Four Years Later, She Came Looking for Me Again

The morning sun came in at an angle through the blinds of the small office Damián had rented in the center of the city. It wasn’t luxurious: white walls with the odd damp stain he’d never quite managed to cover, a secondhand sofa rescued from an internet listing, a wooden table marked by the rings of a thousand cups, and a framed diploma that still felt чуж?—no, still felt foreign whenever he glanced at it out of the corner of his eye.

He was sitting in his swivel chair, organizing the day’s schedule. He leafed through his patients’ files: a forty-year-old woman fighting anxiety after her divorce, a teenager who didn’t know how to tell his parents he wanted to study art, a man who had lost his job and felt he’d lost his identity with it. He closed the folder carefully and stood up.

He looked at himself for a second in the small mirror hanging by the door. Shorter hair, a trimmed beard that no longer hid anything, glasses he’d started wearing for reading. He was still the same as always, and at the same time he wasn’t. Something in his gaze had changed.

He opened the door and stepped into the shared hallway. He nodded to the floor’s receptionist, a young woman who always offered him coffee.

—Good morning, Belén. Not today, thanks. My schedule’s packed.

—As always, Doctor —she replied with a smile—. Another group therapy session this afternoon?

—Yes. Self-esteem and boundaries. At six.

—Good luck. It always fills up.

He nodded with a small but sincere smile. Who would’ve said it, he thought.

He went down the stairs and out onto the street. The air was cool, carrying that smell of freshly baked bread drifting from the corner bakery. He greeted the newsstand owner who kept the paper for him, the mail carrier crossing by bike, the woman watering the plants on the first floor. It was part of the routine he had built over these four years, brick by brick, without hurry.

After Lena left, Damián was left more broken than he ever admitted out loud. The apartment smelled like her for weeks; the T-shirt she’d left forgotten in a drawer kept her perfume far longer than was reasonable. The note she had written him before leaving was still in his wallet, folded and reread so many times the paper had worn thin at the creases.

Something inside him broke, and instead of sinking, he decided to rebuild himself.

He picked up the psychology studies he had abandoned years before. He enrolled in night classes at the university, worked by day at whatever came along —waiter, delivery rider, copy editor— and studied at night until his eyes burned. It was hard. Very hard. But every time he wanted to give up he thought about what he’d lived through, about how low he’d gone, and he swore he would never fall into that pit again.

He graduated with good grades. He tried his luck in the public sector: mental health centers, social programs. He got experience. Then private patients began to come, first a few, referred by friends, then more and more, until he could rent this office and open his own group sessions. Once a month he led meetings on self-esteem, personal boundaries, recovery after relationships that left scars. People came in shy, fractured, and left a little more whole. What irony, he would tell himself: the one who had been broken the most teaching others how to piece themselves back together.

He walked to the café he always went to and ordered a coffee to go. The owner, an older woman who insisted on finding him a girlfriend, greeted him with her usual question.

—So when are you going to bring me a girl? —she said as she poured it—. Such a handsome young man, and all alone.

Damián smiled with a sweet sadness.

—There isn’t anyone right now. The one there was is gone.

The woman nodded, understanding.

—The good ones always come back… or at least they leave a mark.

He paid, took the cup, and looked up at the sky for a moment. It was a clear day, one of those that make the city feel a little less heavy. He took out his wallet, opened the compartment where he kept Lena’s note, and read it in silence, as he did every so often. Then he folded it back up, sighed, and kept walking toward the office. Life went on, and at last he was learning to live it without waiting for someone else to define it for him.

***

It was one of those quiet Wednesdays, with gaps in the schedule and permission to breathe before the next session. Damián was at a table by the café window, with an American coffee half-finished and his phone in his hand. The sun warmed his left arm as he swiped through the screen.

He was scrolling slowly, almost automatically: photos of old classmates who now had children, colleagues’ memes, the occasional viral video that didn’t interest him. Until one post stopped him cold.

It was a selfie. Iván and Tomás were posing smiling on a beach in the north: pale sand, turquoise sea, palm trees behind them. Iván wore his hair longer, a short neatly trimmed beard, and a loose T-shirt that gave him a relaxed air Damián had never known him to have. Tomás, beside him, had his arm around his shoulders and his chin resting on Iván’s neck. Both of them looked at the camera with a peace that felt real. Underneath, Iván had written just one sentence:

“Finally home.”

