He came back to find me six years after the storm

August 2017.

It was midnight when, after several rounds of beer and a couple of bottles of tequila, my best friends and I swore we would make it a tradition. “Every summer’s end we’ll come back to this forest, watch the sunset and the sunrise together, and recharge for the whole year,” Lucas said, raising his glass. The campfire crackled, Sebastián’s laughter mingled with everyone else’s voices, and for an instant I thought time was going to stop for us.

June 2023.

Adult life weighed more than I remembered. I’d been out of university for two years, I had a decent position at a consulting firm downtown, and yet Mondays and Thursdays blurred into a single straight line. My group of friends had turned into coworkers I’d have a beer with after six or play soccer with on Saturdays as part of the company team. Nothing felt real, and the worst part was that I didn’t even have the energy to ask myself why.

I’d always been optimistic by nature, but lately I kept finding myself thinking too much about the past. I had the ugly habit of missing what I hadn’t known how to enjoy when I had it.

That afternoon, leaving the office, my phone vibrated with a number I didn’t have saved. I ignored it. Later, once I was in the car, I opened the message.

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Who is this?” I replied.

“Sebastián. I figured you’d still have my contact.”

“Sebastián who?”

“High school. We swore we’d be friends forever, remember? Until… never mind. I just wanted to know if you were okay.”

I stopped replying. I couldn’t explain to myself why. Part of me needed to hear his voice again; another part preferred to keep pretending I’d gotten over it. That night, after dinner, the phone vibrated again. This time it was a call, and I recognized the number immediately.

“Hello?” I said, barely.

“I need to see you. I want to talk to you,” his voice was smiling, and that annoyed me more than anything else.

“Honestly, I’m pretty busy.”

“Saturday at six. La Trastienda,” he cut me off before I could make anything up. “Don’t you dare stand me up, Mateo.”

“Well, I’ll check my calendar…”

“Too late,” he laughed. “Who the hell has a calendar at twenty-eight?”

“I…”

“You’ll explain it to me on Saturday. I’ll be waiting.”

The rest of the week dragged by painfully slowly. Every time I thought about Saturday, my stomach clenched. Still, I didn’t miss it.

I put on dark jeans and a black polo shirt, and got there fifteen minutes early. I saw him sitting alone, one leg crossed over the other, staring blankly out at the street. He was still handsome in that unsettling way that felt like a punch to the chest.

“Wow, you never change,” he said, getting to his feet with a broad smile. “Come here.”

He wrapped me in a warm hug that lasted a second longer than necessary. He smelled of a different cologne, more grown-up, but underneath it was still him.

“Hi,” I murmured.

We ordered a beer, then another. The conversation started where these things always start: work, parents, the city. We talked about everything except relationships. I don’t know if it was coincidence or tact. I was grateful for it.

“I want to do it again, Mateo,” he said suddenly.

“Do what?”

“The trip. Like when we were kids.”

“I don’t know, Sebastián. The last time…”

“I know. But listen to me, I really need it. I think we all do.”

“All of us?”

“I’ve been talking to the others. Lucas is in too.”

“Excuse me,” I said, my voice breaking a little. “I don’t belong to that group anymore.”

Sebastián brought both hands to his mouth. When he spoke, his voice came out trembling.

“I know what I did was wrong. No, wait, that’s not it. I don’t regret what we did, not with you. I regret how I acted afterward.”

His green eyes held mine. His leg was shaking under the table.

“Look, Sebastián,” I settled back in my chair, “what happened is in the past.”

“Mateo, please. I care about you. I still care about you. I loved you. And I love you. I was an idiot and a coward. I got scared because I felt something, and because no matter how much I wanted it, it terrified me too.”

I stayed silent. My eyes burned. My head filled with that other night.

***

August 2017.

The breeze in the forest clashed with the heat of the campfire. It was the first night of the campout, and Lucas, our consensus leader, was telling a ghost story in a dramatic voice, with exaggerated gestures and carefully timed pauses. The five of us listened without blinking, so much so that none of us noticed the storm gathering over our heads. At the climax, thunder exploded across the sky, lighting up the whole campsite. Seconds later, the rain started coming down hard.

“Shelter!” Lucas shouted, hamming it up. “Run, you miserable bastards!”

Sebastián and I ran to the tent we shared. We arrived soaked to the bone, laughing, gasping.

