My Roommate Taught Me What I Didn’t Know

Carolina had never spent a summer away from her family. At twenty-three, after four winters shut away in the Faculty of Philology, she decided she needed air, real languages, and a salary that didn’t depend on her parents. That was why she accepted the Marsden Hotel’s offer, on a small island off the English coast, where they were offering her a job as a waitress for three months in exchange for a room, food, and a modest check every two weeks.

The trip was long. A flight to London, a bus to Portsmouth, and a three-hour ferry that smelled of diesel and fried food. By the time she finally stepped onto the pier at Saint-Pierre, she had been awake for twenty hours and still had a taxi ride to the hotel ahead of her. She climbed up to her room carrying two suitcases and the feeling of having crossed half the planet only to end up in a town with three streets.

The room door was ajar. Carolina pushed it open with her shoulder and found a girl sitting on the bed, unpacking a huge backpack. She had dark skin, her hair tied up in a high ponytail, and she was wearing shorts that rode up her thighs without asking permission. She looked up and smiled.

—You must be Carolina —she said in Spanish with a strange accent—. I’m Naima. I got here an hour ago.

Naima was from Bristol, she was twenty-one, and her mother had been born in Kenya. She blurted it all out in thirty seconds, with the easy confidence of someone who had already told the same story a hundred times. Carolina kicked off her shoes, flopped onto the other bed, and started talking without filters. Ten minutes later they were already laughing. An hour later they had already decided to ask for the same shift in the dining room.

The following weeks passed quickly. They worked together, ate together, and on Sundays they took the bus to a cove in the south of the island, where they lay in the sun and commented on the impossible tastes of the English guests. Naima had a deep laugh that escaped through her nose, and a strange habit: whenever something truly amused her, she would rest her hand on Carolina’s thigh as if she needed to hold on so she wouldn’t fall. At first, Carolina didn’t give it any importance. Then she started to look forward to those touches without wanting to admit it.

One night, at the end of July, the restaurant stayed open late. A group of English retirees had arrived and didn’t finish dinner until after midnight, and Carolina went up to the room with swollen legs and the feeling that there was sand inside her uniform. Naima was already asleep, or so it seemed to her. She decided the quick shower she’d been taking for weeks wasn’t going to save her tonight and turned on the bathtub tap.

While the water rose, she took off her apron, her polo shirt, and the black work trousers. She was left in a white cotton robe, almost sheer, that her mother had thrown into the suitcase at the last minute. She looked at herself in the mirror for a second. The bathroom light outlined her shape: heavy breasts, wide hips, a waist narrower than she herself remembered. She turned off the tap, let the robe fall, and stepped into the tub very slowly.

The water was just right, somewhere between hot and bearable. She sank in up to her shoulders, let her black mane float around her face for a few seconds, and closed her eyes. For the first time in weeks she didn’t think about anything. She only listened to the drip of the tap and, far away, the sound of a car crossing the town.

A few barefoot steps on the tiles pulled her out of her trance.

She opened her eyes and there was Naima, naked in the doorway. Her hair was loose for the first time since Carolina had known her, and it covered part of her right shoulder. She had small, firm breasts, dark nipples, a smooth belly, and long legs that seemed to go on forever. She wasn’t wearing so much as a towel.

—Sorry —Naima said, but she didn’t move—. I thought you’d already gone to bed.

—I was —Carolina answered, feeling her face grow hot—. I was done for today.

Naima smiled, took two steps into the bathroom, and came up to the edge of the tub. She made no move to leave, or to cover herself, or to apologize again. She knelt behind Carolina’s head and looked down at her.

—Do you want me to give you a shoulder massage? I learned in a class last year. I’m good at it.

It took Carolina a while to answer. She nodded without looking at her.

***

Naima’s hands entered the water without warning. They started at the nape of her neck, with her thumbs right at the base of the skull, and worked down the trapezius muscles, finding each knot one by one. Carolina clenched her teeth to keep from moaning at the very first squeeze. She could feel each muscle giving way without asking her permission, as if her body had spent weeks waiting for someone who knew where to touch.

—You’re hard as a rock —Naima murmured, very close to her ear.

Her breath brushed Carolina’s neck. Carolina felt the skin on her arms prickle despite the hot water. Naima’s hands moved down over her shoulders, then along her arms, and when they came back up they lingered in the curve between her neck and collarbone. Too long. Carolina opened her eyes and looked back. Naima’s honey-colored eyes were fixed on hers, unblinking.

—Should I keep going? —she asked.

—Keep going.

Naima swept her black hair to one side, exposing the back of her neck, and kissed her there. It was a soft kiss, almost childish, on wet skin. But then came another, and another, and by the third there was already tongue. Carolina felt something loosen in her stomach. She had never kissed a girl. She had never wanted to kiss a girl. And yet, at that moment, all she wanted was to turn her head.

