The Night My Friend Confessed She Was a Virgin

I had just turned twenty-five when they sent me to Moyobamba. It was my first serious job after three years of technical school in Lima, and the cocoa company had put me on as quality supervisor for a pilot project that was just getting started. I arrived with two suitcases, enormous expectations, and a girlfriend staying in the capital, promising that the distance wouldn’t be a problem.

The climate kicked my ass the first few days. Sticky humidity that never let up, not even at night, mosquitoes the size of coins, and heat that left your shirt soaked before noon. The locals were friendly, though. They greeted everyone in the street, offered you chicha de jora even if they’d just met you. My colleagues were also from Lima — we were like a small colony in the middle of the jungle — so within a week we already had a group together for lunch.

By three months in, the routine had settled in. Up at six, coffee in the hallway of the tenement house, walk to the office, eight hours of paperwork and lab samples, back to the room, warm beer with the guys in the patio. Nothing took me off script until that Monday in February when I arrived early and found her waiting for the offices to open.

Lucía Carmela Hidalgo. Twenty-seven years old. Born in Cajamarca, raised by a strict grandmother, technical studies finished in Lima. She rattled it all off in one breath while we waited for the guard, as if she had her résumé memorized. Very white skin, a bunch of freckles on her cheekbones, brown hair pulled back in a high ponytail. And a smile that didn’t fit the formal pitch, a smile that slipped out of her without permission.

—Mateo —I said, holding out my hand—. Welcome to the end of the world.

—That’s what they told me in Lima —she replied, laughing—. That it was the end of the world. I see they weren’t exaggerating.

They assigned us to the same team. Same area, adjacent desks, same shifts. In two weeks we were already inseparable, and the mess, clearly, was me. Lucía had something I hadn’t seen in any girl before: a rare ability to listen. She didn’t fake interest; she really listened, and when you told her something, she’d throw back an observation that stung a little because she was always right. In the office we whispered about the boss, at lunch we argued about everything else, and at night, once each of us was back in our room, we kept texting until the phone battery died.

—Don’t you ever sleep, woman? —I texted her one dawn.

—Neither do you —she answered two seconds later.

The problem started around the fourth month. One morning I watched her pour coffee and, out of nowhere, the image flashed through my mind of what it would be like to kiss her. It wasn’t a dirty or planned idea; it arrived whole, like when a song ambushes you in the middle of the street. That night I dreamed about her. The next day I forced myself not to look at her too much, but it was already too late. She had opened a door in my head I didn’t know how to close.

Camila, my girlfriend in Lima, called me twice a week. The conversations had become a formality. She talked about work, I answered in monosyllables, she got angry, I promised to do better, and we hung up without having said anything important. I loved her, I thought, but I loved her the way you love a familiar piece of furniture, knowing it’s there, without seeing it.

What I felt for Lucía was different. What I felt for Lucía was thinking about her while I showered. It was wondering, while we ate chicken soup for lunch, what expression she’d make if I slid my hand up her leg under the table and listened to her draw in a sharp breath, not knowing what to do with that.

Awful, Mateo. You’re behaving like an asshole.

The places where we lived were very different. Hers had an owner who looked like a retired nun: male visitors, forbidden; music after nine, forbidden; strong perfume, suspicious. Mine, on the other hand, was a three-story house with rooms rented out to soldiers and laborers, and nobody checked anything. The problem was that three of my colleagues lived in the same building, and everything that happened on my floor was known by the next day in the dining hall.

That night it was pouring. At ten I’d messaged Lucía, commenting on a new series. She answered right away, and between one joke and another I wrote, without really thinking it through: “Coming to watch it in my room?” It was a joke. Lucía would never agree. I knew that. She was the kind of girl who wouldn’t even get into an elevator alone with a strange man.

It took her three minutes to answer.

“I’m on my way in half an hour. Do you need me to bring anything?”

I read the message four times. My mouth went dry. I answered with one word, “pisco,” because nothing more coherent came to mind, and sat on the bed with my heart pounding, trying to understand what had just happened.

***

She arrived at eleven twenty, soaked to the bone, with a plastic bag hanging from her arm. Inside she had two bottles of pre-mixed pisco sour, a bag of popcorn, and a packet of chocolates. She laughed when she saw me, and the laugh shook the drops from her bangs.

—You’re crazy —I said, handing her a towel.

—I know —she answered, drying her hair—. But I’m here now.

I turned off the main light, left only the bedside lamp on, and put on a random movie, a French one called White Room, about a couple who meets in secret at a hotel near the sea. We lay down on the bed because there was no sofa, our backs against the wall and our feet crossed, eating popcorn and sipping the pisco in small swallows.

