The Night I Discovered What I Felt for My Friend

It had gotten late at the studio. At forty-eight, I discovered that pleasure doesn’t ask my permission: I conquer it in every mirror where I recognize myself as provocative, shameless, and sensual. I’m an interior designer, I have friends, occasional lovers, and accomplices to sins that sometimes have a price and sometimes only leave a wet towel in some hotel in Coral Gables.

I looked at myself in the elevator mirror as it took just long enough to go from the forty-seventh floor to the garage. My hair fell over my silk blouse and brushed my breasts through the unbuttoned neckline. The freckles cascaded downward like a waterfall, disappearing toward my nipples. What a slut, I thought. I shook my head, deliberately messing up my hair, and that perverse pleasure of feeling like a whore grew sharper.

I didn’t feel like driving back to my apartment in Brickell. Friday night, Miami gridlocked, two hours wasted just to reach the supposed rest of the jacuzzi with candles, scents, and a bottle of champagne waiting for me. I wanted it, yes, but a good drink tempted me more as I walked the streets of Coconut Grove.

On one of those deserted streets desire got the better of me again, because perhaps I was the one who was lost. I walked into a bar that smelled of old wood and cigar smoke. I ordered a whiskey on the rocks and sat in a secluded corner, crossing my long legs that the black miniskirt barely managed to cover. Someone rested a hand on my shoulder. It was the soft touch of a woman.

—Hi, Caro. What a pleasure to run into you in this dump. How did you dare? You, always such a little saint?

—As you can see, Inés, there’s always a first time.

—A secret getaway!

—Maybe. But it doesn’t seem so secret anymore. You found me.

Inés was a friend from the afternoon tennis matches at the club in Key Biscayne. We had become close to the point of sharing, amid damp thongs, showers, and orgasms, the same tennis teacher. What began casually between us took on its own erotic charge when champagne glasses replaced whiskey. The charged atmosphere and midnight drawing ever closer were turning everything into a setting of carefully crafted provocations. That nightclub was the ideal place to find someone to finish the night with.

Inés’s green eyes moved down over my neckline without shame, and I opened it wider every time so she could make out the freckles and, above all, so she’d discover that without a bra my breasts were still firm. She bit her lower lip when I started teasing her with stray remarks, while I sipped a very cold rosé in short mouthfuls.

I uncrossed my legs with calculated arrogance and let her see the sheer lace culotte I was wearing underneath, just barely outlining the trim line of my shaved cunt. Inés couldn’t resist. She started stroking my knee, then my thigh, and I felt a shiver run all the way down to my nipples. The black silk marked them without effort. She opened her eyes wider, fixed them on mine, and the silences between us turned into desire.

Without thinking twice, in one sudden movement I grabbed her by the neck and gave her a long kiss on the mouth. Our saliva mixed dirty into one. I was moaning while she ran two fingers over the lace and sank them into me, getting wet, pulling her fingers out after a long while. When I opened my eyes again, Inés was taking her fingers to her lips and sucking them unhurriedly.

—Syrup for my need to have you —she told me.

I felt another shiver and looked around, trying not to be recognized. By that point in the night, nothing mattered too much anymore, but I remembered the bar was one of the discreet ones, the kind where no one comes to tell what goes on inside. I sighed in relief, moistened my lips, and kissed her again, this time more slowly, as if I were accepting something.

I didn’t feel lesbian at that moment with Inés, but I had discovered something different in my skin and, why not, in my sexuality. For a reason I had gotten completely soaked. For a reason I had been the one to take the initiative and fuse us together in that kiss. Looking into Inés’s eyes, in silence, my life ran through me the way reassessments do at forty-eight. She kissed me again after dipping her index finger into her champagne flute and brushing it over my lips. It electrified me. I had to go to the bathroom.

In front of the powder room mirror, I saw all my sins rise to the surface: the infidelities to my husband, who was away in Cartagena, the silent betrayal of my children. A few tears streaked my mascara, and I wiped them into my cheekbones, feeling sluttier, freer, and lonelier. I knew I wouldn’t come out of that confession I was giving myself unchanged. I would never be the same, and maybe I had never been just one, but many in my delusions.

