Young

We started talking by messages. We ended up seeing each other naked under the same red moon, each in our own city, each with the other’s breath on the screen.

Her boyfriend played with his phone a meter away while she left the fitting-room curtain half open and, every time she undressed, checked that I was still there.

I opened the door expecting dinner and found a slight girl with red-painted nails and a smile that said much more than “good evening.”

I was sixteen, the house was silent, and a word had sat in the margin of my notebook for months. That night, at last, I locked the door.

Her white nightgown with lavender flowers barely covered her thighs, and I knew that night I’d undo it all, button by button, in silence.

I rarely send photos: it’s dangerous. But that boy gave me confidence, and between black stockings and midnight messages I became the star of his hottest fantasy.

I thought the bathroom would be empty. Carolina was standing at the mirror, and her gaze wasn’t surprised: it was the gaze of someone who knew exactly what I had just done.

I thought I’d put her in her place. That afternoon, as I came out of the bathroom, I heard a zipper coming down behind the half-open office door.

I never thought a scene in a game would ignite something between us, or that that same afternoon I’d have his taste in my mouth and his name looping in my head.

The taxi arrived at two-thirty. I climbed the four floors with two bags in my hands and the certainty that there was no turning back.

When the three knocks sounded at the bathroom door, I assumed it was Carla. But the one who came in was him, without waiting for an answer, barefoot and bare-chested.

I felt his body trembling against mine on the bench along the seafront. What he confessed that night changed everything, and there was no turning back.

I never had privacy for anything. That afternoon, on an empty bench with my skirt pulled up, I understood I could finally do exactly what I wanted.

Every so often I’d type her name to see if I could find her. She never showed up. Until that morning, when the first result was her, exact, unmistakable.

It started as a joke while watching videos in bed. It ended with both of us bent over the mattress, trying something we never thought possible.

She expected one toy. Inside the box was an entire collection, and Lucía knew that afternoon, alone in the apartment, no one would interrupt her.

I knew nobody could see me in that dark storeroom. Only the naked mannequin in the corner witnessed what I did while thinking of her, the seamstress in the shortest skirt.

It took me years to understand what my body was asking for. And when I finally did, there was no going back or settling for less.

The clock said three and sleep still hadn’t come. Then I remembered that post and opened the drawer where I kept my best-kept secret.