My Husband Recorded an Audio Before Leaving with the Other Woman

The leather armchair creaked when Marisol shifted position, pressing the cell phone against her chest. She had listened to the audio four times in a row and still couldn’t quite believe it. The screen had gone dark twice. She unlocked it again, pressed the player icon again.

—Sol. When you hear this, I’ll already be far away. I was always a burden to you, a wall between the life you wanted and the one you had. For a long time now, I haven’t been able to keep putting up with what was happening. I had something with someone. With Carolina. The new girl in Accounting. We’ve been together for three months. And... she got pregnant. That’s why I’m leaving. I have neither the courage nor the dignity to face you to your face. I’m leaving with her. Don’t look for me. Be happy, Sol.

The name hung in the living room air like a fly trapped in a spiderweb. Carolina. The new girl. The one she herself had greeted twice at the year-end dinner, the one who smiled with her mouth closed and looked at Diego when he didn’t notice. Marisol remembered the blue dress, the long earrings, the long legs too.

Pregnant.

The word hit her in the stomach with the same force as the day the doctor had told her her ovaries were made to look at and not to touch. Three years. Three years of treatments, injections, appointments at seven in the morning. Three years of Diego telling her, “It doesn’t matter, what matters is us,” while he held her in the waiting room. Three years so that now, in a fifty-seven-second audio clip, he was telling her he was going to be the father of another woman’s daughter.

She stood up. Her legs were shaking, but rage was already starting to push grief aside. She walked to the bedroom. Half the hangers in the closet were empty. The gray backpack was gone. The picture frame with the photo of Diego’s mother, the one he had kept on the bedside table since before he even married her, was gone too. The only thing left was the square space, darker than the rest of the wood, where the sun hadn’t reached in five years.

She went back to the living room and opened the bar. She poured herself two fingers of whiskey and drank it as if it were water. The alcohol burned her throat and gave her a little clarity back. If Diego thought she was going to cry over him on her knees in the kitchen like a widow, he didn’t know her as well as he believed.

She dialed Sergio’s number before thinking about it too much.

—Hello —he answered, his voice thick, as if he’d just woken up, even though it was eleven at night.

—Are you alone?

There was a pause that was far too long.

—Yes.

—Send me the address. I’m coming over.

She hung up before he could ask anything. Sergio was Diego’s best friend since they were fourteen. They had shared college, Sunday games, summer barbecues. And they had also shared, all those years, that silent tension Marisol pretended not to notice. The times Sergio lingered a second too long staring at the curve of her waist when she bent to serve coffee. The times he held her hand a moment longer when greeting her. Little things, things she had stored in a mental box and never opened.

That night she was going to open the box.

***

The building was near the park, on a tree-lined street where the trees formed a green roof overhead. Marisol parked badly, leaving one wheel on the curb. She didn’t care. She went up to the sixth floor and when Sergio opened the door, she didn’t give him time to say hello.

—Diego left —she said, walking in without waiting to be invited—. Two hours ago. With another woman. Pregnant.

Sergio closed the door slowly. He was wearing an old white T-shirt and gray pants. Hair tousled, barefoot. He smelled of cigarettes and mint soap. Marisol walked to the window and stood looking at the cars passing on the avenue.

—Do you want me to call someone? —he asked behind her—. Your sister, or...?

—No.

She turned around. Sergio was three steps away, arms crossed, not knowing what to do with his body. Marisol looked him over slowly, as if seeing him for the first time. The broad shoulders. The old scar on his left eyebrow, from a bike fall at twelve, according to what Diego had told her a thousand times. The rough, unshaven line of his jaw.

—Do you want a drink? —he said.

—No.

—Do you want to sit down and...?

—I want you to fuck me —she cut in—. Right now. Hard. Until I forget my husband’s name.

Sergio opened his mouth and nothing came out. Marisol closed the distance. She put one hand on his chest, right above his heart, and felt his pulse quicken beneath her palm. With the other hand she slid straight to the bulge in the gray pants. He was already half hard. She squeezed him through the fabric, closing her fingers around him, weighing him.

—You always wanted this —Marisol said softly, not letting go—. I knew it the first time I came to eat here with Diego. Four years ago. You got hard every time I bent down to pick something up. Did you think I didn’t notice?

—Sol, now is not the time.

—This is the only time.

She ran her other hand over the back of his neck and pulled him down. Sergio’s mouth took a full second to respond. Then it responded as if he had been practicing for years. He kissed her with the urgency of someone who knew that door would not open twice. He held her face with both hands, thumbs on her cheekbones, while he bit her lower lip and let it go only to find it again immediately. Sergio’s tongue slid hot and thick into her mouth, and Marisol sucked on it as if she were already sucking on something else.

She closed her eyes. For the first time in two hours, she didn’t hear the audio in her head.

