My Former Literature Teacher Kissed Me at the Bus Stop

My name is Sofía, I’m twenty-two years old, and I study Fine Arts in a small city in the center of the country, without a sea, with lots of squares and far too many jacarandas. I’m short — barely five foot one —, slim, with shoulder-length brown hair and eyes that are too big for my face. I’m also bisexual, though I still haven’t told my mother that, and honestly, I don’t think I’ll tell her anytime soon.

What I’m about to tell happened in March, when I’d been using one of those dating apps that promise a lot and deliver little for two months. I installed it after breaking up with a guy from my college, and at first I was swiping more out of boredom than real interest. Most of the profiles were gym selfies, Instagram copy-paste lines, people who couldn’t even be bothered to read my description before sending me a blank hello. Until she appeared.

Renata had been my literature teacher in my last year of school. Back then she was thirty-eight, spoke very softly, and sat on the desk when she read poems out loud. I was seventeen and I stared at her without blinking. I memorized fragments of Pizarnik just because I heard her say them first, with that cadence she had, stretching out her s’s as if she was careful not to break them. Nothing ever happened, of course. It was one of those adolescent crushes you file away in some mental drawer and, over the years, almost completely forget.

Renata’s profile appeared between two generic guys. I recognized her right away, although now her hair was shorter, down to her jaw, and she wore thin glasses she hadn’t used in class. Her bio said, “Recently separated, looking for sincere company, everything else to be seen.” She was forty-two. I brushed my thumb over the screen several times before I worked up the nerve. And yes, I liked her.

She’s going to ignore me. Or worse: she won’t remember me.

The next day, while I was having breakfast, the notification came through. Match. And almost immediately, a message from her: “Sofía Aguirre, the girl who drew in the margins of her exams?” I nearly spilled my cup on the keyboard.

I answered clumsily about my drawings, she replied with something funny about exams in general, and before I knew it we’d been writing to each other all morning. She asked me about my degree, about the teachers who were still left at the school, about my life in the city. I asked her about her separation just enough so I wouldn’t seem nosy. At two in the afternoon she suggested coffee for the following Saturday. I said yes before thinking, and as soon as I hit send I realized I had a whole week ahead of me to regret it.

I didn’t regret it. But the days felt long. And every night, alone in my bed, I ended up slipping my hand between my legs thinking about her. The first time I felt ashamed and stopped. The second time I didn’t. The third time I came so hard imagining her mouth on my pussy that I had to bite the pillow so I wouldn’t wake my roommate.

***

I got to the square ten minutes early. March was still warm where I lived and I chose black leggings, a cream sweater, and white sneakers. Nothing that screamed “date,” but not my around-the-house clothes either. Underneath I was wearing new lingerie: a black lace set I’d bought that same week, thinking about her, even though I told myself it was “just in case.” I sat on a bench under a big tree and took several deep breaths. A couple was walking a small dog that kept barking at the pigeons. I didn’t have any concrete expectations. Or at least that’s what I wanted to believe.

I saw her coming from the other end of the square. She was wearing wide gray trousers and a black silk blouse that moved with the breeze. She walked as if the square belonged to her. When she reached me, she bent down and kissed both my cheeks. She smelled of something citrusy, light, nothing cloying.

“You look the same,” she said, stepping back to look at me. “Only now you don’t look up at me from below like when you were fifteen.”

“I was seventeen,” I corrected.

“That’s right. Seventeen. I remember.”

She said it with a tone I couldn’t quite interpret. We walked toward a small café she knew, two blocks away. On the way she told me she gave private lessons and translated books from French, that she’d recently moved into an apartment with a tiny balcony, and that she was learning to cook on her own for the first time in her life. I listened while sneaking glances at the way her hair moved every time she turned her head.

At the café we ordered the same thing: a cortado and a slice of lemon tart to share. We sat at a table in the back, next to a window that looked out onto an interior courtyard full of ferns. She took off her glasses and set them on the table, folded carefully.

“Does it bother you that I was your teacher?” she asked suddenly.

“A little,” I admitted. “But less than I thought.”

She smiled. It was a sideways smile, as if she were saving the other half for later.

We talked about everything: school, the teachers who were no longer there, the novel she was translating — a contemporary French author whose name I forgot the second she said it —, the painters I admired. At some point, while she was explaining something about Marguerite Duras, she rested her hand on mine on top of the table. She left it there, without pressure, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I stopped hearing what she was saying. I only felt her long, cold fingers over mine, and the pulse in my own wrist underneath. And, without being able to help it, I noticed my panties getting wet under my leggings just from imagining those fingers inside me.

