The Night Camila Went on Stage

Camila and I have known each other for twelve years. We became friends at university, in one of those bonds that survive boyfriends, moves, and jobs that don’t last. From Monday to Friday she works as a nurse at a private clinic near the city center. On weekends she dances at a club you get into with advance booking and a code at the door.

She told me three years ago, one night after dinner, with that calm she has for dropping huge things as if they were offhand comments. She said she danced, that she made good money, that she didn’t ask anyone’s permission. I asked if I could go see her sometime. She laughed. She said yes, one day.

That one day came last Friday.

Camila is almost five foot nine. Most of that height is her legs, long and shaped in a way that makes it hard not to look at them when she walks. She has dark, straight hair that falls to the middle of her back, and eyes that shift between brown and green depending on the light and her mood. When she smiles, a dimple appears in her left cheek and throws everything off balance.

I’ve wanted her for a long time. I don’t know exactly since when, though I think it was during a trip we took together to the coast four summers ago. We shared a room with one double bed. That night it took me hours to fall asleep with her body ten centimeters from mine, listening to her calm breathing while I couldn’t stop thinking about how close her hand was to mine on the pillow. I touched myself in silence under the sheets, biting my lip so I wouldn’t make a sound, thinking about her cunt, about what it would be like to bury my tongue deep in it while she slept.

I never told her anything. We’ve been friends for twelve years and that counts for more than any fantasy. But fantasies stay there even when you don’t invite them. They pile up, get refined, borrow details from real conversations and from glances that last a second longer than necessary.

Camila is the most recurring fantasy I have. And she doesn’t know it.

***

The club is on a dead-end street south of the city, behind a dark wooden door with no sign. Camila sent me the code by message that same afternoon, along with a “don’t be late” and no further explanation.

The inside is bigger than it looks from the outside. Low tables, dim amber light, a long bar at the back. The circular stage with a vertical pole in the center takes up almost a third of the space. There were no more than forty people. The music was soft, background music, just enough to cover people’s conversations without blocking their own thoughts.

I sat at a table near the stage, ordered a drink, and waited.

When Camila came out on stage, it took me a second to recognize her. She had her hair down with a slight wave she doesn’t wear in everyday life, something shiny applied over her shoulders and arms that made them gleam in the light, a tiny black outfit that left nothing to the imagination: two triangles of fabric barely covering her nipples and a thong wedged between her ass cheeks. She walked to the center pole with that way she has of moving that I had always noticed but that night was completely different. More deliberate. More aware of herself.

The music started. And Camila started.

There are people who dance for the room. There are people who dance for themselves. Camila did it with a focus that turned everyone else into background noise. She was precise, she was fluid. She hung from the pole upside down, opened her legs wide, and from my table I could see how the thong fabric clung to her cunt, outlining every fold. My mouth went dry.

Her eyes swept the room. When they reached my table, they stopped.

She smiled. Not the kind of smile that says, “I’m so glad you came.” The kind of smile that says something that doesn’t translate cleanly into words but that I understood perfectly from the second row.

I didn’t look away.

Neither did she.

She danced for fifteen minutes that felt like three to me. When she got down from the stage, she walked straight to my table. She stopped in front of me, looked down at me with her hands on her hips, and said:

—Well?

—You’re incredible —I answered, and I don’t know whether it came out naturally or whether what was behind the line was too obvious.

She took my drink, drank a sip without asking, and sat down beside me. She smelled like her perfume mixed with the heat from the stage, and that combination did something to my stomach that I tried to ignore with little success.

***

What I’m telling you from here on isn’t exactly what happened that night. It’s the version that repeats itself in my head when I can’t sleep. What I imagined in the taxi ride home, with the city sliding by dark in the window and my heart still racing and my thighs pressed tight together.

In the version I imagine, Camila sits very close. So close I feel the heat of her skin and that perfume she always wears, floral with something darker underneath. She looks at me for a moment with those eyes that change color and says:

—You spent the whole show looking at me like you wanted to eat my cunt.

—It’s because I do —I tell her. In the fantasy that comes out without effort, without the weight of twelve years of friendship pulling from the other side.

She doesn’t say anything. She looks at me a second longer. Then she kisses me.

It’s not a greeting kiss or any other kind with a familiar name. It’s deliberate and slow, with one hand on my cheek guiding me exactly where she wants. She pushes her tongue deep into my mouth, tangles it with mine, and I feel her other hand slide down my thigh and squeeze it hard over my pants. I feel it in my stomach, in my chest, in the cunt that’s already soaked before anyone has even touched it.

