The Secret I Shared with My Roommate

What I’m going to tell you I kept to myself for months, and even now my face burns as I write it. But whoever reads this will understand why I needed to get it out of me. It’s my first year away from home, told exactly as I lived it, even if I’ve changed a few names out of modesty.

My name is Carla. Wavy brown hair, freckles that come out in the sun, the kind of body that goes running every morning along the river. I’m nineteen, and last autumn I moved into a shared flat in Ruzafa, that neighborhood in Valencia that isn’t so working-class anymore but still smells like bakeries and narrow streets. The building was old, with a yellowed façade, an elevator that took forever, and a lobby that always smelled like the fried-food place downstairs.

My parents live in Paterna. My mother is an administrator at an insurance mutual, quiet and obsessed with making sure I eat vegetables. My father repairs cars, his hands always black, calls me “princess,” and gets nervous if I mention I’m seeing someone. I have a sister three years younger than me who sends me memes all day long.

On the first day of Journalism class I walked into the lecture hall smelling like burnt coffee. I sat in the third row because I hate the front. Next to me a girl dropped down with a pastel pink backpack and headphones hanging around her neck.

Her name was Noelia. Same age as me, but she looked like she was from another planet. Very long straight black hair, beach-brown skin, huge green eyes, full lips with a clear shine, and a dancer’s body: narrow waist, hips that seemed to move on their own, high breasts that challenged the cropped T-shirt she wore that day. A tiny navel piercing peeked out whenever she stretched.

—Jesus, it’s so hot in here —she said, fanning herself with the timetable.

I smiled. She smelled like vanilla and something floral and expensive.

—I’m Carla.

—Noelia. Are you dead on your feet too, or is it just me?

We spent the whole hour messaging each other under the desk. By the time we left, we’d already made plans to go for a drink after the last class. A week later, when I found out the middle room in my flat was free, she was the one who took it.

***

The flat was small: three bedrooms and a living room with a tiny balcony overlooking a courtyard full of clotheslines and cats. I slept at the back, Noelia in the middle room, the brightest one, and the third room was rented by an exchange student who hardly ever showed up. We paid just enough and took turns cleaning the bathroom.

The first few weeks were a whirlwind. Classes in the morning, library in the afternoon, beers on some terrace at sunset. Noelia was seeing a guy from second year, some Iván, tall and tattooed, who brought him back to the flat some nights. I heard them through the thin wall. She moaned shamelessly, and I’d lie still in bed, my hand inside the shorts of my pajamas, listening, imagining.

I hooked up more easily. An exchange student kissed me all the way up my neck in the bathroom of a bar one October night. Another, a classmate, took me back to his residence hall one rainy afternoon. I’d return to the flat with my hair messed up, and Noelia would sniff my neck and laugh.

—You smell like you want it, you little slut —she’d say.

I’d blush, but I loved it.

***

One November night, after a horrible exam, we were alone in the living room. A bottle of cheap wine, some series on in the background that we weren’t even watching, both of us in oversized T-shirts and little else, our legs tangled together without us even noticing.

Noelia looked at me steadily.

—Have you ever been with a girl?

I shook my head, but my heart was pounding in my throat.

—I have. In high school, with a friend. It really did it for me.

She moved closer. Her breath tasted of white wine and mint.

—Want to try?

I didn’t answer with words. I leaned in and kissed her. Soft lips, a shy tongue at first and then a hungry one. She tasted sweet. She slipped her hand under my T-shirt and pinched a nipple until I moaned against her mouth. I slowly pulled down her lace underwear and parted her legs. She was already wet, her skin burning.

—Touch me —she whispered.

I slid two fingers inside her slowly. She arched, grabbed my hair, and kissed me harder while I set the rhythm. She took off my T-shirt, sucked my breast as if she were starving, bit gently. Then she lowered her head, opened my legs, and licked me slowly, tormenting me, until I came trembling with her fingers inside me and her mouth never stopping. Then I climbed on top, rubbed my sex against hers, hot wet skin, and we came almost at the same time, looking into each other’s eyes.

***

Since that night everything changed, but without drama. We kept going out with guys when we felt like it, and sometimes the other would watch from the half-open door. Other nights it was just the two of us: she’d put me on all fours on her bed and whisper things in my ear that made me push back, begging for more.

At Christmas I went back to Paterna. My mother asked me about some marks on my neck and I lied, said it was a guy. My father grunted something about being careful. Noelia went to Sagunto, where her mother made her home-cooked food and asked if she already had a boyfriend; Noelia laughed and said she had someone special. We came back in January closer than ever. The flat still smelled of coffee, street, and now us too.

***

February arrived like a cold slap. The wind slipped through the cracks and, if we didn’t turn the heating on, the temperature dropped like a stone. But the neighborhood was starting to light up: it was winter-festival season, streets full of lights and terraces despite the cold, and the two of us had bodies charged with desire after the holidays.

