What Happened Under the Willow I Told No One

We had been dating for exactly a month when Tomás insisted we celebrate at La Vuelta, the café by the faculty where we had first seen each other. It was the end of March and autumn still hadn’t quite decided to show up. The afternoon slipped in through the windows with a warm gold that had the exact color of things one keeps in order to remember them later.

We ordered what we always did. Him, a double cortado. Me, a cappuccino with cinnamon. We sat at the corner table, the one with the wobbly leg that he had claimed as ours since the third date. I let him believe it.

—Don’t look at me like that —I told him.

—Like what?

—Like that. As if you knew something I don’t know.

Tomás laughed under his breath and ran a hand through his hair. He had been wearing it a little longer since summer, and when he leaned forward it fell over his forehead. He was wearing a white linen shirt with the last button done up wrong. He smelled of glycerin soap, of the citrus cologne he dabbed behind his ears and, above all, of him. It was that scent of his that had worked its way under my skin without asking permission, and that afternoon, for some reason I couldn’t think. I crossed my legs beneath the table and could feel my panties already damp just from having him in front of me.

—You’re weird —he said.

—I’m fine.

I lied badly. Tomás knew me better than I wanted to admit. He stretched an arm across the table and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers brushed my jaw and stayed there, holding onto something neither of us wanted to say yet.

—Lucía.

—What?

—I’m looking at you. Get used to it.

And he kissed me. It wasn’t a café kiss. It started as if it were, soft, almost formal, but after two seconds his tongue was already pressed against mine, finding me all the way to the back of my mouth, sucking my lower lip, and I had forgotten that behind me was the bar couple and to my left two girls with law notes. Under the table his knee slid between my legs and settled right there, against my cunt, and I clamped my thighs around it to keep it there. When I pulled away, my breathing was broken and my tits were standing hard beneath the fabric of my dress.

—Pay —I told him.

—That bad a kiss?

—Pay.

***

We went out into the street and the light was no longer gold but violet. We walked without saying where we were going, holding hands with that awkwardness new couples have, fingers that still haven’t found the exact place in the other’s. Lezama Park was three blocks away. No need to talk it through.

At that hour the runners had already left and the older couples who take the dog out before dinner hadn’t arrived yet. The park was almost empty. We crossed along the path that slopes down toward the big willow, the one with branches so long they make a curtain to the ground. Once, Tomás had taken me there to read and I had joked that it was the perfect place to hide.

That afternoon we weren’t joking.

He went first. He pulled the branches aside with his hand and let me in. Inside, the air was different: cooler, stiller, smelling of freshly cut grass and earth. The light filtering through the leaves cast moving patches over his face, as if he were someone else.

—Come here.

He pressed me against the trunk and looked at me. That look of his that I knew so well, the one he wore when we were in his room with the door shut and his mother still hadn’t left for work. But there, standing against a tree, with no walls, no door, my heart hammering against my ribs, that same look did something else to me.

—Tomás.

—Shh.

He kissed me again. But now it was different. Now he was holding the back of my neck with one hand and gripping my waist with the other as if he didn’t want me to go anywhere. I wasn’t going anywhere. His lips moved down my neck, slowly, biting me now and then, and his hand left my waist to slip under my dress. He stopped it at my thigh.

—Yeah?

Just one word. I nodded with my head against the trunk.

His fingers kept going up. They passed the elastic of my panties and stayed there, touching me over the fabric, not going in yet. I was soaked and he noticed right away.

—Look at how wet you are —he said into my ear, his voice deeper now—. All drenched. And I still haven’t done anything to you.

—Touch me.

—Ask properly.

—Touch my cunt, Tomás. Please.

The willow trunk was digging into my back, rough through my dress. I closed my eyes. All I could hear was my own breathing and, far off, someone whistling at the other end of the park.

He pulled the fabric of my panties aside and ran his fingers along my slit, from bottom to top, slicking over my own wetness. He found my clit and pressed it with the pad of his thumb, in slow circles, while two fingers sank into me all at once. I had to bite his shoulder to keep from making too much noise. His fingers knew how to move. They always had. I had discovered that the second night we spent together, in the narrow bed in his boarding house room, with the light off and the radio on so his roommate wouldn’t hear. But out here, with nothing covering anything, it was different. It was more. He moved inside me with a hooking motion, finding that spot he already knew exactly where it was, and with his thumb he pounded my clit to the same rhythm. I spread my legs wider without realizing it, offering him my cunt, pressing my pelvis against his hand so he could go deeper.

