Cheating

I hit send and left the phone face down. I wasn’t expecting a reply that same night. When he answered, I knew there was no going back.

In primary school she loved me more than I could love her back. Twenty years later, her voice on the phone sounded the same, and my hands shook.

It was the first time I saw her in person. I meant to tell her about the pool and the lifeguard, but her hand on my thigh changed the conversation before I finished the sentence.

I’d been drafting the ad in my head for months; it took me twelve minutes to write it, and half an hour later I already had seven replies. His was the fifth.

Under that loose, demure clothing, you could sense a woman with her desire intact. I only had to wait for her to stop pretending in front of her husband.

I climbed the tree behind the dormitory to confirm what I already knew. I never imagined seeing her with him on the balcony would awaken something between rage and desire I’d never felt.

I locked the door and turned off the lights in the study room. All I wanted that afternoon was to comfort her; all she wanted was to forget her boyfriend.

She came in wearing her white uniform and her usual smile. What neither of them saw coming was that the other woman was on the sofa, three meters from the game.

There was an hour left until dinner, the children were watching cartoons in the living room, and I crossed the garden looking for my wife. The laundry-room door was ajar.

I’d known him since high school as the toughest macho in class. Last night he saw me transformed into someone else, and the next day his message left no room for doubt.

When I got into the car that morning and saw that she was alone at the wheel, I knew the weekend wasn’t going to be innocent.

I went downstairs barefoot for a glass of water, convinced I was alone. I saw the light on in the office and knew that morning wasn’t going to end the way it had begun.

When she whispered that she was wet and apologized, I realized the fantasy had gone too far. And the stranger still hadn’t done his worst.

When I looked at myself in the hotel mirror, mascara smeared and marks on my neck, I knew no lie would be enough when I got home.

For months I’d let her dance alone, waiting for someone to push far enough. That night, a man taller than me finally did it.

The lover’s initials weren’t written out in full, but they matched the man smoking on my balcony at that very moment.

The skirt was torn, her lips swollen, and she smelled like a man who wasn’t me. The worst part wasn’t seeing her like that: it was what she ordered me to do next.

I went to the club looking for a quiet night. I ended up walking through a bedroom door with another man’s wife and the promise that he’d wait outside.

I went in with the key he’d left in the planter. What I didn’t expect was to find her waiting for me, arms crossed and jaw clenched.