What I Imagine When He Closes the Chat
Outside, everyone is asleep, or so it seems, judging by the darkened windows of the neighborhood and the silence of the street, broken only by the distant sound of some car crossing the avenue. But that is happening beyond her window. Inside, in her room, the light is dim, the air is warm, and tonight is another one of those nights.
Just a few minutes ago, Camila shut off the computer. She had spent a good while browsing, trying to beat boredom and that apathy that settles over her on Sundays. But above all, she had spoken with him again. And as on every previous occasion, she can’t get him out of her head.
She thought about him all day, even when she forbade herself to. While washing the dishes, while pretending to read, while staring at the ceiling. All she wanted was to meet his words, until they finally arrived, like a relief from anxiety and waiting.
His name is Adrián. He lives thousands of kilometers away, in a city she has never set foot in, in a country she only knows from photos. They met by chance, in one of those forums where people cross paths without looking for one another, and since then they have talked almost every night. The time difference forces them into a strange ritual: when evening is just falling for him, it is already the early hours of the morning for her.
—Still awake? —he wrote that night, as always.
—I’m not sleepy —she lied, her heart already racing.
Adrián knows nothing. He can’t imagine a thing, of course. For him this is probably just another fun conversation to pass the time, the chance to exchange ideas and meet someone from another part of the world. Another person on the other side of the screen.
He knows nothing, but he awakened something she still can’t name. He can’t imagine a thing, but his words became necessary, essential, and without either of them deciding it, they turned into an uncanny portal toward unusual emotions, daydreams, desires.
***
The room’s warmth has already been overtaken by the warmth of her own body. Beneath the light clothes she sleeps in, her skin has taken on heated hues. Now it always happens the same way when they say goodbye after writing for hours.
That night they had talked about small things, about those that mean nothing and mean everything. About a song they both like. About what it would be like to walk together down any street, with no destination, just for the pleasure of being side by side. He had typed a silly line, a joke, and she had laughed alone at the screen, with that laugh she never gets with anyone else.
—Someday I have to meet you in person —he typed, near the end.
She stared at the line for a long while before answering. Someday. Two words that open an abyss and a sky at the same time.
—Someday —she repeated, and then quickly added something funny so she wouldn’t seem too exposed.
Then came the goodnight, the sleep well, and the chat window closed. And then the other thing began. The thing he will never know.
***
Camila keeps thinking about him with an intensity that almost hurts. Her mind, as every night, takes flight along the paths of fantasy. She closes her eyes and imagines them together, face to face, staring intently at one another, hands clasped. She sees them slowly bringing their lips closer, delaying the moment, stretching out the wait until it becomes unbearable.
In her imagination, those lips that take so long to arrive end up tracing her neck, the line of her jaw, the lobe of her ear. Adrián has a voice she has never heard, but she invents it: deep, low, a voice that speaks into her ear while his firm, confident hands uncover her.
She imagines the sound of his breathing growing more ragged. The scent of his skin, which she has never smelled and yet feels she knows. The weight of his body against hers. Desire almost makes her tremble. She blushes, alone, in the half-light, and begins to take off her clothes slowly, hungrily, as if it were his hands undressing her.
Now it is her own hands moving over her body, with the impossible mission of replacing those so desired. They climb over her stomach, circle her breasts, caress them with her fingertips, imagining it is Adrián’s mouth closing over them, millimeter by millimeter, in a blend of hunger and tenderness.
—Like this —she murmurs softly, to no one, to him who is not there.
Her left hand begins a downward path. It moves down her stomach, pauses for an instant at her hip, toys with the edge of the last garment she has left, and lets it fall to the bedroom floor. Then it continues, unhurried, toward the place where the heat gathers and throbs.
She finds herself wet, open, burning. She imagines another hand over her own, guiding her; she imagines Adrián’s naked body lying beside her, eager, attentive to every reaction, reading her like someone learning a new language. Her fingers move in slow circles at first, then more deliberately, while in her head it is he who sets the rhythm.
***
She thinks about what it would be like to have him for real. Not the screen, not the white letters on a dark background, not the cursor blinking in anticipation of a reply. Him. His weight, his temperature, the rough scrape of his unshaven chin against the inner side of her thighs.
Surely, if he were here, her body would burn even hotter. Surely it would be the real touch, not the imagined one, that would leave her breathless, much more than she is left now. But he isn’t here. He is at a distance no desire can cross, and so she must be, at once, the one who desires and the one who satisfies herself.
Her fingers enter her with an urgency that surprises even her. The other hand remains busy up top, on her breast, on her neck, moving over her body as if they were two people and not one alone in an empty bed. She arches her back. The sheet sticks to her sweaty skin. Her breathing catches and, without realizing it, she begins to move her hips to meet her own hand.
In her mind, Adrián whispers things to her. He tells her what he would do to her, step by step, with that invented voice that has become more real than many real voices. He tells her not to stop. He says her name. And she obeys a man who is not there, a lover who exists only on the other side of an ocean and a darkened screen.
She feels her heart racing, her whole body tightening like a rope about to snap. Pleasure grows from the center and spills outward, to the tips of her toes, to the tip of her tongue. She presses her lips together so she won’t make a sound, because on the other side of the wall there is a world that must not know about this.
The orgasm hits her all at once, in a wave that leaves her trembling. And in the exact instant everything explodes, the name that escapes her mouth, in a barely audible sigh, is his. Adrián. The one who is not here, nor now, but who somehow is everywhere inside her.
***
She lets herself fall onto the sheets, still trembling, her skin soaked in her own essence and in a nostalgia she doesn’t know how to explain. Her naked body vibrates with the contradictory melody of satisfaction and longing. She is sated and, at the same time, lonelier than before.
Because that is the strange thing about all this. Pleasure doesn’t calm her completely; on the contrary, it reminds her more strongly of the distance. Every orgasm wrung from her in his name is also a small confession no one hears, a message she will never send, a truth that stays trapped between the four walls of her room.
As every night, she wonders what he is doing at this moment. Whether he has already eaten dinner, whether he is working, whether he is talking to someone else with the same ease with which he talks to her. She wonders whether, at any point in his routine, he too thinks of her more than he should. She wants to believe he does. She has no way of knowing.
She remembers the line he wrote before saying goodbye. Someday I have to meet you in person. She repeats it silently, savors it, turns it into a promise even though she knows it may be nothing more than courtesy. But tonight she chooses to believe in it. Tonight, the distance feels a little less infinite.
Today was another one of those nights of secret, solitary release. She brought herself to another orgasm thinking of him, wanting him, imagining him, even though he will never know it. Tomorrow will be another day, like the ones to come, when they will meet again through the ever-closer screen, that window opening a little more onto her deepest emotions and her most urgent desires.
She already misses him. She already needs to read his words again, to find his ideas again, to let her mind carry her once more to those places she longs for so much. She stretches out her arm, turns off the last light, and settles onto her side, hugging the pillow as if it were another body.
So far away, and yet so deep inside her. With that thought, smiling faintly in the dark, Camila closes her eyes and gives herself over to the world of dreams, where perhaps —only perhaps— Adrián is already waiting for her.
