona. That night I dialed the only number that could save me.

She agreed to share her bed just so she wouldn’t lose me. She had no idea how far I was willing to go so I wouldn’t lose her.

He watched me from the armchair while I knelt in front of the stranger I’d picked at the bar. It was my first night being a whore.