Camila Turned Nineteen and Waited for Me in Her Room

I got there late that night. My shift at the store where I worked had run over more than once, and by the time I walked into Camila’s house garden, the party had already been going for a couple of hours. Plastic cups everywhere, the speaker spitting out old reggaeton, and a group of guys I didn’t know laughing way too close to my girlfriend.

Camila was turning nineteen. I was twenty-one and had been waiting months for that night, even if she didn’t quite know it. She was dark-skinned, with long hair down to her waist, a narrow back, and legs that in that miniskirt seemed to go on forever. We’d been together almost a year, and up until then, every time things got serious between us, she found a way to stop me before it went too far.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” she said, throwing her arms around my neck.

She smelled like sweet perfume and beer. She was talking a little faster than usual, with that loose laugh she got when she’d had two or three drinks too many. I noticed it right away.

“How many have you had?” I asked, trying not to sound reproachful.

“Not many, I swear. I was hot.”

“And the guys staring at you from across the way—were they hot too?”

She laughed and kissed the corner of my mouth, knowing she’d done wrong. I let her kiss me, but I didn’t kiss her back. I wanted to leave her wanting more. More than jealousy, what I had was a plan.

***

For the rest of the party I played the role of the angry boyfriend. I didn’t answer her questions, I smiled at one of her friends on purpose, I sat on the couch with a drink in my hand and looked at her from afar. Every so often Camila came over, sat on my lap, cupped my face to force me to look at her, and I barely returned her gaze.

“Andrés, don’t be like that.”

“I’m not being anything.”

“You’re acting so weird.”

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

What I was doing was calculating the moment.

Every time she got up and went off to dance, I made sure to look the other way. Every time she came back looking for comfort, I played noble. I knew her well enough to know that when she felt guilty, she was capable of anything to make things right. And that night, with her birthday, the drinks, and the pressure of her friends watching her fail, I had all the cards in my favor.

The guests started leaving around two in the morning. Her parents had stopped by for a short while at the beginning, eaten with us, and then gone early to their room on the first floor. The music was already low. There were five or six of us left, all of us tired, and Camila grabbed my arm in the kitchen.

“Come outside for a second.”

We went out to the patio. The lights were off and only the yellow reflection from a neighbor’s window lit us up.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, the smile gone now.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me already.”

“Nothing’s wrong, Camila. If you don’t want me here, I’ll go, simple as that.”

“Go? It’s my birthday.”

“You’ve already had plenty of fun without me, haven’t you?”

I let go of her hand and walked toward the door. I had no real intention of leaving, but I needed her to believe I was. It worked. I’d barely taken three steps when I heard her heels on the tiles and felt her grab my T-shirt from behind.

“Don’t go. Please.”

“Let go of me.”

“Andrés, I love you. Don’t do this to me today.”

I turned around. Her eyes were shiny, half from the alcohol and half because tears had collected on her lashes. I felt something like guilt, but I put it away immediately.

“You’re the one who won’t let me be with you,” I told her softly, staring straight at her. “You’d be with anyone else without thinking, and with me you always put the brakes on.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true.”

She bit her lip. She looked toward the first-floor window, where her parents’ room had been dark for quite a while. Then she looked back at me.

“Wait until they’re properly asleep. We’ll go up to my room.”

***

When the rest of the guys left, we helped collect cups purely for appearances. We walked barefoot to the stairs and climbed, counting the steps so we wouldn’t step on the creaky ones. The house was dead silent. From the hallway, we could hear Camila’s father breathing heavily on the other side of a closed door.

Her room was at the back, with a single window that looked out onto the back garden. Her bed was against the wall, a desk covered in notebooks, and a huge stuffed animal propped against the pillow. She closed the door carefully, locked it, and stood in the middle, barefoot, looking at me.

“No noise,” she murmured.

I nodded. I moved in slowly. I took her by the waist and kissed her like I hadn’t kissed her all night, that kind of kiss you feel in your stomach and that makes you open your mouth. Camila softened against me. I ran my hands down her back, under her blouse, and felt her skin prickle.