“It’s so fucking cold,” he said, hugging himself.

“You can’t handle anything,” I grumbled. “Take that off, you’re going to get everything wet.”

He started undressing in front of me without the slightest shame. He pulled off the soaked sweatshirt and the T-shirt underneath it. His body had changed a lot in the last few months. More chest hair, more muscle in his arms, a shadow of a beard he hadn’t had before. I was looking at him, and we both knew it.

“Are you going to stand there, or are you changing too?” he said, teasing. “You’re leaving a puddle.”

“Uh, yeah. I’m going.”

Sebastián was my best friend. They all were, but he was different. He was my safe place, and I was his. I’d been feeling things for a while that I didn’t know how to name. In private he was always more affectionate with me than with the others, but I hadn’t found the courage to say anything. The fear of losing him weighed more than any desire.

I undressed too. I was left in my boxers and crawled under my blanket. He kept on a white tank top and black briefs, and got under his own blanket, an arm’s length away. Rain battered the tarp with a hypnotic rhythm.

“Mateo,” he whispered.

“Yeah?” I said, turning toward him.

“Can we share the blankets?”

“How?”

“One on top and one underneath. It’s really cold.”

“Okay.”

He got up, arranged them, and climbed back in. This time we were pressed together, not a centimeter of air between us. I could feel his warm breath on the back of my neck.

“Are you sleepy?” he asked in a tone that was no longer that of just any friend.

“A little. Storms make me nervous.”

“Me too. Can I hug you?”

His question landed on me like another thunderclap. I’d spent months imagining it, and suddenly he was asking with the same casualness he’d use to ask for a glass of water. I nodded without speaking. His arm went around my waist and his chest pressed against my back. He smelled like sweat, campfire smoke, and something else, something I recognized because I’d wanted it a thousand times.

I felt his lips near my neck. He didn’t kiss me at first. He just breathed there, as if gathering courage. Then it was a caress. A mouth resting against skin. Then another, higher up, behind my ear.

“Sebastián,” I whispered.

“If you tell me to stop, I’ll stop.”

I didn’t say anything.

I turned slowly until I was facing him, under the two blankets, with the rain roaring outside. I kissed him first, finally, with fear and desire tangled in the same breath. His mouth was warm and tasted like beer. His hands slid down my back and clung to my waist as if they’d been waiting for that moment for years.

That night, in silence so the rest of the group wouldn’t hear us, we discovered each other. I took his shirt off and learned every mole with my fingers. He pulled down my underwear and touched me like no one had ever touched me before, with a mixture of clumsiness and devotion that split me open inside. His hand wrapped around my cock slowly, measuring me, learning me. I buried my face in his neck so I wouldn’t moan, but muffled sounds still escaped me when he started moving his hand with more confidence, squeezing and releasing, brushing the head with his thumb until he wrung an entire shiver out of my body.

“You like it like that?” he murmured in my ear, his voice broken with arousal.

“Yeah… fuck, yes,” I answered, digging my fingers into his back.

Then it was my turn to explore him. I went down his body with my mouth, over his sternum, over his stomach, down to the line of hair disappearing beneath the waistband. I heard him suck in a breath through his teeth when I took him in my mouth for the first time. He tasted of rain and of the hours we’d spent not talking about this. I held his gaze while I did it, and he held my hair with a tenderness that didn’t fit what we were doing. I sucked him slowly, first the wet tip, then as much of the length as I could fit, swallowing him in small pushes, letting him strike my tongue until he started moaning softly, covering his mouth with one hand so he wouldn’t make noise.

“Shit, Mateo… like that, like that,” he panted. “Don’t stop.”

I took him to the edge with my mouth and my hand, alternating pressure, licking under the head, running my fingers over his balls while he writhed beneath the blankets. When he felt he was about to come, I pulled away for just an instant, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to look at him. His face was flushed, his eyes shining, his jaw clenched.

“Don’t leave me like this,” he begged, swallowing.

“Then come here,” I said, and he shoved me onto my back on the sleeping bag.

We kissed again, urgently, teeth, tongue, and breaths colliding. He opened my legs with beautiful clumsiness and settled between them, rubbing his hard cock against my thigh while he kissed my neck, chest, mouth. I caressed him all over, tracing his back, his hard ass beneath the fabric, slipping my hand into his briefs to grab him fully and feel him throbbing in my palm. He shuddered so hard he nearly came off me.

