The Italian Woman from the Office Cried on My Couch That Night

That morning I woke up with the sky still painted violet. Light filtered through the slatted blinds and drew warm stripes across my face. Without fully opening my eyes, I knew something had changed: there was a weight on the other side of the bed, a breath that wasn’t mine.

I got up carefully, barefoot, and walked past the wardrobe mirror. Thirty years old. Redhead by inheritance, skin the color of milk that turns a little bluish when it’s cold. My nipples had gone hard right away, two pink points betraying the room’s temperature. I looked down. Narrow waist, smooth stomach, the broad hips I hated so much in my teens and now thank every morning. Ten years of swimming had left my legs firm. That morning, in front of the mirror, I felt formidable.

My hair fell to the low curve of my back, loose, still wavy from the pillow. I’d shaved my pubic hair on Monday. In the reflection I saw the outline of my clitoris peeking between my lips, still a little swollen from the night before, and I smiled.

I turned my head toward the bed. Under the white sheets was she. One long brown leg sticking out over the edge, round buttocks half exposed, the slim waist hidden under the fabric and her back bare. Her black, long hair had spread across the pillow like an ink stain.

Noemí. The Italian woman from the office. The woman who had obsessed me for six months and who last night, against all odds, had come in my mouth.

I went into the bathroom before she woke up. I needed to be alone for a while. I filled the tub, dropped in a fig-scented bath bomb, and sank in until the water covered my ears. Silence under water always helps me think.

If you want the whole story, we need to go back a little.

***

Noemí arrived at the company in October. She’d been transferred from the Milan office to coordinate a project that, they said, was going to change everything. The only thing that changed, at least for me, was the course of my free time. I started arriving earlier so I could run into her by the coffee machine. I learned to greet her in Italian. I offered to drive her home when it rained. Nothing ever happened. She had a partner —some guy named Aldo, a photographer, according to her— and I’m the sort who puts up with it in silence.

Over time we became friends. The kind of friends who tell each other things you don’t tell anyone else. I told her about my last relationship, a story with a married woman that ended the way those stories usually end. She told me about Aldo. And then, within a few weeks, she told me that Aldo had started coming home late, that he smelled of a perfume that wasn’t his, that Lucrecia —her supposed best friend, someone Noemí had introduced at her own housewarming party— answered her messages with a certain sharpness she hadn’t had before.

Last night, around eleven, my doorbell rang. When I opened it, Noemí was on the landing with mascara smeared down her face, a travel bag at her feet, and a broken voice.

—Helena, I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.

I let her in. I sat her on the couch, poured her a whiskey with two ice cubes, and let her cry until the tears ran out. She told me that afternoon she’d come home early and found Aldo and Lucrecia in the kitchen, too close together, wearing that look of children caught red-handed that admits no other interpretation. She’d left without saying a word. She’d been driving around until she remembered me.

***

—You’re not going back tonight —I told her.

—I can’t.

—Then you’re not going back. Period.

I stroked the back of her hand slowly, like you stroke a frightened animal. Noemí closed her eyes. She had long eyelashes, almost fake in how perfect they were. And then I got the idea, because a person gets a little unbearable after spending months holding in a desire, to tell her what I’d been thinking for months.

—There are worse ways to spend a bad night, you know.

She looked up. Her gray eyes, almost silver, met mine with something that wasn’t surprise.

—I’ve never been with a woman, Helena.

—I know.

—So…

—So nothing has to happen if you don’t want it to.

We stared at each other for a long time. Outside, in the street, someone started a car. Noemí bit her lower lip, that habit of hers I already knew by heart. I took her by the waist and, with a movement I’d rehearsed a thousand times in my head, sat her astride me.

She didn’t resist. We ended up face to face, so close I could count the tiny freckles on the bridge of her nose. My hands slid from her waist to her hips, feeling the bare skin where the top didn’t reach. She moved her hips, just barely, a small gesture that said far more than any promise.

—If we stop, we stop when you say so —I whispered.

She leaned in. She took my face in both hands and kissed me. First timidly, nibbling my lower lip as if testing the waters, and then, once she’d decided, with a firm, hot tongue that came into my mouth as if she’d been thinking about it for years. Her hips moved without her even noticing.

I pulled the straps of her top down. The fabric gave way. Her breasts fell free, full, heavy, the nipples dark and hard. I pulled back for a second just to look at them. My hands couldn’t encompass them. I started squeezing them slowly, sliding my thumbs over the tips, and Noemí dug her nails into my shoulders without hurting me.

I buried my face between her breasts. She smelled of a citrus soap and something else that was uniquely hers, a warm mix that made me close my eyes. I took one nipple into my mouth and heard her let out a sharp breath. I licked it, bit it lightly, let it go. I moved to the other one. She arched to bring them closer to me. I felt my panties soak through and, for a moment, nothing else mattered but her taste on my tongue.

And then she pulled away.

