Young

Nadia arrived that morning with a bag of soft drinks and very short jeans. We hadn’t been alone together in years. I didn’t know that was about to change.

I hadn’t planned it. But when he walked in with the others and locked eyes with me, I already knew that night would end only one way.

We left the café saying we were just going to get some air, but when he took my hand and led me through the trees, I already knew how the night would end.

She arrived with a backpack on her shoulder and a red pacifier between her lips. She had just turned twenty-two and laughed as if she already knew everything that would happen next.

When that twenty-year-old boy appeared in my doorway for the second time, hands trembling and voice breaking, I knew the night was about to change.

I’d been tossing and turning in bed for two hours. I knew he was sleeping three doors down, and that night, for the first time, I couldn’t pretend.

I went into the game to make friends. I stayed because there were men there who wanted the same thing I did: something real, nameless, and without a future.

Carmen was sleeping naked in the sun while I made the worst and best decision of my life. When she woke and saw the state she was in, she didn’t react as I expected.

When I passed by the bus stop, Don Rodrigo saw me from the bus. What started as a birthday beer ended in a way I never expected.

I woke up in his room with no memory of how I got there. He was in the kitchen, half-naked and calm, like everything was perfectly normal.

When Mateo came out of the water in soaked trunks, I knew my wife wouldn’t let that afternoon pass without biting into something that didn’t belong to her.

The door opened in the middle of the storm and the woman looked us over before making her offer. It was direct: five hundred for everything, paid in advance.

She looked him up and down and said, “You walk like you’re asking permission to exist.” She was right. And that was exactly what she wanted from him.

I’d been watching him in the locker room for months without daring to act. That afternoon, when he asked if I wanted to go up to his place, I knew it was now or never.

We went to the nude beach to relax. What began with furtive glances ended with her moaning among strangers while I couldn’t stop watching.

I’d been ignoring his looks for weeks. That night at the hotel, after the pool and dancing with strangers, I couldn’t keep doing it.

There were nights when I didn’t look at the face of whoever came in. I counted the money and waited for it to be over. But once, everything was completely different.

I thought the fire drill would last minutes. Two hours later, in a basement classroom with no signal and no witnesses, I understood it was no drill.

When I went down to the garage, Valeria was waiting for me in leather pants and a smile that was anything but maternal.

He’d come in looking for the bathroom and stayed standing in the doorway, staring at me. Twenty years old, nervous as hell, and asking me something I hadn’t expected.