Taboo

I’d been watching her for years when no one was looking. That night, with the house empty and a bottle of wine between us, I stopped pretending I was only her daughter’s husband.

I’d spent years looking after her, paying for everything, putting up with her screaming. That dawn, in front of the empty alleyway, I decided that for once she was going to give me something in return.

After twenty-eight years of quiet marriage, one hidden photo was enough for Carmen to obsess over what her little brother was hiding.

I thought I knew my son until that night, when his confession forced me to choose between indignation and something far darker that had slept for years.

When my aunt asked if I already had a girlfriend, everyone laughed. My cousin Camila didn’t. Beneath the tablecloth, her bare foot slid up my leg and I knew the night was only beginning.

He came back from the pool hall with that crooked smile and a story about my brother he shouldn’t have told me. That night I learned how far he could push me.

When she opened the door in a rush, with smeared mascara and a wrinkled dress, I knew that night had changed everything between us.

When I looked up and saw her sweeping the living room, I knew my cousin was the only one who could save me. I never imagined how far we’d go that afternoon.

She had made me eat in a hurry, and now she was straddling me, wet, whispering in my ear that she wasn’t going to leave me alone until nightfall.

I’d spent my whole life seeing her in heels and stockings, but until that night on the sofa I’d never imagined what her feet could make me feel.

I never thought a late-night talk with my grandmother, half-finished drinks, and the TV on in the background would uncover what happened every Saturday in the other house in town.

At the first traffic light, she hiked up her dress and I understood that this car ride wasn’t about shopping. My mother had other plans for us both.

Thirty-two degrees, the child asleep, and a single deck of cards between them. When she asked what he wanted to bet, he answered with the one thing he’d spent the whole week not daring to say.

Marisol thought her son was only watching his cousin. But that night, in the same dress and with the same curves, she realized the real temptation was her.

It was three in the morning when I heard the key in the lock. I hid behind the curtain, never imagining what my mother would let them do a meter away from me.

He came to my room to confront me about what happened on Saturday, but what he confessed afterward left me breathless: he had seen everything, and he liked it.

The taxi disappeared in the dust and, on the porch, the grandparents waited with open arms. No one imagined that welcome embrace would change everything.

I was fifteen when I heard that line. I never imagined that, on an ordinary night, my own father would make me understand what it really meant.

“I’ll help you,” Lorena said before going upstairs to change. When she came down in that fitted skirt, neither of them imagined how far that morning would go.

She knew exactly what that dress would do; what she didn’t expect was for him to dare whisper it in her ear, right in front of the whole family.