I Caught My Girlfriend with the Captain at the Party

The university bar was packed, but I couldn’t see anyone. I’d been staring at the same bottle of black whiskey for two hours, and the waitress had stopped bothering to ask if I wanted anything else. I was eighteen, in my fourth year of molecular physics, and I had just discovered that my girlfriend was sleeping with another guy.

My name is Mateo. I know it’s not a weird name, but my old lady used to say it was the saint of people who sacrifice themselves for others. What a joke that turned out to be.

That night, while the whiskey boiled in my stomach, I kept replaying the scene over and over. The half-open room, the moans, Camila on all fours on the bed with her skirt hiked up to her waist and her ass pushed up in the air, the captain of the football team hammering her from behind with his cock sliding in and out shiny with her juices, his balls slapping against her pussy with every thrust. Her eyes locked on mine without a shred of shame, her mouth open and dripping moans she had never once let out with me. As if she’d been waiting for months for me to find her like that, speared.

***

A week earlier I’d been the luckiest guy on campus. Camila was two years older than me, brunette, with a body you could see under any T-shirt and a smile that made you forget your own last name. We’d been together since the first day of September, and that Friday I’d woken up beside her with that new feeling of belonging to someone.

It was my first time. Hers wasn’t. The night before, she had stripped me slowly in her room, laughing at my clumsy hands, then shoved me down onto the mattress and climbed on top of me. She’d pulled her bodice down and shoved her tits in my face, one hard nipple brushing my lips until I dared to suck it. Then she’d pulled down my boxers and stared at my hard cock like someone evaluating merchandise. She took it in two fingers, laughed softly, and put it in her mouth just enough to leave the tip soaked with saliva. She sucked me three times, not really trying. I remember that now: not really trying.

—Come on, relax —she said, and lay back, opening her legs—. Put it in slowly.

I was shaking. I settled between her thighs and felt for her pussy blind, my cock bumping into everything except where it was supposed to go. She sighed with a teacher’s patience, took hold of my dick, and guided it inside. I felt a tight, wet, slippery heat. I pushed in little by little, afraid of hurting her, and in three clumsy thrusts I was already coming inside her, unable to stop anything, my semen spurting out in jets while I squeezed her tits and babbled her name.

She stayed still, letting me wheeze over her. She hugged me and told me she had never felt anything like it. I believed every word. At dawn I went downstairs to buy croissants and coffee to make her breakfast like in the movies.

When I came back, she was already awake and on the phone. I stopped in the kitchen before going in.

—Yeah, babe, I swear he’s such a boring asshole —she said, laughing—. And to make it worse, he was a virgin. He lasted three thrusts and came inside me like an idiot. I barely even came myself, I had to finish off alone with my fingers after he fell asleep. He treats me like some plaster princess and it drives me crazy. I want to be fucked properly, have my ass torn up, not be looked at like I’m some manger virgin.

I dropped the bags on the counter on purpose, made a noise, and went in like nothing had happened. She changed her voice instantly and started talking about one of her friend’s boyfriends. I clung to that explanation like a shipwrecked man to a plank.

It was easier to believe her than face what I’d just heard.

***

On Wednesday, when class let out, Camila was waiting for me in the hallway with one of her catastrophic smiles.

—There’s a party at Bruno’s place tonight —she said, hanging on my neck—. I want to officially introduce you as my boyfriend.

A Wednesday night wasn’t party night for me. I had promised my mother I’d have dinner at her apartment. But Camila had that way of tilting her head and biting her lip, and she slipped a hand into my jeans pocket to grab my cock over the fabric while she whispered in my ear that later we’d finish the night in her bed, that she was going to suck my dick to the root and this time she’d really teach me how to fuck properly. Under those terms, saying no is almost a crime.

We got to Bruno’s house and the party was already in full swing. Music at a volume that made the glasses vibrate, cigarette smoke, people who knew each other and looked at me like I was the cousin from the backwoods. Camila let go of my hand as soon as we crossed the threshold and disappeared upstairs with two friends. She left me standing beside the bowl of chips.

I held out for half an hour trying to talk to someone who wasn’t busy tongue-fucking someone else. I didn’t find anyone. I got fed up. I thought about going home and working on my industrial chemistry thesis, since what was the point of staying.

I went upstairs to find her and say goodbye. On the landing I ran into Sofía, one of her friends, wearing a little smile I knew all too well.

