The Afternoon We Stopped Being Just Friends

We had gone out to buy a notebook that Mariana said she needed for her literature assignment. We bought it in five minutes and, as always, we dragged out the way back. It was one of those strange highland afternoons: the sun was beating down hard on your face, but all it took was stepping into the shade of a tree for the cold to remind you of the altitude. We walked in silence, listening to the sharp sound of our own steps on the sidewalk. The notebook excuse was, really, just one more in the long list of excuses we made up so we wouldn’t have to part during the day.

I was thinking of leaving her at the gate and going back home. That was what we did almost every afternoon. But that time, when we arrived, she stopped and looked at me in a way I had never seen before.

—Come —she said—. Come with me to see it inside, so I can get it out of the way once and for all.

The sentence didn’t make much sense, but I understood. It was the next pretext. Assignments we never finished, movies we never started, books nobody read. All our afternoons had been that for months: inventions to brush against each other, to kiss when some adult passed from one room to another and left us alone for half a minute. I nodded. I had no way to refuse.

We went up to the second floor and, instead of going into her room, she opened her parents’ bedroom door.

—The TV is bigger here —she said, without looking at me—. And they don’t get back until late.

I stood for a moment in the doorway. The previous week we had argued over something stupid and barely spoken to each other. The reconciliation had been silent: a look in the school hallway, a brush of hands on the stairs, nothing explicit. But that afternoon, in that room that smelled of adult women’s perfume and ironed sheets, I sensed that something had been decided without my knowing it.

—Lie down —she insisted, patting the bed.

I leaned back against the headboard, my back stiff. She put on the movie—one of those European tragedies with naked bodies in every scene—and settled beside me, letting her head fall onto my chest. I wasn’t paying attention to the screen. I barely registered the line of her neck, the warmth coming off her hair, the warm breath reaching me along my throat.

Something was happening and I still didn’t know what to call it.

On the screen, a man kept obsessively following a woman to the ends of the earth. I watched the smallest movement of her fingers on the sheet. Her hand came toward mine, first as if by accident, then with clear intent. Mariana’s palm was slightly sweaty, maybe from nerves, and when it met mine I closed my eyes for a second. We began stroking each other’s fingers slowly. Then harder, pressing our palms together as if we were holding each other up from a long fall.

I lifted my head, which had been resting on her thighs, and moved toward her face. Our breathing had become short and uneven. I kissed her cheek, that warm cheek with fine, transparent hairs between her nose and lips. Before the first kiss on the mouth, she pulled me against her in an embrace that settled the matter. There was no turning back now.

The kiss was like breathing again after a dive too long. After the first came others and others, and the sound of the movie sank far below the sound of our hearts hammering against our ribs, the wet noise of our lips, the blood beginning to move inside us. Mariana pushed her tongue deep into my mouth with a hunger I didn’t know she had, and I bit it slowly, sucking on it like it was a long candy. She panted against my cheek and the hot air slid down my neck straight to my cock, already hard against the seam of my pants.

—Can I? —I asked, with my fingers already under her T-shirt.

She didn’t answer with words. She lifted her back a little, just enough to give me permission. My hands traced her waist, first over her bra and then underneath. I felt the edge of the fabric and, without taking it off, pushed it up. Her tits were warm and much softer than I had imagined for months, in biology class or on the bus ride home. When my cold hands brushed her nipples, she let out a small, held-in sound, as if she were afraid of waking someone. Her nipples went hard instantly, two pink, taut peaks that dug into my palm every time I squeezed an entire breast. I lowered my mouth. I sucked one nipple, then the other, and she grabbed my head with both hands so I wouldn’t stop.

—Don’t stop —she whispered—, bite it, like that, harder.

I obeyed. I tugged at her nipple with my teeth, pulled it from my mouth with a little wet sound, and took it back in. Mariana arched her back against my face and I felt her hips begin to move on their own, searching for something to rub against.

She was almost on top of me, her chest lifted against my palm, wanting me to keep touching her there. I tried to hold my breath so it wouldn’t show how much my hand was trembling.

