I play bass with a jazz band. I love it, I enjoy music as if it were a second skin. Always in some club. We arrive, set everything up, and the notes start flowing. We improvise, play classics, and leave with some cash in our pockets.

The bass is my thing. I'm the foundation of everything, the one who keeps the rhythm while the others fly. I like to feel the strings under my fingers, that deep vibration. Sometimes I do walking bass, sometimes I just mark time. But I'm always there, holding it together. When I find the right groove, when everything fits, it's perfect. The music flows and I'm part of it.

I've been with this band for five years, but I still get nervous before going on stage. I walk slowly to the microphone and greet the audience with a smile. Most nights someone asks me to play "Autumn Leaves," without fail. At first it bothered me, but now I even enjoy playing it differently each time. I've gotten into the habit of always carrying an extra pick-or two-because I lose them when I need them most.

We rehearse in the basement of Paul's house, our drummer. It's a small but cozy place. The walls are lined with egg cartons for sound, and there are Blue Note posters everywhere. I like to arrive early, tune up quietly before the others arrive. The old amplifier purrs when I turn it on, like a happy cat. We always stay an extra hour after rehearsal, drinking beer and talking about music until Paul's wife kicks us out.

My grandfather gave me the strap when I started playing in these clubs. It's old, the leather is worn, but I don't want to replace it. Sometimes I feel like it's the only thing I have left of him.

He was the one who taught me, who sat with me many afternoons, with patience and dedication. He was a professional musician, a bohemian, he lived life differently. I miss him very much.

My grandfather died three years ago, but every time I play, I feel like he's there. Sometimes, in the middle of a solo, I hear his voice saying, "Less is more, granddaughter." He was obsessed with rhythm, he made me play scales until my fingers hurt. But thanks to that, today I can play with my eyes closed.

The band is my second family now. Paul, Marco the pianist, and Xavi the saxophonist. We know each other's quirks, we know when someone is nervous or when they're going to improvise something crazy. There's a trust that builds just by playing together, night after night. When one of us shines, we all shine.

Where I haven't been shining lately is in my relationship. Maybe we moved in together too soon. We started with that feeling that everything happens fast because you can't wait. Two years. Last month he asked me to marry him and I said yes. But a wedding is far beyond our means. We don't live badly, but the situation isn't right for spending that much.

"We'll get married when things get better," he would say whenever he sensed me questioning him with my gaze.

"I know, Zachary. I'm in no rush," I would usually reply.

"I know it's what we have to do, but I can never get comfortable with the money situation."

Some nights, when I played, Zachary would show up. He would sit at one of the tables with a drink and do everything but listen to us. He would check his phone, look at other tables, order another beer. At first, I thought he was nervous, that he didn't know how to behave in a place like that. But then I realized that he just wasn't interested. The music didn't mean anything to him.

That hurt me. I didn't need him to be a musician, but I did need him to understand why this was important to me. One night he left before we finished the set. He didn't even say goodbye. Now when I play, I scan the audience looking for him. Sometimes he's there, sometimes he's not. When he's not there, I play better. When he is there, I get distracted thinking about what he's thinking. It's exhausting.

My dad didn't understand either.

He was always like that with me. When I was a kid and practiced scales in my room, he would bang on the wall and yell at me to turn down the volume. "That's not music," he would say. One night I came home from rehearsal and found my amplifier on the sidewalk. That's when I realized that, for him, I had to choose: his house or my music.

I chose music and ended up homeless. For the first few months, I slept in Paul's basement, surrounded by drums and cables. I ate noodles and played until my fingers went numb. It was hard, but for the first time in my life, no one told me to turn down the volume. Paul helped me find a small apartment later on.

Then Zachary came along. And he turned everything upside down. We met at one of those clubs where I played and he went to drink. It was love at first sight. I told my friends it was love at first sight.

"Do you like it, bitch? Do you like how I fuck you, Sabrina?" he always asked me as he growled and penetrated me deeply.

It was like a script or a fantasy he never told me about.

And I would say yes, moaning. Although the truth was that the sex was far from what I liked. But hey, he made up for his super macho image with other things. He still made me come.

"Scream louder," he would ask me. And I would scream.

It wasn't that I was looking for corny stuff. I'm not one of those women who needs candles and soft music. But there was something about his routine, about his dominant male act, that struck me as false. As if he were playing a role he had seen in some porn movie.

He fucked me as if he wanted to impress someone who wasn't there.

And it worked for me physically-that wasn't a lie. He made me come, he satisfied me in that sense. But I was left with the feeling that I was interchangeable to him. That any body would have done, as long as it screamed when he asked it to.

