My Mother’s Best Friend Came Into My Room

My bedroom door had been left slightly ajar that Sunday afternoon. My mother had rushed off to the hospital because my younger brother had broken his arm while playing at the park, and before leaving she asked her best friend to stay and keep an eye on the house until she got back. That friend was Carmen.

I didn’t know a thing. I had gone down for my afternoon nap after lunch, as I always did on days I didn’t work, in my underwear and lying face down on the bedspread, which was the only way I ever felt truly comfortable.

Carmen, so she told me later, had been wandering around the house to kill time. She passed by my door, and the crack was enough for her to see me in full. I was stretched out on the bed with my legs slightly apart, wearing a thin, almost transparent panty that barely covered me, my brown hair spread across the pillow. She stood still in the doorway, not thinking about anything specific, just looking.

She confessed it to me in so many words weeks later, and that’s why I can tell you what went through her mind in those minutes. She said she leaned against the doorframe and the first thing she did was close her eyes for a second, as if she wanted to convince herself she wasn’t doing what she was doing. Then she opened them again and kept looking at me.

—I couldn’t walk away from there —she told me—. I knew it was wrong, I knew if you woke up I wouldn’t have any way to explain it. And even so I couldn’t move my feet.

What had her rooted to the threshold, she said, was the curve of my back, the two dimples above my waist, the suntanned skin from the previous summer. She started touching herself over her clothes almost without realizing it, first her chest, then lower, while she wrestled with herself over whether to go in or not. Every minute she spent watching, she told me, made it harder to stay outside.

***

Carmen must have been around forty then, and I had just turned twenty-three. I’d known her all my life: she was my mother’s friend who came to birthdays, the one who brought wine and stayed late laughing in the kitchen. Never, not once, had I thought of her in any other way. And I’m sure she had never thought of me that way either, until that afternoon.

What I know of what happened next, I know because I lived it, though at first I lived it asleep. At some point she made up her mind. She took off her shoes in the hallway so she wouldn’t make noise, came in barefoot, and sat with infinite care on the edge of my bed. The mattress barely dipped. I kept sleeping.

She told me she spent a good while just looking at me up close, noticing things she hadn’t been able to see from the doorway: the texture of the skin on my back, the way I was breathing. Then she couldn’t take it anymore and slid the tips of her fingers along my spine, so softly it wasn’t even a touch, it was barely the idea of one. She brought her nose to my hair and smelled it. She lowered her hand to the edge of my panties and stopped there, as if asking herself for permission.

I started feeling something in my sleep. It was a warm caress going up and down my back, and my body responded before my head understood anything. I shifted. I sighed. I stayed with my eyes closed, in that strange state between sleep and wakefulness where everything seems to be happening far away.

The hand slowly slid beneath the fabric. When her fingers found my clit and began moving in slow circles, I was already wet and still hadn’t opened my eyes. My hips pressed themselves against the mattress, seeking that caress. She kissed my back while she did it, short, wet kisses that were waking me up completely.

And then I understood. I understood that those fingers were real, that there was someone in my bed, and that someone was touching me. I turned over suddenly.

—Carmen, what are you doing? —I said, more scared by the surprise than by anything else—. Why are you touching me?

She didn’t pull away. She was kneeling beside me, her blouse open, and she looked at me with a calm I didn’t know she had.

—I’m going to be honest with you —she said softly—. I walked by the door and saw you asleep like that, and I couldn’t resist. I know it’s not right. But now that you’re awake, I’m going to ask anyway: give me a kiss. Just one.

***

I was speechless. The strangest thing of all was that my body was still hot, that between my legs I could still feel what she had started, and that part of me didn’t want her to stop. But the other part was terrified.

—I’m not a lesbian —I told her, as if that explained anything—. I’ve never been with a woman.

—There’s always a first time —she answered—. I touched you and you’re wet. I’m not the one deciding that. Give me a kiss, and if you don’t like it, I’ll get up, get dressed, and you’ll never hear me mention it again.

—Why are you insisting so much on the kiss?

—Because I know that after the kiss you won’t want to stop. Are you up for just one?

I bit my lip. I thought about my mother, the hospital, how absurd all of it was. And I said yes, on the condition that if I didn’t like it she wouldn’t bother me again. She promised.

Carmen put a hand on the back of my neck and leaned in. It wasn’t a short kiss. It was long, slow, the kind that leaves you not knowing where you are. I felt a tingling that ran down my neck to the pit of my stomach and from there lower still. Without realizing it, I slipped my arms around her back. When we pulled apart, she was looking at me expectantly.

