Bisexual

We were two women in the same bed, my husband was sleeping on the floor, and I’d spent years wondering what it would feel like to touch another woman’s skin.

We were a married couple used to sharing everything. When Marcos arrived from tour with that same old smile, we knew dinner would have to wait.

The first night I went out without her, I ran into Lucía, my longtime ex. And she knew all the right friends.

It was two in the morning, it was the anniversary of my dead marriage, and I was crying on the couch. Marcos wrapped his arms around me and said he wasn’t going anywhere.

I got there before Daniela and a girl offered me a drink at the bar. I didn’t know that night we’d end up the three of us in bed, doing things none of us had planned.

We had spent the morning joking among the five of us, with that tension nobody names. When they started touching each other, it was obvious the afternoon was going to last a long time.

When I entered the room and saw 198 naked people waiting for my signal, I realized I'd crossed a line I didn't want to go back over.

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.

When I told him I could call someone to keep him company, he went out to buy cigarettes. Thirty minutes later, Sofía came down the stairs in heels.

I had never done it. Never let anyone in there before. That afternoon in the booths, a stranger with hand cream changed everything.

I only went to pick up the bra I’d forgotten the night before. Sofía opened the door with that smile, and I knew I wasn’t getting out of there any time soon.

He was big, calloused, with hands that did the heavy work without ever complaining. He wasn’t the man I would have imagined. But that snowy afternoon, something broke.

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.

Opening the door that night was the hardest decision of my life. Behind it stood a tall, smiling man, ready to take what I could no longer give my wife.

The first time I went to his place alone, my heart was pounding when I rang the bell. I didn’t know what to say. He opened the door in a wet robe and smiled.

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.

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.

All I meant to do that night was eat light and sleep. Then he came in with the tray, looked at my underwear, and said the line that changed everything.

I never imagined that crossing the threshold of a discreet bar in my wife's underwear would end with me in a hotel room with a stranger.

I’d spent years hiding a part of myself. The night I told her, I never imagined she’d end up asking if we’d do it together with several men.