Seduction

I walked barefoot down the hallway and rested my forehead against the bedroom door. I knew he’d come after me. And I knew exactly what he was going to do to me there.

I slipped off my heel beneath the tablecloth and, while he smiled absentmindedly, started reminding him who had control that night.

I accepted without thinking. I read everything he posted. I never liked a single post. Three years later, I still don’t dare write to him, but I think of him every night.

He was twenty-one and had been looking at me for months in a way I pretended not to notice. That night my son went to bed and we were left alone.

Two separated women, an apartment too orderly, and a deck of cards no one should have found that night.

It had been a month since I couldn’t get that corner of Industria out of my head. That night I decided to go back, but this time I wouldn’t be alone.

I was walking alone when Ernesto leaned out of the bus window and called me by name. I should have kept going, but something in his voice stopped me.

I was wandering aimlessly when he lifted his head from a second-floor window and held my gaze as if he knew, before I did, that we’d end up tangled in his sheets.

He asked me for a quickie while I was writing. He came out of the bathroom smelling like him, and I put on the lace stockings. I’m still savoring the rest.

Bruno would take our parents back to the city and I’d stay behind alone. What no one expected was that Sunday lunch would end like that.

He took forever changing. She waited outside. And a group of tourists passed through at exactly the wrong moment.