How My Son’s Friend Ruined My Christmas Eve

I've been carrying this around for four months. I haven't told anyone: not my sister, not the friends I meet for lunch on Fridays, not my therapist, who is supposedly there to listen to me. There are things you don't say out loud because the moment you do, they stop being only yours. So I write them here, for strangers, because I need to get it out somehow and this is the only way I can think of.

My name is Valeria. I'm thirty-six, with two decades of mortgage payments behind me, a son who just turned twenty, and a husband who travels for work more days than he's at home. I don't complain, or at least not out loud. Money is not an issue, the house is big, Rubén is a good man. But “good man” and “present” are not always the same thing, and there are nights — many of them — when I go to bed alone in a double bed, slip my hand between my legs, and wonder when was the last time someone really looked at me, when was the last time another mouth made me come without me having to fantasize about a stranger to get there.

Santiago has been coming to the house since he was sixteen. He is my son Iván's best friend, or whatever they are: that kind of friendship that works on a basis of constant insults and always being willing to show up when the other needs you. At first he was a skinny, slightly difficult teenager, with that leashless-dog energy some boys that age have. He came over, messed up the living room, ate whatever was in the fridge, and left. Normal.

At some point over the last year that changed. I can't put my finger exactly on when. I only know that the last time he came over, in November, I stayed longer than necessary watching him take off his jacket in the entryway. He's twenty-one now. The shoulders of a guy who has spent time in the gym, the big hands of someone who works with them, and that way he moves — calm, unhurried — that made me nervous in a way I didn't know how to manage. A couple of times, after he left, I went upstairs to the bathroom and touched myself thinking about him. I'm not saying that with pride. I'm saying it because it's true.

He irritated me. He had always irritated me. He would steal the controller from Iván during games, make him look bad in front of the others, call him “pathetic” and “loser” with an easy confidence that drove me up the wall. And yet, when he was at the house, I found myself walking through the living room more times than necessary, looking for excuses to go in with something: a glass of water, a question I didn't need to ask, the punch bowl on December 24. A couple of times I caught myself wondering whether his cock was big, and I hated myself for thinking it, and then I thought about it again that same night before falling asleep.

***

It was Christmas Eve. Rubén had called that morning in his usual apologetic tone to say the meeting in Berlin had run late and he'd be back on the twenty-seventh. Iván was in the living room with his headphones on, oblivious to the world. I was preparing dinner — pork loin with apple, the same green beans as always — when the doorbell rang.

—I'm coming —I shouted, even though there was no one there to hear me.

I opened the door and Santiago was there, holding a bottle of red wine and wearing that crooked smile of his, slightly defiant, as if he were always about to say something he shouldn't.

—Merry Christmas Eve, Valeria —he said. For months he had stopped calling me “ma'am.” I don't know when that started, I don't know if he did it on purpose.

—It's Christmas Eve, Santiago. Don't you have somewhere to go? —I asked, stepping aside to let him in.

—I already did. —He came in without a second thought, setting the bottle down on the entryway cabinet—. Iván told me to come.

I watched him as he walked toward the living room. He was wearing dark jeans and a gray T-shirt, nothing special, but the fabric fit just enough across his shoulders. I looked away before he turned around, though not quickly enough to miss the bulge in his jeans when he bent down to set the bottle on the cabinet.

***

Dinner was long. Iván talked about work, his plans for next year, a trip he wanted to take with some friends in the summer. Santiago ate with that silent concentration he sometimes had, answering in short phrases, not needing to fill the silences. I kept serving, refilling glasses, getting up and sitting down and doing the things mothers do at these dinners so everything looks effortless.

But every time I looked up, Santiago was watching me.

It wasn't a long or obvious look. It was just the moment his eyes met mine and didn't look away immediately. A second. Two. Enough for me to feel the heat climbing up my neck, and lower, to a place that hadn't shown any signs of life in a very long time. Enough for me to have to take a sip of wine, cross my legs under the tablecloth, and squeeze them together until I felt the pulse between them.

—This loin is really good, Valeria —he said at one point, while Iván had gone to get more bread from the kitchen.

—Thank you —I replied.

—Do you always make it the same way, or do you change the recipe?

It was a completely normal question. Nothing unusual about it. And yet he asked it looking straight at me, with that calmness that threw me off, and I took a moment to answer as if it were a difficult question.

—Always the same —I said finally—. It's my mother's recipe.

He nodded slowly. He dropped his gaze for a moment to my cleavage — the sweater wasn't low-cut, but he found a way — and lifted it back to my eyes with the same calm. Iván came back with the bread and the conversation continued. But something had settled at the table that hadn't been there before, something I could feel in the tension of my shoulders, in the wetness beginning to gather in my panties, and in the way I tried not to look toward his side of the table.

