Cheating

I was married and alone at the town festival when my two exes showed up the same night. First they hated each other. Then they decided to share me until dawn.

When I opened the box and found the black lace and the feathered mask, I thought it was just one of Andrés’s whims. It would be months before I understood who had really chosen it.

“If you stay, you stay to play,” he said, looking at my friend. I only wanted him for myself, but a dark part of me wanted to see how far she’d go.

When I got off the plane at two in the morning, I had no idea I’d be sleeping under the same roof as her. I only knew my brother had died and that I was far too alone.

She had spent years convincing herself that desire belonged to the past, until she accepted an invitation she shouldn’t have and unfamiliar hands reminded her who she was.

She had spent eight comfortable, empty years of marriage when that man smiled at her between the aisles. She never imagined that smile would leave her without a husband, without a lover, and finally face to face with herself.

When I saw the truck driving away down the road, my body started beating differently. I knew exactly what was going to happen as soon as he and I were left alone in that house.

I was twenty and had a boyfriend waiting for me at home. That hot afternoon by the pool, I discovered how fiercely the body can burn when you let go.

I accepted his money without imagining how he’d want it paid back. When he arrived that night with wine and that calm smile, I knew there was no turning back.

I confessed the fantasy at eleven thirty at night. By two in the morning, the date was locked in and I was more scared than she was.

It was an April afternoon. I went out without a bra and in a tiny thong. I had no idea my husband would stop at the abandoned gas station and do that to me.

There I was on the sofa, whisky in hand, realizing I no longer needed to take part: it was enough to watch someone else do what I’d stopped doing.

A patient hand came out from between the bars and stroked my stomach, unhurried. My husband undid one button on my shirt to make room for it.

Two beeps, a lit screen, and his wife’s voice filling the garden: “Everything that’s happening to me… everyone needs to know this.”

I asked for just one thing for the last night: to dance. What happened after that, in the cabin at the end of the corridor, I told no one.

You blocked me everywhere, so I’m writing by hand. I need you to know why I did it before I leave this city forever.

I’d given her permission to let them watch us. What I didn’t expect was for her to pull the curtain herself and move my hand aside to put hers there.

I followed him down the corridor without thinking, my heart in my throat. I knew that if I pushed that door there’d be no going back, and I pushed it anyway.

When Tobías’s teacher gave me her personal number “in case anything urgent came up,” I knew it had nothing to do with my son’s grades.

A burst pipe forced the men to sleep together. Toni on one side, me on the other, and between us, Sergio... who wasn’t sleeping quite as soundly as we thought.