What I Imagine When My Husband Goes on a Trip

I’m going to confess something I’ve told no one, not even the friend I share almost everything with. I’m writing it because I need to get it out of me, where it’s been circling for months like a caged animal. I’m married to a good man. Andrés is attentive, hardworking, one of those men who remember your anniversary and bring flowers for no reason. We live in a beautiful house, in a quiet neighborhood with tree-lined streets. I don’t lack a thing. And yet, every time he closes the door to go on a trip, my mind crosses the street and slips into another bed.

Andrés travels often for work. This week he’s leaving for one of the long ones, almost ten days. When he goes, the first nights leave me restless, my body awake and the house far too silent. I resort to what I always do: I lock myself in the bedroom, reach for the vibrator in the bottom drawer, and let my mind come loose. And my mind, as always, ends up in the same place.

It goes to the neighbor across the street.

His name is Diego, and he moved into the house that looks straight onto our backyard a little over a year ago. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, with the kind of back that belongs to someone who actually trains. The first time I saw him carrying boxes into the front door, I stared through the kitchen window longer than was decent. Some men occupy space in a way you can’t ignore, and he’s one of them. I think that, in bed, he must be someone who decides. Someone who takes charge.

What comes next did not happen. Or not exactly. It’s the fantasy I piece together every time I’m left alone, and I tell it like it was real because, in my head, it is.

***

In my story, Diego and I have been seeing each other in secret for months. Always when Andrés is away, never before. One afternoon, a few hours before my husband gets on the plane, my phone rings. It’s him. In that low, calm voice of his that admits no argument, he tells me what’s going to happen that night.

—Tonight I want to get you pregnant —he says, as if he were commenting on the weather.

I try to explain the obvious. That Andrés would kill me if he knew, that a child would change everything, that it’s madness. He doesn’t listen to my objections. He doesn’t even argue with them. He just explains, calmly, how he wants me to receive him that night, what I need to have ready, how I should be waiting for him. And I, who consider myself a woman of character, someone who doesn’t let anyone push me around at work, hang up trembling and obey with my head.

I spend the rest of the day at the office in an impossible state. I can’t focus on anything. Every time my phone buzzes on the desk, I jump, expecting another message from him, another clue about what he plans to do to me. At lunch he sends me a single line, a suggestion about where he wants to find me when he arrives. I have to close the chat and breathe deeply so my coworkers won’t notice my flushed face.

That night I make dinner early. I set the table, open a bottle of red wine, and leave two glasses ready on the marble. I go upstairs to take my clothes off, because he wants it that way, even though cooking with nothing on is a terrible idea when you’re so turned on your hands won’t answer. I go back down and finish the last details with goosebumps from the breeze coming in from the garden.

He arrives a little late. When I open the door and see him there, filling the frame with his body, my mouth goes dry. He looks me over slowly, from top to bottom, as if checking something that belongs to him. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

We sit on the terrace while the sun finishes dropping behind the rooftops. He pours me wine and tells me the rest of his plans with enough detail to make me clamp my thighs together. I always liked feeling the air on my bare skin, sunbathing naked in the yard on hot days. I suspect he’s seen me more than once from his window, and the thought, far from embarrassing me, turns me on.

When it cools down, we move to the two-seater sofa on the porch. I settle onto his lap. I’m already wet; I’ve been wet all day. I wonder how he knew today was exactly the day, when I don’t even keep track of my cycle with that much precision. I’m a mess about those things. He, on the other hand, seems to have everything measured.

—You’re gorgeous —he tells me, while his hands move up and down my sides.

He caresses my breasts before closing his fingers over my nipples and squeezing them to that exact point where pain becomes something else.

—I want to see them grow even more —he murmurs against my neck.

My breath catches. I feel the center of my body like a hollow space pulling the rest of me toward him, desperate to be filled. I can’t take it anymore and lower my hand to touch myself, but he catches it in midair and holds it against my own thigh.

—Tonight you don’t get anything I don’t give you —he tells me.

I let out a sound halfway between a protest and a laugh. He knows he’s the one who gives, and I’m the one who receives. I don’t consider myself submissive in life, I swear. But when this man wants something, I give it to him instantly, and that surrender heats me in a way I didn’t know existed. People use those words, dominant and submissive, so lightly. Tonight I understand what they mean: he decided to get me pregnant, and I’m going to let him do it.

After playing a little longer, after biting one of my nipples and smiling at me like a satisfied cat, he gets to his feet.

—Upstairs.

***

We go up the stairs together to the master bedroom. The same one I share with Andrés. Guilt should stop me there, on the threshold, but that night guilt stays outside. The lights are off; only the streetlamp’s glow comes in through the window, drawing a pale stripe across the bed.

—Lie down —he tells me.