While she talked, I suddenly remembered an afternoon in May, in class. Renata had sat on the desk to read us Pizarnik’s “The Cage,” and when she leaned forward, the light fell diagonally across her neck. I, in the second row, had thought for a whole second that I’d give anything to stand up and touch her throat right where the vein showed. Then I’d mentally punished myself all week for that thought. Now, in the café, her hand on mine didn’t seem much bolder than that fantasy I’d had at seventeen.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling her hand back. “I forgot to ask if it bothered you.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” I said, and put my hand back on the table for her, palm up.

She covered it again. This time she intertwined her fingers with mine. And she kept talking about Duras as if nothing were happening, even though I could feel her breathing getting faster just like mine. The waitress brought the tart and set it down without saying anything, looking at some other point in the place with professional discretion.

***

We left the café after six. The streetlights weren’t on yet, but the light had that orange tone that makes you feel like the day is slowly saying goodbye. We walked aimlessly until we reached an avenue lined with old plane trees. She asked if I’d accompany her to the bus stop. I said yes without thinking.

On the way, she talked to me for the first time about her ex-husband. They’d been together fifteen years. They split because one morning, she sat down in front of the bathroom mirror and realized she’d been pretending for too long. Not pretending to love him — there had been love, she said, a lot of it —. Pretending desire.

“I always knew I was more into women,” she said, looking ahead, toward the crowns of the plane trees. “But I grew up where I grew up, and I fell in love with him too, and everything got mixed up. Until it didn’t anymore. One morning I looked at him and knew I never wanted him to touch me again. That I couldn’t stand his cock or his hands or the smell of his cum on my sheets anymore. And the following month I asked for a divorce.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Now I’m learning to be honest. Starting with myself.”

A little farther on she told me more about her translation. She said the novel told the story of a woman who falls in love with her husband’s sister and that for months she hadn’t been able to get past the first twenty pages because something about it felt too familiar. She said it as if it were nothing, but I knew she was telling me, there on that avenue, deliberately.

We reached the stop. There were two other people waiting under the shelter, so we moved a little to the side, next to a pole with an old poster advertising a play that had already ended. She turned toward me and looked straight at me, not smiling this time.

“Sofía, is there any important reason why we shouldn’t kiss right now?”

I froze. I felt the blood rush to my ears and, at the same time, to my pussy, which was already throbbing hard under my clothes. I shook my head because I couldn’t speak.

She put one hand on my waist and the other at the nape of my neck. She leaned in — she was almost six inches taller than me — and kissed me. Slowly at first, as if testing the waters, giving me time to pull away. I didn’t pull away. Her lips were softer than I’d imagined in class at seventeen, and I had imagined a lot.

I kissed her back with an eagerness that surprised me. I wrapped my arms around her neck and kissed her with everything I’d been holding in since that school year. I felt her tongue slide into my mouth, seek out mine, suck on it slowly, the brush of her silk blouse against the wool of my sweater, her hand sliding from my waist to my ass and squeezing over my leggings with a force that tore a moan from me against her teeth. The two people at the stop were either looking or not looking, and I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything at all.

We pulled apart for a second to breathe. My cheeks were burning, my lips a little swollen, and my panties were soaked. She brushed a strand of hair out of my eye with a gesture I already knew: she’d done the same in class, when she’d leaned toward a student to correct a word.

“I’ve spent seven years imagining this,” I murmured without thinking.

“And I’ve spent two months,” she said, and laughed softly against my mouth before kissing me again.

This time she kissed me more calmly. Her fingers slid up my back to the nape of my neck and stayed there, at that point where the hair begins and grows finer. I closed my eyes and let her kiss me without thinking about anything. At the other end of the avenue, a truck honked; at the shelter, someone coughed. All of that was happening very far away.

The bus arrived. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, coming into view at the end of the avenue, headlights blinking yellow. She saw it too. Neither of us moved.

“Let it go,” she said.

The bus stopped, opened its doors, took away the two people waiting with us, and pulled off again. Renata still had her hands on my waist. I, with my forehead against her collarbone, was trying to get my heart back to a reasonable rhythm.

