The Girl from the Square Ended Up in My Bed That Night

This story happened to me a few months ago, during a two-day getaway Tomás and I took to the capital. We asked for the time off at work almost at the same time and decided to spend it on one of those urban adventures we love so much: walking without a destination, eating in new places, getting lost in neighborhoods we didn’t know.

For me, traveling is much more than seeing places. It’s about chasing adrenaline, letting my mind get messy, feeling that mix of excitement and curiosity that shows up when a huge city welcomes you without asking anything in return. I like coming back with stories to tell, even if some of them stay tucked away in an inner drawer.

We arrived at the hotel around midmorning, a modest one on a wide avenue in the downtown area. After check-in and dropping off our bags, we went out in search of coffee. We sat by a window, ordered pastries, and while Tomás checked the map on his phone, I watched the street go by.

An hour later we were walking through a tree-lined square, with iron benches and a monument in the center. We sat down to rest and started one of those conversations that go nowhere. We talked about the city, about people, about our relationship, about things we’d already said a thousand times but repeated anyway because it was nice to hear each other.

And while we talked, she appeared.

Well, she didn’t appear alone. She appeared with him. A couple, seated on a blanket on the grass, not far from our bench. I don’t know if it was the light, or the fact that neither of them seemed to notice the rest of the world, but something about them made me stop halfway through a sentence.

They were young, barely into their twenties. She had long dark hair, tied back in a messy ponytail. He was skinny, tall, with just the hint of a beard. On the blanket there were bags, piled-up coats, a bottle of water. They looked completely at home.

What caught me was the way they touched each other. It wasn’t the clumsy groping of couples putting on a show in parks. It was something else. A caress that moved from arm to nape, a long look before every kiss, a laugh meant for no one else.

—Look at those two —I said to Tomás, almost under my breath.

He looked at them. Said nothing for a few seconds. Then he squeezed my hand.

I couldn’t stop watching them. It was as if the noise of the square—kids playing, dogs running, market stalls—had become a distant murmur. Only they existed.

Her lips moved slowly, and every so often she’d stick out her tongue to moisten them. Then he’d kiss her, and I could guess the brush of tongues even from a distance. His hand moved up her thigh, under her skirt, and stayed there, still, possessive.

Through the thin fabric of her shirt, you could tell her nipples were hard. He, with one finger, deliberately brushed them as he moved his hand across her chest. It wasn’t accidental. They knew they were turning each other on, and they liked it.

I caught Tomás’s eye. No words were needed: we were both in the same place. I pressed my fingers into his thigh and we kissed. A slow kiss, longer than the setting called for.

—Are you okay? —he asked when we pulled apart.

—I’m horny —I told him.

He smiled, shook his head, and looked back at them.

She lifted her legs and crossed them over his. Took out a cigarette, lit it. She blew the smoke in his face with a sly smile, and he took the chance to bite her lip.

After a few minutes they gathered their things and left. They walked away arm in arm, laughing, not noticing that half the park had been watching them. Tomás and I were left on the bench, heated and still, aware that we were surrounded by kids and people walking dogs.

We waited for our temperature to come down a little and went on with our tourist plan. The next stop was a subway station—in my city there’s no subway, no taxis, nothing remotely like it, so for us going down to a platform was almost an excursion.

We went down some worn steps and entered another world. A world in transit, fast-paced, where everyone was rushing except us. People in a hurry to get to work, to college, to the doctor. The station smelled of damp, of train brakes, of that trapped air in the tunnels.

The first train that passed scared me. The number of people getting on and off at the same time left me frozen on the platform. Tomás squeezed my hand and calmed me down. We let two more trains pass before I worked up the nerve.

We got on a packed car. Hundreds of bodies crammed together, each person staring at their phone or at some lost point in space. Nobody talked. Nobody looked at anybody. That strange big-city thing, where you’re lonelier the more surrounded you are.

And then I saw them.

In the opposite corner of the car, holding onto the same pole, were they. The girl from the square and the guy. Tomás still hadn’t seen them. I squeezed his arm twice, hard, until he turned his head.

—No way —he muttered.

It was possible. And there they were again, turning each other on with no attempt to hide it. His hand had slipped under her little jacket, and her face was resting against his chest, eyes half-closed.

Now we were only a few feet away. I could see, with a clarity that made me a little ashamed, the tiny movements of her tongue as she moistened her lips. I could hear—or imagine—their muffled gasps, the kind you hold in in public places. I felt dampness gathering between my legs. My nipples had hardened again under my bra.

