What Happened with Camila Behind the Orange Trees

When her friend request reached me last week, it took me quite a while to recognize her. More than twenty years had gone by, and memory is treacherous with faces, but not with names. And Camila’s name I had kept tucked away in a corner of myself I almost never open, that corner where one puts the things one isn’t entirely proud of.

Camila had been the good girl at school. Studious, almost always with a book under her arm, part of that group the rest of us called “the nerds” with that cruel mix of mockery and envy that adolescence has. We only shared two classes, and that was where I also met her best friend, Mei, a girl of Taiwanese origin, skinny, with such thick eyeglass lenses that they made her eyes look bigger.

Camila, on the other hand, was gorgeous. A tennis player’s body —she played on the school team—, firm back, long legs, a narrow waist that ended in a round, high ass. She was about five foot five. She didn’t have much breast, but everything else made up for it. Tight jeans fit her as if they’d been made to measure.

She was one of those girls who were popular because of their beauty and yet she had no known boyfriend. A lot of guys hit on her, but she kept her distance. Especially from me.

And the truth is she was right. I was the opposite of Camila. I got good grades, even won a couple of scholarships, but most people knew me for something else: for hopping from one girl to another without rest. A ladies’ man, they called me. I couldn’t deny it. The worst part was that that reputation, which had once flattered me, ended up driving away the girls who really mattered to me. Camila was one of them. I felt that she liked me too, that something sparked when our eyes met in the hallway, but my reputation carried more weight. And to make matters worse, a classmate named Lucía had made it her business to tell the whole school that Camila was my girlfriend, even though by then she hadn’t been for months.

After a while I stopped sharing classes with Camila. I only saw her during recess, sitting on the grass with her group. I don’t remember how it came about, but one Saturday Mei invited me to a barbecue at her house. I liked her, and I think she knew perfectly well that her type wasn’t mine, that there was no risk of me making a move on her. I said yes because my friend Esteban had been obsessed with Camila since the start of the year and was sure she’d be there. I took the car my mother let me drive on weekends and we stopped to pick up some beer.

When we got there, people were already around the pool and music was coming from the living room. Mei’s parents had left Friday for a casino and wouldn’t be back until Sunday night. That changed everything. The party stretched on until hours no parent would ever have allowed.

***

That afternoon Camila showed up in an olive-green bikini. With her height and athletic body, she drew every eye in the garden. The gold chain she always wore around her neck shone against her skin, barely browned by the summer sun. The medallion was a tiny rose. What I liked most about Camila wasn’t her legs or her ass: it was that smile of hers, half teasing, half shy, and her full lips painted red. Every time she smiled I thought about kissing her, about pushing my tongue into her mouth, about seeing those red lips open around my cock.

After a couple of hours in the water, someone suggested dancing in the living room. Camila changed and came out in white shorts and a black blouse that left her navel bare. She put on sneakers and let her hair down, still damp. We weren’t dancing in pairs; everyone was dancing with everyone. But between Camila, Esteban and me, who had some natural sense of rhythm, we owned the floor. The punch going around was stronger than it seemed, and by ten at night the heat inside was unbearable.

I went out alone to the dark part of the garden, where Mei had two orange trees and a side gate that led to the street. The idea was to cool off for a minute and go back in. I didn’t hear her coming, but a few seconds later I saw her silhouette outlined against the distant light from the kitchen.

—What are you doing out here alone? —she asked.

—Getting some air. Thinking.

—Can I keep you company?

—If orange trees in the dark don’t scare you, come on.

She moved slowly. The darkness was nearly total: you could barely make out your own hands. When she was within reach, I took both her hands and noticed they were cold despite the heat. She was nervous, and so was I, though the punch was helping me hide it. I didn’t give her time to think. I leaned in and kissed her. She answered at once, with the anxious awkwardness of someone who had been imagining a kiss like that for a long time.

We kissed the way two teenagers kiss when they’ve just discovered what losing control means. I bit her lower lip, sucked her tongue, and she answered with heavier and heavier breathing. I tried to move my hands down to her ass and her legs, wanting to feel her skin beneath the shorts, but she kept bringing them back to her waist every time.

—You’re like an octopus —she said with a low laugh.

—And you have a mouth that’s getting my dick rock hard —I told her in her ear.

