I Walked All Night to See My Friend’s Father

I walked so many blocks that night I stopped counting. My head was racing a mile a minute, repeating like a scratched record: “He’s your best friend’s father, idiot. He’s Lucía’s father. What are you even expecting? That he’ll look at you the way you look at him? That he’ll forget the age difference and everything else just because you felt like it?” But my feet wouldn’t listen. They kept moving on their own through streets I didn’t even recognize, against all the warnings my mother had drilled into my head for years.

It rained on and off, a fine drizzle that never quite soaked me but made my dress cling to my thighs. My pantyhose had ripped at the ankles and the rubbing of my shoes had split the skin. Every step was a stab, like walking on glass. Even so, I didn’t stop. I needed to see him. I needed to look into his eyes one last time and confirm whether what I had felt that afternoon, in his living room, while he served me coffee and talked to me about nothing, had been real or just something I’d made up.

The street corners were full of figures whistling in code, voices calling out to me from dark doorways. I just quickened my pace and kept looking ahead. I had his face burned into my mind like a lighthouse in the middle of the night.

***

Mr. Mendoza’s condo was on the other side of the city. A white booth, two guards, and a barrier arm. When I planted myself in front of the gatehouse, the guard on duty looked at me as if I were a ghost.

“Which house are you going to, kid?” he asked.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Just stammers, loose syllables that didn’t form a thought. The man sighed and turned toward the phone. I took advantage of the fact that his back was turned to walk quickly away along the outer sidewalk until I disappeared behind some trees.

I walked along the perimeter until I found the darkest corner of the fence. There was a wooden panel leaning against the gate, the kind used for vines. It would do as a ladder. I started climbing awkwardly, my hands shaking, my legs heavy as if I were dragging them through mud. My dress snagged twice and I had to yank it until it gave. I got to the top half dead, gasping, and then I saw the security camera pointed right at my face.

A voice through a loudspeaker ordered me down. I closed my eyes and jumped.

***

The bush I landed in wasn’t a bush, it was a pile of thorns disguised as an ornamental plant. I fell badly, on my butt, sunk up to the waist in branches that snagged on my dress and my skin. The pain in my tailbone stole my breath. When I finally got out, my legs were streaming blood from a dozen little cuts.

I didn’t have time to check myself. I heard barking, lights coming on, shouting. I broke into a run. I jumped a flowerbed, dodged a dark pool, slammed my knee into a bench and kept going. I recognized Mr. Mendoza’s front facade by the geranium pots he tended himself on Sundays. I got to the door and hammered the bell like my life depended on it.

A huge hand grabbed my forearm. The tallest guard, the one with the thick eyebrows, had caught up to me and started dragging me back like an animal. I clung to the doorknob with both hands.

“I just want to see him! Please, let me see him!” I shouted, my voice breaking.

And then the door opened.

***

The warm light from the living room spilled out onto the porch. For a second I was flooded with hope, ready to cry from relief. But the one who’d opened it wasn’t him. It was a woman. Tall, hair tied up, lips painted a dark red. She wore a silk robe that showed the start of her cleavage and, lower down, the dark shadow of her nipples pushing against the fabric. She looked at me the way you look at a stray dog that dirties the rug.

The knife sank into my chest without warning.

I looked at the house number, the doormat, the geranium pots, everything, wanting it to be a mistake. It wasn’t. It was his house. And that woman was in there, at three in the morning, dressed like that, with the look of someone who’d just been taken off a cock.

I stopped fighting. The guard pried me off the doorknob and dragged me to the condo entrance, where the flashing lights of a patrol car were already blinking. I walked with my hands behind my back, barefoot, while the neighbors came out in pajamas to judge me with their eyes.

They put me in the cruiser. And through the fogged-up glass I saw him. Mr. Mendoza, in pajama pants and a T-shirt, forcing his way through the crowd to reach the officer. He was talking fast, gesturing with his hands. I couldn’t hear him. I could only see him waving his arms, pointing at the patrol car, clutching his head.

The officer opened the door and jabbed a finger in my face.

“Do you know this man, kid?”

I nodded.

“Were you coming to see his daughter?”

I nodded again, even though it was a lie.

“Do you know what time it is? Do you know the scene you caused?”

I lowered my eyes. They were full of tears but I had no strength left to cry.

“Get out. He’s taking responsibility. Leave before I change my mind.”

***

Mr. Mendoza grabbed me by the nape of the neck like a bad dog and took me into his house without saying a word. His green eyes threw daggers at any neighbor who dared comment as we passed.

When we got inside, the woman with the cleavage was waiting with her arms crossed.

