I Touched Myself in the Shower Thinking About You All Night

It was one of those days when nothing ever quite gets started. Gray light filtered through the window, the phone didn’t ring, and the hours dragged themselves along one after another as if they had lead weights on their feet. I felt the exhaustion lodged in my bones, that thick heaviness that doesn’t come from having done too much, but from not having felt anything. I closed the laptop without saving anything important, took off my shoes, and walked barefoot down the hall toward the bathroom, determined to shake off all the lethargy that had me trapped.

The bathroom was silent. A strange, dense silence, the kind that seems to have a weight of its own. I broke it myself when I pulled the curtain, and the plastic rings squealed against the metal rod. The faucets gleamed in their stillness, waiting. I unbuttoned my blouse slowly, without hurrying, and let my clothes fall to the floor in a soft heap. Out of the corner of my eye, I looked at myself in the mirror, which hadn’t fogged up yet. There I was: hair tied back, shoulders slightly slumped, pale skin crying out for something to wake it up.

I turned on the tap. The water coughed first in the pipes, as if clearing its throat, and then a generous stream came out. I tested it with my fingers until I found the exact temperature—not so hot that it would burn, not so lukewarm that it would be useless. I put one foot in, then the other, and finally my whole body under the cascade. The first blow of water against my back drew a long sigh from me. It was as if someone had loosened a knot I’d been keeping tight all day.

I stayed like that for a good while, motionless, letting the heat climb up my neck and run down my spine. The steam began to take over the walls, the surfaces turned milky, and the mirror disappeared behind a white cloud. That was when I understood I hadn’t come in just to clean myself. I had come looking for something. Something I missed too much, something the water, with its warm persistence, was beginning to awaken without asking my permission.

Because running the shower over every inch of my body always brings the same things back. It brings back those dreams I pretend I don’t have, those urges I keep quiet, that thirst I’m always denying myself in the solitude of my bed. And it brings back your face, Adrián. You’re the one I miss when the water runs over my shoulders. You’re the one I want here, now, with me, filling this bathroom that feels enormous when you’re far away.

Maybe thinking about you isn’t enough. Maybe wanting you isn’t either.

I slowly slid down the tiles until I was sitting on the shower floor, my knees bent and my back against the cold wall. The water kept falling over me, now on my chest and belly, breaking into streams that ran down my skin. I closed my eyes. If I squeezed them shut tightly enough, I could almost feel you. Almost.

Imagining you close doesn’t fill the void. I know that, and still I try. I brought one hand between my open legs, slowly, feeling my way, and the first brush of my own fingers made me arch my back against the tile. It wasn’t enough. It never is when my mind is somewhere else, on another mouth, with other hands. Desire grew larger inside me, more urgent, and I couldn’t understand why it refused to be soothed.

Then I took the handheld showerhead from its holder. I lowered it between my legs and let the pressure of the water fall directly onto my exposed sex. The warm impact tore a moan from me that bounced off the tiles. I clenched my teeth, moved my hand, searched for the exact angle. The force of the stream pushed me toward an edge I couldn’t quite reach, like a wave that rises but never breaks. I felt the yearning growing, relentless, and no matter how insistently the water fell, it couldn’t satisfy it.

And I felt like calling you. Dialing your number with wet fingers and asking you to come, to open the door, to get in here with me in this steam and finish what the memory had begun. But I know you wouldn’t come. I know you can’t. And that was precisely why I let you into my head without resistance, so the lie of having you here could become sharper, more vivid.

***

I imagined you appearing through the steam, fully dressed, looking at me from the doorway with that half smile of yours that always undoes me. You didn’t say anything at first. You only watched me there, sitting, vulnerable, water sliding down my face and my thighs spread shamelessly. I didn’t speak either. I held your gaze and let you see everything, let you understand why I had called for you in silence.

“I knew you’d be waiting for me like this,” you said, and your voice traveled down my back like another hand.