“Do you want to come to my place?” she asked very softly, almost in my ear. “I want to fuck you, Sofía. I’ve wanted to do it for two months, ever since I saw your photo.”

I nodded, still not lifting my head. I felt her laugh slowly, and her fingers traveling up my back under my sweater, warm, slow, as if she were recognizing a territory that was already hers.

***

We hailed a taxi on the corner. In the back seat, she put her hand on my thigh as soon as the car pulled away, and slid it up my leggings until her fingers stopped a centimeter from my crotch. She didn’t touch me there. She just stayed still, looking at me from the side, while the driver listened to a radio show with football voices. I squeezed my legs together and felt the fabric already wet from side to side. She noticed too, because she smiled without saying anything.

The apartment was on the third floor with no elevator. We went up the stairs almost running, laughing like two teenagers. Renata got the key wrong twice before finding the lock. As soon as the door shut behind us, she shoved me against the wall of the entryway and kissed me again, this time with no calm at all. Her tongue filled my mouth, her hands yanked my sweater up over my head, and I bit her lower lip without really knowing what I was doing, only knowing I wanted more.

“Wait,” she said, breathing hard. “To the bed. Not here. I’ve waited too long for you to do it against a wall.”

She took my hand and led me down a short hallway into a bedroom with the blinds half closed and a small lamp on a nightstand. The bed was big, with white sheets rumpled from that same morning. She sat me on the edge, knelt between my legs, and took off my sneakers one by one, unhurried, looking me in the eye. Then she pulled my leggings down, tugging them back, and paused for a second to look at the dark stain on the black lace of my panties.

“God,” she murmured. “You’re drenched.”

“I’ve been drenched since the café,” I confessed, and she laughed with a hoarse laugh I’d never heard from her before.

She laid me on my back and lifted my undershirt up over my tits. She unclasped my lace bra with one hand — those long teacher’s hands I’d stared at for an entire school year — and looked at me for a moment, all of me, naked from the waist up, with black panties stuck to my pussy. Then she lowered her mouth and sucked one nipple. Hard, with no hesitation, closing her lips around it and tugging with her teeth until a sharp moan slipped out of me. She moved to the other one. She bit them, licked them, left them hard and red, and all the while I clutched her hair with both hands, pushing her head against my chest as if I were afraid she might pull away.

“Suck them harder,” I begged, and I didn’t recognize my own voice. “Harder.”

She obeyed. She bit my left nipple until it hurt, and that pain went straight through me to my pussy. I lifted my hips looking for something, anything. She put one hand over my panties and pressed with her whole palm, not slipping underneath yet, just pressing the soaked bulge against my pubic bone. I fell apart against her hand.

“Please,” I whispered.

“Please what?”

“Touch me. Please. Now.”

She smiled with that sideways smile and slowly pulled my panties down, folding them over my thighs, my knees, until she got them all the way off and threw them on the floor. She spread my legs and stood there for a moment looking at my pussy, glossy, wet, swollen. I thought I was going to die if she didn’t touch me in the next second.

“You’re so beautiful, Sofía,” she said softly. “You have such a pretty little cunt.”

Then she lowered her head and licked me from top to bottom in one long stroke, from my entrance to my clit. I screamed. I grabbed her hair, shoved her face against me, and she laughed against my pussy, a low vibration that made me tremble all over. She started sucking my clit with her lips, circling it with the tip of her tongue, alternating flat, soft licks with little sucking pulls that tore howls out of me. I moved my hips against her mouth without control, both hands gripping the back of her neck.

“Like that,” I gasped. “Like that, don’t stop, please, don’t stop.”

She didn’t stop. On the contrary: she slid one finger inside me, slowly, all the way in, and I felt my walls close around it, pulsing. Then she put in a second one. She fucked me with her fingers while she sucked my clit, curving them upward, searching for that spot I knew was there but that no one had ever touched properly. She found it in two minutes. When she touched it, my whole back arched off the bed.

“There,” I cried. “There, there, Renata, I’m going to come, I’m going to come now.”

“Come,” she said, lifting her mouth away only for a second. “Come in my mouth, my love.”

And she went back to sucking my clit, now harder, while her fingers fucked me fast, wet, making an obscene sound inside me that I had never heard before. I came a few seconds later, with one long cry that must have been heard all through the building, pressing her head against my pussy with both hands, shaking over her face. I felt everything clench, felt the orgasm rise through my belly and down my legs to my toes, felt it soak Renata’s fingers still inside me, moving slowly now, stretching the pleasure until I couldn’t take any more.

