The Girl Who Taught Me to Feel What I Never Imagined

There are things you know before you know that you know them. I understood that much later, looking back. At the time, all I knew was that I was studying at university, that I was nineteen, and that there was something about the way certain girls moved through the corridors 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 warmth in your chest that you don’t quite know where to put.

They would pass me between classes, and I followed them with my eyes without meaning to. One in particular, with long hair and a way of laughing that took up far too much space in my head. I never said anything to her. Or to anyone. I simply 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, pursued them, got excited when one paid attention to me. It was easy to tell myself that the thing with girls was just curiosity, something temporary, something that would settle down with time. I did that for years.

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

We were together a little over a year. We fucked many times, and it wasn’t bad. He would get on top of me, spread my legs with his knees, and slide his cock inside slowly at first, then with the concentration of someone doing a job properly, thrusting it all the way in with even, predictable strokes, biting my shoulder when he was about to come. I sucked his cock when he asked me to, on my knees on the rug with his hand on the back of my head setting the rhythm, taking him down my throat until my eyes watered, and he came in my mouth or on my tits, depending on what he felt like, with those short grunts that never changed. Sometimes he finished on my face and left my cheeks sticky with come, looking down at me as if he’d just discovered a new trick. Other times I rode him, moving my hips on top of him until I came with his cock buried inside me, squeezing his pecs with my hands, rubbing my clit with two fingers while he watched my tits bounce, and it worked, and I came, and it was fine. I let him fuck me from behind sometimes too, my face pressed against the pillow while he held my hips, fucking me hard until he unloaded inside me with a longer grunt, and that worked too, and I came then as well. But there was always something left unresolved, a feeling that was difficult to locate, like when a song ends and you feel it was missing something even though you don’t know what. I left him after a winter in which that feeling had become 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 was a little easier than the one before.

Then came five months of nothing in particular. Going out with friends, work, routine. That was when Valeria appeared in my Instagram feed.

***

A mutual friend had tagged her in a photo, and something made me stop and look at her profile: her very short black hair, the way she smiled in pictures as if she were keeping the most interesting part to herself. I followed her without thinking 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 a lesbian and mentioned it without making a big announcement, 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 messaged me to ask if I wanted to get a drink sometime that week. She suggested a bar she knew, with no further details. I replied yes before I finished reading the message.

I arrived ten minutes late because I’d spent far too long deciding what to wear. She was already at the bar with a glass of white wine and that same smile from the pictures, which in person was even harder to decipher. She was taller than I’d 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 something to drink and stayed at the bar for quite a while, talking about work, music, and a series we had both happened to watch that same month. It was easy to talk to her. Too easy for me to keep telling myself that this was only an outing 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 speaking required getting close. We began dancing with a certain distance between us, then with less, and then directly with no distance at all. It was the kind of movement that doesn’t require anyone to make any particular decision; it simply 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 instead of 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 a little, my heart beating in a way that wasn’t exactly fear, although 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 else about it. We kept dancing, kissed a few more times throughout 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 at a nearby apartment and asking if she wanted to come by. She asked if I wanted to go too. I hesitated for three seconds. I said yes.

There were about ten people sitting on the living-room floor, with quiet music playing in the background and half-empty wine bottles scattered around. The mood was peaceful, almost drowsy, the kind of calm nights acquire when it’s already the middle of the night and people have lost the impulse to be entertaining. I sat beside Valeria, talked to the people near me, and drank whatever they offered me.

When it was past eight in the morning, she announced that she couldn’t stay awake any longer and was going to lie down. The people who owned the apartment showed her to a bedroom. Before getting up, she looked at me.

“Are you coming?”

I stood up.

The bedroom was small, with the blinds drawn and a single bed. We lay down without taking our clothes off, although that didn’t last long. We began kissing, and the kiss was different from the one on the dance floor, longer, more intentional, 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 moved down over my hip, and something inside me tensed.

“Stop,” I said.

She stopped at once. No question, no drama. She simply looked at me.

“Okay,” she said. And she meant it.

We fell asleep soon afterward, her arm around my waist and me staring at the ceiling for quite some time, listening to the distant music from the living room, thinking about nothing in particular.

***

A week later I invited her to my place. My parents had gone away for the weekend, and I had the apartment all to myself. I told her to come over, that we could watch something, eat. When I hung up the phone, I stood 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 couch, ate something, and talked with the television playing in the background. At some point during the second half of the movie, I realized I hadn’t looked at the screen in a long time. I was only looking at her: the way she had her legs tucked up on the couch, how she held her glass between her fingers, how a lock of hair fell across her cheek whenever she turned her head.

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

She was surprised. I noticed it in that second of hesitation before she responded. But she did respond. She cupped my face in both hands, and we kissed slowly at first, and then not slowly at all: I slipped my tongue into her mouth and she lightly bit it, sucking on it afterward, and I felt my nipples tighten against my bra just from that. A sudden wetness gathered between my legs, more than I had ever felt from a kiss, and my panties clung to my pussy all at once.