—Wait —she said, her voice hoarse—. Helena, wait. This is wrong.

I stopped. I looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed and her chest was rising and falling as if she’d run a hundred meters.

—Sorry —I said, trying to think with my head and not my crotch—. You’re right. I was being an idiot.

—It’s not that. It’s just that I don’t know how I’m going to look at Aldo tomorrow.

I looked at her. And something in me boiled over.

—Aldo? Are you serious? Your boyfriend is fucking your best friend, you saw it with your own eyes four hours ago, and you’re worried about how you’re going to look at him tomorrow? Don’t you have the right to feel good?

She fell silent. The last thing I’d said kept turning over in her head; I could see it. She stood up from the couch. Still bare-breasted, she unbuttoned her skirt and let it fall. She was wearing a peach lace thong that seemed made for her skin tone. The triangle was so small one of her lips slipped out over the edge, and the fabric shone where it had gotten wet.

She came forward until her hips were level with my face. I looked at her. She grabbed my hair, with a decisiveness I hadn’t seen in six months at the office, and pushed my face against her pussy.

I didn’t resist. I kissed her over the fabric. I inhaled her scent. I ran my tongue over the bulge of her clit, still through the lace, and felt her shudder.

I knelt on the floor. I pulled her thong aside with two fingers. I spread her lips open slowly. She was drenched, so much that a thread of moisture ran down the inner side of her thigh. I licked that thread first, from bottom to top, until I reached her clit, and when I found it I sucked gently. She let out a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard from her before.

I slid in one finger. Then two. Without stopping sucking her clit, I started moving them in a rhythm she herself set with her hips. She was gripping my hair so hard I thought she’d tear out a lock, and that strength only turned me on more. I felt her thighs start to tremble. Her moans grew broken. And in the end she came against my mouth, with a cry that sounded like a long, months-long relief, and I drank in everything she gave me without moving.

She stayed still. She looked down at me, breathless, her eyes shining.

—That doesn’t feel like anything else —she murmured.

***

We went to my room. I turned on only the lamp in the corner. She walked behind me, naked except for the pulled-aside thong, and I guided her to the bed as if I were leading her somewhere she already knew.

As soon as I sat on the edge, she pushed me. She yanked off my jeans and panties in one pull. She spent a while looking at me, opening my lips with two fingers, as if studying a new map. I lifted my hip just a little, offering it to her, and she licked her lips and looked at me for permission. I nodded.

Her tongue made the whole journey, from the entrance to the clit, with a slowness that didn’t seem like a beginner’s. She stayed there a long while, sucking, while the tip of one finger stroked my clit in circles. I had no idea where she’d gotten that instinct from. Maybe from imagining it for weeks without daring to admit it. Maybe from looking at me in the office more than I realized. I twisted. I grabbed her hair the way she’d grabbed mine. I felt the orgasm rising, and just before it burst I pulled her up and placed her on top of me, astride, leg against leg, until our clits met.

Then we started moving. Slowly at first, then with a rhythm that got dirtier and dirtier. She leaned down, pulled my shirt up, bared my breasts, and swore in Italian when she saw them. She squeezed them, licked them, bit one carefully, and I dug my nails into her butt to pull her closer. We ground against each other, both of us breathing harder and harder. I could spend my life here, I thought, in this exact movement, without ever needing to get anywhere.

But I wanted more.

—Turn around —I told her—. I want to see you from behind.

My voice came out hoarse, not entirely mine. She obeyed without protest. She got on all fours on the mattress, ass raised, buttocks parted. I knelt behind her. I ran my tongue along the whole crease, from bottom to top, and heard her moan into the pillow. I stroked her with one finger. I felt her contract and relax.

I pressed my pelvis to her ass. My clit, swollen, wet, found hers from behind and I started moving. I slid two fingers into her from the front, never stopping rubbing myself against her. Noemí pressed her face into the mattress and surrendered, moaning things in Italian that I didn’t understand and didn’t need to understand. Every time I thrust, she lifted her ass higher. Every time I pressed my fingers against her, she soaked the sheets even more.

I don’t know how long we went on. I know that when she cried out the second time, I was right behind her, and the orgasm hit me so hard I had to cling to her hips so I wouldn’t fall. I collapsed over her back. I kissed the hollow below her ear. I pushed the sweaty hair off the nape of her neck.

It took us a good while to breathe normally again. When we finally settled, she fell asleep with her head on my chest. I stayed there looking at the ceiling, listening to the heater’s purr, still feeling everything throbbing inside me.

***

I got out of the water. I wrapped myself in a towel. When I went into the bedroom, Noemí had turned over. She was looking at me with one eye open and a small smile, still half asleep.

—Buongiorno —she said.

—Good morning.

—Did it really happen?

—It happened.

She paused. Bit her lip. And then, with the same calm with which she had left me breathless the night before, she lifted the sheet to invite me in.

This, without a doubt, could be repeated.