I couldn’t stop looking at her. At her, especially. And as I looked at her, a scene started taking shape in my head that I had never had before. I imagined myself being the one receiving her kisses. I pictured myself sliding a hand around her waist, biting her ear, moving lower, opening her shirt to kiss her stomach. I imagined the brush of our bare breasts.

I had never been with a woman. I had thought about it, yes, sometime in the shower, some nights in bed after looking too long at a waitress. But I had never taken it beyond thought.

When I told Tomás, in a very low voice, I felt my face burn. He wasn’t surprised. He looked at me from the side, with that smile I know so well, and said:

—And why don’t you ask her?

—Are you crazy?

—What if she says yes?

I looked at him as if I were seeing him for the first time. I asked him if he was sure, if it wouldn’t bother him. He answered with another question: “Would it bother me if you liked a woman?” And the answer was obvious.

Hand in hand, we dodged passengers until we got close to them. The girl noticed we were looking at her. She lifted her gaze and held mine. She didn’t look away. That gave me the courage I needed.

I moved close enough to speak in her ear. I told her, very quietly, what I was feeling. I told her I’d been imagining her for half an hour. I told her I had never been with a woman. I told her my partner knew I was telling her this.

She pulled back a little, opened her eyes wide, looked at her boyfriend. The guy gave the smallest nod, as if this had happened to them before, or as if they had fantasized about it so many times they already had the answer ready. Then she leaned in again, asked my name, gave me hers—Mariana, she said—and before I could answer, she kissed me.

A long, wet kiss, with tongue. In the middle of the train car. With forty people pretending not to watch.

I bit her lower lip when we parted. It was soft. It tasted like mint and tobacco.

***

We got off at the next station, all four of us. Joaquín—that was his name—knew a love hotel three blocks away, on a half-hidden street. We didn’t talk much during the walk. I was holding Mariana’s hand, and Tomás was chatting with Joaquín like they were old friends. They were from the area, lived fifteen minutes away by bus. They were both twenty-two, and they’d met in college.

In the room, things fell into place on their own. Tomás and Joaquín sat on a small sofa facing the bed, with hardly any discussion. It was a silent agreement: the women first. The men would watch.

Mariana took me into the bathroom. She turned on the shower while helping me unbutton my shirt. Her fingers were quick, sure. When she took off my bra, she kissed my breasts with a calm that melted me.

Under the warm water, we soaped each other up. I was laughing. Not from nerves, but from disbelief. That this was happening. That her skin was so soft, so different from a man’s. That my hands were daring to roam over her back, her ass, her thighs, without asking permission.

I knelt under the spray and kissed her stomach. Then I went lower. I did it without thinking, letting myself be carried by the fantasy I had built on the subway. She braced herself against the tiles, spread her legs, and gently grabbed my hair. I gave her oral sex clumsily and eagerly, learning on the fly. Her small tremors kept telling me what to do.

When I stood up, she pushed me against the wall and bit my nipples, one first and then the other. She pressed her sex against mine and moved slowly, sliding, with water running over us everywhere.

We came out of the shower trembling. We dried ourselves off halfway. When we walked into the room, still with towels around our waists, the guys were still on the sofa with expressions of utter disbelief.

—Are you two going to stay there all night? —Mariana asked them, with that sly smile I already knew.

No need to repeat it.

We knelt on the bed facing each other, while they came up behind us. My mouth found Mariana’s, and while we kissed, I felt Joaquín enter me. Tomás, on the other side, started moving inside her. It was a strange and exciting image at once. I could see my partner fucking another woman, eyes closed and jaw clenched, while a stranger pounded into me.

Mariana held my face with both hands. She bit my mouth every time a harder thrust shook her. I bit back and met her gaze. We didn’t miss a thing. It was as if everything else—the men, the room, the city, the life outside—were a blurred background, and only the two of us were in focus.

When I came, it was different. Long, sustained, doubled. I felt the pleasure in my body and, at the same time, the pleasure of knowing she could see it cross my face. She came almost at the same time, and we held each other while the guys finished behind us.

After that, there was silence. A strange silence, not uncomfortable, but tender. I kissed her forehead. She kissed my breasts. We dressed in order, without talking much, because there was no need.

We left the hotel all four of us together. We said goodbye on the corner. I hugged Mariana tightly, whispered thank you in her ear. She squeezed my hand before letting go.

That was the only time we saw each other. We didn’t exchange phone numbers, or social media, or anything. Some encounters are made not to be repeated. If we had tried again, it wouldn’t have been the same.

Sometimes, when I travel, I look for that couple in the squares. I know I won’t find them. But I also know that afternoon, on that bench in that square, I discovered something about myself that I hadn’t known was there.

And that, too, is tourism.