What Happened When I Told Her About My Wife’s Infidelity

I met Inés online more than a year ago. We lived in different cities, separated by four hours on the road, and at first we only chatted about music and old TV series. Then came the suggestive photos, the late-night voice notes, the occasional video call that ended up becoming something more intimate. We had never met in person, but we had that strange kind of trust that gets built when someone exists only through a screen.

One afternoon I wrote to her saying I needed to tell her something. Something big. Something that had left me not knowing what to think.

—You can tell me that face to face —she replied—. I’m going to be in your area next week.

We agreed to meet in a bar downtown, but she herself suggested changing the plan. She said a public place wasn’t the setting for what I wanted to tell her. I suggested going up to the house my parents had in a village thirty kilometers away, an old building overlooking barley fields and smelling of damp on the walls. She agreed without even thinking about it.

I picked her up at the station at noon. We hugged like we’d known each other all our lives, and I’d be lying if I said that hug didn’t last longer than I’d expected. She smelled citrusy, of expensive shampoo, of clean skin that had spent too long shut up on a train.

—Are you going to make me wait all the way there? —she asked when I started the car.

I told her no. I started telling her from the beginning.

***

We had gone to the municipal pool the previous Saturday, Mariana and I. It was that kind of huge facility with three different pools, a swimming lane, a garden all around it. My wife had been wanting to get back into exercise for months. She said she was going to sign up for a lesson with the lifeguard on duty, a dark-haired, skinny guy who gave freestyle lessons for twenty euros a session.

—I’ll lie down and read —I told her—. You swim whatever you want.

From my towel I watched her without really looking. Until something caught my attention. The lifeguard wasn’t teaching her technique. He was running his hands over her hip to correct her rotation, so he said. He was putting his palm on the lower part of her stomach. He was stroking the small of her back for far too long. Mariana was laughing with a laugh I hadn’t heard from her since our first year together.

—And you didn’t say anything? —Inés interrupted from the passenger seat.

—I didn’t know what to say.

I kept telling her. When they got out of the water, she went in after him to the lifeguards’ hut. I went to the showers thinking they’d be talking about the next schedule. When I came out, I heard a sound I could never mistake. Moans. Her voice. I know it too well. I peeked out from the tiled corridor and saw Mariana sitting on the edge of a table, gripping the edge with both hands, her legs spread around the boy’s waist. She was moving with an urgency she’d never had with me in years.

I didn’t go in. I didn’t say anything. I went back to my towel and waited for her to come out with wet hair and a tired smile.

—Good lesson —I told her.

—Very good —she answered—. I think I’ll do it again.

***

We arrived at the house just as I finished speaking. Inés got out of the car without saying a word. I opened the door, left the keys on the counter, and poured her a glass of water because I had nothing else at hand. She sat down on the big sofa in the living room and patted the place beside her.

—Come here —she asked me—. Tell me the rest.

I sat down. She started asking me questions I hadn’t expected. How they were positioned. Whether he moaned. Whether she asked him for anything specific. Whether I heard her come, because she knew perfectly well what my wife sounded like when she did, from what I had confessed to her in some late-night audio months earlier.

While I answered her, her hand rested on my knee. At first it was a comforting gesture. Then it moved a couple of centimeters up onto my thigh. Then it stayed there, still, not pulling away.

I kept talking. I told her how I had seen my wife’s face reflected in the locker room mirror, eyes shut, mouth open, one hand gripping the boy’s hair. While I described it, I felt Inés sliding her palm toward my crotch. I was already hard, had been since we started talking, I couldn’t help it. She noticed and let out a very low laugh, almost a sigh.

—Keep telling me —she said—. Don’t stop.

***

I couldn’t go on much longer. Her chest brushed my arm, her lips were so close to mine that we were breathing the same air. I lifted my hand and laid it on her waist, beneath the cotton sweater. Her skin was hot. When she turned her head toward me, I knew the conversation was over.

We kissed slowly at first, nibbling at each other’s lips, as if we were both checking something. Then it turned into one of those kisses that hurt in the neck, with hands tugging at hair and teeth catching on the jaw. I bit her earlobe and she laughed against my mouth.

—Are you sure? —I asked, because I wanted to hear her say it.