What bothered me wasn't the lack of romance. It was that feeling that he was fucking a fantasy of his, not me.

"Do you like how we make love?" That was another of his prefabricated questions.

And I always answered yes. Because technically it wasn't a lie. But every time he asked me, I realized that he needed that constant confirmation. As if he were evaluating his performance.

One night, after one of those sessions, I lay awake staring at the ceiling. Zachary was snoring contentedly beside me. And I thought, "When was the last time we made love without him directing everything like it was a movie?"

And a bad movie at that. I ended up convincing myself that it was okay, that you can't have everything in life. He was hard-working, he was considerate, he had a lot of shitty aspects, but at least he was there. And I was no "perfect saint" either, I also had that shitty side that not everyone knew how to deal with.

There are women who dream of a Prince Charming, all handsome and chivalrous. Like those wedding cake dolls. I dreamed of something else. When I told Andrea, she laughed: "I want one who spanks me and says, 'Bring me a whiskey, bitch.'" Zachary was far from that. But all the same, it broke me in half. Still, I broke down when that guy showed up at the door.

Talking to that woman blew my mind. It wasn't until I got home that I realized what I had done: behave like a jerk and drag someone else down with me.

I looked him up, found out who he was. It wasn't hard with all the people I knew. They told me he had a sister, where he lived, what he did for a living. They never mentioned her, and I couldn't even remember her name. I didn't even listen to her. Zachary Stewart, 29 years old, single, electrical technician. He worked on large construction projects with contractors. No parents, one sister, 25 years old. I thought it was her, I don't know why. It never crossed my mind to wonder if he was married or had a partner. I was a son of a bitch.

She looked at me standing at the door, in her pajamas, as if I were a lunatic. And maybe at that moment I was crazy.

"Does Zachary Stewart live here?" I asked her as she rubbed her eyes, trying to wake herself up.

"Who are you?"

"Spencer Wildman. I'd like to talk to him."

"Zachary is at work," she said. "He'll be back later. What do you need him for?"

"I need to talk to him about a problem. Who are you?"

"Sabrina."

"Oh, his sister."

His sister? I can't believe how blind I was. How distraught I was that I didn't even realize it.

"What problem do you want to talk to him about?"

She should have slammed the door in my face. "Look..." I hesitated. "Can I come in? I don't want to talk about it in the hallway." And she let me in. A stranger who must have made a good impression because he was well dressed and because it looked like someone had died on me.

I looked at everything with my hands in my pockets.

I looked at her: tangled hair, sleepy face, all the confusion in the world in those green eyes. Pretty, simple, everything Vera wasn't.

Something made me stand still, just watching her. Little by little, she began to get nervous, shifting from one foot to the other, clutching the edge of her pajamas with her hands. Any moment now, she would call the police.

"So, what's going on with Zachary?" she asked me after closing the door.

"His brother sleeps with my wife," I blurted out, without thinking twice.

"Excuse me?"

"His brother is my wife's lover."

She froze. She was petrified.

"I don't understand," she shook her head.

"His brother sleeps with my wife."

How stupid, I repeated it again, slowly, as if she were dumb.

"Look, I think..."

"Vera. Her name is Vera," I cut her off.

"I don't know any Vera, I've never heard her name."

It was confusing, unreal, as if I were trying to say something and there was a lot of background noise distracting me.

"Tuesdays and Fridays are the days they see each other," I continued. "At the same hotel, at the same time."

"I think you've got the wrong person," she said. Yes, later I too wished I had got the wrong person. "You should..."

"Look," I interrupted her, showing her the phone. "It's him, isn't it?"

She took the phone and looked. And yes, it was him. Standing at a reception desk with a blonde woman, just as elegant, my wife. From the way her eyes widened in surprise, I knew I wasn't wrong.

Still, I was waiting for her to confirm it. I swiped the screen and showed her more photos. She stared for a long time at the one where Zachary was grabbing her butt.

"Yes, it's Zachary... How long has this been going on?"

"I don't know."

"And why did you come looking for him?"

"I don't know either. To see him up close, to talk to him. So his brother could explain to me what to do with 15 years of marriage."

She sat down on an armchair, collapsed onto it. She looked me in the face and started crying, just like that.

"He's not my brother," she said.

"What do you mean he's not your brother?"

"No," she cried louder. "He's my fiancé, my boyfriend. We've been together for three years."

"Shit."

