My Wife’s Friend Arrived the Night She Left Me

A flash of lightning lit the distant clouds beyond the hill, without the thunder reaching the house. The drizzle eased and left the dawn still, cold, wet. Esteban Mariano rested his palms on the terrace railing and felt the air bite into his back through his shirt.

—Call it what you want, it was unexpected —he muttered, without turning toward the guest.

Rodrigo drew slowly on his cigarette and the ember glowed like a red dot in the gloom. He was Camila’s friend, the only one who had shown up unannounced the night she packed her bags. He had spent two hours listening, never rushing him, never interrupting him except to pour himself vodka.

—Unexpected? —he repeated, in that deep voice that settled in the chest of anyone who heard it—. After what you’ve told me, man, what could still surprise you? Camila, Valeria, the gym girl, all of them in your bed. Anyone would say nothing gets to you anymore.

Esteban exhaled a puff of sweet pipe smoke. The smoke floated between them like a thick mist that took a while to dissolve. The guest’s gaze didn’t ask permission to enter; it entered on its own and searched.

—It wasn’t the orgy that was unexpected —Esteban said, clearing his throat—. The orgy was her idea, down to the last detail. What was unexpected was realizing it wouldn’t be enough for her.

—Start from the beginning —Rodrigo asked, setting his glass on the iron table with a soft clink.

—The three of them arrived together, laughing, already half a bottle of Mompox aguardiente in. The room filled in less than a minute with clothes that fell silently onto the carpet. Camila hung Valeria’s black corset from my bedside lamp, on the side where I sleep. Antonella, the gym girl, did the same with a cherry-red culotte, soaked in the crotch, and left it dripping on the nightstand. As if they were marking territory.

—A declaration of intent —Rodrigo noted, with a crooked smile.

—The three of them looked different in the dim light. My wife, thick thighs and a short waist, all brown skin, with dark nipples already hard from friction alone. Valeria, cream-white, with teardrop breasts and pubic hair trimmed into a narrow strip. Antonella, long and narrow, with a piercing glinting in her navel and another, smaller one, through the hood of her clit. I stayed seated on the edge of the bed, not knowing what to do with my hands, my cock already straining my pants until it hurt.

—And who directed the choreography? —Rodrigo asked, leaning in a little.

—Camila. As always. She sat down beside me, slid her hand through my fly, and pulled my cock out into the open with the same ease as uncorking a bottle. She told me, almost in my ear, that it wasn’t entirely for me. She had lost a stupid bet with her girlfriends: according to her, Antonella had never had a vaginal orgasm with any of her boyfriends, and my wife had sworn I could fix that. I was the bet.

—“Do it for me, monkey” —she told me, while she jerked me off slowly with a closed fist, looking me straight in the eyes—. “Fill that pussy up good, fuck her until she screams, and save me a little milk for later too.” She said it laughing, like asking a favor between friends.

Rodrigo set the glass down and, for a second, dropped his observer’s pose. He let out a low whistle, almost admiring.

—Damn. What a strategist.

—That’s the word. And I was the pawn. But I didn’t mind. I did it. Antonella knelt first between my legs without saying a word and took my cock halfway into her mouth. She had a trained tongue, the kind only women who’ve sucked a lot and well can have. She sucked me with hollowed cheeks, bringing up saliva on purpose, letting it run down her chin to her small tits. Camila grabbed her hair and shoved her head lower until Antonella gagged and pulled back coughing, thick strings hanging from her lips. “Like that, whore, that’s how you suck it,” my wife said, laughing. “Make it show in your throat.”

—Camila getting the other one into the rhythm —Rodrigo whispered.

—Camila getting her into the rhythm. Then she laid her on her back on the bed, spread her legs wide, and showed Valeria where to go. Valeria dove in headfirst, her chin buried in Antonella’s pubis, and started licking her pussy with the meticulousness of a cat. She pried the lips open with two fingers, stuck out her whole tongue, and traced from the asshole to the clit with the piercing, sucking it slowly, tugging the little ball with her teeth until Antonella’s back arched off the mattress. I watched with my cock in my hand, not moving, until Camila pushed on my shoulders and said, “Now, monkey. Push it all in at once.”

—And you did?

—Right in. No preamble. Antonella was so wet the cock slid in on its own, all the way to the balls, with a wet sound that made all three of them laugh. I fucked her hard, my hands on her bony hips, watching my cock slide in and out glossy and slick while Valeria kept licking her clit just above the place where I was fucking her. Valeria’s tongue would sometimes brush my shaft and that contact made my back prickle. My wife, crouched beside us, with two fingers buried in her own cunt and her thumb on her clit, was jerking herself off watching us, breathing hard, commenting on every thrust like a coach. “Deeper, monkey, use your hips, make her make noise.”

