The Café Where Her Gaze Was No Longer Mine

I hadn’t seen her in six weeks, and my body still hadn’t learned how to sleep without hers.

My name is Mariela. I’m an on-call doctor at a hospital in the south, I’m forty-two years old, and until that February I thought I had built a solid balance between the white hours of the shift and the warm nights when Renata’s back settled against mine. It took one morning to discover that balance was a very carefully drawn lie.

I went into the café on the avenue with two colleagues. We were celebrating the chief resident’s birthday with croissants and American coffee. I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate anything, but I smiled the way I’d been taught to smile since I was seven. And then I saw her.

She was on the terrace, sitting very straight, reviewing a file. Her hair was shorter, jaw-length, and that hit me like someone had taken something from me without warning: I had stroked that long hair for months. Now someone else had watched it fall to the floor of a hair salon I didn’t know.

Beside her was a woman in a light-colored suit. High cheekbones, a patient hunter’s smile. She brushed the nape of Renata’s neck with two fingers while whispering something, and Renata didn’t pull away.

—Marie? —Tomás, my resident, said. —Should we order at the counter?

—Go ahead —I answered without looking away.

Renata lifted her eyes. For a tenth of a second they met mine and I swear I felt her pulse race from across the terrace. I knew her. I had read her through and through, skin-deep. I knew her cheeks heated when she held her breath, that she clenched her jaw when something hurt. That morning she did both.

Then she looked away. As if I were a piece of furniture. As if she had never begged me, in a low voice, not to let go.

***

I closed my eyes for a second and went back to the first time I had stripped her naked.

It had been in my apartment, on a November dawn when she showed up unannounced, soaked through by rain, mascara running, a question stuck in her throat. We didn’t say anything. I pushed her gently against the door, took off her wet blazer, ran my tongue along the line of her collarbone until her knees went weak. Renata smelled like rain and expensive perfume, and below, when I pulled down her pants with my teeth on the button, she smelled like something much more mine: wet cunt, like a female who had come to find what she knew only I could give her.

I took her to bed and spread her legs with the calm of someone who knows she has hours. I kissed the inside of her thigh, bit the inside of her arm, dragged my tongue along the exact fold where hip stops being hip. I yanked off her panties with my teeth and stayed there looking at her cunt, open, shiny, swollen with want. I slid one finger across the whole slit, very slowly, from bottom to top, and she arched her back as if I had driven something into her.

—Please —she said. —Mariela, please.

When I finally lowered my mouth between her legs, she grabbed my hair with a force she hadn’t shown before and said my name as if she were praying. I licked her clit slowly, my tongue flat, broad, insistent, while I dug my nails into the inside of her thighs so she wouldn’t close. Renata moaned without shame, moving her hips against my mouth, fucking my face with the same desperation I had seen only that once. I slid two fingers inside her and felt her cunt tighten around me, hot, soaked, sucking me in. I curved my fingers, found that spot I had learned by heart, and she came on my tongue with a rough cry, trembling all over against my mouth.

That night I made love to her three times. The second time she was face down, biting the pillow while I rode her ass, three fingers inside and my thumb pressing her clit from behind, whispering in her ear that she was a beautiful whore, that she should come for me again, that she should give me everything. And she did. She came with her ass lifted, squeezing my hand with her cunt, soaking me up to the wrist.

The last time was near dawn, with two fingers inside her and my palm pressed against her, while I held her gaze and whispered that she was mine. Renata told me yes. That she was mine. She said it with her eyes full of water and her cunt dripping all over my hand.

***

The memory shattered when the prosecutor — I later learned her name was Beatriz Almeida — took Renata by the waist to lead her toward the exit. She held her with the familiarity of someone who already knows the way. Renata stood up without looking at me.

I followed them out, apologizing to my colleagues with a cold smile. I got to the door just in time to see them get into a black car. A hand on Renata’s thigh. A kiss on her temple. The door closing with a dry thud.

I stood on the sidewalk with cold coffee in my hand and broken breathing.

—Don’t run after her —said a voice behind me.

It was Carolina, Renata’s best friend. A lawyer, two years younger than us, with that way she had of looking at people like she’d already read the end of the novel.

—I just need her number —I murmured.

—You know perfectly well why I’m not giving it to you.

I knew. I had ruined it in December, one night, one lie, and since then I had chased her the way you chase a key that falls through a floor grate: with your hand pushed in as far as it will go, feeling the metal is there but unable to rescue it.

—Carolina, I’m begging you.

—If you want to talk to her, find a way. But you’re not getting shortcuts. You lost that.

And she left.

