The Blindfold That Changed Everything Between Two Friends

From the window of the apartment across the way, Andrés adjusted the brightness on the monitor and settled into the chair. He had spent weeks keeping watch over that apartment for hire, but days ago the job had stopped being just a job. Elena was beside him, a coffee cup between her hands and her eyes fixed on the screen.

“She’s just arrived,” he said, pointing at the image.

In the lit-up living room on the other side of the street, Lucía dropped a gym bag beside the sofa and lit a cigarette. Her hair was still damp from the shower, and she wore the irritated expression she had had since the afternoon.

“She looks angry,” Elena observed.

“She argued in the locker room with a friend. I heard it on the audio.”

The cameras Andrés had installed picked up sound with a clarity Elena still found unsettling. Through the tiny speakers, they heard Lucía dial a number on her phone.

“No, I’m not ever going to her place,” she said, her voice tight. “I know we’re friends, Mara, but I’m fine with Diego and I don’t want anything to do with that guy… Fine, come if you want. But if you talk to me about him, you can get lost. Come on, don’t be late.”

She hung up and stood staring at the street from the window. A few minutes later, a red-haired girl appeared in the entrance hall.

“There’s the friend,” Andrés murmured.

They watched Mara go upstairs and, when Lucía let her in, the two of them melted into a long embrace. The redhead was quietly apologizing for what had happened in the locker room.

“It pisses me off that you can’t see he’s using you to get closer to me,” Lucía said, pulling back a little. “I warned you. He’s an asshole.”

“I know. I’m an idiot for not listening to you.”

Mara lowered her head, ashamed, and Lucía brushed away a tear with her thumb. They sat together on the sofa, very close, and their conversation dropped lower and lower until it became a whisper.

“I feel bad for that girl,” Elena said, without taking her eyes off the screen. “But there’s something between them that isn’t just friendship.”

Andrés didn’t answer. He had noticed it too.

***

“You really forgive me?” Mara asked in the image.

“Yes. It’s over. But let that be the last time you grope me at the gym, okay?”

“I won’t do it again.” Mara stretched her neck and brushed Lucía’s cheek with her lips. “I thought if I turned you on, you’d want to come with me.”

“All you managed to do was make me run off.”

The two of them laughed, and in that instant something shifted in the air of the watched living room. Mara slowly unfastened the first button of her friend’s pajama shirt and slid her hand beneath the fabric. Lucía closed her eyes.

In the apartment across the way, Elena set the cup down on the table without making a sound. Andrés was standing behind her chair, his hands on her shoulders, and she felt him pressing a little into her skin.

“I love the feel of your breasts,” Mara’s voice came through the speaker.

“I’m going to kill you,” Lucía replied, but she didn’t push her away.

“Do you like it when I touch them?”

“What do you think?” Her voice had gone lower, huskier.

Mara slid down onto her knees on the floor between her friend’s legs and pulled open her pajama jacket all the way. She stared at Lucía’s naked breasts with a mix of admiration and hunger the camera captured without shame.

“They’re so beautiful,” she said, almost to herself. “Will you let me kiss them?”

“Yes. Kiss them for me, please.”

Andrés leaned down and brought his mouth to Elena’s ear. He grazed her earlobe with his tongue and felt her shiver beneath his hands.

“Yours are hard too,” he whispered, sliding his palm beneath her T-shirt. “Do you like looking at them?”

“Yes,” Elena answered, breathless, never taking her eyes off the monitor. “And you?”

“A lot.”

On the screen, Mara scattered short kisses over Lucía’s breasts. When she caught a nipple between her lips, the girl arched her back and let out a low sound that slipped through the speakers. It was obvious, from the clumsy and eager way she did it, that it was the redhead’s first time sucking another woman’s breasts. And she was enjoying it as much as her friend.

“I’m so horny,” Mara said, pulling back for a moment only to yank off her T-shirt and sports bra in one motion.

“Come here,” Lucía asked, looking at her naked chest. “Sit on my legs.”

Now it was Lucía kissing and nibbling her friend’s nipples, while Mara wrapped her arms around her neck and arched her back to offer herself more. The two women’s moans blended into a single line of sound that filled the empty living room in Andrés and Elena’s apartment.

