The Afternoon I Stopped Seeing Catalina as a Friend

Catalina was my brother’s woman before she was my best friend, and my best friend before she was something else. I’m telling it like that, in that order, because that’s exactly what happened. First I knew her as Mateo’s girlfriend, then as his wife, and when they split up, she stayed with me. Or I stayed with her. Sometimes I don’t know how to say it.

We’re both twenty-nine. We’re only months apart. And for almost ten years we’ve talked every day, even when we don’t see each other. We tell each other things we don’t tell anyone else: our fears, the fights with our families, the men we liked and the ones who hurt us. I love Mateo, but I loved Catalina more, and I never felt guilty about that.

We were always very physical. We hugged when we said hello, slept in the same bed when we stayed over at each other’s places, changed clothes in front of each other without thinking twice. Once, on a trip to the coast, we shared a bathroom and she lent me her cream because I had sunburned shoulders. She rubbed it over my back with a calm that now, when I think about it, wasn’t as innocent as it seemed at the time. Or maybe it was, and I was the one who changed.

I never looked at her with desire. I want to be clear about that. I never thought of her that way. I like men, I’ve always liked men, and I’ve always liked a good hard cock between my legs. That didn’t change even after that afternoon. But Catalina is Catalina, and what happened happened.

***

It was a Tuesday at siesta time. I had bought two dresses in a shop downtown and still wasn’t sure which one to return. I sent her photos by message and she said no, both were pretty, that she should come over after the gym and try them on too. We have the same body. The same height, similar waist, both of us have been lifting weights for years. When one of us buys something, the other ends up trying it on.

She arrived around five. She came up to my room with the gym bag still hanging from her shoulder, hair tied back, face bare of makeup. She smelled like that deodorant she always uses, one with coconut and wood that I can identify as hers even if I can’t see her. She tossed the bag onto my bed and kissed me on the cheek, quick, absentminded.

—Let’s see them —she said.

I handed her the two dresses. One was black, tight, short. The other was dark green, with a low back. She took off her gym shirt and yoga pants with her usual ease, without turning around. She was left in a thong and bra, both black, in a fine lace I’d never seen before. And for the first time in ten years I stopped to look at her.

I don’t know what happened to me. It wasn’t a decision. It was like when you step wrong and realize it too late, when you’re already in the air. I saw the curve of her waist, the lace against her skin, the line of her spine defined by exercise. And the ass. That round, high ass, built by squats, split in two by the string of a black thong that looked made for it. The bra pressed her tits upward and outlined her hard nipples through the lace.

I felt something I had never felt before, a concrete heat between my legs, a pulse in my cunt I hadn’t expected. My thong got wet all at once, without warning, as if my body had understood before my head did. I swallowed and looked away toward the mirror. But she was in the mirror too, and from that angle I could see her whole ass.

—Try the green one first —I said, and my voice came out rougher than I wanted.

She lifted her arms and pulled it over her head. The dress fell to her thighs and left her whole back bare. She adjusted the neckline, looked at herself from the side, made a face with her mouth.

—Can you help me with the zipper? —she asked.

I went up behind her. I took the zipper between two fingers and started pulling it up slowly. When I reached the middle of her back, my knuckles brushed her skin. She didn’t move, but something in her breathing changed. I noticed because I stopped breathing too.

***

I don’t know what made my hands stay there. It wasn’t entirely me. I let go of the zipper and put both hands on her waist, over the fabric of the dress. Then I moved them a little forward, to the edge of her hips. Then I went up, slowly, until I cupped her tits over the dress. I felt her nipples hard against my palms, squeezed gently, and she let out her breath through her teeth.

Catalina didn’t say anything. She didn’t laugh, didn’t move away, didn’t ask me what I was doing. She only rested the back of her neck against my shoulder and closed her eyes. I felt her hair, still damp from the bath, against my neck. I felt her breathing speeding up, contradicting that complete stillness of the rest of her body. I bit her shoulder, just a little, and she pressed back against me, her back against my tits, her ass against my lower belly.

—What are you doing? —she asked at last, without opening her eyes.

—I don’t know —I said.

And it was true. I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to stop either. I slid one hand down her stomach, over the dress, until I pressed between her legs. I felt the heat through the fabric. She opened her legs a little, without thinking, and let out a low, rough moan that made me clamp my thighs together.

She turned around in my arms. We were inches apart, my heart pounding against my chest as if it were the first time for something, and I suppose it was. Catalina looked at me with a question in her eyes and I didn’t know how to answer with words. I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, touched the side of her face, and kissed her.

It was different from any kiss I’d given before. Softer. Slower. There was no beard, no weight, no urgency. It was two equal mouths meeting, each one testing the newness of it. Catalina kissed me back, first cautiously, then opening my lips with her tongue, then grabbing the back of my neck so I wouldn’t pull away. I wasn’t going to pull away. I didn’t want to. I sucked her tongue, bit it, and she let out a gasp into my mouth that went straight between my legs.

***

We fell onto the bed without stopping kissing. The green dress was still half on her, the zipper only halfway up. I ran my hands over her bare back and pulled the neckline down off her shoulders. She sat up for a second, lifted her arms, and let me take it off completely. When she lay back down again, there was no dress left, only her body in a thong on my sheets, and the afternoon light coming in sideways through the window, gold, slow. I yanked off her bra and her tits sprang free, round, with dark, sharp nipples pointing at me.

I pulled off my shirt and bra without thinking. I wanted us to be equal. When I leaned over her and our breasts brushed for the first time, both of us sucked in a breath at the same time. I had thought touching another woman’s tits would be similar to touching my own, but no. Hers were firmer, the nipples darker, and they hardened as soon as I ran my thumb over them. I grabbed both her tits with open hands, squeezed them, pushed them together, and lowered my mouth to suck them.