Damián smiled before he could stop himself. A nostalgic smile, but a clean one.

He thought about everything that came after that afternoon in the office. Iván had told the truth to his family, on his own, without anyone pushing him. Their reaction was exactly the one he had feared: shouting, icy silence, accusations, threats to disown him, to erase him from the family name. They kicked him out of the family company that same week. The blow was brutal, but not as brutal as Iván had imagined; in truth, it seemed he had expected it for years. The day after the breakup, he moved in with Tomás in a small apartment on the outskirts. He left behind the surname, the money, the expectations. And, for the first time, he began to live.

Damián felt a healthy envy, one that held no bitterness at all. It was admiration. Iván had chosen the truth even though it cost him everything, and now, on that beach, he looked at peace. Free to be happy.

He scrolled a little more and the photo disappeared. He kept going for a while, but his mind was already somewhere else.

He thought about Lena.

During the first few months he had looked for her. Not obsessively, but constantly. He checked the social media she had already deleted, discreetly asked mutual acquaintances, even drove past her old rental place a couple of times. Nothing. Lena had moved without leaving a trace. No public profiles, no tagged photos, not a single post. She vanished as if she had never existed.

At first it hurt. A lot. And it hurt in his body too, in that animal part that doesn’t take orders from reason. He remembered with an unsettling clarity the warmth of her body on winter nights, when she slept naked despite the cold and he climbed into bed freezing, seeking her skin to warm himself. He remembered how Lena would turn over, half asleep, and open her arms without saying a word, and he would press himself against her from behind, his cock already hard against her ass before he even realized what he was doing. He remembered slipping a hand between her thighs, prying open the lips of her cunt with two fingers and finding her already wet, always wet, as if she had been waiting for him even in her dreams. “Fuck me,” she would whisper, voice rough, not opening her eyes, pushing her ass back against his cock. And he would fuck her like that, on her side, slowly at first, sinking in millimeter by millimeter until she bit her own shoulder to keep from screaming, and then driving harder, deeper, with his free hand squeezing a breast, twisting the nipple between his fingers until he drew out a muffled moan that sank into his groin.

He remembered Saturday afternoons, when Lena would show up at his apartment with the stupid excuse of bringing him a book and he already knew why she was really there. She’d lock the door, come up to him without a word, and unbuckle his belt right there in the entryway, with the urgency of someone whose time was counted. She’d pull his pants down to his ankles and kneel in the doorway, looking up at him while she took his cock out of his boxer briefs and swallowed it whole in one go, down to the hilt, until tears sprang to his eyes and he had to brace himself against the wall so he wouldn’t fall. She sucked him with almost rabid hunger, sealing her lips around his shaft, playing with her tongue under the glans, spitting on the tip so she could suck him noisier. When she sensed he was close, she’d take him out of her mouth and whisper, her chin shining with spit and drool, “Not yet, inside. I want to feel you inside.” And he would carry her to the sofa, strip off her panties, spread her legs, and drive into her with his clothes still half on, with the watch ticking on his wrist, with that hot urgency of lovers who shouldn’t be together.

He remembered the way her skin prickled when he traced her back with the pads of his fingers after coming inside her, when semen was still dripping down between her thighs and she would ask him, with that strange shame that sometimes came over her, to clean it off with his tongue. And he did. He buried himself between her legs and licked her cunt full of his own cum, swallowing it all while Lena arched and tugged his hair, whispering “filthy, you’re so filthy,” but not pulling away, pushing his head against her sex, reaching for another orgasm, always another one. He remembered the restrained moans she muffled against his shoulder so as not to wake the neighbors, the way she dug her nails into his back when she came, her thighs trembling on either side of his hips, her voice breaking as she begged in his ear to fill her, to come inside, never to stop.

