The Woman from the Café Who Taught Me to Breathe Again

Autumn had painted the city in copper and crimson, and I was walking with my shoulders bent under the weight of the latest argument with my father. Single mother at twenty-six. For him, that phrase was a life sentence that never ended. That morning he had told me I was still in time to fix my life, as if what I had was a breakdown and not a daughter napping against my chest on Sundays.

I needed a place where nobody knew me. I walked aimlessly for a few blocks until I accidentally saw the café entrance: a wooden door with a faded sign that read “La Higuera.” I pushed it open and the smell of cinnamon and roasted coffee greeted me like it had been waiting for me for years.

I sat at a table in the back and opened a book I had no intention of reading. I just wanted to hide behind the pages for a while.

It was a laugh that made me lift my head. Low, rough, as if the woman who owned it had learned to laugh without asking permission. She was on the other side of the room, leaning against a table with her phone to her ear and a smile that never seemed to wear out. She was wearing an open leather jacket over a red shirt, and her hair fell rebelliously over her face.

I looked at her longer than I should have. So long that I felt heat in my neck and dropped my gaze to my cup, pretending to concentrate. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I passed by her without meaning to, and on my way back our eyes met. It was only a second. But that second stayed with me like a jolt in some place I wasn’t used to looking.

My heart went wild. I took a step toward her table before I thought about it. The floor creaking under my shoes was enough to make her look up and lock eyes with me. I almost regretted it. I almost turned around. But then she smiled and I knew there was no turning back.

—Am I bothering you? —I asked, and my voice came out trembling, as if the question meant something else.

—No —she answered, and pointed to the chair across from hers—. Nice to meet you, I’m Sofía.

—Mariana —I said, and sat down before my legs forgot how to do it.

I wanted to speak, and the words came out clumsy, badly put together, as if I were just learning the language. She, on the other hand, had a calm voice, like the murmur of a river after a storm. She gathered up my sentences patiently, without judging the ones that broke apart halfway through. I told her about my daughter without really wanting to tell her anything. I said I was running from a sermon, and she laughed softly and told me I was in the right place then, that sermons didn’t get in there.

That afternoon I knew it wasn’t just another conversation. It was the beginning of something.

***

The café became our refuge. We kept going back so many afternoons that the tables ended up recognizing us. There we were different: I left the weight of my last name and the neighborhood stares at the door; Sofía left hers, though she never told me what she was carrying. It was enough to know she also needed a place where she could breathe.

One November afternoon Sofía was sitting in her usual chair, her hair tied up in a mustard-yellow scarf that made her brown skin feel even warmer. She was wearing a short white jumpsuit and drawing on a sheet of paper with a charcoal pencil. She had that same concentration of hers, her lips pressed together and her brow very soft, as if she were about to discover something the paper still didn’t want to give up.

I arrived in a bottle-green dress, my hair loose, straightened for the first time in weeks. I was carrying a book I wasn’t going to open. I sat down beside her, not across from her, and let my knee fall against hers as if by accident. I waited. She didn’t move away. On the contrary: she pressed against me a little more.

We talked about nonsense. About a client at the bank where she worked part-time, about a series we’d both watched, about the cold that was already creeping through the café’s old windows. The conversation was the usual one, full of jokes only we understood. But something had changed in the air, and I felt it in my chest and, lower down, between my legs, where I was already getting wet without having done anything.

—You know —she said at one point, without lifting her eyes from the drawing—, this is the only place where I can breathe.

I looked at her, surprised by the honesty, and then she, without warning, rested her hand on my left thigh. She moved it slowly, up, down, without stopping looking at me. I swallowed. My heart had forgotten every rhythm it knew. Her fingers went a little higher and slipped under the hem of my dress, brushing the bare skin of my thigh.

—This is the only place where I can be myself —I answered.

And my hand went, on its own, to her right thigh. I stroked her with the same gentleness she was using on me. I felt her skin through the thin fabric of her dress and it was hard to breathe. I went a little higher, until my fingertips brushed the edge of her underwear. Sofía pressed her lips together and held back a gasp.

Her eyes were burning. Mine too, I knew that without needing a mirror.

—Tell me you don’t feel anything for me and I’ll leave —Sofía whispered.

