The Girl Who Taught Me What I Never Imagined I Could Feel

There are things you know before you know that you know them. I understood that much later, looking back. At the time I only knew I went to a girls’ school, that I was sixteen, and that there was something in the way certain girls moved through the hallways that I found hard to ignore. It wasn’t admiration, although for a long time I told myself it was. It was something else, more physical, more uncomfortable, with that heat in your chest that you don’t quite know where to put.

They would pass by me at recess and I would follow them with my eyes without meaning to. One in particular, with long hair and a way of laughing that took up too much space in my head. I never said anything to her. Not to her, and not to anyone. I just put that feeling away in some drawer and didn’t open it.

At the same time, boys existed for me in a perfectly functional way. I liked them, I sought them out, I got excited when one of them paid attention to me. It was easy to tell myself that girls were just curiosity, something fleeting, that over time it would settle down. I did that for years.

My first boyfriend was called Marcos. I met him when I was twenty, at a gathering with mutual friends. He was quiet, read a lot, and had that shy quality of people who are used to living inside their own heads. I didn’t fall in love with him in the way I had expected, but I liked his company and thought that was enough to give it a try.

We were together for a little over a year. We fucked many times and it wasn’t bad. He’d get on top of me, spread my legs, and slide his dick into me with the concentration of someone doing a task well. I’d suck his cock when he asked me to, on my knees on the rug with his hand on the back of my neck setting the rhythm, and he’d come in my mouth or on my tits depending on what he felt like. Sometimes I’d ride him, moving my hips on top of him until I came with his cock deep inside me, and it worked, and I came, and it was fine. But there was always something unresolved, a feeling hard to place, like when a song ends and you feel like something was missing even if you can’t say what. I left him after a winter in which that feeling was more constant than anything else. He took it badly. He kept writing to me for weeks with the same request, and every time I told him no, the no got easier than the one before.

Then came five months of nothing in particular. Going out with friends, work, routine. It was during that time that Valeria appeared in my Instagram feed.

***

A mutual friend had tagged her in a photo, and something made me stop on her profile: very short black hair, the way she smiled in photos as if she were keeping the most interesting part to herself. I followed her without thinking too much about it. She followed me back the next day.

We started writing to each other. First comments on posts, then direct messages, then conversations that stretched past midnight without either of us suggesting it. She was openly lesbian and mentioned it without making a big announcement of it, simply as part of who she was, with the same naturalness with which someone says they prefer coffee to tea. I didn’t say anything in particular about myself. There was nothing to say, I kept telling myself.

One Tuesday afternoon she wrote to ask if I wanted to grab a drink that week. She suggested a bar she knew, with no further details. I said yes before I finished reading the message.

I arrived ten minutes late because I spent too long choosing what to wear. She was already at the bar with a glass of white wine and that same smile from the photos which, in person, was even harder to read. She was taller than I expected. She wore a thin striped shirt and dark jeans, and she had a way of leaning on the bar with her elbows that made everything seem very casual even though I didn’t feel casual at all.

—I thought you’d changed your mind —she said when she saw me arrive.

—I got lost —I lied.

We ordered drinks and stayed at the bar for quite a while, talking about work, music, a series we’d both watched that same month by chance. It was easy to talk to her. Too easy for me to keep telling myself it was just a night out between acquaintances.

After a couple of hours she suggested going dancing at a place three blocks away. The space was small and half full, with the music loud enough that talking required getting close. We started dancing with some distance between us, then with less, then with no distance at all. It was that kind of movement that doesn’t require anyone to make any particular decision; it just happens.

When she took my hand in the middle of the dance floor, I let her. When she looked at me, I held her gaze without looking away. When she leaned toward me, I didn’t move.

The kiss was brief. Her lips were soft and she didn’t push beyond what I allowed. I pulled back slightly, my heart beating in a way that wasn’t exactly fear, though it wasn’t calm either.

—You’re nervous —she said. It wasn’t a question.

—A little —I admitted.

She squeezed my hand and said nothing more about it. We kept dancing, kissed a few more times over the course of the night, always briefly, always with that care she had and that I appreciated without telling her.