He also remembered the last time, the night before she disappeared, when Lena got down on her knees at the edge of the bed with her ass raised and asked him, between laughs and gasps, to fuck her like that, facing the wall, not looking at each other. He got behind her, grabbed her ass with both hands, spread her wide, and shoved into her in one thrust all the way to the hilt, tearing out a strangled cry. He fucked her until the bed creaked and the headboard hit the wall, until Lena was moaning “harder, harder, give it to me harder,” her face buried in the pillow and one hand dropping to rub her clit in rhythm with his hips. Damián grabbed her hair, tugged gently to lift her head, and kept pounding faster, hearing the wet slap of her cunt taking him in, hearing his own animal panting spill from his open mouth. He came inside her with a low roar, biting the back of her neck, emptying himself in long spasms that made his legs tremble, and she came at the same time, squeezing his cock with the spasms of her cunt, soaking the sheets beneath them. Afterward they stayed wrapped around each other, sweaty, smelling of sex, saying nothing. And he didn’t know —how could he have known— that it was the last time he would ever have that body in his hands.

And above all, he remembered the weight of the deceit that had started it all: the lie that brought them together as lovers before destroying them both. With time, he understood that Lena needed exactly that: to disappear from everything that had defined her. From him. From Iván. From Andrés. From the lie.

So he stopped looking for her. He kept the note in his wallet and decided to respect her silence. If one day she wanted to reappear, she would. And if not, he would move on.

He took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee and looked out the window. The city kept moving, indifferent to his memories. He sighed, put his phone away, and stood up. He had a session in half an hour. And, who would’ve said it, now he was the one helping others find themselves. He smiled to himself, left a few coins on the table, and stepped out into the street. The day went on. And so did he.

***

Damián tried to go on with his life. The days had become a comfortable, almost comforting routine: the office, the individual sessions, the group therapies where he talked about self-esteem and boundaries with a honesty that sometimes surprised even him. He had not closed the door on love. He went on dates, three or four over these years. Interesting women, fun women, women with lives of their own and a desire for something serious. But none of them went anywhere. There was always a reason: schedules that didn’t line up, a chemistry that never quite sparked, or simply him. Because, even if he denied it out loud, his heart was still keeping someone for itself.

It didn’t keep him up at night. Or that’s what he kept telling himself. But on nights that were too quiet, he took Lena’s note out of the drawer and read it again. Not out of cheap nostalgia, but because it was the only thing that confirmed for him he had once felt something real. And that frustrated him a little. How much more do I need to forget her? How many years does a heart need to let go of something it never fully had?

That was how the days went by, trying to think about work. About his patients. About the stories he listened to and the ones he helped rewrite.

Until that Thursday morning arrived.

He entered the building as always, greeting the doorman with a nod and climbing the stairs with coffee in hand. When he reached the floor’s reception desk, Belén looked up from the computer and gave him a huge smile, the kind that promises good gossip.

—Good morning, Doctor —she said, eyes shining.

—Good morning, Belén —Damián replied, setting his cup on the counter—. Everything okay?

She leaned forward, trying not to laugh.

—You really kept that one quiet, Doctor.

Damián frowned, confused. He picked up his schedule and opened it.

—What are you talking about?

Belén bit her lip to keep from laughing louder.

—Don’t play dumb. You never told me you had a girlfriend. And what a girlfriend, by the way. Really beautiful.

He blinked. The agenda hung limply in his hand.

—Girlfriend? Belén, I really have no idea what you’re talking about.

She let out a low laugh and leaned a little closer, whispering as if sharing a state secret.

—Don’t joke. She told me she was here to see her boyfriend, Doctor Damián Ríos. I told her you weren’t in yet, that you had a session away from the office. And she, all innocent, asks me, “Is he in surgery?” Can you imagine? She thought you were a surgeon. When I explained that you weren’t that kind of doctor, she turned red as a tomato. Didn’t you ever tell her what you do for a living?

Damián felt his heart lurch so hard he almost dropped the agenda. His mouth fell open on its own. The coffee was forgotten on the counter. He recognized every word. The innocence. The adorable confusion. The blush. Even the faint trace of a perfume still hanging in the air of reception that he would have recognized among a thousand. It was her. It had to be her. He smiled like an idiot. Like her idiot.

Belén looked at him strangely at his expression and added, lowering her voice:

—She’s in your office. Waiting for you.