On the first weekend we went out alone, thick coats over skimpy clothes because we didn’t care about the cold if it was for the thrill of it. We walked among light installations that changed color over the façades, and we kissed on every dark corner, tongues slow, hands slipping under our clothes. In a narrow tunnel of neon lights, with people only a few meters away, Noelia pushed me against the wall.

—Take off your underwear here —she whispered, her voice husky.

I laughed nervously, looked around. But I did as she said. The cold air hit me when she slid her hand between my legs, two fingers straight in, moving slowly while she kissed my neck.

—You love being seen, don’t you?

I nodded, biting my lip so I wouldn’t scream. Someone passed close by and looked at us oddly, but kept walking. I came quickly, trembling against her hand, the lights flickering behind my closed eyelids.

We went back to the flat soaked through with rain and with each other. We took off our clothes in the hallway, leaving a trail of coats and boots, and fell onto her bed, the big one, against the courtyard window. That night was long and slow, and we fell asleep wrapped around each other, still breathing hard.

***

Carnival filled the neighborhood with costumes and improvised parties. One night we ended up at a themed place near the center. Me as a little devil, Noelia as a fallen angel, dancing pressed together among sweaty bodies. A guy dressed as a pirate came over, tall, confident smile, and bought us drinks. The three of us ended up in a corner off to the side: he kissed my neck while Noelia licked my breasts, then they switched. We came almost at the same time, him carefully and with protection, us with one another’s hands. We went home at dawn and showered together, soap sliding over us, slow kisses under the hot water.

At university things got intense: midterms, group projects late into the night. One afternoon, at a secluded table in the library, Noelia was wearing a short skirt and nothing underneath, according to what she whispered in my ear. She slipped her hand under the table and fingered me slowly while I pretended to read my notes, covering my mouth so I wouldn’t moan, my legs trembling in silence.

***

March and April passed in a blur of assignments, study nights, and escapes to bars where we kissed without hiding it. On Sant Jordi we wandered among stalls of novels and roses. Noelia gave me a poetry book with her notes in it and a white rose; I gave her a pendant with a tiny key and told her it was the key to my body. We ended the day in a tapas wine cellar, tipsy on vermouth, and went back to the flat to love each other slowly on top of a stack of open books, smelling of paper and crushed roses.

In May a third one appeared. Her name was Sandra, twenty years old, Noelia’s classmate in another subject. Petite, very short blond hair, light eyes, freckles across her face and chest, a slender body with soft curves. She came from a town in the interior and had been out as bisexual since high school. She had seen us kiss in a hallway and, instead of looking away, she smiled and said it seemed beautiful to her.

One afternoon we invited her to the flat. We started with beers on the balcony, talking about boys, girls, fantasies. Sandra confessed that the idea of a threesome with a steady couple turned her on. Noelia and I looked at each other. I kissed her first, then Sandra, and the three of us ended up in the living room, taking turns with hands and mouths until we came in a chain: first Sandra trembling, then Noelia, and then I was watching them until I came too. From then on she joined us some nights, never fixed, but always with some new idea under her arm.

***

June arrived like a fire. Sticky heat, nights without sleep because of final exams. When classes ended we celebrated at a party by the port, taking advantage of the fact that the city had been taken over by music. The three of us went, dressed in almost nothing, sweat gleaming on our skin while the speakers pounded over the sand.

There we met Gonzalo. Forty-five years old, divorced, architect, two children who lived with his ex-wife. Tall, short hair gray at the temples, trimmed beard, a calm smile that contrasted with the chaos of the party. He bought us drinks because, he said, we looked like the ones having the best time. He smelled of expensive cologne and sea air. The four of us ended up in a quiet area, near the water.

—Want to come up for the last one and take it a bit easier? —he suggested, unhurried.

We went up. It started with kisses shared around, hands everywhere, and the four of us ended up tangled in the dim light, always careful and always with protection. He took me slowly at first and hard after that, while Noelia and Sandra kissed each other watching me and touching themselves. When it was all over, he asked us to finish together in front of him, and we did, the three of us at once. He wasn’t possessive; he just left us his number in case we ever wanted to do it again, no strings attached.

***

The term ended in mid-June. I passed by the skin of my teeth. I went back to Paterna for a few days: my mother hugged me tight, my father grunted a “well done, princess,” my sister asked for gossip and I gave her a very watered-down version. Noelia went to Sagunto, Sandra stayed on as a waitress for the summer.

Noelia and I stayed in the flat one more week, before the lease ended. We said goodbye slowly, room by room, laughing and crying a little at the same time.

Almost nine months later, I can still smell her vanilla on my fingers some nights. She writes to me from Sagunto, messages that make me smile alone in bed. Sandra sends voice notes saying there’ll be more next term. And Gonzalo wrote yesterday, in case we’re around the city this summer.

The first year ended. But this, what I discovered about myself, I think has only just begun.