The Dinner My Flatmate Left in the Hallway

Nuria woke up in a foul mood. The night before she hadn’t pulled the blind all the way down, and the spring sun in Valencia was pouring in with unbearable force, bouncing off the metal balcony across the way and hitting her straight in the eyes. Between the backache from so many hours hunched over her notes and the hole Pol had left in her life, she felt like she couldn’t cope.

Pol had been her first in everything: the first to kiss her, the first to undress her slowly, the first to show her what a real orgasm was. But now he was seeing a girl from film school and she was alone, with final exams looming over her and her spirits in the gutter.

She dragged herself into the kitchen. Adrián and Carla, her flatmates, were there, and they fell silent the second she appeared in the doorway. Nuria was too tired to ask anything. While she made herself a glass of milk with cocoa powder, Adrián shot out, muttering that he was late for university. Carla, for some reason, let out a little laugh that struck Nuria as utterly strange.

—What’s up with you? You’re glowing for eight in the morning —she blurted out—. Did you get lucky last night or what?

She knew Carla had her adventures, because sometimes she came home smelling unmistakably of sex and with her clothes half on wrong. But she had never seen her smile like that.

—I’ve got a plan that’s going better than I expected —Carla replied, mysterious—. If everything goes right, it’s going to be the best summer of my life.

Nuria didn’t want to dwell on it and went straight into the shower. She needed to clear her head. As she undressed in front of the mirror, she looked at her small, almost adolescent body: small, firm breasts, no big curves, but skin that had been begging for weeks for someone to touch it.

She closed the shower screen and let the hot water beat on the back of her neck, trying to let the steam erase Pol’s image and his new girl. But the body has its own memory, one that knows nothing of breakups or pride. As she ran the sponge over her shoulders and down toward her chest, the soap sliding over her skin was no longer the usual routine washing. It was a spark.

She looked at her blurred reflection in the glass. Her nipples had hardened under the water, darkened, demanding attention. When she brushed them with her fingertips, a shiver ran down her back. It had been far too long since anyone had touched her, and the hunger of her own skin began to wake with a force that almost scared her.

She let her hand travel down her flat stomach to her most intimate place. The contact with the water and soap made her immediately sensitive, electric. She began to stroke herself in circles, circling the clit with gentle pressure while the stream fell directly on her pubis and water slid between her thighs. She closed her eyes and imagined those hands weren’t hers, but big hands claiming her urgently.

But her hand wasn’t enough. The emptiness she felt inside was a physical demand, almost painful.

She stepped out of the shower for a moment, dripping onto the tiles, her chest rising and falling out of rhythm. She opened the drawer of the sink cabinet and rummaged among creams and brushes until her fingers found a bottle of cologne, thick glass, long and almost phallic, with a rounded cap of cold metal.

She went back under the water. The contrast of the icy glass against her burning skin made her let out a moan that was swallowed by the drain’s roar. She braced herself against the tiles, spread her legs as wide as she could, and began to drag the rounded base of the bottle across her sex, pressing in a slow but firm rhythm. The sensation of fullness hit her all at once when she started to sink the neck of the bottle into herself.

—Ah… —she whispered, arching her back.

The rocking motion, lubricated by the water and her own slick, became frantic. With one hand she pinched a nipple, mixing pain with pleasure; with the other she worked the bottle with a dexterity born of desperation. The outside world—the library, the exams, Carla and her secret—ceased to exist. There was only the brush of glass, the heat of the water, and that growing pressure at the base of her spine that was about to burst.

The orgasm struck her without warning, violent. Her legs gave way and she had to grab the taps to keep from falling, while a series of rhythmic spasms shook her from top to bottom. She stayed with her forehead against the wall, panting, letting the water wash over her burning skin and finally give her some peace. She put the bottle back at the bottom of the drawer, dried herself calmly, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes shone differently.

***

The days flew by between notes and strong coffees, and so Friday of the last week of exams arrived. In theory Nuria was supposed to go up to Morella that afternoon; her parents were waiting for her at the house in the village to spend the weekend as a family. But she didn’t feel like it at all. The idea of enduring her mother’s questions about Pol and pretending she was fine exhausted her more than studying did. So, with a mix of guilt and relief, she called home and made up an exam for Monday morning. The perfect excuse to stay alone in the city.

She was walking back to the flat, enjoying the late-afternoon sun. Right as she turned the corner to her building’s entrance, she thought she saw Carla leaving the place, but it was a matter of seconds; the figure was lost in the crowd and she couldn’t be sure. She reached the door with her hands full: her heavy bag, a couple of books, and the keys that never seemed to be there when she needed them. After rummaging through the side pocket, she managed to open it.