Inés came into the bathroom and pulled me away from my memories. She pressed against my back, swept my hair to one side, and started kissing my neck. I closed my eyes and surrendered to her game again. I didn’t resist; I left the ghosts outside, turned around, and held her until only our breasts separated us. I kissed her again. I asked her to go back to get my car and come with me to my apartment in Brickell. She nodded with a half smile and kissed me back. I was going crazy holding back the orgasms.

***

I don’t know how I drove across the highways to Brickell with that lesbian wickedness I had never felt beside me before. My legs were trembling. Inés played with words and with my hand, slid my skirt up without permission, and kept finding over and over how wet I still was. I barely looked at the lane.

I always leave the living room’s dim lights on, the ones that blend with the reflections from the bay. We arrived. Inés was dazzled by the view of Biscayne Bay from that height. I asked her to pour two drinks, and we played with caresses while the night overflowed around us again. I put on an old record, “All the things you are,” and we started dancing very close, cheek to cheek. I have to confess that I was still holding my excitement back against my own delirium. I still didn’t feel free enough to give in.

—I’m going to take a shower and come back —I told her without taking my lips from hers.

—I want you, Caro —she answered, sighing.

I kept undressing in front of the dressing-room mirror, which always plays with my curves. I paused at each memory of each sin. I stepped into the shower and let the steam fog the screen. I pressed my breasts against the hot glass and my nipples drank in that burning warmth. I started to masturbate, trying to calm the lust, but it was useless. I didn’t want to finish. I wanted my first orgasm to be in her arms. And before that, I wanted to be the one who seduced her when I came out of the bathroom.

I put on another culotte, this time finer, with a white slip dress worn open, no bra, and high-heeled sandals. I walked toward the living room with my index finger to my lips, as if provoking an image. The music was still playing, but Inés was already in the bedroom, kneeling on the bed, naked. Her silhouette stood out against the window and the glow of the buildings’ electric fireflies. I stayed there watching her while I poured myself another glass of champagne, deliberately delaying the moment.

I was about to taste my bisexuality. I opened the slip dress and let her see my breasts. Inés came closer, uncovered my nipples, and began kissing them with a tenderness that was hard to believe, nibbling them with a delicacy that electrified my whole body. My nipples swelled between her lips. Her hands stroked my ass over the white lace. She brought her mouth to mine, and we fused again in a long, wet kiss, while two of her fingers played between my lips and my clit screamed for her tongue too.

I lost consciousness and fell onto her in an embrace, turning over on the soft sheets. Her skin and mine blurred together. I was trapped beneath her body, between her scent and my perfume. With her tongue she left a trail of saliva from my mouth down to my hips. I turned over and offered her my ass. My sphincter felt her tongue sinking in and her fingers in my vulva ripped the first orgasm out of me. It was intense, endless. Inés lay all her nakedness on top of me, I looked at her green eyes shining without decorum, and she kissed me. I closed my eyes and caressed her body, accepting that moment with no more questions.

I think it was the first time I felt a real passion for a woman. Inés was already an intimate friend; in that minute she became something else. My hands slid over her skin and circled her ass, perfect, soft. We turned again. Now I was the one in control. I went down until I found the taste of her sex. My tongue played without going in, leaving streams of saliva between the folds. I took her clit between my lips and squeezed it until a thick gush slid down my throat. Inés had come in my mouth, the way I had in hers before.

We ended up kissing and moaning like two sluts. Our legs tangled and our embraces wouldn’t let us stop getting aroused. I started moving over her, rubbing our pussies together as if I were penetrating her, or she me—it was all the same. And again, and another orgasm, drowning in another game of wet kisses.

Inés fell asleep after so many orgasms. On her back, her silhouette drew a curve that aroused me again. I wanted her once more, but I didn’t dare wake her. It had been too much for the first night. I poured myself more champagne and returned to my thoughts. How were we supposed to keep going with this? How long would the temptation last?

I relaxed looking at her naked body and, in the background, the windows where perhaps other anonymous perversions were lighting up in that electric Miami. I closed my eyes. I stroked my own body. My nipples were still aimed at the night. I fell asleep on the last breath of pleasure, after masturbating while brushing the warm skin of my sleeping lover.