***

“You feel so good,” Mara panted. “Wait a moment, please.”

She stood up and disappeared from the frame for a second. Lucía watched her go, puzzled.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back.”

She came back holding something black in her hand. It took them a moment to make it out: it was a sleeping mask.

“What do you want to do?” Lucía asked, half amused, half nervous.

“Just let me do it. Don’t say or do anything.”

She slipped the elastic band around the back of her head and settled the fabric over her eyes. She moved a hand in front of her face.

“Can you see anything?”

“How am I supposed to see with my eyes covered? You’re scaring me with all this mystery.”

“Shh.” Mara kissed her lips, drew back for a second, and kissed her again, this time slower, her mouth slightly open. “Shhh. Don’t say anything.”

Elena had moved so close to the monitor that her breath barely fogged the edge of the screen. Andrés slid a hand to her stomach and slowly downward, and she parted her knees without taking her eyes off the two women.

“Look at what she’s doing,” Elena murmured.

In the other living room, Mara was moving down her friend’s neck with her mouth, then over her sternum, then over her stomach. Lucía lifted her hips almost involuntarily when she felt her pajama pants being pulled down.

“The other day I wished I could do this to you,” the redhead was heard whispering.

“But…”

The rest of the sentence was lost in a moan. Mara had spread her legs and buried her face between them. Her tongue, inexperienced and curious, groped for the rhythm, and judging by the way Lucía was writhing against the sofa, she was finding it.

“No, Mara, not there…” she weakly protested, with no conviction.

“Shhh.”

Andrés slid his fingers between Elena’s thighs, unwittingly mirroring what was happening on the screen. She threw her head back against his chest and let out a long sigh.

“Do to me what she’s doing to her,” she whispered. “I want to feel what she’s feeling.”

***

In the watched living room, Mara’s curiosity had taken her farther. Without stopping licking her, she had brought a finger to her and moved it slowly in circles, exploring, until Lucía jerked.

“No, not there, please,” she panted, trying to push her away with a hand that had no strength.

“Relax. Don’t you like it?”

“I do like it, but…” Another moan cut her off.

“It’s okay. We’re friends. This way you can find out what it feels like.”

Elena watched, fascinated, as the redhead’s finger went in and out with patient slowness, while her tongue kept working higher up. She could feel Andrés’s hands moving against her own body in the same rhythm, and without realizing it she had started moving her hips to meet him halfway.

“They’re both trembling,” Andrés said, his voice rough.

It was true. On the screen, Lucía had started trembling from the waist down, and Elena, connected to her from across the street by a fiber-optic cable and a screen, was trembling the same way.

“I’m going to come,” Lucía was heard saying.

“Me too,” Elena answered out loud, as if she could speak to her from that shadowed living room. “Me too, baby.”

They came almost at the same time. Lucía with a muffled cry against the cushion, her hips lifted off the sofa; Elena with her back arched against Andrés, her fingers digging into his forearm. For a few seconds none of the four said anything. Only the agitated breathing of the two friends recovering could be heard through the speakers.

***

When Lucía took off the blindfold, she looked at Mara with shining eyes and a smile that was part guilty, part grateful.

“You witch,” she said.

“A good witch?”

“The best.”

They settled together on the sofa, skin against skin, and the redhead stroked her hair while Lucía kissed the curve of her shoulder.

“You know what pisses me off?” Lucía said, her voice drowsy. “That with Diego I’d never dare tell him any of this.”

“You don’t have to tell him. It’s ours.”

“Ours,” she repeated, as if trying the word out.

In the apartment across the way, Andrés turned off the monitor and the room fell dark. Elena was still leaning against him, still breathing hard, and for the first time in weeks neither of them was looking at the screen.

“We should stop doing this,” she said, not moving.

“I know.”

“We’re not going to stop, are we?”

Andrés didn’t answer. He found her mouth in the dark and kissed her slowly, and that was all the answer Elena needed. Outside, the lights in the living room across the way went out one by one, and the two friends went to sleep wrapped in each other’s arms, unaware that their secret was no longer theirs alone.