My Neighbor Caught Me Naked in the Garden

Although I have a university degree, I stopped working many years ago. Now I take care of the house, read, travel when I can, go tango dancing with a group of friends, go to the gym three times a week, and always find some time for myself. My husband travels for work almost every month, and when he’s not here, I make the most of life my own way.

What I enjoy most, I confess, is the garden behind the house. It’s small, but it has a square of grass, a Paraguayan hammock hung between two olive trees, and a tall hedge of cypresses that separates me from the chalet next door. I slip out there as soon as the sun really starts to warm up. I take off my dress, strip off my bikini, and lie naked on the canvas, my skin already shining with tanning oil.

While I massage my breasts, my belly, and my thighs, I feel the heat seeping into me everywhere. And sometimes, almost without realizing it, my hand keeps going down to my crotch and I end up letting my fingers do their thing. It turns me on like crazy to come like that, in broad daylight, knowing anyone could look at me if they wanted to.

It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with my husband. On the contrary. Many nights, after dinner, we find each other in the bedroom or on the living-room rug, and make love for a good while. Once I’ve come two or three times and my body is limp, I return the favor with my mouth and let him finish between my lips. After that, I sleep like a baby.

But sunbathing naked is something else. It’s an intimate, secret routine. Or at least it was, until that morning in late June.

I had been lying there for about twenty minutes, with the radio playing softly, when I noticed something. It wasn’t an exact sound, more a sensation—that warning that someone is watching you. I opened my eyes slowly and turned my head toward the hedge. Between the leaves of the cypresses I made out a silhouette. Someone was on the other side.

I covered myself with the towel and went over out of curiosity, not fear. When I reached the edge of the hedge, a hand appeared between the branches and then the face of a young man, smiling, sunburned, with green eyes that disarmed me instantly.

—Sorry —he said right away—. I didn’t mean to bother you. I was pruning and all of a sudden…

—All of a sudden what? —I replied, not moving away from the hedge.

—All of a sudden I saw you and I went stupid. I’m sorry.

He gave a nervous laugh and I, far from getting annoyed, laughed with him. He told me his name was Mateo, that he was thirty-three, that he had lived in San José, Costa Rica, for almost a decade, and that he had come to spend the summer taking care of his parents’ house while they went to a thermal spa in the north. His wife, a Caribbean girl he had been married to for four years, had stayed there to run the family business: a small gourmet coffee distribution company they sold to hotels all over the world.

—Too hot for her here —he explained—. And someone has to sign the checks.

We ended up talking for almost an hour, the two of us on either side of the hedge, me wrapped in the towel and him in a T-shirt soaked with sweat. Before we said goodbye, he told me what I already knew he was going to say.

—If you want, tomorrow you can come use the pool. It’s empty and it’s a shame. The house is big, you’ll have it all to yourself.

I said yes without thinking twice.

That night I didn’t tell my husband. I had nothing to hide yet, but I knew, from the moment I closed my eyes in bed, that this wasn’t going to stay a single morning of pool time with the neighbor.

***

I crossed the hedge through a little wooden gate that separated the two plots and had been closed for years with a loose chain. I carefully removed it and went in. Mateo’s garden was twice the size of mine, with dwarf palms, a bougainvillea pergola, and a rectangular pool with water so blue it looked painted. I rang the housebell, but nobody answered.

I shrugged and, like a good guest, made myself at home. I left my dress, shoes, and towel on a sun lounger, took off the bikini I had on only out of habit, and got into the water. It was cool, perfect. I swam a couple of lengths slowly and then got out, lay face down on a big teak hammock, and let the sun dry me.

I must have fallen asleep for a while, because when I opened my eyes there was a fresh towel beside me, folded, and two tall glasses of lemonade on a small table. Mateo was sitting in the other hammock, barefoot, wearing a tiny bone-colored swimsuit that showed everything beneath it.

—Forgive me —he said, not bothering to hide that he’d been watching me for a while—. An emergency at the warehouse. I was on the phone. I didn’t want to wake you.

—It’s fine —I answered, and I didn’t cover myself—. Pass me that lemonade, please.

We drank in silence. I lay on my side, propped on one elbow, feeling his eyes travel over me without asking permission. When he set his glass on the table, he looked me straight in the eye.

—I love seeing you like this —he said—. Does it bother you?

—No.

—Does it bother you that I am too?

I shook my head. He sat up, yanked off his swimsuit in one quick motion, and lay back down. He was halfway between relaxation and alertness, thick, just barely lifted toward his navel. I licked my lips without thinking.

—Feel like a massage? —he asked—. I’m good at it. I promise.

***

I lay face down on the hammock. Mateo disappeared inside the house for a second and came back with a bottle of oil that smelled like almond and vanilla. He sat astride my ankles, not touching me yet, and started at my neck.

