The Night of the Red Moon with My Virtual Muse

I met Camila a little over a year ago, without even knowing what her voice sounded like. She appeared on my screen one ordinary afternoon, with a blurry profile photo and brown hair falling over her shoulders. We started talking about nonsense—music, books, how boring office work was—and within days I could no longer fall asleep without opening our conversation first.

It was unlike anything I had felt before. I had barely touched other girls. Three, maybe four, in clumsy encounters that ended without really knowing what to do with my hands. I was a beginner when it came to dating women, and I admitted it without shame. Camila, on the other hand, seemed to know what she wanted. Or at least she wrote it with a confidence that made my fingers tremble.

—Did you know I think about you before I fall asleep? —she wrote me one night.

I stared at the screen with my heart out of sync. It took me three minutes to answer with something that wasn’t stupid.

—Me too —I finally put, and erased the emoji after it twice.

Within a few days we fell into a routine neither of us thought to break. We talked late into the night, sometimes until four in the morning, and when she fell asleep without warning, I kept writing her whole monologues that appeared as unread messages by the time she woke up. I told her what I’d dreamed, what had happened to me during the day, what I had imagined while she slept. She laughed. She said I was the only person who talked to her by herself.

One afternoon, after coming home from work and getting into the shower, she wrote to me.

—I just got out of the water. My hair’s wet and I can’t shake this cold.

—Put something on —I replied, trying to sound normal.

—That’s what I’m trying to do.

Fifteen minutes later the photo arrived.

She was turned away from the camera, up on her tiptoes, her ass lifted as if she were reaching for something on the top shelf of the closet. She was wearing a black thong that dug a little into her hips and, instead of a bra, a gray pajama T-shirt that barely covered her breasts. Her shoulders, the nape of her neck, the exact curve where her back dips before rising into her ass were all visible. And her nipples were showing through the fabric.

I stared at the photo for a while I won’t even try to calculate.

—Is this looking for something in the closet or looking for something else? —I finally wrote.

—You tell me.

I turned the phone over. I set it on the table with the screen facing down, as if that could make me pretend nothing had happened. But ten seconds later I picked it up again.

—A few more photos like that and they’ll forbid me to sleep tonight? —I wrote.

—I’ll send them if you tell me what you’d do if I were there.

And that’s where it all began.

I wrote the first thing that came to mind, without thinking too much, because thinking scared me. I told her I’d stare at her for a while, without touching her, just to see if she could keep holding that pose. I said I’d kneel in front of her. That I’d slowly spread her legs, first with my hands and then with my teeth on the edge of that thong. That I’d pull her underwear down with my fingertips, unhurried, until it fell to the floor. That I’d lift one leg and rest it on my shoulder so her cunt would be right at my mouth.

—Keep going —she wrote.

I’d never written anything like that. And yet the words came out as if I’d rehearsed them a thousand times.

I told her I’d kiss the inside of her thigh first. That I’d slowly work my way up, leaving tiny marks with my lips, not biting, until I reached the fold. That I’d breathe her in before touching her. That I’d let her feel me very close, so close that my breath would already be a caress, before I ran my tongue over her for the first time.

—I’m trembling —she replied.

—Sitting or standing?

—Standing. Leaning against the closet wall. Don’t ask me why.

I laughed alone in my bed, with the lights off and the phone lighting up my face. It was the first time in a long while that something seemed absurd and serious to me at the same time. I wrote that I’d lick her slowly, that I’d let her feel every movement, that I wouldn’t let her come the first time. That I’d make her hold her own weight against that wall until her legs gave out.

—And if my legs give out, then what? —she wrote.

—I’ll hold you up.

***

Weeks passed like that. Every night a new scenario, a new photo, a new line neither of us dared say out loud. Once I asked her to send me an audio of her saying my name, and it took her three days to send it. When it arrived, I listened to it so many times I ended up deleting it for fear I’d wear it out.

Camila had a way of writing to me unlike anything else. One day she’d tell me absolutely filthy things, no filter, no shame; and the next she’d ask if I had remembered to eat. It was that mix that had me hooked. I, who had never really known what it was to want a girl, began to understand that desire was not only about touching each other in the dark. It was also this: waiting all day for one of her messages, rereading the old ones, sleeping with the phone in my hand in case it rang.

Until the night of the red moon arrived.

I found out that same morning, from a stupid news item that popped up on my phone. Total eclipse visible across much of the continent. It was going to rise late, around eleven. I sent the link to Camila without saying anything else.

—I’m going to watch it from my window —she replied—. Alone.

—Me from mine.

—What if we watch it together?

We agreed on a time. At eleven-thirty we’d open a video call, both of us at our windows, both of us watching the same moon stained red from two different cities. It sounded innocent. We both knew it wasn’t.

The time came.

Camila appeared on the screen in an oversized sweatshirt and her hair tied up in a messy bun. Her face was freshly washed, without makeup, and to me she looked more beautiful like that than in any of the photos she had ever sent me. She lifted the camera and showed me the moon, already high above the buildings, already that rust color that only lasts a few minutes.

—It’s insane —she whispered.

—It is.

We stayed quiet for a while, each watching the moon from her own side. It was the first time I’d seen her face in motion. The first time I’d heard her breathe. I thought about all the things I’d written to her over those weeks, and a new shame came over me, different, much deeper than screen shame.

—Are you alone at home? —she asked after a while.

—Yes.

—Me too.

There was a long silence. The moon above us kept bleeding.

—Camila —I said.

It was the first time I had said her name out loud. It sounded strange in my room, strange and final.

—Tell me.

—I want to see you.

—You are seeing me.

—You know what I mean.

She took two seconds. Only two. She moved a little away from the camera, set the phone down on something, and pulled the sweatshirt over her head. Underneath, she wasn’t wearing anything. The window light hit her at an angle across her chest, across her belly, across the barely defined outline of her ribs. She had a small mole just below her left nipple. I hadn’t imagined that.

I sat back against the headboard. I slid one pajama strap down. Then the other. The shirt fell to my waist and I was naked from the waist up too. I didn’t say anything. Neither did she.

—What would you do if I were there? —she asked at last.

—What I’ve been telling you for weeks.

—I want to hear it again. But out loud.

And then I told her. Slowly, with my voice a little broken, I repeated the part about kneeling in front of her, about her thighs, about lifting her leg to my shoulder, about not letting her come the first time. Camila watched me without blinking. At some point she slipped a hand under her pants without taking her eyes off me.

I did the same, almost without thinking.

—Don’t close your eyes —I asked her.

—I’m not going to close them.

We both moved slowly. We both breathed harder and harder, each in her own city, each under the same red moon. I watched the muscles in her neck tighten, watched her lips part, watched her hair escape the bun and fall across her face. She watched whatever I wanted to show her.

—Don’t stop —she murmured—. There, like that.

—You don’t stop either.

She bit her lip and threw her head back. I gripped the phone with both hands so I wouldn’t drop it. And then, with the eclipse halfway gone and the silence of the early morning filling my room, our bodies gave in almost at the same time. I heard her. She heard me. And for an instant there was no screen, no cables, no two different cities: there was only that, that small shared tremor, that surrender.

***

Afterward we stayed quiet for a while. The moon was already beginning to recover its usual color. Camila covered herself again with the sweatshirt, unhurried, and I pulled my pajama strap back up. Neither of us was smiling yet. We were both at that strange point where everything that could be said sounded too little.

—And now what? —I asked.

—Now —she said— we should meet in person.

—Seriously?

—I’m checking tickets tomorrow.

I laughed softly. She did too. The moon was almost no longer red. But between the two of us, somewhere, that light was still burning, waiting.