—Tell me the truth —she said—. What did you feel?

—I’m not going to lie —I admitted—. I felt pleasure all over my body.

That was enough for her. She took my neck again and kissed me once more, and while she did she let the pads of her fingers travel down my back. The second kiss was longer than the first, and by the time it ended I was already trembling a little.

—I feel really good, but I’m scared —I told her—. I don’t know what to do with a woman.

—There’s nothing to know —she replied—. Let your body lead you. There’s no right or wrong. Let me guide you.

***

I was the one who went looking for the third kiss. While we were kissing, Carmen’s hands went up to my breasts and started stroking them over my bra. I offered no resistance. On the contrary: when she took it off and ran her tongue over my nipples, slowly, without rushing, waiting for my body itself to ask for more, all I could do was sigh.

She spent a long while playing like that, and when my nipples went hard she took them into her mouth and started sucking them. A sound escaped me that I couldn’t control. She took it as a sign and kept going, then moving up to my neck, where she kissed me until she made my back arch.

She took my hand and brought it to her own breasts. It was the first time I’d touched breasts that weren’t mine. They felt softer than I had imagined. I gathered my nerve, leaned in, and kissed them the way I liked being kissed myself, with my tongue first and little bites after. I heard her breathing harder.

—See? You don’t need to know anything to make another woman come —she told me with a smile—. I loved the way you did that.

—I’m still nervous —I confessed.

—That’s normal the first time. It’ll pass.

She didn’t give me time to cool off. She kissed me again, this time pressing me against her, and let one hand slide down over my belly. She had me sit between her legs, with my back to her, and while she kissed the nape of my neck and held my breasts with one hand, with the other she tugged my panties down just enough to get where she needed.

Her fingers found my clit again, but now I was awake and paying attention to every sensation. She started slowly and gradually picked up the pace. I moaned softly, with hoarse little sounds I didn’t know I had in me, pressing myself harder and harder against her body. When she slipped her fingers inside me, they went in easily from how wet I was. She held me like that, reading every reaction of my body, until I came in her arms with a long shudder.

***

When I caught my breath again, she took my hand and brought it between her legs, under her clothes, and let me do what I wanted without saying a word. I let instinct guide me. I rubbed her clit in circles, changed direction, tried from top to bottom, and ended up sliding two fingers inside her until I felt her tremble. Then I brought my fingers to my mouth to know what she tasted like.

—And? —she asked me.

—I liked it —I said, surprised at myself—. I never thought I’d be doing this, much less that I’d enjoy it.

But Carmen had had something on her mind ever since, from the doorway. She made me lie back, spread my thighs with both hands, and settled herself between my legs. What came next didn’t resemble anything I had ever felt. She ran her tongue everywhere, lingered on my clit, sucked it, then went over me all over again. She left not a single place untouched. I opened my mouth gasping for air, clutched the sheets, and ended up coming not once but twice in a row, without her lifting her head.

I didn’t miss a thing. While it happened, somewhere in my head I was learning, because I knew I’d want to return the favor afterward and I didn’t want to do it badly.

—Want to try? —she said when she stopped.

—I’m dying of curiosity.

—Don’t think about it so much. Let instinct guide you.

She lay back and opened her legs. I put my lips where I had touched her before, tasted her, and at first I wanted to repeat exactly what she had done to me. But I ended up forgetting the copy and doing to her what I liked myself. I stuck out my tongue, explored her over and over, and then focused on the clit, which I sucked and bit softly and circled a thousand different ways. For my first time, I did it well: I felt her tremble, I heard her moan, and within a few minutes I made her come against my mouth.

***

Carmen got dressed quickly. We had lost track of time and, although she knew my mother would take a while to come back from the hospital, she didn’t want to risk her finding us like that. Before leaving the room she leaned over me, gave me one last long kiss, and squeezed me in her arms.

—I had an incredible time —she whispered in my ear—. And I hope it happens again. But next time, at my place, nice and quiet, with no one able to show up.

I nodded, still dizzy, my body limp on the rumpled bed. She fixed her hair, winked at me, and went out to the living room to wait for my mother as if nothing had happened, as if she were the same as always, the friend who comes to birthdays and brings wine.

When I heard the front door and my mother’s voice greeting her a while later, I kept staring at the ceiling. I was no longer the same girl who had lain down for a nap that afternoon. And, to my surprise, I regretted nothing.