His Girlfriend Almost Caught Us in the Parking Lot

It was my college years, and I was still studying at night after the office. I’d leave at six in the evening, change out of my shoes on the subway, and get to class from seven to eleven, my head already tired but my clothes still immaculate. Almost all my classmates wore sneakers; I was still in heels and my work blouse. That gave me an advantage I didn’t mind one bit back then.

Matías and I had become friends in second year. He was one of the few guys in our study group, and the first time we had coffee together in the café, I understood that I liked him. He hid it well, or else he genuinely didn’t notice. He’d had a girlfriend since high school, a girl who was two years ahead of us, Carolina, and we ran into her all the time in the halls. Carolina was nice to me. I was part of her boyfriend’s circle, and that was enough for her to greet me with a long kiss on the cheek and ask how I was.

On Saturdays we got together to study at someone’s place. That week we had a complicated practical assignment, and we started at three in the afternoon at Esteban’s, another classmate’s apartment. There were six of us at first, but by eight only four were left: Esteban, Matías, a girl named Lucía, and me. We ordered pizza and opened the first beers. The conversation drifted from Analysis to something else, and from that to half-childish confessions, the kind people make when they’ve had a little too much to drink and know they’re among friends.

I told them about Ricardo. It was an old story for me: a young assistant professor, not especially handsome but not ugly either, who had been watching me for weeks until one day I stayed after class with a question and he took the chance to strike up a conversation. Fifteen minutes in the empty classroom, the door half open, and that was enough to plant the seed. The next day another question, a coffee in the cafeteria, my friends at a nightclub downtown on Saturday, his number in my phone. That night he showed up alone, told me I was very hot, tried to kiss me near the bar, I whispered in his ear not there, and we ended up in a no-tell motel three blocks away. I passed the class. For them it was a story; for me, a formality.

Lucía was laughing behind her hand. Esteban looked at me not quite sure what to say. Matías didn’t say anything at the time. When we called it a night, almost one in the morning, I offered to drive him home because he had no way to get back. He lived far away, but I insisted. Lucía was on my way.

We dropped Lucía off first. Then Matías started giving me directions. The avenue was empty, and the silence in the car felt different from the silence in the group. A few blocks later he asked me:

—Did you really sleep with Ricardo?

—Really.

He stayed quiet for a moment. Then he laughed.

—You’re something else. I knew you were bold, but not that bold.

—If I want something, I get it —I told him—. I don’t overthink it.

That’s when he asked me what it had been like. He wanted the details. I told him about the coffee, the nightclub, the hotel. I told him that during sex I had called him “professor,” and that had completely undone him. Matías was driving with one hand and looking out the window, but he didn’t miss a word. His left leg was bouncing against the gearshift.

—You’re dangerous —he said at last.

We reached his block. I parked where he told me. The street was dark, empty. I thought he was going to try something. But he only looked at me for a second and said:

—I would’ve passed you too.

And he got out. I was left there with the engine running and my hands on the wheel.

***

The following Monday something had changed between us. He, who had always been kind of distant in the hallways, now looked for me with his eyes. He’d grab my hand when he laughed at some stupid thing. He’d put an arm around my shoulders when we left the classroom. Carolina saw us and laughed with us, with not a shred of suspicion. I felt a little guilty and a little turned on.

On Friday we turned in the practical assignment. The lecturer grabbed it, flipped through it for two seconds, and told us it was perfect without really reading it. We walked out of the classroom with Matías practically euphoric: it was a subject he’d been struggling with, and he’d gotten through it cleanly. In the faculty’s internal parking lot, I offered to take him home once again.

It was a lit internal lane, but with cars parked double-parked and tinted windows that barely let you make out what was going on inside. I got in, started the engine, and before I could put the car in gear, he grabbed me by the nape and kissed me.

It caught me off guard. For a second I thought about stopping him. Then I was the one who went looking for him.

We kissed long and urgently, like both of us had been waiting for that minute for months and didn’t want to waste it. I slid my hand over his jeans and felt how hard he was. I rubbed him slowly through the fabric, looking him in the eye, and he looked back at me with an expression I’d never seen on him before: tired and hungry at the same time.

—Take it out for me —I said.

I unbuckled his belt and pulled his jeans down just enough to get him out. He was odd, slightly curved to the right, with a head broader than the rest. I didn’t care. I settled against the console and lowered my head.

Here. In the parking lot. At eleven at night.

