Deceit

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 lingered too long staring at me. So I gave her a real reason to hate me.

I promised myself it would only be a quick visit to the 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 her 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 rented the room and turned off the lights, letting myself be spoiled like never before. Until my hand moved between her legs and found something I’d never imagined.

I was kneeling on the passenger seat when he whispered his girlfriend’s name. I looked up through the tinted glass: 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 hit send and left the phone face down. I wasn’t expecting a reply that same night. When he answered, I knew there was no going back.

In primary school she loved me more than I could love her back. Twenty years later, her voice on the phone sounded the same, and my hands shook.

It was the first time I saw her in person. I meant to tell her about the pool and the lifeguard, but her hand on my thigh changed the conversation before I finished the sentence.

When I went into the empty classroom to change, the door opened behind me. It was her, the student council president, and she hadn’t come alone with words.

I’d been drafting the ad in my head for months; it took me twelve minutes to write it, and half an hour later I already had seven replies. His was the fifth.

Under that loose, demure clothing, you could sense a woman with her desire intact. I only had to wait for her to stop pretending in front of her husband.

I climbed the tree behind the dormitory to confirm what I already knew. I never imagined seeing her with him on the balcony would awaken something between rage and desire I’d never felt.

I locked the door and turned off the lights in the study room. All I wanted that afternoon was to comfort her; all she wanted was to forget her boyfriend.

There was an hour left until dinner, the children were watching cartoons in the living room, and I crossed the garden looking for my wife. The laundry-room door was ajar.