The Older Woman Who Was Waiting for Me at Her Apartment

I met her on an ordinary Tuesday, in that small bar on Almagro Street that I’d gone into just to get out of the rain. I was twenty-three, with a degree half-finished and the habit of looking too long at women who were ten or fifteen years older than me. She was at the end of the bar, alone, with a glass of red wine between her fingers and her eyes on me before I’d even sat down.

She didn’t tell me her name. That was the first rule I understood without anyone saying it out loud: this wasn’t about names. It was about the way she looked at me.

—You’re soaked —she said, sliding a napkin across the bar until it stopped in front of me.

—It started raining all of a sudden —I replied, and noticed my voice came out weaker than I’d meant it to.

She smiled in a way that wasn’t kind. It was a smile that knew things. Her dark hair was carelessly pulled back, there were fine lines around her eyes, and she wore a perfume that stayed with me the rest of the night. When she turned her body toward me, her knee brushed mine and she didn’t move it away.

—Do you live nearby? —she asked.

—A few blocks away.

—So do I. —She took a sip without breaking eye contact—. But my apartment is warmer than yours, I can promise you that.

She knew exactly what she was doing. And the worst part was that I knew it too, and still I let her ask for the check for both of us.

***

The building was old, one of those with a wrought-iron elevator that creaks on the way up. While we waited, she leaned against the back wall and studied me from head to toe, unhurriedly, as if she were calculating how long it would take her to have me where she wanted. I didn’t say anything. The silence between us weighed more than any conversation.

Her apartment smelled of wood and that same perfume. She switched on only a standing lamp in the corner, and half the living room fell into shadow. I set my bag on a chair. When I turned around, she was already a step away from me.

—Are you nervous? —she asked.

—A little.

—Good. —She brushed a damp lock of hair away from my face—. The ones who come in too sure of themselves don’t interest me.

She kissed me before I could answer. It wasn’t a soft, tentative kiss: it was direct, deep, with one hand closing behind my neck so I couldn’t pull away. I tasted wine on her tongue and a heat rose up from my stomach. When she finally let me go, I was breathing with my mouth open.

She walked toward me, and I backed up without thinking until my spine hit the cold wall. She placed both hands on either side of my head, caging me in, and lowered her mouth to my neck. Her lips traced the line of my jaw, my throat, the hollow at my collarbone. Every kiss was slow and deliberate, and I felt my skin prickling in its wake.

—You’re trembling —she murmured against my ear.

—I can’t help it.

—I don’t want you to.

One of her hands left the wall and slid down my side, slowly, until it found the hem of my wet T-shirt. She lifted it just enough for her fingers to brush the bare skin of my stomach. I held my breath. She smiled against my neck when she felt it.

—Look at you —she said—. You’ve been waiting for this all night.

I didn’t deny it. I wouldn’t have been able to.

***

She took me to the bedroom without stopping kissing me, guiding me with her hands on my hips, in clumsy steps neither of us wanted to stop. The bed was big and low, with dark sheets. She sat me on the edge and stood in front of me, watching as I pulled the rain-soaked T-shirt off over my head.

—Stay still —she ordered—. I want to look at you first.

I did. I let her eyes travel over me, sitting there in my underwear, my hair still dripping over my shoulders. There was something about being looked at that way that made me feel exposed and desired at the same time. When she finally leaned in, it was to push me gently down onto the mattress.

She settled over me, still dressed, and the contrast of her blouse against my bare skin made my back arch. She kissed the center of my chest, the curve of one breast, and when her mouth closed over my nipple I let out a moan I didn’t even try to swallow. She licked it, bit it lightly, and my fingers sank into her dark hair.

—That’s it —she said, lifting her head—. Don’t stay quiet. I want to hear you.

Her hand moved down my body while her mouth stayed busy. I felt her fingers slip under the elastic of my underwear, unhurried, parting me, finding how wet I was for her. A longer moan slipped out of me when she started moving them.

—You’re ready for me —she whispered in my ear—. You were since the bar.

—Please —I murmured, and I didn’t even know what I was asking for.

—Please what?

—Keep going.

Her fingers traced slow circles, then firmer ones, until my nails dug into her shoulders. I moved my hips, seeking more, and she gave it to me on her rhythm, not mine. Every time I was about to lose myself, she slowed down and left me hanging on the edge, breathing through soft laughter.

—Not so fast —she said—. The night is long.

***

When I couldn’t take it anymore, she pulled away abruptly, and I whined like a child having something taken from her. She chuckled under her breath, sat up on her knees on the bed, and began unbuttoning her blouse without any hurry, enjoying the way I watched her.

—Did you want this? —she asked, letting the garment fall to the floor.

—Yes.

—Say it properly.

—I want you —I said, and my cheeks burned when I heard myself.

She finished undressing slowly, and when she lay back down on top of me, skin to skin, the heat of her body made me close my eyes. She was soft where I had expected hardness, firm where I hadn’t. She kissed me again, deeply, and then began to move lower.

She traced my stomach with her mouth, left a wet trail along the inside of my thigh, and when she finally settled her head between my legs I thought I was going to come apart too soon. The first sweep of her tongue tore a cry from me that I smothered with the back of my hand. She held my hips so I wouldn’t move away and kept going, with a patience that brushed against cruelty.

—Take your hand away —she ordered, lifting her gaze for a second—. I want to hear you scream.

I obeyed. I obeyed everything. Her lips and tongue worked at a rhythm that had me writhing against the dark sheets, and my moans filled the room without me caring anymore who might hear them on the other side of the walls. I buried my fingers in her hair, not to guide her, but to hold on to something.

—Don’t stop —I begged—. Please, don’t stop.

This time she didn’t. She kept the rhythm steady, constant, adding two fingers to what her mouth was already doing, and I felt everything inside me tightening like a rope about to snap. When she finally let me fall, I did it with my whole body, my back arched and a sound I didn’t recognize as my own. She didn’t stop until I finished trembling.

***

Afterward she let me breathe. She came back up, lay down beside me, and brushed my hair out of my face with a tenderness she hadn’t shown until then. I was still breathing hard, unable to speak.

—Are you okay? —she asked, and for the first time all night she sounded almost sweet.

—Better than okay.

—We’re not done yet. —Her hand slid over my waist again—. Now it’s my turn.

I turned toward her, still dizzy, and kissed her, tasting myself in her mouth. This time it was me who pushed her down onto the mattress, me who moved down her neck biting with more bravery than I thought I had. She watched me with half-closed eyes, letting me, correcting me with a murmur when it was needed.

—Slower there —she whispered—. That’s it. Just like that.

I learned her body by listening to her breathing. I learned where to press and where to barely brush, when the sound of her voice rose and when she ran completely out of air. When she finally came apart under my hands, her fingers clenched in the sheets and my name hovering on her tongue without ever quite being asked, I felt a pride unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

We stayed like that for a long while, tangled together, with the lamp in the corner still on and the rain beating against the windows. We didn’t talk. There was no need.

***

I left before dawn, while she slept. I gathered my clothes from the floor in silence, found my bag on the chair, and looked at her one last time from the doorway. I still didn’t know her name, and I understood that it had to stay that way.

Outside, the rain had turned into a fine drizzle. I walked the few blocks to my place with her perfume still on my skin and the certainty that something had opened inside me that night. Until then, I had believed that my desire for other women was a curiosity I could keep locked away in a drawer. A stranger in a bar on Almagro Street proved me wrong.

I went back to that bar many Tuesdays after that. Sometimes just because of the rain, I told myself. But I always looked first to the end of the bar, just in case she was there again, waiting for me.