Cheating

Daniela’s voice narrated the locker-room encounter while, around her, her friends’ bodies tangled shamelessly and without limits.

I didn’t need to touch her. Just to be there, half a meter from her back, breathing the same air. And to see, once again, that she wasn’t going to turn around.

For two years I ignored my boss’s stares and his wife’s silent insults. That afternoon, when the last employee turned off the lights, I stopped ignoring everything.

At eleven-thirty I went down to the laundry room with an excuse. She was turned away, and didn’t turn when she heard me come in. That changed everything.

My boss’s wife called me a bitch in her private messages. If she thought it was true, that afternoon I was going to prove her right.

When she locked her office door and looked at me like that, I knew the document boxes were just an excuse for what was coming next.

Rodrigo watched my ass in the office every day without daring to do anything. Until I read what his wife thought of me and decided she was right.

I’d been putting up with his looks in the office for months. The day I read his private messages, I made a decision his wife should never have provoked.

When I saw his name on the screen, my stomach clenched. Two weeks remembering his mouth and his hands, and there he was again, as if nothing had happened.

The villa was perfect for an affair: four bedrooms, husbands fishing offshore, and two men due at seven. Until the gate rang at six.

The water poured over us and I was on my knees. Those three days taught me that there are pleasures you can’t repress no matter how hard you try.

When I stepped out of the elevator with my thong already soaked and my dress clinging to my sweat, I knew that tequila wasn’t going to stay just tequila.

Marcelo watched from the couch while Rodrigo undressed me slowly. Then my husband wanted to know something I had never told him.

Sofía told me that night her boyfriend was too much for her. I just smiled. For me, that wasn’t a problem—it was an invitation.

When she told me to kneel, I did. I understood I was no longer her patient, but something entirely different.

We went out looking for an alley and came back with a secret. Some Fridays change you without asking permission.

I went for water at midnight and found her alone in front of the washing machine. I didn’t announce myself. I stayed in the doorway, watching, unable to leave.

I told myself I only cut past the lot because it was the shortest way. But when his eyes followed me and his hand brushed my hip, I couldn’t lie anymore.

I went down to help him wearing what I had on. I hadn’t guessed what would happen when I sat beside him in that room.