I felt her tremble. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t pull away either. We kept kissing for a long while. I kissed her neck and down to her collarbone, sucking the skin salty with sweat and chlorine. I tried to reach her breasts over the blouse and that time she let me. I squeezed them through the fabric, and when I ran my thumbs over the blouse I felt the nipples hard, marked, with no bra underneath. I pinched one and she let out a low, contained moan, as if she were embarrassed to hear herself.

I don’t know how, but at some point she ended up with her back to me, leaning against me, and I was kissing the nape of her neck while I slid my hands under her blouse. I grabbed her small, firm breasts, with nothing in the way, and rolled her nipples between my fingers until they turned to stones. I could feel her broken breathing, and also how she was pressing her ass against me, how she rubbed shamelessly against the bulge behind my jeans. She moved slowly, in little circles, as if she didn’t realize what she was doing. But she knew perfectly well.

—Feel what you do to me —I said, pushing my hips forward so she’d feel me better—. I’m getting hard for you.

—I know —she whispered—. I already felt it.

I unbuttoned her shorts. I expected her to stop me, but she didn’t. My hand slid down her flat stomach, under the waistband of her underwear, and found her pussy warm and soaked, so wet my fingers slipped as soon as I touched her. She was almost completely hairless, with only a thin strip above. I started slowly, first over the underwear, pressing the warm mound with the palm of my hand, and she jolted. Then I slid my hand under the cotton and found her clit with my middle finger.

—You’re soaked —I told her in her ear.

—Shut up —she whispered, and pressed my hand against her so I wouldn’t take it away.

Camila rested her head on my shoulder and let out a long, shaky sigh. I stroked her clit in slow circles, feeling it swell under my fingertip, while with my other hand I kept working one nipple, tugging it, rolling it. I went lower with one finger, found the entrance to her pussy and slid it in slowly. She was so tight that my finger went in squeezed tight, wrapped in a sticky heat that made me clench my teeth. I kissed her neck, just behind the ear, and felt her whole body tremble.

—More —she let out, so softly I almost didn’t hear her—. Please.

I put in a second finger. Camila opened her legs a little more and started moving against my hand, seeking it, fucking my fingers without realizing it. I drove both fingers deep inside her and with my thumb kept working her clit, nonstop, in faster and faster circles. She bit her lip, swallowed, pressed her ass against my cock. I could hear the wet little sound of my fingers going in and out of her pussy, a sound that in the garden’s silence seemed huge.

The orgasm came to her in silence, biting her lip so she wouldn’t cry out. Everything in her trembled: her legs, her belly, her back against my chest, and I felt her pussy closing in spasms around my fingers, squeezing them, soaking my whole hand. It lasted a long time. When she finally relaxed, I pulled my fingers out and ran them over my mouth, sucking them in front of her even though she couldn’t see me. They tasted like sea and something else, sweet, heavy.

I waited for her breathing to steady and went after her again, this time deeper. I wanted more. I pulled her shorts down to her knees and her underwear with them, a white cotton thong that hung between her thighs. In that same position, her leaning against me, facing the orange trees, her bare ass pressed against my stomach, I opened my jeans and took out my cock. It was so hard it hurt. I held it and ran it slowly between her butt cheeks, up and down, wetting it with what was dripping from between her legs. She shivered and let out a low, long moan.

—Adrián… —she said, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a plea or a warning.

I pushed her back a little so she would lean forward. She braced herself against the trunk of one of the orange trees, hands spread against the bark. Her ass was left lifted, pointing at me, white despite the darkness. I grabbed my cock and guided it between her thighs, looking for the entrance. When the tip brushed her pussy, so wet it sank in by itself, she gasped hard.

—No, Adrián —she managed to say.

But there was no firmness in her voice, none. I stopped for a second, the tip barely inside, feeling her pussy pulse, begging for more. I whispered something to her I no longer remember, something about going slowly. And I went back in. I pushed just a little, and a tight, burning heat sank into me, so closed around me that I had to bite my lip not to moan. I entered little by little, a centimeter at a time, feeling her open around me, feeling her yield to the force. Camila held her breath, gripped the trunk with both hands, and let out a muffled moan when I split her all the way open.

—God… —she breathed out—. It’s huge.