“Who is this girl?” she whispered, barely hiding her rage.

“She’s Lucía’s friend.”

“Your daughter’s? And what is she doing here at this hour, alone, like this?”

“Renata, let me handle this. Please.”

“Handle it? Look at her! She’s filthy, covered in blood, I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Call her parents and have them take her.”

“Things at her house are complicated. I can’t send her back like this.”

“Tonight was the night. After three months, tonight was supposed to be the night. Three months of holding myself back from having you fuck me, and you’re cutting me off for this brat?”

“I know. I swear I’ll make it up to you. Next week, wherever you want. I’ll fuck you to the hilt, if you want two days straight. But I can’t now. It’s like she’s my daughter.”

“Then you should’ve let the police take her. But of course, she’s the priority. Not me, not my cunt, not what we were talking about.”

She passed by me with a look of disgust that scraped away the little I had left inside. She grabbed her purse, opened the door, and slammed it shut hard enough to shake the framed pictures.

Mr. Mendoza stood in the middle of the living room, looking at me. I couldn’t lift my face. My torn stockings were sticking to the cuts, and to make things worse I realized that at some point in the panic I’d peed myself a little. I was wet, and I didn’t know how much was piss and how much was something else, because ever since he’d closed the door with his hand on the back of my neck my panties had been soaked through. If someone had told me two hours earlier, I would’ve wanted to die; now I just added it to the list.

“I’ll take you to the hospital and then home,” he said.

I didn’t move. I didn’t even look up. I heard him mutter a curse and leave the living room. He came back with a first-aid kit and sat across from me at the coffee table.

“Take off your stockings.”

I obeyed with clumsy fingers, trying not to lift my dress any higher than necessary. He put on a pair of gloves, opened a bottle of antiseptic, and took hold of my right leg. He lifted it, turned it this way and that, without looking me in the face. His brow was furrowed.

“Lie back.”

I did. The sofa smelled like his cologne. I focused on that so I wouldn’t tremble.

He started with the lower wounds, the ones on my calves. Cleaning, drying, gauze. I clutched my skirt between my thighs to preserve what little dignity I had left. Every time he swiped the wound with alcohol, I bit my lip to keep from moaning at the burn. And to keep from moaning at something else, because the burning mixed with the tingling that rose up the inside of my thigh every time his thumb brushed clean skin.

“Are you going to tell me what got into your head?” he asked without looking at me.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. I had no answer that wasn’t the truth, and the truth I couldn’t say. Not yet.

“Turn over.”

I rolled over. I ended up face down, cheek against the velvet sofa, and felt the heat of his hand moving slowly up my calf, then my thigh, stopping just before the edge of the dress. My voice had gone off to some corner of my throat and wouldn’t come out. A gasp escaped me that I tried to disguise as a sigh. I don’t know if he noticed. I know his hand stayed one second longer than strictly medical there, high on my thigh, fingers splayed, almost brushing the crease of my ass.

“Do you have more up there?”

“No… I’m not sure,” I lied. I had a sharp, stinging burn on my right butt cheek; I knew exactly where.

“Feel for it and tell me.”

I reached back, pretended to palpate, kept silent.

“No… I don’t know…”

“Let me check.”

He lifted my dress without asking. The window breeze raised gooseflesh over my legs, my waist, my ass. I was left with my white panties on display, plain underwear that any other day would’ve seemed ridiculous and that now, soaked in front, clung to my cunt and outlined every fold. I closed my eyes and bit my forearm, praying he wouldn’t look. Praying he would.

“Yes, baby. You’ve got one here.”

I felt the cold cotton on the burned skin, then the soft pressure of his thumb as he cleaned around it. To get a better angle, he pulled the fabric of my panties a little toward the center. Barely an inch. But that inch stole my breath, because the edge of the panties slid between my cheeks and stayed there, cutting the line.

“You’ve got a bruise on your lower back. A bad one. But what were you thinking, girl?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I felt the brush of his gloved hand and my whole body answered in ways it shouldn’t. My nipples had gone rock hard against the sofa, enough to hurt. Between my legs was worse: every time he moved his thumb over my ass cheek, I pressed my thighs together and felt my clit throb against the seam of my wet panties. I hated myself for it. And at the same time I didn’t want him to stop.

“And what did you drink? Tell me the truth.”

“One of my mom’s liqueurs.”

“Jesus. Why would you do something like that?”

“I was sad.”

“Sad about what? Sad enough to cross the city at night, drunk, and nearly kill yourself jumping a fence? Look at me. Do you know what kind of trouble you could get me into? Do you know what kind of trouble you could get yourself into?”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was an idiot.”

