The Woman in the Chat Who Lit Up My Screen

It was Tuesday. Five in the afternoon. The whole house to himself.

Daniel had spent two hours on the sofa not knowing what to do with himself. He had tried everything: a series he abandoned after twenty minutes, his phone checked incessantly, the ceiling contemplated with more attention than it deserved. The accumulated tension was too much to ignore and too diffuse to solve easily.

He tried porn. Generic, mechanical, ineffective. The bodies moved with the precision of a rehearsed choreography and he remained cold in front of the screen, like a spectator to something that did not belong to him. Nothing he saw connected with what he felt.

What he needed was something real. A voice that answered. A presence on the other side of the screen.

That’s how he ended up opening an adult chat he had heard friends mention. He had never used it. He created a profile in two minutes with the first name that came to him and started scrolling through the list of active users with that mix of boredom and expectation that comes at the end of an afternoon with nothing better to do.

There was everything on that list. Suggestive names, numbers added at the end, exclamation marks begging for attention. None of them stirred the slightest interest in him.

And then she appeared: Lorena_sola.

He couldn’t explain why that name stood out from the rest. Maybe it was the simplicity. Maybe the adjective, that “alone” that promised something without stating it outright. The point is that he chose it without thinking too hard and wrote.

—Hi.

—Hi —she replied after a few seconds.

Direct. No embellishments. No emojis or questions, the sort that usually defined those conversations. Daniel introduced himself with more calm than he expected to have.

—My name’s Daniel. Twenty-one.

—Lorena. Thirty-six. What are you doing here so early?

The question threw him off in a pleasantly disarming way.

—Bored —he replied—. You?

—Same. But with more experience in boredom.

Something in that answer made him smile. There was a tone behind the text: a controlled irony that made the conversation more interesting than most he’d had in a long time. They kept talking. Nothing important at first: the reasons for being alone on a weekday afternoon, the difference between productive boredom and the kind that just weighs you down. The tension was there, recognizable to both of them, but neither rushed toward it. It was as if they both knew anticipation had its own value and that breaking it too soon would waste it.

Half an hour like that. And when Daniel decided to make the move, he did it with the same calm with which she had answered from the beginning.

—Do you have a camera?

There was a brief pause before the answer.

—Yes.

—Want to do video? Whatever happens there stays there. No photos, no recordings.

Another pause. Daniel waited without adding anything.

—All right —she said—. But I’m going to take whatever time I need.

—No rush —he answered.

***

They switched to a video call. Both screens black for the first few seconds.

He was the one who turned on his camera first. The room behind him, lit by the yellow afternoon light coming in through the window. Him facing forward, in a dark T-shirt, his hair a little tousled.

—I’m here —he said.

Silence. And then her image.

Lorena was lying back on a bed with the sheets rumpled. The light in her room was dimmer, orange-toned, and framed her so that only her shoulders and the upper part of her chest were visible. She wore a camisole with thin straps, white, contrasting with her brown skin. Her dark hair, long to her shoulders, fell to one side of her face in a carelessness that was not entirely unintentional.

Thirty-six years old. It showed, and that was exactly what made the image so attractive. Nothing about her tried to hide itself. She showed herself as she was, from a posture that conveyed complete ease with that fact.

—Can you see me okay? —she asked. Her voice was deep for a woman’s. A little husky, with the cadence of someone who chooses her words before saying them.

—Perfectly —Daniel replied, and had to make an effort so his voice wouldn’t betray how fast his pulse had quickened.

—And are you comfortable in that chair?

He laughed. He hadn’t expected that.

—More comfortable than before you turned the camera on.

Lorena smiled without exaggeration. Just a slight curve at the left corner of her mouth. She tossed her hair back with a distracted gesture and looked straight at him.

—What were you wearing before you sat down there? —she asked.

—Sweatpants and this T-shirt.

—Take off the shirt.

The instruction was direct, without a pleading inflection. Daniel obeyed without arguing. He pulled it off over his head and let it fall out of the camera frame. She watched him with calm attention, unhurried, like someone who knows exactly what she is looking at and feels no need to hide it.

—Good —she said simply.

—Now you? —he suggested.

—Not yet.

Daniel accepted the asymmetry without disputing it. There was something about the control she exercised over the pace that was more stimulating than if things had rushed from the start. Lorena’s calm was not coldness; it was exactly the opposite. It was the certainty of someone who knows how to bring something to the exact point she wants because she is in no hurry, because the journey is also part of the destination.

—Tell me what you were thinking before you came into the chat —said Lorena—. What image you had in your head.

Was that a trick question or an invitation? Daniel decided it was the latter. He told her. Without embellishment, with more honesty than he usually allowed himself in that kind of context. She listened without interrupting, and when he finished, she nodded slightly.

—That can be fixed —she said—. But you’re going to do what I tell you. All right?

—All right —Daniel answered without hesitation.

***

Lorena began to speak. She did it in a low, even voice, as if she were reading something she knew by heart but that still managed to surprise her. She described what she was going to do. She told him what she wanted him to do.

—Close your eyes for a moment —she said—. I want you to imagine my hands before you see them.

He obeyed.

—They’re small —she said—. Thin fingers. Right now I’ve got them resting on my neck, moving down slowly. Following the line of the collarbone.