He had big hands and long fingers. He began slowly, pressing with the base of his thumbs along both sides of my spine, loosening the muscles in my neck. He went down over my shoulders, lingered on each shoulder blade, then worked down the sides of my back to my waist. He treated every centimeter with calm, as if he had all the time in the world.

When he reached my lower back, he changed rhythm. He started using his whole palms, sliding them in wide circles, alternating firm pressure with almost imperceptible caresses. I closed my eyes and let out a sigh I couldn’t control.

—That’s a good sign —he murmured.

He kept going lower. My ass. At that point there was no therapeutic massage left in it. He kneaded me with both hands at once, parting, opening, bringing together. Then he leaned down and kissed me very slowly, first one cheek and then the other. When I least expected it, he gave me one sharp slap, just one, harder sounding than painful. I arched without meaning to.

—Do you like that?

—Keep going.

He repeated the slap on the other cheek, then went back to long strokes, now moving down my thighs, my calves, all the way to my ankles. When he finished with the soles of my feet, I felt my whole body sliding forward toward him without me deciding it.

—Turn over —he said.

I turned over slowly, looking him in the eyes. He started again at my neck, as if it were a new massage. He moved down over my collarbones, my shoulders, my arms. When he reached my breasts, he didn’t pretend it was work. He took them in his hands, weighed them, ran his thumbs over my nipples, which had been hard for a while already. He leaned down and took one into his mouth, unhurried. Then the other.

I ran my fingers through his hair, still wet. He lifted his head for a moment and kissed me on the mouth. Then he kept going down.

Over my belly, my hips, the insides of my thighs. He opened my legs with an open hand, without violence, like someone drawing back a curtain. Two fingers, first one and then the other, sank into me. I was already soaked. You could hear it.

—You were hungry for it —he said softly.

—For weeks.

He knelt between my legs, took my hips, and slid me to the edge of the hammock. He pressed his mouth to my clit and started with the tip of his tongue, in tiny, slow circles. Then he widened it, alternating tongue and lips, pressing with his chin. He didn’t need much. Three or four minutes of that and I exploded like I hadn’t for months. I gripped the edges of the hammock with both hands so I wouldn’t fall.

Before my shaking had even passed, he was already inside me. He did it slowly, as if checking whether he fit, and then stayed still for a moment inside me, looking at me. His chest was shining and his eyes were narrowed by the sun.

—If I ask you for something, will you give it to me? —he said.

—Anything you want.

—I want to finish inside.

—Finish wherever you want.

He started moving. At first slowly, deeply, marking each thrust. Then he picked up speed. The teak hammock creaked and I creaked with it. I wrapped my legs around his waist and dug my heels into his lower back. I felt him harden even more, hold his breath, and finally give himself over in one long thrust that ended with a rough moan against my neck.

We stayed like that for a while, him on top, me holding him, both of us breathing like two animals after a race. When he pulled away and lay down beside me, he slipped an arm under my neck.

—Tomorrow, at the same time —he said.

—Tomorrow, at the same time —I repeated.

***

What came after was an entire summer compressed into two months. Every morning, after I said goodbye to my husband at the door—he left early for the office, unaware of everything—I grabbed my towel, crossed the hedge, opened the little wooden gate, and stepped into another life. Mateo would be waiting for me with lemonade or coffee, depending on his mood, and sometimes with nothing at all, already naked in bed, ready not to waste a single minute.

We tried things I had never tried before. We did it in the pool, holding onto the edge, with the water up to my neck and him behind me. We did it in the kitchen, me seated on the marble counter, my heels driving into his lower back. We did it on the living-room sofa while it rained on a Saturday, with all the windows open, not caring who might hear us. One afternoon he tied my wrists with an old tie of his father’s and left me like that for a long while, laughing, before untying me.

We talked too. A lot. He told me how he’d come to Costa Rica, the hard first years, how he met his wife in a market by the harbor, how they built the business. I told him things I had never told anyone, not even my husband. Small frustrations, old desires, urges I had been postponing for years. He listened with his head resting on my belly, as if every word mattered to him.

We never talked about the future. There was no need.

At the end of August, his parents came back from the spa. I knew the day before, because Mateo told me in a low voice while kissing the back of my neck. We spent that last afternoon slowly, without hurry, pausing at every gesture as if it were the first. When I said goodbye at the garden door, he kissed me for a long time, without touching any other part of my body. Just my mouth.

—Don’t say goodbye to me —I asked him.

—Until next July —he said.

I crossed the hedge, closed the little gate, put the loose chain back in place, and went into my house as if nothing had happened.

***

It’s been a few months now. My husband and I still make love some nights and everything is fine, even better than before, because I get to bed more relaxed, more confident, more alive. He notices and is happy without asking questions. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I go out to the garden, lie in the hammock, and look toward the cypress hedge thinking about the coming June. I close my eyes, slowly rub sun cream all over my body, and let my hand follow the path it knows on its own.

Ten months to go. But they’ll come. And when they do, Mateo will be there again on the other side of the hedge, waiting for me with two glasses of lemonade and everything else.