Deceit

I held her gaze while lying, my hand still remembering his skin as it trembled against the cup, praying she wouldn’t connect the dots.

I’ve spent years faking it in bed. That night, while he ordered another drink, I caught the eye of the man at the bar and knew I wouldn’t be coming back from the bathroom alone.

I told Andrés that therapy was helping me clear my head. I didn’t tell him that every session left my body shaking and my conscience split in two.

Each excuse she gave my fiancé was more elaborate than the last. I left that office trembling, aching, and with a smile I couldn’t hide.

—I need you to sleep with my fiancée —he told me, as calmly as if he were asking the time. And I still didn’t know the trip would change me more than it changed them.

I climbed the fourteen stairs with the cold stuck to my clothes and the secret stuck to my skin: no one in the building imagined what was happening one floor below.

Marisol sat on the armchair in her robe. She had just filmed her revenge with the man her husband despised most, and there was no turning back.

Ten years of marriage collapsed with a gold ring forgotten on the passenger seat. Carla decided the divorce would not be the end, only the beginning.

I agreed to therapy to understand my body before marriage. No one warned me I’d end up begging the wrong man not to stop.

While he puts away the domino tiles and heads off to the club, she’s already feeling her body heat up, thinking of what awaits her in that student apartment.

I opened the door half-dressed, my hair a mess and the bed still warm. He looked at the basket of my lingerie before he looked at me, and I didn’t bother to cover myself up.

I kept telling myself it was only part of the therapy, that it was nothing personal. But with another man’s cum running down my thighs, I didn’t believe a single word of it anymore.

Each email brought a new photo and a crueller line. I drank whiskey in front of the screen, not knowing whether the woman tied up was truly my wife.

My body was still burning from the weekend with him. I never imagined that same night I’d hear, through a door, the conversation that would break me apart.

She’d had twenty-four hours of pent-up desire trapped in her body. When the boy in the blue uniform came to deliver the package, Renata knew she wouldn’t be going without that morning.

That hot afternoon, Lucía sat beside him on the sofa and confessed something no brother-in-law should ever hear. Damián knew he was doomed before he answered.

She dissected other people’s minds for a living; so did he. It only took sharing a table for the two of them to stop pretending they were just looking for conversation.

She climbed the stairs knowing that, once she crossed that door, the naive woman she had been until then would cease to exist forever.

I went up the mountain alone under a red alert, fleeing my husband. I wasn’t looking for shelter: I was looking for impact, for something that would finally break the glass I’d been trapped in.

I was always certain of her faithfulness. So when she lowered her gaze and began to talk about that night, I felt the ground shift beneath my feet.