Deceit

I agreed to my boyfriend’s fantasy believing we’d both come out ahead. That night, while I was screaming in one room, he heard everything from the other side of the door.

She slipped into bed naked except for her thong and whispered in my ear: don’t turn around, don’t say anything, just listen. Then she started telling me about that night.

I came home at six in the morning with her perfume clinging to my body and my ass still red. My wife was waiting, smiling, suspecting nothing.

She lied to me about everything: her name, her job, the reason she came close to me. The only truth was how she trembled when I touched her again.

Everyone at the university knew what I was like, and the guard at the gate only needed a smile to understand that that afternoon, after cleaning up, I wouldn’t be leaving so fast.

I turned fifty, I’ve been married for thirty years, and I’ve never been faithful. These are the secret getaways that kept my marriage alive.

I learned early that my body was worth more than any degree. What none of them knew is that I never felt a thing while they paid me.

I got out of the car ready to defend him and ended up seeing him with a stranger on his lap. What I did next wasn’t planned: I simply stopped being afraid.

That morning I didn’t get dressed or dry my tears. I just dialed his number and asked him to come without telling my husband.

We were never friends, but she looked at me with contempt every time her boyfriend kept staring at me. So I decided to give her a real reason to hate me.

I told myself it would be a quick visit to the old neighborhood. When I woke in the middle of the night, she was still beside me, immaculate, but something had changed forever.

I accepted the room he rented me without suspecting a thing. Three weeks later I was already planning my new life with him, while my husband still called me every night.

When I opened my eyes, her arm was resting on my chest and the makeshift bed still smelled like the night before. I was going to leave soon; I’d promised my husband.

Every time my friend came through the door, she changed clothes. One afternoon I made up an excuse, drove around the block, and slipped in through the back patio in silence.

Her wife was leaving on a trip the next day, and I was still sleeping on a mattress on the floor. When he rang the bell with his toolbox, I knew something was about to happen.

I went down to the garden looking for her and found her behind the glass, seated in the chair, with her assistant kissing her eyelids as if I didn’t exist.

I asked for the room and turned off the lights so she could take care of me like never before. Until my hand found something between her legs I’d never imagined.

I was kneeling on the passenger seat when he whispered his girlfriend’s name. I looked up through the tint: she was walking toward the car.

I knocked a thousand times and nobody opened. When reception let me in, I found suitcases that weren’t mine under the bed and an unmistakable smell.

I pressed send and left my phone facedown. I wasn’t expecting a reply that night. When he answered, I knew there was no turning back.