The Message That Made Me Travel to the Capital

It all started with a friend request on a social network. Mariano was thirty-two, had a slow smile in his profile photo, and introduced himself in a way that was nothing like the boys from my town. I was in my final year of high school, and I never really understood why I clicked accept.

I lived in Las Cañadas, a dusty town in the north where almost everyone planted something or looked after someone. I was raised by my grandparents. Their idea of the world fit into three streets, a church, and Don Heriberto’s shop. My routine was going to school, coming back, helping in the kitchen, and sleeping. To go out to the corner I had to justify myself three times.

With so many no’s hanging over me and little else to do, answering his messages became the only space that was truly mine. We talked about anything: a movie he had seen, a song I had heard, what he thought about the weather, about the future, about people. He made the absurd sound interesting. It’s just chat, I told myself, nobody has to find out.

But something was growing. I started waiting for the hour he logged on the way I used to wait for recess. I started seeing the town differently, as if someone had adjusted my glasses. Mariano asked me questions no one had ever asked me before. He listened to me. And I, who hardly had any friends, found myself confessing things to him I had never even said out loud to myself.

I wanted to see him. I dreamed about him. I thought he was my Prince Charming, though I was embarrassed to even say it like that in my own head. When I managed to sneak away for an hour to the plaza in the neighboring town, there he was, waiting beside his pickup. Those were short meetings, watched over by the clock and by the fear that someone might see me. The most he ever gave me was a hug and a kiss on the cheek when we said goodbye, and even so I went back floating.

Almost two years went by like that, chatting almost every day, seeing each other only a few times. Until one afternoon he wrote to say he was being transferred to the capital. That he was leaving the next day. That if I wanted to say goodbye, it had to be that same night, at the usual place.

My legs were shaking while I waited for him at the side of the road, hidden among the poplars. When he got out of the pickup, he didn’t give me his usual hug. He didn’t say a word. He took my face in both hands and kissed me on the mouth. It was long. Much longer than I had ever dared imagine. And when he pulled away, I knew from his look that he had found out something too. I apologized. It was my first kiss.

That night I didn’t sleep. My body didn’t understand what it was supposed to do with everything that had just happened to it.

***

Then came months of silence. My messages stayed seen, or never reached their destination. Life went back to its course of scoldings, chores, and Sunday masses. I learned, almost by force, to live without expecting anything.

On Thursday, September tenth, I found his name on my screen. He didn’t explain his absence. He didn’t ask forgiveness. He just wrote: “I’m waiting for you on Sunday at eleven at the capital bus station. I’ll be at the passenger exit. I know it won’t be easy for you. If you don’t have money for the ticket, I’ll pay for it here. It’s the only chance we have to see each other again. Kisses.”

I read it five times. I’ll do what I can, I answered.

I called Camila, my best friend, who lived in the neighboring town. She told me I was crazy, that I shouldn’t even think about it. Five minutes later she was figuring out how to lend me the money without her father noticing. We invented a family emergency so the old man would loosen his grip on his wallet, and with my grandparents we said it was Camila’s birthday and that I’d sleep there. At seven on Sunday morning I walked over to her house, took a local bus, and after two transfers I was sitting on a bus headed to the capital, clutching the ticket between my fingers.

***

I had never been in such a big city. When I got off the bus, I let myself be carried by the stream of people because I didn’t know where to go. And suddenly there he was, leaning against a column, waiting for me.

My heart stopped and sped up in the same second. He came closer, asked me how I’d gotten there, took my hand without asking, and led me to the parking lot. His car was new, different from the one before. Inside it smelled of expensive cologne and old tobacco.

Before starting the engine, he turned toward me. He grabbed the back of my neck with a firmness he had never used with me before, and gently pulled me toward his mouth. I thought he was going to kiss me like he had when we said goodbye. But no. Barely a brush at the side of the lips. Then he pulled back, looked at my mouth, and said:

—I have to take care of something. When I’m done, I’ll take you to a place where we can talk in peace.

