Lovers

“She came to see her boyfriend, the doctor,” the receptionist told him. Damián had no girlfriend. But when she described the visitor’s blush, he knew exactly who was waiting inside.

I had buried it under years of exams and routine, but all it took was hearing him say my name from across the bar for my body to remember what my mind wanted to forget.

I took off my ring before getting into the water. I didn’t want any souvenir photo to give me away, or for him to get ideas that weren’t his to have.

“Welcome to my beach,” his voice said behind me. I was completely naked on the towel, and he was the last person I expected to see there.

He could tell something was off in my breath, but he never dared name it. My best work wasn’t on any screen: it was inside his head, on a loop.

He wasn’t looking at the frescoes: he was looking at her, as if she were the material he had to break. And for the first time, she wanted something in her life to come crashing down.

When she opened the door to my study, I knew she hadn't come for the inheritance. She'd come for what we left unfinished ten years ago, and I'd been waiting for her all that time.

It’s been seven years since we signed the divorce papers and I never stopped looking for him. What I miss isn’t him: it’s what he does to me when no one else is watching.

I hissed in the kitchen that she’d pay for her deception. I never imagined she’d end up kneeling in my room, begging me like she never begged him.

She had been burning for months and her husband never got home in time. That afternoon, seven months pregnant, she got off the subway at the wrong stop... or the right one.

Sebastián told her to tear it all apart. The only thing that broke was the promise she’d made, in the bed of a stranger who smelled like victory.

She told me, “Don’t trust my husband,” and I laughed. Three months later, my wife walked into my office unable to meet my eyes.

For two years she gave her body every Friday to keep her husband alive. Now he’s coming home, and she won’t give up the cell that set her free.

I went down to the pool in my underwear just to tease him. I never imagined that same night I’d end up begging him not to stop inside me.

I’d never cheated on my husband in eighteen years. One screen, one bold stranger, and one empty afternoon were enough to make all of that stop mattering.

For her, it’s just affection, a way of taking care of him. For him, it’s love. And between them grows a secret that beats every night just a few feet from her sleeping boyfriend.

When my mother opened the door and I saw who was coming in for dinner, my blood ran cold: it was the man I’d been secretly sleeping with for two months.

She had spent months imagining his hands, his cologne, his voice. She never thought a storm would be enough to make them stop pretending they didn’t want each other.

I never knew my grandfather, but his final will tied me to a woman I didn’t expect and to a house where everything ended up changing.

I woke to the smell of coffee and knew those two days locked inside with her, while it rained outside, would stay etched in me forever.