The Night My Best Friend Told Me the Truth

“Since when?” I repeat, louder this time, trying to make myself heard over the brutal silence my question has provoked.

“Since… when… what?”

Daniel’s voice comes out haltingly, as if he were feeling his way through the darkness. His usual confidence has vanished, and the spectacle is pathetic: I see him with one knee on the floor and his other hand gripping the doorframe, as though he were rehearsing an octogenarian’s marriage proposal.

The buzz from the wine and joints has evaporated from the air, leaving behind a dense, painful emptiness. I envy it. If there’s one thing I feel like doing, it’s walking out of this house with a resounding slam of the door.

A new coldness takes hold of my body, as if I’d been shoved under an ice-cold shower without warning.

“Since when have you been fucking my best friend? Since when have you been sticking your cock in Bárbara?”

Daniel’s face goes from white to bright red without any intermediate stages. He gets to his feet with a jerk, propelled by a spring I’ve never seen in him, and stands bolt upright like a freshly painted tin soldier. All he’s missing is lowering his head in a military salute.

Instead, I watch him stiffen.

“Lucía! What nonsense are you talking? I understand that the joke earlier upset you, but that doesn’t give you the right to come out with such an outrageous accusation. I’m your husband, and she”—he points at Bárbara with his chin—“is your best friend.”

There’s something in his condescending tone that I recognize as an old melody. He’s been speaking to me like that for years, and I’ve never heard it so clearly as I do now.

“The right? I don’t have the right, is that what you’re saying?” I scream.

Daniel draws a loud breath before speaking again.

“Lucía, calm down,” he whispers, conciliatory. “You’ve had too much to drink, and the joints have gone to your head. Let’s go into the living room and talk this through like adults.”

For a second, his words make me hesitate. But the effect lasts only as long as it takes my brain to process them. The rage I feel at being treated like an out-of-control child drives me to close the distance between us and shove him with all my strength.

Daniel’s body, which on any other occasion would barely have moved backward, crashes into the opposite wall of the narrow hallway. I caught him off guard.

“Answer me, goddammit! How long have you two been fucking? How long have you been sticking it in my friend’s pussy?”

I see a primitive, animal flash in his eyes, a moment in which he wants to lash out. It’s the first time I’ve noticed it in fifteen years. The flash quickly dies, and he raises his hands, palms open toward me.

“Darling…”

“Darling, my ass, Daniel!” I tear my gaze from him and fix it on my “dear” best friend. “Answer me!”

Bringing up his mother, that pearl-wearing, cashmere-cardiganed viper, does not sit well with him at all. His tone changes and his shoulders tense.

“You’re acting like a lunatic,” he says angrily. “The weed has triggered an episode. What you’re saying makes no sense. If we can’t talk like civilized people…”

“We slept together once, Lucía.”

Bárbara’s voice cuts through Daniel’s speech like a guillotine. He turns toward her so quickly I can almost hear his neck crack, unable to believe what he has just heard.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he snaps, his eyes bulging from their sockets.

“The truth,” she replies with a calm that chills me. “We slept together once. We fucked twice, and I came four times. Once of those was with glorious cunnilingus, during which your husband gave it his all.”

“And it wasn’t my birthday, or our goddamn anniversary, or a full-moon Sunday,” she adds, looking directly at me. “It was a Thursday afternoon, on the sofa in my living room, with the blind half-lowered. He ripped my panties off with his teeth. He spread my legs like someone opening a book and licked my pussy until I came in streams into his mouth. Then you fucked me, Danielito. Face down, gripping my hips, moaning like a pig. And when we finished, you still hadn’t pulled out of me and you were already telling me to suck you so you could get hard again. And I sucked you. And you got hard. And you fucked me again.”

Now it’s my turn to open my mouth and let it hang there. The blow has been so precise that I can almost hear the echo of shattered glass after the detonation of a heavy-caliber bomb.

The first thing I feel is an absurd victory: I wasn’t crazy. What I’d been smelling for months, what my gut screamed at me every time I caught them exchanging a look, was true. But the victory lasts for one heartbeat. Then the emptiness arrives.

The detail about the cunnilingus is the painter’s signature. Bárbara and I used to talk about everything. When I say everything, I include the fact that Daniel refused oral sex except on special occasions: an anniversary, a birthday, some time when he felt particularly generous. He presented it as a gift, as charity. He would spread my legs reluctantly, lick my clitoris twice with the tip of his tongue, lift his head, and say, “See what a good husband you have?” Me sucking him, on the other hand, had no calendar. He came in my mouth, on my face, on my tits whenever he felt like it, without asking, without saying thank you.

Something that over the years I had stopped caring about now lights up before my eyes like a neon sign. Bárbara has had what he denied me. His whole tongue buried in her pussy. The effort. The desire. His mouth opened wide, devouring her, sucking her lips, fingering her while he licked her. All of that, not for me. For her.

“You’re a fucking bitch,” Daniel insults her, more out of surprise than conviction.

Bárbara, with a calm that amazes me, pulls a pack of cigarettes from the side pocket of her trousers and lights one. Her first drag seems to taste like heaven.

