Desire

For months I’d whispered the same fantasy in her ear. That afternoon, in a deserted cove, I stopped imagining it and watched it come true in front of me.

When Damián slid his fingers along her hips, Marina understood that her husband was not watching her with jealousy, but with a desire she had never known in him.

He went up those five floors to argue with his girlfriend’s mother. He had no idea her husband was home, or the proposal that would come out of his mouth that afternoon.

I went out to clear my head with a bottle of tequila still in my hand. I had no idea that crossing paths with him in the hallway would change everything that night.

When he brushed her forearm as he left the restaurant, Marina knew it hadn’t ended at the table. He was her husband’s best friend.

The emergency door was locked and my wife was trapped on the other side with him. Only a plaster wall separated us. Then I started hearing.

Hide the photos, hide my clothes, hide the webcam, and lock myself in the ironing room: that night my wife would bring home a stranger and I’d be the only witness.

When Diego stopped in front of the neon lights, I knew that dare, fueled by laughter and kalimotxo, would become the night my wife and I had been secretly imagining for months.

My girlfriend had been out of town for a week and I could think of only one thing: text Mariana and meet her at our usual café for a little game.

Every morning she chose a different garment knowing it would end up torn on the living room floor. What she hadn’t accounted for was the day the door opened early.

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.

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 had promised Daniel I would never look at another man. And yet, when he closed that room’s door, I was the one who took the first step.

When she crossed the workshop threshold that night, she knew she would leave as a different woman. She wasn’t going to resist. She was going to surrender, because her husband’s life depended on it.

I never imagined I’d be the one pushing my wife toward another man, but there I was, reading every email with a racing pulse and a dry mouth.

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.

They had been going to nude beaches for ten years without anything ever happening. That afternoon a man sat down in front of them and she did what her husband had spent years not daring to imagine.

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.

He sat on the sofa, a handspan away from me, with that repentant-boy face that worked so well on him. And I, who hadn’t slept in weeks, knew I was going to forgive him again.

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.