Young

The boy from the neighborhood looked me up and down without shame while I tried to keep my voice from trembling. I was forty-six, with a son to save.

When he locked the library door, I knew my little game of skirts and glances had just crossed a point of no return.

When Héctor put his hand on Sofía’s back and she didn’t pull away, I understood that this trip was going to be different from all the others.

I had her underwear in one hand and her phone in the other when I heard the front door open. Camila was there, staring at me from the hallway.

Sebastián had never opened that book in his life. But he had been keeping a rope in the drawer for weeks, waiting for the night we’d be alone.

That afternoon at home, while we were trying on clothes in the living room, I understood that the look Valeria gave me was anything but innocent.

Rodrigo convinced her to turn around. It was only for a moment, he said. Marcos had been looking at her that way for years, and Sandra hadn’t seen it until now.

He told me to close my eyes, that he had chocolate for me. What I felt on my lips was not exactly chocolate.

I only wanted to clear my head for one night. I never expected that bachelorette party, that bar, and that man would stay with me for so long.

Renata had a dress almost transparent from sweat and a smile that wasn’t about rest. Nobody knew how to dance. That night, it didn’t matter.

When I looked down, I saw she was holding the larger condom between her fingers. It wasn’t for me. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave.

When I opened the door dressed in the button-down blouse and heels, I knew that winter morning would not be just another class, but a surrender arranged with him.

She appeared on my screen on an ordinary night, but her rough voice woke something in me with an urgency I didn’t know existed.

I promised myself I’d wait. That the more I denied it, the more intense it would be. But the body has its own reasons, and that night it wasn’t willing to give in.

When Marcos came down from the roof, soaked in sweat, Carmenza already knew she wasn’t going to let him leave. She’d been waiting too long for a man like him.

That night in the rented house in Búzios, with three guys and half a bottle of vodka, Camila decided shame could wait until tomorrow.

When I told my flatmate on the balcony what that stranger had done to me a month earlier, I never expected her to ask to come with me next time.

When Bruno put out the joint and looked at me that way, I knew the night would end very differently from how it had begun. Neither of us regretted it.

There was something her uncle had been asking for months. She had been refusing for months—until she saw that phone on the counter and everything between them changed.