I Went Back Alone to the Beach Where I Met Her

I didn’t go to the beach to swim. I went because it had been three months since I’d heard anything from her and because, in the absence of her body, I was left with the place where I’d had it last. Sometimes you go back to places the way you reopen a letter you already know by heart.

I arrived at night, with summer still clinging to my skin. The sand was holding onto the day’s heat and the sea sounded closer than it was, that strange thing water does in the dark: it seems to breathe right beside you.

I wasn’t afraid. Places in the dark never scared me, and this one less than any other. I had kissed her here for the first time, against the cold wood of the lifeguard station, while she laughed and told me someone was going to see us.

—Let them see us —I’d replied then.

That night, though, there was no one. Just me, the shoreline, and a name I no longer dared say out loud. I’ll call her Mariela, though that wasn’t her name. Some names wear out from being repeated too many times inside your head.

I walked to the line where the water leaves the foam and sat down. And I started remembering.

***

The first thing that always came back were her tits. Not out of cheap lust, but because they were the first thing she let me touch, as if she were testing me with them before opening up the rest. They had an exact weight in my hand, no more and no less, and her nipples would harden with such ease that even she was embarrassed by it.

—Don’t look at me like that —she’d say, covering herself with her arm.

—I’ll look at you however I want —I’d answer, and I’d slowly move her arm aside to suck on them one after the other, biting her nipple until that short little moan slipped out of her and made my cock hard as a rock.

I remembered the first time we were really together, in my apartment, with the window open and the city humming below. I undressed her without rushing, even though my hands were trembling inside. I pulled her panties down a centimeter at a time with my teeth, and when I opened her legs she was already soaked, her cunt gleaming in the lamp light. I ran my tongue all the way from bottom to top, from her ass to her clit, and she jolted and grabbed my hair.

—There, you motherfucker, there —she told me, pressing my face against her cunt.

I ate her slowly, sucking her lips, slipping my tongue deep inside her, tracing circles on her clit until her thighs started trembling. She came in my mouth with a hoarse cry, squeezing my head between her legs until I was almost choking, and she was still shaking when she climbed on top of me and took my cock in both hands.

—Now it’s my turn —she said, and started sucking me off with a fury I’d never seen from her before.

That was what I liked most about Mariela: you never knew who was going to be in charge. She sucked my cock all the way down, to the root, until she made me touch her uvula, her eyes locked on mine. She ran her tongue over my balls, took me back into her mouth, pulled me out with an obscene wet sound, and smiled. When I was right on the edge she pulled off me all at once, straddled me, and slid herself down onto it, slowly, staring straight at me while I felt her descend around my tight cunt.

—Perfect —she whispered when she had all of me inside.

And she started riding me. At first slowly, planting her hands on my chest, moving her hips in circles, letting her cunt adjust to my cock. Then harder, bouncing on top of me, her tits rising and falling in front of my face. I grabbed her ass with both hands and helped her move, feeling everything inside her tighten every time I buried myself to the hilt. I turned her over without pulling out and pinned her to the mattress, face down, holding her by the hair while I fucked her from behind with all the strength I had. Her ass bounced against my pelvis with a wet flesh sound, she bit the pillow, and I didn’t let up.

—Harder —she begged me—. Break me.

I broke her. I came inside her with one final thrust that nearly threw her off the bed, emptying myself completely while she came too, squeezing my cock with those spasms that would seize her at the end and that I felt as if she were milking me dry.

We’d had perfect fucks. That was the word we both used, half joking, when something turned out so well it was funny. “Perfect,” she’d say in that rough voice of hers, still out of breath, with my cum running down her thighs, and she’d laugh against my neck.

I also remembered the dead afternoons, the ones that never make it into any story because nothing spectacular happens. Her reading upside down on my bed, naked, me running my fingertips down her back until her skin prickled, sliding lower to slip one finger between her ass cheeks, stroking her ass, then her cunt already wet without my having barely touched her. The way she would turn over without warning, grab my hand, and shove it all the way inside herself, and all of a sudden the book was on the floor and she was coming on my fingers before I’d even managed to unbutton my pants. It was in those unplanned moments that we worked best, when desire showed up without either of us summoning it.