She didn’t answer with words. She shoved me back against the sofa, took off her sweater, and was left in her bra. I tore off my T-shirt. I told her to undress slowly, that I’d spent a year imagining her and I wasn’t going to miss a single detail.

She stood up. She unbuttoned her jeans and let them drop to the floor. She stood in front of me in a gray lace bra and matching panties, barefoot on the cold living room tiles. I asked her to take a step back so I could see her better. She had wide hips, firm thighs, a soft stomach that shifted with every breath. I realized that while I was looking at her my pulse had quickened in a way I didn’t remember.

—Do you like it? —she asked, biting her lip.

—More than I expected.

She unclasped her bra. She let it fall beside the jeans. Her breasts were fuller than the photos suggested, with nipples dark and hard from the cold or from wanting. She came closer, climbed astride me, and while I kissed her neck and ran my tongue over her collarbone, I felt her rubbing herself against my pants.

—Take these off —she murmured, tugging at the waistband of my jeans.

***

I took her up to the upstairs bedroom by the spiral staircase. She went ahead of me, barefoot, still in her panties, while I followed with my hand on her hip. The bed was a double, old, with a wooden headboard and a mattress that creaked when you sat on it. I pulled off her panties on the last step, before laying her down.

I knelt between her legs. She had a neatly kept mound, almost no hair, and smelled of something clean mixed with her arousal. I started with her thighs, kissing the inner side slowly and deliberately, until she propped herself up on her elbows to look at me.

—Please —she said—. I’ve been thinking about this the whole trip.

I ran my tongue from bottom to top without touching the clit. She let her head fall back onto the pillow. I repeated the motion twice more, each time closer to the center, until her hands tangled in my hair and she started pushing me against her. I held her thighs with my palms and focused on the clit with the tip of my tongue, drawing slow circles, then fast ones, then slow again.

The first orgasm came quickly. Her thighs tightened against my temples and she let out a long, rough moan, completely unrestrained. I stayed still for a few seconds, waiting for her to relax. Before she could catch her breath, I slid a finger inside her while I kept using my tongue. The second orgasm was faster and stronger. She laughed between gasps. She told me to stop, that she couldn’t take any more, that now it was my turn.

***

I took a condom from the nightstand drawer. I put it on slowly while she watched me from the bed, one leg stretched out and the other bent, her eyes shining. She said nothing. I knelt between her legs. I lifted one of them onto my shoulder. She wrapped the other around my waist.

—Look at me —she asked when I entered her.

I looked at her. I went slowly at first, letting her body get used to it, feeling her tighten with every thrust. Her lips were parted and her eyes locked on mine, unblinking. When I picked up the pace, the moans came back, different from before, sharper, more broken.

I leaned over her. I kissed her mouth without stopping my thrusts. I slipped a hand under her back to lift her against me. I wanted to feel all of her, her chest against mine, her hips pressed to me, her breath in my ear.

—Don’t stop —she whispered—. Don’t stop now.

I didn’t stop. Her body began to tremble in a way she couldn’t control. She dug her nails into my shoulders. She swore under her breath. And then I let go too, without warning, without wanting to hold out any longer, emptying myself into the condom while she kept moving beneath me.

I stayed still on top of her for a few seconds, breathing against her neck. She stroked my back with an open palm, slowly, as if she wanted to memorize the shape.

***

After that we stayed lying on the bed, looking at the ceiling. The afternoon had grown long. Through the open window came a smell of dry grass and wet earth.

—I’d never done this with anyone who wasn’t my husband —she said softly.

—Do you regret it?

—No. You made it very difficult for me. I’d been thinking for months about what you’d be like in person and then you show up with that story about your wife and the lifeguard, telling it to me as if you were asking my permission for something.

I laughed despite myself. I brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead.

—And now what?

—Now you take me to the station whenever you feel like it. And you tell me the next time your wife goes back to the pool.

Mariana, at that hour, would be in the same locker room at the sports center with the same lifeguard, taking her second lesson of the week. She had told me as she left the house, the gym bag over her shoulder, while I made up the excuse about an old friend I had to visit in the village.

I thought that, possibly, the two of us were coming at the same time. Each with the person we were meant to have. And, for the first time in many years, it didn’t seem to me that that was the end of anything.