—You’re dripping —he murmured—. Listen.

And it was true. His fingers made that wet, obscene sound, going in and out, and I heard it mixed with my own breathing and it turned me on more than it embarrassed me.

—Show me —he said.

He undid two buttons of my dress and pulled the fabric down. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I never wore one with that dress and, that afternoon, I had left home knowing I wouldn’t be wearing one. Tomás looked at me for a second, with my tits out and my nipples standing up in the cool air, and then his mouth was on my chest, sucking one and then the other, biting my nipple with his teeth until a short moan escaped me. His warm tongue went back and forth, and his hand kept moving inside me, nonstop, unhurried, not letting me breathe. He added a third finger and opened me wider, and I felt my cunt stretching around his hand and I pressed myself against him on my own, wanting more.

I felt my knees might give out.

—Tomás...

—Hold on.

—I can’t.

—Hold on. Come for me. I want to feel it.

But I couldn’t hold on. I came right there, against the trunk, with his mouth on my chest and his fingers inside me and that stranger’s whistle still somewhere far away in the park. I felt the orgasm rise up, my cunt clenching in spasms around his fingers, leaking down his wrist. I dug my nails into his shoulder through the shirt and bit his neck so I wouldn’t scream. He didn’t pull his hand out. He left it inside me, still, feeling me clench and release around him until the shaking passed. Only then did he withdraw his fingers, shining with me, and bring them to his mouth. He sucked them one by one, looking at me.

—Delicious —he said.

I pressed myself to his body like it was the only thing I had left in the world.

***

When I opened my eyes, there was almost no light left. The park was now a mass of shadows and the moon, still low, had appeared between the willow’s branches. Tomás’s face was resting against my neck.

—What was that? —I asked.

—The gardener’s whistle. He closes at nine.

I laughed. I gave him a light punch in the chest.

—How do you know that?

—I worked two summers in park maintenance.

—You’re impossible.

—Yeah.

He pulled away a little and lowered the zipper of his jeans. I heard it; I didn’t look. Then I did look. The moon hit his face and chest just right, where the open shirt let me see the mole he had below his collarbone. He pulled his pants down to his thighs and took his cock out. It was thick, hard, the tip gleaming in the dimness, a thick drop hanging from the glans. I knelt without thinking. The bark of the tree scraped my back as I went down and the damp grass stabbed into my knees.

—Lucía, you don’t have to...

—Shut up.

I took his cock in one hand, weighing it, and ran my tongue from base to tip, collecting that drop. He tasted like himself, salty, dense. I took as much of him into my mouth as I could, all the way until the tip touched the back of my throat and made me tear up. I pulled back slowly, sucking hard, leaving a strand of saliva hanging between my lips and his glans. I took him in again. And again. With both hands now, one at the base and one on his balls, I sucked him with hollowed cheeks, hearing him curse above my head.

—Jesus fucking Christ, Lucía... like that...

He grabbed my hair, not hard, guiding me. I let him. I sucked his cock like it was the only thing I wanted to do in life, my tongue circling the glans every time I came off it, my lips tight around the base. Saliva dripped down my chin, onto my bare tits, and I kept going. I licked his balls too, one by one, my hand moving him nonstop, and he had to brace one hand against the trunk so he wouldn’t fall.

—Stop —he said, voice wrecked—. Stop, I’m about to come.

I let him go with a wet kiss on the tip and stood up. He turned my face with his hand and kissed me hard, tasting himself in my mouth.

—Here? —I asked.

—Here.

He lifted my dress to my waist and tore my panties off in one pull. I heard the fabric give way. I didn’t care. He lifted my left leg, braced it against his hip, and I had to cling to the trunk with both hands to hold myself up. He lined the tip up with the entrance to my cunt and first dragged it all along my slit, wetting himself in me, brushing my clit with the glans until I told him, through clenched teeth, to just put it in already.