When she pulls away, she doesn’t go far. Her forehead touches mine.

—How long have you been thinking about this? —she asks.

—Four years —I answer.

—Five for me —she says, and smiles with the dimple in her left cheek—. Five years imagining what you taste like.

We disappear backstage, into a small room with a leather sofa and a floor lamp that casts a warm orange light. Camila locks the door, turns toward me, and unbuttons my jacket with her fingers, slowly, never taking her eyes off mine. The fabric falls to the floor. She lays her open palms on my collarbone and slides them very slowly down my cleavage, until she’s squeezing my tits over my bra.

—Stop —I say.

She stops immediately.

—So I can take my shirt off —I clarify.

We both laugh, and there’s something in that shared laugh that makes everything more real, more ours. I pull my shirt over my head and she unhooks my bra with one hand, with the ease of someone who’s done that many times. When my tits are bare, she bends her head without saying a word and sucks one nipple, slowly, tracing circles with her tongue, while her fingers pinch the other. A sharp gasp escapes me that I don’t recognize.

—Fuck, what tits you have —she murmurs against my skin—. All this time hidden under clothes.

She nudges me gently toward the sofa and sits on top of me with her knees on either side of my hips. Her weight is exactly like I imagined all those nights I forbade myself from imagining it. I grab her ass with both hands over the thong and she starts moving on me, rubbing her cunt against my thigh, leaving a wet patch on my pants that I can feel perfectly. I tear away the two black fabric triangles covering her tits and there they are, round and firm, with nipples dark and already hard as stones.

—Suck me —she tells me, grabbing the back of my neck and pulling my head down.

I suck her. I take one nipple fully into my mouth, run my tongue around it, tug gently with my teeth. She arches her back and lets out a long moan that goes straight to my cunt. I switch to the other one, give it the same treatment, and feel how she moves faster over me, how her breathing breaks apart.

She kisses my neck. Slowly, tracing a line with her tongue from my jaw to where my shoulder begins. My fingers are buried in her hair and I don’t remember putting them there. She slides her hands down my abdomen, unbuttons my pants, slips her hand under my underwear without ceremony, and touches me directly.

—You’re soaked —she says, and there’s something triumphant in her voice—. You’re dripping, Marta.

—I’ve been like this since you came out on stage —I admit.

She slips in one finger. Then two. She moves them inside me with a precision that makes me clench my jaw. With her thumb she finds my clit and starts making slow circles, while she watches my face so she won’t miss a single one of my reactions.

—Tell me what you want —she says against my neck.

There are things you know exactly, even when you’ve never had them.

—I want you to eat my cunt —I tell her, without apologizing for it, without lowering my voice—. I want your tongue inside me. Now.

She smiles against my neck.

—Good —she says.

***

She gets off me and kneels on the floor between my legs. She pulls my pants off by the legs, then my underwear, and tosses both aside. She spreads my knees with her palms, unhurried, taking in what she sees.

—What a cunt —she says, more to herself than to me—. All these years and I had no idea.

She doesn’t go straight down. First she kisses the inside of my thighs, one and then the other, coming up with her mouth centimeter by centimeter. When she reaches the top, she deliberately skips my cunt and kisses my hip bone. She moves higher. She licks the skin below my navel. Then she goes back down the other thigh, biting softly.

—Camila, please —I say, and I don’t care how it sounds anymore.

—Please what —she says, looking up at me from below with shiny lips and raised eyebrows.

—Eat me. Please.

She lowers her head. The first pass of her tongue is flat, long, from bottom to top, and it makes my legs tremble and my fingers grip the sofa leather. The second is more precise: the tip of her tongue directly on my clit, small, steady circles, with exact pressure that makes me release a moan that comes out raw.

She knows what she’s doing. There’s no hesitation, no searching. With her tongue she sets a constant, precise rhythm over my clit, unhurried and uninterrupted. She alternates: sucks, licks, slips the tip of her tongue very deep only to pull it out at once, returns to my clit. Every time I get close to the edge, she notices and adjusts the pressure or angle just enough to keep me there, on that brink, a little longer. It’s deliberate. She’s doing it on purpose. And I know it, and that makes it even harder to bear.

—Camila —I say, and I don’t know if it’s complaint or plea or just her name, which I like how it sounds when I say it like that—. Camila, please, don’t stop, don’t stop.

She looks up without stopping. Her chin is shining, soaked in me, and that image alone tightens my whole body. Her eyes are dark, focused, with something in them I’d never seen before because until tonight I’d never had her here, in this position, with her mouth buried in my cunt and looking at me like this from below.