She did. Naima had been waiting for her.

The first kiss was awkward, at an impossible angle and with a wet chin, but the second found its rhythm. Naima’s tongue was soft, and she knew exactly when to bite her lower lip. Carolina straightened up inside the tub to get closer, and when she did, her breasts rose out of the water and brushed against Naima’s forearms.

—Get out of there —Naima said softly.

She pulled the plug with her foot and turned on the shower. Carolina stood up. Hot water was falling from above now, and Naima climbed into the tub with her, wrapping her arms around her from behind. Her nipples, already dark and hard, pressed between Carolina’s shoulder blades. She brought her hands around to the front, cupped Carolina’s breasts with both hands, and began to rub her nipples with her thumbs in slow circles. Carolina let her head fall back against Naima’s shoulder.

—I have no idea what to do —she admitted.

—You don’t need to do anything yet.

***

Naima turned her around. She kissed her on the mouth, then on the neck, then in the hollow between her collarbones. She moved down over the left breast and, when she reached the nipple, licked it first with the tip of her tongue and then took it fully into her mouth. Carolina gripped the edge of the tile to keep from slipping. Pleasure surged up her back in waves. Naima knew every spot. She knew when to press with her teeth and when to pull away and leave the nipple trembling against the cold shower air.

One of Naima’s hands moved down Carolina’s belly and lingered in the pubic hair before going on. When her fingers reached her crotch, Carolina opened herself a little wider without thinking. Naima found her already wet inside, and not because of the shower.

—Well now —she murmured, without lifting her lips from Carolina’s breast—. You’re more honest with your body than with your mouth.

Carolina laughed nervously, and the laugh cut off when Naima’s middle finger slid inside her, slowly, as if asking permission. She squeezed her thighs shut by instinct and let out a small, almost shy whimper. Naima didn’t move right away. She waited for Carolina to relax, and then began to go in and out with a rhythm she learned from Carolina’s sighs.

—Let’s go to the bed —Naima said.

They turned off the water, stepped out of the tub without drying off, and crossed the room dripping wet. Carolina let herself be laid back on the bedspread. Naima settled astride her, kissed her mouth again, and, without warning, turned her body. They ended up inverted, one over the other, with Naima’s face between Carolina’s thighs and Carolina looking, for the first time in her life, at another woman’s sex a hand’s breadth from her nose.

She hesitated. Naima didn’t.

Naima’s tongue traced Carolina’s sex from top to bottom, unhurried, drawing the outline before moving up to the clitoris. Carolina jerked. She closed her eyes, bit the back of her hand, and when she managed to breathe again, she did the same. She tried it. She brought her mouth closer in fear and licked. The taste was not what she expected, neither better nor worse: it was different, it was new, and that first stroke was enough to draw a deep moan from Naima that vibrated against her own sex.

That gave her confidence. Carolina licked her again, longer this time, and then sought out the clitoris with the tip of her tongue, imitating what Naima was doing to her. The two of them began moving at the same time, in a sort of clumsy mirror that gradually fell into sync. Naima used her fingers at the same time, going in and out while she sucked; Carolina, more cautiously, focused only on her tongue and the little bites that drew the louder moans from the other woman.

Carolina came first. It was an odd orgasm, different from the few times a boyfriend had taken her that far: deeper, longer, almost shameful. She squeezed her thighs against Naima’s head without being able to stop herself and let out a moan she didn’t even recognize. Naima didn’t pull away. She kept licking, gently, until Carolina asked her, please, to stop.

Then Carolina focused on her. She imitated what she had just learned, slid two fingers inside and moved them the way Naima had moved inside her, while sucking the clitoris with the steady rhythm of a heartbeat. Naima didn’t take long. When she came, she did it with both hands gripping Carolina’s hips and a muffled cry against her thigh.

***

They stayed like that for a while, exhausted, in the impossible position in which they had come, with no energy to move. Naima was the first to turn. She settled beside Carolina, placed a hand on her belly, and kissed her wet shoulder.

—I’ve been thinking about this for three weeks —she confessed—. Since the first night, when I saw you come out of the bathroom with the towel.

—You could have said something sooner.

—You could have noticed sooner.

Carolina turned her head. She looked at Naima from very close up, her eyes still clouded.

—I thought I didn’t like women.

—And now?

Carolina didn’t answer. She leaned in and kissed her on the mouth, slowly, as if she wanted to make sure that yes, the kiss still tasted just as good as it had in the bathtub. Then she rested her head on Naima’s chest and fell asleep to the distant sound of seagulls announcing that dawn was almost here.

The two months of summer they had left changed color that night. And when September came, Carolina went back to Madrid with a round-trip ticket to Bristol for Christmas and the certainty that she still had a lot to learn.