I took him all the way into my mouth and sucked him calmly, measuring every movement. I felt his thighs tense up. His left hand grabbed my hair, not to push me, but to steady himself. I went up and down slowly, then faster, and ran my tongue over the head until I heard that sound men make when they’re no longer thinking.

—I’ve wanted this for months —he murmured.

—Me too.

I lowered my head again. And then I felt him tense up in a different way. A different way.

—Carolina.

He said it softly, almost in a whisper. I froze with his cock in my mouth.

—What?

—Carolina. She’s there.

I lifted my head just enough to look over the dashboard. Three cars ahead, standing on the sidewalk, Carolina was chatting with two girls I recognized from the previous year. Her backpack was slung over one shoulder, and she was laughing at something. They must have been fifteen meters away, no more. From where they were, you couldn’t see inside the car. With the tinted windows, if they walked past us, they still wouldn’t —as long as they didn’t deliberately peek in.

I thought about sitting up. About staying still. About crouching down to the floor. I did all of that in my head in one second.

Matías grabbed my head with both hands and, without using force, pushed it back down.

—Don’t stop.

I lowered my face to his cock again. My heart was pounding against my ribs. I sucked him with an intensity I’d never used before. The kink was poison: fifteen meters away from me, his girlfriend was laughing at something a friend was telling her, and I was doing to her boyfriend what she probably had never done to him.

—You like having me suck you off with her right there —I said, without taking him completely out of my mouth.

—Shut up.

—Later I’m going to go say hi to her with your cum on my tongue.

I felt him shudder all over. I ran my hand over his balls, felt them harden, and I knew he was there. I sped up, deep and fast, until he came in my mouth with a muffled groan he bit off halfway through. I swallowed almost all of it. What was left, I licked up neatly. It tasted like warm milk and fear.

I sat up slowly, looking in the side mirror. Carolina was still on the sidewalk, talking, oblivious. Matías had already pulled his jeans back up without my seeing him. His eyes were closed and he was breathing like he’d run a block.

—Is she still there? —he asked.

—She’s still there.

We sat in silence. We didn’t know whether to wait for her or get out of the car as if nothing had happened, whether to start up at once and pray she wouldn’t see us, whether to keep talking as if we were reviewing something. Matías grabbed the practical assignment sheets from the back seat and laid them open on the dashboard, pretending we were reading them. His ears were red.

Then Carolina said goodbye to one of the two friends, and the other started walking with her in our direction.

I did something I still don’t fully understand. I flashed her with the car, as if I were greeting her from afar. Carolina looked up, recognized me, and smiled. She walked over to us. I rolled down the window halfway, just enough for her to lean in.

—Hi! —she said, pleased—. Just getting out now?

—Just getting out now —I answered, with a smile I don’t know where I found.

Matías muttered something indistinct. His arms were crossed over the practical assignment sheets, as if he were protecting them from rain.

—We were just going over something —I added.

—We passed —he said, this time loud and clear, and he smiled at his girlfriend with a smile that hurt me.

Carolina clapped softly. I asked how she was getting home. She said she was taking the bus at the corner with her friend. I told her to forget it, that we’d drive her. Her friend stayed at the faculty and Carolina got in the back. I handed her the seat belt through the rearview mirror. I still had remnants of her boyfriend on my tongue.

I started the car. Carolina began talking about classes, about an exam she had on Monday, about an unbearable professor. I answered her in monosyllables and smiled at her in the mirror. Matías, beside me, didn’t speak. At one point he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, his head resting against the window. I saw the pulse in his temple.

—He’s wiped —Carolina said, laughing—. All week with that assignment.

—All week —I repeated.

I dropped her off at her house. I let him out there too. Carolina kissed me through the window and thanked me for the ride as if I’d saved her night. Matías lifted a hand slightly and they went in together.

I went home to my boyfriend with my hands a little firmer on the wheel than I wanted them to be.

***

That night I didn’t shower. I wanted to keep that strange feeling in my mouth a little longer, with my heart still beating differently, with the mix of guilt and triumph that had stayed with me the whole ride. My boyfriend asked me if I’d studied well and I told him yes, that I was exhausted.

It never happened again with Matías. We kept sitting together in class, I kept passing him notes and he kept making jokes in the hallways. Carolina kept greeting me with two kisses. Today they’re married and have a little girl; I see them now and then on social media and I like the birthday photos. He never wrote me, not once, not even drunk. Neither did I.

Of all the things I did in college, that was the worst, and also the one I remember most. Every time I walk past a car with tinted windows in a parking lot, I still feel a strange heat on my tongue.