That was what I really missed, sitting in the sand. Not just the sex. The way the sex was only the tip of something much bigger that had slipped through our fingers without either of us ever fully understanding how.

And there were more missing. That was what hurt me, sitting in the sand: that there were so many more fucks missing and maybe they would never come.

***

I wondered what it would have been like to fuck there, in the sea, with her. We never worked up the nerve. We talked about it once, laughing, with our feet in the water, but there was always someone around, it was always daytime, the courage was always missing at the exact right moment.

And then, sitting alone in the dark, I imagined it.

I imagined her walking into the water ahead of me, naked, glancing over her shoulder to make sure I was following. The moon drew the line of her back, the curve of her waist, the round ass moving with every step. The water crept up her thighs and she kept walking, unhurried, knowing perfectly well what she was doing to me.

I caught up with her when the water reached our waists. I hugged her from behind and felt all her wet skin against mine, the cold of the sea and her heat mixed together in the same second. I kissed her salty neck, bit her shoulder, and she threw her head back, resting it against my chest while I grabbed her tits with both hands and squeezed her hard nipples until she moaned. I slid one hand over her stomach, down, pried open her cunt with two fingers and slipped them inside. It was hot in there, even in the cold water, hotter than the sea. I moved them slowly while my other hand kept squeezing her tits, and she started rocking against my hand, wanting more.

—See? —she’d say, her voice thick—. The world isn’t going to fall apart.

I’d turn her toward me and kiss her for real, with that tongue of hers seeking mine and rubbing against it, eager, impatient. Her tits floated slightly, heavy and light at once, her nipples dark and erect, and I’d lower my head and suck one until she arched. She’d reach for my cock under the water, find it hard, take it in her hand and start working it slowly, squeezing and letting go, while she looked me in the eyes with that smile of hers.

—Look what I’ve got here —she’d tell me, squeezing it harder—. All mine.

The water held us up. She’d wrap her legs around my waist and I’d hold her by the ass, one finger barely slipping into her asshole, and for a moment there was no up or down, only the sway of the sea pushing us against each other. I felt her open cunt brushing the tip of my cock, searching for me, slipping, and the two of us played at enduring, at not going in yet, at stretching out that moment when desire is almost unbearable. I’d run the head of my cock along the lips of her cunt, up and down, without entering her, and she’d dig her nails into my shoulders.

—Now —she’d whisper in my ear, the word sounding at once like an order and a plea—. Put it in already, you motherfucker, now.

And I’d slide it in. All the way, in one upward thrust, feeling her cunt open around my cock and wrap itself around all of me. She’d let out a cry that swallowed the sea and start moving on top of me, bracing herself on my shoulders, rising and falling with the sway of the water. I’d grab her ass with both hands and help her, fucking her from below, feeling how each thrust pulled a fresh moan out of her. The water splashed between us, her tits bounced in front of my mouth and I’d suck them again and again, biting her swollen nipples.

I’d lift her out of the water without pulling out of her, carry her to the shore, and put her on all fours on the wet sand. I’d grab her hips and sink it into her again from behind, all the way in, watching her white ass in the moonlight. I’d fuck her hard, faster and faster, listening to her moan with her face pressed into the sand while the sea licked our feet. I’d wet one finger with her own slick and slowly slide it into her ass, and she’d clench up all over, moaning louder, pushing back against me.

—Don’t stop —she’d beg—. Don’t stop, don’t stop.

She’d come like that, with my cock in her cunt and my finger in her ass, trembling all over, face buried in the sand and a long cry lost in the sound of the waves. I’d hold out a few seconds longer, watching her shake beneath me, and I’d come inside her with short, deep thrusts, grabbing her by the hair, emptying myself into her to the very last drop.

***

I opened my eyes. I was still alone in the sand, with the tide licking my feet and imagination burning me from the inside. There was no Mariela, no warm water around us, no legs around my waist, no cunt squeezing me. There was a man sitting on an empty beach, painfully awake and with a hard cock bulging against his pants.

