The Confession I Never Made to My Boyfriend

There are confessions one keeps forever, and then there are confessions that weigh so much they need to come out, even if only like this, written, without a name, without a face. This is one of the second kind. I never told Andrés, and now I never can, because it’s been years since I’ve heard anything about him. But I carry it with me the way one carries an old scar: it doesn’t hurt anymore, but it’s there, and sometimes I touch it to remember who I was.

Andrés gave me a second chance when I didn’t deserve it. I had failed him once, and instead of closing the door, he left it open for me. I promised myself that this time would be different. That I would learn. That the faithful woman he imagined when he looked at me sleeping could truly exist.

I kept it up for three weeks. Exactly three weeks.

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to. I knew it from the day I promised him.

Back then I couldn’t stand routine. Andrés was good, attentive, predictable. He drove me to work in the mornings and picked me up at night, and on that back-and-forth trip he thought he had the whole world under control. He thought that if he saw me get into the car and get out of the car, there was no room for anything to happen. Fidelity, for him, was a logistical matter.

The problem is that between the time he dropped me off and the time he picked me up, there were hours. And in those hours I was someone else.

***

I started working at a cocktail bar downtown, one of those places with amber light and low music where people go to pretend their lives are more interesting than they are. My shift started at eight. I went in alone to clean, restock the bar, and get everything ready before we opened. Andrés dropped me at the door at five to eight, kissed me on the forehead, and went home peacefully to his sofa and his games until dawn.

At nine the bouncer arrived. His name was Bakari.

The first time I saw him I thought the place was too small for him. He was a huge man, broad-shouldered, with hands that looked like they could wrap around my entire waist. He had a calmness that didn’t match his size, a slow way of moving, as if he were never in a hurry for anything. He spoke little. When he did speak, he looked you straight in the eye, and that made me nervous in a way I didn’t want to admit.

For those three weeks, nothing happened. I kept telling myself nothing was going to happen. I repeated it while I watched him cross the room, while I watched him lift a box of bottles as if it weighed nothing, while I noticed his eyes lingering on me a second longer than necessary. And while I repeated it, I’d slip into the bar bathroom and touch my cunt thinking about him, pinching my nipples through my T-shirt, coming fast and quiet with two fingers shoved deep inside me, biting my lip so I wouldn’t say his name out loud.

—Do you need anything from up there? —he would ask sometimes, pointing at the high shelves in the stockroom.

—No, I can get it —I always answered.

I was lying. I couldn’t get it. But I’d rather climb a wobbly ladder than ask him to hand me anything, because I knew that the moment he came close, I’d stop pretending. I knew that if he put a hand on my hip, I’d unzip his fly right there.

***

It was a Tuesday. A quiet Tuesday, one of those nights when the bar breathes slowly.

That night Bakari arrived early. Not at nine: at eight twenty, when I was still alone, up that damn ladder trying to get a box of glasses down from the top shelf. The box tilted, I lost my balance, and before I fell I felt his hands on my waist, firm, holding up my entire weight without effort.

—I told you to ask me for help —he murmured.

He didn’t set me down right away. He left me there, suspended between the ladder and him, his warm hands through the thin fabric of my T-shirt. I could have pulled away. I could have said anything, a joke, a “thank you,” and broken the moment.

I said nothing.

I turned slowly in his arms until I was facing him, and the box of glasses ended up on the floor, forgotten. He looked at me as if he’d spent three weeks waiting for exactly that silence. And I kissed him. Or he kissed me. I was never quite clear on that part, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because what came after we decided together without saying a word.

The stockroom smelled of cardboard and spilled liquor. There was a metal table where we stacked inventory, and that’s where I ended up, my back against the cold metal and the heat of his body on top of mine. He kissed my neck slowly, unhurriedly, the same way he moved through the room, as if we had all night and no reason to rush. He bit my earlobe, licked my collarbone, and I could feel my nipples hardening against my T-shirt until it hurt.

He ripped my shirt over my head with one hand. I wasn’t wearing a bra underneath —I never wore one on shift, it showed under the uniform— and he gave a low groan when he saw my tits bare. He bent down and took one nipple fully into his mouth, sucking it until a moan escaped me and bounced off the shelves. With his other hand he squeezed my other breast, pinching the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and I could feel my cunt soaking just from that.

—You’re already wet, aren’t you? —he said against my skin—. It shows on your face.

—Check for yourself —I replied, and I didn’t even recognize my own voice.

