Cheating

When he tied the black mask over my eyes and opened the private-room door, I never imagined that one of those masks hid someone I’d known since childhood.

I heard it through the ajar door: the laborer was fucking the secretary in the storeroom. That afternoon I went back to the office for more than documents.

I’d spent half my life with the same woman when that stranger in leopard print sat beside me and looked at me the way no one had in years.

The prince’s convoy rolled in unannounced between the cranes. He got out of the second car, took off his sunglasses, and I knew those three months of silence would break tonight.

The doorbell rang at half past seven and I knew my marriage had just changed forever. She came down the stairs without a bra, looked at them, and smiled.

When I opened the door, he wasn’t alone: behind him, wearing that practiced rent-boy smile, he had brought a man I had never seen in the neighborhood in my life.

I’d been lying to Mateo for months, and when he understood that I knew everything, I didn’t fall apart. I put on the blue dress, left the house, and crossed the city to meet Adrián.

I innocently asked whether I’d been her best lover. Her laugh was the first sign I shouldn’t have opened my mouth that night.

I ripped the dress, tossed a shoe, and rubbed my thighs until they were red. When I called him crying from the phone booth, I knew he’d come without thinking.

We’d been drinking beer around the pool for hours. When I went into the house looking for ice, the moans were coming from inside—and they weren’t hers alone.

I got out of the taxi half a block from the hotel, as always. The receptionist no longer asked my name: she handed me the key to 304 without looking at me.

I opened the door convinced it was my husband. I was in my underwear, hair messy, and barefoot. When I saw who it was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to shut it in time.

I got off the plane knowing I’d have to look him in the eye. What I didn’t know was that that same night, through tears, I’d ask him for something I had never dared say aloud.

When I saw her walk into work in the same black leggings from the day before, I knew that day wasn’t going to end like the others. Not like I thought it would, either.

Rodrigo kept watching me every time I crossed the living room. I’d known for months, and that afternoon I decided it was time to collect a debt.

Sandra took the wine bottles, looked at me, and whispered: “It’s going to be needed, trust me.” Her smile was the kind that already knows how the night will end.

I always trained alone, in silence, never looking at anyone. He’d been watching me for three months, and I found out when it was already too late to walk away.

Four weeks watching her move between the tables, wanting what I didn’t dare name. After that, nothing was ever the same.

We’d been married for twenty years, and then she started going to the gym, changing her clothes, checking her phone in the bathroom. Something was off. I decided to find out.

The August heat crushed the block’s courtyard and Adrián couldn’t tear his eyes from the window across the way. Mrs. Valverde didn’t know she was being watched.