***

I decided to go lower. A curious finger found the button on her pants and stayed there, waiting. She twisted her hips just slightly and I understood that it was a yes. I pulled her pants down clumsily, tangling myself in her shoes, and the two of us ended up half-dressed on her parents’ bed.

—Are you sure? —I asked.

She looked at me without saying anything. Her eyes were bright, fixed on mine. It was an answer that didn’t need to pass through her mouth. Even so, shyness got the better of us for a few seconds and the two of us crawled under a light blanket folded at the foot of the mattress. It wasn’t because of the cold. It was so we wouldn’t see each other too much.

I slid my hand under her underwear. The hair felt rougher and more alive than I had imagined, and that, instead of making me uncomfortable, only made me more excited. My fingers moved lower and I found her soaked. Mariana’s pussy was so wet that the tip of my finger sank in on its own, effortlessly, up to the knuckle. She gave a tiny jump and I pulled my hand out at once.

—Slowly —she murmured.

Then it was she herself who took my wrist and guided it back. Her pussy was hot and wet, much more than anyone ever tells you in biology class or in any conversation among boys after school. I opened her lips with my index and middle finger, felt upward until I found the clit, and when I brushed it she jerked hard against my hand.

—There —she gasped against my neck—, there, don’t move from there.

I started making circles, first slow, then faster. I felt how she kept getting wetter, how my hand became sticky all the way to the wrist. I shoved two fingers into her and with my thumb kept working her clit. Mariana sank her teeth into my shoulder to keep from crying out. Her hips were moving on their own, fucking my fingers with a desperation that had my cock about to burst in my underwear. I felt her breathing against my neck while I pumped my fingers in and out, still not really understanding what I was supposed to do there, letting myself be guided by the way her body responded to every tiny change.

We finished taking off the rest of our clothes beneath the blanket. What we were wearing on top stayed as it was: the embarrassment hadn’t completely gone away. She felt over the top of my underwear and pulled it down. When her hand closed around my cock, I wanted to close my eyes and disappear and, at the same time, stay there forever. She started jerking me off slowly, squeezing me with a hand that didn’t know what it was doing but learned fast. She worked me up to the tip, paused there, her thumb smearing precum all over the head, and slid back down to the base. A rough groan escaped me that I didn’t know how to swallow.

—Wait —I whispered—, if you keep doing that I’m going to come already.

She smiled for the first time that whole afternoon and squeezed me harder once more, like a little mischief, before letting go.

—Come —she said, and pulled me toward her.

I settled myself over her body. I felt her wetness at the tip and, when I pushed in, she made a pained face that stopped me dead. I pulled back.

—No, keep going —she said.

I held her tight, kissed her forehead, pushed again. The head of my cock barely made its way a centimeter inside her, through a hot, tight resistance that almost made me come right then. Once again that expression, that mix of wanting and not wanting, and once again I pulled back. For the first time in my life, I felt the weight of another body when you don’t want to hurt it.

—Better me on top —she said then.

***

We switched places without separating. She settled over me with her knees on either side of my hips. I saw her up close, too close, with her hair falling over her face and her tits bare in the gray light of the movie. She grabbed my cock with her hand, set it against her pussy, and slowly lowered herself. First just the tip. I felt her flesh wrap around my head and squeeze it, hot, slippery. Then a little more: halfway, three quarters, her breathing through an open mouth and her hands braced on my chest so she wouldn’t drop all at once. Then all of it. All my cock sank deep into her and her pussy closed around me like a wet fist. She made a pained face again, but this time she wouldn’t let me pull back. She locked eyes with me and didn’t move until her body decided it could keep going.

I was inside Mariana. I didn’t know what to do with that information during the first few seconds. My head was blank and, at the same time, full of everything: the heat, the pressure, the smell of the shampoo that had slipped loose from her ponytail. She started moving on top of me, slowly, biting her lip every time she went all the way down. She rose until only the tip was left inside and then dropped hard, impaling herself completely. Every time she came down, her tits bounced against my face and I stretched my mouth out to catch a nipple as it went by.

—Easy —I asked, not for me but for her.