—Looking for Camila? —she said—. She’s upstairs, in the back room.

—Thanks.

That little smile should have warned me. I went up anyway.

The first-floor hallway was a parade of bodies pressed against the walls, hands buried under skirts, fingers going in and out of panties, a girl on her knees sucking off a guy leaned against the wall without even caring who walked past. I walked to the back room, where a half-open door and a familiar sound were coming from inside. Familiar and horrible at the same time. Flesh smacking against flesh, wet and rhythmic.

I pushed it with the tip of my fingers. It barely moved six inches, and that was enough.

Camila was on all fours on the bed, her skirt hiked up to her waist and her thong hanging from one ankle. Her ass was lifted in the air and her pussy was slick and open, lips reddened and stretched around Bruno’s cock every time he drove in deep. Bruno held her by the hips with both hands and fucked her with the same fury he had on the field when he scored, his cock going in all the way, his balls hitting her clit with every shove, her ass trembling with each collision. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, moaning things she had never moaned with me.

—Harder, like that, break me, give me more —she gasped—. Come inside me, motherfucker, come inside me, I want to feel it.

Bruno landed a sharp slap on her ass, leaving the red print of his hand, and grabbed a lock of her hair to yank her head back. She arched her back like a cat and started moving against him, fucking him from below, shaking her hips to take him all the way. When she opened her eyes and saw me in the doorway, she didn’t panic. She didn’t stop. She held my gaze for a full second, stuck out her tongue and licked her lips as if to say now you know what a woman really getting fucked looks like, and closed them again, burying her face in the mattress to moan even louder.

My ears rang. My legs froze to the floor for a couple of seconds and then moved on their own. I went down the stairs three at a time. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I didn’t take my jacket. I walked six blocks to the university bar and ordered the cheapest thing they had. The strongest thing.

***

I woke up with my skull about to split open. I was naked in a bed that wasn’t mine, in a room with white walls and a poster of the periodic table next to the window. Fuck me, I’m at some classmate’s place.

I tried to remember. I remembered the bar, I remembered a girl coming up to me and telling me she had a better place for me to drown, I remembered getting into a taxi, and nothing else. Then a black ocean.

I sat up on the edge of the bed wrapped in a sheet. My clothes were nowhere to be seen. I started opening drawers looking for something that would tell me where I was, and in the second drawer I found a bundle of lingerie —black lace thongs, a red bra with semi-sheer cups, a pair of rolled-up fishnet stockings— that made me pull my hand back as if I’d burned it.

—It’s not polite to snoop through other people’s drawers.

I jumped. In the doorway stood a blonde girl with freshly wet hair and a white towel wrapped around her body. The towel came only just to her thigh and pushed her tits up, giving her a cleavage where drops of water were still shining as they ran down her chest. Her skin glistened from the shower. I dropped the lingerie as if that might convince her I hadn’t touched it.

—Sorry —I stammered—. I didn’t know where I was. It was the only thing I could think of.

—For the genius who finishes a bachelor’s degree at eighteen, you don’t think of many things —she replied, not moving from the doorway.

I went silent. How the hell did this girl know what I studied?

—Sorry, but… do we know each other?

—We’ve been in the same class for two years, Mateo. My name’s Renata. Nice to meet you.

I mentally ran through the faces of my year and didn’t find one that matched hers. It didn’t surprise me. I never looked at anyone.

—And my clothes?

—In the washing machine. You came in your pants in the taxi last night. I put them in to wash while I got you settled on the couch. You fell asleep before I could offer you a coffee.

I felt the heat rising up my neck. Renata crossed her arms over the towel, emphasizing every centimeter of a neckline I hadn’t registered two minutes earlier. Under the sheet, my cock decided that yes, it had registered.

—I brought you here because I couldn’t in good conscience leave you lying on the bar sidewalk —she said—. But for the record, you’re exactly as unbearable as I thought from day one.

—Unbearable?

—Vain. Arrogant. You never join a group project, you do everything alone, you look at people like we’re extras in your movie. It’s typical of people who think they’re smarter than everyone else.

I wanted to snap back, but I couldn’t find any ammunition. Somewhere in the back of my head, a voice was telling me Renata had a pretty good point.

—I didn’t know it bothered you that much.

—It doesn’t bother me. It makes me feel sorry for you. Go call your mother; she’ll be worried. Your clothes will be ready in twenty minutes.