He helped me sit up. Lowered my dress, covered my legs with a fleece blanket folded over the back of the sofa. He took off his gloves, tossed them in a little bag, and sat beside me, hands on his knees. He looked at me from the side, waiting.

“What was so urgent, girl? Why did you have to see me?”

My heart was pounding in my temples. A voice inside me was shouting: “Say it already, say it, you’re not going to get another chance.” The other voice was begging me to stay quiet. I took a breath.

“I… have feelings for you, Mr. Mendoza.”

Silence stretched for centuries. I didn’t dare open my eyes. I felt him shift on the sofa, lean his elbows on his knees, drag both hands over his face.

“Feelings… in what sense?”

I looked at him. My eyes burned.

“In the sense that you look at someone you like. In the sense that I touch myself thinking about you.”

“Baby, no. Your head is playing tricks on you. You’re confused.”

“I’m not confused. I finger myself thinking about your mouth. Every night. Does that sound like confusion to you?”

The air burst out of him like he’d taken a punch to the stomach. I was surprised myself that I’d said it, but there was no going back now.

“Look at me. It’s not possible. You know that. You’re Lucía’s friend. I’ve known you for years. I watched you grow up, for God’s sake.”

“I know all that. I know every single reason. I repeat them in my head every night. They don’t matter to me.”

He let out a long sigh. He rested one hand over mine, on my knee, like a father trying to comfort a daughter who’d failed an exam. But the hand wasn’t a father’s. It was warm, heavy, and his fingers spread a little too much, the pad of his thumb brushing the inside of my thigh under the blanket.

“There are plenty of guys out there who are your age. You just have to be patient.”

I started crying. Not the controlled crying of a girl trying to be strong: the crying that comes from inside and breaks everything. He put his hand on the back of my neck and pulled me against his chest. He smelled like soap and something I couldn’t name, something masculine, thick and salty, that made me clench my thighs. I wrapped my arms around him with what broken pieces of myself I had left and, without meaning to, my hip pressed against his. I felt the bulge. It was hard. Against the pajama pants, his cock pressed thick and tilted, and I felt it pulse once, twice, against my hip.

“Calm down, it’s okay.”

But his voice was breaking too.

“I’m an old guy, worn out already. You’re just starting out. You deserve someone fresh, not this.”

I wanted to scream at him that I didn’t care about the age, that I also didn’t care what people would say, that I didn’t want some fresh young guy, I wanted him, I wanted that cock I could feel pressing against me. But the words wouldn’t come. I let myself be laid back against him, over his arm, while one of his hands caressed my lower back with that warm pressure only big men have, going lower each time, until it reached the base of my ass.

“I love you, Mr. Mendoza.”

“Oh, my little one. Don’t make this harder. You’re suffering over something impossible.”

I cried harder. He held me tighter.

“Please, girl, you’re going to make me cry too.”

“Tell me I’m not crazy. Tell me you felt something. Even a little bit. I’m begging you.”

“Baby…”

“Tell me you didn’t open the door just out of pity. Tell me you wouldn’t do that for just anybody. Please. I can’t take the doubt anymore.”

He sighed again, deeply. And then, in a voice that had nothing paternal about it, he let four words fall out.

“You’re not wrong, baby.”

Air rushed back into my lungs all at once.

“Yes, I feel things for you too. But it’s impossible. I swear to you it’s impossible.”

I hugged him with all the strength I had left. It was the only answer that mattered to me that night. Later we could talk about impossibilities, ages, my best friend, whatever. That night I only needed one thing, and I had heard it.

I stroked his cheek with my thumb. I brushed the corner of his mouth. He was looking at me with shining eyes, never looking away. And I, emboldened by the confession, slid my hand down his chest, over his stomach, and rested it on the bulge still pushing against his pants. His cock twitched under my palm.

“Baby, no…”

“Shhh.”

I squeezed gently. I felt it grow a little more, hardening against the fabric. He grabbed my wrist, not to pull my hand away, but to hold it there, as if he were struggling to decide. He closed his eyes. A low, rough, throaty groan escaped him.

“It’s impossible, my little one. It’s impossible,” he repeated, voice broken.

“Then let me have you once. Just once. And after that I’ll go and never bother you again.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes, I do.”

I slid my hand inside his pants. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath. My palm filled with hot skin, with a thick, heavy cock, the head damp with a bead of fluid that had leaked out. I stopped breathing. I’d never touched one like that, so thick, so much a grown man’s. I wrapped my whole hand around it and realized I couldn’t even close my fingers.

“Oh, baby,” he murmured, and leaned his head back against the sofa.