She yanked his T-shirt off. Sergio had the sun-bronzed torso of a summer at the pool, a dark trail of hair running down from his navel and disappearing under the waistband of his pants. She ran her tongue over his collarbone, slowly, tasting the salt. She bit his right nipple and sucked it until it hardened. Sergio grabbed her hips and slammed her against the window. The glass was cold against her back. Marisol arched her spine, feeling desire rise through her pelvis and erase the image of the empty closet.

Sergio hoisted her dress up to her waist. He ripped her panties off in one dry jerk, snapping the elastic against her hip. He slid two fingers between her thighs, direct, without preamble, and found she was already drenched.

—You’re soaking, Sol —he said against her ear, voice rough.

—Shut up and fuck me.

—Not here —he murmured, fingers still inside her, curling them—. Come.

He took her to the bedroom without taking his fingers out, forcing her to walk against his hand. The bed was unmade, the white sheets rumpled. Marisol pulled the dress off over her head and let it fall to the floor. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts bounced free, nipples already hard. Sergio stood still for a second, looking at her, then shook his head very slowly, as if he couldn’t quite believe this was happening.

—If you’re going to regret it tomorrow —he said—, stop now.

—Tomorrow is tomorrow’s problem.

She pushed him onto the bed. She pulled down his pants and underwear in one motion. Sergio’s cock sprang free, hard, thick, the head swollen and already shining with pre-cum. Bigger than Marisol had imagined in all the times she’d allowed herself to think about it. She licked her lips without noticing.

—Look what you had tucked away —she said, taking hold of it with her hand—. And my husband right next door, not suspecting a thing.

She knelt between Sergio’s legs at the edge of the bed. She gripped his cock with both hands, measuring it, weighing it. She dragged her tongue from base to tip, slowly, looking him in the eyes. She licked his balls one by one, sucking them into her mouth. Sergio shut his eyes and let his head fall back onto the pillow, releasing a word that broke in his throat.

Then she went up the shaft with a flat tongue, collecting the taste, and when she reached the tip she opened her mouth and took him all the way in. She swallowed him until the head hit the back of her throat and gagging rose in her, but she held on. She started sucking him with a slow, deep rhythm, letting saliva run from the corner of her mouth and down over her fingers and his balls, soaking everything. Every so often she pulled him all the way out of her mouth to spit on him and then grab him again with her hand, stroking him against her own tongue.

—Fuck, Sol, fuck —he panted, fingers tangled in her hair—. Like that, like that.

She worked him like that for several minutes, listening to his breathing become shorter, more broken. She pressed her head down against his pelvis, deliberately choking herself, stuck her tongue out underneath to lick his balls while the tip was glued to the back of her throat. Sergio pulled her hair and moved her head to the rhythm he wanted. When she felt him right at the edge, when his cock started throbbing against her palate, Marisol stopped. She put a hand on his chest and made him understand, without saying it, that this wasn’t going to be the end. She gave the tip one last slow lick, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and smiled.

—Not yet. I decide when you come.

—Get up here —he said, voice broken, gripping her hips.

Marisol climbed onto the bed, straddled him, and took his cock in her hand. She ran it along the lips of her pussy, rubbing it from top to bottom, wetting it with her own juices, teasing him. She tapped the tip against her clit, slid it through the folds, and when Sergio tried to lift his hips to get inside her, she rose up and slipped away from him.

—Ask for it —she told him.

—Sol, please.

—Ask properly.

—Put it in. Please. Put my cock all the way in, for fuck’s sake.

Marisol sat down slowly. The penetration was slow, deliberate, almost cruel. Every centimeter was a decision she made. His cock opened her cunt, stretched it, filled a space nothing else had filled for months. Sergio had his fingers dug into her thighs, knuckles white. When she had him all the way inside, to the base, Marisol stayed still, resting her palms on his chest, feeling him throb inside her, looking down at him.

—How many times did you think about this? —she asked, clenching her pussy muscles around him to punish him.

—Too many —Sergio panted, rolling his eyes back—. Fuck. Too many.

—When you jerked off at night, did you think about me?

—Yes.

—Say it all.

—I jerked off thinking about fucking you. Every night. After every barbecue. After every time you came to eat.

—Diego cheated on me for three months —she said, beginning to move, riding him all the way up and down—. Three months. Did you know?

Sergio hesitated. That hesitation was the answer. Marisol sped up, riding him hard, dropping all the way down on him each time, feeling the tip slam into her depths. She dug her nails into his chest, dragging them until they left red marks. Sergio shouted something that wasn’t a word.

—I don’t care —she went on, never stopping—. It’s done. This is what I do with the pain. Fuck you. The bastard’s best friend. And he never finds out.

