Strangers

It was six in the morning and he was looking at me in the rearview mirror as if he already knew what I was going to let happen. This really happened, and I regret nothing.

A car braked beside me and asked my price. I was thirty-seven, a lawyer, and for once I decided not to say no to the madness.

Fresh out of the shower, I looked in the mirror and realized I couldn’t keep waiting. I took a sheet of paper and started writing down everything I’d wanted for years and never dared to do.

My friend promised me a wild costume night. I put on the sexiest outfit in the sex shop and headed out, not imagining what was waiting for me at that bar.

I always told myself my slip-ups were the alcohol’s fault. That morning, sober and in broad daylight, I knew I had been lying to myself.

I swear this is a real story, one you don’t tell out loud. She appeared from the hedges almost naked, asked me for a light, and everything else just happened.

The hum of the air conditioner was the soundtrack to her golden cage. That night, a blown tire left her before three strangers and on the edge of what she had never allowed herself to want.

I never promised you more than I gave you, and maybe that’s why you came back. This is the story of the woman I never truly got to know.

I walk between the lockers with a towel over my shoulder and I feel every gaze. They pretend not to look, but their bodies answer me before their words do.

He insisted so much on walking me to the entrance that I ended up inviting him up. At eight in the morning, his phone rang and everything I believed changed in an instant.

When I got into the car and saw that man in the front seat, I had no idea my lover had brought me there to hand me over to someone else.

It took me two weeks to admit I wanted it to happen again. And one dawn, instead of running away, I sat on that stair and waited for them.

That early morning I lost my money, my underwear, and the idea I had of myself. What happened afterward in that empty park I had never told anyone.

When the elevator door opened and I saw the apartment door ajar, I knew there would be no rules this time. And part of me had been craving that for days.

He slipped a little note into my hand when he took the plate away. I read it in the room: it was his number. And I knew I wouldn’t be alone that night.

I’ve never done it, but I know every detail: the café, the elevator, his hands. This is the fantasy that repeats itself and that I never dare say out loud.

I thought the picnic area would be empty in that rain. Then she appeared, asked for a light, and two hours later let her dress slide to the floor.

I was furious, trembling, with an almost empty bottle beside me. I dialed his number at three in the morning just to hear him breathe on the other end.

At six in the morning, with a plate of tacos in my hand, I decided to sit at the table of two strangers who had been watching me for a while.

He shut the room door with all my clothes in his hands and left me on my knees, naked, with one order: “I’ll wait for you in the car.”