The film quickly faded into the background. Lucía started telling me things she had never mentioned at the office. That as a teenager she had been fat, really fat, that the boys at school said cruel things to her and she got used to expecting nothing from anyone. That she had only kissed one man, and it had been a lousy kiss at a graduation party where they had spiked her soda with vodka without telling her. That her mother had never spoken to her about sex, not once, and that she understood things through the novels she read in secret.

—Never? —I asked, wanting to make sure I understood her correctly.

—Never —she repeated, looking at the screen and not at me—. At twenty-seven I’m still a virgin, Mateo. It is what it is.

She said it with a calm that left me speechless. There was no shame in her voice, no provocation. It was a fact. As if she’d told me she was allergic to peanuts.

At that moment, on the screen, the couple in the film started undressing in a room with white curtains billowing in the wind. The woman was unbuttoning the man’s shirt, and the camera was making tight shots of her hand moving up his neck.

—Turn that off —Lucía asked me, very softly.

I turned off the TV. I looked at the time: two ten in the morning.

—It’s late —I told her—. Stay over and I’ll walk you to your room early.

She nodded without speaking.

We covered ourselves with the sheet, both of us still clothed, her on her side with her back to me. I switched off the lamp. The yellow light from the courtyard bulb came through the curtain gap and drew a strip across her shoulder.

***

I didn’t sleep. I knew she wasn’t sleeping either. I could tell by the way she breathed, too even, too controlled to be real sleep. We stayed like that for ten minutes, maybe twenty, in a false stillness that was louder than any conversation.

I thought a lot. I thought about Camila, about work, about what Lucía would say if I made a mistake and she sent me to hell. I thought that maybe she had come knowing exactly what was going to happen. I thought that maybe I was an idiot.

In the end, what weighed most was the hand she’d left abandoned on the sheet, fifteen centimeters from me, as if she’d forgotten it there on purpose.

I moved slowly. I placed my right hand on her chest, over the T-shirt, without slipping it under, without moving it. Just resting there. I felt how big it was, much bigger than it seemed under her work clothes, and how hot it was. I waited. Counted to twenty. Lucía didn’t move.

I pressed a little more. I felt her breathe in deeper, just once. I started stroking her over the shirt, slowly, almost without pressure, drawing circles. I brushed my thumb over the nipple through the fabric and felt it harden. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t speak.

I worked up the nerve. I slid my hand under the shirt and moved up her back to the clasp of her bra. I unclipped it in one motion, surprised even myself that I got it right on the first try. When I came back around to the front, I found her with her chest already free of the bra, breasts loose, hot, filling my palm. I kissed between them and heard her let out the smallest sigh, like air escaping through a crack.

—Lucía —I murmured.

—Don’t say anything —she answered, eyes still closed—. Please don’t say anything.

I understood. If I spoke, she would have to decide, and deciding was what scared her. As long as it stayed something that was happening and not something she was choosing, she could bear it.

I kissed her breasts carefully, without rushing, fully aware that for her everything was the first time. The first time a mouth sucked on her nipple until it went hard and sensitive. The first time a man’s hand slid down her stomach, breaking her breath into short jolts. The first time she felt the pressure of a body on top of hers, with real weight, without barriers.

I pulled her jeans down slowly, leaving her the option of finishing the job herself if she wanted to. She did. She kicked the pants toward the foot of the bed, eyes still closed. I touched her between the legs, over her underwear, and found her soaked. I traced circles with my fingers, first softly, then a little more firmly, feeling the heat and trembling her body gave back to mine. She lifted her hips two centimeters, a tiny but clear response.

—Am I stopping? —I asked.

—No —she said right away—. Don’t stop.

I took off her underwear with two fingers, slowly, as if I were unwrapping something fragile, and left her exposed. Her cunt was shining, barely opened by desire, and the trimmed hair stuck to her damp skin. I stared a second too long, because seeing her like that, so red and so alive, tightened my chest. I lowered my head and kissed the inside of her thigh, then another kiss closer, until I felt her shudder. When my tongue touched the center, she arched her back and let out a short gasp, surprised, as if she couldn’t believe it could feel like that.

I parted her lips with my fingers and started sucking her clit slowly, testing the pressure, learning her rhythm. Lucía grabbed my hair with one hand, not to rush me but to steady herself. I heard her breathing turn ragged, and when I slid two fingers into her, just a little, she tensed and then opened with a wetness that left my hand slippery. I fucked her with my hand while I kept eating her cunt, sliding my fingers in and out slowly, curling them little by little until I had her gasping into the pillow.

—Like that —she said, in a voice that wasn’t hers anymore, lower, more broken—. Like that, Mateo.

I heard her say my name as if it burned her mouth. I kept going until her legs started trembling. Then I lifted my face, ran my wet hand over my own chest, and guided her left hand down to my pants, leaving it resting on my fly. She moved her fingers, hesitating, until she found the hard bulge under the fabric. When she squeezed it, she was the one who drew in a sharp breath. I lowered my zipper, put what she was looking for in her palm, and felt her fingers close around it: clumsy, curious, fascinated.

