Cheating

For years I pretended not to understand why she lingered when passing that shop. The afternoon I followed her inside, I understood my mother had already stopped belonging only to my father.

A single photograph on the studio wall was enough for the professor to realize he could never look at her as just a student again.

She told herself she was only helping him feel better. But every afternoon, with her boyfriend out of the house, the distance between them grew shorter.

“She came to see her boyfriend, the doctor,” the receptionist told him. Damián had no girlfriend. But when she described the visitor’s blush, he knew exactly who was waiting inside.

I’d spent years cheating on my husband without guilt, but I never imagined a work trip to a remote farm would end with me on my knees before a stranger.

I had buried it under years of exams and routine, but all it took was hearing him say my name from across the bar for my body to remember what my mind wanted to forget.

I never answer the phone at three in the morning, but that night I knew it was him—and what he had to confess about my wife and the old man couldn’t wait until dawn.

When he went down to the supermarket for beer, his uncle cornered me against the freshly painted wall and I knew my boyfriend wouldn’t be the one breaking in the bed.

Adrián fell asleep ten minutes after takeoff. The man by the window waited until he heard his steady breathing before leaning toward Marina and whispering in her ear.

I started by telling him made-up dreams about other men. What he didn’t know was that every word that made him moan had really happened that same week.

I didn’t shower before going back home. I wanted my boyfriend to feel the gym sweat on my skin and the trace of another man, and not have the courage to ask whose it was.

That night, hidden in the shadow of the hallway, my husband learned that offering me to another man had a price: watching someone else give me what he no longer knew how to give.

When the engine died in the middle of nowhere, Daniela knew that night would depend entirely on the two men sleeping in those trucks.

I took off my ring before getting into the water. I didn’t want any souvenir photo to give me away, or for him to get ideas that weren’t his to have.

“Welcome to my beach,” his voice said behind me. I was completely naked on the towel, and he was the last person I expected to see there.

Marisol couldn’t sleep. She left the hut, leaving Gonzalo among dreams, and walked to the campfire, where the silent guide was waiting. That night she would cross a point of no return.

He wanted me to tell him my made-up adventures again. He had no idea that every word I whispered that night was a lie with a hidden edge.

Every insult shouted by that masked stranger was aimed at one person: the man beside me who slept believing I was his.

He could tell something was off in my breath, but he never dared name it. My best work wasn’t on any screen: it was inside his head, on a loop.

He thought that night was just a night out with his friends. He had no idea the masked woman on stage had been planning his downfall for weeks.