My Confession: We Lost at Strip Poker and Won Everything

It had been four months since I’d split up with Damián when Julieta talked me into going out. “You need some fresh air,” she told me on the phone. “I know two guys who are dying of boredom in a club downtown and have no intention of going home alone.” I laughed. I wasn’t in the mood for anything, much less pretending to be interested in two strangers. But in the end I said yes, because it had been six months since my life fit inside a forty-square-meter apartment and I was starting to talk to the plants.

They picked me up at eleven. When I stepped out onto the sidewalk, I saw a freshly waxed red pickup truck and, sitting in the passenger seat, a guy in a white silk shirt that lit up his face as if he had a spotlight of his own. Driving was another one, taller, with an easy laugh. Later I found out they were officers in a special unit. That night, once there was no turning back.

“Get in, Camila,” the one behind the wheel said, opening the back door for me. “Tonight we’re going to remember.”

His name was Sebastián. The one in the white shirt was Mateo. Sebastián was right, though not for the reasons he imagined.

***

Julieta was waiting for us on a corner downtown. She was wearing a burgundy dress that was way too short on her and red hair that looked painted with fire. When she got in the car, the perfume knocked all four of us flat.

“Where are you taking us, officers?” she asked, biting back a smile.

“Somewhere there’s no line for us,” Mateo replied.

And that’s how it was. Sebastián showed something—badged, I suppose—and the bouncer let us through as if we were honored guests. Inside, the music thudded in our chests. We ordered four strong drinks and took refuge at a high table near the dance floor.

Mateo watched me with an intensity that was both uncomfortable and flattering. He wasn’t magazine handsome; he was street handsome, the kind who doesn’t need to pose. Sebastián, on the other hand, was all charm: a hand on Julieta’s waist before her second drink, a permanent smile, and the scent of expensive cologne getting everywhere.

“How long has it been since you’ve really had fun?” Mateo asked me, leaning in so I could hear him over the music.

“Too long,” I said.

And I held his gaze longer than I should have.

What happened after that had to do with that. With that look.

***

By two in the morning I was dancing with Mateo in the middle of the floor, laughing at how he was trying to keep up with a cumbia rhythm like a cop obsessed with order. Julieta was kissing Sebastián against the bar, not trying to hide anything. I could have gone on like that all night. But then Damián showed up.

My ex knew I was going to be there. I found out later: one of my cousins had a big mouth. He came up to the table with beer stains on his shirt and bloodshot eyes. He insulted Julieta first. Then he grabbed my arm. Sebastián stepped in with two strides, assessed the situation with the kind of coldness only the job teaches you, and spoke in a voice so low it was scarier than any shout.

“Take your hand off her and go.”

Damián pulled out a switchblade.

What happened after that lasted four seconds. Mateo, who had been with me on the dance floor, appeared behind my ex, seized his arm, and twisted it behind his back with a technique I’d seen in movies and never in real life. The knife hit the floor with a metallic clatter. Then the bouncers arrived. Damián was escorted out, babbling threats that got swallowed by the music. The club crowd applauded like it was theater.

I didn’t applaud. I was shaking. But not from fear.

“You okay?” Mateo asked me, his hand still on my waist.

“Better than I’ve been in six months.”

I held his gaze again. And this time it was different.

***

At three we left the club. Julieta and I climbed into the pickup without thinking too much about it. Sebastián was driving with one hand and using the other to caress my friend’s thigh. Mateo, in the back seat with me, didn’t touch me. He waited. And that waiting, that exacting self-restraint, did more to me than any hasty hand ever could.

“My place is close,” Mateo said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “I can offer another round. If you don’t want to stay, I’ll take you home after.”

Julieta and I looked at each other. We didn’t say anything. There was no need.

I know what you’re thinking, and I am too, that look said.

***

Mateo’s apartment was a temple. I mean it. Every book had its assigned millimeter on the shelf. The rug had been vacuumed so carefully it looked drawn on. The white shirt he was wearing had probably been ironed with a ruler. When we walked in, I thought: this guy is not going to survive anything that’s about to happen in here.

