Young

When I followed the sound of her music to the old closet in my office, I didn’t expect to find slits that opened right onto the changing room where she undressed.

My family was one floor below and I was alone in my room, phone pressed to my ear, his voice ordering me to do things I’d never dared before.

With mascara running from my tears, she took my hand and led me upstairs, determined that what we felt would no longer be a secret.

When Valeria told me her three cousins were waiting to celebrate, I never imagined the celebration meant finding out whether I was good for more than balancing their accounts.

I’d been fantasizing about her in silence for months. That afternoon, during class, she looked up from the book and told me: you have to be more careful with the bathroom door.

Every morning she handed me coffee with a smile that lasted a second too long. I knew she had a boyfriend. She knew I knew. And still, neither of us looked away.

She knocked on my door at midnight with red eyes and a broken voice. I didn’t expect the last night of the trip to end with my student in my bed.

Adrián measured every gesture with me, as if he knew something I didn’t. It took me a while to discover that the boy I was kissing already had his suitcase packed and a life waiting for him in another city.

She went into the fitting room in front of me with seven bikinis. The curtain didn’t quite close, and by the third one she knew I was watching.

She came out of the bathroom in lingerie, posed in front of me, and asked me from one to ten how hot she was. I already knew where that night was going to end.

When he staggered against me on that packed bus, I felt something I should never have felt. Since that day I haven’t been able to think of anything else.

Everyone in the neighborhood wanted her, but that birthday afternoon she discovered just how far she was willing to go to be the center of her own family again.

My boyfriend was snoring like a log in the back room when she came up to me. Her southern accent and those black eyes told me everything before her hands did.

I was forty-four, had two daughters, and a recent divorce when the girl from across the street looked at me differently and said what I didn’t dare think.

I needed company. Without thinking, I asked him if he wanted to get in with me. What happened next changed everything I thought I knew about myself and my friends.

Three days at the beach, five friends, and a phone that was never turned off. I thought I was among innocent laughs; others saw it as a show.

That September morning I saw the shyest girl in class walk in. It took me two weeks to realize the shy one wasn’t her, it was me.

I never thought an avatar in a video game would give me back the urge to desire another woman, or that desire would stay with me long after I shut off the console.

I’d known Esteban for years, but that stifling afternoon I discovered his house held a secret that would change our friendship forever.

I rang his bell with trembling hands. Twenty years older, a declared sadist, no mercy. And me, a virgin, begging him to begin the moment he closed the door.