—Like this —I told her, slowly, guiding her hand—. Easy. Hold it firmly, don’t be afraid.

We finished undressing without speaking. I stripped off my clothes in jerks, blood pounding at the back of my neck. She stayed for a second looking at my cock, already hard, completely exposed, and didn’t look away. Her eyes were shining, not from shame, but from a kind of shy hunger. She settled onto her back, opening her legs wider, and I knelt between them. I ran the tip of my dick over her entrance a couple of times, pushing only a little, sliding over the wet heat of her vulva until I felt the lips of her cunt part. I looked at her face.

—If it hurts, tell me —I reminded her.

—Keep going —she answered, swallowing.

Then I pushed. I went in slowly, just the tip at first, until I hit that closed, hot resistance that made me stop dead. Lucía clenched her teeth and dug her fingers into my arms. I stayed still, letting her wrap around me, feeling myself get swallowed centimeter by centimeter, with that delicious tension of a virgin body opening to the force of mine.

—Breathe —I told her in her ear.

She breathed. She trembled. And when I pushed a little farther, she let out a long, broken moan that got lost against my shoulder. I took her all the way in slowly, stopping each time I felt her tighten too much, and she kept loosening up through kisses, through saliva, through her hands gripping my back. When I was fully inside, I stayed motionless for a few seconds, feeling her cunt against the base of my cock, throbbing around me like a living pulse.

—There —I whispered—. The worst part’s over.

I started moving after that, small, slow, my cheek pressed to hers. The first rock of my hips was clumsy, the second more sure. Lucía answered right away, arching her hips to take me better, opening little by little as the pain mixed with a wet pleasure that changed her face. I kissed her mouth, bit her lower lip, sucked on her neck until her skin went hot, and she gave me everything back with ferocious surrender, gripping my ass to set the rhythm, pushing against me every time I pulled out.

We moved together for a long while. She learned fast. She lifted her hips to meet me, dug her fingers into my back, bit her lip to keep from making noise: the neighbors in the next room were sleeping a meter away from the headboard. At one point I changed positions, carefully turned her body and put her on her side, one leg over mine, so I could enter her from behind without stopping kissing her neck. There I felt her open better, wetter, looser, and the slam of my hips against her ass tore a louder, more honest moan from her.

—That’s how I like you —I said, without thinking.

She barely smiled, her face buried in the pillow.

I put her on her back again and parted her legs with my knee. I slid my cock into her again, this time firmer, and started fucking her harder, in and out until the bed began to creak. I sucked one breast while I fucked her, then the other, and she began to tremble in that way the body does when it’s getting ready to come, with tense thighs and ragged breathing. I slid two fingers into her ass to support her better, slowly at first, then more confidently, and the shock she gave made me slow down for only a second. She didn’t pull away. On the contrary, she opened her legs a little wider and let me do it, wet and burning.

—I want you to come —I told her in her ear, mask off now, direct now—. I want to feel you clenching my cock.

—Don’t stop —she begged, her voice pure thread—. Don’t stop, please.

I kept going until her thighs changed, until she started shaking under me with her breath undone and her mouth open. I felt her come like a blow: the cunt suddenly clenching, the legs tightening, a sharp cry she tried to swallow and couldn’t. She came with a force that left her face wet with sweat, and I kept driving into her two, three more times, holding her hips while her body still gripped and trembled around my cock.

That image finished me off. I pulled out in one jerk, grabbed my dick with my hand, and came over her belly, over the edge of her tits, in thick spurts that splashed onto her skin and the sheet. Lucía opened her eyes just a little when she felt the heat, looked at the white semen sliding down her stomach, and let out a small laugh, exhausted, almost disbelieving.

—Look what you did to me —she said, touching a drop that had landed near her navel with one finger.

We stayed wrapped around each other without speaking. The courtyard light cut our bodies into strips.

***

We slept for a couple of hours. At five thirty I opened my eyes and found her already dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed, tying her laces. I watched her from the pillow. She noticed but didn’t turn her face.

—I’ll walk you —I said.

We walked to her building without speaking. The streets were empty, still dark, with the smell of wet earth rising from the pavement. At the door of her building she looked at me for a second, straight on, without smiling.

—Mateo —she said—. What happened last night didn’t happen.

—It didn’t happen —I repeated.

She went inside. I headed back to my room under the first light of day.

In the office, for a week, we greeted each other like coworkers and nothing more. No messages, no extra looks. Then, little by little, we went back to the routine: lunches, jokes, late-night calls. But never, not once, did we speak of that night again. As if it had never happened.

Even though we both knew it had.