I sucked them one by one, long and hungry. I bit one nipple and she arched her back all at once, dug her fingers into my neck, wordlessly begged me not to stop. I circled my tongue over it, left it wet, blew on it. Catalina was trembling. I had never made anyone tremble like that, not even with a man on top of me. I went down to the other nipple, did the same, and felt her hand slipping between our bodies, searching between our legs, touching herself over the wet thong while I ate her out with kisses.

—No —I said, and pulled her hand away—. That’s mine now.

I kissed her neck, her shoulder, the middle of her chest. I took one nipple back into my mouth and felt her arch again. Catalina was grabbing my hair, twisting it around her fingers, pushing me without quite pushing me. I went lower. I kissed her ribs, her side, her belly. I kissed the place where the skin gets thinner, right above the lace. I dragged my nose over the top of her thong and breathed in hard: she smelled like clean cunt and arousal, a smell that blurred everything.

I took her thong off with my teeth because it seemed to me that I had to do it that way. I slid it down her thighs, over her knees, over her ankles, without taking my eyes off her from below. Catalina gave a little laugh, a nervous laugh, almost a sigh, her face red and her tits rising and falling. I laughed too, without taking my mouth off her thigh, and then I stopped laughing, because I saw her cunt up close for the first time and my throat went dry.

***

I had never been that close to another woman’s sex. It was strange and familiar at the same time: it was what I had, but backwards, like looking into a mirror that gives back another person. She was almost completely shaved, with only a thin strip left at the top, the lips small and pinkish, wet, shining under the window light. I opened her thighs with my hands, slowly, and breathed on her before touching her. Catalina shivered. Just from the air, she shivered.

I ran my tongue over her once, long, from bottom to top, from the entrance of her cunt to her clit. I didn’t have to think where or how. I knew. It was the map I knew by heart but had never read on another body. Catalina let out a sound unlike any I had heard from her in ten years of friendship, a guttural, animal moan that made me press my thighs against the bed. She grabbed my hair with both hands and never let go.

I parted her lips with two fingers and stayed there sucking her clit, soft at first, then harder, tracing letters with the tip of my tongue the same way I liked it when someone did it right to me. She started moving against my mouth, lifting her hips, looking for me. I slipped one finger inside her and felt her clamp down hot, squeezing me, soaking me to the knuckle. I slid in a second. I started moving them slowly, curling them upward, while I kept sucking her clit without stopping.

—Oh God —she said, her voice breaking—. Oh, don’t stop, please don’t stop.

I didn’t stop. I pushed my tongue inside, pulled it out, put it back in, alternating with my fingers, sucking her whole, swallowing everything she gave me. She moved her hips as if she were riding something, pressing my face between her thighs, moaning louder and louder. I grabbed one tit with my free hand and pinched the nipple, and felt her cunt contracting around my fingers.

I was learning what she liked in real time. When she stayed still, it was because it felt good. When she moved her hips, it was because she wanted more. When she held her breath, she was close. And when she was close, she was close to everything: to her, to me, to both of us understanding that this wasn’t just a one-afternoon thing. I added a third finger and she let out a choked cry, biting the back of her hand so as not to wake anyone.

Catalina came long and almost silently, her thighs closing over my ears, her back lifting off the bed, her cunt throbbing against my fingers in waves that didn’t end. She filled my mouth with thick, hot fluid, and I swallowed it without thinking, without disgust, with a hunger I didn’t know I had. I stayed where I was, licking her slowly, until her hands let go of my hair and she collapsed onto the pillow, trembling. Then I went back up slowly, kissing my way back, leaving the wet mark of her own taste on her belly and tits.

***

We stayed silent for a while. Me leaning on her shoulder, her looking at the ceiling, both of us naked, the sheet tangled between our legs. Her taste was still in my mouth, unlike anything else, neither sweet nor salty, something that didn’t resemble anything I had tasted before. I ran a finger around the outline of her navel.

—Are you okay? —I asked.

—I’m not into women —she said, and laughed softly—. I never was. I didn’t picture it.

—Neither did I.

—But I loved it —she said, turning her head to look at me—. I loved you. I’ve never come like that, not with Mateo, not with anyone.

I didn’t know what to tell her. I kissed her on the forehead, which was the only tender thing I could think to do. She took my hand, the one that had been inside her, and brought it to her mouth. She sucked my fingers one by one, looking at me, tasting herself in me. Everything inside me tightened.

—I want to taste you —she said after a moment, softly, her fingers still in her mouth—. I want to know what it feels like on the other side. I want to do to you what you did to me, I want to eat your cunt until you scream.

I looked at the time. It was past six-thirty. At seven I had to be at my night shift, and I still had to shower, get dressed, get there. Catalina saw my face and understood before I even opened my mouth.

—Not today —I said, and it hurt to say it with my cunt wet and throbbing between my legs.

—Not today —she repeated, smiling—. But next time, yes. And I’m going to make you come so many times you’ll forget your own name.

She got up, picked the thong up from the floor, put it on with her back to me while I was still sitting up dazed, pulse pounding between my legs and my soaked panties stuck to my cunt. She put on her shirt and gym pants without trying on the other dress, without a bra, with her nipples showing through the fabric. Before leaving, she stopped in the doorway of my room, bag already on her shoulder.

—I’ll call you tomorrow —she said.

And she called the next day. And the one after. And the one after that. But that’s another story, one I still don’t know how ends, because it keeps beginning every time she shows up at my front door with that smile I now understand in a different way.