At 11:15, Iván got up yawning.

—I'm going to bed —he announced—. I want to get up early for the presents tomorrow.

He was twenty and still wanted to wake up early to open Christmas presents. I love him for that.

I kissed him on the cheek, told him to sleep well. I watched him go upstairs and then I stood frozen in the middle of the living room, with the fireplace lit and the remnants of dinner on the table and Santiago sitting on the sofa, looking at me.

—I can help you clear up —he said.

—No need —I replied. I started stacking plates. It was something to do with my hands.

He didn't get up. He stayed sitting there, hands on his knees, without his phone, without the console controller. Just watching. When I went into the kitchen with the first round of dishes I felt his eyes on my back, on my ass, all the way there.

I went back for more. I cleared the glasses. Folded the napkins. I was looking for things to do so I wouldn't have to stand still and face what was happening in that living room.

—Valeria —he said when I was about to pick up the last glass.

I froze.

—Have you been like this for a long time? —he asked.

I turned to him.

—Like what?

He got up from the sofa. He walked toward me slowly, unhurried, exactly as he did everything, and stopped less than a meter away. Close enough for me to smell his cologne: something simple, citrusy, mixed with the warmth of someone who's spent hours in a heated room.

—Alone —he said—. Without anyone fucking you properly.

The word hit me in the stomach. Nobody had spoken to me like that in years. Nobody had ever spoken to me like that in this house, ever. And least of all a twenty-one-year-old kid with a crooked smile.

I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer that wasn't the truth, and the truth was that I had been alone for a very long time, a very long time without a cock making me come, a very long time touching myself with my eyes closed imagining things I didn't dare ask for out loud. And that twenty-one-year-old boy had seen it before I had even admitted it to myself.

He put his hand on my jaw. Slowly. As if giving me time to pull away.

I didn't pull away.

***

He kissed me first. It wasn't an adolescent kiss or an awkward kiss: he opened my mouth with his tongue and squeezed my jaw with his fingers until I let out a low moan against his lips. With his other hand he grabbed my waist and pulled me against him, and there, against my belly, I felt for the first time how hard he was inside his jeans. Long, thick, throbbing against me through the fabric. Another sound slipped out of me and he swallowed it with his tongue.

—Shhh —he said against my mouth—. Your son is upstairs.

As if I needed reminding. As if that wasn't what was soaking my cunt.

He led me to the sofa, pushing me slowly, never breaking the kiss, never stopping his hands roaming over my sweater. The fireplace cast long shadows across the ceiling, the cold fabric of the sofa pressed against my back when he laid me down and climbed over me, one knee between my legs, pressing right where I could no longer hide how wet I was.

He took off my sweater unhurriedly. He did it with serious concentration, almost methodical, without the nervous urgency of men who've been waiting too long for something. He did it like someone who knew he had time, like someone who didn't need to prove anything. That was the first thing that surprised me: that he was twenty-one and behaved like someone who had already learned not to rush.

Under the sweater I was wearing a black bra, one of those I put on when I want to feel pretty even if no one is going to see me. He smiled when he saw it. He unclasped it with one hand, without even looking, and when my breasts fell free he took them, one in each hand, and lowered his mouth to my left nipple.

—Fuck —I whispered, because I couldn't keep quiet.

He sucked it. He sucked me slowly at first, circling the nipple with his tongue until it stood hard as stone, then taking the whole breast into his mouth and sucking. His other hand pinched my other nipple, not hard, just enough for me to arch my back against his mouth and spread my legs wider without realizing it.

—How long have you been thinking about this? —he asked in my ear, his voice rough, when he moved to the other breast.

—Shut up —I answered.

He laughed. A low, short laugh, almost identical to the one he used when he beat Iván at video games.

He kissed his way down my belly, nipping a little at my hip bone, and when he reached the button of my pants he opened it with his teeth. His teeth. At thirty-six I'd never had my pants unbuttoned with teeth before. He yanked off my jeans, then my panties — black too, matching the bra — and stayed kneeling on the floor for a moment, looking at me naked on the sofa.

—Look at you —he said.

He opened my legs with his hands, unhurried, placing them where he wanted. One on the back of the sofa, the other resting on the floor. I was completely open for him, my cunt shining from how wet I was, and he was looking at me as if deciding where to start.

He began by licking the inside of my thigh. Then the other one. He would move toward my cunt and then away, and I started moving my hips toward him without meaning to, searching for his mouth.

—Ask me —he said.

—Santi, please…

—Ask me properly.

I closed my eyes. I could feel the shame rising up my face, and underneath the shame I could feel the need tightening my cunt until it hurt.

—Eat me —I said—. Eat me, please.

