Taboo

I slipped in quietly and found him by the window, absorbed in what was happening across the street. My youngest son was no longer a boy, and I saw everything.

They were cousins, they rarely saw each other, and that night they were alone in the living room while everyone slept. Nothing should have happened. Almost nothing did.

We arrived at the hotel as mother and son, pretending to be lovers. By Sunday, there was no pretending left.

She had never been with anyone. I was her cousin. What began as a family gathering ended at dawn when she whispered that she had been waiting for me all night.

His parents had an open marriage and a reputation for depravity. When he asked for help with his final project, he never imagined they’d put him in the script.

Forty-five years old, a growing belly, and a chastity device my own daughter controls from across the bar. This is my life now.

Rodrigo knew stealing his own son’s wife was unforgivable. But when Valentina first looked him in the eye, he understood there was no turning back.

We were doing crunches and then I saw him. He wasn’t my son in that moment, he was a man. And that thought haunted me for days.

I went to drop off a package for my mother-in-law and ended up with my hands on something that wasn’t her ankle. I can’t regret a thing.

When Valeria asked, “When do we start?” with that smile, I knew the night would have no turning back. And I no longer wanted it to.

I was wearing my mother-in-law’s black lingerie set when the door opened. Lucía hadn’t brought only Patricia with her. My mother was there too.

The living room camera switched on just as she crossed her legs on the sofa. I only had to watch and wait for my turn.

She came home from the hospital with both arms in plaster up to the elbows. And I discovered, watching how she depended on me, how little I knew how to look at my own mother.

That afternoon I found one of his movies. That night he came back drunk, opened my bedroom door, and I knew something was going to break forever.

I heard him pull up in the driveway and I didn’t cover myself. I spread my legs on the sofa, moved my thong aside, and started touching myself before he even came in.

We got to the ninth floor almost out of patience, she drunk on desire and me ready for anything. What I didn’t expect was to find her mother awake, with the screen lit up.

When I opened the door to my uncle that afternoon, no one else was home. What I confessed to him later, on his sofa, I had told no one.

They came down to the kitchen with serious looks on their faces. I thought it was over. What they said next turned that night into something none of us could undo.

I found her underwear on top of the laundry basket when I went into the bathroom. She hadn’t put it away properly. And from that moment on, I could never see her the same way again.

We were having dinner like any other Sunday when my father dropped the line. Three hours later, my brother and I were closing the door to their bedroom, not knowing what we’d be by morning.