I know he’s going to take me without ceremony, and I’m ready for it. I rest my head on my crossed arms and look at him, waiting. I watch him unbutton his shirt with deliberate slowness, fold it, and leave it on the chair. It isn’t like him; usually the clothes hit the floor and he comes down on me all at once. Tonight he takes his time just to make me wait.

—How cruel you are —I tell him.

He smiles. He strips off the rest and stands naked in front of me, outlined against the light from the window. I spread my legs, move a little, tease him. He climbs onto the bed and, with one firm hand on my hip, turns me face down. A sharp slap on my ass.

—Stay still.

He starts rubbing my back, from my shoulders down to the nape of my neck, which he bends to kiss. Then he trails his tongue down my spine, vertebra by vertebra, until he reaches the small of my back. It seems like hours, and only minutes have passed, when he asks me to turn over. I do.

—I can’t wait to watch your belly grow and know there’s something of mine inside —he says, laying his palm over my stomach, right where he imagines the bump.

—I want to take you like this, with a heavy belly, drink from your breasts and watch you writhe knowing it was me —he adds, and every word sends a jolt straight down to my center.

He sits back against the headboard and motions for me to climb on top. I do. I slide over him and lower myself slowly until I’m completely full, seated between his legs, with not a millimeter of air between us. Leaning toward me, he runs his hands over my body again, captures my nipples—so hard they hurt—and pulls and twists them while I bite my lip so I won’t scream.

When he gets tired of that position, he straightens me up on my knees and slips out of me. He passes his arms underneath, spreading me wide open, full access to touch me however he wants. His fingers move slowly, pinching, tugging until they’re right at the edge of pain. Then they find the exact spot where I’m most sensitive and he plays there, knowing perfectly well what it does to me. I pant, spread my knees wider, offer him everything.

I sink into an almost animal need for something to fill me. He slides in one finger, then two, and my body closes around them by instinct, but he pulls them out just as I start to lose myself, leaving me emptier than before.

—I want you inside me —I tell him, not recognizing my own voice.

He repeats it, louder, pressing now with the palm of his hand against the bone, and I fold forward, on the verge of coming just from that. I can feel him very close, brushing against me, not entering yet.

—Please —I moan.

—Tell me what you want —he answers, stopping, though the pressure of his hand is still there. I writhe, searching for more.

—I want you to fuck me. Please.

He smiles, motionless, and I know he wants to hear it all, down to the last word.

—Please, fuck me and finish inside me. I want your child. I want you to take me again when I’m pregnant, with a huge belly. And I want you to do it again and again.

Then, finally, he answers. He enters in one single thrust, all the way to the hilt, as if my body had been made to measure for him. He’s big, but I take him without effort, as if I’d been waiting for him all my life. He settles over me, patient, until I can’t bear his stillness and start moving my hips myself. He’s filling me completely and still I need more, and he knows it.

He starts pulling back and I push toward him so he won’t go. Then he drives into me all the way and I’m the one who has to hold on. That’s how we start that long fall together toward the end, speeding up side by side, the two of us getting closer and closer to the edge.

I come fast, almost without warning, and when I think there’s nothing left in me, he hammers a spot deep inside me, over and over, and I come again, thinking about how close he is to finishing inside me.

—Finish inside me —I beg, breathless. —I want to feel it.

People always said a woman can’t notice the exact moment when a man comes inside her, that it’s impossible, that it’s only suggestion. That night, I swear I felt it. He explodes with a muffled groan, his whole body going rigid, and that sudden shudder sends me off for the third time.

I wrap my legs around his waist, squeezing him, holding him in place. He stays on top of me, still inside, while I whisper in his ear so he won’t go cold.

—I think this time, yes —I whisper—. And if not, we’ll do it again until it happens. Are you up for it?

His only answer was to move inside me again, slowly at first and then not so slowly, until we finished again. And again. I lost count of how many times.

***

That’s usually where the fantasy breaks, and I come back to my empty bed, alone, my heart hammering against my chest and my breathing ragged. Andrés is still away. The house across the street is dark. Diego, the real one, probably doesn’t even know my name.

And then I’m frightened by how clear the other part of the story becomes, the part I invent afterward. I imagine the months passing, my body changing, the impossible truth impossible to hide. I imagine Andrés looking at me and understanding all at once, the house falling apart, me crossing the street with a suitcase to start another life at the door next door. A disaster. And yet there’s a part of me that wants it with a clarity that makes me ashamed.

I don’t know what that says about me. I don’t know whether one day I’ll have the courage to ring that doorbell and find out if reality is anything like what I imagine in the dark, even a little. For now I keep the fantasy, which is mine and no one else’s, and this confession that, now that I’ve let it out, leaves me as exposed as that night that never happened.