Strangers

My parents were gone. The afternoon was long and the desire unbearable. When the name 'Valeria_sola' appeared on the list, I knew that day would be different.

It was the first time I went to the transport base to look for him. What I didn’t know was that Rodrigo was already waiting for me with a smile that wasn’t innocent.

There are mornings when my body beats my mind to it. Damp sheets, hips moving on their own—and then I invent you: a stranger who breaks me wide open.

When the masked guide separated me from Mateo at that colonial hacienda, I knew the fantasy we had whispered in the dark was about to become flesh.

She was famous, perfect, and in her fifties. I was the striker of the moment. That night I went up to her suite and learned what it means to play above your league.

I knew it wasn’t sensible. I circled the bridge anyway, climbed down the wall, and found him sleeping exactly where I’d left him.

I went into the game to make friends. I stayed because there were men there who wanted the same thing I did: something real, nameless, and without a future.

Carmen was sleeping naked in the sun while I made the worst and best decision of my life. When she woke and saw the state she was in, she didn’t react as I expected.

When I passed by the bus stop, Don Rodrigo saw me from the bus. What started as a birthday beer ended in a way I never expected.

Rodrigo told me there would be six. I stood up and left. Nine days later I called him back to say I’d thought about it and yes.

I kept his texts in a private folder, rereading them at night with the lights off. I’d been doing it for months before I dared to write him.

Every time she accepted one condition, the next one appeared. By the end of the day, neither of them knew exactly what had happened — but both wanted it again.

Fifty-four years old, suitcase packed, and a week on the coast. She wasn’t looking for anything. But a blue-eyed waiter had a way of looking at her that changed everything.

I walked fifteen minutes to his hotel in the shortest dress I owned. I knew exactly what I was there to do and I didn’t care if it showed.

Her avatar sat down beside mine on that pixelated terrace, and something in her voice made me stay until five in the morning.

Four envelopes of money, four gifts on the table. Valentina knew exactly what she was worth, and that night they were going to prove it.

I never liked him. Never commented. I just read his texts at midnight and wondered if he was thinking of someone like me too.

When the smuggler told us the price, we all looked at one another. It wasn’t jewelry or money. It was us, our bodies, twelve hours a day in front of his cameras.

I went down to the hotel lobby in my pajamas to pick up a package and found him there: a huge man with hands the size of my head and a smile that wasn’t entirely innocent.

The door opened in the middle of the storm and the woman looked us over before making her offer. It was direct: five hundred for everything, paid in advance.