My Husband Never Knew What Happened Every Morning

I'm not writing this to brag or to justify myself. I'm writing it because I need to get it out of me, and because I know there are other women who are where I was and who will understand every word without my having to explain it. I was married for nine years. For almost one of them, I had a lover, and my husband never knew. This is my confession.

My name is Carla, although that isn't my real name, just as none of the names that appear here will be. When I met Damián, I wasn't looking for anything. That's the first thing I want to make clear, because it sounds like an excuse, but it's the truth. I wasn't on any of those apps, I hadn't promised myself an affair, I hadn't spent months fantasizing about cheating on Rodrigo. One ordinary Tuesday, I simply walked into a coffee shop near my work and he was there, reading, with that calm of a man who isn't afraid of silence.

We started talking over something silly, a comment about the book he had open. We talked for twenty minutes. By the time I got up to leave, I already knew I would come back the next day, and that he knew it too. Nothing physical happened that first time. Just a current, that thing you can't fake or bring about at will. I recognized it because I hadn't felt it in years.

***

It took us three weeks to sleep together. Three weeks of midmorning coffees, messages I deleted as soon as I read them, meetings I made up out of thin air. I worked for myself, set my own hours, had my own car and my own bank account. Looking at it coldly, I was the easiest person in the world to hide something with. An independent woman can disappear for two hours without anyone demanding an explanation, and I learned to use that freedom as a weapon.

The first time was at his apartment, on a Monday at eleven in the morning. I remember everything with a clarity that almost hurts. Light came in sideways through a window without curtains. He wasn't in a hurry, and that undid me more than anything else. He kissed me slowly, first my neck, then my mouth, as if we had the whole day, as if outside there weren't a life with another man waiting for me.

—You don't have to do anything you don't want to do —he said against my ear.

I wanted everything. That was exactly the problem.

He took my clothes off with a patience I wasn't used to. Rodrigo and I, in the last few years, had reduced sex to a Sunday-night routine, efficient and silent, three minutes of friction and then sleep. Damián looked at me as if discovering my body were a task he intended to take seriously. He unbuttoned my blouse one button at a time, never taking his eyes off mine, and when he opened it, he held me there for a second, exposed, so he could take a good look at me. He pulled down my bra and sucked my nipples one after the other, slowly, barely biting, until they grew so hard they hurt. He left them wet and blew on them, and I felt every puff travel down my spine and stab between my legs.

—You're trembling —he said, laughing softly against my breast.

—It's been a long time since anyone touched me like this.

He knelt me against the edge of the bed and finished undressing me himself, my skirt, my panties, everything thrown onto the floor without ceremony. He opened my legs with both hands and spent a long while looking at my cunt without touching me, and that single look made me squeeze myself. Then he lowered his face and began to lick me slowly, from bottom to top, flattening his whole tongue against me, seeking my clitoris with the tip and staying there, sucking it gently, then harder, while he slid two fingers inside me and curled them against a spot I hadn't known existed. I gripped the bedspread with both hands, arched my back, and came in his mouth without warning, squeezing his head between my thighs, biting my forearm so I wouldn't scream. He didn't stop. He licked me until I stopped trembling and then kept going a little longer, his beard wet, until I had to push him away by the forehead because I couldn't take it anymore.

—Come here —I said, tugging on his arm.

I undid his belt myself, my hands clumsy, and yanked down his pants and boxers. His cock sprang up against my face, hard and thick, with a transparent drop at the tip that I cleaned off with my tongue. I took it in my hand and put it in my mouth slowly, the head first, sucking it with my lips tight, then farther in, as much as would fit, feeling its weight on my tongue. I sucked him while looking up at him, pulling it out to lick his balls, pressing it against my face, spitting on it so it would grow nice and shiny, then sucking it again. Damián grabbed my hair, not to force me, but to move with me, and began moving too, pushing it deeper into my mouth until my eyes filled with tears, then pulling it out and letting it rest against my cheek.

—I'm going to fuck you —he said hoarsely.

—Fuck me.