“Wait,” she said in my ear. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything. Of it hurting. Of them hearing us. Of regretting it.”

I looked at her. I brushed a strand of hair off her face and held her chin with my thumb.

“If you want me to stop, I stop. But if we keep going, you’re going to have to trust me.”

She nodded without saying anything. I pulled her blouse over her head and left it on the desk. She had a white bra, plain, with a tiny bow in the center. I gently pushed her until she sat on the edge of the bed and knelt between her legs.

“Stay still,” I whispered.

I kissed her neck, the hollow of her collarbone, the center of her chest over the fabric. Camila held her breath as if letting it out might betray her. I lifted her skirt to her waist and stayed there for a second, looking at her, legs open and clothes wrinkled over her hips, swallowing as if her own body were already weighing on her. I ran my open palm along the inside of her thighs. Her skin was warm and she trembled as if she were cold.

“My parents,” she said again.

“They won’t hear us. Trust me.”

I kissed the edge of her navel over the thin fabric of her slip, then her knee, then higher, slowly, making her wait. Her breathing broke when I parted her legs a little more and settled my face between her thighs. Her whole body was tense, but the dampness was already shining through the fabric of her underwear, dark, marked by friction and by the urgency she was trying to hide.

***

I lowered her underwear slowly, sliding it down her legs to her ankles. When I lifted my face, she was covering herself with both hands and staring at the ceiling, her cheeks bright red. I gently moved her hands aside and spread her knees.

“Look at me,” I asked.

She lowered her gaze. I held her eyes while I ran my tongue along the inside of her thigh, inching upward. Camila bit the back of her hand to keep from making a sound. When I got where I wanted to go, I parted her lips slightly with my fingers and the first lick made her arch all the way up. I covered her mouth with my palm without thinking, and she nodded, as if telling me to keep going like that.

I started softly. With the tip of my tongue I traced her folds, first on the outside, then moving toward the center. Camila thrust her hips forward without meaning to, searching for me, soaking my tongue with her own desire. I gripped her thighs to keep her still. When I started sucking her clit, I felt a tremor rising from her feet and stopping in her throat before it could come out as a moan.

“Andrés,” she whispered, almost voiceless, “I can’t hold it.”

“Then don’t hold it,” I said softly. “Bite the pillow.”

She grabbed the huge stuffed animal and pressed it to her face. I went back down. This time I wasn’t gentle: I sucked her hard, slowly but firmly, alternating my tongue with the pressure of my lips, tasting that hot, salty mix that kept coming out more and more with each movement. I slid one finger inside her first, testing, then another, pushing them in and out with patient rhythm while my mouth kept working exactly where her belly twisted most. I felt her clench around me in a grip that made me growl under my breath.

“Wait, wait,” she panted. “It’s too much.”

I stopped. I went up to kiss her. Her face was flushed and her eyes were closed.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No. But come on top.”

***

I took off my T-shirt and pants in silence, leaving everything in a heap on the floor. When I pulled down my boxer briefs, she opened her eyes for a second and closed them again immediately, as if she’d rather not look. The nervous laugh escaped her anyway.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. It’s just… looking at you like that makes me embarrassed.”

“It’s the same as always, dummy.”

“It’s not the same like this.”

I climbed onto the bed over her, resting on my elbows so I wouldn’t crush her. I kissed her neck, ran my tongue over her ear. Camila grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me against her.

“Slowly,” she said. “Please, slowly.”

I opened her legs with my knee. I lowered one hand and lined myself up at her entrance, brushing the tip, feeling how she was already searching for me even before I entered. I rubbed back and forth, wet against her heat, so it wouldn’t be sudden. When I pushed in, I did it little by little, barely moving. Camila dug her nails into my shoulders and opened her mouth without making a sound.

“Breathe,” I told her in her ear. “Let the air out.”

She did. I pushed a little more. I felt the resistance, then a short give, and I knew in that second that something had opened inside her. Camila squeezed her eyes shut and a couple of tears slipped to her temples.

