Party

I stormed off to bed angry over nothing. Fifteen minutes later I woke up, heard noises in the living room, and what I saw changed everything between the two couples.

For years we mentioned it with laughter and wine, never daring to do it. That night someone wrote our names on slips of paper and we all stopped talking.

Four office coworkers, new heels, and a boss with a plan. What happened when the last drink was empty was something no one dared say out loud.

I asked her not to wear anything under the green dress. I had no idea that little tease would open the door to the couple at the next table.

“The decision is yours, you decide.” I couldn’t get that phrase out of my head all week, while my body had already decided for me.

I was waiting for him with my bags packed, ready to leave him. But when he began telling me what happened with her, I discovered my body was reacting differently from my pride.

I went out to clear my head with a bottle of tequila still in my hand. I had no idea that crossing paths with him in the hallway would change everything that night.

When Diego left me the car and went home with the child, I never imagined I’d end the night against a bathroom wall with another man’s mouth on my neck.

There was a week left before my wedding when I sat in the middle of the room and let a stranger convince me to go into that bedroom.

At the wedding everyone was looking at her in a way I never had. That night she came up to get me and I passed out drunk. What happened after that I only found out at dawn.

The night before my wedding I prepared myself alone in the hotel suite. What my future husband didn’t know was who I was really preparing for.

He thought that night was just a night out with his friends. He never imagined the masked woman onstage had spent weeks planning his downfall.

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.

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 spent months seeing her in a sweater and glasses behind the monitor. That night, in a wine-colored dress and with one drink too many, she looked at me in a way that changed everything.

I kissed him in the car before going into the party, never imagining that inside I’d find the last person I wanted to see: my own father.

I came out of the bathroom with my bikini half unfastened and he was there, drying his hair. We froze. What happened next still makes me smile.

I thought I knew him after three years together, until that night he set his glass on the table and told me he had a fantasy he didn’t dare confess.

On the outside I was the perfect girlfriend, the one who turns off the light and moans softly. That morning I came home fired up from the dance floor and decided I was done pretending.

I spent twelve months hauling spotlights and hating my life. That dawn, by the fountain, a stranger asked me to photograph her like no one ever had.