PIG STORIES 4 NEIGHBORHOOD SEX / LITERATURE BAWDY

You went to the bathroom first. You urinated for a long time, with your eyes closed, leaning your forehead against the cold tile wall. The dark yellow stream of dehydration and alcohol hit the water in the toilet. You cleaned yourself. You looked at yourself in the mirror above the sink.

The guy who looked back at you was not the same one who had gone up the stairs the night before. Technically, yes. The same dark eyes, the same thin face with pronounced cheekbones, the same nose that your mother said was like your father's, although you had never seen a picture of your father to confirm it. But there was something different. In the eyes. In the way your mouth curved slightly downward at the corners. In the way your neck had a reddish mark on the left side where Dani had sucked on your skin until he burst your capillaries.

You had a hickey. The first one in your life. A purple bruise the size of a two-euro coin that silently screamed that someone had had their mouth on your neck long enough to leave a mark. Physical proof. Evidence. The kind of mark that the guys at school showed off on Mondays, bragging about their weekend, and that you had never had because no one had ever touched you with the intention of leaving a trace.

You touched the hickey with the tip of your finger. It hurt a little. A good kind of pain. Dani's mark on your skin.

You left the bathroom and went to the kitchen. Dani was sitting in one of the chairs, his bare feet on the other, smoking his first cigarette of the day with his coffee next to him. His phone was on the table, cracked screen facing up, an unopened WhatsApp notification.

He pointed to the coffee maker with his chin.

"Cups are in the top cabinet. If you want milk, there's some in the fridge, but I think it's expired."

You opened the cabinet. Three cups, none of them matching. You took a blue one without a handle. You served yourself black coffee because you didn't dare open the fridge and face the expired milk of a guy who made eight hundred euros per night but lived like he made four hundred a month.