The First Time Was with the Girl I Hated Most

More than twenty years have passed since that night in the mountains, and I still find it hard to make sense of it. My wife, Valentina, is in the kitchen whistling while she prepares breakfast, and sometimes I catch myself staring at the shape of her face and think back to the first time I saw her: five years old, long hair loose, hazel eyes. And the first thing she did when she crossed paths with me in preschool was stick out her tongue at me.

I threw my sandwich at her. She threw my hat back at me. I yanked out one of her braids. She bit my arm. That’s how it all started.

She was the youngest of four brothers and it showed in every move she made. Valentina gave in to nothing and no one. If I grabbed her hair, she drove her knee up without hesitation. If I threw something at her, she threw it back with better reflexes and not the slightest sign of tears. In the preschool yard we were a permanent attraction: the teachers eventually resigned themselves to it and simply seated us at opposite ends of the room, hoping the day would end without serious injuries.

They didn’t always manage it.

We went on like that for years. Always in the same classroom, because of the cruelties of alphabetical order or some teacher with a sense of humor nobody appreciated. Over time, the physical violence gave way to something else. In the last years of primary school we weren’t hitting each other anymore, but we hurt each other just the same. I’d walk into class and make a loud comment about a sudden smell. She’d arrive and say someone had let a draft of rotten air in. Our classmates looked at us with that mixture of boredom and amusement reserved for a marriage that doesn’t know it’s one.

Miss Carmen, who taught us Language Arts in seventh grade, was the first to put it into words. One Tuesday in May she had us sit face-to-face, looked from one to the other of us, and said very calmly:

—Remember this: two people who spend that much time and that much energy making each other’s lives impossible usually care more than they’re willing to admit. You’ll see.

Valentina told her she’d marry a frog first. I said I wouldn’t stop even on the opposite sidewalk if I saw her fall. Miss Carmen laughed to herself, unhurriedly, and said nothing else.

***

We were eighteen when what happened happened. Final year of high school, winter field trip to the mountains with the gym teacher, a new man who had arrived in March and still knew nothing about us. When he divided us into groups for the second day’s activities, we ended up together. The whole group burst out laughing. The teacher didn’t change a thing.

We set out with the morning sun: me with a full backpack, thermal jacket, compass; her with a small backpack and her hands in her pockets. The assigned hill was behind a grove about forty minutes from the base camp. We walked without saying a single word, with a yard between us, as if it were a boundary agreed upon in silence.

I don’t know exactly when the fog arrived. In that part of the south, the weather changes without warning. Visibility dropped to ten meters in a matter of minutes, and with it the temperature. I zipped up my jacket. Valentina crossed her arms over her chest.

—If you weren’t so unpleasant, you’d lend me your coat —she said.

—If you weren’t so willful, you would’ve brought yours.

She snorted and started going downhill in the direction her instinct told her. I saw it immediately on the compass.

—It’s the other way.

—I know perfectly well where I’m going.

She didn’t. But I followed her anyway. She didn’t ask me to. And I couldn’t explain to myself why I was doing it while I was doing it. I simply couldn’t turn my back.

We walked for more than an hour. When the fog got so thick we couldn’t see the ground under our feet, Valentina sat down on a rock and admitted, without looking at me:

—We may be lost.

—Maybe —I said.

Her lips were slightly bluish. Her hands, which had never trembled in front of me, were trembling.

***

We found two large rocks with a cleft between them, just deep enough for both of us, barely. I cut broad-leaved shrubs with the knife from my backpack and spread them on the ground as a base. I improvised a roof with branches and an emergency thermal blanket, securing it with stones along the edges so the breeze wouldn’t move it. Valentina gathered firewood without being asked, in silence, with the same practical efficiency with which she did everything. There was something different about that silence: it wasn’t hostile, it was focused. The two of us understood we were in the same situation and that fighting each other wasn’t going to get us out of it.

I lit the fire with the lighter in my pack. Valentina moved closer and held her hands out to the flames.