I held her by the waist and waited a moment, giving her time, and then I started moving. Short strokes at first, going back in to the hilt, each thrust making her let out a tiny gasp, crushed between her teeth. We moved together for several minutes, no noise, no rush, in a silence broken only by the wet slap of my cock going in and out of her virgin pussy and by her breathing, getting more and more broken. I grabbed her hips and sped up, and she began pushing her ass back, seeking me, impaling herself on me. I felt her come again, stronger, and her pussy clenched so tightly around me that I couldn’t hold out anymore. I came inside her in silence, squeezing her hips until they bore marks, spilling shot after shot deep inside, without pulling out, without thinking about anything.

When everything stopped, I stayed inside her for a while, feeling her pulse. It slipped out on its own when I eased the pressure. I saw a white thread run down the inner side of her thigh, barely visible in the darkness. She pulled her underwear and white shorts back up without cleaning herself, and I tucked away my still-wet cock and zipped up. I gave her a quick kiss on the shoulder. I hopped over the side gate.

Esteban showed up minutes later in the car and, when he sat down, the first thing he said was:

—You smell like you just ate a pussy.

I didn’t answer him. I drove home repeating every second of what I had lived through.

***

I didn’t see her again for a month. The next time was at the senior farewell dance. I didn’t know that night they were going to crown her class queen. When they announced it, she went up onstage with the same calm composure as always. She was wearing an ivory dress, rough fabric, that marked her waist. I could barely get near her among so many admirers. I congratulated her with a kiss on the cheek and a short hug. I didn’t dare ask her to dance. I felt like garbage beside her.

By then I no longer knew what to do with the guilt. I thought about Camila every day. That night, Mei came up to me with a strange smile and told me, as if she didn’t mean it, that Camila was going to sleep at her house. I didn’t know whether it was an invitation or a clue, but around two in the morning I found myself, once again, in the orange-tree garden.

This time there was moonlight. It lit just enough to make out the outline of her face. She was wearing the ivory dress and had her hair up. This time I had two condoms in my pocket, something learned too late. We kissed first, with less awkwardness than the other time, and I pulled down the zipper of the dress without her stopping me. The dress fell to the grass and she remained in a gold thong, without a bra, her nipples pink and hardened by the night’s cold air.

—Now I do want to see you —I told her, stepping back—. I want to look at you all over.

She hesitated, but she let herself be looked at. I grabbed her breasts with both hands, squeezed them, bent down and sucked one nipple, then the other. I tugged them gently with my teeth, and she arched her back and dug her nails into my neck. I kissed her breasts for the first real time, slowly, at length, while with one hand I squeezed her ass over the thong and with the other I searched for the warm mound between her legs. She was already wet. The gold fabric was dark, soaked.

I went down to her navel and lower. I knelt in the grass and slid her thong aside with two fingers. Her pussy was at my face, barely covered by that thin strip of hair. When she realized what I was about to do, she tried to stop me.

—Adrián, no… no one’s ever done that to me, I don’t know if…

—Shut up and open up —I told her—. You’ll see.

I lifted one leg and rested it on my shoulder. She wasn’t used to it, she didn’t know whether she wanted it, but after a couple of seconds she gave in and surrendered, leaning back against the trunk. I slid my tongue into her slowly, learning her rhythm. I licked her clit with the tip, then with my whole tongue, flat, long. I pushed my tongue inside and she let out a moan that echoed among the trees. I sucked her like I was thirsty, tasting that sticky, sweet liquid that kept coming without stopping, and drove my tongue in as deep as I could. With two fingers I spread her pussy lips and worked her clit with the tip of my tongue, fast, nonstop.

—Oh, God… oh, God, don’t stop, don’t stop…

I slid two fingers inside while continuing to suck her clit, curling them upward, searching for a spot that would make her lose her mind. I found it. Everything in her trembled again, like that night in total darkness, and she let out a small sound, almost a whisper, that was cut off abruptly. When she came the first time, I felt her pussy convulsing against my tongue, squeezing my fingers, and it filled my mouth with a hot juice that I swallowed whole. I kept sucking while it passed, until she pulled my head away because she couldn’t take any more.

I stood up. My face was soaked and my cock was so hard it was tearing at my pants. I opened the zipper and took it out. She looked at me, bit her lip, and without saying anything she knelt too. It was the first time I saw her awkward: she didn’t know what to do with her hands, or with her mouth. She grabbed me with both hands and licked me from base to tip, uncertain, curious. Then she opened her mouth and took the head in. Nothing more than the head. She sucked me slowly, looking up at me from below with those huge eyes and that half-teasing smile, and it seemed to me the most incredible scene of my life. Like any inexperienced young man, I came shortly after, without holding back much. I warned her a second before and she pulled her mouth away but didn’t let go of my cock: I finished over her tits, on her neck, on a nipple, leaving a smell that mixed with the pool chlorine and the citrus of the garden. She looked at her stained chest, laughed softly, and with two fingers brought a little to her mouth. I watched her swallow.

