What I Heard From the Other Side of the Door

The shower was still dripping when the intercom rang. I wrapped myself in a towel in a hurry, came out of the bathroom slipping on the wet tiles, and pressed the intercom button.

—Who is it?

—Rodrigo.

I stared at the unit for two full seconds. Rodrigo. It had been a while. I remembered him perfectly: the guy who always showed up at friend gatherings without exactly being invited, who made bad jokes with a confidence he hadn’t earned, who was always after some girl who wanted nothing to do with him. He wasn’t a bad person. He was just annoying. But annoying in that way that, with time and distance, becomes almost endearing.

The truth is I had always liked that dynamic between us a little. His innuendos were predictable, but they amused me in their own way. Feeling desired, even by someone who isn’t your type, has its own particular charm.

Four years ago I’d moved here, to this city that at first seemed enormous and now I already recognized as mine. Rodrigo and I had limited ourselves to exchanging the occasional comment on social media, nothing more. Until two weeks ago he wrote to me: that he was coming for work, that he wanted to stay a few days after the conference. Almost without thinking, I offered him the couch. I expected him to tell me no, that he already had a hotel booked. He said yes, delighted.

—Come up. Top floor.

I ran to towel my hair off a little. When I still had the hair dryer in my hand, the apartment bell rang. I peered through the peephole.

He had put on quite a bit of weight since the last time. His hair was longer. His eyes were the same as always. It was him.

I opened the door.

The silence that followed lasted a full two seconds. He looked me up and down without even trying to hide it, mouth slightly open, and I noticed how he paused an extra beat on the cleavage barely covered by the towel, and another on my wet legs.

—Hi —I said.

—Hi —he repeated, as if the word cost him something—. Damn.

—Is that all you’ve got to say after four years?

—It’s just... I wasn’t expecting this welcome —he said, recovering his usual crooked smile—. I should come by more often.

—Don’t get ahead of yourself —I replied, stepping aside to let him in—. I just got back from work and it was unbearable outside. I needed to shower. Wait a second, I’m going to change now.

—Can I help?

I shot him a look that meant many things, none of them favorable. He put his hands up in surrender, laughing to himself.

I closed my bedroom door and put on the first things I found: a white tank top, short shorts, and nothing underneath, because it was too hot for any more layers. When I went back to the living room, Rodrigo whistled.

—Still impossible to resist, I know —I said before he could open his mouth.

—More so. Clearly more so.

I did a little turn, playing along. I liked doing that: giving him a little of what he expected without giving him anything real. He smiled with that expression of someone who has just won something when in reality he hasn’t won anything at all.

We ordered pizza by phone while I showed him around the apartment. There wasn’t much to see: the open kitchen off the living room, the small but functional bathroom, my bedroom with the bed I’d spent three months’ salary on, and the big sofa that turned into a bed when I had guests, which wasn’t as often as I would’ve liked.

Rodrigo pointed at the sofa bed with a raised eyebrow.

—What if I sleep with you? I’m sure we’d both fit.

—You, maybe. Me, not so much.

He laughed. That was the good thing about Rodrigo: he never took it badly. His innuendos had always had that shared-joke quality, almost a ritual between us, with no real pressure behind them.

We ate in the living room, the TV on low in the background, talking about nothing important: mutual friends, the conference the next day, the changes in the neighborhood where we’d grown up. It was easy to talk to him when he wasn’t trying to be funny by force. There was something genuine under all that noise.

At eleven we went to bed. I gave him a clean towel, explained the finicky shower buttons — the one on the left doesn’t work, the one on the right you have to push twice — and left him settling in while I shut the door to my room.

***

I couldn’t sleep.

I’d been tossing and turning for half an hour, with the fan blowing over me and the sheets twisted around me, when I heard water running in the bathroom. Rodrigo showering. Then his footsteps in the hallway, slow, and the creak of the sofa taking his weight. Then, silence.

I was just about to fall asleep when I started to notice his breathing.