—And the moans?

—The three moans were different. That’s what I remember most. How one moan didn’t sound like the next. Valeria moaned with her mouth full, a wet hum that made Antonella’s cunt vibrate and made the tip of my cock tremble. Antonella let out dry screams, almost like barking, every time I hit bottom. And Camila, off to the side, was breathing like she’d been running, cursing under her breath, murmuring, “Come here, give her to me for a little, give her to me.”

—And did you get what your wife had bet on?

—Antonella came twice. The first time in silence, eyes closed and legs trembling over my hips; I felt clearly how her cunt closed around my cock, squeezing me in waves, while Valeria kept licking her clit without stopping. I flipped her over, put her on all fours, and drove my cock into her from behind, grabbing her hair with one hand and her hip with the other. Valeria got underneath her, on her back, and sucked her clit with her tongue stretched out while I kept fucking her. The second time Antonella came with a scream that woke the neighbor’s dog, with a hot jet that stained Valeria’s face from forehead to neck. Camila clapped. She really clapped, with both hands, naked and satisfied, as if she were at a theater. And then came her turn. She threw herself on the bed on her back, spread her legs, and said, “Now yes, monkey, come inside me, I’m burning up.” I drove my cock in wet with the other woman’s cunt, and she let out a cry of pure pleasure. She came three times in a row, biting my shoulder, until she wrung the milk out of me in one pull and swallowed it with kisses, then passed her mouth full of it to Valeria so they could share. We ended with the four of us, skin stuck together with sweat and semen, the sheets turned into a rag.

Rodrigo laughed, this time without sarcasm. He took another sip of vodka and settled more comfortably into the wicker chair.

—I’ll confess something to you, man. Up to here, the story made sense. It sounds like a night anyone would want to live once. But you said the unexpected came after. I still don’t believe that part.

Esteban sat down in the rocking chair across from him. His pipe had gone out. He set it on the ashtray as if giving up on it. The sky to the east was starting to lose its darkness.

***

—She came back to the attack two months later. One night, in bed, while she was giving me a slow blowjob, the kind where she took her time, her tongue wrapped around the frenulum and her eyes locked on mine. She dropped it on me as casually as asking for a coffee without sugar, my cock still in her mouth and her voice all wet. That next time she’d like to try me with another man. That instead of another woman, it should be a guy. That she wanted to feel two cocks at the same time, one in the pussy and another in the ass, or one in the mouth and another from behind, the order didn’t matter. A movie orgy, she told me, laughing with my cum between her teeth, because right then she made me finish and swallowed it slowly, never taking her eyes off me, as if it were some new mischief.

The guest blinked. For the first time that night, he blinked twice in a row.

—I didn’t answer what I was really thinking. I told her yes, of course, whenever you want, and I squeezed her ass like the idea thrilled me. Inside, I promised myself I’d avoid it at all costs. Let her sleep with whoever she wanted, fine. But me watching another cock sink into her balls-deep? Me agreeing to let another man pry her legs open in front of me and fill her cunt with someone else’s cum? No.

—And she accepted that silent refusal? —Rodrigo asked carefully.

—Camila doesn’t accept refusals. She waits them out. She just has to wait for the right moment. And the moment came on a Friday night. I got back from a work trip late, and before I even put the key in the lock I could hear them from the hall. Vallenato music, laughter, glasses, and a long, very long female moan that slipped under the door. When I opened it, they were in the living room. Camila and Valeria, dancing pressed together. So close together that at first I thought they were holding each other up so they wouldn’t fall.

—And they weren’t holding each other up —Rodrigo murmured.

—They weren’t holding each other up. Camila had her hand under Valeria’s miniskirt, up to the wrist, moving inside with a slow rhythm; you could hear her fingers sloshing in there. Valeria, her head thrown back, was biting my wife’s neck and squeezing one breast over the blouse with her free hand. Camila looked at me from there, over her friend’s shoulder, with two fingers stained up to the knuckles, and I knew I wasn’t invited. She pulled them out of Valeria’s cunt very slowly, very deliberately, and brought them to her mouth one by one, sucking them while her eyes stayed fixed on mine. I waited a while, standing there like an idiot with my suitcase in my hand. When I tried to move closer, she waved me off. With two fingers, the same ones she’d just sucked. Softly, but she moved me away.

—“Go to bed, monkey” —she told me—. “Tonight’s a farewell; Valeria’s going to Turkey and she deserves her sendoff. Tomorrow we’re both going to a finca, I’ll let you know when I’m back upstairs.” I watched them leave hand in hand toward the guest room. Before closing the door, Camila lifted her skirt and showed me she wasn’t wearing anything underneath, her shaved cunt already shining. I turned off the lights. I went to bed alone. I pressed my ear to the wall, man. Like a teenager. And I listened. I listened to mouths, tongues, the wet splashing. I heard Valeria ask for more fingers, four, all of them, the fist. I heard my wife shout things at her she had never shouted at me: “Come here, whore, come on my face, come on, come on.” I heard Valeria come twice, three times. With my cock in my hand, I jerked off in anger and came on my stomach without pleasure.