He lifted me onto the bed onto my back and positioned himself on top of me. He opened my legs and thrust all the way inside in a single motion, to the hilt, and I felt him settle inside me as if the hollow had always been waiting for him. I stayed still for a second, eyes closed, processing his size, the way he filled me. Then he began to move, slowly at first, each thrust long, pulling almost all the way out and pushing back in to the bottom, and I felt him hitting a place inside me Rodrigo had never touched. I hooked my legs around his back to get him even deeper.

—Like that —I told him—, like that, don't stop.

He sped up. Now he was pounding into me hard, the bed banging against the wall, my tits bouncing with every thrust. He sucked my neck, bit my shoulder, whispered things I had never heard anyone say to me.

—You're so tight, goddamn, what a delicious cunt you have.

—Harder —I begged, and my own voice surprised me.

He turned me over. He put me face down, lifted my ass with both hands, and thrust into me again from behind, gripping my waist, fucking me with an animal rhythm that shook my whole body. I buried my face in the pillow and moaned without restraint, forgetting everything—Rodrigo, the time, the window without curtains through which anyone could have seen. He put his thumb in my mouth and I sucked it, then he dragged it down my back and pressed it against my other hole, barely applying pressure, not putting it in, and that extra pressure made me come for the second time, squeezing him inside me with spasms that pulled a groan from him too.

—I'm going to come —he warned.

—Not inside.

He pulled out in time, turned me over again, and came all over me, thick, hot streams falling onto my stomach, between my tits; one reached my mouth and I stuck out my tongue without thinking. He stayed on top of me, panting, his forehead against mine, and we remained like that for a long while, in silence, until my breathing returned to normal. When I finally felt him slip out of me, I bit my lip so I wouldn't say something I would later regret.

I regretted nothing during those two hours. Regret, if it came, always came afterward, driving home with his scent still on my skin.

***

And that's precisely the part nobody talks about. An affair isn't just pleasure. It's the logistics of pleasure, the meticulous engineering of leaving no trace. I became an expert at things I had never imagined I'd have to learn.

I learned that the body remembers what it has done. After being with Damián, I always showered before going home, washing my cunt twice with soap to get rid of the smell of semen and someone else's saliva, putting on the same perfume I always wore, the one Rodrigo had given me, so that the scent he associated with me would be the only one he found. I learned to check my neck and tits in the hotel bathroom mirror, looking for marks I would have to explain, hickeys, bruises from tightly gripping fingers. I learned to avoid my husband in bed on the days I had seen my lover, because a woman who has just been fucked differently gives herself away without meaning to, in the way she moves, in what she asks for and what she no longer needs.

I had two phones. My regular one, and a cheap prepaid one that I kept in a compartment of the car Rodrigo never opened. Damián and I spoke only through that one. An email account in the name of a woman who didn't exist. Never, ever did I send him a message from my real number. I never paid for a coffee or a hotel with a card. I took cash out of the ATM on Monday mornings, a fixed amount, just enough not to attract attention and enough not to leave a trail.

Written down like this, it sounds cold, like a manual. But the truth was that the discipline was part of the game. Every precaution reminded me of what I was risking, and what I risked put a price on the pleasure. I had never felt so awake in my life as I did during those months. I lived on alert, and that alertness made me feel alive in a way the security of my marriage had stolen from me without my realizing it.

***

The rules I imposed on myself were simple, and I never broke them. Morning meetings, never at night; nights belonged to Rodrigo, and at night a husband has time to notice an absence, to call, to ask questions. Never at my house, never at his if he lived with someone, never anywhere an acquaintance might run into me. The hotel on the outskirts became our territory, anonymous and perfect, with a covered parking lot where the car disappeared from the street.

—You're the most organized person I've ever met for something so disorganized —Damián told me once, laughing, while I dressed with my back to him against the window.

—It's the only way this can last —I replied.

And he fell silent, because we both knew that “for this to last” was a contradiction. An affair isn't made to last. It's made to burn fast and leave a mark, and mine burned more intensely every week.

