What Lucía Asked Me for on That Deserted Beach

There are memories one keeps in a drawer one almost never opens, and this is one of them. I’m telling it as it happened, without embellishment, because even today, so many years later, my pulse still races when I write it.

I met Lucía on the first day of university, in the endless enrollment line. She had long curly hair, dark eyes with a slightly slanted edge, and a face so delicate it looked as though it had been drawn with a compass. I had just turned twenty-two; she was twenty. It was enough that she smiled at me over her shoulder for me to lose the thread of what I was saying.

I was lucky enough to make her like me too. Five minutes into talking, we were already teasing each other as if we’d known one another all our lives, and before reaching the desk we’d made plans to get a drink that very afternoon.

Despite being younger, Lucía was the one who had a clear idea of things. I was a bundle of impulses with no direction; she knew exactly what she wanted and at what pace. From the start she was the one leading the way, and I was happy to let myself be guided.

We were devouring each other with kisses on every corner. She let me touch her up to a point, and when I pushed a little further, she stopped me dead with a smile that was half mockery, half promise.

—All in good time —she’d tell me—. Don’t be so impatient, Mateo.

Those first months were a delicious torture. We spent afternoons in her building entrance, in my car inherited from my brother, on park benches when there was no light left. I learned to read her body before her words: when she tensed, when she yielded, when her breathing turned heavy and I knew she’d let me go one step further before stopping me. It was a game she controlled and I accepted, because every centimeter gained felt like a treasure.

I remember one night in a small bar in the center, one of those places with red light and eighties music. We were in a secluded corner where hardly anyone came near. She was wearing a light dress that ended above the knee, and when I slid my hand under the fabric I found her burning hot, her breath coming in little gasps against my neck.

I was about to explode. I felt that dull, aching tension that only went away later, once I was home and alone. But that night something different happened.

—Have you ever done it? —she asked in my ear, almost voiceless.

—No, I already told you. Never. Why are you asking me again?

—Because if I ever find out you were with another woman, you’ll have me to answer to —she said, and bit my earlobe with a tenderness that contradicted the threat.

—No, silly. I’m yours, full stop.

And I meant it. I would have signed whatever she put in front of me.

—Let me take the edge off —she whispered—. I want to do it myself. I told you I didn’t want to go any further yet, but this I do.

Without giving me time to answer, she pulled down my zipper and freed me with a hand that trembled a little. No one could see us in that corner, but the mere idea that they might made everything more intense. I felt her warm palm move slowly, without technique, with an awkward, lovestruck care that was worth more than any skill.

For one instant I thought she was going to bend down, but that would have been asking too much, and I was satisfied with what I had: the most beautiful girl I had ever imagined, stroking me in the half-light while the music beat in the background.

Still, I had the presence of mind to find a breast through her dress and squeeze it slowly, and to leave a mark on her neck with my lips. She answered with a low moan close to my ear, saying things I couldn’t quite make out and didn’t need to understand.

The whole thing was too much. I came apart between her fingers with a force that surprised both of us, and we stood there frozen, laughing softly at the mess, holding each other in that corner like two accomplices in something that belonged only to us.

That night, once home, I couldn’t sleep. I went over every second again and again: the smell of her hair, the exact pressure of her hand, the words she’d whispered in my ear. I understood that everything with her was different, that what I felt bore no resemblance to any of the adolescent rushes I had known. Lucía didn’t give me her body in pieces on a whim; she was handing it over the way someone writes a long letter, knowing the ending will be worth the wait.

***

Two weeks later we escaped to a hidden cove she knew, far from the beach bars and umbrellas. It was May, the sun was bright but the water was still icy, and the beach was completely empty. Not a soul was in sight for miles.

I put on a brave face and went into the sea. I was much colder than I expected, but seeing her lying on the towel, sunbathing like a mermaid, made me want to endure anything.

When I got out of the water, shivering and with blue lips, I found her settling her bikini, adjusting the cups with those lazy movements of someone who doesn’t expect anyone to be looking. And without thinking twice, I went to her and started kissing her all over, my skin still cold and salty.

—You’re freezing —she protested, laughing, without pushing me away.

The sun warmed her skin while my mouth moved over her, and the combination of the two temperatures made her tremble. But what truly gave me wings was her face: her eyes were half-closed, her expression of surrender something I had never seen before, and a rough, soft sound kept rising from her chest every time my lips moved a little lower.

She took my hand to the nape of my neck, not so much to caress me as to guide me. She wanted to set the path. And I, for once, decided not to obey completely: I stretched out the wait in order to prolong the pleasure too.

I explored every corner without rushing, as if I had the whole summer ahead of me. I kissed the curve of her shoulder, the warm hollow of her collarbone, the soft line of her ribs. The sound of the waves swallowed her moans and returned them mixed with the wind, and for a moment I felt that cove existed only for us, that the world had stayed outside that small patch of sand.

I stopped at her navel and, by chance, discovered a switch neither of us knew existed. A jolt ran through her entire body. She began to moan in a new way, desperate, and those moans grew louder as my mouth slowly made its way up to her breasts.

I pushed the bikini fabric aside and devoted myself to them without hurry. I had never had anything so warm or so soft between my lips. She reacted by arching, saying no with her voice while her body screamed for me to keep going, not to stop for anything in the world.

—Please —she gasped at last, her eyes shining—. Down. Go down now.

She didn’t need to repeat it. I moved aside the last piece of fabric and went down to where she’d been asking me to go for ages. I found her so ready, so completely given over, that it took me a second to believe it. I don’t have exact words to describe it, and it wasn’t really a matter of words anyway: it was the hunger of two beginners who had spent months holding back and were finally letting go completely.

I’m convinced Lucía’s cry could be heard on the other side of the cove. She clamped her thighs around me with a force that left me breathless for a moment, and she stayed there trembling, clutching the towel, repeating my name as if it were the only thing she remembered.

***

When she finally calmed down, she pulled me to her and kissed me slowly, without caring what my lips tasted like. We stayed tangled up on the towel, listening to the sea, our skin prickling from the contrast between the sun and the breeze. We didn’t say anything for a long while; there was no need.

A good while later, lying in the sun and catching our breath, she confessed that it had been hundreds of times better than she had imagined. That she wanted one just like it every day. That she wanted it with me and no one else.

And then, looking out at the sea with a new smile, she told me what she had been turning over in her mind for weeks.

—Waiting so long was stupid —she murmured—. I want us to do it. Here. This very morning.

I stopped breathing.

—Are you sure?

—I’ve never been surer of anything —she said—. But first let me get a little more sun. I’ve earned it.

I laughed, still not quite believing it, and let her rest. I sat back against a rock, the Mediterranean behind me and a sandwich half-finished in my hand, watching her relax in the sun with her eyes closed and that smile still intact.

What more could I ask for?

That morning we fulfilled the promise, with no witnesses but the sea. And although life later took us down different roads, even today, whenever I smell salt and feel the strong sun on my skin, I go back to that cove and to that girl who decided, in a quiet voice and in her own way, that the time had come.