What That Stranger Wrote to Me in the Rain

I know I left another story halfway through, but I need to tell what happened to me a few days ago before I regret it and delete everything. I still have a hard time believing it was me who did what I did.

The weather in my city is treacherous. That afternoon it was sticky-hot, the kind of heat that convinces you it’s going to stay clear, so I went out to do some shopping wearing a thin top and shorts, nothing more. I trusted the sun and the sun betrayed me. When I was almost done with my errand, the sky shut down all at once and it started raining so hard you couldn’t even see the sidewalk across the street.

I ran aimlessly looking for somewhere to hide and ended up under the awning of a place I knew by sight. It was a small neighborhood shop I used to walk past, and many times I had greeted the man who ran it. I pushed the door open and went in dripping, apologizing with my eyes.

He’s a man in his fifties, serious, the kind who speaks little. All that time we had never gone beyond a “good afternoon” or a “how are you?” out of pure courtesy, mostly because I’m chatty and say hello to everyone. But that afternoon we were alone, it was almost closing time, and the rain left us with no choice but to talk.

—Looks like the storm really caught you —he said from behind the counter.

—Honestly, I didn’t think it would rain. With how hot it was… I should have known —I replied, water dripping onto his floor.

—You can never tell with weather like this. And don’t you have anything else to put on? You’re soaked through.

He said it while slowly running his gaze over me from head to toe. And it didn’t bother me. The top and shorts had stuck to my body like a second skin, outlining everything, and I knew perfectly well that that morning, in my hurry and the heat, I hadn’t put on any underwear. I felt his eyes pause a second too long and something lit up in my stomach.

—I only went out to buy a couple of things and it caught me by surprise —I said—. Sorry I’m getting your floor all wet.

—Don’t worry about that. I don’t mind having you here at all. By the way, after so many greetings, I don’t think we’ve ever introduced ourselves.

—We know each other, but we’ve never been introduced. Nice to meet you, my name is Renata. And you?

He got up from the bench behind the counter and walked to the middle of the shop to shake my hand. Esteban, he said, and said he was glad to finally know my name. Up close he smelled like cold tobacco and cheap cologne, and I realized he was taller than he had seemed from behind the counter.

—If you need to close, I can leave no problem —I offered.

—Don’t even think about going out in that rain. I have to pull the shutter down because it’s closing time, but you can stay as long as you want.

—All right. I’m waiting a few minutes; I already ordered a taxi.

He lowered the metal shutter halfway and the sound of the rain became more muffled, more intimate. When I got the notification that the car was on its way, he told me that, as a precaution, he’d like to have my number, so he’d know if I made it home safely. It struck me as such an old-fashioned gentleman’s gesture that I gave it to him without thinking.

***

The taxi dropped me off at my building still dripping. I had barely taken off my shoes when his message arrived. A terse “hello, I’m assuming you know who I am.”

“Hello, yes, sir,” I replied.

“And how’s it going? Did you get home okay?”

“Fine. Wet, but fine,” I wrote, and laughed to myself at my own joke.

“I hope you don’t mind, but you left me wet too.”

I stared at the screen. Did I read that right?

“Excuse me?” I answered, more out of reflex than anger.

“Well, yes. It’s not every day a woman as beautiful as you walks into my shop all wet, with her clothes outlining everything. Your nipples were showing hard, and I swear it was hard not to keep looking at them.”

I should have been outraged. I should have blocked the number and forgotten all about him. Instead, I felt heat climbing up my neck and a tingling between my legs that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I went a while without answering, imagining that serious man saying those things to me, wondering what he would be like under that shirt buttoned all the way to the throat.

“I was only writing to let you know I got home,” I finally answered, trying to sound formal.

“Did I make you uncomfortable with what I said? I hope you don’t mind a man like me talking to you that way. It’s just that I liked very much what I saw.”

“What did you like?”

“Your breasts. How beautiful your nipples looked outlined under that wet fabric.”

“Nothing else?” I wrote, and when I hit send my heart was pounding in my throat.

“And everything else. How that shorts fit you. I’m not going to lie.”

By then I was already lying in bed, my clothes still damp and my hand resting over my stomach, not daring to lower it. I didn’t care how shameless he was being. On the contrary: I wanted more, I wanted him to be more direct, dirtier, to say out loud what I didn’t even dare think.

