What I Did with My Husband’s Best Friend

I dialed Sebastián’s number with my hands still trembling. I told him I needed to see him, that it was about Andrés, my husband, and that he should come over without saying anything to him. There was a brief silence on the other end, that pause people make when they sense something has broken, and then he agreed. In fifteen minutes he was at the door.

Sebastián had been Andrés’s best friend since college. He was the one who introduced us, on some random night at a party I barely ever went to, and over time we had genuinely grown fond of him. He was family without actually being family. He came to dinner at our house on Sundays, remembered my birthday, brought good wine when Andrés forgot. That was why, when everything came crashing down, he was the only name that came to mind.

While I waited for him to arrive, I paced around the living room not knowing what to do with my hands. I gathered up the breakfast cups Andrés had left dirty, put them back where they had been, sat down, stood up. My mind was racing. I didn’t have a plan. I only knew I didn’t want to be alone with it one minute longer.

I hadn’t gotten dressed up. I was still in my pajamas, no bra, my hair hastily tied back, my eyes swollen from crying all night. I didn’t care what I looked like. I opened the door and tried to smile, though it came out crooked.

“Hi, Sebastián. Come in, sit down. Want a glass of juice or something stronger?” I said, sinking onto the sofa beside him.

“No, I’m fine,” he replied, studying me closely. “What’s going on, Marina? You look really bad.”

I looked him straight in the eye. I asked him to be honest with me, to tell me without beating around the bush if he knew anything. If Andrés was having an affair with someone at work.

Sebastián frowned. He swore he knew nothing, that he couldn’t believe it about Andrés, that he had always seen us as in love, like one of those couples that make you a little jealous.

“Last night I checked his phone,” I told him, and my voice broke halfway through the sentence. “He was asleep, he’d left it charging on the nightstand and I couldn’t sleep. A hunch, I don’t know. I found messages with some woman named Daniela. And they weren’t just messages, Sebastián. There were photos. There were videos.”

I had read everything until dawn, sitting in the bathroom with the door closed so he wouldn’t hear me crying. Every message was a new wound. The things he said to her, the things they did, the plans to see each other. Andrés had been living a double life for months and meanwhile I was ironing his shirts and heating up his dinner.

He was speechless. It took him a while to react, as if he needed to organize the information before he could speak.

“Have you talked to him yet?” he asked at last.

“No. What for? It’s not going to change anything,” I answered. “All I managed to do is feel like an idiot. Feel like I’m already old, like he doesn’t want me anymore, like that’s why he went looking for someone else.”

***

I stood up to get a tissue from the hallway dresser. I didn’t even make it three steps. Sebastián got up too and hugged me from behind, carefully, the way you hug something that could break.

“Calm down,” he said near my ear. “You are not the problem. I’m serious. The problem is Andrés, who’s an asshole. I don’t understand how he can do this to you when he has you.”

I turned in his arms to look at him. We were too close.

“Do you really think so?” I asked softly, pressing myself a little more against him.

“Of course I do,” he said. “I’ve always envied him, Marina. A smart, beautiful woman. Andrés preferring someone else when he has you makes no sense.”

Something inside me settled at that instant. It wasn’t only spite, though there was that too. It was the need for someone to look at me the way I had stopped feeling looked at. To be desired again, even if only for an hour, even if I paid for it afterward.

“Prove it to me,” I said. “Make me feel like I still count as a woman.”

He looked at me, surprised, not sure he had heard right. I didn’t give him time to hesitate. I cupped his face with both hands and pulled him in until I kissed him.

For a second he went rigid. Then he kissed me back.

“Wait,” he murmured, pulling back just enough, his breathing already different. “Andrés might come home.”

“He gets home at night. Don’t worry about him,” I answered.

And while I said it, I took off the top of my pajamas. I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. I stood there with my breasts bare in front of him, and I saw the doubt finally drain from his face. He looked at me in a way Andrés hadn’t looked at me in a long time.

***

He kissed me again, this time without restraint. His hands rose to my breasts, exploring them slowly, squeezing my nipples, which were already hard, I don’t know if from the cold or from sheer bottled-up arousal. He bit my lower lip and I let out a sigh I couldn’t quite hide.

I slid a hand down to his crotch. He was hard beneath his pants. I stroked him over the fabric, slowly, feeling his breathing grow heavier each time my hand moved. Then I undid his belt and button and slipped my hand inside to feel him for real.

I knelt in front of him on the living room rug. I pulled down his pants and underwear in one motion. I was surprised by the size, bigger than Andrés’s, and for a second that comparison gave me a strange, almost cruel pleasure.

I ran my tongue over his entire length before taking him into my mouth. I did it eagerly, with a surrender even I hadn’t expected, looking up from below to see his reaction. Sebastián threw his head back and gripped the back of the sofa.

“Stop,” he said hoarsely. “Stop or I won’t last. My turn now.”

He took me by the shoulders and lifted me gently. I finished taking off my pajama pants and underwear, then lay back on the edge of the sofa, my legs spread for him. I was completely wet, ready, exposed in a way I hadn’t dared to be with anyone in months.

He knelt between my legs and lowered his head. His tongue began to move slowly, searching, and when he found my clit he played with it in a way that made my back arch. I clenched my fists in the sofa fabric. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had made me feel like this, with that much patience, as if my pleasure were the only thing that mattered in the world.

I didn’t last long. The orgasm hit me all at once, from my legs to the nape of my neck, and shook me through and through while he kept going, without stopping, until I had to push his forehead away because I couldn’t take any more.

***

Sebastián stood up and finished taking off his clothes. He asked me to turn around and get on all fours on the sofa. I did as he said without thinking. I felt his hands opening me, positioning me, and then the tip entering slowly, centimeter by centimeter, until he filled me completely.

He took my waist and began to move. At first slowly, letting me get used to him, and then with a steady, deep rhythm that pulled sounds from me I didn’t even recognize as my own.

“Make me yours,” I begged between gasps. “Make me feel like a woman, please.”

He sped up. I felt the impact of his body against mine, the heat, the force of every thrust. I buried my face in the sofa back to muffle my moans, even though there was no one home who could hear us. The guilt was there, somewhere in a corner, but anger and pleasure were bigger than it in that moment.

“I can’t hold on any longer,” he said suddenly, his voice broken. “I have to finish.”

“Inside,” I told him without hesitation. “Finish inside. I want to feel it.”

I wanted to feel his desire, his urgency, everything Andrés no longer gave me. I felt him spill inside me with a low growl, holding my hips as if afraid to let go. It was intense in a way that left me empty and full at the same time.

***

Afterward we stayed hugged together on the sofa for a while, in silence, catching our breath. His hand moved slowly up and down my back. There was no regret yet; that would come later, that night, when Andrés walked through the door as if nothing had happened and kissed me on the cheek.

“Sebastián,” I said, still pressed against his chest. “Every time Andrés sees his mistress, you’re going to come comfort me. Deal?”

He was quiet for a second. Then he kissed my forehead.

“Deal,” he replied.

He got dressed unhurriedly. Before leaving, he looked at me from the doorway, as if searching my face for something, some sign that I had regretted it. He didn’t find one. I smiled at him, and this time it wasn’t crooked.

When he left, I stayed seated on the sofa, naked, feeling warm drops running down between my thighs. Outside, evening was starting to fall. I thought about Andrés, about that Daniela of his, about the messages I had read the night before with my stomach in knots. And for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel like the victim of this story.

I felt like the owner.