***

I went back to the café every morning for twelve days, like someone repeating an incantation. I sat at the corner table, ordered the same thing — double American coffee, salted medialuna — and waited. Sometimes I wrote in a notebook. Sometimes I just watched the door.

I knew I was being pathetic. I didn’t care.

On the thirteenth day, she came. Alone. With the same file under her arm. She ordered at the counter without looking around and sat at a table near the window.

I stood up before I could think. My legs were trembling as if I were sixteen again.

—Renata —I said when I reached her table. —Please. Just five minutes.

She lifted her eyes. And this time she held my gaze. It was the first time in six weeks. What I saw inside hurt me more than all her absence: pain, yes, but also something dimmed, like when you lower the blind so you don’t have to look at a street that hurts.

—Mariela...

She was going to say something to me. I saw it in the way her lips parted just slightly, in the way the air changed as it went in.

And in that exact instant, as if fate had been written by someone with very little delicacy, two things happened at once.

Beatriz Almeida crossed the café’s door, found Renata with her eyes in less than a second, and walked straight to her, taking her by the waist with the same authority from that other morning.

And behind me appeared Dr. Salazar, my colleague and my December mistake, the man with whom I spent that stupid night that ruined everything.

—Mariela, darling —he said, kissing my cheek. —I wasn’t expecting to find you here.

The word “darling” dropped onto Renata’s table like a glass breaking. I saw her jaw tighten. I saw how the flicker that had appeared in her eyes a second earlier went out with a snap only I heard.

—I didn’t know you knew Prosecutor Almeida —Salazar continued, oblivious to everything. —Pleasure, Doctor Rodrigo Salazar.

Renata spoke for the first time. Cold. Surgical.

—You’re mistaken. We don’t know each other. We just crossed paths.

And Beatriz, smiling sideways, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and said, loud enough for me to hear:

—My love, shall we go? I ordered the coffees to take away.

Renata didn’t answer.

But she didn’t pull away either.

She let herself be led out as if I weren’t standing in front of her. As if the November apartment had never existed. As if she had never said my name with her eyes full of water.

***

That night I got home without knowing how. I didn’t remember getting in the elevator. I didn’t remember opening the door. I only knew my fists were clenched and that something was burning in my body that wasn’t only jealousy.

I sat on the edge of the bed with my cell phone in hand. Carolina had texted me half an hour earlier.

“She’s at my house. If you’re going to write to her, do it now. It’s the window you have.”

I squeezed the phone until my fingers hurt. I opened a blank note.

“Renata, I know I have no right to ask you for anything. Not even to write to you. But there are things that, if they aren’t said, rot from the inside. What happened between us wasn’t a whim. It wasn’t an experiment. It was the realest thing I’ve felt in years, and I ruined it over one stupid night with a man I didn’t even want. I betrayed you out of fear. Out of fear of what I felt when you looked at me, because what you did to me was too much and I still hadn’t learned how to hold it. I didn’t come to compete with the prosecutor. Or to ask you to leave her. I came to tell you that when she touches your waist I feel like a rib is being torn out of me, and that I’d rather have that rib broken than forget how your voice trembled that November night. If you never look at me again without that pain, that’s okay too. Because I don’t love you so that you’ll love me back. I love you because I never learned how to stop.”

I read it three times. I removed two commas, added one. I deleted the word “always” because after what I did I didn’t deserve it.

I pressed send.

***

I stayed sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the screen. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. The app gave me the double check mark. Then the double check mark turned blue.

And nothing else.

I closed my eyes. I thought about the inside of her thigh, about that first time she had grabbed my hair and said my name as if she were praying. I thought about how her eyes would moisten when she came, about how she’d look for my mouth afterward, with that calm hunger of someone who knows there’s no need to rush.

My phone vibrated.

A message. Three words.

“Come. I’m alone.”

***

I knocked on Carolina’s door and Renata opened it. Barefoot. Wearing an old T-shirt that reached the middle of her thigh and nothing underneath, or so it seemed from the way the line of her hips showed. Her eyes were red.

—Come in —she said, without touching me.

I went in. Carolina wasn’t there. The living room smelled like her, like her shampoo, her expensive perfume. I stood in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do with my hands.

—I read what you wrote to me —she said, closing the door behind my back.

—Renata, I...

—Shut up.

She came closer. Slowly. Stopped ten centimeters from my face and looked at me as if deciding whether to cut my throat open or kiss me. Her lower lip was trembling.

—Six weeks, Mariela. Six weeks imagining you with him. Six weeks wondering if what you did to me with your mouth you were doing to him too.

—Never. It was never like with you.

—I don’t care —she said, and grabbed my jaw with one hand. —Tonight I don’t care.