She slips a finger inside me, then two, and curves the tips upward, searching for that exact spot most people never find. She finds it on the first try. The rhythm she keeps with her tongue syncs with the movement of her hand and suddenly everything is one single thing: tongue on top, fingers inside, the thumb of her other hand pressing my thigh open to keep me spread. I feel the tension gather from my feet to my center, dense and urgent, like a wave rising very slowly and not going to fall until it breaks.

—I’m about to come —I warn her, my voice tight—. Camila, I’m going to come in your mouth.

She moans against my cunt and that vibration is what finally snaps me. I grab her hair with both hands, squeeze harder than I should, push her face into me without any care.

—Don’t stop —I tell her—. Don’t stop, fuck, don’t stop.

She doesn’t stop. On the contrary: she speeds up the rhythm of her tongue, pushes her fingers deeper, faster, and sucks my clit between her lips with a suction that tears me apart.

When I come, I come slowly and then all at once, my back curving forward and a sound in my throat I don’t recognize as mine, a tight howl that comes out from very deep down. The orgasm shakes me in waves, one after another, and each one lasts longer than the last. Camila keeps up the rhythm until the final contraction, sucking and licking while I convulse beneath her, until I let go of her hair and collapse against the back of the sofa, still breathing hard and with no strength left in my muscles.

She pulls her fingers out slowly, shining and soaked, and puts them in her mouth without taking her eyes off me as she sucks them one by one.

—You taste exactly like I imagined —she says.

—Come here —I ask her, in a thread of a voice.

She climbs up my body and I kiss her. She tastes like me in her mouth, salty and thick, and that detail just turns me on all over again. I slip my hand between her legs under the thong and her cunt is so wet my fingers slide from side to side without any grip. She pants against my mouth.

—Lie down —I tell her.

She lies on her back on the sofa and I get on top of her, fitting my thigh between hers. I tear the thong on one side, without untying anything, and she lets out a short laugh that turns into a moan when I shove two fingers inside her at once. Her whole body goes taut. I bite her neck while I fuck her with my fingers, searching for the same spot she searched for on me, and by her face I know when I find it.

—There —she says, eyes closed—. There, there, don’t move from there.

I ride her against my own thigh, moving my hips in the same rhythm as my fingers, and she sinks her nails into my back so hard I know I’ll have marks tomorrow. I lower my mouth to her tits, bite one nipple without fear, and she moans louder, not caring if someone on the other side of the wall hears us.

—Marta, fuck, like that, like that, don’t stop —she says, and her voice sounds unlike any voice I’ve heard from her in twelve years.

I don’t stop. I add a third finger, change the angle, rub her clit with my palm every time I push in. She arches off the sofa, her mouth falls open without sound, and when she comes she does it with her legs clamped around my hand, trapping my fingers inside her as she climaxes in long waves that run through her whole body.

When she’s done, she lies still for a moment, eyes closed and a small smile on her face. Then she pulls me down on top of her and hugs me, still inside her, and stays like that breathing against my neck.

She doesn’t say anything for a while. The room smells like sex, like her perfume and the leather sofa, and outside, very far away, the club music keeps going as if nothing had happened, even though for me everything has happened.

Then she says:

—Four years keeping that to yourself?

—Four years and a bit —I confirm.

—What a waste —she says, and laughs—. And now we’re going to have to make up for lost time, huh?

I laugh too. We both laugh. And in the fantasy we stay like that for a long while, naked and pressed together on the sofa, with no need to say anything else.

***

What really happened was that Camila sat beside me, drank from my glass, and we kept talking until one in the morning. About work, about a trip she’s planning for the summer, about a series we’re both watching without having told the other until that night. I drove her home to her building. She kissed me on the cheek when she got out, as she always has since we met, and disappeared into the building.

In the taxi home I wondered if I’d ever tell her anything. If there would come a moment when the weight of keeping it would be greater than the weight of losing what we have. I never came to any conclusion. I never do. I got home, got into bed without changing, and touched myself thinking about her, about her mouth, about her cunt tight under the thong, and came in less than two minutes with my face buried in the pillow.

On Wednesday we’re going out to dinner.

I’m going. I’m going to look at her the way I always do, with that secret only I know. And probably the fantasy will remain mine forever, accumulating in silence like all the others before it.

But when I asked if I could come back next Friday to watch her perform, Camila laughed.

She said yes.

And that smile with the dimple lasted a second longer than normal.