Deceit

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 kept their numbers in the drawer and knew I would never call. But I also knew my husband would never touch me the way he had before that night at sea.

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.

By my fifties, I thought nothing could shake me anymore. Then she walked into my son’s room with her hair tied up and a smile I wasn’t expecting.

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.

When I saw her kneeling among the park bushes, I knew that night I’d check her phone. What I found changed everything I planned to do after.

I opened the door convinced it was my husband. I was in my underwear, hair messy, and barefoot. When I saw who it was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to shut it in time.