She nodded without stopping. I took her by the waist to steady her and to avoid being completely passive. Her skin was burning. I started to drive up from below, thrusting into her too, crashing my hips against hers every time she lowered herself. There was a wet, obscene noise every time my cock went in and out of her soaked pussy. I had never been more awake in my life. The biology lesson about contraceptive methods had fallen out of our heads long ago. We knew the names in theory; we didn’t have the products. And yet neither of us stopped to calculate that. The simple madness of having each other had won completely over any common sense.

After a few minutes I put her back under me. I spread her legs, kissed her knees, went in again. This time the pain seemed to have eased a little. I buried myself in her all at once in one long thrust and she let out a moan she muffled against my shoulder. I started fucking her slowly, my cock going in and out at full length, feeling how her pussy loosened and tightened in turn. I grabbed one breast with a hand, kneaded it, pinched the nipple until it tore a gasp from her. I never lost her face. When I kissed her, I closed my eyes; when I stopped kissing her, I stared at her hard, as if I wanted to get in through there too. It was the first time I understood what a look could do.

—Harder —she murmured, her lips against my ear—, you’re not going to break me.

I did as she said. I drove my hands into her thighs, spread them wider, and started thrusting with my whole body. Her parents’ bed creaked beneath us with every stroke. She dug her nails into my back, pulled my hair, bit my neck. I watched her tits rise and fall with the force of each thrust and told her things in her ear that, until that afternoon, I wouldn’t have dared say out loud.

—That’s it, you’re that wet, do you like how I’m fucking you?

—Yes —she panted—, more, deeper, don’t stop.

***

The rhythm adjusted itself, without either of us planning it. I didn’t know how long had passed, whether ten minutes or an hour. The movie kept playing in the background, in another language, in another world. At some point I felt her tremble all over beneath me, her pussy clenching my cock in quick, rhythmic contractions that left me breathless. Mariana buried her face in the pillow and muffled a long moan, her thighs tight against my sides, while she came all around my cock. I felt her getting even wetter, her pussy pulsing in short waves against my cock, sucking me inward.

Only when I felt the end rushing up on me did I become sensible for a second. I pulled my cock out of her pussy with a wet little sound, rolled to the side, and finished coming against the sheet in thick, hot spurts, biting my hand so I wouldn’t make a noise. My cum came out in jolts, one after another, staining my hand and my belly. I didn’t show her anything. I thought, with a shame I had never felt before, that this was not the moment to explain to her what had just happened inside my body.

When I came back to myself, I held her. I kissed her forehead, her cheekbone, her ear. I thanked her under my breath, not really knowing why one thanks someone for something like that.

She stayed still for a while and then sat up. And then we both saw it at the same time: a small, dark stain in the middle of her parents’ light-colored sheet. Beside it, another larger, whiter stain, from the semen that had escaped me. Mariana covered her mouth with her hand. I looked at my T-shirt and found a couple more drops, already brown, on the hem.

How was I going to explain that at home?

We got dressed in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes. It was strange: we had seen each other completely a minute earlier and now, dressed, we were shy about every gesture. She pulled the sheet off the bed with trembling hands and stuffed it into the laundry basket, under some towels. Then she straightened the coverlet as if nothing had happened.

—It’s better if you go now —she said, without anger, almost as a favor.

I went down the stairs almost running. My head was full of images mixed with fear, with guilt, with a strange joy unlike any other. At the door, just before I left, she caught up with me. She grabbed my T-shirt, turned me around, kissed me. It wasn’t a long kiss, but it was the most loaded kiss I had ever received in my life.

—Tomorrow —she said only.

I walked down the main avenue with strange legs, with the sun still beating hard on one side of my face and the cold on the other. I thought about many things at once: whether I had done everything wrong, whether I had hurt her, whether the stains would give us away, whether Mariana’s parents would smell something as soon as they walked into the bedroom. But above all that, while I went block after block toward my house, one simple, almost stupid certainty kept growing: what we had just done, with all its mistakes and scares and pain, had also been one of the most beautiful things that had ever happened to me.

That night, in my room, I hid the T-shirt at the back of the closet. I turned off the light and lay there staring at the ceiling. And instead of thinking about the stain, my mother, the biology exam, or any of the problems that would come the next day, I kept thinking about one thing only: the way Mariana, with her eyes locked on mine, had not let me pull back.