Taboo

I grew up listening to her through the wall, hating every man who passed through her bed. That dawn, with the house silent and the national team on TV, she was the one who closed the distance.

He hadn’t touched anyone in months when I started looking at my aunt differently. She prayed every night; all I could think about was how to bend her without guilt.

When my husband left me alone with his father at the country house, I knew that slow smile wasn’t innocent. And I had too much to hide.

I only meant to tell him to turn the porn volume down. I never imagined that argument would end with the two of us on his bed, with nothing between us.

When Greta opened the bathroom door and found us like that, I knew the lockdown was only just beginning to drag all our secrets into the light.

I called my psychologist because I’d been burning all day. Her voice convinced me that no desire was a sin, not even what I felt for Diego.

When she twisted her ankle, my aunt didn’t look for another chair: she sat right on my lap in front of the whole family and started moving slowly.

I built the pool for the family, not for this: for my son’s girlfriend to spy on me from the window while I pretended not to notice her trembling hands.

Bruno had spent the whole night staring at his friend’s mother’s neckline. What he didn’t know was that the two women had worked out every detail of the game long before they did.

I was turning thirty-nine and had the day off. I was waiting for a lover; the man who knocked at midmorning was the last one I should have let in.

I told him yes, but he’d have to pay for me to leave the cantina and give me something too. And there I was, walking ahead of my uncle toward the hotel.

I knew my boyfriend was on the afternoon shift. I knocked on the apartment door with my heart pounding, determined not to leave without what I’d been imagining for weeks.

She stood still against the mirror, breathing through her nose, letting me do as I pleased in silence while the rest of the building rode up without suspecting a thing.

I crossed half of Spain with a fever to hide out at my grandmother’s house. I never imagined that country woman would look at me naked the way she did that first night.

The silence at the table said it all before the words did: my father had a debt, and this time it wouldn’t be paid with money.

I turned off the TV when she went upstairs to bed, but the scene kept replaying in my head with my sister’s face instead of the actress’s.

I slept in his bed when I was scared. The night I found him crying because of me, I knew what I felt for my brother was beyond turning back.

Sharing a room with her in that house by the sea seemed harmless, until the heat, the mezcal, and her body pressed against mine changed everything.

That first week under her roof changed everything: a hug that lasted too long, one drink too many, and the certainty that she felt the same thing I was keeping quiet.

She used to tan topless by the pool, sure no one could see her. Until she felt his gaze fixed on her naked skin.