The Date in the Car Before Dinner with My Friends

I’m telling it now because I’ve had it tucked away for a long time and never told anyone. Not the girls either, who that very night were waiting for me to have dinner and had no idea why I was late. We’d planned an entire day for ourselves: each of us doing our own thing in the afternoon and all of us together at dinnertime. The funny thing is that I was the one who always runs late, the first to be free.

It was barely six and I didn’t know what to do with those dead hours. Go down to the beach? Go back to the apartment? My phone was overflowing with messages, so I decided to answer one in particular and ended up having a drink with a guy I’d met on an app. His name was Bruno, he was from Asturias, and he was passing through the coast for a few days. And what a guy.

I’d put on a short gray dress with subtle sparkles that only showed when I moved. Heels and cleavage. The cleavage was nonnegotiable. I looked myself over before leaving and liked what I saw: no one would have guessed that this same woman was planning to spend the night eating salad and trading silly anecdotes with her friends.

We sat on the terrace of a small bar, the kind that puts candles on the tables when the sun starts to go down. We ordered a couple of drinks. We talked about nothing and everything, with that pleasant tension that comes when you both know why you’re there but neither of you says it. He had a way of looking at me that was direct, unashamed. Every time I crossed my legs, his eyes followed the movement and then came back to mine without any hurry.

“You have a dangerous smile,” he told me at some point.

“Dangerous for whom?”

“For the one who shows up late where he’s supposed to be.”

And he was right. If it had been up to me, that drink would have ended at his place. But then the phone rang. It was the girls. They’d booked a table at a place near the beach and they were already there, asking where the hell I’d gotten to. I looked at the time and let out a snort.

“I have to go,” I said, with less conviction than I meant to.

“I’ll take you.”

I accepted too fast. Come to think of it, if Bruno hadn’t had a car, nothing would have happened. I would have walked, I would have arrived a little late and that would have been that. But he had a car. And he offered. And I said yes, looking him in the eye an extra second longer than necessary.

***

The restaurant was less than five minutes away. What I hadn’t expected was that, just before we got there, he’d turn the car onto a dirt track and stop in a vacant lot. A large, dark estate separated us from the place, barely fifty meters of brush and silence. He switched off the engine but left the dashboard lights on, that bluish dimness that made everything feel a little unreal.

“Aren’t you taking me to the door?” I asked, knowing perfectly well the answer.

“First I want to kiss you.”

He was direct with his words and even more so with his mouth. I didn’t have time to answer. He was already kissing me, one hand at my nape and the other unfastening my seat belt with a skill that didn’t seem improvised. His tongue sought mine and I gave it to him without a fight. The hand at my nape slid down slowly, brushing my neck, my collarbone, until it settled over the fabric of the dress, right above my breast.

“You’re moving fast…” I murmured against his mouth.

I didn’t finish the sentence. His knee nudged mine gently and my legs parted almost on their own. I felt his hand travel up the inside of my thigh, without asking permission but without roughness, as if he knew I wasn’t going to stop him. And I didn’t stop him. I turned my face away for a moment to look out the window: we were completely alone, not a streetlight, not a car, only the distant murmur of the sea on the other side of the estate.

When I looked down again, his hand had already found the edge of my underwear and moved it aside. He kissed my neck while he touched me, slowly at first, attentive to my breathing, matching the rhythm to each of my sighs. I gripped the headrest of his seat and let my head fall back.

“Look at me,” he asked in a low voice.

I looked at him. And that was my undoing. Keeping my eyes open, holding his gaze while his hand moved with that certainty, was what took me to the edge faster than I wanted to admit. I pressed my thighs against his forearm, held my breath for a full second and then let it out in a moan that filled the whole car.

“That’s it,” he said, never taking his eyes off me. “That’s exactly it.”

***

I stayed still for a moment, catching my breath, my forehead resting against his temple. I could have left it there. I could have asked him to start the car, arrived at dinner with flushed cheeks and a smile nobody would have been able to decode. But I didn’t want to go yet. I turned toward him and dropped my gaze to his lap, where the fabric of his trousers no longer hid anything.

“Do you want me to return the favor?” I asked.

He didn’t answer with words. He settled back in the seat, tilted the backrest a little farther, and unfastened himself slowly, never taking his eyes off mine. He freed himself with one hand and stayed that way, offering himself to me in silence. I barely brushed him with my fingertips and felt him hot, tense, a tiny bead shining at the tip. I took him in my hand and moved slowly, enjoying the way his breathing broke apart, he who until a minute ago had been in complete control.

I felt his hand return to my nape. He didn’t push me. He just left it there, more of an invitation than an order. But I already knew what I was going to do from the moment he turned the car onto that road. I leaned in, closed my eyes, and lowered my head.

“Fuck…” he let out.

I started slowly, with my mouth and tongue, listening to how his breathing changed with every movement. I looked up once to see him: his head was thrown back and one hand was gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles white. I liked that power. After he’d had me at his mercy a few minutes before, now I was the one setting the pace, the one deciding when to tighten and when to let go, when to go deeper and when to leave him on the edge, waiting.

“Like that, exactly like that,” he murmured, repeating my own words from before in a broken voice.

I took him deeper, slowly, as far as I wanted, and then withdrew to catch my breath and start again. I played with him for a long while, alternating, reading him, feeling how harder and harder it became for him to stay still. His hips started seeking me out, small involuntary movements, and I knew he was close.

“Wait, wait…” he said, trying to warn me. “I… I’m gonna come.”

I didn’t move away. I felt the first pulse and then everything else, and I held on until he went completely still, emptied out, his breathing shattered and one hand still tangled in my hair, now gentle, almost grateful.

I sat up slowly. I searched my bag for a tissue, touched up my lipstick in the sun visor mirror, and straightened my dress as if nothing had happened. He was looking at me with a mix of disbelief and respect he didn’t bother to hide.

“You’re incredible,” he said.

“I’m punctual,” I replied, checking the time. “Or I was half an hour ago.”

***

He started the car and dropped me at the restaurant door, this time for real. Before I got out, he took my hand, kissed my knuckles like we were two strangers who had just met, and told me he hoped it wouldn’t be the last time. I smiled without promising anything and crossed the street toward the warm light of the place.

My friends were already at the table, the bread half-finished and a bottle open.

“Finally!” Marta said, raising her glass. “Can you tell us where the hell you were?”

“Traffic,” I lied, sitting down and placing my napkin over my legs.

“Traffic? It’s right here next door,” Carla laughed, narrowing her eyes. “You’re flushed.”

“It’s the beach wind.”

None of them quite believed it, but they didn’t press me either. We ordered, toasted, laughed at each other’s afternoon anecdotes. I gave a very abbreviated, very decent version of my date, enough not to arouse suspicion, leaving out everything that really mattered. And while they talked, I took small sips from my glass with that warm calm that settles in your body after something like that, smiling to myself.

That’s the part I like best about confessions: that through the whole dinner, while we shared dishes and told each other our usual secrets, I was keeping one that none of them would ever have imagined. A fifteen-minute detour, a vacant lot fifty meters away, and a stranger I would probably never see again.

Although, to be honest, I replied to his message that same night.