Strangers

If we ordered beer, we said goodbye. If we ordered wine, we stayed. I never imagined how far that glass she chose without hesitation would take us.

I went upstairs to lock myself away, thinking no one had seen me. I had my fingers between my legs and my eyes closed when I felt the door give way slowly behind me.

A stranger’s hand brushed my waist just before I left the bar. One question in my ear was enough to make me forget my friends and follow that couple home.

I never told my partner. But when I close my eyes, I’m no longer the one in control: someone comes in, holds me down, and my body stops obeying me.

No one knew why I always parked on the same deserted stretch. That afternoon, a runner turned his head toward my window and realized everything.

I knew exactly what I was doing when I put on the gown the wrong way. What I didn’t know was how far that stranger would let himself explore me that afternoon.

I was pregnant, alone, and hotter than I’d ever been; when those two men offered to walk me home, I already knew what I was going to let happen between the three of us.

Sitting in the armchair, the key dangling between her breasts, I knew that night I’d finally watch her give herself to another man while I stayed locked up.

I don’t know your name, but I know what’s waiting for you. I also thought it was love before I learned to obey every one of his orders.

I stared at her from the bar until our eyes met. I didn’t know yet that that night she would call me “sir” and do everything I ordered.

When he crouched in front of me under the rain and asked me to show him my teeth, I knew that man in the black suit wasn't offering me a coin.

She spent her whole life being the strong one, the one who cared for everyone. That afternoon, a stranger told me to get in his car and, for the first time, I stopped deciding.

It started with a red thong and a “put it on, love.” It ended with her smiling from the counter, deciding for both of us how the rest of my life would go.

I'd imagined this day for two years. I never knew a suited man in his fifties, his gaze fixed on mine, would decide what my first time would be like.

She ordered me to get on all fours in the back room and, while her fingers explored me, I realized she had just uncovered something I’d hidden for years.

I’d spent weeks watching her behind the clinic desk. The night her life fell apart, I invited her to my apartment and offered her the one thing she couldn’t refuse.

The bed across from her creaked every dawn to the rhythm of a stranger, and she pretended to sleep while calculating how much she was willing to lose.

She was hungry, cold, and had no reason to trust him. But when he looked her in the eye and offered her a roof over her head, she knew saying yes would change everything.

I arrived trembling at the room, closed the curtains, and undressed following his instructions. I only wanted to be a usable mouth. I had no idea what would come out of it.

We connected for weeks through a screen, but what if none of that spark remained in person? Then I saw him cross the bar, and my body responded before my mind.