Taboo

When I went up to his room to see why he hadn’t come down for lunch, my son asked me to close the door. He had something to show me on his cellphone.

I caught her naked in bed, with two fingers buried in her cunt. What I didn’t expect was for my own mother to show up and join the game without asking.

When he confessed his fetish that night, I knew I could never look at him the same way again. I told him it would happen only once. We both knew that was a lie.

We shut the door, turned on the console, and my brother lay back on my legs with that nervous smile he only gets when he’s hiding something he’s dying to tell.

When Camila suggested we go down to my boyfriend’s basement, I knew that night wouldn’t end like the others: my brother had already tried her that afternoon.

My grandmother, my mother, and I thought that trip to the mountains would be the break we needed. Until the storm trapped us with two strangers.

The fourth round of daiquiris lowered everyone’s defenses, but nobody expected Daniela’s confession to end with all of us tangled up on the living-room rug.

When I walked into the kitchen that morning, she was standing with her back to me in a T-shirt that barely covered her thighs. Three years change people a lot.

When we reached the harbor and she got off the bike, her hands were still on my waist. Neither of us pulled away right away.

Six years ago, I went into my older brother’s room one August night. I didn’t go to talk. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

When I saw them on the roof terrace, everything changed. My cousin was looking at me from the dark and asked me something I hadn’t expected to hear that night.

I’d been telling him no for months. When I saw that phone in the display case, I knew exactly what I could offer him in exchange for it.

When he hugged me from behind and I felt his body against mine, we both knew it had a name no one dared to say aloud.

We had spent three months coordinating every detail. When Diego opened the door and I saw his mother behind him, I knew there was no turning back for any of us four.

Nadia arrived that morning with a bag of soft drinks and very short jeans. We hadn’t been alone together in years. I didn’t know that was about to change.

I’d been tossing and turning in bed for two hours. I knew he was sleeping three doors down, and that night, for the first time, I couldn’t pretend.

When I went down to the garage, Valeria was waiting for me in leather pants and a smile that was anything but maternal.

She got on my bike in that tight leather outfit and told me to go slow. But neither of us wanted to go slow that night.

She entered Diego’s room with only a black thong under her robe. He was asleep. She sat on the edge of the bed and her hand went there on its own.

I’d been under the same roof as my father’s wife for four days when she left her bedroom door ajar and told me, without words, to come upstairs.