What My Best Friend Did to Me in the Dressing Room

It took me weeks to dare to tell this, and my hand still trembles a little as I write it. I’m thirty-six, I’ve been married to Adrián for eight years, and I always considered myself a woman of predictable tastes. Until that July afternoon. Until Renata, my husband’s best friend from university, decided I needed to learn something I didn’t know I was missing.

Renata is forty-one and has a way of taking up space that isn’t taught anywhere. Black hair cut straight to skim her jaw, green eyes that linger too long on you, lips always painted a red that feels like a warning. I’m more understated: brown-haired, waves to mid-back, a body that yoga kept firm, and a small tattoo on the inner side of my thigh, a little iron key only visible when I spread my legs. That day I had no idea who was going to use that key.

The summer was unbearable. Renata came to pick me up in her convertible, top down and hot wind tangling her hair. My white cotton dress clung to my body like a second skin, and she noticed it, of course she noticed it, because she looked at my legs at every traffic light and made no effort to hide it.

—You need new lingerie —she told me, as if delivering a medical diagnosis—. Something that reminds you you’re still in there underneath.

I laughed, nervously, not quite sure what we were laughing about.

***

The lingerie shop was small and the air conditioning hit like a bucket of ice. I picked out a black set: a half-cup bra, a thong with thin straps, a garter belt. Renata put it in my hands without asking, decisive, and gently pushed me toward the fitting room.

I tried it on. I looked at myself in the mirror and, for the first time in a long while, I liked what I saw. I stepped out for a moment, just to look at myself in the big mirror, turning slowly.

—How do I look? —I asked.

Renata got up from the bench without hurrying. She looked me up and down with those green eyes and took her time answering, just enough for the silence to start to weigh.

—You look like trouble —she said softly—. Did you know that? Or does nobody tell you that anymore?

The question hurt because it was true. Adrián and I loved each other, but it had been a long time since anyone looked at me as if it were the first time. I swallowed and didn’t know what to answer.

Renata followed me inside the fitting room and pulled the curtain shut with a firm gesture. Suddenly the two of us were in that tiny cubicle, her vanilla perfume mixing with the cold air-conditioning, and I didn’t pull away.

—What are you doing? —I whispered.

—Nothing you don’t want —she said, pressing against my back.

I felt the heat of her body against mine, her hands settling on my hips, her breath on my neck. She turned me toward the mirror so I could see myself, so the two of us could see what was happening.

—Look at yourself —she ordered—. You need to learn to look at yourself like that.

She didn’t kiss me right away. First she brushed my neck with her lips, slowly, letting anticipation run through me completely. I was breathing harder and harder. When her fingers slid down my stomach and stopped at the edge of my thong, I was already lost.

—Tell me to stop —she murmured against my ear—. One word and I’m out.

I didn’t say that word. I said the opposite.

—Don’t stop.

Her fingers slipped under the fabric and found me soaking wet. She let out a low, approving sound and began to stroke me with calculated slowness, drawing exact circles while her other hand freed one breast from the bra. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t make a sound. Behind the curtain, barely a meter away, a sales assistant was humming.

—Quiet —Renata warned me, smiling against my skin—. That makes it better.

And she was right. Knowing anyone could draw back the curtain made every touch electric. She held me against her, her fingers moving in and out, her thumb never leaving that exact spot, and when I came she clapped her palm over my mouth to smother my cry. I unraveled against her body, trembling, my legs close to giving out, while she held me and kissed my shoulder as if she had just given me a gift.

When I caught my breath, she turned me and kissed me on the mouth, slow and deep, with a taste that was mine.

—First lesson —she said—. Now we’re going to your place. I want Adrián to see what you’ve become this afternoon.

***

Adrián opened the door for us in a T-shirt, just back from the workshop. He’s a carpenter, thirty-eight years old, with forearms the work has shaped better than any gym ever could. On his chest he has a small compass tattoo, a youthful whim. He looked at me, looked at Renata, and knew something had changed by the way the two of us were looking at him.

—What are you two up to? —he asked, half joking, half on guard.

