Cheating

I’d never cheated on my husband in eighteen years. One screen, one bold stranger, and one empty afternoon were enough to make all of that stop mattering.

When that stranger’s punch knocked my boyfriend flat on the canvas, I knew that night I would do something I’d never fully regret.

For her, it’s just affection, a way of taking care of him. For him, it’s love. And between them grows a secret that beats every night just a few feet from her sleeping boyfriend.

He only came to use our computer on a rainy afternoon. But he showed me a program that could strip anyone naked, and without thinking, I asked him to try it on me.

I told him to strip too. It was only fair: he’d already seen me naked on the screen and I’d spent the whole afternoon pretending to be technically curious.

I told him I wouldn’t touch him, that he should only look. But every folder he opened on the screen pushed me a little closer to crossing the line we’d been skirting for months.

She went downstairs for water and found them laughing in the garden. That night, on her knees in the hallway, I decided to remind my husband who she belonged to.

When my mother opened the door and I saw who was coming in for dinner, my blood ran cold: it was the man I’d been secretly sleeping with for two months.

Daniel slept in the front seat while, a meter away, his uncle and his girlfriend shared the truck’s narrow bunk. And Noelia no longer wanted to sleep.

She ran her marriage, but that morning on the sand I found out how much she loved a stranger telling her who was in charge, with her husband watching.

For twenty years behind the desk, I've learned to read people. I knew she couldn't make rent long before she dared ask me for help.

He brought homemade orujo in an unlabeled jug and got my boyfriend drunk in an hour. When Sergio started snoring, his uncle looked at me and I knew dinner had only been the beginning.

A year had passed since the last time. I turned a corner downtown and crashed into her: the same perfume, the same gaze, the same desire I thought I’d forgotten.

It was only supposed to be the excuse his wife wouldn’t question. I never imagined I’d end up sitting across from them, unable to look away.

I’d spent years sneaking on just to look. That summer afternoon, I finally decided to open the door to one of them.

I put on the lingerie she would never wear and wait for him to knock on the motel door. I know he’ll come back: at home there’s a man starving.

I was 24, with a sweet girlfriend and a doubt I’d kept quiet for years. His hand on my shoulder that night at the bar ended up answering it.

I showed up at that party in my swimwear thinking it would be just another day with my boyfriend. I had no idea I’d end up on my knees, showing another man what he was missing.

I’m a patrician used to buying everything I desire. That afternoon I discovered there are men you don’t command: you obey them.

I was only going to touch him for a moment, out of pity. I never imagined that old man with the huge hands would end up giving me orders while I obeyed without resistance.