Taboo

I found an old photo tucked away in a drawer, and all at once I knew exactly what I wanted to ask each of them for that vacation.

When she hung up the phone, I knew I’d be at her place the next day. Her husband was away. And my daughter would never look at me the same way again.

I woke up not knowing how I would ever justify what they forced me to do that night, or how I could look the man I still loved in the eyes.

She came out of the bathroom in lingerie, posed in front of me, and asked how hot she was on a scale of one to ten. I already knew where that night would end.

I was straight my whole life. Until one afternoon my son crossed the living room and I couldn’t look away from his crotch. That night I knew I couldn’t stop.

When he staggered against me on that packed bus, I felt something I should never have felt. Since that day I haven’t been able to think of anything else.

I thought nobody had seen me that afternoon at my grandfather’s house. I was wrong: there were a pair of eyes behind the door, and they took fifteen years to speak.

I found her in a bikini filming videos by the pool. Dad’s new wife. Eight years younger than me. And she thought she could order me around.

I came out of the shower wrapped in a towel, knowing my father was alone. That night I wanted to see how far he’d dare go without alcohol.

Everyone in the neighborhood wanted her, but that birthday afternoon she discovered just how far she was willing to go to be the center of her own family again.

When he opened his shirt and I felt his cologne fill the kitchen, I knew that breakfast with my nephew wasn’t going to end with a quiet coffee.

I saw him in briefs only once and since then I can’t sleep without thinking about him. The fact that he’s my half-brother should be enough to stop me, but it isn’t.

When I ran into him on that beach after three years without seeing each other, he was no longer the boy who used to throw sand in my hair. Something in his look told me this wasn’t going to end well.

My sister’s friends kept coming to my door with one excuse or another. What I never imagined was who would end up in front of me at three in the morning.

I needed company. Without thinking, I asked him if he wanted to get in with me. What happened next changed everything I thought I knew about myself and my friends.

We were up in the cherry tree stealing fruit when Hugo confessed the obsession he’d carried since childhood. That same afternoon, his mother still had no idea what was coming.

I went downstairs looking for Mateo and Ricardo, and what I found behind the half-open door left me rooted to the hallway floor, breathless and unable to look away.

My sister was laughing while I told her what I’d read on my son’s WhatsApp, and I never imagined that afternoon would end with me kneeling in front of him.

Catalina came out onto the terrace in a white nightgown, sat beside me without a word, and that night we stopped being just siblings in the house by the sea.

She was twenty-five and, on paper, his stepmother. Dinner began with seafood and white wine, and neither of them planned to end it at his place.