Cheating

One look from Renata was enough for me to understand: she’d seen everything the previous afternoon and now wanted her share, with no chance to refuse.

We’d joked about the idea after the movie. A week later, my wife left me a voice note at one in the morning, and the bedroom smelled like another man.

When she lowered her voice to tell me they had slept together, everything I thought I knew about my marriage shattered on the hallway floor.

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.

When he knocked on my door at midnight, I knew he’d lied to his wife again. And I knew, too, that tonight would be mine alone.

My husband had been away all week and I was still carrying the guilt from the last time. Then that man in line smiled at me like he knew everything.

The grocery tab was maxed out, my husband watched TV, and the grocer watched me from across the counter with blue eyes that seemed to strip me naked.

I found her crying in the kitchen, the phone still in her hand and her husband’s voice still echoing. I only meant to comfort her; I swear the rest wasn’t in my plans.

That stormy night I came home soaked and opened the bedroom door without warning: what I saw on our bed changed my mind more than any accusation could.

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.

He crouched to show me his bracelets, and his gaze dropped to my breasts. In that instant, I knew I wouldn’t leave that beach the same woman.

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.

When the last coworker closed the door, I knew that night I wouldn’t go home as the same woman. He looked at me and I was already trembling.

She got the mechanic she’d been watching from the queue. When he slipped her his phone number “in case the car had problems,” they both knew the car was the least of it.

When I saw my sister crossing the restaurant with that new sway, I knew the game I'd invented to arouse my lover had stopped being a game for me.

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.

She crossed her legs slowly so he would notice the black lace beneath the dress. That night, he would not be the one in control, though he did not yet suspect it.

We left the party at four in the morning thinking the night was over. In reality, in that huge house it was only just beginning.

No one said aloud what was going to happen, but when the clothes began to come off, all four of us knew we wouldn’t return home that night as the same people.