Lovers

We’d spent a week planning that night: her husband at soccer, my wife in class. What we didn’t plan was how many times we’d be interrupted.

When she asked me to help with the washing machine, I never imagined I’d end up staring at her without hiding it. A woman like that shouldn’t be left alone so often.

The tree that grew between our yards was only the excuse. What I really wanted was on the other side of that wall, and I learned to jump it every time he left.

I ran into her in the communal showers and, without thinking too much, decided to provoke the situation. What followed turned a boring trip into something I still can’t get out of my head.

Three months became nine, and among waterfalls and orchids I discovered that my different body was no curse, but the heart of a desire the village celebrated.

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 came home still burning from the night before, never imagining a kitchen conversation would unravel me more than any caress.

When she opened the door in that red housecoat, I knew summer wasn’t over yet: we still had unfinished business between the sheets.

Ten minutes before six, I put away the papers, touched up my red lipstick, and drove to the motel where he was waiting with a very precise order from my husband.

I had promised him a different kind of gift: that weekend I wouldn’t decide anything. He would take the reins, and I would only have to obey and let myself go.

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.

No one suspects the respectable woman I pretend to be by day. Only you know what I whisper when we’re alone again, glass in hand.

I only meant to connect the cameras to my phone. Instead I found, recorded and dated, what my mother did every time my father left for work.

By day she humiliated me in front of her friends; by night she begged me to put her in her place. No one imagined what was happening inside that car.

He opened the door in jeans only and I knew we weren’t going to watch any movie. I looked him up and down and my mouth watered.

What we had was already over, but that summer night I discovered how far I was willing to go just to feel him inside me again.

I was forty-one and had spent months pretending nothing was happening whenever he looked at me. That night, I stopped pretending.

He stopped the car outside her building with trembling hands. She was waiting behind the window, and they both knew that glass of wine was only the beginning.

He texted me to ask where I was. Twenty minutes later I was in the back of his tram car, biting my lips to keep quiet.

I’d spent years fantasizing about it, but I was still a virgin in back. That December afternoon, in a motel room, I finally let him cross that last frontier.