At first I thought it was my imagination. But no. It was unmistakable: a breath that gradually became more and more rapid, rhythmic, accompanied by the soft but constant sound of movement. Repetitive. Deliberate. The unmistakable friction of a hand sliding up and down a hard cock, with that wet sound that only appears when the guy has spit into his palm or when he’s been at it for a while.

I went completely still.

Rodrigo was masturbating on my couch. He was jerking off four meters from my bed.

My first reaction was something close to indignation. Seriously? Here? With my bedroom door four meters away? I wondered whether I should get up and confront him, say something sharp that would make it clear these apartment walls aren’t made of stone. But the more I thought about it, the more absurd the scene seemed. And while I was deliberating, I kept listening.

His breathing grew heavier. The rhythm more insistent. The fist slapped against his stomach on each downward stroke, a muted, carnal, obscene smack that cut through the hallway as if it were pressed right against my ear.

I closed my eyes.

I shouldn’t be listening to this.

But I couldn’t stop.

I pictured the scene on the other side of the wall: him stretched out on the pullout sofa, in his boxers or naked, with his hard cock in his hand, thick and veined, the tip shiny with pre-cum, his hand clenched tight pumping up and down, his thumb rubbing the head on every upward stroke. His balls swollen, knocking against his fingers. The sheet pushed aside because it was too hot to cover up. And while I imagined it, something in my body reacted in a way I hadn’t expected: my nipples hardened beneath the tank top until they hurt, and I felt a warm wetness soaking me between the legs.

It was ridiculous. It was Rodrigo. The guy with the bad jokes.

But there he was, in my living room, in the dark, wanking himself off thinking about who knows what, and I was listening with my heart beating faster than normal and my cunt beginning to throb.

A gasp came from the living room. Held back, but real.

Then, clearly, my name.

I froze.

He repeated it, lower this time, almost as if it were for himself. As if he didn’t realize he’d said it out loud. As if in the image in his head I was present, close, within reach. Fuckable.

Something lit up in me that I couldn’t explain.

I thought of him. Not the awkward Rodrigo from gatherings, but this one, right now, lying on my couch in the dark, cock in hand and my name on his lips. I thought of the look on his face when I opened the door still in a towel. Of how he’d put a hand on my waist when he greeted me, just one second longer than necessary. Of the way he looked at me that I had always dismissed as background noise and that suddenly carried a different weight. I wondered if he was thick. If he was the kind who could last a long time or the kind who came fast. If he’d shove it all in at once or ease in little by little.

My hand moved on its own.

First over my stomach, slowly, as if it didn’t know where it was going. Then lower, brushing the waistband of my shorts, sliding over the fabric until my palm rested on my cunt. I felt my own heat through the cotton, and my hip lifted on its own, searching for pressure.

On the other side of the wall, Rodrigo’s breathing became less and less controlled. I could hear the rhythm speeding up, irregular, urgent. The fleshy slap of his fist sliding along his wet cock. I imagined him with his eyes closed, focused, jaw clenched, murmuring my name without meaning to while he pumped his dick harder.

I slid my fingers under the fabric of my shorts.

I was soaked. Much more than I expected. My pussy lips swollen, slick, the clit already hard and throbbing beneath the tip of my middle finger. At the first touch a small shiver ran through my thighs.

I touched myself slowly at first, testing, not yet fully surrendering to the situation. One slow circle around the clit, another, another. But the sounds from the living room wouldn’t let me pretend it was anything else. Every gasp from him tightened my belly from the inside. Every smack of his hand made me press my fingers harder against myself.

—Ugh... —came from there, a guttural sound that crossed the entire hallway.

I shut my eyes tightly.

I imagined him getting up, crossing the hallway with his hard cock in his hand, coming into my bedroom without knocking, with that clumsy certainty he had when he thought he was right about something. His hands on my waist, turning me face-down, pushing me against the mattress. His mouth on my neck, biting the skin. His fingers slipping under my tank top, squeezing my tits until I moaned, pinching my nipples. I imagined him yanking off my shorts, spitting on his hand and rubbing his cock against my ass before prying my legs apart with his knee and driving it into me all the way to the balls.

