Cheating

In the elevator he brushed my arm like it was nothing and smelled like expensive cologne. That same night, while I got dressed in the dark, I was already planning how to leave Tomás.

I’d been crossing paths with her in the lobby for months, avoiding her gaze. That afternoon, trapped in the elevator with her drunk husband beside us, I stopped avoiding her.

I went over just to watch the final. When the whistle blew, a hand sank into my ass and I knew the real plan was starting then and there.

When I opened my suitcase at the cabin, none of my clothes were there—just lace thongs, short skirts, and makeup. Carla calmly told me that was my only chance.

The key had been warming my pocket since the night before. I knew she’d be awake, waiting for me, with her robe open and the coffee pot on the heat.

Two hours before the vows, I tried to steal one last kiss from my fiancé and crossed the forest to his cabin. The back window showed me something I’d never forget.

When the landline rang that afternoon, I never imagined the call would lead me to a downtown hotel, two men desiring me, and a version of myself I never knew existed.

When she opened the door in that short robe with the sheer nightdress underneath, I knew the afternoon wasn’t going to be just about installing a TV.

We were alone in the office at seven. By ten Camila was leaning against a shelf in the archive and I couldn’t think about the client anymore.

Yesterday I slept with my ex-wife, and it was by far the sanest thing I did all week. What happened the other four days is not something I should be telling you, but here I am.

I arrived determined to behave. When the lights went down and that stranger’s body began moving among us, I knew something was about to spin out of control.

The other side of the bed was untouched and, on the fruit bowl, an envelope with my name and my husband’s square handwriting.

She wore the tightest yellow dress in her closet and a head full of arguments against that woman. An hour later, she no longer knew whether she hated or desired her.

Carla whispered her darkest fantasy to me, and weeks later I watched her kneeling before the man we had both chosen without ever saying it aloud.

I was married and alone at the town fair when my two exes showed up the same night. They hated each other at first. 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 Andrés’s whim. 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.