The Afternoon I Stopped Being the Perfect Wife

I turned forty-two in March, and until that spring my life had followed the expected script: husband, a son at university, a house too big in a development on the outskirts, and a body that still drew appreciative looks when I walked into a shop. I’d been with Enrique for twenty years. Twenty years of effortless fidelity, because no one had ever crossed my path.

Until Diego appeared at the company dinner.

—Let me introduce you to Diego, our new partner —Enrique said, with that proud voice he used when he wanted to impress people.

I shook his hand and pulled away too quickly. He noticed. He raised an eyebrow. Said nothing.

He must be about thirty-five, I thought. And he’s looking at me like no one has looked at me in years.

For the entire dinner I avoided his side of the table. When he poured me wine, I thanked him without lifting my eyes. When he laughed at something Enrique said, I felt the laugh reach the nape of my neck before it reached my ear. My husband talked about figures. I nodded. And beneath the tablecloth I pressed my thighs together without really knowing why.

By dessert, Enrique had gone out to the garden to smoke with two colleagues. Diego stayed behind. He poured himself another glass. He handed it to me without asking.

—You don’t drink —he said.

—I drink when I want to.

—You want to now.

He looked straight at me. I drank. The whole glass, without breathing. He smiled like someone who has just won something small.

—What’s a woman like you doing married to an accountant? —he asked softly.

—The same thing an accountant does married to a lawyer. Living.

—You’re not living, Lucía. You’re killing time.

I felt a beautiful anger rise to my throat. I was about to answer him, whatever came to mind, when Enrique came back and the conversation changed. But it was too late. It had already been said.

***

The dinner ended close to one in the morning. When Diego said goodbye, he kissed my cheek longer than one kisses the wife of a partner. He smelled of something citrusy, clean, young. When I got home I got into the shower and leaned against the tiles. I didn’t touch myself. I didn’t need to. I just closed my eyes and breathed, still feeling the pressure of his lips on my skin and the way he had looked at me, as if he were undressing me too soon.

Three days later the message arrived. It was from an unknown number.

“Hotel Aurora, Thursday, four in the afternoon. Room 312. Don’t answer.”

I didn’t answer. I deleted the message. Retrieved it from the deleted folder. Deleted it again. I spent two nights without sleeping, with my cunt throbbing every time I remembered his voice, dry and assured, telling me I wasn’t living, only killing time.

On Thursday, at half past three, I was putting on lipstick in the bathroom mirror and lying to Enrique by text about an afternoon of shopping with my sister. I’d put on new underwear. I’d found it at the bottom of the drawer, a set my husband had never seen, and I had felt ashamed putting it on. Until I thought that shame was exactly what I needed to feel. I adjusted my bra, checked that the panties fit snugly between my thighs, and, seeing myself in profile, noticed my breasts sitting higher, my nipples already hard beneath the fabric, as if my body had understood where I was going too.

***

The Aurora was one of those downtown hotels that manage to seem discreet without hiding. I crossed the lobby without looking at anyone, went up to the third floor, and knocked twice on the door.

He opened it in a shirt, no jacket, barefoot. As if he’d been waiting for hours.

—Come in.

—I don’t know what I’m doing here.

—Yes, you do. Come in.

I went in. The room smelled of clean sheets and his citrusy cologne. The curtains were drawn. On the dresser, an open bottle of wine and two poured glasses.

—Drink —he said, handing me one—. And stop looking at the door.

—I didn’t say yes.

—You came. That already means yes.

I drank. He took the glass from my hand before I could set it down. He took me by the nape of the neck, slowly, like someone straightening a fragile object, and kissed me. It wasn’t an exploratory kiss. He opened my mouth with his tongue, stole my breath, and left my head empty. The heat dropped straight to my belly.

—Come —he said when he let me go. And he led me to the bed by the hand, not like an invitation, but like an instruction.

I sat on the edge. He stayed standing, looking down at me.

—Take off your shoes.

I did.

—And the blouse.

I hesitated. I felt the heat rising in my face. This isn’t me, I thought. But my fingers were already on the first button.

—Slowly —he added—. I want to see you.

I took off my blouse button by button. I folded it carefully over the chair, as if I could still get out of there as the same woman. Diego came closer, sat beside me, and looked at my breasts over the bra.

—Did you put this on for me?

—No.

—Liar.

I smiled despite myself.

—Lie down.

I lay down. He leaned over me, swept my hair from my face, and kissed me on the mouth, the jaw, the neck. Each kiss was a little slower than the last. He slid one bra strap down with a finger. He kissed my bare shoulder. And then, without warning, he held both my wrists above my head with one hand.

—Don’t move.

I didn’t move. I felt a tingle low in my belly that I hadn’t felt since adolescence. With his free hand he unfastened my skirt, pulled it down over my hips, and let it fall to the floor. He kissed my stomach, my navel, the inside of my thigh. I closed my eyes.

—Look at me —he said.