I started stroking him slowly, feeling the skin shift over the hardness. On every downward pass, the head swelled more against my palm. I leaned toward his ear.

“Teach me. I know almost nothing. Teach me.”

That was the point where he broke. I felt him give in. He grabbed me by the nape with the same hand that had dragged me off the police door handle before and crushed my mouth to his. It wasn’t a daddy kiss. It was a kiss with tongue inside, with his teeth brushing my lip, with hot breath pressed against my face. I opened my mouth as wide as I could and let him in.

With his other hand he shoved the blanket off me and onto the floor. He slid his fingers under my dress, straight between my legs, no hesitation. He found my soaked panties and a groan escaped him against my mouth.

“You’re dripping, girl. All wet. All this for me?”

“Yes. All for you.”

He pulled the fabric aside. The pad of one finger slipped between my lips and found my clit. I jumped on the sofa. No one had ever touched me there with a finger that wasn’t mine, and certainly not with that firmness. He started drawing slow, tight circles, watching my face to read what he was doing to me.

“Look how your mouth changes when I touch you here.”

“Mr. Mendoza…”

“Tell me your name when you’re like this. Tell me your name.”

I told him, panting. He repeated it against my ear while his middle finger slid inside me slowly, all the way, and came back out shining.

“Look at you. So tight. You’re going to kill me.”

He added two fingers. He opened me up. He started pumping in a rhythm that pulled the first real moans out of me, the ones that come from the throat without permission. My hand was still inside his pants, stroking his cock to the rhythm he was setting inside me. Every time he drove his fingers in, I clenched my hand around his shaft. We were in sync without ever having talked about it.

“Take off my pajamas. Pull them down.”

I tugged at his waistband. He lifted his hips and the pants dropped to his knees. That was when I saw it for the first time, all of it, up close. Long, thick, with swollen veins running up the side, the glans shiny, almost purple. I stayed there for a few seconds with my mouth open, staring.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s bigger than I thought.”

He smiled for the first time, half to the side. He took my hand and put it back there, this time with no clothes between us, and showed me how to hold it, how to close my fist, how to squeeze on the way down and loosen on the way up. I obeyed as if my life depended on learning. I made a bigger bead of fluid appear at the tip and, without thinking too much, moved by something that had been writing itself in my head for months, I bent down and licked it.

“Fuck me, baby.”

He took my head in both hands, not pushing, just resting them there. I ran my tongue all over the head in circles, feeling the taste stick to me. Then I opened my mouth and took as much of him as I could. It didn’t fit all the way, not even close. It hit halfway and already touched the back of my throat, making me gag. I came back up, breathed, went down again. I sucked him while looking him in the face.

“Like that, like that, my girl. Tongue underneath. That’s it. Look at me while you suck it. Look at me.”

I looked at him. His green eyes had gone so dark they seemed black. One hand gently guided my head, the other used his thumb at the corner of my mouth to open me wider. Saliva started dripping down his chin, down his balls. I had him all slobbered up, cheekbones hollowed out, sucking like I’d done nothing else in my life.

“Enough. Enough or I’m going to come in your mouth and I don’t want to, not yet.”

He lifted me by the arms. Set me astride him on the sofa. He yanked my dress up over my head. I was left with my panties pulled to one side and my white bra still on, which he unhooked with one hard tug and threw on the floor. He looked at my tits, small, with the nipples standing up, and lowered his mouth straight to them.

“You’re so beautiful, baby. So beautiful.”

He sucked one nipple while his hand squeezed the other breast. Then he switched. He nibbled them gently, tugged them with his teeth, ran his tongue flat over them and then suddenly blew on them. I rubbed myself against his cock, seated on top of him, wetting it with my cunt wide open. The head of his dick sat right against my entrance, sliding up and down over my clit. Every brush pulled a sharper moan out of me.

“Put it in me. Please, sir. Put it in me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Yes. I’m begging you.”

“Has someone put it in you before?”

“One. Just one. And not like you.”

He grabbed my hips. Lifted me a few inches. With his other hand he settled his cock against my opening. I felt the head pushing, thick, opening me. I lowered myself slowly. I felt it enter. A third. Half. I dug my nails into his shoulders and gave a muffled cry.

“Wait, wait. Easy. Don’t force it.”

“It’s just… it won’t go in…”

“Yes, it will. Relax. Breathe. That’s it. Now lower yourself a little more.”

I sank down little by little. With every inch I felt it inside me, thick, hot, moving on its own. When I had him all the way in, when I sat down to the hilt with my ass against his thighs, I went still, trembling, mouth open.

