Cheating

I turned on the system from the office just to keep an eye on the tools. What came up on the screen was my wife taking off her bikini in front of him.

I asked her to dress to provoke, and on the fourth day she came home with a trembling voice and a story she couldn’t tell me with her clothes on.

I got out of the car thinking I was going to defend him and ended up seeing him with a stranger on his lap. What I did next wasn’t planned: I just stopped being afraid.

I let the dress fall on the balcony knowing he was watching from the other side of the glass. And I knew my husband had planned it all.

That morning I didn’t get dressed or dry my tears. I just dialed his number and asked him to come without telling my husband.

We were never friends, but she looked at me with contempt every time her boyfriend lingered too long staring at me. So I gave her a real reason to hate me.

I promised myself it would only be a quick visit to the neighborhood. When I woke in the middle of the night, she was still beside me, immaculate, but something had changed forever.

I accepted the room he rented me without suspecting a thing. Three weeks later I was already planning my new life with him, while my husband still called me every night.

When she came out of the bathroom with her robe tied carelessly and her nipples pressing against the fabric, I knew I could never look at her as just the cousin from summer beach trips again.

When I opened my eyes, her arm was resting on my chest and the makeshift bed still smelled like the night before. I was going to leave soon; I’d promised my husband.

My wife pulled a brochure from her purse and told me we had a meeting that afternoon. I had no idea that saying yes meant giving up being the only man in her bed for fifteen days.

My ad was always for men. But that afternoon, when I read her message, I knew I was about to break my own rule and complicate my life.

Every time my friend came through the door, she changed her clothes. One afternoon I made up an excuse, drove around the block, and slipped in through the back patio in silence.

I sent my secretary home, turned up the heat, and left only my blazer over my sheer bra. I wanted Mariela to see everything I’d been craving for weeks.

Her wife was leaving on a trip the next day, and I was still sleeping on a mattress on the floor. When he rang the bell with his toolbox, I knew something was about to happen.

I went down to the garden looking for her and found her behind the glass, seated in the chair, with her assistant kissing her eyelids as if I didn’t exist.

I was kneeling on the passenger seat when he whispered his girlfriend’s name. I looked up through the tinted glass: she was walking toward the car.

I knocked a thousand times and nobody opened. When reception let me in, I found suitcases that weren’t mine under the bed and an unmistakable smell.

When I sat next to her in that workshop, I had no idea that the sad, discreet woman would end up whispering, naked in her bed, that she had never felt anything like it.

I went out to get some air while he slept. The lights in the apartment across the way were still on, and then I heard a moan that wasn’t mine and knew I was going to keep watching.