I made coffee with a packet and the thermos. I handed it to her without saying anything.

—Thanks —she said.

It was the first time in thirteen years she’d said that to me.

The rain came around nine. First fine, then persistent and cold. The roof held, but the cold got in everywhere and the temperature kept dropping. I noticed Valentina’s lips shifting from pink to violet and understood that the fire alone wasn’t enough: this was the beginning of hypothermia, and the problem was inside.

—You need real heat —I told her—. The fire isn’t enough.

She looked at me suspiciously.

—What are you suggesting?

—What any survival manual says. Get into the emergency bag and share body heat. Nothing more.

Silence. Rain hammering outside.

—Okay —she said.

We got into the two-person bag, covered by the thermal blankets. I rubbed her back slowly, in circles, to get the circulation going. Little by little she stopped trembling. The fire crackled. The rain kept falling outside. And somewhere between ten and eleven at night, something changed in the air inside the little shelter.

I turned to look at her and found her looking back at me. Up close, in that orange light, Valentina was another person. Not the rival from the schoolyard. She was a girl with wide-open eyes and something I had never seen in them before: genuine uncertainty.

—What are you looking at? —she whispered.

—You —I said.

She didn’t answer. But she didn’t move away either.

***

We kissed. I don’t remember exactly who moved first. What I do remember is that it was too intense at the start, almost angry, as if we’d wanted to cram thirteen years of wasted energy into one thing. I bit her lip hard, she dug her nails into the back of my neck, and I felt her tongue enter my mouth as if she were handing back every insult from elementary school transformed into heat.

She put her hand on my chest and stopped me.

—Not like that —she said.

I looked at her.

—If anything’s going to happen —she said more slowly—, I want it to be real. Not out of anger. I’m cold, I’m scared, and I don’t want it to be only because of that.

I understood what she was asking for. Something in me truly relaxed for the first time that night.

—Okay —I said.

We started again, but differently. I ran my hand through her hair and she closed her eyes. We kissed unhurriedly. Her hands stopped being tense. So did mine. I ran my tongue along her neck, slowly, and heard her let out a sigh I had never heard from her before. I unbuttoned her sweater button by button inside the bag, not letting the cold in, and she copied me with my jacket and my thermal shirt, with that same practical efficiency of hers, until we were skin against skin under the blankets.

It was her first time. And mine. We said it to each other almost at the same time and laughed, both of us, together, for the first time in thirteen years.

—Then we’ll both learn —she murmured against my mouth.

I pulled down her bra with both hands and saw her breasts for the first time in the firelight. They were smaller than I had imagined on some nights at fifteen, and at the same time prettier: very white skin, dark nipples hard from the cold, stiffened like tiny stones. I lowered my head and took one into my mouth. She let out a short moan that bounced off the rocks of the shelter.

—Jesus —she whispered—. Lucas.

I sucked her nipple slowly, circling it with my tongue, biting just a little, and felt her arch whole against me. I moved to the other one, unhurried. She grabbed my hair and pressed me to her chest, breathing in short gasps, as if she’d never known she would like it that much.

I slid her pants down under the bag, wrestling with the frozen zipper. She lifted her hips to help me, cheeks red and eyes shining. I ran my hand between her legs over her panties and found her wet, soaked, so much so that my cock hardened even more inside my pants. I pushed the fabric aside with two fingers and touched her cunt directly, slippery, hot, a total contrast with the ice in the air outside.

—You’re soaked —I said, unable to keep quiet.

—Shut up —she whispered, but she spread her legs wider.

I ran my fingertip over the lips of her cunt, up and down, looking for the clit. When I found it, she bit her lip and arched her back. I made slow circles, paying attention to every movement she made, learning on the fly what rhythm made her breathe harder. Then I slid one finger inside. She was tight, clenched, and she closed around my finger as if it had a life of its own.

—Another one —she gasped—. Put another one in me.

I slid in the second finger. She started moving against my hand, hips up and down, lips parted, eyes closed. The first time Valentina asked me for something in a soft voice in her life, it was that: for me to put another finger in. And I gave it to her.