Rodrigo lowered his gaze to the glass. This time there was no smile. Only the sound of the ice melting.

—Camila came back at five. She kissed my forehead, still smelling of Valeria’s cunt in her hair, curled up against my back, and said nothing. Neither did I. At ten we left for that finca. A place for couples with problems, according to her. A convention, she called it. I understood right away what kind of finca it was.

—A swinging club —Rodrigo said, almost in a whisper.

—A huge house, with an infinity pool, sauna, billiard table, double hammocks on the balconies. And rules. Camila recited them to me in the car like she was reading a grocery list. “If you don’t want anybody, no problem. But I do want someone, my little monkey. You know I need this.” Forty minutes driving with that phrase bouncing around in my head.

—And you gave in?

—I gave in. I gave in to watching, because refusing would have meant getting out of the car halfway down the road. I gave in to drinking two glasses of wine in the carved wooden bar while she played poker with two couples she knew and I didn’t. I gave in to watching her leave the lounge on the arm of a guy younger than me, shirt open and the smile of someone who already had everything arranged. I gave in, Rodrigo. I gave in to staying in a hammock on the balcony while I listened to the bed in the neighboring room complain for a long hour. The springs creaking in a steady rhythm. The blows of a pubis against a pair of buttocks. And Camila’s voice —that voice I knew note for note— telling the guy to push it in deeper, not to stop, to bury it to the hilt, and then, lower, rougher, telling him to put it in her ass too, to open her up, not to be afraid of it. I heard the scream she let out when she came from behind, a scream I had never managed to pull from her in twenty years. Then silence. Then her laughter. Then the unmistakable sound of a cock sliding out of a body and a stream of semen falling onto a stomach. And while I listened, I knew Camila didn’t need me to take part. She needed me to be there. She needed an audience. That was the unexpected part.

Rodrigo stayed silent for a long while. The gray light of dawn softened his features.

—That must have hurt you a lot, Esteban —he said at last—. Not the betrayal. The revelation that the betrayal could happen in front of you, with your signed permission.

—More than hurt, it shut me down. We came back on Sunday. We didn’t talk about the weekend. We never spoke of it again. But from that night on, Camila would leave twice a month, without telling me where, and come back with finger marks on her hips, bite marks on her tits, her hair messed up and sometimes dried semen still at the corner of her mouth. I never asked. Until last night, when she packed her bags and told me, with that same smile, that being my public no longer served her if I was going to pretend I couldn’t see anything.

***

The cellphone vibrated on the table. Esteban picked it up with slow fingers. It was Carolina, Camila’s sister, asking whether her niece Renata was still sleeping at the house or if she should pick her up later. He replied in three lines. Told her to come get her at eleven. That he would be there. That she shouldn’t worry about anything.

Rodrigo stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and stood up. Light was already entering over the savanna and sketching the first outlines of the valley. Birds were starting, timidly, in some tree at the back of the garden.

—I’m going to ask you a favor, man —he said, without looking at him—. When Camila calls me, and she will call me, I’m not going to tell her any of this. But I’m also not going to tell her I came. If she asks, I’ll say I got lost on the road and slept in a hostel.

Esteban Mariano looked at him without fully understanding. And then he understood. His wife’s friend had come to say goodbye, not to console him. He had come to confirm with his own eyes what he had sensed from the beginning: that Camila was leaving because there was nothing left to look at, because the audience had gotten used to the show and no longer applauded.

—Did you ever love her? —Esteban asked, slowly, almost in a whisper—. Her, I mean. Did you love her as a friend or were you always waiting for your turn?

Rodrigo took his time answering. He adjusted his jacket over his shoulders, looked toward the valley as it lit up, and turned back to the host.

—I loved her as a friend. But there was one night, years ago, when the idea crossed my mind. Camila realized before I did. She told me not to even think about it, that she had chosen one man and that that one was enough for her. —He paused—. That man was you.

Esteban didn’t answer. He stood up from the rocking chair, walked to the kitchen, and came back with the Italian coffee maker in his hand and two clean cups. He poured in silence. The coffee steamed in the cold air like a small offering.

—Strong —he said before Rodrigo could ask—. And no sugar. The way she likes it.

Rodrigo accepted the cup with both hands and took a long sip. The sun emerged over the ridge of the hill and, for a second, the whole terrace turned orange. The two men stayed there looking at it without speaking, each holding his own cup, waiting for something neither of them knew how to name.