Strangers

I didn’t do it for the money. I did it because I didn’t care about anything. Seeing her happy with another man in that bar triggered a period I should never have lived through.

When we pulled up beside them, the girl was already moving her hips to the song. Mateo had painted nails. That trip wasn’t going to end the way we’d planned.

My grandmother made the decision, as always. I only followed instinct. What happened in that cabin during the storm is still ours alone.

An adult chat was a bad idea at five in the afternoon. But when her name appeared and she said hi in that husky voice, it was already too late to close the window.

The private room was immaculate, and I was kneeling in the center, waiting. Eight men entered in silence. Then I understood what it meant to truly surrender.

When the doctor locked the door, I knew that appointment would be unlike any other. It never was.

My husband had a plan: take me to a shop and let the salesman put his hands on me. There was only one rule: he would pretend not to see a thing.

I was there, champagne bucket in hand, listening to every moan, every creak of the bed. And I couldn't bring myself to walk away.

I went to their apartment hoping for beer and a way to kill time. I left with a sore ass, a mouth tasting of semen, and a smile I couldn’t hide.

She had always been shy, but that afternoon on the beach, naked beneath the sun, something awakened in her that I had never seen before.

We were traveling together but sleeping apart. I was too cowardly to cross that hallway. Until she knocked on my door.

When Diego placed a hand on her back and introduced her as his wife, Lucía felt that word open a door none of the four would close that night.

When Bruno put the cards on the coffee table, I had no idea that game would end with the four of us sprawled across the living room rug.

I thought I knew what I was getting into when I started. But what some clients asked of me, what some of them did, still wakes me up at night.

For three years I read every word he wrote without liking, commenting, or daring to do anything. Then something changed that night when his message appeared.

The first night I swore I’d go home. By the seventh, I couldn’t remember why I’d bought a return flight. This is what happened between those two nights.

They said they were going to celebrate a birthday. What they didn’t say was that the gift was me, up on that dark bus, surrounded by men twice my age.

I traveled alone seeking temples and ended up on a terrace over the river, surrounded by hands that weren’t mine and mouths that knew exactly where to find me.

She burst out laughing, lowered her voice, and looked at me with that satisfied whore’s smile I already knew. I knew she was going to tell me everything she’d kept hidden.

I’ve spent months thinking about it. Three different people fell in a single week at a roadside truck stop. The last was me, and I still can’t explain it.