I moved down her stomach with kisses, biting the skin of her hip, and opened her legs all the way. The emergency bag was small and I had to crawl almost completely underneath, with my face between her thighs, smelling her and smoke and rain all mixed together. I ran my tongue over her cunt from bottom to top, long and slow, and felt her shudder all over.

—Lucas, wait, no…

—Shut up —I told her this time.

I ate her cunt slowly, unhurriedly, sucking her clit and sliding my tongue into her, alternating. She grabbed my hair with both hands and pressed me to her, panting hard, moving her hips against my mouth without realizing it. I slipped two fingers into her again while I sucked her clit and felt her whole body tense, her thighs crushing my head, her back arched, and suddenly a long, deep tremor shook her from top to bottom. She came with a muffled moan, trying not to shout, and I could feel on my tongue the way she clenched and released, clenched and released.

—Holy fuck —she said when she could breathe again—. Holy fuck, Lucas.

I climbed up to kiss her. She found my mouth with her tongue, testing herself in me, not caring.

—Now me —she said.

She shoved me onto my back against the shrubs. She pulled down my pants and boxers in one yank. My cock stood up against my stomach, harder than it had ever been in my life, and she looked at it for a second, with that new uncertainty and that usual determination.

—I’ve never done this —she said.

—Me neither.

—Talk me through it.

She took me in her hand, squeezing slowly, measuring the thickness. Then she lowered her head and took me into her mouth. I felt her warm, wet, a little awkward at first, and perfect two seconds later. She sucked me slowly, up and down, her tongue circling the tip, and I had to clutch the edge of the blanket not to come right there and then.

—Like that —I said, voice broken—. Like that, don’t stop.

She sucked me off with that same practical efficiency of hers, learning fast, adjusting the rhythm when she heard me gasp. She looked up at me from below with hazel eyes full of fire, and that image stayed engraved in me forever: Valentina Álvarez, the preschool girl, with my cock in her mouth and the look of someone who had already decided everything.

—Stop —I told her—. Stop, I’m going to come.

She stopped. She wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand and smiled, the first smile she’d ever given me in thirteen years.

—Come here —I said.

I lay back and felt the weight of her body settle over mine. Her hands were warm and precise. Her skin smelled of smoke and of something else, something uniquely hers that I couldn’t identify but from that night on I associated with her forever. She sat astride me and grabbed my cock with her hand to position it. I felt her press against the lips of her cunt, slick with saliva and with her own wetness. When I entered her it was slow, careful, paying attention to every signal. She lowered her hips little by little, biting her lip, bearing the burn. I felt her open around my cock millimeter by millimeter, tight, hot, so narrow I could barely move.

—Slowly —she whispered—. Slowly.

I gripped her hips with both hands and helped her lower herself. When she finished sitting down on me, with all my cock inside her, she stayed still, eyes closed and head thrown back. I felt her pulsing around me like a small heart.

—Are you okay? —I asked.

—I’m better than okay —she said—. Move.

Her hips answered with a soft pressure, guiding me. She started moving up and down slowly, finding the rhythm, enduring the sting of the first time. I helped her with my hands, lifting her a little, letting her drop onto me. I looked at her from below: her breasts moving with each thrust, her hair falling over her face, her lips parted, hazel eyes locked on mine. I felt her body adjusting to mine, her breathing changing pace, her fingers finding my chest and settling there.

—Harder —she gasped after a while—. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Harder, Lucas.

I grabbed her by the waist and turned her over. She ended up on her back over the broad leaves, legs spread, and I thrust back inside in one stroke. She cried out softly, grabbed my shoulders, and dug her heels into my ass so I wouldn’t stop. I fucked her slowly and then faster, feeling how her wet cunt squeezed me with every push, how a slapping, wet sound rose between us, how the skin of her thighs hit mine in the silence of the shelter.

