What Happened in the Shower on the Morning of the Farewell

Dawn came through the picture window with a warm, unhurried light. The sun was peeking out from behind the bay, and its rays played over the gentle swell of a windless morning, glinting off the water until the apartment walls were filled with sparkles. I stayed there for a while watching the show, still naked among the tangled sheets, feeling Andrés’s body pressed against my back.

I didn’t want to move. I knew that the moment I did, the day would start to race forward, and the day ahead was the day of our parting.

We had spent our first night together. The real first one, after months of late-night messages, calls that ended in whispers, and a stolen meeting in a bar in another city where we barely dared to brush hands. And now, before noon, each of us had to go back to our own life. Him to his province, me to mine. To our homes, to our families, to that façade we carried around like a suit that never quite fit right.

Twelve hours. They gave us only twelve hours and now I have to give him back.

The thought stung. It wasn’t clean sadness: it was a mix of pain and something like fear, the fear that what we had just discovered wouldn’t survive the distance.

I replayed the whole night against my will. The way we’d worked up the nerve, first awkwardly and then without restraint. The hands that stopped trembling. The shaky laughter at four in the morning, the two of us exhausted and sleepless, talking about things I had never told anyone. It had been more than sex, and that was exactly what made the morning that was beginning so hard.

Andrés stirred behind me and kissed the nape of my neck.

—You awake? —he murmured, his voice hoarse from little sleep and no regret.

—For a while now —I said—. I was watching the river.

—Come on, let’s go have breakfast outside. I want to feel the air before this turns real.

***

We got dressed in silence, with that tender awkwardness of bodies that already know each other but still look. We went down to a café facing the water and ordered coffee and medialunas at a table by the window. Outside, the fresh breeze lifted the foam from the waves.

To anyone passing on the sidewalk, we were two men in suits, two businessmen in town for a stopover, going over numbers before a meeting. No one would have imagined that half a day earlier those same two men had met in a bar on the outskirts, trembling, still not knowing whether what they felt was going to burst open or die out.

There was no uncertainty left. We had gotten past that during the night.

—When do you think we can see each other again? —he asked, stirring his coffee without drinking it.

—I don’t know. Soon. I’ll have to invent a trip, a trade fair, something —I said—. You look for an excuse too.

He smiled with melancholy.

—Business —he said—. We’ll always have some business pending in some city, won’t we?

—Always —I promised, and under the table I squeezed his knee.

It was nine o’clock. Check-out for the apartment was at eleven. We did the math without saying it out loud: we had two hours left, and we both knew exactly where we wanted to spend them.

—Let’s go back —he said, and nothing else needed to be added.

***

We went up in the elevator without touching, holding everything back, watching ourselves in the bronze mirror reflection like two teenagers waiting until the door closes. Tension built on every floor the display marked. By the time we reached the apartment, I was already breathing differently.

The number on each floor took forever to change. I kept glancing at him and finding him looking at me, and both of us would look away at once, biting back the want. I could feel my heart in my throat and a heat rising from my belly. When the elevator finally opened, I practically shoved him down the hall, fumbling with the lock while he breathed on the back of my neck.

The moment we crossed the threshold, Andrés lunged at me before I could set the keys on the table. He kissed me deeply, hungrily, driving me back against the entrance wall. The keys hit the floor and neither of us looked at them.

Our bodies came together in a tight embrace, and our tongues began a slow, possessive dance, as if trying to memorize each other’s taste for the weeks of absence ahead. I felt his quickened breath against my cheek, the heat rising between us.

We started undressing without fully separating, wrestling with buttons, laughing in snatches when a fist got stuck in a sleeve. I opened his shirt and rested my face against his chest covered in hair. He smelled like coffee, soap, and that thing of his that I wasn’t going to be able to smell for a long time.