“At some point,” she replies, exhaling smoke, “you two were going to find out.”

The coldness of her words throws me off balance. I realize that I don’t know them. That I’m alone in this hallway with two strangers.

“Why, Bárbara?” A thread of voice escapes me, difficult to force out.

The disappointment is so immense that I doubt whether I’ll be able to string together another coherent sentence. His betrayal is the brutal blow. Hers is the immense pain that comes afterward.

Bárbara looks at the cigarette between her fingers and smiles with profound sadness. Then she lifts her eyes from the smoke and settles them on me.

“Because there was no other way.”

“Don’t believe a word she says!” Daniel jumps in, trying to move toward me. “I swear she’s lying! I don’t know what she’s trying to do, but…”

“Don’t swear, for God’s sake,” I reply, stepping out of his reach. “Don’t humiliate me any more.”

I see terror in his eyes. For the first time, real terror.

“Fuck, Lucía! Are you going to believe her before your husband? I’m telling you, it’s a lie. What…”

“Do you want me to describe his dick to her, Daniel?” Bárbara interrupts with a cynical smile. “Should I tell her you have a mole on your left ball? That your glans turns red when you’re about to come? That you shout, ‘I’m coming, fuck, I’m coming,’ three seconds beforehand and thrust all the way in to empty yourself inside her? Or would you rather I cover your mouth, the way I covered it that afternoon so the neighbors wouldn’t hear you moaning?”

Daniel turns white. The description is too precise. I listen with my mouth hanging open because every detail is a stab. The mole. The red glans. The “I’m coming, fuck.” The same words I’ve been hearing in my ear for fifteen years. Identical.

“Just as it’s a lie that the bank is going to take the mountain house,” Bárbara adds after another leisurely drag. “Isn’t that right, Danielito?”

My husband’s face transforms. If he opens his eyes any wider, they’ll fall onto the floor.

“Oh, really?” she comments sarcastically. “You forgot to tell her that detail too.”

Then everything happens in fast motion.

Daniel turns toward Bárbara, fury spilling through his entire being. In two steps he closes the distance and plants himself in front of her, chest puffed out.

“Lying slut!” he spits, beside himself.

Daniel is a full head taller than Bárbara. In any other circumstance, it would seem suicidal for her to stand up to him. But in the blink of an eye, Bárbara drops her cigarette, moves one leg back, hooks her opposite arm around his neck, and swings the leg she had shifted, driving her knee into his stomach.

I cover my face with my hands as Daniel crumples, hunched over, gulping for air to fill lungs that refuse to cooperate.

“Easy, cowboy,” Bárbara advises, breathing hard. “That macho act won’t work on me. While you’re down there, think very carefully about what you’re going to say when you get your breath back. I may be the neighborhood bicycle, but call me a liar again and the next kick is going straight to your balls. And I already know how much you like using them with me, with your wife, and with all the other women you’ve fucked since you got together with her.”

“Tell her yourself, Daniel,” Bárbara continues, without taking her foot off the floor. “Tell her about the intern from the office you used to screw in the archive every Friday. Tell her you made her kneel and came on her face. Or the sales rep from the publishing house, the one you fucked in the hotel bathroom in Málaga while Lucía waited for you in the room wearing her new dress. Should I go on? Because I can. I have the whole list. She gave it to me herself, after two glasses of wine and a third whiskey, and she recited it with names, surnames, and positions.”

My eyes fill with tears I can’t hold back. Bárbara looks at me. Her expression goes beyond the disgust of betrayal. She tells an entire story without needing words. They are the scraps that fill in gaps I didn’t even know I had.

I remember when, as a child, they put glasses on me for the first time. The almost magical sensation of clarity, of discovering that the world had defined outlines and not the haze I had thought was normal. I cried with joy when I saw the individual leaves on a tree.

Now, with the new lenses Bárbara has hammered into place, I see a different world again. I cry too. This time from sadness. From understanding that I’ve been living a blurred life, believing in a made-up version of reality that I hadn’t known—or hadn’t wanted—to see.

“Why did you do all this?” I ask, my voice broken by tears and pain. “Why this way? Why let him stick his cock in you?”

Bárbara shrugs with that gesture of hers that she has used a thousand times since I’ve known her, the one that replaces the stoic phrase “that’s just how things are.”

“Because you’re blind, Lucía,” she replies calmly. “And because I needed proof that couldn’t be dismantled. A photo can be edited. A message can be deleted. But he can’t deny my pussy with his come inside it. Tell him to ask the condom I threw in the trash in my bathroom. And the sheets, which must still smell like him.”

The coincidence between her words and my thoughts about the glasses hits me. One more spark of the connection the two of us have always shared. The fear of losing her as a friend bites into my soul and tears another lash of pain from me.

“Was there really no other way to tell me than sleeping with… him? Than spreading your legs and letting him come inside you?”

Without meaning to, my gaze drifts to the wreckage still trying to catch his breath on the floor. The man I had considered the most important thing in my life until tonight. He only disgusts me.