I stood motionless. Her hands trembled as she wiped her face. Poor woman. She must have been the same age as him. You could tell how young she was, and I had knocked on her door to shatter her dreams. She had a simple ring on her finger, a silver wedding band perhaps, nothing expensive.

"I'd better go," I said, not knowing where to hide.

"Now you're going to leave after ruining my life?"

"Look, I didn't know..."

"I didn't know either!" she cried. "You come to my house to tell me that my boyfriend is sleeping with your wife as if it were nothing."

"Do you think it's easy for me?" I raised my voice. "Today is our fifteenth wedding anniversary, and that bitch is going to be waiting for me in lace lingerie, like she does every year."

How pathetic, complaining about infidelity like a little girl who had her doll taken away. It was that shit pressing on my chest, that voice in my head screaming that I was an idiot.

"If you're going to smash his face in, he'll be here in about an hour," he said, standing up with red cheeks.

"I'm not going to break his face."

"Then what? Did you come here to meet him, to sit down and talk about how you both sleep with the same woman?" he asked me with all the anger in the world. Since I was already there and had come up with the "news," I might as well eat the shit too.

"I told you I don't know..."

"What don't you know? Didn't you see the photos? Didn't you just tell me the days they see each other and where?"

I felt worse, because she was right. Because the logical thing would have been to beat him up, and yet I didn't even want to do that.

"I can't afford to beat up some piece of trash and end up in jail because my wife turned out to be a whore," I said, my voice thick with rage.

That face turned my stomach. I reached out and gave her my handkerchief. We were two stupid people, two people who had been cheated on, looking at each other's faces. I had lost control over something I didn't even know if I still cared about.

Me in a suit, her in her pajamas, and in two minutes we lost everything.

I had arrived late, around 5 in the morning. We played at the Jazz Band Club that night. There weren't many people there, but at least they paid us. Matías wasn't home. He got up at 6 and left for work.

Tuesdays and Fridays.

That Friday, he came home from being with her and caught me in the shower before I left. Out of guilt, I'm sure. Against the wall, penetrating me from behind, pulling my wet hair and biting my neck.

It was strange for him to do it like that. Usually, he would just lie down on the bed and wait for me to get on top of him. Now I counted the few times in those months that he took me the way I really liked, the times he came back from being with her.

He made me moan, gasp, scream.

He fucked me as if we hadn't touched each other in weeks, made me come twice, left his fingers marked on my waist. He squeezed my breasts, pinched my nipples, and came with his face buried in my back.

Did he fuck that guy's wife like that too? I cried harder. Humiliated, feeling dirty. Son of a bitch.

And that guy was firing off words, photographs. He wasn't angry, anyone in his place would have come in kicking down doors. He was overwhelmed, tired, I don't know. His eyes were burning, but he was holding back. Tall, black hair, well dressed. One of those guys you look at from afar because you know they'll never give you the time of day.

He was taken aback when I yelled at him, but he was still polite. A silk handkerchief. The rage I felt mixed with the scent of that piece of cloth, filling my lungs.

"I don't understand why you came, honestly," I said, handing him back the handkerchief.

"Because I lost what little sanity I had left. I don't make scenes like that," he stretched out his arm, "I don't get carried away. But I didn't think."

"It's obvious you didn't think," I spat.

"Would you have preferred not to know?" he asked me sarcastically.

I didn't know how to respond. Part of me hated that he had told me. The other part knew he was right. Better to know. Better than continuing to be an idiot.

"I don't know," I said. "But it's done now."

Standing there, I didn't know what else he wanted me to say. To thank him or to tell him to fuck off. I just wanted him to leave.

"I'm leaving," he said.

"Yes, go."

When I closed the door, I leaned against it. Everything that had happened in the shower now made sense. The urgency, the guilt, the way he took me as if it were the last time.

Because maybe it was.

I started packing everything I had into a bag. I couldn't stop crying. Andrea had told me a thousand times: "That guy doesn't love you, Sabrina, wake up."

But you don't wake up to anything when you feel secure, calm, not jumping from one boarding house to another, running away from two parents who had you because air was free. No, the feeling of security blinds you, convinces you that it's better not to know.

As soon as I told her, when Marcos left, Andrea yelled at me to leave right away, to kick him out, pack my things, and go to her house. The truth is, I had nowhere else to go. But she was newly married, pregnant, and was I going to move into her house?

"If you don't come, I'll come and drag you out by your hair." Get out of there, Sabrina. We'll get settled in here, she told me.

And that's what I was doing, gathering my things, when he came home from work. He saw me furiously stuffing things into my bag and got scared.

"What's going on?" he asked, approaching the bed.

