Barefoot Across Campus, She Knew Everyone Was Watching Her

The signs were there, Alberto Sandoval kept repeating to himself in bed that night, after turning off the lamp. During dinner, his wife had insisted he strip their daughter of control of the company as punishment for her oddities, for that stubborn habit of going barefoot everywhere. But Alberto knew it would do no good.

Renata had landed major clients in recent years, some huge ones, despite having been featured, mocked, and talked about from the first time she appeared barefoot in a magazine. That was how she earned the nickname: the barefoot businesswoman. There was no longer any need to pay people to look the other way, as when she started going without shoes to university and he had to make a generous donation so the dean’s office wouldn’t bother her.

His daughter was smart enough to get through everything on her own, and that was what had happened. He only paid so she could walk barefoot across the campus whenever she felt like it. Deep down, Alberto blamed himself for indulging her. Maybe he should have done more, he thought as he tried to fall asleep. But he remembered how it had all begun, how they found out about his daughter’s habit, and he understood it was already too late.

***

Renata arrived at the bus stop on her first day barefoot on campus with not the slightest trace of disgust or shame on her face. On the contrary: she walked with serene satisfaction, as if she were finally doing something she had longed to do for years.

She sat on the metal bench under the shelter, her sneakers in hand and her backpack slung over her shoulder. A couple of students walking hand in hand stopped in front of her, looking down at the ground, where her bare feet still rested wrapped in white athletic socks. The girl smiled, the boy did too, and the two went on their way, kissing.

Let them look all they want.

Every time someone came to the stop, their eyes went straight to her feet. No one said anything to her, but they pointed, whispered, some laughed under their breath. She didn’t care. There were people in her year, classmates she barely spoke to, who were whispering and laughing. Even better, she thought. Tomorrow she’d be the talk of the place, and then it would be easier to show herself barefoot in the gardens, to leave the classroom without shoes, to walk the hallways with her silent steps filling the corridor.

The morning sun warmed the tops of her feet through the mesh of the socks. She felt the concrete still cool beneath the soles, the seams in the pavement, a little pebble that pressed into her for an instant and that she almost appreciated. Every new sensation confirmed that she had done the right thing by leaving her sneakers in her hand. The skin on her feet, used to living locked away, now took in everything: the temperature, the texture, other people’s gaze.

Then a guy her age arrived, tall, broad-shouldered, with dark skin, and froze when he saw her. He stared at her feet as if hypnotized. Renata looked up and smiled at him; he lowered his head, blushed, looked again and blushed even more, until he had to turn his eyes away. He likes what he sees, she thought, and the idea warmed something in the center of her chest.

When the bus opened its doors, she pulled her transit pass from the back pocket of her pants and boarded barefoot, without the driver saying a word. She walked down the aisle to the back and sat by the window. The boy from the stop settled in the same row, against the opposite window. Now she could see him better, and she remembered having crossed paths with him before on campus.

The bus pulled away nearly empty. No one sat in the seats beside her, except him. Renata set her sneakers and backpack in the seat next to her, pulled her feet up onto the seat, and hugged her knees, holding the toes with her hands. She felt the stranger’s gaze on her white socks, on the taut arch of her soles, and she didn’t look away.

The route ended at the central station, and from there she would take the subway home. That was the next step. Would I dare to cross the subway barefoot? Maybe today was enough. She didn’t need to prove anything else to herself: she had already confirmed that she liked being this way, that she liked walking barefoot in the street, and she had made up her mind to do it every day, even if only for that short stretch.

She took her headphones out of her backpack and put on some music. Beside her, the boy didn’t take his eyes off her feet. In his private thoughts he wanted to tear off those socks, take each toe into his mouth one by one, run his tongue along the entire curve of that white, soft sole. Renata didn’t know it, but something in his stillness, in the way he breathed, let her sense it, and she liked it.

***

She got off the bus barefoot and stopped in front of the subway entrance, her sneakers dangling from her hand, feeling watched by the people coming and going. The boy passed very close to her, looking at her feet one last time, licking his lips without her noticing, with a mix of hunger and desire he barely concealed.

She stood for almost five minutes to one side of the entrance, looking at her bare feet against the gray asphalt, the contrast of the white socks on the concrete. She imagined how they would look fully naked on that surface. Then she shook her head, smiled, put on her sneakers, tied them, and went into the subway. Tomorrow will be another day. And I’ll be able to do it again. Or go a little farther.

***

It was about six in the evening when Renata walked through the front door of her house. As soon as she came in, she went straight to her bedroom. She took off her socks without looking at the sole blackened by the street and took off her dress, until she was left wearing only her thong. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she looked at her dirty feet and smiled. They seemed beautiful to her even like that. She stroked them, feeling the roughness and the calluses that had formed from so much walking barefoot, the ones neither creams nor massages could ever quite erase. Even so, she liked them.

Without hesitation, she leaned over them and kissed them, licked them without reserve, just as another mouth had done for so many years. Damián’s.

She had met him in her first year, in the library, on a rainy afternoon when she had gone in barefoot so she wouldn’t get her sneakers wet. Damián was the only one who didn’t look at her with mockery or disgust. He sat across from her, held her gaze, and after a while quietly admitted that he hadn’t been able to focus on the book since he saw her cross the room without shoes. That same night, in the apartment he shared with two roommates, he took one of her feet in his hands as if holding something precious and began to kiss it with a devotion she had never received from anyone.

Deep down, she still missed him. Since him she had not gone out with anyone who truly attracted her, and the few who showed interest one night or another, once they learned about her habit, drifted away after a few days. No one like Damián. No one like those years at university with him. No one had touched her like that, not just between her legs, but her feet above all, the way Dami did. Maybe because he was first in everything. The first to lick her toes, the one who touched her with the most calm and the most heat, the one she enjoyed the most with. The one she lost her virginity to.

She lay back on the bed, legs spread, thinking of him. Of his hands traveling over her whole body. Of his mouth moving down slowly, licking her soles, sucking her nipples as if he wanted to draw something out of them, biting her breasts until he left marks. Of his fingers working through the dark hair of her pubis, parting her lips to lick her, to suck her swollen clit, which now, just from remembering, was beginning to throb.

While her mind boiled, she brought two fingers to her ever-wetter sex and began to slide them in and out slowly, rubbing one foot against the other, feeling the roughness of one sole against the top of the other foot. With her free hand she pinched and pulled at her nipples until they reddened.

She remembered the entire afternoons they used to spend like that, she lying down and he kneeling at the foot of the bed, licking each toe one by one, gently biting her heel, whispering against the sole of her foot what he planned to do to her next. Damián had turned her feet into the center of everything, and by adoring them so much he had taught her to desire them too. That was why now, alone, with the house silent, her own body responded as if he were still there, giving her orders with his mouth.

She thought of the boy on the bus, of the way he had looked at her, of what he surely wanted to do to her. She imagined it was he who took her foot and brought it to his mouth, obedient, looking up at her for permission. She liked that idea: of someone at her feet, waiting for an order. Her fingers sped up. Pleasure rose in waves, first slow, then impossible to hold back, until she arched her back and bit her lip so she wouldn’t cry out, both feet tense and her toes curled in the air.

When she caught her breath, she stayed still, looking at the ceiling. Tomorrow she would go out barefoot again. She would let them look at her, whisper, desire her. And perhaps, this time, she would hold the dark-haired boy’s gaze from the bus long enough for him to understand that he could come closer. One step more, she thought, smiling. Barefoot, of course.