—Say it.

—Put it in me.

—What do you want me to put in you?

—Your cock. Put it all the way in me. Now.

He went in slowly, measuring, opening me centimeter by centimeter, and even so a sound escaped me that was neither moan nor complaint. I felt him fill me, felt my cunt stretching around him until it settled over him completely. Tomás covered my mouth with his. That kiss was different from the earlier ones. That kiss he was giving me to keep me quiet.

He started moving. Slowly at first, pulling almost all the way out and pushing himself back in to the hilt, making me feel every vein. Then not so slowly. He drove into me with his hips, striking my bones, and his balls knocked against my ass with every thrust. The bark of the tree scratched my back through the dress and I couldn’t tell him anything because his mouth was still pressed to mine. He only pulled away to look at me. To see the face I was making, how my eyes closed, how they opened when he went deeper than I would have thought possible.

—Lucía...

—Don’t stop.

—I’m not stopping. Look at how I’m eating you. Look.

I lowered my eyes between our bodies and saw the cock going in and out, shining, my own white slick marking the base. It made me dizzy. He drove deeper and a long moan escaped me that he didn’t even get to silence.

—Shut up, dumbass —he laughed into my ear—. They’re going to hear us.

—Let them hear.

He laughed harder and fucked me more fiercely. One of his hands went back to my chest, pinching my nipple between two fingers until it hurt. The other held my thigh, his fingers digging into my flesh. I bit his lower lip, his neck, his ear. I bit him as if I were afraid he was going to leave. And he answered with deeper thrusts, with his hips searching for me, with that silent fury men get when they stop thinking.

—Turn around —he said suddenly.

He slid out of me and turned me against the tree. Now it was me with my face pressed to the trunk, my tits flattened against the bark, my ass pushed back. He pried my legs open with his knee and drove back in with one stroke, all the way to the hilt. I screamed against the wood. He covered my mouth with one hand and fucked me like that, from behind, my head thrown up, biting my nape, every thrust making my tits scrape against the tree.

—That’s how you like it —he panted—. My little slut, that’s how you like it.

I could only nod. I closed my eyes and let him fuck me. His free hand dropped and found my clit again, rubbing it fast, without rhythm, while he speared me from behind. I felt the second one coming. It announced itself in my legs, in my breathing, in the way the willow trunk had stopped hurting and become just another thing, another part of his body.

I came again, harder, clenching his cock inside me in spasms I couldn’t control. My legs shook and he had to hold me by the waist so I wouldn’t collapse into the grass. He didn’t take his hand from my mouth. I bit it.

—Come inside me —I told him as soon as he loosened his grip, without thinking too much—. Inside me, Tomás. Fill me up.

And he did. He turned me again, wanted to see my face, lifted my leg once more and thrust three, four more times, deep, slow, until he went rigid and I felt the first pulse inside me, hot, and then another, and another. He stayed still against me, forehead resting on my shoulder and cock throbbing inside me, emptying himself completely, both of us breathing as if we had run blocks.

When he pulled out, I felt the semen sliding down the inside of my thigh. He watched it run and ran a finger through it, collecting it, and brought it to my mouth. I sucked it off him without taking my eyes from his.

After that we didn’t say anything for a long while. Him against me, me against the tree, the moon now high among the willow branches. Somewhere in the park, the gardener’s whistle sounded again.

—Lucía.

—What?

—I think I’m in love with you.

—Me too.

***

We went back to the café for the things we had forgotten. The waitress looked at us funny. My hair was a mess, I had a scrape on my back that would show up the next day, and my torn panties were in Tomás’s coat pocket. I could still feel the semen sliding inside my thigh with every other step. Tomás had a stain on his neck and a mark from my teeth just below his ear. We paid what was left and left without looking at her.

That was the first time we were together outside a room. After that there were others. But the first stayed there, in March, smelling of willow and earth and his soap, beneath a moon that seemed to have leaned out on purpose to watch us.

That was four years ago. Tomás is still Tomás. When we pass through Lezama I take his hand and, without speaking, we both know where the other is looking.

It’s the confession I never made to my best friend. I’m making it now to whoever reads it.