Young

The gym stud who humiliated me in front of half the gym wrote me from a dating app fifty meters from my place. Fifteen minutes later, he was ringing my doorbell.

I went down to the garden looking for her and found her behind the glass, seated in the chair, with her assistant kissing her eyelids as if I didn’t exist.

I was kneeling on the passenger seat when he whispered his girlfriend’s name. I looked up through the tinted glass: she was walking toward the car.

The call came on a Saturday at dusk. Her parents were away, and her voice on the phone trembled a little. I knew then the night wasn’t going to end early.

Downstairs our parents were toasting twenty years together. Upstairs, in his room, I had his cock in my hand and he wanted me to finally make a move.

We went downstairs following moans and found them. That night I learned by watching what the next day I’d dare to try.

They came home at midnight in short dresses, fishnet stockings, and a perfume that hit me like a punch. In three weeks, my house became something else.

Mariana asked me whether I’d ever been curious about kissing another woman. I answered with an impulse that changed what we were forever.

When she asked what it felt like to be with another woman, I told her she’d have to try it herself. I didn’t expect her to stand up and climb onto my lap.

When we turned off the lights and climbed under the same blanket, I never imagined that silly question about kisses would end with her fingers seeking mine in the dark.

I never said this out loud. This is one of those things: what my cousin planned with me that January, without my realizing it until it was too late.

The car was so packed there was only one seat left: on her son’s lap. Marisol never imagined five hours on the road would be enough to cross the one line she should never have crossed.

For days I had felt eyes fixed on the back of my neck while I played. That Friday I locked the doors and came down from the stage determined to find her.

He had a meeting and left me alone all afternoon. Bored, I opened a folder on his computer I had no business opening... and I couldn’t stop looking.

I lowered the zipper of his trousers very slowly, afraid of waking him. That morning changed forever what I understood pleasure to be.

When I went into the empty classroom to change, the door opened behind me. It was her, the student council president, and she hadn’t come alone with words.

Lucía came to the mirror naked and called me by the name only she uses. That night, with our parents away, we stopped being just brother and sister.

I locked the door and turned off the lights in the study room. All I wanted that afternoon was to comfort her; all she wanted was to forget her boyfriend.

We were coming back to the hotel at three in the morning, having gotten nowhere with the guys. What happened once we closed the door changed our friendship forever.

When I got into the car that morning and saw that she was alone at the wheel, I knew the weekend wasn’t going to be innocent.