Jimena

Sometimes she’s the woman my wife left me for; other times she’s the woman I left my wife for; other times still, she’s neither of those things.

I don’t talk about Jimena very much anymore and neither does my wife, Carly. I never left my wife, and she never left me, but in a sense this isn’t exactly true, either.

When Jimena came into our lives, we were both thirty-eight years old, and recently married. Prior to this we had dated and lived together for close to ten years. Jimena lived in the apartment below ours, but we didn’t actually meet her until she had lived there almost six months. We were aware of her, of course—a lean, attractive woman in her late twenties who seemed to slip in and out of her apartment at odd times, late at night or in the early hours of the morning, but we never actually spoke to her.