The “something” turned out to be a checkpoint on the highway, two men with radios, an envelope changing hands. Then a big warehouse full of machines and ATVs. He introduced me to his coworkers as his girlfriend. He said it out loud, without hesitation, and I felt the floor rise a handspan under me. He put me on an ATV and took me for a spin around the property, popping wheelies until I was screaming and laughing and forgetting, for a while, where I was. It was the first time in years that anything had made me scream just from adrenaline.

—Let’s go —he said when we got down—. I’m taking you somewhere we can be alone.

***

When he walked into the motel, I didn’t understand. It was a long building, with individual garages covered by curtains. I asked him why he was bringing me there, and he answered without looking at me:

—To talk. We’ll watch a movie, rest a while, and I’ll take you back early.

I believed him. I wanted to believe him. I got out of the car behind him like a sleepwalker.

The room seemed from another galaxy. Dim amber light, a jacuzzi in one corner, a huge bed covered in pillows. It smelled of sandalwood. There was a steel pole running from floor to ceiling, backlit by a barely perceptible haze. I had only seen things like that in movies. Mariano noticed the way my eyes kept drifting.

—Come here —he said—. Sit down. I’ll make you something.

He poured me a sweet drink with ice. I drank it slowly. Then he opened a little bottle of red wine and filled half a glass.

—Down it in one —he ordered.

I obeyed. A few seconds later I felt the heat climbing from my chest to my ears. My face burned. Something in my crotch began to pulse with a rhythm of its own, as if it had a beat separate from mine. My cunt tightened without permission, and every time I squeezed my thighs together, a wet tug reminded me that down there my blood felt different, heavier.

Mariano came closer. He looked different, or maybe I saw him differently. He stood in front of the bench where I was sitting and, without saying a word, spread my legs with both hands. He stepped in between them. He kissed me. This time it was a different kind of kiss: his whole tongue inside my mouth, looking for mine, pushing it, sucking on it as if he wanted to rip it out of me. My breath caught. His hand slid down my waist and pulled me toward him, and then I felt, against my skirt, the hard bulge of his cock pressing into my stomach. I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. I felt naked without being naked, and my heart was pounding between my legs with the same force as in my chest.

When he pulled away, he covered my mouth with his hand in a nearly affectionate way, tilted my head, and started kissing my neck, licking it, sucking slowly behind my ear. A current ran down my spine and got stuck between my legs. I felt my nipples harden against my bra, so hard they hurt. It was new. It was too much. My panties had stuck to my skin, soaked through, and every time he pressed me against his cock over my clothes I moved my hips without meaning to, searching for friction.

—You’re hot —he whispered in my ear, and the word alone tore a short moan from me that I didn’t know how to swallow back.

He took my hand and led me to the bed. His voice changed.

—Relax. Hold me.

I was still sitting on the edge, with my face level with his waist. His body smelled like something between wood and clean sweat. I leaned against him as best I could, and I felt, on my cheek, the firm bulge under his pants, throbbing against my skin. That sensation stayed etched in me: the rough denim and, beneath it, something alive, dense, moving when he breathed. I stayed still, trying to understand what one was supposed to do with that part of the information. He took my hand and placed it on top, over the pants, and made me squeeze. I pulled my fingers away by reflex, and he, without getting angry, put them right back there.

—It won’t bite you —he said, and laughed softly.

—Lie down in the middle —he said after that.

I obeyed.

He took off his belt and I panicked. But that was all. He let it fall onto the chair, lay down beside me, and kissed me again, deeper, biting my lower lip until my mouth opened all the way. His hand began to travel. It traced my neck, my shoulders, my breasts over my blouse. He pinched my nipples through the fabric, first gently, then with a firmer twist that tore a gasp from me. When he moved down toward my stomach, I managed to say no.

—I’m only going to touch you over your clothes —he murmured—. Be quiet for a minute.

