Young

What started as a silly afternoon on his sofa ended with me kneeling between his legs, learning that some favors can’t be undone.

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.

Four years ago, her mother walked in just in time to stop the sin. This time, with everyone gone and the band booming below, no one was opening that door.

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 barely covered her thighs, and I knew that night I would unbutton it all, one button at a time, in silence.

I rarely send photos: it’s dangerous. But that boy made me feel safe, and between black stockings and midnight messages I became the star of his best 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 game scene would ignite something between us, or that by 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 four flights with two bags in my hands and the certainty that there was no turning back.

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

I never had privacy for anything. That afternoon, on an empty bench with my skirt hiked up, I understood I could finally do exactly as I pleased.

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 no one 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 once I finally did, there was no going back or settling for less.