Taboo

I waited at the bus stop with my heart racing, knowing that the moment his car appeared we’d stop being mother and son and become something else.

He served dinner as usual, but this time she knelt beside the sofa. In that house, after the bankruptcy, their son imposed a new order.

I thought the worst part of the trip would be sharing a room with my parents on a honeymoon-style getaway. I never imagined that, in the dark, I’d be the one who couldn’t stay still.

I thought it would be a fifteen-minute scolding. I didn’t count on the bag Bárbara brought, or on the woman that furious mother would become.

She came downstairs expecting a cake and a chorus of congratulations. Instead she found twelve candles, two silent men, and a long-planned revenge.

She leaned over the railing to watch my uncle’s car disappear, and I came up barefoot behind her. I’d been looking at her like that for years. That morning I stopped just looking.

I closed my eyes to imagine him watching me. When hands grabbed my waist from behind, I thought I knew whose they were. I was completely wrong.

That afternoon at the hospital, my mother took my hand and whispered a favor I never imagined hearing from her lips.

I was half asleep, touching myself, when I felt a hand that wasn’t mine. What came next shattered every boundary I thought I had.

I went up to change into something more daring while they showered. By then I already knew that if I went downstairs to the kitchen, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back.

We asked for two singles and split the beds without thinking. By eleven everyone was asleep; in ours, Mom started asking questions no mother should ask.

Her mother saw us playing around in bed and, instead of yelling, smiled at me. That same night I understood that nothing in that house was innocent—and I didn’t want to be innocent either.

The moment the elevator doors close, my sister kisses me like she’s been waiting all week for it. Truth is, we both had.

When I went into the bathroom I had no idea her mother was waiting for me, or that my niece would appear in the doorway with a smile that would change everything.

She wore a tiny black bikini, two triangles tied with strings, and looked at me over her shoulder as if she already knew what was about to happen between us.

We had always been the closest in the family. What I never imagined was that one weekend of wine would change everything between us.

I opened the door thinking the house was empty. The noise was coming from Marina’s room, and what I saw when I peeked in froze me in the doorway.

I cornered her against the oak door without imagining that, through the crack in the drawing room, a pair of green eyes could no longer look away from us.

It had been eight years since I last saw her. She came back as a woman with one idea in mind: to provoke me until I gave in.

I thought it would be a quiet afternoon in front of the TV, until my stepsister’s bare foot started climbing my thigh and one question changed everything.