What was hardest for me to manage wasn't the guilt, though there was some. It was the double emotional accounting. I'd go home and Rodrigo would ask how my day had been, and I'd answer with a smile that was genuine, because my day had been extraordinary, just for reasons he could never imagine. I'd hug him on the couch in front of the TV and truly love him, with an old, comfortable tenderness, while at the same time thinking about other hands, another cock, another mouth that at that very hour might have been thinking about me. I learned that the heart doesn't work in shifts or respect the logic we demand of it. It holds more than you think, and that's what makes it dangerous.

***

There was one morning when I almost got caught, and even today my stomach tightens when I remember it. Rodrigo had forgotten his wallet and came back home in the middle of the morning, on a day when I was supposedly in a meeting. He called my real phone. I was in the car, in the hotel parking lot, with Damián still mussing my hair from the passenger seat and his semen running down between my thighs, barely held back by the panties I had hurriedly put on.

I gestured for him to be quiet. I took a deep breath. I answered in the calmest voice I could manufacture.

—Hi, honey. Is something wrong?

He asked where I was. I told him the name of a café downtown, one I knew well, with details, describing the noise that wasn't there. I talked for two minutes. I told him I loved him and hung up. When I lowered the phone, my hands were shaking, and Damián was looking at me seriously, without his usual smile.

—Is it worth it? —he asked.

I didn't answer him. But that afternoon, driving home, I knew the answer was still yes, and that was what truly frightened me. Not the risk of being caught. What frightened me was realizing how far I was willing to go to avoid losing what I felt with him.

***

I was the one who ended it, almost a year later. Not because I stopped wanting him, but for precisely the opposite reason. Damián started asking for more. One extra call at night, an entire afternoon, a weekend that was impossible. The affair had served its purpose and was beginning to want to turn into something else, and that something else would have destroyed my entire life.

Our last meeting was like the first: a Monday at eleven, with the light coming in sideways. This time there was no hurry at all, and no desire to talk. We undressed slowly, looking at each other, both of us knowing what it was. He lay me on my back and kissed all of me, from my mouth to my feet, not skipping an inch, stopping at every place as if he were committing it to memory. He sucked my tits for a long time, barely biting, then licked my navel, then went down and opened me with his tongue again, that tongue I was going to miss more than anything. He made me come that way, with his mouth, holding my hands above my head as if he were afraid I'd escape.

When he finally climbed on top of me and slid inside, he did it looking into my eyes, never closing them for even a second. He moved inside me slowly, very slowly, his full length, stopping at the bottom, pulling out only slightly. I held his face in both hands. I ran my thumbs over his cheekbones. We fucked like that, without hurrying, perhaps for half an hour, our breathing tangled, without saying a word, until I felt another orgasm coming from very far away, a slow, deep one, different from all the ones before. I came crying, without sobbing, tears running sideways onto the pillow, and he came inside me for the first and last time, because we both knew it no longer mattered, that there would be no afterward to take care of.

Afterward I stayed for a while with my head on his chest, listening to his heart, committing it to memory for the years when all I'd have left would be the memory.

—Take care of yourself —I told him at the door.

—You too, Carla.

We never spoke again. I deleted the prepaid phone, closed the email account belonging to the woman who didn't exist, and went back to being nothing but Rodrigo's wife. He never knew anything. He still doesn't know.

***

I don't know whether what I did was right. I know I don't recommend it, just as I don't recommend jumping out of a plane: the problem isn't the fall, which is the closest thing to flying you'll ever feel, but the ground waiting for you below. I was lucky enough to open my parachute in time.

But I'd be lying if I said I regret it completely. For a year I was two women, and the second one, the woman who waited for Monday with her heart pounding in her chest and her cunt already wet before she arrived, taught me things about myself the first would never have dared to find out. That woman still lives somewhere, silent, waiting. Some Monday mornings, when I pass near that coffee shop, I swear I feel her waking up.

And that's why I'm writing this. Not so people will judge me. Just so she can exist somewhere beyond my memory, even if only in these lines no one will ever know are mine.