It was hard to breathe when his hands started moving lower. He had that confident way of touching, of someone who knows he’s not going to be told no. He lifted my skirt with maddening calm, pulled my panties aside with two fingers, and sank them in without warning. I was so wet he slid right up to his knuckles in one go. He laughed softly, satisfied, and started moving them inside me, curling them, looking for a spot Andrés had never found.

—Fuck —he muttered—. You’re soaked. How long have you been like this for me?

—Three weeks —I confessed through clenched teeth—. Three fucking weeks.

He pulled out his shiny fingers and shoved them into my mouth. I sucked them without hesitation, looking him in the eye, tasting myself on his skin, and he let out a rough breath from deep in his chest.

He knelt on the stockroom floor without caring about the cardboard or the sticky alcohol. He hiked my skirt up to my waist, ripped my panties off in one pull —I heard the fabric tear— and buried his mouth in my cunt with a hunger I had never felt before. He licked me all over, from bottom to top, with his tongue wide and flat, and then he found my clit and sucked it like it was candy. I had to grip the edge of the metal table just to stay upright. I dug one hand into his hair and pressed his face harder against me, and he moaned into my cunt, and that vibration went through me completely.

—I’m going to come —I warned him, almost voiceless.

He sped up. He shoved two fingers inside me again while he sucked my clit, and I came with my back arched over the metal, trembling, biting the back of my hand so I wouldn’t scream. I felt it running down my thighs, and he kept licking, cleaning me, not giving me a single second to recover.

When he stood up, his chin was shiny and his cock was straining hard under his pants. I reached for it myself, pulled down the zipper, and took it out. It was huge. Thick, heavy, dark, with the veins standing out, and I stared at it for a second like an idiot, calculating whether it would fit. I spat on it and ran my hand up and down, and he let out a low groan.

—Suck it —he told me, and it wasn’t a question.

I got down from the table and knelt this time. I grabbed his cock with both hands and took it in my mouth as far as I could. I choked halfway down, tears sprang to my eyes, and he held my nape with both hands and started fucking my mouth slowly, sinking a little deeper with each thrust. I drooled, strings of spit ran down my chin to my tits, and I didn’t care about anything, because when I lifted my eyes and saw him looking at me with that possessive face, I realized I’d spent years wanting someone to look at me like that.

—You’re going to be a slut for me, right? —he said, and I nodded with his cock in my mouth—. Every night. Here. Without telling anyone.

—Yes —I answered when he pulled it out for a second to let me breathe—. Yes, every fucking night.

He lifted me by the hair, turned me against the table, and bent me over the metal. I felt the tip of his cock pressing against my cunt, sliding, soaking in me, and I pushed my ass back without the slightest shame. He entered me in one thrust. One single thrust. All the way in, to the hilt, and I screamed against my bent arm, muffling the sound in my own flesh.

—Fuck, fuck, you’re huge —I panted.

—Take it —he said, and he stayed still for a second inside me, letting me get used to him, and then he started fucking me.

He fucked me with long, deep thrusts, gripping my hips with those massive hands, marking my skin with his fingers. Every hit shoved me against the metal table, and the boxes beside us shook, and I shook, and I didn’t recognize myself in the sounds I was making. I dug my nails into his shoulders so he wouldn’t stop. I asked for more. I asked for harder. I asked him to treat me however he wanted.

He didn’t stop.

He lifted one leg up onto the table to open me wider, and from that angle he went even deeper. I looked down between my legs and saw his dark cock sliding in and out of me, shining, stretching me, leaving my cunt soaked and open. He put a thumb in my mouth for me to suck and then brought that same hand down to start rubbing my clit in time with his thrusts.

I came again. Harder. With a long moan that escaped me completely, beyond my control. My cunt clamped around his cock and he let out a rough gasp.

—I’m going to finish —he warned me.

—Not inside —I said quickly—. On my tits. Come on my tits.

He pulled out, turned me around, and sat me on the edge of the table. He jerked himself off fast, his fist closed around that shiny cock of his, and shot hot bursts of cum all over my chest, my neck, my chin. I opened my mouth and caught the last of it with my tongue. It stayed sticky between my breasts, sliding down my stomach, and he looked at me from above, breathing hard, and I ran one finger through my cleavage, filled it with his cum, and licked it off.

—Again —I told him—. Before anyone gets here.

***

We did it on that table the first time, and against the back wall the second, before we opened the bar. That second time he fucked me standing up, my legs wrapped around his waist, my back pressed to the painted brick wall and his hands holding my whole ass. He bit my tits while he thrust me upward with each stroke, and I bit his shoulder so I wouldn’t scream, and when I came I clung to him so hard that he came too, inside me this time, filling my cunt in a moment when neither he nor I thought about anything.

