The Scent My Friend Left in My Bed That Night

This story I’m about to tell happened shortly before I got a boyfriend. It’s a little story, without any big twists, but I keep it whole in my head because it was the first time my body did something my mind couldn’t understand. It has to do with Camila, my best friend from high school, and with a pair of shorts she forgot on my bed.

We were in our fourth year. I still wasn’t anyone’s girlfriend, though I was already talking regularly with the guy who later became my boyfriend. That Thursday Cami came over to my house after school because I had promised to explain mathematical analysis to her, which was like a foreign language to her. The two of us arrived dragging our backpacks, she took off her sneakers at the door to my room, and we flopped face-down on the bed with our notebooks open.

We lasted ten minutes doing derivatives. Then, as always, the conversation drifted away on its own.

—Did you hear what Tati said at recess? —Cami said, lowering her voice even though there was no one nearby.

Of course I had heard it. Tati had told us, grinning from ear to ear, that she had given oral sex to a guy she’d known for two weeks.

—That’s disgusting, idiot —I said, wrinkling my nose—. Sucking someone off when you barely know them, just like that. I don’t get how she can do it.

Cami laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.

—She’s bold, Tati is. I couldn’t do it no matter what. I’d be horribly grossed out having that in my mouth.

We fell silent for a second, looking at each other, and then we burst out laughing at the same time. After that, almost in unison, we both said the same thing.

—Still, she’s our friend, you know.

—Yeah, obviously. Tati’s a good person, I adore her, but… gross, seriously.

Cami bit her lip, as if she were thinking something important, and went on:

—I’d be really shocked, Mariel. Imagine that thing there, hard, moving, probably smelling bad… no way, not a chance.

—I swear I’d gag —I answered—. I don’t know how Tati managed.

Cami stared at her notebook without seeing it. Then she said, more softly:

—I would do it, but only for love. If I were really in love and he asked me, maybe. But not like Tati, who did it with some guy she barely knew. That’s different.

We looked at each other again. Neither of us added anything. Cami sighed, picked up her pencil, and went back to the page.

—Okay, come on, let’s keep going, because if I fail this class again my mom’s going to kill me.

We stayed with derivatives a while longer. I explained, she copied slowly, biting the eraser on her pencil and complaining every few steps. But neither of us was really there. Before long we were talking about Tati again, like we couldn’t get the subject out of our heads.

—Still, what I envy most about her are her tits —I said, lowering my voice even though we were still alone—. They’re huge, Cami. I look at mine and they’re pathetic.

Cami looked down at her own chest for a second and laughed.

—Oh, don’t be stupid, Mariel, yours are really pretty. I’m thrilled with mine. They’re small and firm, and they don’t sag. If they were like Tati’s, I’d be dying from pain when running in gym class. A cousin of mine has huge tits and she’s always complaining about her back. She suffers, seriously.

We laughed again. We went on for a while with dumb stuff: whether the guy had said anything afterward, whether Tati would get a reputation, whether we were ever going to be that bold. Until my bedroom door opened.

—Girls, dinner’s in ten minutes. Wash your hands and put all that away.

It was my mom, poking in half her head with that smile that said, “I know you weren’t studying.” Cami checked the time on her phone and looked panicked.

—Oh no, it got really late. My mom’s going to kill me, Mariel. I have to go now.

—Stay over, come on —I said, almost without thinking—. Tomorrow’s Friday, we don’t have to get up that early.

—Nooo, my mom doesn’t like it on weekdays. She says I end up dead in class. And with the low grade I have in math, I’m on thin ice.

—Wait, let me ask my mom to call her.

I ran out to the living room and explained. My mom picked up the phone without any fuss and called Cami’s mom. They talked for a bit, and she assured her we’d leave early the next day for school. In the end I heard the other woman give in.

—Okay, she’s staying —my mom told us, hanging up—. But please let her know as soon as you get there tomorrow.

We ate calmly with my family. My mom had made milanesa with mashed potatoes, which Cami loved. She, as always, was impeccable: she thanked everyone, helped clear the plates, and even followed my dad’s conversation about soccer though she didn’t care at all. My little sister wouldn’t stop bothering us, but we ignored her and laughed our asses off under our breath. When we were done, my mom sent us to my room and asked us not to go to bed too late.

