Young

When she suggested that the loser take off a piece of clothing, I said yes without thinking. I never imagined what would come next—or that we’d end up naked.

When she poured the fourth shot and held my gaze a second too long, I knew that night we were going to cross the line we’d been avoiding for months.

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 tint: 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 toasted twenty years together. Upstairs, in his bedroom, I had his cock in my hand while he waited for me to finally dare.

We followed the moans down to the kitchen and found them. That night, I learned by watching what I would dare to try the next day.

They arrived at midnight in short dresses, fishnet stockings, and a perfume that hit me like a punch. In three weeks, my house turned into 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 straddle me.

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.

There are things I never said out loud. This is one of them: what my cousin planned with me that January, before I realized 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 couldn’t stop looking.

I pulled down the zipper of his trousers very slowly, afraid of waking him. That dawn 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 gone, we stopped being just siblings.

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.