Valentina was everything I should have noticed for years: the precision of her movements, the warmth of her voice when she wasn’t using it to hurt me, the way she shut her eyes when something overwhelmed her, the short, rough moan she let out every time I went all the way in. I heard myself say her name. I heard her say mine —Lucas, just that, without irony— and it was enough for everything else to disappear.

—I’m going to come —I told her against her ear—. Tell me where.

—Outside —she gasped—. Over me. I want to see it.

I pulled out at once, grabbed myself with my hand, two or three more strokes and I came over her stomach in thick, hot spurts, trembling all over, my forehead resting against her neck. She ran her fingers through my cum and brought them to her mouth, never taking her eyes off me, as if trying something new. I’ll never forget that image.

We stayed wrapped around each other for a long while, breathing hard, the rain beating outside and the fire crackling low. I ran my tongue over her nipple again without thinking, and she let out a short laugh.

—You’re crazy —she said.

—I know.

Half an hour later she turned over, rested her cheek on my chest, and slid her hand down my stomach until she found my cock again. She started stroking it slowly, patiently, until I got hard again. She looked at me with a different smile than the first one, more certain.

—Now I want it back —she said—. But slower. And I want to see your face.

The second time was different from the first: more certain, more ours. We both learned at the same time, without either of us having to pretend we knew more than we did. She laid me back again, settled on top of me, and slid my cock into her without using her hand this time, moving her hips until she found it. This time I went in easier, slicker, and she let out a long breath when she sat down fully. She began moving on top of me unhurriedly, rocking her hips, bracing her hands on my chest. I grabbed her breasts and pinched her nipples carefully. She closed her eyes and sped up the rhythm.

—Like that —she whispered—. Like that, don’t stop, don’t stop.

I watched her ride me from below, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, her mouth open, eyes closed, and thought I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. I dug my fingers into her waist and pushed up from underneath, faster and faster. She started moaning without restraint, forgetting the shelter, forgetting everything. I felt her cunt clench again, those deep spasms around my cock, and I knew she was coming. She came over me trembling, collapsing against my chest, biting my shoulder so she wouldn’t scream.

—Come inside —she gasped when she caught her breath—. This time inside.

—You sure?

—Sure.

I turned her over and thrust in deep. I fucked her slowly, looking into her eyes, feeling how she tightened around me with every thrust. She wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me toward her. When I reached the end I emptied everything inside her, with short, hard thrusts, moaning against her mouth, feeling every pulse of my climax leave me to enter her. We stayed like that for a long while, me on top of her, still inside, while we kissed slowly as if we had just discovered how it was done.

When we were done, we lay still listening to the rain. I was looking up at the improvised roof of branches. Her head was resting on my chest and her open hand on my side.

***

—You know I wasn’t lost? —she said much later.

I looked at her.

—I knew perfectly well we were walking parallel to the camp. I made you think we were lost to see what you’d do.

—To see if I’d leave you alone.

—Yes.

A long silence. Outside, the rain was beginning to let up.

—You didn’t —she said.

—No —I replied.

She squeezed my side a little.

—Ever since Miss Carmen told us that in seventh grade, I started seeing you differently. I saw you for real. And I decided that if anything ever happened between us, it would be with you. That you were the only one I wanted it to happen with. That’s why I never got close to anyone else.

I didn’t know what to say. I don’t think it was necessary.

They found us at dawn. The whole group fell silent when we came out from between the rocks. The gym teacher was the only one who smiled. Valentina and I walked back to camp together, shoulder to shoulder, saying nothing.

***

Four years later we got married. We were twenty-three. The whole family said it was too soon. Those who had known us since preschool said it was a miracle, though Miss Carmen, whom we invited to the wedding, said it was the most predictable thing she had ever seen in her life.

Today we have three children. The oldest is fifteen and the youngest, who is six, is identical to her mother: long hair, hazel eyes, that way of standing up to the world without accepting defeat. There’s a boy in her class she fights with every day. When they tell us, Valentina and I look at each other and say nothing.

We just smile. Some things don’t need explaining.