“It hurts,” she murmured. “Stay still for a second.”

I stayed still, buried only partly inside. I kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, the tip of her nose. I stroked her hair. I felt her take two deep breaths, then three, until the tension started to leave her body. When she gave me a tiny nod, I moved again, even more slowly.

***

The pain turned into something else with every rocking motion. First an irritation that wrinkled her forehead, then wonder that showed in her half-open mouth, and finally a new pleasure she didn’t even know how to handle. She moved her hips to meet me and her breathing quickened.

“Don’t scream,” I reminded her.

“I can’t, oh, Andrés…”

I covered her mouth with my hand again. She kissed my palm, bit it softly. I pushed a little farther in and quickened the pace, still careful, but now looking for my own release. The bed made no noise. The only things you could hear were our breathing and a faint creak of wood every time I leaned in with my full weight.

“Turn over,” I told her in her ear.

“How?”

“Face down. Come on.”

I helped her roll over and slipped a pillow under her hips. Camila buried her face in the stuffed animal. I knelt behind her, stroked her back from top to bottom, grabbed her hips and went in again. From that angle she felt different, tighter, hotter, tensing and opening at the same time. I pushed a little harder and she answered with a muffled sound against the fabric.

“Like that, like that,” she murmured. “Don’t stop.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes. Yes. Don’t stop.”

I leaned over her back and slipped one arm under her stomach. I lifted her just a little, held her against me, and moved her myself, setting a firmer rhythm. Camila clenched her fists in the sheets. I ran my free hand over her chest, over her neck, put two fingers in her mouth, and she sucked them without opening her eyes, with a desperation that had nothing shy left in it. I kept moving her, in and out, feeling how every thrust tightened the base of my cock until it became a knot.

I lifted one of her legs, settled her better, and opened her wider. The angle of my hips changed and Camila let out a broken moan, the kind that lands halfway between fear and pleasure. I leaned in to bite her shoulder, to quiet her and at the same time make her shake more. She arched, and the friction of her cunt against my pelvis made me lose control of my breathing for a second.

“Harder,” she whispered. “I love it when you fill me like that.”

The words went straight through me. I pressed my hand into her waist, forced her to keep pace with me, and the sound of skin against skin began filling the room with each short, deep thrust. Her wetness ran over my balls and my pubis, hot, filthy, perfect. Camila kept repeating my name as if she were running out of air.

***

I wasn’t going to last much longer. The feeling had been building since before, and with every thrust it was harder to hide. I pulled my fingers out of her mouth, grabbed both hips and sped up.

“Camila,” I said softly, “I’m going to come.”

“Pull out,” she gasped. “Pull out, please.”

I had the right reflex. I withdrew in one motion and came over the curve of her back, a warm line that slid toward her side. I collapsed beside her, panting, both of us breathing like we’d run a block.

Camila stayed there, face down, unmoving, for a long while. Then she turned her head toward me and looked at me from under her messed-up hair.

“And that?” she murmured, with a tiny smile.

“And what?”

“All that angry-boyfriend theater. It was for this, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

She gave me a weak slap on the arm and laughed into the stuffed animal, muffling the sound. Then she curled up beside me and fell silent, staring at the ceiling as if she were still processing everything that had just happened.

***

When it started getting hard to keep my eyes open, she was already asleep. I sat up slowly, gathered the clothes from the floor, and got dressed in the hallway without turning on any lights. I went barefoot down to the kitchen, put my shoes on, and left through the back door, climbing the garden fence so I wouldn’t make noise with the gate.

Camila and I stayed together for several more months after that night. It seemed to me that something had changed, that we were closer now, that there wasn’t a wall between us anymore. And for a while, that was true. Until one afternoon she found me coming out of a café with another girl, and everything ended with a slam of the door.

Years passed. Today, if I think of her, I don’t remember how we argued, or the things we said at the end, or how idiotic I was those last few weeks. What I remember most is that dawn in her room, with her parents sleeping a few meters away, and the way she looked at me when it was all over, her eyes still bright and the stuffed animal clutched against her chest.