I took off my dress in the entryway and stood in front of him in the black set I’d been wearing since the shop.

—Your best friend did things to me in a fitting room —I said, surprised by my own boldness—. And now I want you to see us. To touch us. The three of us.

I saw him swallow. I saw his body react before his mind decided anything. Renata stepped up to him, put a hand on his chest, right over the compass, and spoke into his ear loud enough for me to hear.

—Your wife has been wasted all these years —she told him—. Let’s fix that together.

Adrián looked for me with his eyes, asking permission. I nodded. And that was all.

We went to the bedroom, where the late-afternoon light came in gold through the blinds and painted everything honey-colored. I pushed Adrián onto the bed and took his clothes off myself, with a new urgency, while Renata undressed to one side without hurrying, letting us watch her.

—Look closely —I told her, kneeling between my husband’s legs—. This is what you’ve been imagining for years.

I took him in my mouth slowly, looking at her while I did it. Renata came over, knelt beside me, and learned my rhythm, our two tongues meeting over Adrián’s skin, his fingers tangled in my hair and his breathing ragged. I had never seen him like that, on the edge of something he had never even asked for.

—Slowly —I whispered to Renata—. Enjoy it. There’s no rush at all.

She obeyed me, and watching her discover it, her of all people, the one who always controlled everything, lit me up in a way I hadn’t expected.

***

I got on all fours on the bed, the key tattoo gleaming with sweat on my thigh, and I asked Adrián to come. He entered me in one thrust, all the way, and I let out a long moan I no longer bothered to hold back. Every thrust tore a new sound from me. Renata lay down in front of me, open, offering herself, and I lowered my head and tasted her for the first time while my husband fucked me from behind.

It was a chain of pleasure that never stopped: him inside me, me with my mouth on her, her fingers in my hair guiding me, her voice telling me not to stop. The whole room smelled of sweat and desire and something forbidden we could no longer take back.

—Now her —I told Adrián, pulling away with my breath coming in gasps—. I want to see you with her. I want to watch.

Renata turned her back to him and lowered herself slowly, centimeter by centimeter, eyes closed and mouth open in a deep moan. I moved in front of her, held her gaze, stroked her breasts as she moved.

—Like this —I murmured, giving her back her own words—. Learn to look at yourself like this.

She laughed between gasps, and that laugh amid the pleasure was the most intimate thing about the whole afternoon. I kissed her while she rode my husband, my hand between her legs setting the pace, until I felt her go tight all over and break against me with a tremor that shook me too.

Adrián held out as long as he could. When he couldn’t anymore, he looked at me, always at me, searching for the final word.

—Come here —I told him, and lay down beside him—. Finish with me. Let her watch now.

He entered me again and Renata settled to one side, one hand on my chest and the other between my legs, whispering things in my ear that pushed me to the brink. I came with her name and his mixed in my mouth, my body arched, and I felt him spill inside me a second later, with a hoarse sound against my neck.

***

The three of us stayed sprawled across the rumpled sheets, sweaty, laughing softly in sheer amazement. Adrián had one arm under my neck and the other around Renata’s waist. No one spoke about what had just happened, as if words might break it.

Renata was the first to move. She propped herself on one elbow, brushed a strand of hair from my face, and kissed me with a tenderness I hadn’t known in her.

—I told you —she murmured—. She was still in there underneath.

Adrián reached for my hand and squeezed it, and in that gesture I understood that he wasn’t angry, or jealous, or afraid. He was, perhaps for the first time in years, really looking at me.

—What now? —I asked out loud, not addressing either of them.

Renata got up, gathered her clothes from the floor, and dressed without hurrying, with the same confidence with which she had undressed me in the fitting room. At the bedroom door she turned around.

—Now —she said— you’ll take a very long time to forget this afternoon. And next time, you decide it yourselves.

She left. Adrián and I stayed in silence, looking at each other, knowing that something had opened between us that we weren’t going to close again. I don’t regret it. I’m telling it because sometimes you need someone from outside to remind you what you’re capable of feeling. Renata lent me that key that afternoon. What we did with it, that was our business.