This time I didn’t stop.

We reclined on the couch without stopping touching each other. She climbed on top of me with one leg between mine and began moving slightly, rubbing against my thigh as she kissed me, and I felt the bone of her pelvis pressing against my hip. Her hands slid beneath my T-shirt and grabbed my tits over my bra, squeezing them with her open palms, then slipped underneath, her thumbs scraping my nipples until they became so hard they hurt. She pinched one between her thumb and forefinger, and a moan escaped me against her mouth, which swallowed it whole. I pulled her striped shirt over her head and bit her neck, and she let out a low, hoarse laugh unlike any laugh I had heard from her before.

“I knew you’d let go eventually,” she whispered in my ear. “I saw your face all night. You couldn’t even look at me without squeezing your thighs together.”

I didn’t answer. I undid her jeans and slid my hand all the way down without preamble, finding her pussy through her underwear, and she was soaked. Her panties clung to her lips, and I felt the heat rising against my palm when I squeezed her. I ran my fingers over the fabric, following the cleft of her lips, and felt her swollen clitoris pressing against the cotton. She opened her legs wider, pushing herself against my hand, and bit my lower lip.

“Fuck,” she said, digging her fingers into my back. “Get underneath. Touch it.”

I did as she asked. I slipped my fingers inside her panties and found her naked pussy, slick and burning. I ran my middle finger from top to bottom, feeling her lips spread wide, her clitoris hard as a little pebble, and she let out another fuck, longer and more broken. I slipped the tip of my finger inside her, barely an inch, and watched her close her eyes and bite her lip.

She gently moved my hand away and sat up a little.

“Wait,” she said, her voice thick. “Let me do you first.”

She undressed me slowly, the complete opposite of what my hands had been doing to her, removing my T-shirt and bra with the kind of attentiveness you notice when someone is truly present and not merely following a script. I was naked from the waist up on the couch, my skin covered in goosebumps, and she looked at me for one long second before lowering her head. She licked my nipples one at a time, took them into her mouth, and sucked them hard until a moan escaped me, one I hadn’t known was inside me. She bit one with her teeth and squeezed the other with her hand until I arched my entire back against the couch. I did the same to hers: small, dark, very hard, tugging one with my teeth while squeezing the other with my fingers, and she arched her back and dug her nails into my shoulder. I licked between her tits, ran my tongue over her sternum, and bit her side.

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

She began kissing my neck, then my collarbone, then my chest. She moved lower little by little, unhurried, while I stopped thinking about anything except what I was feeling in that moment. She licked my stomach, bit my hip, and slid her tongue into my navel as if announcing what was coming. When her lips reached my belly, I let out a sudden breath. When she pulled my panties down with her teeth, without using her hands, I closed my eyes and gripped the couch cushion. She pulled them off my ankles and threw them onto the floor without looking where they landed.

She opened my legs with both hands, unhurried, and spent a second looking at my pussy before lowering her mouth. She ran her thumbs over my open lips, spreading them completely, and I felt the cold air against me there and shuddered.

“You’re dripping,” she said, and there was no mockery in it, but something else, almost wonder. “Look at you. You’re soaking wet for me.”

The first lick was slow and long, from bottom to top, her broad, flat tongue drawing a moan from me that sounded far too loud in the silence of the living room. The second was the same, even slower, and I felt her gather all my wetness with her tongue. The third stopped right on my clitoris, and she stayed there, sucking it slowly at first and then with more hunger, her lips closed around it while her tongue worked it from inside. I grabbed the cushion, the back of the couch, her short hair, not knowing where to put my hands, moving my hips against her mouth without being able to control it. When I let go of her hair and looked at her face buried between my legs, her eyes closed and her mouth pressed against my pussy, everything inside me tightened.

She slipped in one finger first, all the way to the hilt, and left it there for a second so I could feel how she filled me. Then she pulled it out and came back with two, more slowly, opening me. She moved them inside me, curled upward, searching for a spot I hadn’t known was so clearly there, and every time she curved them, a dirty word escaped me that I hadn’t known I was going to say. “Fuck me,” I said at one point without meaning to. “Fuck me like that.” And she said nothing, only pushed her fingers deeper and faster, licking me without stopping. She slid them in and out with a wet, obscene sound that filled the entire room, and I felt my own juices running down over my ass and soaking the couch.

“Like that,” I told her in a voice I didn’t recognize. “Deeper, harder, I’m losing my mind.”

She lifted her face for a second, her lips shining with me, her chin wet, and looked up at me with a smile I hadn’t seen before.

“Hold on,” she said. “Not yet.”

And she went down again.

What followed 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 felt my pussy open and dripping wet, her fingers moving in and out with a sound that would have embarrassed me at any other time and now only turned me on more. She added a third finger when I was so wet that all three slipped in at once, stretching me in a way that made me lift my hips from the couch. She sucked my clitoris at the same rhythm with which she fucked me with her fingers, and I felt a wave rising inside me that I wouldn’t have been able to stop even if I’d wanted to. I came with my hips arched and a sound that emerged on its own, without me seeking it, gripping her head against my pussy with both hands, coming in her mouth in long waves that wouldn’t end, feeling my pussy squeeze around her fingers in spasms that shook my entire body. I lay still for a few seconds afterward, staring at the ceiling, my heart pounding hard in my chest and ears, my legs trembling beyond my control.