He lowered his mouth without waiting any longer. The first lick was long, flat, bottom to top, and it made me lift my hips off the sofa with a moan I had to smother by biting my fist. Then he started sucking my clit, circling it with his tongue, sucking slowly and then fast, alternating in a way that had me writhing against his mouth out of control.

He slipped two fingers inside me. Two thick fingers that opened me and filled me at the same time, and when he started moving them inside me, searching for that spot without stopping sucking my clit, I knew I was going to come fast, so fast it made me ashamed.

—I'm going to… —I managed to say.

—Come in my mouth —he replied without lifting his head.

And I came. I came so hard, gripping his head with my thighs, biting my hand to the point of pain so I wouldn't scream. My fingers trembled when I let go of his hair. He kept sucking me, softer now, while I came down, and when he finally lifted his head his mouth and chin were shining with me.

—Now you —I said, still panting.

I got down on my knees in front of him because I wanted to. I need that to be clear, even if only to myself: nobody pushed me. It was me, my hands going to his belt, my mouth already watering before I opened it. I unbuttoned his jeans, pulled down his boxers, and when his cock sprang free — hard, thick, with the head already shiny — I felt something tighten in my chest that didn't have an exact name but was completely mine.

It was bigger than I expected. Much bigger. I took it in my hand and couldn't quite close around it. I looked at it for a moment, licked it from base to tip, running my tongue over the vein underneath, and he let out a rough groan that made me clench my thighs.

I took him into my mouth. Slowly at first, measuring him, letting the tip bump against my palate. Then deeper, until I felt him touch my throat and had to breathe through my nose. I took my time. I looked at him while I did it. He held my hair with one hand, without squeezing, without forcing, and the difference from other times was so huge that I was grateful for it in silence.

I sucked his cock like I was hungry. Because I was hungry. I took it out of my mouth and ran my tongue over his balls, sucking them one by one, looking up to see his face. His lips were parted, his eyes half-closed, and his hands were clenched in my hair even though he still wasn't pulling.

—Fuck, Valeria —he whispered.

I took him into my mouth again. I started moving faster, sucking hard on the way up, letting a thread of saliva run down his cock to the hand I was holding him with. His breathing got shorter, more irregular, and the sensation of being the one controlling it rose in my chest like something warm and dense.

—Stop —he said after a while, his voice rough—. Come here. If you keep doing that I'm going to come.

—Come —I murmured with his cock against my lips—. Come in my mouth.

—After —he replied, gently tugging my hair upward—. Now I want to fuck you.

He lifted me up. He took the rest of my clothes off with that same calm of his, and I didn't close my eyes. I watched him watch me. I let him look. I had spent too long feeling invisible to waste that moment looking away.

—You're incredible —he said, and he said it without emphasis, as a fact, as something that didn't need elaboration—. You're going to be wrecked.

He laid me down on the sofa again and climbed over me. He put one leg over his shoulder, the other open toward the backrest, and ran the tip of his cock over my cunt, up and down, soaking himself in me, brushing my clit with every pass. I tried to push my hips toward him so he'd go in and he pulled away, smiling.

—Wait —he said.

—Put it in already —I begged.

—Wait.

He brushed against me again. And again. I was about to beg him when he finally pushed, and he opened me slowly, centimeter by centimeter, all the way in. I let out a sound I had to smother by stuffing my fist in my mouth, remembering Iván upstairs. Santiago noticed and smiled with that crooked smile of his, then lowered his head to my neck and stayed still inside me, letting me get used to his size.

—Fuck, you're so tight —he murmured against my ear.

He started moving. Slowly, too slowly, methodically and deliberately, making me dig my fingers into his back. Each full thrust, all the way in, then almost all the way out before going back in. His cock scraped my walls in a way that made me clench around it without meaning to, and he noticed, because every time I tightened around him he let out a low grunt against my neck.

—Not so slow —I whispered.

—You're not in a hurry —he replied.

He was right. I wasn't in a hurry. I had all night and the house to ourselves and the fire lit and this boy who didn't need to rush either. But I also had four months — four years — of built-up heat, and I wanted him to fuck me hard.

—Fuck me harder —I asked in his ear—. Fuck me however you want.

Something changed on his face. His smile became more serious, darker. He took my leg off his shoulder, turned me over on the sofa and put me on all fours on the cushions, with my hands braced on the backrest. He got behind me, grabbed my hips and shoved himself into me in one thrust, all the way in, and this time the sound that came out of my mouth I couldn't fully smother.

—Shhh —he told me, covering my mouth with one hand as he started fucking me hard from behind—. Your son is sleeping.

I thought about it for a second —Iván in his room, two floors up, suspecting nothing— and instead of frightening me, the thought tightened my cunt around his best friend's cock. Santiago noticed. He let out a low laugh.

