The Secret I Hid in Mariana’s Sneakers

Dating apps are a lottery. Most of the time they leave you with a dead conversation and a strange feeling that you’ve wasted the afternoon. Other times, very few, someone appears who throws you completely off balance. Mariana was one of those.

I met her one ordinary winter, one of those when you swipe your thumb across the screen more out of boredom than hope. She had curly dark hair, tied up any old way in the photo, and black eyes that seemed to be laughing at something only she knew. She wasn’t just pretty. She was one of those people who write well, who reply with irony, who aren’t empty-headed. We could talk about anything without her getting uncomfortable, without prejudice, with a maturity I didn’t expect from someone twenty-five years old.

I didn’t take long to confess my weakness to her. I like feet. I’ve always liked them, as far back as I can remember, and a long time ago I learned it’s better to say it early than to drag the secret around like guilt. I thought she’d laugh in disgust, like so many others. Instead she told me she thought it was sweet.

—Sweet isn’t the word I’d use —I answered.

—It’s the one I use —she replied, and that was that.

Even so, she elegantly dodged every one of my attempts. Not because she was disgusted, as she explained to me, but because of intimacy. She thought it was too personal for someone she still hadn’t met in person. I almost found that decent. I’d known girls who one day were chatting and the next were already naked in my bed, and yet nothing made me as nervous as Mariana’s calm distance.

I asked her for photos of her feet and she sent them without any drama. They were small, a little chubby, with short toes. They’re not exactly my type, I thought when I saw them, and I was surprised to realize that I didn’t care at all. I also asked her for photos of the sneakers she wore most often. She sent me two pairs: one black pair with white laces and another light pair with green polka dots. Her favorites, she said.

One night I dared to ask for more. I asked if she’d let me cum on the soles of her feet. She laughed so much it took her a while to answer.

—I wouldn’t feel comfortable with that —she finally wrote—. Not yet.

That “not yet” kept me awake half the night. But I didn’t push. I didn’t want to ruin what we had, which was strange and good at the same time. It’s hard to become friends with someone through a screen, and even harder when you genuinely like that person.

***

One day she invited me to her place. I swear: at that moment there wasn’t any second intention running through my head. I just wanted to see her, hear her laugh in person, check whether the chemistry survived outside the phone.

She lived in a remote neighborhood, in a small apartment in an unremarkable building. She shared it with her older sister and two nieces. Her sister worked all day, so Mariana took care of the girls, who went to school in the morning and spent the afternoon running around the house. On weekends, she escaped to go hiking with a mountain club. An orderly, simple life, in contrast with the mess in my head.

When I arrived and rang the bell, she opened the door herself. She was darker than the photo had made her look, and much more beautiful. She smiled and let me in. The nieces were on the sofa, hypnotized by the television, paying me the slightest attention.

The first thing I noticed, even before her perfume, was the chaos of shoes scattered all over the apartment. Sandals by the door, flip-flops under the table, espadrilles thrown in a corner, sneakers half taken off in the hallway. It intrigued me so much I had to hide it. And then I saw her room.

The door to her room opened directly onto the living room and was standing wide open. From where I was, I could see even more shoes lined up against the wall. Including the two pairs she had shown me on the app. The black one with white laces. The green-polka-dot one. There, just a few meters away, at my mercy and at the same time completely out of my reach.

My mouth went dry. Because the truth is I don’t just like a woman’s feet: I also like her shoes, what they keep of her, the warm trace her body leaves in the fabric. And those sneakers were Mariana’s trace.

But nothing about that afternoon invited action. I resigned myself. We ate a cake she had baked, talked for hours about movies, about travel, about the things that scare you to say out loud. At some point I stopped looking at the room. Almost.

***

—Shall we go down to the patio? —she suggested—. That way the girls can run around for a while.

We went down. The nieces shot off toward the swings and we stayed on a bench in the sun. Half an hour passed, maybe more. And then, with the most innocent voice I could manage, I asked permission to go upstairs to the bathroom.

—Here —she said, and handed me the apartment key without thinking twice.