But the body doesn’t understand absence. The body only understands what you tell it, and I had told it too much.

I stretched out on the still-warm sand. Above me, the sky was so crowded with stars it looked fake. I unbuttoned my pants, took my cock out, and grabbed it with my right hand. It was rock hard, throbbing against my palm. I closed my eyes again and let my hand do what reality couldn’t give me.

I imagined her coming out of the water dripping wet, her tits bouncing and her cunt gleaming between her thighs, and shoving me down into the sand, the way she had done that night in my apartment when she decided to take control. I imagined her weight on top of me, her knees on either side of my hips, that look she had just before lowering herself slowly onto my cock and swallowing it with her cunt down to the very last inch.

My hand moved. Slowly at first, the way she always started, measuring me, making me wait. She squeezed the base, slid up to the head, teased the tip with her thumb. I tightened just enough, ran over every inch thinking of how she did it with her mouth, how she sucked me while looking at me, how she changed rhythm when she saw I was close, how she would laugh softly with my cock in her mouth when she felt I couldn’t hold out any longer.

—Slowly —she always told me, pulling me out a second before I came—. We’re in no hurry.

But that night I was in a hurry. I had the hurry of someone who knows that after pleasure comes silence and the empty beach and going home alone.

I imagined fucking her. First in the water, slowly, the sea moving us, feeling her cunt open around me. Then on the sand, her underneath me, legs spread in the air, hands buried in the wet sand, back arched, hair full of salt, tits bouncing with every thrust. I imagined her asking me for more, imagined my cock sliding in and out of her wet cunt, imagined how everything inside her would tighten when she was about to come. I imagined her saying my name in that broken voice that only came out of her at the very end, mixed with curses and pleas.

I sped up. I held my balls with my other hand, the way I did when I wanted it to last, and stopped thinking about holding back. My hand went faster and faster, squeezing me hard, and the images piled up: her salty tits in my mouth, her wet nipples against my tongue, her cunt opening, closing, calling me, sucking my cock, swallowing my load. The curve of her back when I fucked her from behind. The wet sound my cock made going in and out. The muffled scream she made right before she came.

I came staring at the horizon, where the night was just beginning to lighten, that gray strip that warns you the sun isn’t far off. My cum splashed hot over my belly, over my hand, thick spurts that felt as if they’d been waiting months for it. I came thinking that maybe one day that desire would stop being just imagination, and that one day it would be her mouth swallowing what was now spilling uselessly onto my stomach.

***

I stayed there a long while, stretched out, with my cock still in my hand and my breathing settling back into place and my heart still pounding. The sea kept rising, indifferent, slowly erasing the mark of my body in the sand. I wiped myself with a handful of sand and the hem of my T-shirt, and pulled my pants back up.

I thought about texting her. I thought about it the way you think about things at five in the morning, when everything seems possible and nothing has consequences. I took out my phone, looked at the screen, searched for her name. Three months of silence distilled into a conversation that ended with a dry “take care” from her side.

I wrote: “I came back to the beach.” I deleted it. I wrote: “I imagined you in the water with my cock inside you.” I deleted that too. In the end I put the phone away without sending anything, because some things work better inside your head than outside it, and because fantasy has one huge advantage over reality: it never tells you no.

The sky kept brightening. The beach started to take color again: gray turned blue, blue turned orange over the water. A couple of fishermen appeared in the distance, dragging a net, completely unaware of what had just happened there.

I stood up, brushed the sand off, and walked back toward the car. In my hand I was left with the memory of the memory, that double and slightly sad thing of having desired someone who now existed only in my recollection.

Someday, Mariela.

That’s what I told myself, opening the car door as the sun finished rising. Someday I’m going to tell you what I imagined tonight, how I ate your cunt in the water and how I fucked you in the sand, and you’re going to laugh, and you’re going to tell me I’m crazy. And then we’ll come here together, and there won’t be any need to imagine anything.

I started the car with the window down and the smell of salt still clinging to my body. The beach shrank in the mirror until it was only a line, until it was nothing at all. But desire came with me, intact, waiting for the next night when I’d need to come back.