Strangers

She crossed her legs, looked at me over the book, and I knew that woman hadn’t asked permission for anything in years. The dead hour of the metro turned into something else.

She hiked up her dress, smiled at me, and started touching herself for the trucker driving alongside us. It was only the beginning of a trip I would never forget.

A hundred and fifty meters from my umbrella, she was stroking him without hiding it. I knew I’d go back through the dunes so I wouldn’t miss a thing that came next.

For months I’d imagined it: a black dress, heels shining under the lights, and me standing on a corner, in plain view of everyone passing by.

I told you the trip started at four in the morning. I didn’t tell you half the pleasure would come from who watched us along the way.

When my friend opened the bag, there was no uniform at all—just wings, a garter belt, and fishnet stockings. And the trailer was already waiting to set off.

I painted my lips against the trunk, convinced I was alone. Then I heard the crackle of leaves and knew someone had been watching me for a while.

I close the storage-room door, change clothes, and turn into someone else. No one on my street suspects what I’m going to do tonight, and that’s exactly what I like most.

I’d been married for seven years and had never looked at another man. Until my husband took my hand and confessed what he really wanted.

I sat on the edge of the dock not looking for anything, but his gaze, the gaze of a man who knows what he wants, undid me before I said a single word.

I was drying my back when the door flew open. She saw me completely, apologized, and ran out. I never imagined I’d cross paths with her again that same morning.

I signed my resignation without looking back. That night would be the last fuck of my life as a man, and I meant to enjoy it before becoming who Carla had always wanted.

For years she told him no to one thing only. One betrayal and one night with the wrong man were enough to change her mind forever.

I was alone at the bar, bored and two drinks in, when he sat beside me and looked at me like he already knew everything we were going to do that night.

I’d gone weeks without going out and the fire was eating me alive. That night I put on the wig, opened my coat at the fence, and let the street decide for me.

Her anger made her get out of the car on the highway. What she didn’t imagine was that she’d end the night in the cab of a truck driver she’d just met.

I crossed half of Spain to leave that afternoon by the pool behind, but the music and a stranger dragged me into repeating what I swore I’d never feel again.

Three nights of messages with a stranger, and when he asked if I was alone, I decided to tell him the truth about myself just before giving him my address.

I put on the red heels, the baby doll, and the wig, placed a random order, and waited for a stranger to knock on my door in the rain.

I had never been with anyone like him. When he opened the door and I had to look up at his face, I knew that night would no longer belong to me.