His fingers brushed over my panties. One leg, then the other, slowly. He stroked my mound with his open palm, barely squeezing, and every time his hand climbed up over the little hill he tugged the fabric and that wet fabric got between my lips and rubbed my clit. Something in me changed. I was soaked and I didn’t understand why. I was embarrassed, I wanted to stand up and look at myself, to clean myself, but my body had decided without consulting me and was already moving on its own, looking for his hand.

—Open your legs —he ordered.

I opened them. I felt his face against my thigh, his tongue drawing a path along the edge of the fabric, climbing up from my knee, breathing hard against my skin. Then a finger hooked my panties and moved them aside. I was left exposed, my cunt open in front of his face, and he looked at me for a few seconds like someone sizing up the land before going in.

—So wet —he said, and he said it like he liked it, and my face burned.

His tongue planted itself between my lips, flat and broad, and started licking me from bottom to top, slowly, like someone savoring something. A sound slipped out of me that I didn’t know I could make. I twisted. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t like the movies. It was intense in a way I had never lived before. He sucked my lips one by one, slid the tip of his tongue inside and pulled it out, then moved up to find my clit and stayed there, circling it, sucking it, drawing little circles with the tip until I started lifting my hips against his mouth without being able to stop myself. I closed my thighs around his head and he pried them open with his hands, not letting me escape, not stopping the sucking. I gripped the sheets, moaned for the first time in my life without caring who might hear me, and pleasure gathered inside me in a point between my legs and my stomach that I didn’t recognize.

Just when I felt I was about to go somewhere, he stopped.

He slipped the tip of a finger into me. Just a little. He left it there, watching me. Then he pushed a bit farther, carefully, and I felt him sink into something tight and hot that was me. He pulled it out slowly, pushed it back in, and with his other hand he pinched one nipple until I arched my back.

—You’re ready —he said, almost in a whisper—. It’ll be strange at first. Trust me.

He asked me to take off my blouse and bra. Again the embarrassment, again the obedience. When I took them off, he watched me for a long time without touching me, and said I had the tits of a goddess, that they had grown for him, that he was going to fill them with saliva and cum before the afternoon was over. At that moment it sounded like a promise. He took one nipple between his teeth and tugged just a little, then sucked it whole, sinking his tongue into the areola, nibbling the other one with his fingers. I couldn’t stop moving, my soaked panties sliding down on their own with every arch of my hips.

He undressed. When the cock came out, I stared without being able to hide it. It was the first time I had ever seen one for real. It stood against his belly, thick, hard, the tip glossy with a clear bead. He took my hand and brought it to his sex. By instinct I squeezed too hard. He corrected my grip patiently, without laughing at me, closing my fist around the base, guiding me up and down with the skin sliding over the hard flesh. A soft moan escaped him the first time I pulled the skin back and left the tip exposed.

—Like this, slow —he told me—. I’m not asking you to suck it. Just to know it’s there. And that you’ll feel it in a little while.

But he brought the tip to my mouth anyway, rubbed it over my lips, leaving a sticky, salty trail. My tongue came out on its own. I licked the tip just a little, and he let out a rough sound that tightened something inside me.

There was something in his gaze then that hadn’t been there before. A different kind of gleam. I noticed it without knowing what to do with it.

He settled between my legs. He didn’t let all his weight fall on top of me. He spread my thighs with his knees, got comfortable, and grabbed his cock with his hand to guide it. I felt the tip rest at the entrance, perfectly placed, sliding between my wet lips, looking for the hole. When it found it, he pushed it in just a little, and I felt the flesh slowly open around something that didn’t fit.

—Imagine it going in —he said—. Imagine you’re the one asking for it.

And I, not recognizing myself, asked for it.

—Put it in me —I murmured, my voice broken.