We closed the door and flopped onto the bed again. As soon as we hit the mattress, Cami brought up Renata, the prettiest girl in the senior year.

—Idiot, did you see her today at recess? She has a perfect face and hair… I want to be her when I grow up.

—Of course I saw her —I answered—. She looks like a magazine cover. And she’s good at everything too. I’m so jealous I can’t even explain it.

Cami thought for a second and suddenly her expression changed.

—Oh, Mariel, I just remembered something awful. I didn’t bring a change of clothes. Tomorrow I’m going to have to go to school in the same shirt and panties as today. How awful.

—Wait, relax —I said, laughing—. I’ll lend you one of my big T-shirts and some shorts to sleep in. That way you’ll be comfortable and tomorrow you can put your own clothes back on.

I gave her a big white cotton T-shirt and a black athletic pair of shorts, the most comfortable thing I had. We changed quickly, without any embarrassment, turning away more out of habit than out of modesty. I put on another similar T-shirt and stayed in panties underneath. Cami ended up in my little shorts and the long T-shirt. We flopped back down side by side, with the bedside lamp on and the door closed.

That’s when the real conversation started. We talked nonstop for two hours.

We came back to Tati, of course.

—Still, I keep thinking she’s bold, huh —Cami said softly, as if someone might hear us—. But at the same time I’m a little jealous that she dares to do everything.

—Me too —I admitted—. It disgusts me and at the same time I think, “how brave.” We still haven’t even dared to kiss someone with tongue and she already did that.

Cami laughed, covering her face with the pillow.

—Imagine us. I’d die of embarrassment. Do you think we’ll ever have boyfriends?

—Of course. But it has to be someone we really like. Not just for the sake of it, like her.

After that we went back again to Renata, to the boys from school, to the one in the third year who looked at me every gym class, to one Cami liked but thought was too childish. We talked about how we imagined our first kiss, about TV shows, about a trip we were going to take together when we finished high school, about how much we hated the gym teacher. The conversation kept flowing, we laughed softly, we hid our faces in the pillow every time we said something too intense.

Without noticing it, our voices slowed down. Cami curled a little closer, I turned off the lamp, and the two of us stayed covered with the same blanket, breathing slowly in the dark.

That night I slept wonderfully, like when we were little and did sleepovers with six friends in the living room.

***

We woke up almost at the same time when my mom gently knocked on the door and said breakfast was ready. Cami stretched like a cat. I rubbed my eyes. We went out in T-shirt and shorts, hair all messy, and sat at the table with coffee and milk and toast. My mom hurried us because it was getting late.

Back in the room, Cami grabbed her school clothes and went to take a quick shower. She put on the panties she’d worn the day before and all her clothes. I waited sitting on the bed, looking at my phone. When she was done, she said, “Come on, your turn,” and I went into the bathroom. We came out together, made up, ready for school. The little shorts and the T-shirt I had lent her were left in a heap in a corner of the bed, crumpled into a ball.

The day at school was calm. At recess the three of us met with Tati at our usual bench. She was excited and told us more details about the famous encounter: that the guy had gotten really nervous, that at first he didn’t know what to do with his hands, that later he’d grabbed her hair. Cami and I listened with faces full of horror and curiosity at the same time, telling her “that’s disgusting, Tati” but, in the same sentence, asking her to keep telling us. She laughed and said it wasn’t that big a deal.

After the last class I stayed a while talking to a classmate, the guy I’d been talking to often. We chatted at the school gate about homework and about a series we were both watching. He was nice, he made me laugh, and he looked at me in a way that made me a little nervous. I went home with that kind of butterflies in my stomach I had never felt before. I couldn’t stop thinking about him the whole bus ride.

I got home, ate something reheated, did my homework, packed my backpack for the next day. Then I showered with really hot water and put on my official “pajamas”: a worn-out oversized T-shirt and comfortable panties. I flopped onto the bed still thinking about my classmate, about the way he had smiled at me when I said goodbye. I turned off the light and stayed there a while staring at the ceiling.

When I shifted to get more comfortable, I felt a lump under the sheets.

It was the white T-shirt and the little shorts I had lent Cami the night before. She had left them there that morning, bunched up into a ball, and apparently my mom hadn’t come by to gather the clothes for washing. It doesn’t matter, I’ll take it to the laundry basket tomorrow, I thought.