When the first customers finally arrived, my legs were trembling, my cunt full of his cum dripping inside my new panties, and I had a smile I could barely fit on my face. Bakari went back to his post at the door as if nothing had happened, huge and impassive, and only now and then, between drinks, we exchanged a look worth more than any conversation.

That night, when Andrés picked me up at three, he asked me why I was so happy.

—Good tips day —I told him.

He believed me. He always believed me. That was the easiest part and the saddest.

I got home with my body still burning, and while Andrés stayed up with his console, I got into bed without showering. I wanted to sleep like that, with Bakari’s cum drying between my thighs, with his smell clinging to my skin, to keep what had happened in that stockroom for a few more hours. I fell asleep with my back to my boyfriend, one hand between my legs, touching myself slowly until I came again in silence, smiling in the dark like a miserable wretch.

***

From that Tuesday on, Bakari started arriving earlier and earlier. An hour early, sometimes more. He made up excuses that weren’t even necessary, because we both knew why he was coming. And he always left after closing, when no one was left and the bar belonged to us.

I learned every inch of him in that stockroom, and he learned things about me Andrés never knew, things I didn’t even know I needed. I learned to suck his cock on my knees while he held my hair in a ponytail with his fist. I learned to ride him backward on a chair in the office, making faces at the mirror, looking at my own whore face as I went up and down on his cock. I learned to take it in my ass for the first time, slowly, with lubricant stolen from the drawer under the bar, biting my own arm to bear the burn until it turned into pleasure and made me come harder than ever before. I learned to swallow every last drop of his cum and ask him for more. I learned to let him fuck me while he talked on the phone with the bar owner, covering my mouth with my hand so nothing would escape me.

With Bakari, there was no guilt inside the place. I left the guilt at the door and picked it up later, when I got into my boyfriend’s car. But between those four walls I was free in a way I had never been with anyone.

I felt desired. Not loved: desired, which is something else. Andrés loved me, and his affection made me feel small, watched, trapped inside the idea he had of me. Bakari desired me without asking me to be a better person, without expecting me to keep any promise. And precisely for that reason, with him, I was the most honest woman in the world.

I know how that sounds. I know I have no forgiveness. But this is a confession, not an apology.

***

Andrés eventually started to suspect, of course. Not because I made any mistake, but because happiness is hard to hide. He began to notice that I came back from work different, too relaxed, too intact for someone who had spent six hours behind a bar. One night he asked me directly, in the car, without looking at me.

—Is there someone at the bar?

I had the chance to confess. I had it right there, served up, and I let it pass.

—I’m tired, Andrés —I answered, and rested my head against the window.

That same night, when we got home, I fucked him like I hadn’t fucked him in months. I made him think it was for him. I got on top of him, dug my nails into his chest, rode him fast and dirty, moaning his name with my eyes closed and seeing Bakari’s face behind my eyelids. Andrés came almost immediately, satisfied, convinced he’d recovered something. I got off him with a cunt that hadn’t come, went into the bathroom, and finished myself off against the sink, biting my wrist, thinking about the bouncer.

He never asked again. And I never gave him a reason to believe or to doubt. I kept lying with the same ease with which I breathed, and that was what scared me most of all: how easy it was.

***

That was the job where I made the least money in my life and was the happiest. It lasted a little over a year. Bakari wasn’t a man for building anything, and I never asked him to be. What we had lived in that stockroom and died every dawn when the lights in the place came on. We didn’t call each other, we didn’t see each other outside, we knew almost nothing about one another. And even so, for twelve months, that man made me feel more alive than any promise I had ever made or broken.

The bar closed because of problems that don’t concern me, and with the bar everything ended. There was no goodbye. On the last night we closed like any other, he fucked me between the empty boxes with the same calm as always, filled my cunt one more time, and left me there, sitting on the edge of the metal table with his semen dripping inside my thighs. He kissed my forehead the way Andrés used to, and the next day there was simply nowhere left to go back to.

Andrés and I lasted a little longer. Then we split up for the usual reasons, the boring ones, the ones that have nothing to do with a stockroom. He never knew anything. He left thinking the woman who had promised to change for him had at least kept half her word.

If one day he reads this without knowing it’s me, I hope he doesn’t recognize himself. And if he does, I hope he knows that I broke that promise from the very first day, long before Bakari, the moment I made it knowing I couldn’t keep it.

This is my confession. I’m not asking to be understood. I just needed, once, to tell the truth.