She turned and went into the bathroom, leaving behind a smell of coconut shampoo and woman I had never smelled in my life. When she passed through the hallway, the towel rode up another inch and showed me the full curve of a pale, firm ass, with a drop of water running down the back of her thigh. I closed my eyes for a second. Something in Renata’s voice forced me to look at myself in a mirror in a way I had never looked at myself before. Something in her ass forced me to look elsewhere too.

***

I left her building without looking back. I walked three blocks before realizing we lived practically door to door. She had been half a block from me for two years and I hadn’t even known. Maybe I really was an idiot.

When I got home, I had thirty-two missed calls: most from my mother and a few from Camila. I called my mother first, lied just enough to let her sleep peacefully, and promised to come over for dinner on Saturday. Then I collapsed onto the sofa and opened a beer to finish clearing my head.

Just when I was about to close my eyes, an unknown long number rang through. I almost didn’t answer. I picked up out of pure boredom.

—Mateo Aguirre?

—Yes, speaking.

—I’m calling from Extremis Insurance. Your deceased mother, Mrs. Lucía Aguirre, named you the sole beneficiary of her life insurance policy. The instructions were to release the sum when you turned eighteen. We’ve been trying to locate you for two weeks. We need an account number to make the transfer.

—What sum are we talking about?

—Three million euros, Mr. Aguirre.

I was speechless for the second time that day. I dictated the account number like an automaton. Fifteen minutes later I opened the bank app and there it was, the balance, every zero in place.

My mother, my biological mother, the one who had slit her wrists in the bathtub when I was five, had just given me the life my father and my stepmother the whore had tried to steal from me. Three million euros. My adoptive mother’s mortgage, my business project, everything I had dreamed about while sleeping on mattresses that weren’t mine.

I laughed to myself. A bitter laugh, almost nervous. And just then, as if the universe had a sense of humor, my phone vibrated again. Camila’s name appeared on the screen.

I took a breath. I answered.

—I hope you’re brief —I told her—. It’s the last thing I want to do right now.

—Mateo, I was calling to apologize, but I can see you’re already unbearable.

—Apologies are something you ask for, not something you condition.

—Look, I’m saying this with affection. Yes, I slept with Bruno. And I’m going to keep sleeping with him. He gives me what you can’t give me. He doesn’t treat me like porcelain, he fucks me the way I like, he tears up my pussy until I ask him to stop, he sticks it in my ass whenever he feels like it, he makes me suck him off to the root until I choke. He’s got a cock twice the size of yours, he’s got money, he takes me places. You, on the other hand, came inside me in three thrusts and fell asleep. All you could afford me was a McDonald’s combo and sex like a scared little kid. And while I’m at it, I’ll tell you this: I started dating you because I bet the girls I could fuck the brainiac of the class. I won the bet. Go find a girl at your level, and learn how to eat pussy first, because that’s the only thing you might be good for.

There was silence. I thought I’d feel anger, pain, shame. I felt something much more useful. I felt cold. The same cold my biological mother must have felt when she planned the day she got into the bathtub, I supposed. The same cold with which some men sign papers that change other people’s lives forever.

—Camila —I said—. I wish you the best with Bruno. Really.

—Seriously?

—Yes. And tell your friends the next bet is going to cost them a lot more.

I hung up before she could answer. I set the phone on the table, poured myself another beer, and started planning the next twelve months like they were a lab experiment. For the first time in years, I knew exactly what I was going to do the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Three million euros and a very cold rage are, believe me, a chemical combination very hard to beat.

***

Renata called me that same night, two hours later, to ask if I’d gotten home okay. I told her yes. I also told her, without thinking too much about it, that on Monday I wanted her to help me understand why everyone hated me so much.

—You asking me for help? —she laughed on the other end—. Something happened to you today, Mateo.

—A few things happened. I’ll tell you Monday.

When I hung up, I lay there for a long while staring at the ceiling. I thought about the white towel riding up her thigh, the drop of water running down the back of her neck, the smell of coconut. I caught my hand on my cock over my pants without realizing it and found it hard as a rock. The room smelled of old smoke, warm beer, and the promise of something new. Camila had been the last woman I fell in love with out of innocence. Renata, I suspected, was going to be the first I fell in love with out of habit. And in between, a lot of things were going to happen. But that, as they say, is another story.