My Best Friend Had Been Cheating on Me with My Boyfriend for Years

My name is Camila, and when I was nineteen, the doctors told me my heart was failing bit by bit. A degenerative coronary insufficiency, they called it, with a prognosis my parents found harder to accept than I did. My father, the one who had always spoiled me, broke down in front of me for the first and only time. My mother, hard as river stone, cried silently while holding my hand.

I spent the first few weeks crushed, not wanting to get up, not wanting to eat. Why fight if the end was already written? But my parents refused to accept it. The family company let them pull strings others couldn’t, and they managed to get me into an experimental treatment administered one week a year at a private clinic in the north. The day of the dose was brutal: fever, pain, dizziness. The six days after that were for putting myself back together.

Lucía always came with me. She had been my best friend since we were six, the two daughters of businessmen who shared contracts, both of us raised almost like sisters. She had something I would never have: health, energy, the freedom to move through the world without a clock beeping on her wrist. Every time I liked a boy, Lucía showed up. She didn’t always take him, but the times she did hurt so much I stopped keeping count.

I never blamed her for anything. I couldn’t give them what they were looking for. My illness put limits on sex, on my heart rate, on my blood pressure. I wore a watch that measured my vitals and set off an alarm if I crossed a certain red line. Some boys understood at first. Almost none of them lasted. They ended up with their cocks buried to the hilt in Lucía’s cunt, and I was left alone with the feeling of being a defective body, sometimes listening to their moans through the next wall.

So when I saw Sebastián walk into my room at the clinic holding the IV drip in his hand, the first thing I felt was resignation. He was the hottest nurse I had ever seen in that hallway. Early thirties, dark eyes, a smile that stayed in the room longer than he did. I lost all respect for my own diagnosis the moment he put the line in my arm. Lucía, seated in the armchair, stared at him with her usual shamelessness.

—Fuck, Cami, you look wrecked —she said when Sebastián left. —You look like you’re about to get discharged from the heart department too.

—Doesn’t matter, Lu. You know how this ends.

—God, you’re so stupid. Didn’t you see how he looked at you? He treated me like I was part of the furniture.

I didn’t believe her. I thought she was just trying to cheer me up. But in the days that followed, Sebastián came into my room wearing a smile that went straight to my chest and looked at Lucía with the neutral politeness of someone attending to a distant relative. On the last day, before discharge, I gathered what little courage I had left.

—Do you have a partner, Sebastián?

—I don’t date patients —he replied. —But as soon as you’re discharged, I’d be delighted.

He kept his word. A week later we were having drinks on a terrace downtown. I ordered a hawthorn infusion; he smiled gently when he saw my face as I tasted it. I told him I had just finished law school and would be starting work in the legal department of the family company. He told me about his village, the scholarship that had allowed him to study nursing, the first patient he had ever seen die. I listened to him for three hours without moving.

***

The first weeks were slow, careful. Sebastián took me for walks in flat parks with no hills. He cooked for me without salt in my own kitchen when my parents were out of town. He kissed me as if something might break if he pressed too hard.

—I’m afraid of what comes next —I confessed one night, sitting on the sofa.

—Afraid of fucking me? —he said without drama. —I’ve been your nurse, Cami. I know your limits better than you do.

—That’s what the others said too.

—I’m not the others. Let me prove it to you.

Two days later he booked a room in a downtown hotel and a table at his restaurant. Lucía dragged me out to buy a black dress with an open back and a lace thong I would never have picked for myself. That night, in the suite, Sebastián was more patient than anyone had ever been. He sat me on the edge of the bed and knelt between my legs before touching my clothes. He kissed my knees, the inside of my thighs, then moved up with his mouth open to my groin. Every time my watch neared the limit, he stopped and looked up at me with a calm that undid me.

