Taboo

The Saturday the house was empty, my mother-in-law came into the kitchen barefoot, wearing lingerie that wasn’t for her husband, and smiled like she already knew the ending.

When she opened the door and found us, I thought the family was over that afternoon. What I didn’t expect was to hear her confess, right in my ear, desires she’d kept hidden for years.

When I bent down to pick up the book, my stepsister pulled my shorts down. The three of them stared in silence, and I knew something could never go back to how it was.

I’d spent years fantasizing about a threesome. That night at the family chalet, I learned lust sometimes lives closer than you think.

I knew I shouldn’t lift the sheet, shouldn’t look, but the rain beat against the window and my sister was breathing deeply. I looked down and knew there was no going back.

I gave her permission to go out with both of them on the same afternoon. When she came back to the parking lot, she still had one man’s marks on her and a date with the other at seven-thirty.

The robe rode up when she bent for the spatula. It wasn’t an accident; it was an invitation I spent the whole morning accepting.

When she clung to me in the water and I felt her breathing change, I knew the summer we turned eighteen would be unlike any other.

Three weeks after discovering the hidden monitors in my father-in-law’s office, the screen flickered on by itself, just as he was already behind his daughter.

That night at the neighborhood fair I discovered something I shouldn’t have felt for my girlfriend’s younger sister, and the sight of her smile under the lights never let me sleep the same again.

Friday yoga started as a silent game of looks and ended with her body pressed against mine in my father’s game room.

We got home from the airport at eleven at night, with the house to ourselves and fifteen days ahead of us. Then she told me she hated sleeping alone.

I booked the same Airbnb where I first made love to my cousin. This time we weren’t alone: each of us brought our partner, and all four of us knew it.

I hugged him to comfort him and then felt his erection against my hip. In that instant I knew neither of us would ever be the same again.

The dress was French-blue voile, almost transparent. My father was in front of me. My husband to the left. And the French guest still didn’t understand what was going to happen that night.

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.

When I woke on the wet stone and saw her slipping off her swimsuit, I knew that blow to the head had taken me somewhere I’d never come back from the same.

When I came back from the bathroom, my two brothers had her cornered in the center of the living room, and there was no surprise in her eyes: there was a smile that had been waiting months for that moment.

My cousin had gone to the beach with her friends. When I rang the bell, my aunt opened the door wearing her apron and a smile I’d never seen before.

When the screen came on, my sister-in-law was welcoming her two relatives in the living room with a smile I’d never seen at Sunday lunches.