She didn’t pull her fingers out right away. She left them inside me, still, while she climbed up my body with her mouth shining and kissed me before I had time to say anything. I tasted myself on her lips: salty, thick, still alive. She ran her tongue over my chin, let me suck the fingers that had been inside me, and I put them in my mouth without thinking, tasting myself while looking into her eyes.

“Good?” she asked against my ear.

“Very good,” I managed to say.

I held out my hand and guided her upward until she was beside me, then kissed her again, longer this time. After that I took her hand and led her to my bedroom. We closed the door even though there was no one else around. I pushed her onto the bed and finished pulling off her jeans and panties, then stood there for a moment looking at her naked on my comforter, her short hair mussed and a red mark on her neck that I had made without realizing it. I looked at her hard tits, her flat stomach, the black bush between her legs, and her open thighs, glistening on the insides, wet with her own juices.

I did to her what she had done to me, slowly, learning as I went. I licked her neck, bit one of her tits, and left a hickey just beneath it, following her reactions, the rhythm of her breathing, the way her hips moved without her telling them to. I sucked her nipples one at a time until they became hard as rocks, and she let out a moan that reached my lower belly. I moved down her stomach with my mouth open, feeling her skin grow warmer as I went. I bit her hipbone, ran my tongue along her groin, and kissed the inside of her thigh until she trembled. When I opened her legs with my hands and saw her swollen, glistening pussy, completely wet with her own juices, her clitoris peeking out between her lips, I hesitated for a second. Then I lowered my head and ran my tongue between them, and she gripped the sheets with a moan that made me squeeze my thighs together.

I sucked her clitoris as she had sucked mine, not knowing whether I was doing it right but copying her with everything I remembered. I closed my lips around it, sucked it gently and then harder, and ran the tip of my tongue just beneath it, in the place where I saw her whole body tense. I slipped in one finger first, then two, and she guided me with her hand in my hair, pressing me against her pussy when she liked something, loosening her grip when she wanted me to speed up. She tasted of metal and the sea and something else I couldn’t name, and I didn’t want to stop eating her. I ran my whole tongue over her lips, spread them with my fingers, slipped the tip of my tongue inside, and felt her tighten around it.

“Like that, like that, don’t stop,” I heard her say in a broken voice. “Fuck, like that, bite it a little.”

I ran my teeth carefully over her clitoris, barely grazing it, and she jerked her hips and let out a moan that raised goosebumps over my entire body. I went back to sucking it while moving my fingers inside her faster, searching for the same spot she had found in me, and after a few seconds I felt her pussy tighten around my hand. I didn’t stop. I pressed my tongue against her clitoris and fucked her pussy with my fingers until I felt her tremble all over, until she squeezed my head between her thighs and came with a muffled cry into the pillow, thrusting her hips against my mouth again and again until she went still. I kept licking her slowly as she came down, gathering everything that came from her, feeling her pussy continue to shudder around my fingers with aftershocks that grew softer and softer.

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

We stayed like that for a while, my face resting against her stomach and her fingers in my hair, without saying anything. I felt her breathing beneath me, her stomach rising and falling, still making little spasms that didn’t quite go away. Then she pulled me upward, slipped an arm beneath me, and put her hand between my legs again without warning. She spread my lips with two fingers and began touching my clitoris in slow circles, looking me in the face, not letting me close my eyes.

“Look at me,” she said when I tried to turn my face into the pillow. “I want to see you when you come.”

She slipped two fingers inside me again, then three, fucking me slowly while squeezing my clitoris with her thumb, and made me come a second time like that, legs spread, mouth open, unable to look away from her. I came with a long tremor that wouldn’t end, squeezing her fingers inside me so hard I had trouble breathing, and she didn’t pull them out until I stopped moving. And I returned the favor immediately, straddling her thigh, pressing my open pussy against her skin and rubbing myself shamelessly, leaving her entire thigh sticky, squeezing her tits as I moved. She looked up at me from below, her hands on my hips guiding my rhythm, whispering things in my ear that made me speed up on my own.

“That’s it, ride me, soak my thigh, come all over me.”

And I came again, the third time, rubbing myself against her skin until I climaxed, soaking her completely, not caring about anything. I collapsed on top of her when I finished, strengthless, and she held me against her chest, running her hand over my back while I tried to catch my breath.

When we were done, we lay on the bed without speaking, the window slightly open and the noise of the street filtering in from outside. She ran her hand up and down my arm absentmindedly.

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

“That it took me far too long to do this,” I said.

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

***

We were together for a few months. She had a personality that was difficult to sustain over time, an intensity that at first seemed like confidence and later turned 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 find out anyway.