He lowered the zipper of my dress with his teeth. He took my bra off slowly and spent a long while staring at my tits, my nipples already hard, before taking one whole nipple into his mouth. He sucked them one after the other, biting the tip just enough to make a moan slip out of me, tugging with his lips until he let go with a wet pop. When he kissed my neck and my heart began to gallop, he stopped. He licked the hollow of my collarbone, traced a line down my sternum with his tongue, buried it in my navel, and waited for me to breathe slowly again.

He pulled my thong down by the elastic with two fingers. It was soaked through, stuck to the lips of my cunt as he slid it down my thighs. Sebastián laughed under his breath, brought it to his face, and inhaled as if it were an expensive perfume.

—You smell like you’ve been waiting for this for months, Cami.

He spread my legs with both hands, held them open against the mattress, and buried his face between them. The first lick was slow and complete, from the perineum to the clit. I screamed. No one had ever eaten my cunt like that, with that hunger, with that technique. He licked me in circles, alternating flat tongue and sharp tip, slipped his tongue inside me and went back up to suck my clit between his lips. Every time my legs trembled too much, he stopped, blew on me to calm me down, kissed the inside of my thigh, and waited. When the alarm went off for the first time, he pulled his mouth away with his chin shining from my wetness, kissed my wrist clean, and waited patiently for my pulse to come down.

—No hurry —he whispered. —All night is ours.

He went back down. He slid a finger inside me, very slowly, searching for a spot that made my back arch. He added another. He curved them upward while he sucked my clit and I felt a pressure building like a wave that never broke. It took me forever to come. And when I did, it was one of those long, deep orgasms that leave you trembling as if it had snowed inside you. I clenched his head between my thighs, closed my cunt around his mouth, and he kept licking while I convulsed and soaked his chin and neck.

Sebastián held me until I stopped shaking. He climbed onto the bed, finally took off his pants, and pulled out his cock. It was hard, thick, with a vein running clearly from top to bottom and the tip shining. He put it in my hand. It barely fit. I sat up to suck it, I owed him that, but he gently pushed me back against the mattress.

—Not yet. I want to try fucking you first.

He put on the condom, settled himself between my legs, and rubbed the head up and down over the lips of my cunt, soaking it. When he started to enter, I had to bite the pillow. He went in millimeter by millimeter, watching my face and my watch on my wrist. When he was all the way inside, he stayed still, braced on his elbows, letting me feel him throbbing inside me.

—Breathe, Cami. Breathe with me.

He started moving very slowly. Short withdrawals, deep thrusts. I felt my cunt adjusting to him, each push tearing a moan from me I hadn’t known I had. And that was when what always happened happened: my heart shot up, my watch started beeping, and I ran out of air. Sebastián stopped at once, slid out carefully, lay me on my side, and pressed against my back while I caught my breath. We had to stop.

—Did you get tired? —I asked, afraid, once we were already holding each other.

—I never get tired of you, Cami. Sleep.

He spent the whole night wrapped around me, his cock still half-hard pressed to my ass and his open hand over my belly. And for the first time in years, I slept without fear.

***

After that came introducing him to my parents. My mother kissed him twice. My father held out his hand so coldly my mother had to nudge him with her elbow. Dinner was a disaster. Awkward questions, cutting remarks, loaded looks. Sebastián put up with it for two courses before standing and taking his leave politely.

I stayed behind, trembling with rage, my hand pressed against the left side of my chest.

—He’s bad news, daughter —my father told me when the door closed. —He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

—And how would you know?

—I just do. I don’t need proof.

—Then as long as I live under your roof, I’m not going to obey you on this.

—As long as you live under my roof, you’ll do what I say.

I went upstairs, packed my bags, and left. I had been paying the deposit on an apartment near the office for months, waiting for the right moment to tell them. My father forced it. My mother cried at the door, hugging me. My father didn’t move from the living room.

From that night on, my father and I only spoke about work. Me, who had been his little girl, his weekend companion, his pride. That break hurt me more than the diagnosis.

