Taboo

I walked into the living room and found him waiting with something hidden behind his back. His smile told me before he did that the night wouldn’t be normal.

I had been fantasizing about her for weeks, but the snowstorm and that couples’ motel finally broke down the barriers between us.

When I went into his room and saw him, with my underwear in his hands and my name on his lips, I knew what was coming had no way back.

I crossed the hall barefoot at three in the morning, knowing his door was left ajar on purpose. What happened after that can never be named again.

When I went into his room that night, he was already waiting for me. There was something different in his gaze, something I had never seen in my son’s eyes before.

When I entered that room and saw my mother riding my best friend, I knew nothing would ever be the same. What happened next shattered every rule I knew.

When she asked me to undress and climb onto the examination table, I knew something between us was going to break that could never be put back together.

When she turned in those heels, the dress lifted just enough to reveal the exact line where the stocking ended and the skin began. And then she asked me for a massage.

Three glasses of wine, a backpack full of toys, and a complicit look. What happened with my sister that night crossed every line I ever thought I’d cross.

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.

I pulled a dildo from the drawer that still smelled of her and found her with her gaze lowered, biting her lip as if I’d caught her in something more intimate than a secret.

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.

I got there and found her wearing one of my T-shirts and comfy panties, like it was her boyfriend coming home. That night there was no dinner, just the two of us.

Valeria was waiting for me in the kitchen in a T-shirt that barely covered her and a smile that no longer belonged to my little sister. I tried not to look. I failed.

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.

When I clung to his waist on the first curve, I knew I wasn’t going to behave like his father’s wife that night. He was ten years younger than him.

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.