Sebastián spotted a box of cards on the coffee table and lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Strip poker,” he said, throwing the deck between us. “Whoever loses takes something off.”

I laughed. Julieta looked at me, eyebrow arched, the one she wears when she’s about to do something insane and wants me to give her permission.

“Fine,” she said. “But if you two lose, you both run naked to the avenue and back.”

Mateo’s eyes widened. Sebastián let out a laugh that bounced off the perfectly aligned frames on the walls.

“Deal,” he said.

They clinked their glasses together. I finished mine in one swallow.

***

Julieta lost the first hand. She took off her shoes with deliberate slowness, keeping her eyes on Sebastián’s. Sebastián lost the second. He took off his T-shirt and revealed a torso worked to the last detail. I lost the third: I slipped off my black leather pants slowly, seated on the sofa, while Mateo bit his lower lip and tried not to look at me and looked anyway.

By the fifth hand, Mateo was down to his boxer shorts. Sebastián too. Julieta and I were in our underwear. The apartment’s heating had never managed to make it feel so cold and so hot at the same time. My nipples were hard against my red bra and it wasn’t because of the air conditioning.

“Last hand,” Sebastián announced, shuffling with those long fingers that had already started to tremble. “Whoever loses ends up with nothing. Nothing at all.”

Julieta grabbed my arm and dragged me out to the balcony under the excuse of smoking.

***

It was cold outside. The wind raised goosebumps on my skin where Mateo still hadn’t put his hands.

“What are you thinking?” Julieta asked, hugging herself against me.

“That no one’s touched me in six months.”

“Three for me.”

“And you like the idea.”

“Don’t you?”

I didn’t answer. There was no need. My friend has known me since I was fifteen, knew me before Damián existed, and can read the things I don’t dare say.

“If we lose,” she said, “we lose together. Okay?”

“Together.”

We went back into the living room. We dealt. And we lost.

***

What happened after that I’m not going to tell like it was a movie. It wasn’t a movie. It was real. Mateo led me to the sofa with the same calm with which he’d taken Damián apart. He kissed me slowly, with a hard mouth and warm breath, and made me part my lips little by little, as if he wanted to learn me. His tongue found mine without hurry, sinking in and pulling out, and I felt the wetness gathering between my legs before he took my clothes off completely. He pulled my bra down with his fingers, just enough to free my breasts, hot and heavy, and then he leaned in and sucked one nipple, then the other, with a filthy patience that made my back arch against the leather. When I came from that first friction, I still had my pants on.

Julieta was moaning three meters away from me. Sebastián had her against the arm of the sofa, with her dress bunched up to her waist, holding her red hair with one hand and her hip with the other. He was sliding his fingers between her legs, slow at first and then deeper, soaking her while she fumbled at his pants with clumsy hands. When I opened my eyes for a second, I found her smiling at me. That conspiratorial smile we’ve had since we were teenagers. A smile that said: “You too?”

I laughed. Inside me, with Mateo still moving between my thighs, I laughed. He asked me why. I didn’t answer.

“Take this off,” I finally said, tugging at his white shirt.

“Tell me how you want me to touch you,” he replied, his voice broken.

“With desire. And without asking permission for every little thing.”

That was enough for him. He undid my clothes with just the right haste, left me naked from the waist down, and then spread my legs with a firm hand on my knee. I felt the head of his cock brush against me, hard and hot, before he drove into me in one thrust. He entered slowly at first, filling me with that thick pressure that made me dig my nails into his back. Then he really started moving, slamming into me with a dry rhythm that made the sofa creak every time he pushed deeper. I asked for more without speaking, lifting my hips, wanting him to shove it all the way in. He understood.

Mateo flipped me over on the sofa and set me on all fours, one hand on my waist and the other holding me by the nape of my neck. From there he fucked me harder, deeper, driving his cock in and out with an obscene sound of wet skin. My face was buried in the leather, my breasts hanging, my ass open for him, and every thrust tore a groan out of my throat without any filter. He grabbed my hair, lifted my head, and whispered in my ear while he kept pounding into me.

