Male Friends

We had been going naked to the same beach with Rubén and Elena for years. A conversation between men lit the fuse: we wanted to explore what we had never seen in each other.

We had been each other’s first love. Ten years later she returned to the village, and I still didn’t know that night I’d learn to hate my best friend’s easy smile.

When Diego pulled over beneath the neon lights, I knew our bet over laughter and kalimotxo would become the night my wife and I had secretly imagined for months.

—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 bought a tiny bikini without letting her choose it, counted the hours until dawn, and lay down on the small mattress, praying she’d stay alone with him.

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 I left them alone at the hotel bar, I only wanted to give them some privacy. I never imagined she’d go upstairs with another man while I waited below.

We booked the hotel to rest, but what I had in my backpack had other plans for that cold, rainy night.

When the doctor told me I’d never have children, I thought I’d lost everything. I never imagined the answer would be sitting across from me, toasting as if nothing had happened.

No one had touched her for months. That January afternoon, alone in the locker room with three sweaty boys, she stopped thinking and surrendered to what followed.

I put on the red dress with nothing underneath and thought it was just a thank-you dinner. I had no idea how the night was going to end.

It started with his hand inside my pants while we pretended to watch the screen. None of the four of us said a word until it was impossible to stop.

I was only looking for a place to sleep. I never imagined a hole in her pajama pants would change everything that night.

I only wanted to make my ex jealous. I never imagined that night would end with me climbing a hidden staircase with the club bouncer.

I needed to tell someone who wouldn’t judge me, and the only thing I could think to do was knock on his door. What I didn’t expect was what would happen at dawn.

She had a girlfriend and I was dragging along a relationship that was fading fast. We went to the coast as friends. What happened in that room with two beds was not in my plans.

They called themselves brothers, men, untouchable. But every excuse —the creatine, the exhaustion, the technique— hid the same truth neither dared name.

Karim ripped my swim trunks off and told me it was time to stop acting so prim. I had no idea that by the water I’d learn to use my body as a weapon.

They had spent their whole lives inseparable, but that afternoon, alone on the sofa, neither of them wanted to pretend that kiss had been an accident.

I bet him that if I beat him on the field that afternoon, I’d collect my prize with him. He laughed. He had no idea I’d been waiting for that moment for years.