Strangers

He was twenty years, two months and fourteen days old when he filled the tank, rode up into the sierra, and pushed open the door of the only open butcher shop in Risca Alta.

I stepped out of the car with my coat open, wearing nothing underneath, and from across the street they started pointing at me. My husband watched from far away, waiting to see which one I’d choose.

I stormed out, my face covered in tears and my heart burning. I never thought a stranger in a cabin could teach me so much in a single afternoon.

I had forty-seven messages from her when I came back to the game, and they all ended with the same screenshot: her avatar on the empty bench, waiting for me at different hours.

Carla went into the isolated festival bathroom desperate for a piss and ended up hypnotized by the pink pubic hair of the stranger peeing in front of her.

I got to the pool early in a bikini that left little to the imagination. I wanted to know if the girl with the flirty smile would dare to go further.

It was after one when he knocked on my door. He lived two blocks away, with his boyfriend, and swore it would only be a quick blowjob. Neither of us kept the promise.

The key fell into the water and the back door jammed. Trapped in a one-meter-square box, handcuffed and half-naked, we discovered something neither of us expected.

They fought over a shitty pizza. He went into the shower. When the delivery guy rang the bell, she’d already decided to settle the score in the worst way.

I went out to clear my head one Saturday afternoon. When I looked up from my coffee, she was already sitting across from me, smiling as if she’d known me all her life.

I thought I already knew what pleasure was until that night, barefoot in the sand, when an unfamiliar hand pushed my hair off my neck.

My friends were strolling past the display windows laughing. I stopped in front of hers and, by the way she looked back at me, I knew that night wasn’t for them.

I told myself it was just curiosity. I uploaded four photos, used my fake name, and waited to see if anyone still looked at me. That same week, Matías appeared.

I went down the bathroom corridor when no one was looking. I heard his voice first, then hers. I didn’t open the door. I stood there, listening to my life break.

I climbed into a van full of foreign guys without thinking twice. My boyfriend would be back from the supermarket in ten minutes. I only needed one.

She was fifty-two, trapped in a lukewarm marriage, and wearing lace stockings for the first time. She didn’t expect the man who would board two stops later.

I came out of the bathroom with my mouth smeared and a new pulse between my legs. She, with my red lipstick on her lips, didn’t know her boyfriend was already watching.

When her fingers brushed mine across the table, I knew that night I was going to recover something my girlfriend had been making me forget little by little.

When I saw his naked body on the blue towel, I knew I wouldn’t leave without fulfilling your dare. I hadn’t touched him yet and he was already starting to react under my gaze.

For two days I had been lowering the curtains to hide what I was doing. That last morning I decided to leave them open, and the woman in uniform stayed planted on the other side of the courtyard.