“Don’t say those things,” I wrote, though it was a lie.

“Why? Isn’t it the truth?”

“Yes, but you’re turning me on too much.”

“Oh, really? Then let me see you.”

“What do you want me to show you?” I replied, and as I did I was already pulling the top off over my head.

***

What came after that is hard for me to write, but it’s exactly what I need to get out of me.

I sent him a photo. Just my breasts, the nipples indeed hard, partly from the cold of the wet clothes and partly from everything else. His reply took forever—an eternity of seconds.

“I knew they’d be perfect. They make you want to bite them slowly. But tell me one thing, Renata… have you ever explored further?”

“Further than what?” I asked, though I suspected the answer.

“Have you ever touched yourself back there? Put anything in there?”

I went cold. It was something I had thought about sometimes, alone, late at night, but had never dared to try. A curiosity I always shut down before it could become real.

“Never,” I admitted. “I’ve never put anything in there.”

“I like that even more. I’d love to be the one to guide you the first time, even if it’s from here. Do you trust me?”

I don’t know what it was about that man, that stranger I barely knew beyond greetings, but I told him yes. Something about the way he gave orders completely undid me. I always knew I had a submissive streak; I’d never found anyone who touched it so easily.

“Start slowly,” he wrote. “Moisten one finger and rest it there, don’t put it in yet. Just feel it. It doesn’t have to hurt if you take it slow.”

I did as he said. I got rid of the shorts, opened my legs in the darkness of my room, and followed each one of his instructions as if he were dictating them in my ear. The first time the tip of my finger pressed there, a strange current ran through me. It wasn’t exactly pleasure, but it wasn’t unpleasant either. It was new, forbidden, mine.

“I’m doing it,” I wrote, my breathing uneven.

“Good girl. Now just the tip, nothing more. I want you to get used to feeling open. Tell me how it feels.”

“Weird,” I confessed. “But I like it. I didn’t expect to like it.”

“That’s how worthwhile things are. The ones that scare you a little. Now take a deep breath and push a little more, slowly, only as far as it doesn’t hurt.”

I obeyed. I pushed a little more and felt my own body give way, opening a millimeter at a time around my finger. My heart was hammering against my chest. I had the phone in one hand, trembling, waiting for the next order as if my pleasure depended entirely on it.

“I did it. It went in a little more,” I wrote to him.

“What a woman. I knew there was a naughty one hiding behind that sweet little shop smile. Does it hurt?”

“A little, when I try more. But I don’t want to stop.”

“Then don’t stop. But do it properly. I don’t want you hurting yourself. Go slowly and enjoy it. This is only the beginning.”

I spent a long while like that, in my dark room, following the rhythm he set for me through the screen. When I tried to rush things, the burning made me stop, and I confessed it to him like a child breaking a rule.

“It hurt. I had to stop,” I wrote, almost embarrassed.

“That’s perfect,” he answered right away. “For a first time, you did more than enough. This isn’t a race. Tomorrow, when you’re calm, I want you to try again, alone, slowly. And the day after tomorrow you tell me how it went.”

“And if it hurts again?”

“Then stop and leave it for another day. But something tells me it’ll get easier each time. And that you’re going to start seeking it out on your own.”

He was right, and that was what kept turning over in my head the most. That a man I had barely greeted for months had read me so quickly, that on a rainy afternoon he had found something I had hidden from myself for years.

“Did you like it?” he asked me at the end, almost tenderly.

“If I’m honest, yes,” I replied. “It hurts, but it also feels incredible. I never thought I’d say that.”

“That’s my naughty girl. Rest. Tomorrow we keep going.”

***

I turned off my phone and lay staring at the ceiling, my body still vibrating and a smile I couldn’t get rid of on my face. Outside it was still raining, softly now, almost like an accompaniment. I thought about how absurd it all was: going out to buy groceries, getting soaked, taking shelter from the storm, and coming home a different person.

The truth is, this only happened to me a few days ago, so I still don’t know how it’s going to end. I know I spoke to Esteban again. I know it’s become a habit, every night before going to sleep, to give myself a few minutes of that new curiosity he uncovered. And I know that the next time the rain catches me in the street, I’m not going to run for shelter just anywhere.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell you how everything continued. For now, I just needed to write it down and admit, even if only here, that that soaked afternoon was the best thing that’s happened to me in a very long time.