Strangers

I only wanted to watch the sun go down and photograph the sea. Then I heard another bicycle approaching through the sand, and I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end like the others.

I checked the time at half past three when I walked into that empty bathroom. I didn’t lock the door. It was the mistake —or the stroke of luck— that changed forever what I thought I knew about myself.

The arm resting on his abdomen wasn’t his girlfriend’s. It was heavy, warm, male. And Bruno remembered absolutely nothing from the night before.

When I opened my eyes in the steam room, he was already looking at me. And I knew exactly who he was, even though I never thought I’d have him that close.

I left the gym with my body still burning and took the dirt track to smoke in peace. I never expected that black car to stop right behind me.

He took the urinal beside him without thinking. When their eyes met in the mirror, he knew neither of them had come in just to wash their hands.

On a Friday at ten, the gym was nearly empty and a guy who was loading twice what I was on the bench beside me. One look in the mirror was enough to send everything off the rails.

I’d done three thousand meters flat out and all I wanted was hot water on my shoulders. Then he turned under the shower next to me, and I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end like the others.

Iván and Nico walked through the door as if the penthouse already belonged to them, and before they even said hello they had us shoved against the living room wall.

We crossed the black curtain and the darkness swallowed us: only two red lights, the pulse of techno, and a mattress ringed by shadows already waiting for us.

I recognized his devil’s smile leaning on the bar, with the black towel and red harness, and knew that night the whole sauna would witness what was ours.

When the door shut and swallowed the last of the light, there were only the hands, the mouths, and Mateo’s voice saying that night I was his.

When we went in naked and dripping, the three guys soaping themselves stepped aside without a word and left us the center, as if they knew the night still wasn’t over.

We came out of the showers wrapped in short towels, shaking with cold. In the jacuzzi, two strangers were waiting for us, smiling like they had just found dinner.

He had a girlfriend and acted tough, but that night, locked inside the bathroom stall, he was the one who grabbed my neck and asked me to suck him properly.

We lost the game and were walking toward the subway when a high-end car pulled up beside us. The man behind the wheel had a proposition neither of us expected.

It was two in the morning when he agreed to cross my threshold. He only asked for three things, and the third was the one that excited me most: that he could change his mind whenever he wanted.

Andrés kept his card for two days without daring to write. When he finally did, he never imagined that that same night he’d be naked against the wall in his own entryway.

He thought he was alone under the water, until an arm circled his neck from behind and a rough voice whispered in his ear what was already obvious.

I climbed the stairs behind him, breathing in his cologne, not knowing his roommates would come back two hours earlier than expected.