Strangers

I climbed the stairs slowly, knowing he was looking under my dress, and for the first time I didn’t feel ashamed: I felt an overwhelming urge to let him see everything.

Less than a hundred meters from the music and champagne, she spread her legs in the sun without knowing someone was approaching. By the time she saw him, it was too late to close them.

I was twenty-two and had never been with another man. When I pushed open the ajar door to 5B, I knew I wouldn’t leave that night the same man I’d been when I walked in.

“Here we can do whatever we want. Nobody knows us, nobody judges us.” She said it with a glass in her hand, and I knew summer was going to change everything.

When I texted her “do your thing,” she knew exactly what to do with the stranger who would knock on the door at six-thirty that evening.

I had never worn a thong, but that afternoon I decided to break it in in the busiest corner of the market, right where no one could stop staring at me.

They thought the cove was empty. I stayed behind the rock, holding my breath, watching her move on top of him as the sky turned orange.

Two friends leave work, change clothes, and disappear into the night. This time the prey is a drunk boy outside a nightclub, and the deserted cove will see everything.

I opened the door expecting just any old salesperson. What I didn’t expect was to find myself watching her breathing speed up every time my robe slipped a little farther open.

For three weeks I watched before I understood she was watching too. That night she turned her head, smiled at the glass, and I knew she’d been waiting for me for months.

His wife had left him in front of everyone that very afternoon. Now, well past midnight, a pilot he had never seen was smiling in his living room and pouring vodka as if he knew the house.

I’m 55, with a calm husband and dreams that leave my body burning. That night, in a restaurant storeroom, I understood I could no longer keep pretending.

I had half a drink in me and an engagement ring on my finger. When that guy started complimenting me, I knew I was about to do something I’d never talk about.

I love Bruna more than almost anyone. That’s why it’s so hard for me to tell what two strangers did to her that night neither of them will ever forget.

It was my first serious job: door-to-door sales. I never imagined that behind that townhouse there would be a man, a camera, and the afternoon that would change everything.

I had never done anything like that before, but that night the neckline, the music, and two persistent stares pushed me across a line I didn’t want to come back from.

He dismissed the woman who offered to help without a second glance. An hour later, he discovered she was the one deciding whether his career survived.

Everyone suspects what I am from the way I dress, but I never confirm it. It’s my secret, and telling it anonymously turns me on more than anything else.

She went into the fitting room in front of me with seven bikinis. The curtain didn’t quite close, and by the third one she knew I was watching.

Saúl's last message had arrived seven days earlier: “Six o'clock. Don't be late.” And at six on the dot I went upstairs, my pulse in my throat and my body decided before my mind.