And she kissed me. It wasn’t a sweet kiss. It was a kiss with teeth, with rage, with six weeks packed inside it. She bit my lip until it bled just a little and shoved me against the wall. I felt her hot tongue, her uneven breathing, her whole body pressed tight to mine.

—You betrayed me —she said against my mouth while she unbuttoned my coat with furious hands. —You betrayed me, you fucking bitch.

—Forgive me —I whispered.

—Not yet.

She tore off my shirt. Buttons flew against the wooden floor. She yanked my bra down and sucked one nipple until I cried out, her tongue broad, her teeth right on the edge. She shoved a hand inside my jeans without opening them, forcing my wrist downward, and when she found I was already soaked she laughed softly against my neck.

—Look at you. All wet. Were you like this in the café this morning too, when she touched me in front of you?

—Yes —I confessed, because it was true and because I had no pride left.

She dragged me to the sofa. She stripped off my jeans, my panties, everything, with that contained violence I’d never known in her. Then she pulled her T-shirt off over her head and yes, she was right: she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. I looked at her breasts, her flat stomach, the dark hair between her legs, and it felt like the air was falling out of me.

—Knees on the floor —she ordered.

I obeyed. She sat on the edge of the sofa, legs open in front of my face, and grabbed my hair with both hands.

—You apologized in writing. Now apologize to me here.

I buried my face between her legs. I ran my tongue across the whole slit, from bottom to top, sucking her clit, tonguing her, eating her cunt like my life depended on it. And my life did depend on it. She tasted salty, sweet, hot, she was her again, it was the taste I’d missed for six weeks against an empty pillow. I dug my hands into her ass and pulled her tighter against my face, soaking my nose, my chin, breathing her in.

Renata was pulling my hair, guiding me, fucking my mouth with her hips and insulting me between moans.

—That’s it, whore, just like that, suck my cunt... did you miss it? Did you miss my pussy? Tell me yes.

—Yes —I panted against her. —Every day. Every night.

I slid two fingers inside her and curved them, searching from memory. I felt her tremble. I sucked her clit with my tongue flat, insistent, while I fingered her hard, until her thighs folded around my head and she came screaming my name, yanking my hair with both hands, pushing my face against her until the final spasm was over.

She stayed there breathing hard, eyes closed, while I kissed her thighs, her hip, her stomach.

Then she opened her eyes and looked down at me with an expression I had never seen before. She grabbed my wrist and hauled me onto the sofa, laid me on my back, spread my legs with her knees.

—Now me —she said. —And you’re not going to come until I tell you to.

She lowered her mouth without any preamble. She licked me slowly, from top to bottom, eyes closed, tasting me as if checking that I was still the same. She pushed her tongue inside, sucked my clit with pursed lips, licked each fold one by one, taking the time I didn’t deserve. I moved my hips, begged her, pleaded.

—Renata, please...

—No.

She shoved three fingers in at once and I screamed. Hard. Deep. She knew exactly how to do it, how to curve, how to press her thumb against my clit while driving her hand into me against the sofa. She brought me to the edge three times and all three times she pulled her fingers out just before, leaving me trembling, biting the backrest, crying from want.

—See what it feels like to wait? —she whispered in my ear, with two fingers inside me again, still. —See what it feels like to be left like this?

—Forgive me —I cried—. Forgive me, my love, forgive me.

Something inside her broke. I heard it. She kissed me on the mouth, and this time it was different: the kiss had water in it, had forgiveness peeking out beneath the rage. And without stopping the kiss, she started moving her fingers again, now deeper, in and out, rhythmic, while she pressed her thumb against my clit.

—Come —she said against my mouth. —Come for me. Just for me.

I came with a cry swallowed in her mouth, squeezing her hand with my cunt, trembling all over, clinging to her shoulders as if she were the only solid thing in the world. My eyes filled with water and I didn’t try to hide it.

She stayed inside me a little longer, pulling her fingers out slowly, as if it hurt to separate. Then she lay down on top of me, skin against skin, her head in the hollow of my neck.

—This doesn’t fix anything —she murmured.

—I know.

—Tomorrow I might regret it.

—I know.

—But I couldn’t let you go without this.

I held her. I held her like I hadn’t held anyone in six weeks. I kissed the crown of her head, the short hair that still hurt me a little, and I thought that Renata knew how to forgive with her body before her head, and that I was willing to begin wherever she let me begin.

Outside, it was still raining like it had in November. The city smelled exactly the same as it had that night. And she had written “come” instead of “don’t write me anymore.” In the language we had taught ourselves to speak, that wasn’t yet an answer. But it wasn’t an ending either.