***

Sebastián moved in with me. During the following year, we were an almost normal couple. Almost, because my body would not let me forget what it was. I knew he remained unsatisfied. I could feel his cock hard when he woke, nudging against my ass, and I sensed his frustration in every brief morning kiss. I tried to make up for it with my mouth. I learned how to suck him the way women do when they know they have nothing else to offer. I took him all the way down, to the throat, gagging through it, one hand at the base and my tongue working the tip when he came up for air. I licked his balls one by one, took them into my mouth, sucked his cock again with saliva dripping down my chin. When he came, I swallowed everything and cleaned whatever spilled out with my thumb so I could lick it afterward.

Other times, when I was feeling strong, I got on all fours and let him fuck me from behind very slowly, glancing sideways at my watch in case the alarm went off. He loved my ass. He grabbed it with both hands, spread it open, spat between my cheeks, and rubbed the head of his cock there without quite entering, knowing that could kill me. Once I went too far. I asked him to fuck me for real, without brakes, because I wanted to feel him unleashed for one night. He gave it to me: he rode me hard, yanked my hair, filled my cunt with cum and then ate me with his tongue afterward. And I ended up in the hospital for a week under observation. My mother was furious with both of us. My father showed up only one afternoon, looked at me from the doorway, and left without saying a word.

—This time we came close, Cami —Sebastián told me, his eyes red.

—I know. But what am I supposed to do? I can see how frustrated you are.

—Don’t worry about that. I have my ways of blowing off steam.

—What ways?

—My own stuff. Sleep.

I believed him. I was trusting. I was also an idiot.

***

The following year it was time for another treatment session. Lucía offered to stay with me on the day of the dose. The high fever in the first hours required company. By midafternoon I woke up alone in the room. I thought she must have gone out for coffee. My mother came in through the door fuming.

—If Lucía had a commitment, she shouldn’t have offered. Your father or I could have come up.

—I doubt my father would have —I said, and turned over.

When Lucía came back, her hair was tousled and she had some flimsy excuse. I didn’t ask her anything. I didn’t ask the following Friday either, when she showed up to say goodbye looking the same way. I thought she had a new lover and didn’t want to tell me yet. We had always been like that: each one with her own timing.

***

Months passed. I had to travel one weekend for work. Sebastián moved up his annual dinner with old colleagues so it would coincide with my absence and he wouldn’t be alone. On Friday morning I checked in at the airport, the flight was delayed by a blizzard, and it was canceled hours later. I called the client, we agreed on another date, and I went home with my suitcase untouched and the idea of surprising him when he came back from dinner.

I showered, put on an old T-shirt, made myself an infusion, and sat on the sofa. On the table was his laptop, still on, no password, the screen black. I stared at it for a long while. I thought about closing it. Curiosity won.

I moved the mouse. The WhatsApp Web screen came up. The last open conversation was with Lucía.

***

I read line by line, my heart beating faster and faster. Messages from months, from years. Lucía asking him whether I had swallowed the excuse about the alumni dinner. Lucía telling him how she had taken advantage of my sleep in the hospital to call him and go upstairs to fuck in the fourth-floor bathroom: “you shoved me against the sink, drove your cock all the way into my cunt, and covered my mouth so I wouldn’t scream, I still have the bruise on my hip.” Sebastián answering with audios that had been transcribed: “I got hard just from smelling you under the uniform, I had to pull it out fast and cum inside before the nurse came back.” Lucía reminding him how my mother had looked at her with contempt that night. Sebastián admitting that during that same dinner he fantasized about her: “I would’ve taken you in the bathroom of my house with Cami asleep next door, I would’ve eaten your whole ass pressed against the door until you begged me to fuck you.”

And then the phrase that ripped the air from my lungs appeared.

—How do you know Cami’s father is like me? —Sebastián asked.

—Who do you think was the first to break my ass? —Lucía replied. —I was eighteen. He took me to a suite at the company hotel, smeared my asshole with oil, and shoved his cock all the way in while he called me a dirty girl. No one fucks me like he does. And he still does it. Last week I sucked him off on my knees in his office with Cami’s photo staring at me from the desk.

