Strangers

I arrived at his door trembling, unaware that a cheap dress and plastic heels would change everything I thought I knew about myself that night.

The number wasn’t in my contacts, but the first two lines forced me to read to the end. What came next changed everything I remembered about Saturday.

I went into the bathroom as a man and came out in a minidress and platforms. My girlfriend was waiting in the room with three strangers and a smile that said it all.

She wore a miniskirt, black stockings, and sunglasses that kept me from knowing when she’d caught me watching. Until she stopped pretending and started playing with me.

The receptionist winked at him when he handed over the towel. That gesture was only the beginning: in every room, a different body and a new turn-on waited for him.

I got off the bus hot-headed and tight in my pants. I knew what I was going to the vacant lot for, but not that I’d get fucked three times in a row.

I followed her upstairs with my eyes fixed on her skirt, never imagining that I wouldn’t be the one making the decisions that night.

It was eleven in the morning and the cove was empty, except for a guy pretending not to watch me. My husband was swimming and I could feel his eyes fixed on every inch of my skin.

When my phone buzzes at four in the morning I know it’s him, that no one else wanted him tonight, and that he’ll pay anything if I show up.

I was wearing my favorite dress the day those two men understood, without me saying a word, exactly what I was willing to give them.

When Diego closed the van door and disappeared toward the supermarket lights, I knew I had half an hour to do everything I’d been imagining for months.

When the lights went out on the 22nd floor and I knew we’d be alone with him for hours, I had no idea how far he’d be willing to go.

He met my gaze with the note in my pocket, not yet knowing that that same afternoon I’d dial his number and find out how far his offer went.

When I opened the door and saw the three of them on the landing in their blue coveralls, I knew something was going to break that afternoon, and it wasn’t just the washing machine.

My husband doesn’t need to touch me first. He needs to see how other men look at me without permission, how they falter when I pass. Then he comes, and desire no longer fits in the bed.

At midnight, wearing her shortest miniskirt and a white blouse without a bra, Carolina crossed the garden toward the bricklayers' container.

I want to put on my wig, do my makeup, and surrender to a stranger who has read my stories. One night, no commitments, before it’s too late.

I reached down without thinking, phone in the other hand and her photo filling the screen. I’d never wanted a woman like that before, and she didn’t even know I existed.

I had barely dragged her into the courtyard when she started bleeding. But the wound wasn’t the strangest secret that woman kept beneath my roof.

I was twenty-two, with a curiosity kept under lock and key and the address of a hotel where no one would ask awkward questions. Antonella was waiting with a book in her hand.