“That’s it, Camila. That’s how I want you. Wrecked with pleasure.”

In the window’s reflection I saw Julieta on her knees between Sebastián’s legs, biting his cock with hunger, her mouth full of saliva. He held her head, thrusting in and out of her mouth, and the sound of their gasps mixed with Mateo’s flesh striking my ass. Julieta looked up, winked at me, and that was when everything finally tipped into chaos.

I turned and pulled Mateo toward me to kiss him furiously. I wanted to feel his tongue, his beard, the salty taste of his skin. He yanked me up in one pull, set me back on the edge of the sofa, and spread my legs wider. Then he knelt between them and ate my cunt with his whole mouth, without delicacy, licking from clit to entrance, sucking, sliding two fingers inside me and making me grab his short hair and press his head against me. I came once, hard, shaking from the waist down, but he didn’t let me rest. He kept going. He licked me again while he filled me with his fingers, until he made me come again, longer, my legs pulling at his shoulders.

At some point everything blurred together. I don’t really remember how. I know we ended up all four on the leather sofa, the two of us embracing, them behind us. That Julieta and I kissed without thinking, mouths open, with tongue and teeth, because it was the only thing missing to understand that this night would make no sense. That at some point Mateo grabbed me by the waist, turned me around, and when I lifted my face, Sebastián’s eyes were locked on mine while he kept fucking Julieta from behind, driving his cock into her in one hard shove, holding her hips to set the rhythm. Julieta grabbed my thigh and asked me not to stop, and I answered by slipping my fingers into her mouth to hear her moan louder.

There was a moment, I don’t know in what order, when I came. And then another. And then I stopped keeping count. Mateo didn’t let up until he left me trembling, my back slick with sweat and my throat dry from moaning so much. Sebastián was still going too, thrusting hard and making a beastly sound with every stroke. The two of them looked like they’d never been tired a day in their lives. Neither had we.

When we were done, Mateo’s living room wasn’t the same. The cards were scattered like autumn leaves. One glass had tipped over onto the pale rug and no one had picked it up. Clothes were everywhere, even in improbable places: one of my socks was hanging off the back of a dining chair. Mateo looked at the mess with resignation. Then he looked at me, hair messed up and face still red.

“Worth it,” he said with a shrug.

***

We all showered together, shamelessly, with no urgency left. Just hot water, soap, and a few silly laughs. Mateo soaped up my back and then slid his hands down my waist, gliding over my stomach, over my thighs, without hurry. Julieta was washing her red hair and Sebastián kept directing the water over her with his hands, slipping them between her legs from time to time to make her laugh and moan at once. When I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, I found Julieta drying her red hair in the hallway, with a smile I hadn’t seen on her since before she married an idiot she then took five years to leave.

“You look different,” I told her.

“So do you.”

Sebastián drove us both home in the pickup. I was in the front seat. Julieta in the back, almost asleep against the window. When I got out at the door of my building, Sebastián kissed me on the cheek.

“Anything you need, you know where to find me.”

I didn’t answer. I went up to my apartment feeling something I hadn’t felt in years: that the night had been mine. That I had chosen it. That I hadn’t needed to ask anyone’s permission, not even the version of myself who had walked out of her marriage convinced she had nothing left to feel.

***

Three months passed. Mateo wrote me once, two weeks later. I replied with an emoji and never heard from him again. Sebastián went out with Julieta a couple of times and then they disappeared too, because that kind of guy has an expiration date even in my friend’s contacts, and she’s an expert in fleeting things.

I don’t care. That wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered was that conspiratorial look from my best friend across the immaculate sofa of an obsessive officer who was in love with order. That night when the two of us lost at poker and, all the same, we both won something neither of us knew we were looking for.

Sometimes I think about Damián. About how he found out later, through some gossip from my cousin, that I’d gone out with a cop that night. He called me drunk at three in the morning, shouting that I was a slut. I hung up on him. Poured myself a glass of water. Went back to bed.

Some confessions I keep for my friends. This one, no. This one I leave written here, because it was the first time in many years that losing a hand of cards was exactly what I needed to remember who I am.