You took off your shirt without hurrying, step by step, just as I had undressed before. The fabric clung to you as you crossed the stream, and you let it fall soaked onto the floor. When you finally got under the water with me, the first contact of your chest against mine made my whole body tremble. You were hot, real, solid in a way my imagination rarely managed, and I clung to that sensation with all my strength so it would last.

You helped me to my feet. You took my face between your hands and kissed me slowly, taking your time, as if we had all night and there were no rushes in the world. The water fell over both of us, united us, slipped over our pressed lips. I felt your tongue, your breath warming mine, and all the day’s exhaustion drained away down the drain along with the water.

And then your mouth began to travel. You kissed my jaw, my neck, the hollow behind my ear that only you know. You moved down my collarbone, over my breasts, lingering over my taut nipples until you made me sigh harder. You continued down my belly, my hips, leaving a hot trail the water couldn’t erase. I buried my fingers in your wet hair and threw my head back, letting myself go.

“Don’t stop,” I begged you, though I knew you had no intention of doing so.

When you reached the path between my legs, I was no longer in control of myself. I braced one hand against the wall so I wouldn’t slip, spread my thighs farther, and surrendered to your mouth as I surrender to these memories: without guilt, without fear, regretting only one thing—that you’re too far away. The water kept falling, the tiles returned the echo of my moans, and for an instant the boundary between what I imagined and what my hand was really doing disappeared completely.

***

I opened my eyes for a second. The handheld showerhead was still there between my fingers, its warm stream pulsing against my most sensitive skin. The entire room was a cloud. I was sitting on the floor again, alone, my knees trembling and my breathing ragged, but in my head you were still there, on top of me, inside me, filling me in the way only you know how.

I imagined you standing before me, without a trace of inhibition, inviting me to feel you. I imagined you pushing slowly, opening a way inside me, and both of us releasing the breath we had been holding at the same time. I followed every movement of yours with my hand and the stream of water, pretending the pressure was you, the heat was you, the rhythm was set by you and not by my own desperation.

We embraced beneath the hot torrent, a reflection of that other torrent escaping fiercely between my legs. We kissed with water running into our mouths, half laughing, panting. And I let myself be swept away, because desire knows nothing of distances or borders, and when someone imposes them on you, what you feel refuses to die and becomes more stubborn, hungrier.

I felt that wave finally beginning to rise, the one that had denied me all afternoon. I squeezed my eyelids shut, called for you under my breath, said your name again and again over the noise of the water. My hips moved on their own, seeking the final push. I imagined your voice in my ear telling me to let go, not to hold back, that I was yours, and that single thought pushed me over the edge.

The orgasm shook my entire body, from my heels to the nape of my neck, a long tremor that folded me in on myself. I let out a hoarse moan that was lost among the steam and the patter of the water. I stayed curled up on the shower floor, hugging my knees, feeling the aftershocks move through me in waves that grew softer and softer, until all that remained was the calm pulsing of the falling water and my breathing slowly returning to normal.

Several minutes passed before I dared to move. The water was already beginning to cool, announcing that the heat was ending. I hung the handheld showerhead back on its holder, let the cascade fall cleanly over my head for a little while longer, and felt my body change, loosened, alive again. The day’s heaviness was gone. In its place remained that bittersweet mixture I know so well: the body’s relief and the emptiness of knowing I had achieved it alone.

I turned off the tap. Silence returned all at once, that dense silence that had greeted me when I came in, only now it was dripping. I wrapped myself in the towel and sat on the edge of the bathtub, my hair still streaming, looking at the fogged walls where my finger, without my realizing it, had drawn a crooked line in the mist.

Today once again I had to be alone. Once again I had to resign myself to missing you, wanting you, inventing you in the steam so my body could endure the waiting. I know that tomorrow you’ll find your way back into my head, my hands, and the water, whenever I need to escape the routine for a while. And I know that someday, hopefully soon, I won’t have to imagine you. Until then, it’s still just me, my desire, and these waters of mine overflowing in your absence.