She climbed up my body, leaving wet kisses on my belly, my breasts, the hollow between my collarbones. She kissed me on the mouth and made me taste my own climax on her lips, on her tongue. I tasted like myself. I tasted intense and sweet at the same time.

“Now you taste me,” she murmured against my ear.

She sat up, unbuttoned her black blouse button by button, and let it fall to the floor. Underneath she wore a gray lace bra, which she took off right away. Her tits were bigger than mine, round, with dark nipples already hard. She slipped out of her gray trousers in one quick motion and stood there completely naked over me, her brown hair falling over her shoulders. I looked at her for a second. She was forty-two years old and had the most beautiful body I had ever seen.

We turned over and this time I got on top. I sucked her nipples one by one, bit them the way she had done to me, and moved down her stomach, kissing her slowly until I reached her pussy. She was as wet as I’d been, shiny, with the hair trimmed short. I’d never done this to a woman before. I thought of all the videos I’d watched in secret for years and dove in without thinking too much.

I licked her from bottom to top, imitating what she had done to me. The taste surprised me: strong, a little salty, with something almost metallic underneath. Renata moaned softly and put a hand on my head, guiding me without forcing me.

“A little higher,” she said in a teacher’s voice that made me shiver. “There. Yes. Now suck it slowly, don’t bite. That’s it.”

I obeyed. I sucked her clit with my lips, circling it with my tongue just as she had done to me. She started moving her hips against my mouth, panting, her breasts rising and falling. I slipped one finger in carefully and felt the flesh close warm around it. I added a second. I fucked her slowly with my fingers while I licked her, and she grabbed my hair with both hands and started saying things I never would have imagined hearing from my literature teacher’s mouth.

“Yes, like that, suck my cunt, baby, suck it good, that’s how I wanted you, that’s how I’ve wanted you for two months, oh fuck, Sofía, keep going.”

I almost came again just from hearing her. I sped up my fingers inside her, curling them upward the way she had done to me, searching for that same spot. When I found it, I felt her shake all over. She rode my face with her hips, shameless, moving against my mouth. I swallowed what dripped onto my tongue and kept sucking her, obedient as in class.

“I’m coming,” she gasped. “I’m coming, don’t stop, keep going, keep going, don’t stop.”

She came, pressing my head against her pussy with a force that almost took my breath away. I felt her insides clench around my fingers three or four times in a row, and a warm gush wet my chin. She fell back onto the sheets, breathing hard, her chest rising and falling, and a low laugh came out of the bottom of her throat.

I climbed up her body and lay down beside her. She rolled toward me, threw one leg over me, and kissed me calmly, tasting herself in my mouth without the slightest shame.

“We’re not done,” she whispered.

“No,” I said. “Not even close.”

She made me open my legs again and settled on top, fitting her pussy against mine. She began to move slowly, rubbing against me, cunt to cunt, letting our wetness mingle. The sensation was new, different from fingers, different from a mouth. A constant friction that climbed through my clit with each of her movements. She looked down at me from above, propped on her arms, her hair falling over my face. I lifted my hips to meet hers, syncing up, searching for the exact angle.

“Look at me,” she asked. “Don’t close your eyes. I want you to look at me while you come again.”

I looked at her. She sped up. Our clits rubbed with every thrust, and the sound of our pussies slapping together, wet and dripping, filled the whole room. I grabbed her ass with both hands and pulled her harder against me, faster. She was panting with her mouth open, and at some point she moaned my name — Sofía, Sofía, Sofía — three times in a row, with that teacher’s cadence that stretched the s’s, and that was the last straw. I came for the second time, looking into her eyes like she’d asked, my mouth open in a silent scream. She came a second later, collapsing on top of me, trembling all over, her face buried in my neck.

We stayed like that for a long while, not moving, with her weight on top of me, each of us breathing against the other’s skin. The last orange of sunset came in through the half-lowered blind. I thought about the seventeen-year-old girl who had once fantasized about touching her neck, and I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

Renata slowly moved off me, lay on her side, slipped an arm under my neck, and drew me toward her. She kissed my forehead and then my shoulder and then my mouth again, soft, unhurried.

“Are you staying?” she asked.

“I’m staying,” I said.

We still weren’t done, and we both knew it. The whole night was still ahead of us.