Beach

Every morning they left together for surf class and came back too close. I only watched, until one night on the porch I stopped wanting to look away.

We were four in one tent, two couples who barely knew each other, and it only took one touch in the dark for none of us to want to keep pretending to sleep.

I lowered my voice to tell her how an Austrian photographed me naked on the beach, never imagining that story would lead us both to live the same thing.

My wife always shut down the fantasy when she got serious. This time, when I confessed what I’d booked, she bit her lip and asked me: what if they don’t settle for looking?

My wife dreamed I was sleeping with another woman while she watched. Days later, at the hotel, that fantasy stopped being a dream.

While I spread on the sunscreen, she moved her hips slowly against the sand. I could only think about how to convince her to cross into the other hotel.

We’d been married for twenty years and had never done anything like that. But that night, at the adults-only hotel, my wife stared at me and started taking her clothes off.

I had three tubes of aloe vera and not a centimeter of unburned skin when my flatmate’s boyfriend came in with her keys and found me naked on the sofa.

We had been going naked to the same beach with Rubén and Elena for years. A conversation between men lit the fuse: we wanted to explore what we had never seen in each other.

We were alone in the sand, naked and turned on, when I discovered two young men spying on us from the rocks. Romina just asked if I wanted to keep going.

We had been texting for weeks, but nothing prepared me to have both of them in front of the sea, with every rule ready to be broken.

I only got two photos that morning: her naked facing the sea, and an hour later, an opened condom wrapper. She told me the rest in bed.

I went down to the pool thinking I was only looking for the gym and some sun. I had no idea they’d already decided what they’d do with me once the husbands closed their eyes.

They had been going to nude beaches for ten years without anything ever happening. That afternoon a man sat down in front of them and she did what her husband had spent years not daring to imagine.

After that Sunday at the beach, none of my coworkers could look at me the same way. And my wife knew it: she was the one pulling every string.

When I saw him emerge naked from the icy February water, I knew that morning wasn’t going to end at the easel.

I went down to the loneliest cove to enjoy the sun, but behind that umbrella lying on its side there was something I wasn’t supposed to see. And an idea came to me.

I took off my ring before getting into the water. I didn’t want any souvenir photo to give me away, or for him to get ideas that weren’t his to have.

“Welcome to my beach,” his voice said behind me. I was completely naked on the towel, and he was the last person I expected to see there.

I bought a tiny bikini without letting her choose it, counted the hours until dawn, and lay down on the small mattress, praying she’d stay alone with him.