It didn’t go in all at once. It was millimeter by millimeter, as if he were measuring. The tip went in first, stretching me, and then the shaft, pushing against a resistance that was my own hymen. I felt the exact moment something tore inside me. A clean, sharp burn, followed by the sensation of being full for the first time. I felt it so clearly it scared me. I wanted to cry and at the same time I wanted him not to stop. He stayed still for a few seconds, sunk to the base, letting me feel the pulse of his cock inside me. Then it hurt less. Then it hurt in a different way, mixed with something warm and deep that made me lift my hips to seek it.

He started moving. Long withdrawals, deep thrusts, a slow rhythm that kept building. Each thrust tore a gasp from me. He watched my face, attentive to every grimace, and when he saw me stop closing my eyes because of the pain and start closing them because of something else, he sped up. The bed began to creak. My breasts bounced with every slam of his hips, and he lowered his head and sucked one nipple without stopping fucking me, biting it lightly each time he drove all the way in.

—Like that, my love, like that —he panted against my ear—. Squeeze that pussy. Squeeze it hard.

I didn’t know how, but I squeezed. And he let out a groan and pinned his hands on my hips and started fucking me harder, pulling my knees up against my chest to go deeper. In that position I felt him hitting the bottom of me with every shove, a dull ache mixed with a pleasure that rose to my throat. I realized I was moaning loudly, shamelessly, and that I was digging my nails into his shoulders to ask for more.

He turned me over. I don’t know how. He put me face down, lifted me by the hips, and left me with my knees on the bed and my face pressed into the pillows. He shoved into me from behind again, this time in one thrust, all the way in, and I screamed into the fabric. Inside there it felt different. Deeper. Wider. He grabbed a lock of my hair and tugged just a little, enough to make me lift my head, and with the other hand he slapped my ass so hard it rang through the whole room.

—Tell me you like it —he panted—. Say it.

—I like it —I whispered, muffled—. I like it, don’t stop.

—Harder.

—I like it! —I shouted, not recognizing my own voice.

He drove into me with a long cadence, pulling almost all the way out and plunging back in, and every time he buried himself to the hilt a moan escaped me that I no longer controlled. I felt something tightening in my lower belly, something coiling, rising, and suddenly it let go. My whole body went rigid, my cunt clenching in spasms around his cock, and I came for the first time in my life, biting the pillow, trembling from the waist down, with a strangled cry that burst out of my chest.

He felt it. He realized it. He yanked out of me, turned me onto my back, and straddled my stomach. He grabbed his cock with his hand, slick with me, and started stroking fast, aiming at my breasts and upper belly. His eyes went glassy. His breathing broke apart. With two guttural groans, his cum shot out in hot spurts, one after another, over my breasts, my stomach, a long stream that reached my neck. He sat down on my thighs, panting, with his cock still in his hand and dripping over me.

What I had been told about the first time was nothing like this. It wasn’t just pain. It wasn’t just pleasure. It was a crossing of the two, and of something else I still can’t name.

When he finished, he collapsed beside me for a while, his open hand on my stomach, smearing his cum over my skin as if he were rubbing it in. He ordered me to get dressed like that, without cleaning myself all the way, with the cum drying between my breasts and the blood drying between my thighs. That way he was going to take me home. I obeyed, as I had obeyed everything else.

***

In the car, on the way to the station, we barely spoke. He never gave me an explanation for the months of silence, and I didn’t ask him for one. I told him my insides hurt. He answered that the body learns. That in time I would enjoy it more. He said he had been pleased with me. He took a bill from his pocket, put it in my hand, and left me in the parking lot. He didn’t walk with me to buy the ticket. He said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek, just like before all of it, and drove away.

I got on the bus with my face pressed to the window. The sun was falling over the cornfields of the valley as if nothing had changed. Inside, I was someone else. I didn’t know if I would see him again. I also didn’t know if I wanted to see him again. I only knew that the girl who had left Las Cañadas that morning was not the same one who was coming back, and that once that border had been crossed, there was no going back.