The image had nothing romantic about it. It was direct and concrete and exactly what I wanted at that moment. I wanted him to fuck me. I wanted him to shove it in all the way and fill me with cum.

I slipped in one finger. Then another.

My cunt took them with a little splash that made me bite my lip in embarrassment and pleasure at the same time. I was so wet my fingers sank in without resistance to the knuckles. I started moving them inside, curling them upward, searching for that exact spot that made my back arch, while with my thumb I kept rubbing my clit in tight circles.

I heard his gasp and my fingers moved faster.

—Okay... —he said on the other side, not realizing he was speaking.

I almost let out a sound. I bit my lip hard.

My name in his mouth. In the dark, it sounds different. It sounds like he wants to fuck me.

I imagined myself sitting on him, astride, with his cock buried deep inside me, controlling the pace myself, rising and falling slowly to make him suffer. I imagined his hands on my hips, holding me but not forcing me, following whatever I set. I imagined leaning down to his ear and saying filthy things: yes, keep going, right there, shove it in harder, split me open. I imagined yanking it out and lowering my mouth to suck him off, the salty taste of pre-cum on my tongue, taking him in all the way until I choked, while he grabbed my hair and fucked my face.

I imagined spitting on it in a thread of saliva and riding him again, this time the other way around, facing away from him so he could get a good look at my ass while he slid in and out, while the wet smack filled the room and his balls knocked against my clit on every downward stroke.

I moved more, bracing my free hand on the mattress to give myself leverage, sinking into the sensation while I listened to the sounds he let slip without knowing it. I slipped in a third finger, opening myself, fucking myself with the same rhythm with which he was jerking off on the other side of the wall. The rhythm on the other side became more irregular, more urgent, less controlled. The smack of his hand against skin sped up until it became a continuous hum.

—Ugh... yes... —I heard.

And I answered in silence, in the darkness of my room, with my teeth clenched and my back arched, with three fingers buried inside me and my thumb punishing my clit, keeping pace with him without his knowing it. I felt the orgasm start rising from the depths of my belly, tightening my thighs, locking my feet against the mattress.

The end came almost at the same time.

Him first, with a sound he tried to muffle and couldn’t quite, a strangled gasp that lasted several seconds and was followed by a low, animal groan, and by the final smack of his load shooting out in spurts. I imagined it: the cock throbbing in his fist, the cum blasting hot against his stomach, against his fingers, against the sheet. One spurt. Another. Another. His face tightened, mouth open, my name trapped between his teeth.

Me a few moments later, biting the heel of my hand so I wouldn’t make a sound, my whole body trembling under the sheets, my cunt clenching around my own fingers in waves that wouldn’t stop, my thighs closing around my hand, my back arched off the mattress. A long, dense, filthy orgasm that left my pulse pounding in my temples and in my clit at the same time.

The silence that followed was absolute.

I heard his footsteps heading to the bathroom. Water running for a moment — washing the cum off his stomach, I imagined, flushing the paper down the toilet. Then the creak of the sofa as he settled back onto it.

I lay there staring at the ceiling, still with my pulse racing, with my hand sticky between my legs, with a strange mix of satisfaction and something close to disbelief.

Rodrigo. Seriously.

I almost laughed. I slowly pulled my fingers out, still shining with my own wetness, and brought them to my mouth almost out of curiosity before wiping them on the sheet. I stretched out under the covers and turned onto my side.

It took me exactly three minutes to fall asleep.

***

The next morning I found him in the kitchen, having breakfast with mussed-up hair and the most normal expression, as if nothing had happened. Because for him, I suppose, nothing had happened. He thought I’d slept peacefully through the whole night.

—Good morning —he said, lifting his mug.

—Good morning —I replied, opening the fridge so I wouldn’t have to look at him directly.

—Hey, I hope I didn’t bother you last night. The sofa makes an awful noise.

I turned my back to him for a second longer than necessary before answering.

—Not at all —I said—. I slept great.

It was completely true.