My Ex-Player’s Girlfriend Recognized Me at the Bar

They say that lockdown changed us all, which I doubt, but what is true is that it left strange stories behind. Right before the world stopped, I was coaching an amateur futsal team. I was forty-one, and after spending half my life on the court as a player, I had taken over the bench with the idea of getting the club out of the regional divisions. The squad wasn’t anything special, but the boys put in the effort.

We went months without seeing one another’s faces. When we finally got back to playing, each of us had gotten through confinement in our own way. The one who surprised us most was Aníbal, my pivot, a thirty-six-year-old veteran with more experience than talent. He showed up at the first training session telling us he’d gotten himself a girlfriend online, a Bolivian girl six years younger than him.

For weeks he went on and on about his long-distance romance. The other guys laughed and made cruel jokes about how disappointed the poor girl was going to be when she met him in person. Aníbal took it all in stride and swore no one had ever complained about him. The favorite target of those comparisons was Bruno, a twenty-four-year-old kid whom nature had been especially generous with and who turned red every time they brought it up in the locker room.

At last, six months later, the girl landed in Spain to move in with him. Her name was Yanira, and Aníbal brought her to the first home match. She wasn’t at all ugly. She was a short woman with very dark skin, black hair down to the middle of her back, and a figure that drew the eye without even trying. Her Andean features gave her a different kind of beauty from the girls here. She stood right behind our bench and, a little lost, cheered on the team no matter what the score was. She always greeted me shyly and with a smile.

Before the season ended, Aníbal announced that Yanira was pregnant. The guys congratulated him and, of course, started the tasteless jokes about who the real father was. Bruno died of embarrassment every time they pointed at him. When the baby was born, Yanira stopped coming to the matches and the team’s life went on as usual.

***

Things went wrong a year later. Aníbal dumped Yanira for an older Venezuelan woman he’d met at a Latin club, and not long after that he hung up his boots. No one in the locker room missed him. I had completely forgotten all about it until one night chance crossed our paths again.

It was a Friday, one of those team dinners that end with rounds of drinks. After going from place to place, we ended up in a club that was packed to the rafters, with people of all ages and Latin music blasting at full volume. Well into the early hours, while I was waiting at the bar for my drink, I ran into her. I hadn’t seen her since that last match, before the pregnancy.

Yanira had recovered from the birth better than I remembered. She was a little thinner, her figure more defined, and she was dressed in a much more modern, more self-assured way than the shy girl from before. She was the one who came over.

“Hello, coach. Don’t you remember me?” she said, tilting her head.

“Hello, Yanira. Of course I remember you. How are you?”

I bought her a drink and we caught up. The alcohol made the conversation flow on its own, with laughter and confidences. I hadn’t felt like that with anyone in a long time. One thing led to another and we ended up dancing. And did she know how to move. With each chorus she came a little closer, until she finally turned her back to me, lifting her hair with both hands and rubbing her body against mine to the rhythm of the music.

I didn’t take long to react. I put my hands on her waist, pulled her toward me, and kissed her neck. She threw her head back, resting it on my shoulder, and let out a sigh that was lost in the music.

***

It couldn’t have ended anywhere else but at her place. I drove with Yanira nibbling at my neck to a reddish brick apartment block on the outskirts. We went up the stairs in the dark, kissing on every landing, all the way to the third floor. With a certain nervousness, she searched for her keys in her purse while I held her hips and whispered in her ear. Without turning on a single light, she led me to her bedroom and closed the door.

We undressed without stopping kissing. Yanira had an incredible body, with breasts that weren’t very big but were firm, with nipples so dark they almost looked black, hardened by arousal. In the dim light, her brown skin contrasted with the pale sheets. And in bed she turned into another woman: she let me take the lead, compliant, almost begging me to direct her.

I laid her on her back and got on top of her with my pants still on. I kissed her mouth and started moving slowly downward, tracing her neck, pausing at her breasts, licking and gently biting while she dug her fingers into the back of my neck. I kept going down until I settled between her legs. When I touched her with my tongue, she arched her back and clutched my hair.

“Like that, daddy, like that,” she panted. “Don’t stop.”

I didn’t stop. I took my time, attentive to every breath, to every time her thighs tightened around the sides of my face. I held her hips so she couldn’t get away and kept going until I felt her trembling, letting out a long moan that broke the silence of the apartment.

Then she sat up, pushed me against the headboard, and finished taking my clothes off. A nervous little laugh escaped her when she freed me. She looked me in the eyes, opened her mouth, and started pleasuring me with a surrender I hadn’t expected, never taking her eyes off me for a single second. I held out as long as I could, but I didn’t want to end it like that.

“Come here,” I said, gently pulling her arm.

I laid her down again and she spread her legs, offering herself in a way that stuck in my head. I put on a condom and drove into her in one thrust. She cried out when she felt me inside and dug her nails into my shoulders. With every movement of my hips she answered with a moan, whispering through clenched teeth how good I was treating her.

“Oh, you really know what you’re doing,” she panted into my ear.

I kept going without rest until she came, and she did it again shortly after, proving her body had plenty more than one climax in it. I held her tightly, leaving her breathless, until I finished too with a grunt that came from deep inside me. We stayed joined for a few seconds, catching our breath, kissing slowly.

***

We spent a good while caressing each other in the half-dark, unhurried, until little by little desire woke up again. My fingers toyed with her back, sliding lower and lower, and she, far from stopping me, took my hand, put my fingers in her mouth, and then guided them back.

“Feel like it?” she murmured, looking at me over her shoulder with a half smile.

I smiled at her. She turned around and got on all fours, offering herself shamelessly.

“You’re quite the man,” she said. “Do whatever you want with me.”

I knelt behind her and took things slowly, preparing her, attentive to every reaction. I pushed in gently and she cried out, but between gasps she begged me not to stop. I went in little by little, giving her time, until her broken breathing turned into something like pleasure. Then she started asking for more, letting out obscenities, daring me not to hold back.

“That’s it, give it all to me,” she panted.

I held her by the hips and sped up until I finished. Yanira let herself fall onto the bed, exhausted and satisfied, while I lay down beside her with my heart pounding.

***

I spent the night in her bed. The next morning I woke up with her pressed against my back and my desire still intact. I turned, kissed her neck, and caressed her breasts until she began sighing again. I whispered in her ear that I had to go home, but that I wanted a proper goodbye. She smiled, knelt in front of me, and let me finish the night exactly the way I wanted, without a single complaint, never stopping looking at me.

I got dressed in silence and left her tangled in the sheets so she could keep sleeping. I crossed the hallway toward the exit and froze when I passed by the living room. An older woman was sitting at the table, having breakfast in a robe. She was identical to Yanira, thirty years later.

I had no idea her mother lived with her. She had definitely heard us all night, every last sigh. Out of pure courtesy, and mortified, I said good morning. She answered softly, one hand over her face, I don’t know whether embarrassed by her daughter’s behavior or by having sat there listening without hiding. All I wanted was to disappear.

Suddenly she stood up, set her cup on the table, and headed toward one of the bedrooms at the back, where Yanira’s son was sleeping. Before closing the door, I heard her say, without turning around:

“I’m going to wake Mateo. This child is a very deep sleeper.”