—It tastes weird —she said—. But I like it.

The second thing we did was standing up, against the side wall of the house. She braced herself with her arms and gave me her back, with the thong shifted aside, arching her ass toward me. I ran my cock between her butt cheeks, still sensitive, and knelt for a moment to lick her pussy from behind, my tongue pushed all the way in, letting a thread of saliva fall onto her ass so she could see me do it. She let out a long gasp and opened wider.

—Put it in me already —she said, in a voice I didn’t recognize—. I can’t take it anymore.

I stood up, grabbed my cock and shoved it in at once, all the way. She let out a short cry she muffled against her arm. We started with thrusts that were too fast, both of us with months of pent-up hunger. I held her by the waist and pounded into her hard, hearing the collision of my stomach against her ass, the wet, obscene sound her pussy made receiving me. Then we began slowing down, deeper, slower. I ran one hand around front, found her clit with two fingers and rubbed it in time with the thrusts.

—Like that… like that… don’t stop… —she gasped, with her forehead pressed to the wall.

I pulled her hair with the other hand, not hard, just enough to lift her head and see her profile. I drove in deeper, pulling almost all the way out and then burying myself again to the root. I grabbed one breast from behind, squeezed it, pinched the nipple. In the silence of the garden you could hear the impact of her body against mine, the moans she could no longer fully contain, and the pounding of blood in my ears. She came a second time, biting her lip like that first time, and her pussy clenched so tightly around me that it dragged me with it. I finished shortly after, holding her hips hard, driving into her until I felt I touched the deepest place, and emptying myself inside her again, long, in waves, my forehead against her nape. The condom had stayed in my pocket. We both knew it and neither of us said a word.

When we walked back toward the house, she looked strange. I couldn’t read it well. I hopped the gate again and, in the car, Esteban repeated the joke:

—Now I know for sure, you smell like Mei’s pussy.

I never corrected him. I knew Camila had been his platonic love for two years and there was no point in hurting him. Days later, while I was washing clothes, I found her gold thong in the pocket of my jeans. It was stiff, dry, loaded with me and with her. I kept it without thinking much. I would smell it from time to time and go back to that second night.

***

We could have had something, I suppose. But at that age I was incapable of staying still, and there was always another girl nearby, and another party, and another excuse. Camila sensed it. The last time I saw her from afar was at the graduation ceremony.

Twenty years later, in this chat, both of us married, both with children, we’ve talked again. She gave me details I had completely forgotten. She reminded me that that first night, in total darkness under the orange trees, was her first time. The first time in everything: the first kiss, the first orgasm, the first man.

I searched my memory. I remembered that when I got home that night I found a reddish stain on my underwear and vaguely thought of her period. It was something else. It was what she was confirming for me now, with the calm of the years.

—Why did you say “no” then? —I asked her—. I carried that for a long time.

—Because I felt I had to say it. But I wanted to say “yes.” I’m glad you didn’t listen to me. At that moment I just wanted to feel you.

She also told me about the scare that week, when she saw herself in the bathroom and didn’t understand what she was seeing. She talked to Mei, they slept together, they discussed it again and again, until her period came eight days later and she could breathe. Mei, she confessed to me now, had been a witness to the second time. She was behind the orange trees, spying in silence, with her hand between her legs, as she later confessed to Camila. Camila had always known. She asked her never to tell me.

Camila became a doctor in psychology. We spoke like two adults. She lifted a guilt from me that I had carried since I was seventeen. Before closing the chat, she wrote me something that made me grin like an idiot at the screen:

—Don’t feel guilty, Adrián. I wanted it. I dreamed of it from the moment I met you. You were my fantasy and my reality, and I enjoyed both. And yes, I’m going to tell you now: you had a beautiful cock. I felt it open me up inside that first night and I never got it out of my head. I still dream about it, every so often. I still touch myself thinking about it.

I replied with an emoji that said nothing. I closed the chat. I turned off the phone. And I spent a long while staring at the ceiling, thinking about those orange trees and the girl who waited for me twice in the dark, without me asking her for anything.