She set everything on the hall table with a sigh of tiredness. And then she saw it. The dish. It was in the middle of the hallway, completely out of place.

She approached slowly. At first she couldn’t make out what was on it, but after a few steps the image became clear: it was Carla’s panties, fine lace, placed there carefully. Beside them, a note in her flatmate’s neat handwriting:

“I’ve just taken them off… I’ve touched myself with them twice in a row. Please use them properly. I want you to finish in them and leave them on my doorknob. P.S.: they’re my favorites… don’t lose them and don’t tear them.”

Nuria froze. She picked up the dish with trembling hands and, with the slightest movement of the garment, a thick scent flooded the hallway. It was an unmistakable smell of fresh desire, of female arousal so pure it seemed to have its own temperature. Without thinking, she brought the lace up to her face and confirmed it was soaked through.

Her own body started to betray her. The humiliation over Pol, the loneliness of that week, and the taboo of the discovery all mixed in her belly. She felt her nipples harden under her T-shirt and her crotch begin to throb. She had never smelled another woman’s fluids, and the experience felt as forbidden as it was arousing.

Before she could process it, she had already pulled her underwear aside. She leaned against the hallway wall and began to touch herself standing there, with an urgency she didn’t know she had. Her clit, rock-hard, demanded all her attention. She drove two fingers deep inside and felt her wetness surpass anything she had ever felt before.

She didn’t last long. The tension that had built up exploded in an orgasm that left her convulsing, her legs weak. She sank to the floor, panting, looking at Carla’s panties on the dish. On pure instinct, she took them and carefully wiped her still-wet fingers and skin, mixing her fluids with her flatmate’s on the same fabric.

With her heart still racing, she put the dish back exactly where it had been. She needed to find out what was going on in that house and, above all, who the recipient of that “dinner” she had just tasted in the most unexpected way was.

***

She locked herself in her room, but didn’t turn on the light. She left the door just slightly ajar, just enough to have a clear view of the hallway, and sat at her desk in absolute silence. Time seemed to move more slowly. Every creak in the old flat put her on alert. If Carla had gone out, there was only one person left who could be the recipient of that explicit message.

—Adrián —she thought, and the idea gave her a shiver that had nothing to do with cold—. Adrián and Carla?

It didn’t add up. Adrián always seemed like the shy boy, the one who barely looked up from his plate at dinner; Carla was solitary, almost elusive. But then she remembered the scene in the kitchen, the little laugh, the sudden escape. The pieces were starting to fit together in a perverse way.

About twenty minutes later she heard the key turning in the lock. Nuria held her breath. Her eyes, already used to the dimness, saw Adrián’s silhouette come in, leave the keys, take a couple of steps and stop dead.

She watched him bend down. She saw how his big hands took the dish with a mixture of reverence and urgency. From her hiding place she could make out the boy’s profile: clenched jaw, his breathing suddenly heavy. Adrián didn’t hesitate. He brought the garment to his face and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes with an expression of pure hunger.

Nuria felt her own sex throb again. Seeing him like that, so surrendered to Carla’s trail, turned her on beyond reason. She watched him read the note and, after a moment of hesitation, go into his room and lock it behind him.

She knew the show wasn’t over. According to the instructions, the dish had to come back out with the “dessert.” Curiosity was killing her. It wasn’t just prurience: it was a need to understand that raw connection she had just discovered.

Almost half an hour passed. She didn’t move from the chair. Suddenly Adrián’s door opened again. The boy came out with the same dish, but the contents had changed. The lace was still there, shining under the hallway light, now soaked with something much thicker. The smell that reached her room was unmistakable: intense, of a young man. She watched him leave the dish in front of Carla’s door and retreat, exhausted.

Nuria waited a few minutes and, when she was sure he wouldn’t come out, left her hiding place. She walked on tiptoe down the hallway to the dish. She crouched and looked at the mixture of fluids: Carla’s trace, her own that she had left while wiping herself, and on top of all that, Adrián’s generous load. It was a scene of incredible sexual power.

—“Your dinner” —she read on the new note, which he had left next to Carla’s.

Nuria smiled with a lewd grimace. Her fingers, still bearing her own trace, brushed the edge of the dish. She no longer felt the slightest envy for Pol’s girl. What was in front of her was much more real, much more forbidden, and the idea of being part of that secret game, silent in the half-light, seemed to her the best summer plan she could possibly imagine.