—It turns you on —he murmured—. Turns you on that he's up there.

I didn't answer. I couldn't answer. He was fucking me hard, giving dry slaps against my ass with every thrust, and he had one hand over my mouth while the other gripped my hair, pulling just enough to arch my back.

—Answer me —he said.

He moved his hand from my mouth to my chin.

—Yes —I gasped—. It turns me on.

—Whore —he said, and he didn't say it with contempt, he said it like praise, and he pressed me harder against him.

He buried himself so deep it hurt and at the same time made my eyes squeeze shut with pleasure. He pulled out completely, ran the tip over my other hole, pressing it with the pad of his finger, and shoved back into my cunt in one clean stroke. I was biting the back of the sofa to keep from screaming.

—Lie down —he said suddenly.

He laid me on my back again. He slid into me once more, this time able to look at me, and I wound my legs around his waist so he wouldn't stop. He was fucking me while looking at me, and that was the part killing me most: that he didn't take his eyes off mine for a single moment, that he wanted to see my face while he made me come.

He dropped one hand between us and started rubbing my clit while he thrust. Fast circles, with his fingertips wet with me, never stopping inside.

—Come —he told me—. Come again for me.

And I came. I came so hard, squeezing around his cock, trembling, biting his shoulder so I wouldn't scream. It was a long orgasm, the kind that leaves your legs numb, and he kept fucking me slowly while I came down, drawing it out.

—One more —he said—. One more and I'm coming.

—I can't —I whispered.

—Yes, you can.

He sat me astride him, with him sitting on the sofa and me on top. I sank his cock all the way in on my own, without help, and started moving up and down, looking him in the face. He sucked my tits while I rode him, squeezed my ass with both hands, set the pace by pushing me against him.

—That's it —he whispered—. That's it, Valeria. Ride me properly.

I dug my nails into his shoulders. I went down deep, until I felt his balls against my ass, and came back up slowly. The third time I felt it coming without looking for it, like a wave rising from my cunt to my throat, and this time I let out a long moan that he swallowed by covering my mouth with his, kissing me while I came around his cock.

—Now me —he gasped when I pulled away—. Where…?

—In my mouth —I told him—. Come in my mouth.

I got off him and knelt down again on the rug. I took his cock into my mouth —shining with me from top to bottom— and started sucking it while he gripped the base with his hand and moved in my mouth.

—Fuck —he growled—. Fuck, fuck…

He came in two thrusts. He filled my mouth with hot, thick semen, and I didn't pull my head away. I kept his cock in my mouth while he shuddered, swallowing what spilled down my throat, letting him give me everything he had. When I finished swallowing I wiped my lips with the back of my hand and looked up at him. He was looking at me with that new expression, softer, almost astonished.

—Fuck —he said again. Just that.

—Good —I murmured.

—Good —he repeated.

***

Afterward we lay on the sofa, he looking at the ceiling, me looking at the embers. Neither of us said anything for a good while. Outside it had started to rain — one of those December downpours that arrive without warning — and the sound of water against the windows filled the silence in a way that wasn't uncomfortable. I could still feel his cum at the corner of my lips and mine running between my closed thighs, and it didn't bother me.

—Iván can't know about this —I said at last.

—Of course not —he replied, without emphasis, as if the obviousness of it didn't even need commenting on.

More silence. The fire almost out. The rain outside.

—Is something else going to happen? —I asked. I don't know why I asked it. I don't know what answer I wanted.

He turned to look at me. That crooked smile, a little mocking but not cruel. He slid his hand down my naked belly, slipped two fingers between my legs — still soaked, still from him — and moved them slowly inside me until I let out a low gasp.

—I always come by —he said.

***

Four months have passed. Santiago still comes to the house, still steals the controller from Iván, still eats whatever's in the fridge without asking. My husband came back on the twenty-seventh, just as he said, with a bottle of cava and a tired face. That same night I fucked Rubén thinking about Santiago's cock, and I came for the first time in months with him inside me. Friday dinners are still the same. My therapist asked me last month if there was anything new in my life and I told her no.

Every time Santiago comes to the house, sometime in the afternoon he finds me in the kitchen. Sometimes he just looks at me for one or two seconds longer than normal. Other times he puts his hand on my ass under the apron while I'm stirring something on the stove, slips his fingers into me with Iván ten meters away in the living room, and makes me come right there, biting my lip to keep from making noise, with the pan still in my hand.

It's enough.

I don't know whether what I've written here is guilt or gratitude. I don't know if I should regret it or if regret is just what I'm supposed to feel. What I do know is that on that Christmas Eve I was, for the first time in a very long time, exactly the person I wanted to be.

And that, even if I can't tell anyone, is mine forever.