My adviser asked me to meet her at a lookout at sunset

After that first Wednesday, something had broken between us, and neither of us wanted to fix it. I kept going to her advising sessions every week, in the same small office on the second floor of the faculty building, but they were no longer what they had been. We talked more, wrote to each other in the afternoons, and during breaks she would leave her office and sit with me on the same bench in the courtyard. To anyone who passed by, we were just a student and her adviser talking about registrations and deadlines. Only the two of us knew what was really passing through the air every time our knees brushed.

Her name was Mariana, and she had worked for years in the university counseling center. She had that serenity of someone who has learned to wait, and a way of looking at me over the rim of her coffee cup that left me without arguments. I was twenty-three and thought I knew everything about myself until she started disproving me with every silence.

One Friday afternoon I got a message from her. She wanted us to meet, off campus this time. I read it three times before replying, my heart pounding in my throat. I wrote back that there was a park near my house where we could meet, and I sent her directions so she could find me. She answered right away with an exact time and an “I’ll be there” that I reread more times than I’d admit.

There was still a while to go, so I took a leisurely shower and got ready thinking about her. I picked a skirt I almost never wore and stared at myself in the mirror for too long. Before leaving, I told my mother I was going to a friend’s place, a few streets from ours, and that I’d be back a little late. She gave me permission without looking up from the television. Lying came more easily than I’d expected, and that frightened me a little.

When I saw her car parked by the park, I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a run. I opened the door, got in, and fastened my seat belt with clumsy fingers. It was the first time we would be together in a place that wasn’t the faculty building, and my nerves were knotting my stomach. She leaned over and kissed me on the lips, briefly, as if sealing something. I could only smile.

“I’m taking you somewhere near my place,” she said, starting the car.

“Okay,” I replied, with a steadiness I didn’t really feel inside.

“I’ve really been wanting to see you. I didn’t find a single free minute to stop by the courtyard today, and I missed you all afternoon.”

“Me too,” I admitted. “I saw you were really busy and didn’t want to bother you.”

“You never bother me.” She took her eyes off the road for a second and pinned them on me. “I really did have a lot of work. But I’m going to make it up to you tonight.”

The drive felt eternal and too short at the same time. We talked about nonsense, about a movie we’d both seen, about how bad the air freshener in her car smelled, and between one sentence and the next her hand left the gearshift to rest for a moment on my knee. We reached a quiet residential area, were let through at the entrance, and she drove along silent streets until we got to some kind of lookout high up on the hill. It was empty. From there, the houses lay far below, like a map of lights, and we were up above, far from everything and everyone.

She switched off the engine and unbuckled her seat belt.

“Let’s go in back,” she said.

We both got out and settled into the back seats, leaving the doors slightly open so the cool evening air could come in as night began to fall. I knew no one would see us or hear us. The height gave us a kind of freedom we would never have had at the faculty building, and that certainty loosened something in my chest.

“You’re gorgeous,” she murmured, looking me over. “Did you put on that skirt for me?”

“Yes,” I confessed, feeling the heat rise into my face. “I thought you’d like it. You look really beautiful too.”

“Thank you.” She patted her thighs twice. “Come here. I want you close.”

I didn’t hesitate. I straddled her legs and she slid her hands under my skirt, stroking me slowly, tracing lazy circles that made my skin prickle. I didn’t wait any longer and pressed my mouth to hers. It started softly, a tentative kiss, until it deepened and my hands found the buttons of her blouse. I opened it faster than I’d meant to. Her lips traveled down my jaw to my neck, where she left a row of wet kisses that made me close my eyes.

I felt the first throb between my legs, a pulse that turned into heat, into wetness. I wondered whether she felt the same and found out when I slipped my hand under the waistband of her pants. She was so wet that the barest touch drew a sigh from me. I wanted to rub against her, lose my mind, and as if she could read my thoughts, she pulled back a little.

“Take your clothes off,” she said, and it wasn’t a harsh order but something lower, hotter, that left no room for doubt.

I obeyed. I stripped off my skirt and everything else while she took off her pants with a calm that made me even more nervous. Then she made me lie back on the seat and positioned herself over me, supporting her weight on one arm.

“You look so beautiful like this,” she said against my ear. “Right now you’re all mine.”

“I’m always going to be yours,” I answered, and I meant it.

When she started moving over me, I couldn’t hold back my moans. My hands went to her breasts, caressing them, playing with her nipples until I felt her breathing speed up. She ground against me with a rhythm that made me lose track of everything. Every time I tried to keep up with her, a shiver ran through me from head to toe and left me trembling, unable to do anything except cling to her shoulders.

She lowered her mouth to my breasts and licked them, bit them with a tenderness that drove me crazy. I clung to whatever I could, the seat back, her back, while spasms began taking over my body. I could tell she was as close as I was. She left little marks on my stomach and in places no one would see, and that thought—that I would carry her hidden trace for days—pushed me even closer to the edge.

“Don’t stop,” I begged her, and she didn’t.

She moved faster, harder, until we both came almost at the same time. I heard myself say her name as if it were the only thing I remembered how to say. Pleasure folded me, emptied me out, and for an instant the whole world shrank to the inside of that car high up at the lookout, to the warm weight of her body over mine and the sound of our two breaths trying to settle.

***

Afterward we stayed still, rearranged in the seat, her arm around me and my head resting on her chest. Outside, the house lights flickered, and a soft wind slipped in through the still-open doors.

“You were incredible,” she said, stroking my hair. “I loved being able to make you come like that, having you all to myself. You’re so good to me.”

“I promised you I always would be,” I answered, drawing a line over her collarbone with my finger.

“I know.”

We stayed a little longer in that comfortable silence, the kind that only fits between two people who have just stopped pretending. When it started to turn truly cool, we got dressed amid awkward laughter, looking for a lost item under the seat. We talked a little more, about nothing and everything, before she drove me back home so it wouldn’t get too late. On the way back she laid her hand on my knee again, and this time I let it stay there.

That afternoon opened a phase that lasted longer than either of us imagined. We saw each other several times a week, almost always away from campus, sometimes at her house when she knew she’d be alone. There were stolen afternoons, messages sent at odd hours, made-up plans so we could be together a little longer. What was ours lived in the margins, in what was left unsaid, and maybe that was why it burned so fiercely.

Over time, as happens with almost everything, we spaced the meetings farther apart. I finished my degree, she changed departments, and one day we simply stopped writing to each other without a formal goodbye, without a slammed door. There was no drama; just two paths that stopped crossing. Sometimes I think that discreet ending was the most honest thing we could have given each other.

I don’t regret anything. If I close my eyes, I can still go back to that lookout, to the cheap scent of the air freshener, to Mariana’s weight on top of me, and to the feeling of discovering, for the first time with complete clarity, what I truly desired. It was one of the best experiences of my life, and I keep it whole, uncut, exactly where no one can touch it.