“One way or another, the messenger always gets shot,” she says resignedly. “Love blinds and deafens the person suffering from it. And you, Lucía, were blinded with every fiber of your being. You would have forgiven him.”

“That’s ridiculous. If you’d told me, I simply…”

Bárbara shakes her head.

“He’s a born manipulator. He’s had you eating out of his hand since day one. I know you. You’re like the sister I never had. You would have forgiven him. That’s how it is. But because I know you too, I know you’ll never be able to forgive him after he’s slept with me. And you won’t forgive me either.”

“I know, and you’ll know it the moment you think about it from now on. He would have done what he always does: charmed you with a thousand stories about remorse, with bolero lyrics, with claims that his indiscretions meant nothing. But by sleeping with me, knowing the damage it would do to you, he can’t play that card anymore. And neither can you. There’s no way to repair this. It was the only way to break the fucking spell he had you under.”

“And I’ll assure you of one thing, Lucía,” she adds, staring at me. “I didn’t enjoy it. Not the way you think. I sucked him while thinking of you, of the look on your face when I told you. I spread my legs for him while biting my tongue so I wouldn’t scream in his face what a pathetic man he was. He made me come twice with his mouth and twice with his cock, yes, but every moan was a betrayal of myself. Every time he thrust inside me, I repeated: it’s for her, it’s for her, it’s for her. And when we finished, I got in the shower and scrubbed myself for half an hour until my skin was red. Because even though his semen went down the drain, the guilt didn’t.”

I have a lump in my throat that won’t let me breathe. Won’t let me think. Oxygen refuses to reach my brain. My legs tremble, and I grab the doorframe so I don’t fall flat on my face.

“Everything in life has a price,” she continues. “I’ll gladly pay it if it means you finally open your eyes and keep them open. Even if that means you hate me.”

“I’m not going to ask you to forgive me, and I don’t expect it. Because that wouldn’t be sincere, and I’ve always tried to be sincere with you. To truly ask for forgiveness, you first have to regret what you did. And I don’t regret it. I’d do it again without blinking. I’d spread my legs for this son of a bitch as many times as necessary if it meant getting you out of the pit.”

“I’m sorry for the damage I’ve caused you, that goes without saying. I love you, Lucía. I always will. But precisely because of that, I had to do it.”

Her words are slabs of stone walling me in.

“Don’t listen to this lunatic, darling,” I hear Daniel say from what seems like another dimension. “Let’s get out of here. We can fix this. Just let me explain…”

At last he has gotten up and makes another attempt to approach me.

“Shut up! Shut up!” I howl, backing away and covering my ears in a childish attempt to wake myself from this nightmare.

“Do you see what you’ve done?” Daniel shouts at Bárbara. “Fucking crazy bitch!”

Rage erases his recent memory, and he once again forgets how easily Bárbara knocked him down a minute ago. This time it isn’t her who stops him, but Iván, who has appeared in the hallway from God knows where, like an inserted film frame.

“Get out of my way. Nobody invited you to this funeral!” Daniel growls through clenched teeth, trying to break free of his companion’s grip. “I can’t hit a woman, but I can smash your face in…”

Bárbara’s laughter is so out of place that it raises gooseflesh on my skin.

“Let him go, and let’s see what the little macho man can do,” she spits, approaching again. “The same little macho man who came in my mouth in under three minutes the second time. What a stud.”

“Stop! Both of you,” Iván cuts in, stepping between them.

He gives Bárbara a look of absolute reproach without releasing Daniel, whom he holds by the arm with unexpected strength.

The thought reaches me like a drink of cold water on a hot day. I can’t think anymore. I don’t even want to try. I need only one thing, and the little strength I have left concentrates on asking for it.

“Get me out of here, Iván. Please.”

I don’t know where the sentence came from or why I said it to him. Maybe because in a world where the two people I trusted most have just vanished from beneath my feet, an almost-stranger offers me more certainty than any familiar face. Maybe because right now Iván is the only plank left floating after the shipwreck of my life.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Daniel turns around. “We’re leaving, yes. But both of us. We need to talk about all this when we get home.”

His words are another slap of reality. Now I’m the one who plants herself in front of him, my flushed face inches from his.

“You don’t have a home,” I hiss. “You don’t have a wife. And you don’t have a lawyer. So I recommend you find one as soon as possible. Because you and I have nothing left, you massive son of a bitch. And that cock of yours, the one you’ve been sticking into me for fifteen years as if you were doing me a favor, you can stick it up your own ass tonight and every night you have left. Because you will never bring it near me again for as long as you live.”

Daniel’s bewilderment at my outburst deserves an Oscar. As if he didn’t know what I was talking about. As if he had just landed and remembered nothing.

“Iván?” I address him again. “Please…”

Iván glances once more at the body still half on the floor, then at Bárbara. His expression is that of someone who has just discovered that spit has landed in his soup. With one hard shove, he moves Daniel aside and uses his body to clear a path so I can leave that unleashed hell.

“Let’s go,” he says simply.

Before heading toward the stairs, I catch sight of Bárbara’s face. A tear falls from her almond-shaped eyes, contrasting with her resigned smile.

“At last,” I think I read on her lips, though no sound comes out.