“You have no idea how much I’ve thought about you,” he confessed against my throat. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted you.”

“Then prove it,” I replied, braver than I felt.

I took off the rest of his clothes with trembling hands. He did the same to me, frantic, rushing between kisses and soft bites on my neck. When we were naked, the forest cold raised goosebumps on my skin, but his body on top of mine brought the warmth back at once. His cock brushed mine, and we both let out a stifled moan, the kind you swallow so you don’t wake anyone.

We jerked each other off at first, rubbing skin against skin, comparing sizes, tension, and tremors, until that wasn’t enough anymore. Sebastián reached under the improvised pillow and pulled out a condom he must have had for who knows how long, as if somewhere in his head he’d known that night was going to happen. That turned me on even more.

“You asshole,” I whispered, smiling.

“Shut up and get ready,” he answered, with a boldness I didn’t know he had.

He put it on with surprising ease, then looked at me as if asking for permission with his whole body. I nodded. He placed one hand on my thigh, opened my legs wider, and settled between them. The tip of his cock brushed my wet entrance, and the contact made my back arch.

“Are you sure?” he asked once more.

“Yes. Fuck me already.”

He slid in slowly, millimeter by millimeter, until both of us ran out of air. It hurt just enough to make me clench my teeth, but the burn immediately mixed with a feeling of fullness that left me dizzy. Sebastián stopped, kissing my forehead, waiting for me to get used to it. Then he pushed in a little more, and more, until he was completely inside, filling me with a deep pressure that made me see stars.

“You’re incredible,” he murmured, trembling on top of me. “So hot… fuck, Mateo.”

When I started moving my hips, the pain turned into pleasure. I asked for more, harder, faster, and he obeyed. Outside, the rain kept pounding the tarp, but inside the tent only our breathing and the obscene sound of our bodies slamming together existed. Sebastián fucked me patiently at first and then with unrestrained hunger, gripping my legs, opening me better, driving all the way in with thrusts that tore moans out of me I could no longer hide. Every time he pulled out, an aching emptiness was left behind that drove me crazy.

“That’s it,” he said, his voice thick. “Like that, don’t stop. I want to hear you.”

He kissed me while he kept pounding into me, one hand between us to jerk me off to the rhythm of his hips. I grabbed his ass, squeezed it hard, and pulled him deeper. I felt his body tense, his breath break in his throat, and I knew he was close. I leaned in to lick his neck, his collarbone, his sweaty chest, and he answered by burying his fingers deeper in my flesh, fucking me with an urgency that grew dirtier, more desperate every second.

“I’m going to come,” he warned through his teeth.

“Come inside me,” I begged him.

That finished him. He gave two more brutal thrusts and came with a muffled groan, trembling over me while his seed stayed trapped in the condom and his cock kept throbbing inside. I came almost at the same time, spilling on my hand and stomach, my whole body shaken by a hot wave that left my legs weak. We stayed stuck together, breathing as if we’d run for miles.

When we finished, with his forehead resting against mine, he said “I love you” in a voice so low that even today I still doubt whether I heard it or made it up. I fell asleep with his arm over me and the rain easing outside.

The next day he wouldn’t look me in the eye. Nor the next. By the time we came down from the forest, he’d gone back to being just another friend, and a few weeks later he moved to another city without saying goodbye.

***

June 2023.

I left the bar with a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes. When I got into the car, the tears started rolling on their own. How dared he show up after six years? Reopen a wound I’d learned to cover with work, routine, and silence? Ask me, on top of that, to play the same game again?

The next morning there was a message from Sebastián waiting for me. I still hadn’t saved his number, as if refusing to type his name into my contacts was a way of keeping him out. I did what any responsible adult would have done: I put the phone in my briefcase and left it there all day.

I wasn’t avoiding anything, I told myself. It was a situation I’d already gotten out of. I had no interest in replying, or seeing him again, or hearing his soft “I love you” only to watch him run away afterward.

But at night, before going to sleep, I opened the message.

“I know you said no. But this time I’m not leaving.”

I read it three times. I turned off the light and lay there staring at the ceiling, feeling on the back of my neck the ghost of warm breath and the distant sound of rain that no longer fell anywhere.