There was a long silence. I swallowed again. I pressed my lips together. No words would come. I wanted to say yes, I wanted to say no, I wanted to say I had spent weeks thinking about her while feeding my daughter, that I had touched myself more than one night thinking about her mouth. I couldn’t. I stayed frozen, my hand on her thigh and my eyes stinging.

Sofía read my silence. She leaned forward and kissed me.

She kissed me with anger and hunger, with the urgency of someone who had been holding back for a long time, and I melted into the chair. My hands flew to her neck on their own. People passed by and looked at us, an older woman clicked her tongue, a man coughed. I didn’t care about anything. Our tongues were searching for each other, our lips barely biting, her saliva mixing with mine, and for the first time in a long time I wasn’t thinking about my father or what people would say.

When we pulled apart, we rested our foreheads together. We were both gasping.

—Tell me you want to come with me —she murmured—. Tell me you want me to fuck you until you forget your name.

I closed my eyes. I thought about my daughter, sleeping that night at my mother’s. I thought about all the noes I had said in my life so I wouldn’t disappoint anyone. And for the first time I surrendered.

—Yes, I want to —I answered—. I want everything.

***

Sofía’s apartment was three blocks away. We walked quickly, in silence, our fingers intertwined beneath our coat sleeves. We went up a narrow staircase to the third floor. The key had barely gone into the lock when she was already looking at me as if she meant to devour me.

The door slammed shut behind us and Sofía gently pushed me against the hallway wall. Our lips collided with the same need as before, multiplied by the certainty that now nobody was watching us. I moaned into her mouth, not recognizing the sound as mine. I grabbed her waist with both hands and pressed her to me, feeling her breasts against mine, our hips, the hot breath escaping between kiss after kiss. Her hand slipped under my dress and went straight to my cunt, squeezing me over the already soaked panties.

—You’re dripping —she whispered in my ear, her voice rough—. Dripping for me.

I couldn’t answer. I only nodded and bit her lower lip. She lifted me off the floor with an ease I hadn’t expected. I wrapped my legs around her waist, and she carried me like that, without breaking the kiss, to a room that smelled of her perfume. We fell onto the bed with just enough weight to make the mattress protest. The world stopped existing. It was only her and me, her hands opening my dress down the back, mine trying to remember how to unbuckle a leather jacket.

We stripped each other naked amid moans and short laughs. Sofía paused for a second to look at me, straddling me in a black bra. She unhooked it herself and threw it to the floor. Her breasts were round, brown, with dark nipples already hard. I lifted my hands and took them, squeezing them, feeling them heavy in my palms. I pinched her nipples and she let out a low moan.

—Suck them —she asked me, leaning over my face.

I opened my mouth and took one breast fully into it. I licked her nipple, bit it slowly, sucked it like I was thirsty. She grabbed my hair and pressed me against her chest, panting. I switched to the other nipple and did the same, while with my free hand I stroked her waist, her back, her ass. I squeezed one cheek hard and she laughed through her broken breath.

—Wait. My turn now —she said.

She pulled down my bra and yanked off my panties with a rush that made me tremble. I was left naked beneath her, legs open, exposed. She leaned into my ear.

—What happens outside doesn’t matter. Inside this room we are what we want to be. And what we feel is real. Now I’m going to do things to you no one has done before.

She lowered her lips along my neck, slowly, stopping at my collarbone. She kept going down to my breasts and lingered there long enough for me to arch my back against the mattress. She sucked my nipples one by one, tugging them with her teeth, leaving them wet and tingling. I whispered for her not to stop. She didn’t. She kept going down my stomach, leaving a trail of saliva that made my skin prickle. She stopped at my navel. She opened my legs with both hands and stared at my cunt from very close. I felt shy and wanted to close my legs, but she stopped me.

—Look at me —she ordered.

I looked at her. And then she stuck out her tongue and licked me from bottom to top in one long stroke, ending on my clit. A cry escaped me. I covered my mouth with my hand. She laughed against my cunt and licked me again, this time slower, stopping to suck on my lower lips, slipping her tongue inside me. I writhed, clinging to the sheets, my hips lifting on their own to find her mouth.

—Sofía, please —I gasped, not knowing what I was asking for.

She understood. She pressed her tongue to my clit and began making circles, quick and precise, while two fingers entered me. I felt her open me, go all the way in, start pumping slowly and then faster. I was so wet you could hear it, a wet, obscene sound that only made me hotter. Sofía’s fingers found a spot inside me that made me see white. She touched it once, twice, three times, without stopping sucking my clit, and I came.