***

At five in the morning, when we were already talking about leaving, she got a message. Some friends were inviting her to an improvised birthday party in a nearby apartment and asked if she wanted to come over. She asked if I wanted to go too. I hesitated three seconds. I said yes.

There were about ten people sitting on the living room floor, with soft music in the background and half-empty bottles of wine. The mood was calm, almost drowsy, that stillness nights have once they’re already past midnight and people have lost the urge to be entertaining. I sat next to Valeria, talked to the people near me, drank what was offered.

When it was already past eight in the morning, she announced that she couldn’t take it anymore, that she was going to lie down. The apartment owners pointed her toward a bedroom. Before getting up, she looked at me.

—You coming?

I stood up.

The room was small, with the blind drawn and a single bed. We lay down without undressing, though that didn’t last long. We started kissing and the kiss was different from the one on the dance floor, longer, more deliberate, with her hands moving over my back and sides while I returned the gesture without really knowing what I was doing but doing it anyway.

Then her hand slid down my hip and something in me tightened.

—Stop —I said.

She stopped instantly. No question, no drama. She just looked at me.

—Okay —she said. And she meant it.

We fell asleep soon after, her with an arm over my waist and me staring at the ceiling for quite a while, listening to the distant music from the living room, thinking of nothing in particular.

***

A week later I invited her to my place. My parents had gone away that weekend and I had the apartment to myself. I told her to come over, that we’d watch something, that we’d eat. When I hung up the phone I stayed still for a moment in front of the window.

I know exactly why I’m inviting her.

She arrived at eight with a bag containing cheese, olives, and a bottle of red wine. We put on a movie on the sofa, ate something, talked with the TV on in the background. At some point during the second half of the film I noticed I’d gone a long while without looking at the screen. I was only looking at her: the way she had her legs tucked up on the sofa, how she held her glass between her fingers, how a lock of hair fell over her cheek when she turned her head.

When she turned her head toward me, I was the one who kissed her.

She was surprised. I felt it in that second of pause before she answered. But she answered. She took my face in both hands and we kissed slowly at first, and then not slowly at all: I pushed my tongue into her mouth and she bit it lightly, and I felt my nipples tightening against my bra from nothing but that.

This time I didn’t stop.

We lay back on the sofa without stopping touching each other. Her hands slid up under my T-shirt and grabbed my tits over my bra, and then under it, her thumbs rubbing my nipples until they were so hard it hurt. I pulled her striped shirt over her head and bit her neck, and she let out a low, hoarse laugh that wasn’t the laugh I’d heard from her until then.

—I knew you’d loosen up —she whispered in my ear—. I saw your face all night.

I didn’t answer. I unbuttoned her jeans and slid my hand down inside, down to her cunt over her underwear, and she was soaked. The panties were stuck to her lips and I felt the heat rush up against my palm when I squeezed her.

—Fuck —she said, and dug her fingers into my back.

She undressed me slowly, the opposite of what my hands were doing to her, and took off my T-shirt and bra with the kind of attention you notice when someone is truly present and not just following a script. She licked my nipples one by one, took them into her mouth, sucked them hard until a moan escaped me that I hadn’t known was there. I did the same to hers: small, dark, very hard, and I tugged one with my teeth while squeezing the other with my fingers, and she arched her back and dug her nails into my shoulder.

When we were both almost naked and she looked at me, I didn’t look away.

She started kissing my neck, then my collarbone, then my chest. She went downward little by little, without rushing, while I stopped thinking about anything that wasn’t what I was feeling in that moment. She licked my stomach, bit my hip, slid her tongue into my belly button as if warning me what was coming. When her lips reached my belly I let out my breath all at once. When she tugged my panties down with her teeth, without using her hands, I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers into the sofa cushion.

She spread my legs with both hands, unhurried, and paused for a second staring at my cunt before lowering her mouth.

—You’re dripping —she said, and there was no mockery there, something else, almost awe.