I let go of the mouse. I was crying without realizing it, my breathing broken. My father, the man who had thrown me out of his house to “protect” his daughter from a liar, had been fucking my best friend in the ass for years.

I opened a folder of videos. Faces I knew appeared. The waitress from the bar downstairs whom I greeted every morning, kneeling in the back room, sucking Sebastián’s cock with both hands, spitting on his balls and taking him back into her mouth until he grabbed the back of her neck and emptied his semen into her mouth while she swallowed, looking at the camera. A neighbor from the fourth floor with a ball gag in her mouth and her wrists tied to the headboard, crying while he fucked her from behind, slapping her ass until her skin went red and gripping her throat with an open hand. Lucía on all fours in a hotel room, her face distorted by pleasure and Sebastián’s name on her lips, pushing her ass back against him so he could drive deeper, moaning, “like that, asshole, break me” while he fucked her cunt with two fingers at the same time. In another video, Lucía sucking my father off, recognizable by the watch and ring, while Sebastián was fucking her from behind. The two men high-fiving over her back.

I copied everything to an external drive. I sent my mother a single email with the attached file and one line: “Mom, read and watch everything. I love you.” I didn’t have the strength to write more.

***

The watch had been beeping for a while. I felt the stab in my chest as if someone were driving a needle between my ribs. I made it to the bathroom dragging myself along, took my medication, and put on the blood pressure monitor. The number that appeared on the screen was a death sentence. Something inside me already knew it.

I wanted to see their faces when they walked in. That was all. I crossed the hallway with the laptop under my arm, got to the bed, left it open with the conversation visible. I lay down. I waited.

I heard the key. Laughter. Two voices. Footsteps. And then Lucía screamed in my bedroom as if she had seen a ghost. Sebastián came in behind her, saw the laptop, saw my face, understood everything at once.

He came up to the bed crying. He touched my cheek. He was shouting at Lucía to call an ambulance. I slowly raised my arm, made one last effort, and showed him my middle finger.

—Too late, asshole.

Then came a sensation of soft warmth, as if someone were covering me with a blanket. And then nothing.

***

I’m standing in front of my daughter’s grave. This will be the last time in a long while that I can come see her. Tomorrow I’m being admitted. But I have good news, Cami. I’ve been crossing off, one by one, the names of the people who broke you.

Lucía couldn’t bear losing the only thing that really mattered to her: living the way she lived. I canceled the contract that sustained her father’s company, and within six months the tap on her lifestyle ran dry. Among the files you sent me were videos she recorded without permission. The prosecutor did the rest. Five years, final.

Sebastián fared worse. Every woman who appeared in those folders filed a complaint against him. Every video was another charge. When they put him in the van after the hearing, he didn’t lift his eyes from the floor. They told me because I didn’t want to go.

And your father I saved for last. It took me a while to understand why he had been so hostile toward Sebastián that night. Then I understood: your father was exactly the same. They recognized each other the way animals smell one another out. The difference is that your father had been cheating on me for twenty years and I, for love, had looked the other way. When I saw the videos he himself kept on his computer, I stopped looking the other way.

I knew his foreign accounts well, the invoices that never appeared in any ledger. I never reported him because I knew it would drag me down with him. But I didn’t care anymore. I spoke to a lawyer, I presented evidence, I testified against him knowing I was going to go down too. I accepted the sentence. It was worth it just to see his face when he realized it had been me.

Your father thought the wolf was Sebastián. And he was. But the first wolf was always him.

I kissed your gravestone and let the two police officers help me to my feet. My wrists were cuffed and I couldn’t do it alone. They took me to the car. Your grave kept shrinking through the window.

My girl believed she had two pillars to lean on. I didn’t see it in time. But there are no cracks left to mend, Cami. There is only truth. Rest now.