Mariana Wrote to Me While My Girlfriend Was Away

Back then I had gotten used to going over her photos several times throughout the day. Lucía had already been out of town for a week, on a work trip that didn’t seem to have an end, and the heat had settled into my body like a low fever that just wouldn’t go away. There was no time of day when I wasn’t thinking about it. So one afternoon of boredom, I ended up doing what I’d been avoiding for days: I wrote to Mariana.

Mariana was average height, with pale breasts and large nipples, and she had a shamelessness about showing herself that had always undone me. There wasn’t a trace of modesty in her. When she undressed, she did it looking you in the eye, as if she were the one doing you a favor.

—What are you up to, gorgeous? —I wrote.

—At home, bored, not doing much —she answered almost instantly, as if she’d been waiting for the message.

—I feel like playing for a while. Want to meet me at our usual café?

It took her only a few seconds to reply yes.

It was five in the afternoon. The café was on the corner of a little-traveled street, a new place where hardly anyone went at that hour. I already knew the place better than I should: I’d christened the back bathroom weeks earlier with Lucía, one afternoon when we arrived before it was fully open. That detail now seemed to me an irony I preferred not to look at head-on.

For weeks Mariana and I had been sending each other dirty messages. I still had the hot memory of the last time: a video in which she appeared with her breasts shiny with spit while she fucked herself with a dildo looking into the camera. That, she later confessed, had been her way of getting herself turned on before going out to see her boyfriend. That same night, late, another photo of hers had come in from the bathroom of some bar, with her cunt red and soaked. The idea of her getting ready with me so she could go off with someone else ought to have bothered me. It didn’t. On the contrary.

***

I arrived first and ordered a coffee I had no intention of finishing. I saw her come in a few minutes later, in a light blue dress and her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She walked in as if nothing were happening, greeted the girl at the counter with a good-neighbor smile, and sat down across from me, crossing her legs. No one who saw her like that, freshly arrived and put together, could imagine the kind of woman she was in private. That contradiction had always been part of what drove me crazy.

—What are you going to order? —I said, just to say something—. They say the pastries here are amazing.

—Before you got here I took some photos in the bathroom —she replied, ignoring my comment—. I wasn’t going to waste that mirror.

She took out her phone and turned the screen toward me, covering it with her other hand so only I could see. In the first she appeared with her dress pulled down to her waist, her breasts out and her tongue sticking out, that pose of hers like someone waiting for something to be shoved in her mouth. In the second she was turned away, leaning against the tiled wall, with her dress hiked up and her ass stuck out, showing a white thong.

You seem to read my mind.

—You’d think you read my mind —I muttered, giving her back the phone—. Those photos are filthy.

She bit her lip and smiled, pleased with the effect. I couldn’t keep sitting there.

—Have you seen the alley next door? —I said, lowering my voice—. Finish that coffee and let’s go. I can’t take it anymore.

Mariana didn’t even pretend to hesitate. She set down the cup, picked up her bag, and stood as if the plan had been hers from the beginning.

***

I’d met her years earlier, in a bar, through a friend we had in common. Back then she had to have been about twenty-five and was studying something related to the countryside, one of those long engineering degrees she had never been all that interested in. The first time we crossed paths nothing happened; it was later, one of those drunken nights whose beginning and end one barely remembers, when everything veered in the direction neither of us had expected.

That night I bought her a beer and, without really knowing why, ended up confessing the things I liked, the ones I had never said out loud. Instead of getting uncomfortable, she told me hers, and they were no less extreme. I don’t remember how we went from talking to doing. I only remember that that same early morning she let me use her mouth twice: the first time against the wall of the bar bathroom, the second leaning against a car, in the middle of the street, on the way to my place. Since then I became addicted to her shamelessness, to the way she gave herself without asking for anything in return except to keep playing.

What we had never had a name or rules. Each of us had our own life; she had her boyfriend, I had Lucía. Maybe that was why it worked: because there was nothing to protect, nothing to break, only the edge of doing something we shouldn’t.

***

The alley was narrow and opened onto the back of a building under construction. At that hour nobody passed by, but the murmur of the street was still there, a few steps away, close enough to remind us what we were risking. That made it better.

As soon as we reached the corner at the back, Mariana hiked up her dress without me asking and showed me her ass. The white thong barely covered anything. I ran my hand over her and felt that she was already wet, ready from before leaving the café. I sank my fingers in for an instant and then brought them to her mouth; she sucked them while looking at me, never taking her eyes off mine.

—You’re going home with a good memory today —I whispered in her ear.

I pulled my pants down just enough and pressed myself against her. Her cunt looked swollen, the lips reddened, everything about her begging to be touched. I started slowly, rubbing myself between her cheeks while she arched her back and pushed back, impatient.

—Don’t just stand there —she panted—. Do it already.

I moved her thong aside and started easing in little by little, working my way in carefully while I covered her mouth with my hand to silence the whimpers. She breathed hard through her nose, tense at first, and little by little she gave way until I was all the way in. I felt her tighten around me, and when I started moving I did it slowly, measuring each thrust so I wouldn’t hurt her and so it would last.

I let go of her mouth when I saw she knew how to hold herself in. She put both hands against the wall and let her head fall, and from there she let me do what I wanted. The afternoon was fading and the light was turning orange between the buildings. I held her hips, set the rhythm, and every now and then slipped a hand under her dress to squeeze a breast. She answered with a muffled moan every time I drove into her all the way.

—Harder —she begged in a breath of a voice—. You’re not going to break anything.

I did as she asked. I held her with both hands and fucked her without mercy, and the sound of our bodies seemed too loud for that place. For a moment I thought about anyone who might lean out and see us, and instead of stopping me it drove me to the edge. I came inside her, my forehead pressed to the back of her neck, panting dirty things into her ear that I don’t remember.

***

We stayed still for a moment, catching our breath, before the street existed again. Mariana straightened up with that calm of hers, adjusted her thong, and pulled her dress back down like someone fixing their clothes after a stumble. Then, before I expected it, she knelt and cleaned me with her mouth, slowly, unhurriedly.

—Today I wanted to finish with my face full —she said, looking up, almost reproachfully.

—You can still ask your boyfriend for that —I answered, pulling up my pants—. Go see him like that, without cleaning yourself. Let’s see what face he makes.

Mariana laughed, a low, mischievous laugh, and shook her head as if the idea didn’t seem so outrageous. She ran a hand through her hair, checked in the reflection of a window that her dress was in place, and left the alley ahead of me, once again with her good-girl walk, as if we had just had coffee and nothing more.

I watched her go off down the street until she turned the corner. I stayed a moment longer, lighting a cigarette I didn’t need, letting my heart settle back where it belonged.

Hours later, already home, the phone buzzed on the table. It was her. I didn’t open the message right away; I just stared at the lit screen in the dim room, knowing full well what I was going to find and knowing, too, that I’d write to her again as soon as Lucía was still away on her trip.