"A guy came by today. A guy named Spencer Wildman."

"And?"

"He's the husband of the woman you're sleeping with, Zachary."

I was hoping to hear anything but what he said. That it was a mistake, a momentary lapse of judgment, that he hadn't thought it through. I don't know, something that would make me feel less like a piece of shit. A hint, a word that wasn't his usual selfish excuses. But no.

"I fell in love with her, Sabrina," he said as if it were no big deal. I didn't exist in his life; I hadn't been there for three years of putting up with his "depressions."

And I exploded.

"Then why the hell did you ask me to marry you if you're in love with another woman, you piece of trash?" I yelled at him.

Tears of rage were streaming down my face.

"I don't know, I really don't know. Wasn't that what you wanted?"

I threw the frame with the photo we had taken on our last vacation at his head. He hadn't asked me to marry him because he loved me, because he wanted to start a family with me, but because it was the logical thing to do, the next step. To keep me happy, so I wouldn't bother him.

"You came over to fuck her and then you fucked me. What was going on? Didn't you get all you wanted?

He stayed silent, didn't say anything to me. And I felt it more like rejection, like he was taking care of that woman by keeping her for himself.

"Sabrina, you know it wasn't working between us. We've been more like roommates than a couple for a long time," he finally said.

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"I didn't know anything. And we weren't roommates at all. We weren't roommates when it came to getting laid, were we?"

"Come on, don't be like that..."

"Fuck you, Zachary. How do you expect me to swallow all this? Tell me. You cheated on me. Period."

"I didn't want to hurt you, really," he said in that condescending tone.

"You didn't? According to you, if I didn't find out, you weren't hurting me. How the hell does your head work?"

"Look, this is what happened to me, this is how I feel... It's better if you know, so I don't have to lie anymore."

My blood boiled. It was the only thing he wanted: not to have to pretend he was a good guy, that he was a good boyfriend, that he had his life together.

"Better for whom?" I asked him. "For you, now that you don't have to make the effort to pretend you love me?"

"It's not that..."

"No? Then explain to me what it is. Because you just said you're relieved you don't have to lie anymore."

"Sabrina, please. You're exaggerating everything. I always loved you."

"You loved me while you were screwing someone else?"

"What I feel for her is different. It's more... mature. You and I were very young when we started, we were something else."

"Is that your excuse?"

"It's not an excuse."

"Oh, really? Then what is it? Because I didn't cheat on you," I continued. "I didn't screw up three years of your life. I didn't ask you to marry me while I was seeing someone else."

He ran his hand through his hair and sighed in frustration. He got like that when I cornered him, when I didn't let him manipulate me like he did with everyone else.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked me.

"Do what? With you? You can die," I spat at him, taking off my ring and throwing it on the floor.

"No, Sabrina. Where are you going to go?"

"Are you kicking me out?" He was crazy. He wasn't a piece of trash, he was a madman.

"No, I'm not kicking you out," he used that low voice to try to make me understand something that my stupidity wouldn't let me. "But if we're breaking up, we can't continue living together."

Of course, the apartment was his. I was the damn tenant who cleaned, cooked, did the laundry. Who was there at his disposal to spread my legs when he got hard. Who held his head while he threw up all the alcohol he drank because he felt that life wasn't going in the direction he dreamed of.

"You're right, I'm leaving."

"But where to?"

"As if you give a damn."

"I'm not a bastard. You have no one in the city, nowhere to go. What are you going to do? Go back to your parents?"

He was waiting for me to beg him on my knees to let me stay. He had that: he belittled you, reminded you that you were nothing. That way of twisting things to get what he wanted, to make you say what he needed to hear.

"I'm leaving anyway, don't worry. That way you'll save on the hotel room. But at least paint the bathroom, don't bring her to this hole without fixing it up first. The lady will be scared," I said mockingly.

I'm sure she was the one paying, because Zachary couldn't afford a 5-star hotel.

I tied my hair back, slung my bag over one shoulder and the bass over the other.

Dismantling three years of your life hurts. But it hurts more when the person you shared them with sees you as if you were a mistake.

"Should I call you a taxi?" he said, standing up.

"Go to hell, Zachary."

I slammed the door and ran downstairs because I was about to start crying again. When I got downstairs, I was out of breath, suffocating. The neighbor on the ground floor was taking out the trash and looked at me scared, but she didn't ask me anything. She quickly went inside and closed the door.

That's what I got for being stubborn, for insisting on something that always smelled rotten. For being comfortable, for wanting to stop fighting every day with life.

Now I had to start all over again.