Daniel listened without moving. The description was precise, without artifice. It wasn’t literature but cartography of the body.

—Open your eyes.

When he opened them, Lorena had her fingers exactly where she had described. She moved them downward, slowly, following the curve of the camisole’s neckline. She stopped there.

—Do you want me to go on? —she asked.

—Yes.

—Then I want something in return. The pants.

He stood up slowly, so the camera would catch the full movement. He pulled down his sweatpants and remained in his underwear. The erection was visible, pressing against the fabric.

Lorena looked at him for a few seconds without saying anything. When she spoke, her voice had changed. Even lower now. Something darker underneath.

—Like that —she said—. Stay like that.

And she began to lower the camisole straps.

She did it slowly, one after the other, without taking her eyes off the camera. The fabric fell and Daniel saw what he had been waiting to see since the moment she turned on the image.

Lorena had a body that made no apologies for itself. The curves were real, solid, without the polished look of someone who spends hours trying to resemble something other than what she is. Her breasts were large, with the weight and shape proper to her age, and the dark nipples had hardened with the touch of the air, or the situation, or both at once.

—Don’t look away —she said.

He didn’t.

—Run your fingers where I tell you —ordered Lorena—. And tell me exactly what you feel while you do it.

She indicated the path. He followed the instructions precisely, describing each sensation in a low voice while watching her do the same on her own body. It was a strange and exact exchange: each one acting as the other’s mirror, translating what they saw into something that could be touched.

—Squeeze —she said at one point—. Harder. I want to hear you breathe differently.

He squeezed. His breathing changed.

—Good —said Lorena—. Like that.

They went on for several minutes, building that rhythm: she giving instructions, him following them and returning the description in a low voice, the roles reversing without either of them explicitly agreeing to it. It was a dance with an implicit protocol, and the two of them followed it without slipping.

At some point, Lorena lifted the short skirt she was wearing and got rid of her underwear without drama, with the same natural gesture with which one turns off a light. She lay back again and parted her legs enough for the camera to show exactly what he wanted to see.

She was wet. Visible, with no possible ambiguity.

—You see it? —she asked.

—Yes —Daniel said. The word came out rougher than he intended.

—Good. Now you.

He pulled down his underwear. And when he was completely exposed in front of the screen, he heard Lorena let out a short sound, almost inaudible, not exactly a moan but in the neighborhood.

—I like you better like that —she said.

***

From that point on, instructions were no longer necessary.

The two of them found the rhythm at the same time, as if they had agreed on the pace without saying it. Lorena’s fingers moved in circles that were no longer slow or methodical but urgent, animated by something that went beyond technique. He watched her as her hand worked without pause, with the tension accumulated over the whole afternoon converging in that precise instant.

—Don’t look away —she repeated, and this time her voice was different. Tighter. More urgent.

He didn’t look away.

The sounds coming from the speakers were concrete: her breathing, increasingly uneven; the wet, rhythmic sound of her fingers; Daniel’s own breathing, no longer trying to be controlled. Between them they had built something in that half hour of conversation and that other half hour of watching each other, and now all of it took its most concrete and final form.

—How long have you been holding it in —Lorena said suddenly, more to herself than to him.

—Several days —Daniel replied.

—It shows.

She sped up. He did the same. The screen showed Lorena’s body curling in on itself, eyes narrowed but still fixed on the camera, lips parted. She panted with her teeth clenched, as if she wanted to keep control of the sound even though her body was already beyond that.

Daniel felt the pressure build irreversibly. He knew it well, but this time it had a different intensity, amplified by her gaze on him and by that husky voice that kept emitting sounds from the other side of the screen.

—Now —said Lorena, her voice taut—. I’m almost there.

—Me too —he answered.

The two of them came almost at the same time. She first: her body arched slightly, her eyes closed for a second before opening again, and the moan that came from her lips was low but clear, with no effort to hold it back. He watched her reach it and that was enough for his own body to give way with an intensity that tightened his muscles from chest to feet.

Silence.

The two of them catching their breath. The two of them still connected by the screen.

—Good —Lorena said after a moment, in a voice that had recovered its usual calm faster than he expected.

—Very good —he said.

She smiled. This time more broadly than before, without reserve.

—Had you done this before? —she asked.

—Not like that —Daniel admitted.

—For a first time, you know how to listen.

He laughed without really knowing why, but the laugh came out on its own.

—Are you going back to the chat? —he asked.

Lorena was already adjusting her camisole with the same casual gesture with which she had done everything else that afternoon.

—Depends on the afternoon —she replied—. And you?

—Maybe —said Daniel—. Now I’ve got a better reason to log in.

She let that restrained smile return before turning off the camera without saying anything else.

The screen went black.

Daniel leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. The house was still just as empty, the afternoon was still Tuesday, and the tension he had been carrying since noon had gone so completely that he could barely remember what it felt like to have it.

He closed the chat window.

He thought about Lorena_sola and whether he would find her there again one of these days. He thought about that husky voice giving instructions with that strange, precise calm. He thought about how she had ended the session without saying goodbye, like someone who knows long farewells ruin good things.

I hope she’s alone the next time I am too.