His hands traveled over my naked body, down my back until they closed over my ass, squeezing, pulling me closer. I was shaking with pure need. My own hands made the same journey over his body, stopping at his firm buttocks, pressing him against me. I could feel his hardness against my belly, his cock rubbing against mine while his right hand went down to stroke me, wrapping around me, holding me with a firmness that stole my breath.

—Come here —he said in my ear, and took my hand.

He led me into the bathroom, and I let him. There was nothing in me that wanted to resist. The desire to feel each other, to possess each other one last time, was so strong that I would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

***

He turned on the tap and waited for the water to run warm. Steam began fogging the glass as we stepped together under the hot rain. Water ran over our faces, our shoulders, pooling on the floor, and our mouths found each other again, now slower, savoring every second.

Then Andrés knelt in front of me.

He looked up at me from below, hair plastered to his forehead and his eyes shining with something that wasn’t just water.

—Love —he said, and his voice came out trembling—, last night I had you inside me, I tasted you, you made me yours in every way. Now I’m asking one more thing. I want you to finish in my mouth. Please.

I didn’t answer with words. I wouldn’t have been able to. I caressed his wet face with both hands and that was all the yes he needed.

He started licking me slowly, taking me in under the water, while his hands climbed the backs of my thighs until they held my ass. He took me into his mouth with a softness that contrasted with the firmness of his rhythm, going back and forth, drawing me toward him and letting me go, playing with distance, with anticipation.

His gaze never left mine. There was desire, there was a kind of ecstasy, and there was something deeper neither of us had dared name yet. I looked at him and knew my face was saying exactly the same thing.

The steam covered everything. The only sound was water striking the tiles and my own breathing, growing more ragged with every passing second. I braced one hand against the wall to steady myself; my legs were beginning to fail me.

At one point Andrés brought one hand down to touch himself, never stopping taking care of me with the other. I felt him groan softly, a muffled sound that vibrated all through my body. And just when I knew he was about to come, he slipped a finger just inside me, and that small intrusion was all it took.

I emptied into his mouth with a shudder that rose from very deep inside me, fast and ferocious, an explosion that forced me to grip the back of his neck and drive myself all the way in, while he took it without pulling away, swallowing, clinging to my hips as if he never wanted to let me go.

Almost at the same time I felt him convulse against my leg. He finished in his own hand, with a tremor that ran through his whole back.

What he did next I wasn’t expecting. He brought his hand to his mouth, mixed his semen with mine, and swallowed it all. Then he lifted his gaze, smiled, and said something that still raises goosebumps on my skin when I remember it.

—Now that’s better. Now I’m taking you inside me too.

He stood up slowly, water streaming down his body, and kissed me. I could taste the salty trace of both of us mingled in his mouth, and instead of making me uncomfortable, it sent a shiver through me. I held him tight, pressing him against me, feeling the warm water wrap around us both.

When we pulled our mouths apart, I whispered in his ear:

—Yes, love. Now we’re carrying each other around. Wherever we are.

***

The water cooled before we wanted to get out. We dried off in silence, still looking at each other in the fogged mirror, stretching out every gesture: the coffee we didn’t drink, the towel passed over the other’s back, the extra kiss on the shoulder.

After that, there was nothing left but to get dressed. The suit went back in place, and the two businessmen reappeared in the reflection as if nothing had happened between them. We went down, returned the keys at reception, and asked for a taxi to the airport.

At the terminal we shared one last coffee, this time down to the bottom of the cup. We talked little. There was no need. When they announced my flight, Andrés squeezed my hand under the table, just as I had squeezed his hours earlier by the river.

—Find me an excuse —I told him.

—I’ll always have a business in your city —he replied, and his smile cracked a little.

We said goodbye like two colleagues, with one of those hugs that raise no suspicion, but the two of us knew exactly what that embrace was holding inside. I walked toward my gate without turning around, because if I turned around I would not have gotten on that plane.

We were only just beginning to know each other. We had barely scratched the surface of what we could be. But something became clear to me as the plane took off and the bay shrank down below: there would be many more “business meetings” in our lives, and I was going to count the days until the next one.