Partner Swapping

When my husband got up to go to the bathroom, I knew the man at the next table would come over. I still hadn’t told him I was afraid to go back to something like that.

We’d been living in routine for fifteen years until a toy forgotten in a drawer sparked something neither of us knew how to control. And that was only the beginning.

While my husband was sucking on my breasts in front of the mirror, I was thinking about her and the body of the man we’d be having dinner with that night.

She came downstairs with a smile that was no longer the same and one hand hidden behind her back. “Guess what I’ve brought,” she said. That night I understood what she was becoming.

Rubén filled the coffee maker while, on the other side of the window, our women stopped pretending. Neither of us looked away, and then his hand found mine.

In the car, with his hand on the wheel and mine between his legs, I understood that that night I would make the rules. And he would obey every one.

We were newbies and nervous, but that couple sitting at the back of the club looked at us like they already knew exactly what we’d come for.

I wrote it thinking no one would ever read it. The day my mother opened that notebook, everything between us stopped having a way back.

Marina shot me a look through the steam when they came through the door. I already knew then that the night wouldn’t end as we had planned when we came upstairs.

I never imagined that agreeing to partner swapping would end up revealing a secret my husband had kept since school.

Carlos couldn’t see the half-open curtain. I could. And the blonde watching me from the other side never took her eyes off me either. My body decided before I did.

The Polaroid hung from my neck when she appeared under the threshold, barefoot and smiling, escorted by two men I didn’t know at all.

When my boss suggested we go up to his apartment to keep the party going, my wife hesitated. But curiosity and alcohol outweighed caution that night.

I went down to the bathroom at three in the morning and heard my aunt’s laugh behind the curtain. My father appeared behind me with the same conspiratorial smile.

Lorena took off her pareo in front of everyone and chose me to count the thirty seconds. Meanwhile, my wife slept in the cabin, suspecting nothing.

We’d sworn the playroom would be oral sex only. We hadn’t counted on the man next to us watching—or on his wife’s hands on my back.

At five in the morning, with my wife’s friend smoking on my terrace, I knew I was going to tell him about the night she herself pushed me over the edge.

He’d asked that no one in the building see him. When she locked the door and pressed her back to the wood, she was already trembling in his hands.

We’d been drinking beer around the pool for hours. When I went into the house looking for ice, the moans were coming from inside—and they weren’t hers alone.

At two in the morning, in that room with red lights, I stopped pretending I was only there to keep my husband company. I was watching. And I was liking it far too much.