Inside, I was jumping for joy. I left her watching the girls and went up to the second floor with my heart pounding against my ribs. I closed the apartment door carefully. I didn’t go to the bathroom. I went straight to her room.

It was still open, like an invitation she had never meant to make. All her shoes were in front of me. I started smelling them one by one, quickly, searching for the trace of her feet. Most of them smelled like nothing, or at most that neutral scent of brand-new footwear. Until I got to the two sneakers from the photo.

The black one with white laces hit me with an intense smell, of sweat, of her, of whole afternoons spent walking. By then I could no longer hold back. I unbuttoned my pants with clumsy fingers. I’d been hard since the moment I set foot in the apartment, and now I throbbed with a nearly painful urgency.

I slipped the tip inside the black sneaker. The fabric rubbed the head of my cock exactly in the place where her toes would have been, and that rough, forbidden friction sent a shiver through me. I knelt in front of her bed like a penitent. I took the other sneaker from the pair, rested it on the edge of the mattress, and buried my nose in it while I kept moving.

It was a ridiculous position and at the same time the hottest thing I’d done in years. On my knees, submitted to an object, to a smell, to the idea of a woman who at that very moment was playing with her nieces without suspecting a thing. Me up there, in her room, with a sneaker pressed to my face breathing it in as if it were oxygen, and my sex driven into the other one, thrusting mercilessly. The back-and-forth inside that old fabric was a perfect torture.

I didn’t last long. A couple of minutes of friction and imagining her sweaty feet inside those sneakers were enough to make me cum with a force that left me trembling. I spilled everything inside the black sneaker, soaking the inside, staining exactly the place where she’d slip her toes in the next day.

I felt complete. Empty and complete at the same time.

***

Then came the dilemma. Clean it or not? The proper thing, the prudent thing, was to erase any trace. But there was something perverse about the idea of leaving it there. Since the shoes were all lying around without order, and that pair had appeared half-hidden in a corner, I decided not to touch it. I left it exactly as I had found it. That’s a rule I learned early: when you pry into someone else’s intimate things, you leave everything in its place, as if you had never been there.

My libido had gone out, but I still had the other sneaker in my hand, the one with the green polka dots. It also smelled faintly of sweat. I had no strength left for more. I tidied up, pulled my pants back on, and went downstairs.

Mariana was still in the patio, laughing with the girls. I was nervous, but I hid it well. I joined their games, caught my breath, let the afternoon return to its course. And after a while, shamelessly, I asked her for the key again.

—Again to the bathroom —I said—. The cake agreed with me beautifully.

—Since you’re going up, could you bring down a packet of cookies? —she asked, handing me the key with the same blind trust as before.

—Of course —I answered.

I went up again. I closed the door. I went straight to her room with my cock already out of my pants before crossing the threshold. This time it was the turn of the green-polka-dot sneaker. Same ritual: one against my nose, the other wrapping around my sex. The model was more closed, less comfortable for rubbing, but I didn’t care. I was too aroused to notice.

In less than two minutes I came again, this time with less volume but with the same electric intensity running down my back. I put everything back where it belonged, grabbed the cookies, and went down as if nothing had happened. I took advantage of that afternoon down to the last second.

We stayed together until the sun went down. Around six I said goodbye. It was, without exaggeration, one of the best days I can remember.

***

The next day, Mariana posted a photo on her social media. She was with the mountain group, smiling, in the middle of a trail. And she was wearing the black sneakers. The same ones. My cock hardened instantly, right there, staring at the phone screen like a teenager.

I had done it without her knowing. I had gotten to Mariana’s feet by the only route she had allowed me. Now she was walking on my trace, kilometer after kilometer, and every time those small feet sweated inside the fabric, what I had left behind came into contact with her soles. The idea seemed obscene and glorious to me in equal measure.

I never got another chance like that. Mariana remained my friend, elusive and luminous, and I kept the secret where I keep all the ones that really matter. But I know that, sooner or later, life will give me another afternoon like that. And when it does, I plan to enjoy it down to the last drop.