Deceit

I thought it was a secret date with my girlfriend’s cousin. What I didn’t know was that the phone beside the bed was streaming everything live.

My boyfriend used to call the electrician who fixed the wiring “Mustache.” That afternoon, when everyone left, I was the one who asked him for forgiveness in the living room.

When I looked up from the sofa, Bruno and Damián were standing in front of me with their cocks out. I didn’t make it to the door.

Mateo tipped his head at me and went up the stairs. I followed him without thinking, knowing his girlfriend was my best friend and that nothing could stop us now.

When I saw them come out of the elevator together, I knew that afternoon was going to be very different from all the others I’d had with him.

When Sofía walked into the living room and found the loan shark tied up and her husband holding a shotgun, she knew her lie had reached its end.

I climbed into a van full of foreign guys without thinking twice. My boyfriend would be back from the supermarket in ten minutes. I only needed one.

He was forty, with rough hands and a mustache I’d never liked. Until I found him lying in the bed in my son’s empty room.

When the referee blew the final whistle, I knew there was no turning back: I’d have to pay up on the bet in front of my friend, right at the bar.

The doorbell rang after midnight and I opened it expecting pizza. It was a stranger with a bottle in his hand and the truth about my wife on his lips.

He’d asked that no one in the building see him. When she locked the door and pressed her back to the wood, she was already trembling in his hands.

I went downstairs for ice and he shut the door behind me. With the party going on outside, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop him even if I wanted to.

When he tied the black mask over my eyes and opened the private-room door, I never imagined that one of those masks hid someone I’d known since childhood.

I heard it through the ajar door: the laborer was fucking the secretary in the storeroom. That afternoon I went back to the office for more than documents.

I’d spent half my life with the same woman when that stranger in leopard print sat beside me and looked at me the way no one had in years.

The doorbell rang at half past seven and I knew my marriage had just changed forever. She came down the stairs without a bra, looked at them, and smiled.

I’d been lying to Mateo for months, and when he understood that I knew everything, I didn’t fall apart. I put on the blue dress, left the house, and crossed the city to meet Adrián.

I innocently asked whether I’d been her best lover. Her laugh was the first sign I shouldn’t have opened my mouth that night.

I ripped the dress, tossed a shoe, and rubbed my thighs until they were red. When I called him crying from the phone booth, I knew he’d come without thinking.

I got out of the taxi half a block from the hotel, as always. The receptionist no longer asked my name: she handed me the key to 304 without looking at me.