Deceit

Every night she invented a new excuse on the phone while he waited for her in the room upstairs. She knew that sooner or later everything would explode.

I’d been sleeping among the stars for twenty years. The first woman who smiled at me on solid ground dragged me into a bathroom before I could say no.

She packed modest clothes and a body tired of waiting. What she found at her friend’s home changed her forever, though she never dared tell it.

I’d spent years imagining him from the other side of the wall. That night, alone in my aunt’s house, he was the one who rang the bell.

I crept barefoot down the hallway while he slept, determined to give my husband the cuckolding he wanted so badly—but on my terms: he’d never know he already had it.

I invited him for a coffee knowing it wasn’t coffee I wanted. At fifty, Raquel discovered guilt had never been stronger than her desire.

Every time she left that apartment, she swore it was the last time. And the next day she came back in the shortest skirt, ready to please him again.

I opened the door with my headphones on, suspecting nothing. When I looked into the living room, he wasn’t alone, and I had the cold blood to keep watching.

While you slept off the booze in the room, I slipped barefoot down the hotel corridor to discover in his arms what you could no longer give me.

Nobody taught me how to name what I felt every time I closed the bathroom door with her clothes in my hands and let out the woman inside me.

I shaved everything, put on the blonde wig, and crossed the province with a backpack full of hope. What I didn’t bring was a heart of steel, and that was my mistake.

I chose the town’s most coveted guy not because I loved him, but because I needed someone I could shape while my head was somewhere else.

When I climbed into the pickup with my unconscious boyfriend in the back seat, his father already had that smile of someone who knows exactly what’s about to happen.

I saw him open the door a crack while I was on my knees. I could have stopped. Instead, I winked and let him keep watching.

For years she told him no to one thing only. One betrayal and one night with the wrong man were enough to change her mind forever.

I had my ex’s blackmail on my phone and the law firm’s bill on my mind. When he saw the videos and smiled, I knew that fee wouldn’t be paid in cash.

I promised him this time would be different. I kept it up for exactly three weeks, until the bar bouncer arrived an hour early.

I wore a white dress for a night with my boyfriend that never came. At 3 a.m., the only one who answered my call was my tenant.

My tits were always my secret weapon, and that Friday with the office empty I decided to use them to get from him what I really wanted.

It was six in the morning, I was still in my wedding dress, and my husband was snoring unconscious upstairs. The waiter hadn’t left yet, and I was no longer thinking about sleep.