Siblings

I found an old photo tucked away in a drawer, and all at once I knew exactly what I wanted to ask each of them for that vacation.

I woke up not knowing how I would ever justify what they forced me to do that night, or how I could look the man I still loved in the eyes.

Every Sunday, when she left, I opened her wardrobe and became someone else in front of the mirror. That afternoon she forgot her keys and came back early.

Everyone in the neighborhood wanted her, but that birthday afternoon she discovered just how far she was willing to go to be the center of her own family again.

I needed company. Without thinking, I asked him if he wanted to get in with me. What happened next changed everything I thought I knew about myself and my friends.

When I saw them come out of the elevator together, I knew that afternoon was going to be very different from all the others I’d had with him.

I went downstairs for ice and he shut the door behind me. With the party going on outside, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop him even if I wanted to.

Bruno was waiting at the door with a bouquet of roses and a smile that was not a brother’s. The apartment still smelled like paint, and we had the whole afternoon to break it in.

The music was playing far away, the family was toasting downstairs, and I was still sitting on the bed, not understanding when his kisses had stopped being a game.

He opened the door barely dressed, with that smile that was no longer the polite client’s smile, and I understood from the very first minute that this call wasn’t ending with a drain gasket.

I found her in the patio staring at me with wide eyes. She was wearing my thong and my black miniskirt. She didn’t scream. She just smiled and said she’d always wanted a little sister.

That afternoon I found one of his movies. That night he came back drunk, opened my bedroom door, and I knew something was going to break forever.

They came down to the kitchen with serious looks on their faces. I thought it was over. What they said next turned that night into something none of us could undo.

We were having dinner like any other Sunday when my father dropped the line. Three hours later, my brother and I were closing the door to their bedroom, not knowing what we’d be by morning.

We’d been kissing in secret for four years like two hidden lovers. When our aunt and uncle closed the door on the way to the airport, I knew there would be no turning back that night.

It was Thursday, Mom’s day, but my stepsister dragged me into the shower before breakfast. The harem rules they invented were starting to break again.

I left the keys on the table without making a sound. Faint light came from my brother’s room and, before I even looked in, I knew that night was going to change everything between the three of us.

When the camera came on that afternoon, Camila was sitting in her office in a very short skirt, hiding a secret that had no business fitting in that room.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about crossing that hallway, but it was the first time my feet moved before my head did. The whole house was asleep and I wasn’t.

I’d been Camila’s boyfriend for two years. That night, her sister Antonella turned eighteen, and I understood that nothing in that house was forbidden.