The first lick was slow, long, from bottom to top, with her tongue wide and flat, and it tore a gasp out of me that sounded too loud in the silence of the living room. The second was the same. The third stopped right on my clit and stayed there, sucking it gently at first and then harder, with her lips closed around it and her tongue working it from the inside. I grabbed the cushion, the back of the sofa, her short hair, not knowing where to put my hands, moving my hips against her mouth without being able to control it.

She slid two fingers into me and didn’t stop sucking my clit. She moved them inside curled upward, searching for a point I hadn’t known I had so clearly, and every time she bent them I let slip a filthy word I hadn’t known I was going to say. Fuck me, I told her at one point, without meaning to, fuck me like this, and she said nothing, just slid her fingers deeper and faster, sucking me without pause.

What came next was precise and very patient. She knew what she was doing and did it without needing any confirmation, with a concentration that was itself a form of presence. I could feel my cunt open, drenched, with her fingers going in and out with a sound that would have embarrassed me at any other time and now only turned me on more. I came with my hips arched and a sound that came out on its own, without my looking for it, pressing her head against my cunt with both hands, coming in her mouth in long waves that wouldn’t stop, and I stayed still for a few seconds after, staring at the ceiling, with my heart pounding hard in my chest and ears and my legs trembling without my being able to stop them.

She climbed up my body with her mouth shining and kissed me on the mouth before I had time to say anything. I knew myself completely on her lips: salty, thick, still alive.

—Good? —she asked against my ear.

—Very good —I managed to say.

I held out my hand and guided her up until she was beside me, and I kissed her again, longer, then took her hand and led her to my room. We closed the door even though there was no one else there. I pushed her onto the bed and finished taking off her jeans and panties, and I stayed a moment looking at her naked on top of my bedspread, with her short hair tousled and a red mark on her neck that I had made without realizing it.

I did to her what she had done to me, slowly, learning as I went. I licked her neck, bit one breast, left a hickey just below it, following her reactions, the rhythm of her breathing, the way her hips moved without her asking them to. I went down her stomach with my mouth open, feeling her skin grow hotter as I moved lower. When I spread her legs and saw her cunt swollen, shiny, wet with her own juices, I hesitated for a second. Then I lowered my head and ran my tongue through the middle, and she grabbed the sheets with a moan that made me clench my thighs.

I sucked her clit the way she had sucked mine, not knowing if I was doing it right but copying her with all the memory I had. I slid one finger in first, then two, and she guided me with her hand in my hair, pressing me tighter against her cunt when something felt good, loosening me when she wanted me to speed up. She tasted like metal and sea and something else I couldn’t name, and I didn’t want to stop eating her out. I ran my whole tongue over her lips, spread them with my fingers, slipped the tip of my tongue inside and felt her tightening around it.

—Like that, like that, don’t stop —I heard her say, her voice broken—, fuck, like that.

I didn’t stop. I drove my tongue into her clit and fucked her cunt with my fingers until I felt her trembling all over, until she clamped my head between her thighs and came with a muffled cry into the pillow, rocking her hips against my mouth again and again until she went still.

I wasn’t experienced. I was honest. And that turned out to be enough.

We stayed like that for a while, my face resting on her stomach and her fingers in my hair, saying nothing. Then she pulled me up, slipped an arm beneath me, and put her hand between my legs again without warning. She made me come a second time with her fingers, looking me in the face, not letting me close my eyes, and I gave it back by riding her thigh, rubbing myself against her skin until I came again, soaking her completely, not caring about anything.

When we were done we lay in bed without speaking, with the window half open and the noise from the street drifting in from outside. She stroked my arm up and down, absentmindedly.

—What are you thinking about? —she asked after a while.

—That I took too long to do this —I said.

She laughed. A short, calm laugh, without mockery. And said nothing else.

***

We were together for a few months. She had a character that was hard to sustain over time, that intensity which at first seems like confidence and later turns out to be exhausting. We didn’t end badly, we simply ended. What remained wasn’t only the memory of those nights but something harder to ignore: the certainty that what I had been keeping in that drawer for years was as real as anything else I had ever felt. I didn’t need anyone to confirm it for me. But it was good to prove it anyway.