I smiled in the dark and picked up the T-shirt first. I brought it to my nose without thinking, just some stupid teenage reflex. It had a faint smell of sweat, barely noticeable, probably from the whole day of class. It made me smile. I told myself I was going to tease her about it on Monday.

On instinct, I grabbed the little shorts too. I lifted them to my face and…

The smell hit me hard, straight on. My body recognized it before my mind had finished understanding what it was. It was an intense scent, deep, damp. A thick smell, a little sour, but also sweet, of warm skin, of a whole day wearing the same panties. The living, intimate smell of the most private part of Cami. I pulled it away sharply, almost disgusted.

—That’s intense… —I murmured alone in the dark.

But I don’t know what came over me, because a few seconds later I grabbed it again. I brought it closer more slowly. I breathed it in more deeply. The smell filled my whole nose and I felt a strange heat rising up my back. My breathing quickened without asking permission. I got a little turned on. Not much, but enough to realize something was happening.

I turned on the bedside lamp and held the shorts up to the light. That’s when I saw the marks. There were several of them, dry, pale, right in the center of the crotch. They were the natural secretions of a girl’s body at the end of a long day, right there, before my eyes.

Suddenly, a garment that had only been used to be comfortable at home had become something else.

I lay back down without thinking about anything. But after a few seconds I grabbed the shorts again. This time I pressed them directly against my face, covering my nose and mouth with the fabric. Cami’s smell wrapped itself around me completely. I closed my eyes and slowly slid one hand under the waistband of my panties.

I started touching myself slowly, very slowly. My fingers moved in soft circles while I breathed deeply against the shorts. It was as if Cami were there, close, intimate, at a distance that shouldn’t exist. I imagined her body, her small firm tits, her flat stomach, the way she had moved all night with that same garment on. With every breath the smell went deeper into me and my fingers sped up, wetter, more insistent.

I felt my nipples hardening against the fabric of the T-shirt, my panties getting soaked. I touched myself with more pressure. My hips moved on their own against my hand while I pressed the shorts harder against my face. The pleasure rose deep inside me, almost slowly, like a wave that never quite breaks.

I didn’t make a sound. I just breathed in that smell and touched myself faster, more focused, until the orgasm came long and silent. I came with my eyes closed, biting my lip, feeling my body tense and loosen at the same time, wrapped in Cami’s scent.

When I finished, I stayed still for a while, with the shorts still over my face and my breathing ragged.

What’s weird is that I wasn’t thinking about her while I was touching myself, not specifically. It was more like a feeling of being close, I don’t know how to explain it. I didn’t feel it as something lesbian, even though I had ended up masturbating while smelling my best friend’s intimacy. It was something else. Something more primitive, more body than mind, like when you walk down the sidewalk and a smell coming from a window suddenly makes you hungry.

***

The next day was Saturday and I didn’t have to get up at any particular time. I woke up early anyway, with the house still silent. The shorts were still beside the pillow, where I had left them. I stayed there looking at them for a while. Then I picked them up again and did it again.

I’d be lying if I said I felt guilty, or embarrassed, or anything ugly. I enjoyed it a lot, again, just as much or more than the night before. It’s not that I fantasized about giving Cami oral sex or anything like that. It was something more animal, darker, more mine. A reaction from the body that didn’t have much to do with the rest of my life.

When the rest of my family got up, we had breakfast together like any other Saturday. After that I took Cami’s T-shirt and shorts and threw them in the laundry basket in the small bathroom, where the washing machine is. They ended up there, mixed in with my dad’s socks and my sister’s pants, and the whole thing ended as quickly as it had begun.

On Monday, when I saw Cami at school, I didn’t feel anything strange. No arousal, no shame, no urge to avoid her gaze. It was as if what had happened in my room on Friday night had nothing to do with me. We kissed hello, went together to our usual bench, started cursing Tati for not studying for the test, and that was that.

I didn’t define myself then or now as a lesbian or bisexual, despite having done things that would easily fit into one of those categories. And enjoyed them. There’s something about admiring, about contemplating, about getting a little turned on by my friends’ beauty, that for me has always been part of loving them. That night my body surprised me, that was all. And even today, every time I remember it, I still can’t quite find the right name for what I felt.