I opened my eyes. He held my gaze as he slowly pulled down my underwear, dragging the panties over my hips, my thighs, until they were bunched around my ankles. When he came back up to my mouth, I was already wet, trembling, my cunt soaked and my breathing broken, ashamed of being both things at once.

—Don’t be ashamed.

—How do you know…?

—It shows all over you.

He kissed me again. Deeper. He released my wrists and, instead of putting them on his body like I expected, he laid them on top of the pillow.

—Keep them still. Until I tell you.

I nodded. I didn’t recognize my own voice when I answered yes.

He opened my legs with insulting calm, as if he knew exactly how much he was winding me up below. He knelt at the foot of the bed and looked at my already gleaming, swollen, ready cunt. He ran one finger through my wetness and then took it to his mouth, slowly, watching me without blinking, as if he wanted me to understand that mouth was for more than speaking to me. I shuddered all over.

—You’re drenched.

—Shut up.

—You want me to shut up? —he smiled, with that son-of-a-bitch smile that was undoing me—. Ask nicely.

—Don’t make me talk like that.

—Then let me fuck you and that’s that.

His voice hit me like a hand between my legs. He leaned down again and licked me from my opening to my clit with obscene slowness, spreading me with his fingers to get deeper, sliding two fingers inside while he sucked at the top, alternating pressure and tongue until I no longer knew where my body ended. I gripped the sheet tightly, but I remembered his order and kept my hands still, trembling with rage and desire at the same time.

—That’s it —he murmured—. Just like that. Don’t move.

He lifted his head only to pull off his shirt and drop it on the floor. Then he unbuckled his belt, then his trousers, and at last his cock was hard, heavy, pointing at me, so close I felt the need to close my legs to protect myself and open them wider to take him. He put on a condom with the same calm with which he had poured the wine.

—Does it make you nervous that it’s this big?

—Everything you do makes me nervous.

—Liar. What makes you nervous is wanting it.

I didn’t answer. He held my gaze, braced one hand beside my head and grabbed my hip with the other. The head of his cock brushed my entrance, wet, insistent, and slowly entered me, centimeter by centimeter, giving me time to feel everything: the pressure, the stretching, the sweet, brutal shock of being filled by him after so many years of emptiness. I let out a moan so long it shamed me again.

—Look at me, Lucía. Don’t close your eyes.

I tried to turn my face into the pillow. He took my chin and made me look back.

—Here. With me.

—I can’t…

—Yes, you can.

And I could. He started moving slowly, pulling almost all the way out and coming back in with a precision that shook me to my core. Each thrust made me spread my legs a little wider, dig my heels into the mattress, and gasp with my mouth open. He fucked me deep, unhurried, speaking softly while he fucked me like someone who knew by heart the part of me that had been asleep for years.

—That’s it, pretty girl. That’s how I like you.

—Diego…

—Say my name again.

—Diego.

His hand moved down to my clit and started rubbing me with two fingers, fast, while he kept driving his cock all the way in. The combination tore a cry from me. I felt everything clench, the orgasm coming like a filthy, inevitable wave, and when I came I did it looking him in the eye, my cunt contracting around him, soaking everything, my legs shaking uncontrollably. He didn’t look away for a second.

—That’s it. Just like that. Fuck, Lucía.

He waited. He waited until I stopped trembling and he was still inside, throbbing in me, breathing over me. Only then did he move harder, faster, no longer with that earlier patience, pounding into me with his hips until the mattress creaked. He held me by the waist and came inside the condom with a low, tense groan, as if he were truly emptying himself into the body that had just taken his pulse. He stayed still for a few seconds, his forehead against mine, both of us sweaty, breathing as one.

We didn’t talk. There was nothing to say.

***

I dressed with my back to him. Not out of modesty —I’d lost that in the first hour— but because I didn’t know what face to put on. Diego lay there with one arm under his head, watching me.

—Will you come back next week?

—I don’t know.

—Yes, you do.

I turned. I looked at him from the doorway, my bag slung over my shoulder and the mark of his mouth still hot somewhere on my neck.

—Yes —I said—. I’ll come back.

He closed his eyes as if he’d been holding his breath.

***

I got home at seven. Enrique was watching the news, feet up on the sofa, a beer half-finished.

—Did you buy anything? —he asked without looking up.

—Nothing I liked.

—Good. We’re broke this month.

I kissed the top of his head. I went into the kitchen. Took two steaks out of the freezer and set them in warm water to thaw. My hand was shaking when I turned on the tap. A hand that two hours earlier had been still at the top of a pillow because another man, one I barely knew, had told me not to move it.

That night, when Enrique fell asleep, I lay staring at the ceiling for a long time. I thought about my son, the photos in the living room, the twenty years of identical mornings. And then I thought about Diego telling me look at me, about his cock entering me slowly, about how he had made me hold his gaze while I came, and about how I had obeyed without argument.

I didn’t feel guilty. That was the part that scared me most. I didn’t feel guilty.

I felt, for the first time in a long while, awake.

The following Thursday I put on different underwear. Another set. And I went back to the Aurora half an hour early.