Young

She was 20 and had never had a real orgasm. That sticky January night, with half a bottle of rosé, my French cousin decided it was time.

My husband spent the day at his conference while I melted away alone by the pool. When the waiter asked if I wanted something, I knew exactly what I was going to ask for that afternoon.

Tomorrow marks eight years since that last night with him, and I still wonder whether I was brave or just selfish to ask him for that.

His hands were no longer seeking the pain in my back. I knew it, he knew it, and still I said nothing when they traveled down the cleft to places they had never reached before.

I went to the bar to forget what I saw, and woke up naked in the bed of the girl who had despised me most in class. That same morning I’d be getting three million.

When she came to sweep the empty house, I told her to go back to her town спокойно. Three hours later we were in my bed, and my wife still hadn’t landed.

When Mariela asked her to take off her panties too, Carla looked to her mother for the stop she expected. She found none—only a complicit smile.

When I opened my eyes in that white room, my mother was standing naked in front of me, and nothing we had been taught about good and evil ever made sense again.

When we got there that night, my wife was already wearing the plug. What we didn’t expect was to run into a nineteen-year-old who would change the routine.

Adela had always avoided being touched. That January night, a translucent-skinned stranger sat on the edge of her bed and knew she could not send her away.

When I saw my underwear on the glazier’s nightstand, I knew he’d been watching me for weeks. Instead of exposing him, I decided to give him something better to remember.

Her message came Tuesday at four: “My boyfriend’s away. I need to get out.” My best friend’s sister was waiting for me, eager.

I’d spent five years waiting for my husband, and that night, with my sister-in-law’s lover in front of me, I realized my body could no longer bear silence.

I swear that when I got on that plane all I could think about was closing the deal. I never imagined that night would be the one where I lost myself and us.

When I opened that old folder on his computer, I never imagined a photo of her would be the beginning of my own betrayal.

I slipped into the hallway without making a sound. The whispers were coming from the kitchen, and they weren’t from the person I expected. What I saw after that I never told anyone.

The elevator panel died between two floors. She smiled, stepped toward me, and said quietly that she knew exactly what was on my mind.

She told me a thousand times that she liked me; that night she came down with wine, turned off the TV, and said what she’d been wanting to tell me for two years.

I went down to my room wanting to escape the noise. I ended up with my legs open in front of the mirror while everyone toasted a few feet away, suspecting nothing.