What I Never Told the Woman I Loved in Secret

I’m writing this knowing you’re going to read it, Mariana, even if tomorrow you pretend you didn’t. I’ve spent ten years learning to read you between the lines, in the songs you posted in the middle of the night, in the long silences before a message. I know you’re going to read it the same way I know the sound you make when you miss me and won’t admit it.

We met through a music app. A stupid thing. I’d shared a song at three in the morning and you played it on repeat all that week, as if you wanted to tell me something without having to say it. It took us months to really talk. By then you already had a boyfriend, and I already knew I was going to love you in a way that wasn’t good for me.

In a way that still isn’t good for me.

The first time you came to see me, you’d invented a work trip. You showed up at the apartment door with a small backpack and the tired eyes of someone who’d been lying, and before I could offer you coffee you were already looking at my mouth. That look of yours, the one you get when you stop thinking. I know it better than I know your voice.

—I didn’t come to talk —you said, and let the backpack drop to the floor.

—I know.

I kissed you against the hallway wall, still wearing your coat, because I couldn’t stand the meter between us. You tasted like travel, like someone else’s cigarettes, like nerves. Your hands trembled when you grabbed the back of my neck, and that tremble undid me more than any words could. Ten years later I still think about that tremble.

***

I took you to the bedroom without stopping kissing you. I peeled off your coat, your sweater, that gray T-shirt you always wore, and you let me with a docility that wasn’t like you. The rest of your life you gave orders, made decisions, controlled things. With me you surrendered, and I think it was the only thing you allowed yourself not to control.

I sat you on the edge of the bed and knelt between your legs. Not to start yet, just to look at you. You were breathing hard, and your chest was rising and falling under that black bra, the one I later found out you’d put on thinking of me. I ran my hands up your thighs slowly, feeling the way your skin prickled.

—Look at me —I asked.

And you looked at me. You always did when I asked like that, in a low voice, almost out of breath. I lowered the bra straps with my teeth, one and then the other, and when I let it go your nipples were already hard, dark, begging for a mouth. I took my time. I learned that patience drove you crazy, that the slower I went, the more your whole body tightened until you ended up begging me in a thread of a voice.

I closed my lips around one nipple and you arched your back. With my other hand I squeezed the other breast, played, tugged gently, and I heard that first exhale of yours, always my favorite reward. Not the cry at the end, no. The first exhale, the one that escapes before you decide to let yourself go.

—Lie down —I told you.

You let yourself fall onto the mattress and I finished undressing you. I took off your pants, your wet underwear, and left them on the floor next to your fake backpack. You were there, open for me, with the streetlight coming in through the badly shut blind and striping your skin. I never told you how beautiful you were like that, because I was afraid words would ruin it. I’m telling you now, too late, like everything else.

***

I kissed your neck, your collarbone, the center of your chest. I went down your belly, barely biting, feeling every muscle tighten as I got closer. When I reached the inside of your thighs, you held your breath, both hands gripping the sheets, waiting. I blew slowly over your sex, without touching you yet, just to hear you moan from pure anticipation.

—Please —you said.

That word. Ten years and I still hear it in your exact voice.

I opened you with my tongue in one smooth pass, slow, from bottom to top, and your whole body jolted. You were soaked, hot, ready before you even crossed the door. I worked my way through you, unhurried, memorizing your taste as if I already knew I’d one day have to survive on the memory. I sucked your clit softly, then with more pressure, alternating, reading you in every breath to know when to speed up and when to leave you hanging at the edge without pushing you over.

I slid in one finger, then two, and you started moving against my hand, looking for the rhythm you needed. I gave it to you. I know your rhythm better than I know mine. I curled my fingers forward, toward that spot that made you lose your mind, while I kept going with my mouth, and I felt you tensing, your whole body becoming one single cord about to snap.

—Don’t stop, don’t stop —you kept repeating, one hand tangled in my hair, pushing me against you.

I didn’t stop. I never stopped you. I held you there, on the edge, until you couldn’t take it anymore and came with a muffled cry against the pillow, hips lifting, thighs closing around my face, trembling all over for a time that felt both endless and still not enough. I kept licking you slowly as you came down, gathering every spasm, until you pulled away laughing at how sensitive you always got.

***

Then you got on top of me and gave me everything back with that intensity that only showed up once you’d already broken once. You kissed me with your own taste in my mouth, without disgust, hungry. Your fingers found the way without me having to guide them. Ten years of knowing exactly where, how, how much. You made me come twice before dawn, and between one and the next we lay there holding each other in silence, listening to the cars on the avenue, pretending the sun wasn’t going to rise.

At seven your phone buzzed on the floor. It was him. Neither of us said it, but we both knew. You dressed with your back to me, with that guilty rush I already knew, and I stayed in bed watching you, learning your back just in case. Just in case it was the last time. I always thought every time was the last, and I was always wrong, and that’s why this time I still don’t believe myself when I tell myself I’m not going to look for you.

***

The years went by like that. You in your city, sleeping beside a man who loves you in the simple way I never learned to love anyone. Me here, feeding on memories and on the cold tools I use when my body asks for your name in the middle of the night. We found each other in the dead spaces: a made-up trip every few months, messages at odd hours, a song posted so only you would understand.

I told myself you kept reading me out of pity. You answered me with another song saying the opposite. That’s how we loved each other: halfway, in code, stealing hours from your other life. And it was beautiful, Mariana, I won’t lie. It was the closest thing to happiness I’ve ever known, even if it came with its exact dose of madness.

A few days ago I was so wrapped up in my own life that I barely thought about you. And then you posted some nonsense, a meaningless photo, and underneath he left you a comment cheering you on. The world came crashing down on me, like so many other times. Because no matter how much I pretend I’m free of desire, there it is. He exists, he loves you, he shows it in broad daylight. I only exist for you in the dark.

Today I decided, like so many other times, to stop living in your shadow. In an obsession that hurts me more than it pleases me now. I never told you, “Leave everything and come with me,” and now I know I’m not going to say it either. Not because I don’t want to. Because I know you, and I know your fear of loss is as big as mine.

I loved you when I lost my father, do you remember? You showed up right then, in the most unpredictable way, exactly where I was looking for you without even knowing it. That isn’t something you forget. You’re not going to take that from me either.

I’m writing this knowing I’m going to betray myself. That tomorrow, or the day after, I’m going to find a way to know something about you. That one single sign that you’re still alive is enough for my heart to remember everything all over again. Your birthday is coming up and you have no idea how many times I’ve thought about it.

Right now, as I finish writing this, I’ve just felt the urge to look for you.

And I don’t know how much longer I’ll hold out.