“Look at you. All the way inside. Good girl. Good girl.”

He took my waist and started lifting me up and down on him, setting the rhythm. I let him control me. At first slowly, almost tenderly. Then he started speeding up. On every drop his cock hit a place deep inside me I hadn’t known I had, and it drew out a low, unfamiliar moan.

“Like this, like this I’m fucking you. Look at your body go.”

He was sucking my tits while I rode him. I braced myself on the back of the sofa, over his shoulders, and let myself fall, learning to move on my own. At some point I let go of my hands on his waist and started riding him myself, holding the sofa back, moving my ass in circles, forward and back, searching for the angle. I found one that made my teeth grind.

“Oh. Oh. There. There.”

“There, baby? That’s where it hits you?”

“Yes. There. Don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

He grabbed my ass with both hands and started moving me himself, along that same diagonal, squeezing my cheeks, spreading them apart. I felt the cool air on the other hole and realized he had me all open, exposed, and I didn’t care. On the contrary.

“I’m going to come. I’m going to come, sir.”

“Yes, baby. Come. Come on my cock. All my little cunt.”

It was like someone had yanked a plug out of me. My legs locked, my back, even my jaw. I felt the orgasm rise from inside, from a deep place that wasn’t the clit, and explode through me. I clenched around him with all the strength of my cunt and screamed against his neck, biting his shoulder so I wouldn’t wake up half the block. He held me tight, let me shake on top of him, whispering “that’s it, that’s it” in my ear while I kept pulsing around him.

When I went limp, still full of him, still with his cock inside me, he lifted me off the sofa without pulling out. I felt it moving inside me with every step. He threw me onto the rug on my back. He settled between my legs, opened my thighs with his forearms, and shoved it back in with one thrust.

“Now I’m fucking you, baby. Hang on.”

He started pounding. Hard. For real. Every slam of his hips made me scoot up the rug, and he had to grab my shoulders to keep me from sliding away from him. My mouth was open, voiceless, tongue out, staring at the ceiling and feeling that cock going in and out with a wet, loud, obscene sound that filled the whole living room.

“Look at me. Don’t close your eyes. Look at me while I fuck you.”

I looked at him. His face was wrecked, shining with sweat, his eyes locked on mine.

“Tell me who you’re giving your cunt to.”

“To you, Mr. Mendoza. To you.”

“Again.”

“To you. All yours. All yours.”

He shoved three fingers into my mouth and I sucked them like they were another cock. He pulled them out slick with spit and brought them down to my clit, pressing in circles while he kept fucking me without stopping. I came again, shorter, sharper, arching into his hand.

“Come on, baby. One more. Another one for me.”

He rolled me over. Put me face down, cheek against the rug, ass in the air. He settled behind me and drove his cock in again, this time all at once, without waiting. In that position he hit me differently, even deeper, and with every thrust I felt his balls slap against my clit. He took my hair, pulling my head back a little.

“That’s it, bitch. That’s how I should’ve fucked you.”

His other hand gripped my waist hard, leaving his fingerprints there. His hips were pounding against my ass with a wet clapping sound. I felt the orgasm start to build again, this time from farther away, in the soles of my feet, rising up.

“I’m going to come, baby. Not inside. I’m pulling out.”

“Inside. Inside. I’m on the pill.”

“You sure?”

“Sure. Fuck me all the way inside. Finish inside me, please.”

He went wild. He sped up. He drove both hands into my hips and started pounding me with all his strength, to the bone, so hard the coffee table started moving. I heard his breathing turn rough, broken, those big-man growls on the verge of blowing.

“I’m coming. I’m coming, baby. I’m coming.”

He sank all the way in and stayed still. I felt his cock throbbing inside me three, four times, and then the hot flood filling me completely, shooting me up high, forcing my own release out. It was so much that it started dripping out the inside of my thigh before he was even done. With his cum still inside me, mine hit again, clamping around his cock in spasms, milking it.

He stayed sprawled on top of me, panting into my neck, without pulling out. I could feel his heart beating against my back. He kissed the nape of my neck, wet and long. Then another on my shoulder. Another on my cheek.

When he finally pulled out, carefully, I felt the semen start to spill out of me, warm, thick, unstoppable. I stayed there, face down on the rug, legs open, leaking him, with no strength to move.

He turned me over slowly. Settled my head on his arm. Pushed my wet hair away from my face. He looked at me with shining green eyes, never looking away.

“It’s impossible, my little one. It’s impossible,” he repeated, voice broken.

I smiled for the first time all night.

For the first time in a long while, I had a reason to be happy, even if it was an impossible one.