What Happened in Her Car After a Soda

I’m thirty-seven years old, and not long ago I understood something about myself that for a long time I preferred to ignore: I like sex more than anyone would suspect just looking at me. Not the sex in the dark and in silence that I knew from my marriage, but something else. Something that tickles the nape of my neck when I imagine someone might discover us. I get turned on by the idea of doing it where I shouldn’t, in an open place, exposed, knowing that anyone could walk by.

I never told anyone. I’m writing it now because I need to get it out, and because the afternoon I’m going to tell you about was the first time that fantasy stopped being just a thought.

His name is Adrián, though that isn’t his real name. He’s one of those few friends you keep over the years without anything strange ever happening between the two of you. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a hard face that contrasts with how gentle he is when he speaks. I had always found him attractive, but I kept him in that mental drawer marked “off-limits.” Until that afternoon.

We met to have a drink, with no other plan than to talk. A soda with milk for me, a coffee for him, in a quiet place in an area I almost never go to. We talked about everything: work, people we knew, how our lives had changed. The conversation flowed easily, with the confidence of people who no longer need to impress anyone.

And then, without my really knowing how, the subject changed.

—And since the divorce? —he asked, stirring his coffee—. Have you started seeing anyone again?

—A little —I admitted—. Almost not at all, really.

—Hard to believe.

He said it looking at me in a different way, more slowly, running his eyes over my face until they lingered a second too long on my mouth. I felt heat in my cheeks and lowered my gaze to the glass. Don’t look at me like that, I thought, because you’re going to get exactly what neither of us planned.

We kept talking, but something had been lit. Every sentence carried a second meaning. Every laugh lasted a little longer than it should have. At one point I accidentally brushed his arm when I reached for my glass, and neither of us pulled away right away. It was only a second, but it was enough. We both noticed.

I felt my face go hot and a tingling below my navel that I hadn’t felt in years. Part of me was saying it was madness, that he was my friend, that I shouldn’t. The other part, the one I had just discovered, only wanted to see how far that afternoon would go. And it was that part that won.

When we paid and went out to the parking lot, it was already night and the air was cool. He walked me to his car to drive me back, and once inside, instead of starting the engine, he stayed still with his hands on the wheel.

—Is something wrong? —I asked, though I knew perfectly well what was happening.

He turned toward me. He didn’t say a word. He put a hand on the back of my neck and kissed me, and I kissed him back as if I’d been waiting months for it, because deep down, that was exactly how it was.

***

It was a long, hungry kiss, the kind you don’t plan and that’s why it’s the best. His hands were big and warm, and they started roaming over my clothes, first my back, then my waist, moving slowly upward. The car was parked at the far end, away from the entrance to the place, but not so far as to be safe. The windows were dark, tinted, and even so, under the glow of a streetlamp, you could see inside if someone came close.

That idea, far from stopping me, lit me up in a way I can’t explain. Anyone crossing the parking lot could see us. And I wanted it anyway. I wanted it more because of that.

—You’re going to fog up the windows —I said against his mouth, half joking.

—Even better —he answered, and kissed me again.

His fingers found the buttons of my blouse and undid them one by one, unhurried, while he kissed my neck and the curve of my ear. When he opened it all the way and lowered my bra, the cold air brushed my skin and my whole body broke out in goose bumps. He looked at me for a second, as if asking permission, and I answered by arching toward him.

He leaned down and started kissing my breasts, slowly, teasing them with his tongue, and a moan slipped out of me that I tried to swallow too late. We were in a car, in a public place, and even so I didn’t care. I held his head, pressed him against me, begged him in a low voice not to stop.

—Eat them —I whispered—. They’re yours.

I felt how that sentence affected him. His breathing changed, got heavier, and one of his hands slid down my belly, slipped under the fabric, and found that I was already wet. He let out a low sound, almost one of surprise, and started stroking me with slow circles of his fingers while he kept his mouth on my breasts. I bit my lip to keep from making noise, but the noise escaped me anyway.

***

I brought my hand to his leg and slid it slowly upward until I felt how hard he was beneath his pants. I fumbled with the zipper, with those cravings that make your fingers useless, and I freed him. I bent down without thinking, because it was the only thing I wanted to do in that moment.

I took him into my mouth and heard him hold his breath. I did it slowly at first, feeling every vein beneath my lips, the hot skin, the concentrated taste of desire. I worked him over completely, again and again, with my tongue, with my hands, with that surrender that only appears when you truly enjoy doing it. And I enjoyed it. I listened to him breathe, felt him tense, could tell how badly he wanted to finish, and it drove me crazy.

—Wait —he said suddenly, his voice broken—. Wait or this is over too soon.

I straightened with a smile that was anything but innocent. He yanked the seat back and pulled me toward him. I understood what he wanted. I took off what was left of my clothes from the waist down, my back bent against the car roof, laughing at how absurd and how hot the situation was, and I swung one leg to each side of him.

I stayed like that for a moment, brushing against him, feeling him right at the entrance, looking him in the eyes. I wanted him to wait too. I wanted to stretch out that second in which everything is about to happen and hasn’t happened yet.

—Don’t do this to me —he murmured, gripping my hips.

I sank down slowly. I was so wet that he slid in without effort, centimeter by centimeter, until I felt him all the way inside me. I stayed still for a moment to get used to him, my forehead resting against his, both of us breathing the same hot air. Then I started moving.

***

At first it was slow, a sway of my hips searching for the exact angle, the one that made me close my eyes. He held me with one hand and with the other went back to my breasts, and I leaned in to give them to him, so he could kiss them, bite them, do whatever he wanted with them.

—Don’t stop —I begged—. Keep eating them.

I moved faster and faster. The car rocked a little, the windows were already completely fogged over, and somewhere in a corner of my head I remembered that we were visible to anyone, and that idea pushed me further. I imagined someone walking by, seeing our silhouettes through the glass, and instead of frightening me, it tore a deeper moan out of me.

I felt his heat, his need to come held back, how close he was and how he was holding on for me. That drove me wild. I leaned over his ear and told him things I had never told anyone, things I didn’t even know I had inside me. That I was his. That tonight he could do whatever he wanted with me. That I loved feeling like this, surrendered, desired, dominated.

—That’s it —he said through clenched teeth, setting the rhythm with his hands on my hips—. Don’t stop.

I didn’t stop. I moved until I stopped thinking, until pleasure rose from my center and ran through me in a wave that made me bite his shoulder to keep from screaming. I felt him finish almost at the same time, gripping me hard, driving into me, and we stayed wrapped around each other, trembling, in that tiny car with the fogged windows.

***

It took us a while to talk again. I was laughing to myself, still on top of him, unable to quite believe what had just happened. He was stroking my back with the tips of his fingers, slowly, as if he wanted to memorize it.

—And now what? —I asked, looking for my clothes on the seat.

—Now I take you home —he said with a crooked smile—. And next time we pick a worse place.

I laughed, but inside something shifted. Because right there I understood that it hadn’t been a coincidence or a whim. It was me. This was what I really liked, what I had been keeping quiet for years, what marriage had buried under layers of habit and silence. The risk. The exposure. The idea that anyone could see us and that I wouldn’t care.

We drove back without talking much, his hand on my knee and the city sliding past the window. When I got out in front of my building, I stood for a moment on the sidewalk watching his car drive away.

That was the first time. It wasn’t the last. And though sometimes I wonder whether I should feel guilty for enjoying it so much, the truth is that at thirty-seven I finally know what I want. And I want it all, in the light, with risk, and without apologizing.