The Fantasy My Girlfriend Suggested to Even the Score With the Past

After ten years with Mariela, we reached that conversation almost nobody wants to have in full. The one about the past. About how many people came before the other. The one that seems harmless until someone says a number out loud and the air in the room changes.

It started as a game, stretched out on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon, with the television on in the background and two glasses of wine half-finished. She rested her head on my chest and threw out the question as casually as if she were commenting on the weather.

—How many were there before me? —she said—. The truth. Don’t round it down.

I made the mistake of believing honesty is always rewarded. I’m thirty-four, and I confessed that before her I had been with twelve women. I said it without drama, almost with foolish pride, as if it were a neutral fact.

Mariela sat up slowly. She’s twenty-nine, and she has a way of looking at you when something bothers her that I learned to fear over the years: she doesn’t yell, she doesn’t get offended, she calculates.

—I had two —she said—. Not counting you.

Ten apart. The number hung between us like an unpaid debt.

—It’s not a competition —I told her, which is exactly what you say when it already has become one.

She smiled to one side and didn’t answer. I know that smile. It’s the same one she wears when we lose at truco and she promises revenge, the same one she had the day she learned to drive better than me just to prove it. Mariela has been competitive since the cradle. And I, without realizing it, had just marked her a match she had no intention of letting stand like that.

***

That same night, before bed, I understood it better.

We were in bed, the light off, and all of a sudden I felt her mouth on my neck. Not the usual goodnight kiss, but something slower, heavier. Her tongue slid down my chest, unhurried, tracing a warm line that raised goosebumps all over my skin. I didn’t say anything. I could barely breathe, waiting.

She kept going down. When she took me into her mouth, I knew right away that night was different. She was doing it with a surrender I didn’t know in her, as if she were proving something, as if every movement were an argument in a discussion only she understood.

Just when I felt I wasn’t going to hold out any longer, she stopped. She came up to my ear and whispered, with a hoarse voice:

—I’m going to fulfill one of your fantasies. But after that, you fulfill mine.

I didn’t manage to answer. She went back down and finished what she had started.

There’s something that in ten years had never happened between us: Mariela had never wanted to finish that way, with everything in her mouth. It was her boundary and I respected it without arguing. That’s why, when that night she not only allowed it but seemed to seek it out, I understood the deal had already been sealed long before I said yes.

Afterward she stayed there a moment, looking me in the eyes, not swallowing, letting me see what she had done. She let a few drops fall onto her chest, spread them slowly over her skin with two fingers, and only then swallowed. She did the whole ritual without haste, without shame, enjoying it in a way that left me speechless.

Finally, she ran her tongue over it once more, gathering the last of it, never taking her eyes off me.

—I’ve done my part —she said, giving me a quick kiss on the mouth—. Now it’s your turn. Tomorrow I’ll tell you what mine is.

And she settled against the pillow, turned her back to me, and went to sleep, or pretended to, leaving me awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

***

The next day I worked terribly. I couldn’t focus. Every time the phone vibrated I thought it was her, announcing the fantasy. But she didn’t write anything all day. Absolute silence, which with Mariela is the worst of threats.

I got home around eight. The door was unlocked. The lights were off. Only a low lamp in the living room was on, and she was waiting for me standing in the hallway, wearing a black lace set I had never seen before and that she had clearly bought for the occasion.

—Go take a shower —she said, without greeting me—. When you come back, I’ll tell you. While I do it.

I showered faster than I ever had in my life, torn between excitement and a knot in my stomach. I didn’t know what to expect. Mariela has an imagination that, once it turns on, knows no brakes, and the night before she had made it very clear she meant business.

When I came out, I found her in bed. Her legs were open and she was stroking herself slowly, eyes half-closed, offering me the show on purpose. On the sheet, off to one side, she had left a toy: a new one, bigger than any man would take as a compliment. She said nothing about the toy. She just looked at me and patted the mattress softly.

—Lie down —she ordered.

I obeyed. She settled between my legs and started again, with that same dedication from the night before. And while she did it, between pauses, she began telling me her fantasy, word for word, as if she were reading it from somewhere in her head where she had kept it all day.

—To keep things even —she said, lifting her head for a second—, I made a list.

—A list of what? —I asked, my voice breaking.

—Ten. —She smiled—. Ten profiles I put together on a dating app. If I sleep with each one, we’re tied. Twelve and twelve. Even.

I wanted to say something and couldn’t. She went back to what she was doing, letting me absorb the blow, fully aware of the effect her words had on me.

—Don’t worry —she went on after a while—. I already chose them. There’s everything on the list. Tall, blond, dark, one older guy, one who looks shy. —She paused deliberately—. And one girl.

—One girl? —I repeated, stupidly.

—One girl —she confirmed, amused by my face—. You said it wasn’t a competition. I’m just evening the score.

She took her time before continuing. She came up for a moment, lay down beside me, and rested her head on my shoulder, as if we were talking about vacation and not this.

—I thought about it all day at work —she said—. It’s not out of revenge, for the record. It’s just that I need to understand what you had that I didn’t. Twelve people, twelve different ways of being touched. I want to know what it feels like to want someone new, a stranger, without it being serious, without anything between us ending. I want to tell you about it afterward. Every detail.

—And if I can’t handle it? —I asked.

—That’s why we’re going slowly —she answered, and kissed my shoulder—. That’s why we start tonight, just the two of us. So you know how much you can take before the first one from the list shows up.

What was most disturbing wasn’t the list itself. It was the calm with which she had planned it, the detail, the cheerful coldness with which she had turned my foolish Sunday confession into a project with names and faces. Mariela never improvised. Mariela executed.

And the worst part of all —what it cost me to admit even to myself— is that the idea, instead of scaring me, had me more aroused than ever. I imagined her with each one of those ten, telling me the details afterward, looking me in the eye the way she was looking at me now. The mere fantasy clouded my judgment.

***

—Are you really going to do it? —I asked when I could manage a full sentence.

Mariela stopped. She rested her chin on my stomach and pinned me with that look, the one that doesn’t allow lies.

—That depends —she said—. On how well you do your part first.

—I haven’t agreed to anything yet.

—You agreed last night —she replied—. When you let me finish in a way you’ve never let me before and didn’t stop me. That was the deal. I fulfill one of yours, you fulfill one of mine. And mine is only just beginning.

She was right, and we both knew it. The game had already begun the night before, in the dark, when I thought she was only rewarding me and she was really buying me.

—Then —I said, defeated—, what exactly do you want tonight?

She smiled, that revenge smile, and picked up the toy from the sheet again. She held it between us for a moment, as if showing me a promise and a warning at the same time.

—Tonight —she said, leaning toward my ear, slowly, so that every word would weigh— I want to give you one. Just to practice. I want to know what it feels like to be on the other side before I start my list. And I want you to think of each of those ten names while I do it.

My mouth went dry. My heart was pounding in a new way, a mix of fear and a desire in myself I didn’t recognize. Mariela switched off the low lamp with a lazy gesture, and the room went almost dark, lit only by the light coming in from the street.

—Relax —she whispered, with a tenderness that contrasted with everything else—. We’re going to do it slowly. We’ve got all night. And tomorrow —she added, while I felt her hands trace my back— I’ll show you the photos from the list, one by one, so you know who I’m starting with.

I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no either. In the dark, with her breathing on my nape and ten strangers circling in my head, I understood that what I said no longer mattered. Mariela’s revenge had begun, and I was only the first round.

To be continued.