Four Years Later, She Came Looking for Me Again

The morning sun slanted through the blinds of the small office Damián had rented downtown. It wasn’t luxurious: white walls with a few damp stains that had never been completely covered, a secondhand sofa rescued from an online listing, a wooden desk ringed by the marks of a thousand cups, and a framed diploma that still seemed somehow foreign whenever he glanced at it.

He was sitting in his swivel chair, organizing the day’s schedule. He leafed through his patients’ files: a forty-year-old woman struggling with 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 that his identity had gone with it. He closed the folder carefully and stood up.

He looked at himself for a second in the small mirror hanging beside the door. His hair was shorter, a neatly trimmed beard no longer hiding anything, glasses he had begun wearing for reading. He was still the same person he had always been, and at the same time he wasn’t. Something in his eyes had changed.

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

—Good morning, Belén. Not today, thanks. My schedule is full.

—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 genuine smile. Who would have thought it, he thought.

He went downstairs and stepped out into the street. The air was cool, carrying the smell of freshly baked bread escaping from the bakery on the corner. He greeted the newsstand owner who saved his newspaper, the mailman crossing on his bicycle, 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 more broken than he ever admitted aloud. The apartment smelled like her for weeks; the shirt she had 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 that the paper had worn thin along the creases.

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

He returned to the psychology studies he had abandoned years earlier. He enrolled at night school, worked during the day at whatever came along—waiter, delivery driver, 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 had lived through, how he had hit rock bottom, and swore he would never return to that pit.

He graduated with good marks. He tried his luck in the public sector: mental-health centers, social programs. He gained experience. Then private patients began to arrive, at first only a few, referred by friends, then more and more, until he could rent this office and start his own group therapy sessions. Once a month he coordinated sessions on self-esteem, personal boundaries, and recovery after relationships that left a mark. People came in timid and shattered, and left a little more whole. What irony, he would tell himself: the man who had broken the most, teaching others how to put themselves back together.

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

—And when are you going to bring me a girl? —she said as she served him—. Such a handsome young man, all alone.

Damián smiled with a tender sadness.

—There’s no one for now. The one I had left.

The woman nodded sympathetically.

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

He paid, took the cup, and looked at the sky for a moment. It was a clear day, the kind that made the city feel 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 again, sighed, and continued walking toward the office. Life went on, and he was finally learning to live it without waiting for someone else to define it for him.

***

It was one of those quiet Wednesdays, with gaps in his schedule and permission to breathe before the next session. Damián was sitting at a table beside the café’s window, an Americano half-finished in front of him and his phone in his hand. The sun warmed his left arm as he scrolled down the screen.

He was scrolling slowly, almost automatically: pictures of former classmates who now had children, colleagues’ memes, the occasional viral video that didn’t interest him. Until one post brought him to an abrupt stop.

It was a selfie. Iván and Tomás posed smiling on a northern beach: pale sand, turquoise sea, palm trees behind them. Iván’s hair was longer, he had a carefully trimmed short beard, and he wore a loose T-shirt that gave him a relaxed air Damián had never known him to have. Beside him, Tomás had an arm around his shoulders, resting his chin against his neck. They were both looking at the camera with a peace that felt genuine. Beneath it, Iván had written a single sentence:

“Finally home.”

Damián smiled despite himself. A nostalgic smile, but a clean one.

He thought about everything that had happened after that afternoon in the office. Iván had confessed the truth to his family, on his own, without anyone pushing him. Their reaction was exactly what he had feared: shouting, icy silence, accusations, threats to disinherit him, to erase him from the family name. They threw him out of the family business that same week. The blow was brutal, but not as brutal as Iván had imagined; in reality, he seemed to have been expecting it for years. The day after the breakup, he moved with Tomás into a small apartment on the outskirts. He left the family name, the money, and the expectations behind. And, for the first time, he began to live.

Damián felt a healthy envy, one that held no bitterness. 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 farther and the photograph disappeared. He kept going for a while, but his mind was already somewhere else.

He thought of Lena.

During the first few months, he had looked for her. Not obsessively, but consistently. He checked the social-media accounts she had already deleted, discreetly asked mutual acquaintances, and even passed by her old rental 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 of him that reason couldn’t command. He remembered with uncomfortable clarity the warmth of her body on winter nights, when she slept naked despite the cold and he climbed into the freezing bed, looking for her skin to warm himself. He remembered how Lena would turn over, half-asleep, and open her arms to him without saying anything, and he would press himself against her from behind, his cock already hard against her buttocks before he realized what he was doing. He remembered slipping his hand between her thighs, opening the lips of her pussy 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 in a hoarse voice without opening her eyes, pushing her ass against his cock. And he would penetrate her like that, on her side, slowly at first, sinking in millimeter by millimeter until she bit his shoulder to keep from screaming, and then thrusting harder, deeper, his free hand squeezing one of her tits, twisting the nipple between his fingers until he drew a muffled moan from her that drove straight into his groin.

