Young

When I was left alone with Marcos, the lifelong neighbor, something shifted between us. He came closer slowly and kissed me without asking permission or forgiveness.

Soaked clothes clung to their bodies, rain hammered the barn roof, and they had no excuse left to keep their distance. That was how their affair began.

Daniela slipped a condom into my pocket before she left. I knew I was a virgin, and Marco was too. That afternoon was going to change all that.

I went wearing a thong and garter stockings under my pants, not knowing if anything would happen. That night, everything did.

The brothers surrounded me in the stable and told me what nobody in town knew. Their sister belonged to everyone. Their father gave the order. And I was eighteen, with my eyes wide open.

When his mother came down the stairs in that tight dress, Marcos knew that trip to the movies was not going to end the way he expected.

The shop was empty and the boy was young. I’d been imagining that exact moment for days, and I had no intention of wasting it.

We were lying there naked, still smelling like what we’d just done, when Sofía told me she had something to confess. Something about Elena. Something that would change how I saw her forever.

When Mariana asked for my help, I knew the secret I’d hidden for years was about to come to light in front of three people I barely knew.

She always said my body betrayed me before my voice did. That afternoon, after running into an old friend, she was going to prove it in the rawest way possible.

She had a boyfriend. She said she was straight. And yet that afternoon at the hotel pool, her foot found mine under the water and I didn’t pull away.

When he asked me to remove my compression shorts and cover myself with the towel, I thought it was just another session. His hands on my adductor proved otherwise.

We’d spent years avoiding those childhood games, until one winter afternoon I asked him to take me on his bike and my hand landed where it shouldn’t.

I spent six months waiting for him on the same corner. One night in an empty house was enough for him to stop waiting for me.

For twenty years I thought I knew my own desires. It took ten minutes in an elevator with a nervous twenty-something to realize I knew nothing.

We pulled down our pants in front of the other four and, when he bent over me, I knew I wasn’t leaving that classroom the same man.

He was the neighborhood kid who came on as a substitute when someone was missing. It took me a whole year to realize he was looking at me too.

Every morning I purposely hike my skirt up one finger’s width more, hoping some older woman will look at me with that mix of disapproval and desire that appears in all my fantasies.

I'd gone a month without touching anyone when he appeared across the hall in sweatpants that left very little to the imagination. And I was in my boxer briefs.

We’d watched weird videos on his computer at the office that time. What I didn’t expect was that months later, that same curiosity would end up on the couch, under the blanket.