She moved with a disciplined fury, with a cadence that never lost control. She took his hands and put them on her breasts, forcing him to squeeze them. Sergio twisted her nipples, stretched them, and she rode harder. The sound of skin slapping skin filled the bedroom, wet, obscene. Sergio tried to sit up to kiss her; she put a hand on his chest and held him down. She wanted him to look at her, to look at her and know that tonight was hers and no one else’s. She wanted to feel that her body still served some purpose, that the word “sterile” the doctor had used three years ago did not define her entirely.

—Look at my face when you fuck me —she ordered—. Don’t close your eyes. Look at me.

Sergio looked at her. Marisol leaned forward, braced her hands on the wooden headboard, and moved her hips, rubbing against his pubic bone, searching for the exact angle against her clit. She began to tremble. Sergio grabbed her ass with both hands and helped her move, burying his fingers in her cheeks.

When she came, she did it in silence. A long shudder that started in her thighs and climbed to her shoulders. Her pussy closed around Sergio’s cock in deep spasms, squeezing him. She pressed her hands to his chest and stayed there, trembling, hair falling over her face.

—I haven’t come yet —Sergio said, jaw clenched—. Hold on.

He grabbed her by the waist and twisted her in one sharp motion, turning her face-down on the mattress. He lifted her hips, put her on all fours, and drove his cock back into her in one stroke. Marisol screamed into the pillow. Sergio grabbed her hair, bunching it in his fist, and started fucking her from behind with hard thrusts that shook her whole body. Every stroke wrenched a moan from Marisol, every retreat left her empty for half a second before the next. He slapped her ass with an open palm, leaving the red imprint of his hand.

—That’s it, you son of a bitch —she said, arching her back—. Fuck me like she’s supposed to be letting him fuck her right now.

Sergio sank deeper, if that was even possible. He grabbed one breast with a hand and pinched her nipple between his fingers while he kept pounding into her. His other hand moved down to her clit and started massaging it in quick circles, never stopping fucking her. Marisol felt herself coming again, right on top of the last one, with no pause at all. She pushed her ass against him, seeking him, rocking. She came screaming this time, biting the sheet.

Sergio held on for three more thrusts and came inside her, his face buried in her neck, groaning low. She felt the hot spurts filling her, one after another, and for an instant the word sterile bounced in her head like both mockery and relief.

They collapsed there, him on top, still inside, both panting. Then, for several minutes, the only sound in the bedroom was their breathing. Marisol stared at the ceiling, the sheet stuck to her back with sweat. The yellow streetlight filtered through the blinds and drew parallel lines across the ceiling. She felt the warm semen leaking out between her thighs.

—Sol —Sergio said, still not moving—. We need to talk.

—No.

—What happened...

—It happened. That’s it.

She got up. She wiped between her legs with a corner of the sheet without asking permission. She dressed in silence while he watched her from the bed, arms behind his head, his cock still shining with moisture against his thigh, not asking her to stay because he knew it wouldn’t help. Marisol fixed her hair in front of the closet mirror. Her face was red, her lips swollen, her eyes dry. She felt more whole than she had all day.

—Did you know about Carolina? —she asked again.

—I suspected. I wasn’t sure.

—And you didn’t tell me anything.

—It wasn’t my place.

Marisol nodded. It was a man’s answer. It was the answer she expected.

—Are you going to tell him?

Sergio thought about it for a moment.

—No.

—Good.

She put on her shoes. She walked to the bedroom door and, before leaving, turned around. Sergio was still in bed, naked, looking at her.

—If he calls you —Marisol said—, tell him you didn’t see me. That I didn’t even answer the phone.

—Done.

She went down the stairs. The elevator gave her claustrophobia tonight. Outside, the September air smelled of freshly cut grass from the park. Marisol walked to the car, opened the door, sat behind the wheel. She didn’t start it right away. She took her cell phone out of her bag. She had five messages from her sister, two missed calls from her mother, none from Diego.

She opened the conversation with her husband. His last message, from four in the afternoon, said: “I’ll be a little later, don’t wait for me to eat.” Marisol reread the sentence three times. Then she scrolled down to the audio. She listened to it one more time, all the way through, eyes closed. When it ended, she deleted it. She deleted the entire conversation too.

She started the car. She drove home with the radio on, choosing a station with old boleros because she didn’t want to think. When she got there, she took a long shower, letting the hot water run between her legs, washing away what Sergio had left inside her. Then she poured herself another drink and sat in the armchair, in the exact same spot where she had been two hours before.

She picked up the phone. She found Carolina’s contact, that new girl in Accounting whose number she had written down at the year-end dinner, in case Diego ever forgot his phone. She sent a short message.

“Congratulations on the pregnancy. Tomorrow at the café on the corner by the office, at eleven. We need to talk.”

She sent it. Rested her head against the backrest. For the first time all night, she felt herself smiling. Not with joy. With something else. With the cold certainty that the worst betrayal still hadn’t finished paying for itself.