He remembered Saturday afternoons, when Lena would show up at his apartment with the silly excuse of bringing him a book, while he already knew why she had really come. She would lock the door, approach without saying a word, and unbuckle his belt right there in the entryway, with the urgency of someone whose time was limited. She would pull his pants down to his ankles and kneel in the doorway, looking up at him as she pulled his cock out of his briefs and took it all into her mouth in a single motion, all the way down, until tears welled in her eyes and he had to brace himself against the wall to keep from falling. She sucked him with an almost rabid hunger, tightening her lips around the shaft, playing her tongue beneath the glans, spitting on the tip so she could suck it noisily. When she felt he was about to come, she pulled him from her mouth and whispered, her chin shining with saliva and spit: “Not yet, inside. I want to feel you inside me.” And he would carry her to the sofa, tear off her panties, spread her legs, and drive into her with their clothes half-on, their watches marking the time on their wrists, with that hot urgency of lovers who shouldn’t be together.

He remembered the way her skin prickled when he ran his fingertips down her back after coming inside her, when his semen was still dripping between her thighs and she asked him, with that strange shyness that sometimes came over her, to clean it off with his tongue. And he did. He buried himself between her legs and licked her pussy filled with his own cum, swallowing everything, while Lena arched and tugged his hair, whispering, “You’re such a filthy boy, such a filthy boy,” but without pushing him away, pressing his head against her sex, seeking another orgasm, always one more. He remembered the muffled moans she stifled against his shoulder so she wouldn’t 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 broken voice begging him in his ear to fill her, to come inside her, never to stop.

He also remembered the last time, the night before she disappeared, when Lena got on her knees at the edge of the bed, her ass raised, and asked him between laughter and gasps to fuck her like that, facing the wall, without looking at each other. He positioned himself behind her, gripped her buttocks with both hands, spread them wide, and drove into her in a single thrust, burying himself to the hilt and drawing a muffled cry from her. He fucked her until the bed creaked and the headboard thudded against the wall, until Lena moaned, “Harder, harder, give it to me harder,” her face buried in the pillow and one hand dropping to rub her clitoris in time with his hips. Damián grabbed her hair and tugged gently to lift her head, then kept thrusting faster, hearing the wet slap of her pussy taking him, hearing his own animal panting escape through his open mouth. He came inside her with a low roar, biting the nape of her neck, emptying himself in long spasms that made his legs tremble, and she came at the same time, her pussy spasming around his cock, soaking the sheets beneath them. Afterward they lay there embracing, sweaty and smelling of sex, without saying a word. And he didn’t know—how could he have known?—that it was the last time he would ever hold that body in his hands.

And above all, he remembered the weight of the deception that had started it all: the lie that had united them as lovers before destroying them both. In 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 she ever wanted to reappear, she would. And if she didn’t, he would move on.

He took a sip of the coffee, now lukewarm, and looked out the window. The city continued on its course, indifferent to his memories. He sighed, put away his phone, and stood up. He had a session in half an hour. And, who would have thought 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 carry on with his life. The days had become a comfortable, almost reassuring routine: the office, individual sessions, group therapies where he spoke about self-esteem and boundaries with a honesty that sometimes surprised even him. He hadn’t closed the door on love. He had gone on dates, three or four over the years. Interesting, funny 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, chemistry that never quite caught fire, or simply him. Because, although he denied it aloud, his heart was still keeping someone inside it.

It didn’t keep him awake at night. Or so he told himself. But on the overly silent nights, he would take Lena’s note from the drawer and read it again. Not out of cheap nostalgia, but because it was the only thing that confirmed he had once felt something real. And that frustrated him a little. How much longer 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 passed, as he tried to focus on work. On his patients. On the stories he listened to and helped rewrite.

Until that Thursday morning arrived.

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

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

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

She leaned forward, holding back her laughter.

—You kept that awfully quiet, Doctor.

Damián frowned in confusion. He took his appointment book and opened it.

—What are you talking about?

Belén bit her lip to keep from laughing louder.

—Don’t pretend. You never told me you had a girlfriend. And what a girlfriend, my goodness. Very beautiful.

He blinked. The appointment book hung loose in his hand.

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

She let out a low laugh and moved a little closer, whispering as if she were revealing a state secret.

—Don’t joke. She told me she was here to see her boyfriend, Doctor Damián Ríos. I explained that you weren’t here yet, that you had an off-site session. And she, all innocence, asked 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 as red as a tomato. Did you never tell her what you do?

Damián felt his heart lurch so hard that he nearly dropped the appointment book. 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 perfume still lingering in the air of the reception area, one 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 when she saw his expression and added, lowering her voice:

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