I came screaming her name into the pillow, with my legs closed around her head, my whole body shaking. She didn’t stop. She kept licking me while I was coming until I had to grab her face and pull her away because I couldn’t take it anymore.

—Come here —I told her, my voice broken.

She climbed up my body and I kissed her with my mouth still full of myself. I liked the taste. I liked everything. I pushed her and put her underneath me. Now it was my turn.

I licked her neck, her breasts, her stomach, with the same patience she had used on me. When I reached her cunt I paused for a second, as she had done with me. It was shaved, shiny, open and red. I had never eaten a pussy in my life and yet I did it as if I had been doing it for years. I ran my whole tongue over her, flat, and she arched her back. I found her clit with my lips, sucked it, bit it slowly. Sofía grabbed my hair and pressed me against her.

—Like that, Mariana, like that, don’t stop, suck me like that —she panted.

I slipped in two fingers and felt how tight she was, how hot she was inside. I started moving them the way she had with me, searching for the same spot. When I found it, she began to tremble. I sank my fingers to the knuckles and sucked her clit hungrily, sucking, licking, giving her no respite. Sofía came in my mouth with a long moan, squeezing my head between her thighs. I felt her cunt contract around my fingers, tightening, soaking them.

We stayed like that for a moment, my face pressed to her pubis, her breathing hard. Then she pulled me up and kissed me, and we both laughed with wet mouths.

—Are you sure that was your first time? —she asked me between kisses.

—Sure —I answered.

—Then we still have a lot to do.

She turned me over and put me face down. She lifted my hips until I was on my knees, ass in the air and face against the pillow. I felt her get off the bed for a second and come back. Then I felt something cold against the entrance of my cunt, something hard. I turned to look at her. She had put on a harness with a thick flesh-colored dildo, and she was looking at me with a smile that was pure hunger.

—Has anyone ever done it to you like this? —she asked.

—Yes —I whispered—. But not the way you’re going to do it to me.

She laughed and stroked my ass with one hand while with the other she guided the tip to my entrance. She pushed slowly and opened me centimeter by centimeter until she had it all the way in. I moaned into the pillow. I was so wet it slid in without effort, but it felt huge, filling me in a place almost no one ever reached.

—Fuck me —I asked her, not recognizing my own voice—. Fuck me hard.

Sofía obeyed me. She grabbed my waist with both hands and started moving. At first slowly, so I could get used to it, and then faster and harder, until her hips were slamming against my ass with a sharp sound. I clung to the sheets and moaned uncontrollably, pushing back to meet her. The bed complained. My pillow grew damp with saliva. She gave it to me all the way, long and deep, while whispering in my ear.

—Do you like it like this? Do you like being fucked by another woman? Tell me you like it.

—I like it —I gasped—. I love it, Sofía, don’t stop.

She grabbed my hair and pulled back, arching me. With her other hand she ran her fingers over my clit, rubbing it to the rhythm of the thrusts. I felt myself coming again, harder than the first time. I clenched all over. I screamed. My arms shook and I collapsed face-first into the pillow, with her still inside me, moving slowly to stretch out my orgasm.

She pulled out and turned me over. She spread my legs and slid back in, this time facing me, looking at me. She set the tip at my entrance and drove in with a single thrust to the hilt. We kissed like that, with her fucking me slowly, with her breasts pressed against mine, with our tongues meeting. I wrapped my legs around her waist and pulled her tight against me. I dug my nails into her back. She came too, trembling on top of me, with the harness still inside. I realized she had put on one with a stimulator and it moved me, in the middle of all that fire, to imagine her getting ready for me.

The night broke into gasps, into muffled moans against the pillow, into hands learning a new map. We devoured each other and then devoured each other again, with tongue, with fingers, with the harness, with our mouths. There was fire and chaos and surrender, and then a long silence in which we stayed wrapped around each other, both sweaty, both trembling, both smiling with our eyes closed.

I collapsed against her chest. My breathing was wrecked and my body was still vibrating, my cunt throbbing, my thighs sticky. Sofía stroked my hair and didn’t ask me anything. There was no need.

Outside, autumn kept painting the city. Inside, for the first time in a long while, I was in the right place.