What Was Going On Between Mom and Her Best Friend

Lucía had been coming to our house since before I could remember. Tuesdays and Thursdays were hers by right, though she also showed up on Saturdays, on rainy days, and any time Mom called her with a “I need you to come over,” to which Lucía always replied without asking questions. She brought wine or sponge cake, sometimes both, and her laugh, the kind of laugh that makes you smile without quite knowing why.

She was Mom’s best friend. They’d known each other since they were twenty, before the marriages, before the children, before everything else. That kind of friendship no longer needs to be justified or explained to anyone.

I was fifteen when the three things I’m going to tell happened. I lived through them as if they were part of the normal landscape of our house. Only now, at twenty-two, do I understand they weren’t as ordinary as they seemed to me then.

***

One autumn afternoon I was sent home early because the chemistry teacher was absent. I walked back alone with my headphones on, unhurried, watching the dry leaves on the sidewalks. When I opened the door, silence greeted me and, mixed in with it, a smell I recognized immediately: the almond-scented massage oil Mom kept in the bathroom drawer. She used it for muscle knots. She always said it was the only thing that really worked.

From the hallway I heard laughter. Soft, low, the laughter they shared when they were alone and in a good mood. I moved toward the living room and noticed that the door to my parents’ bedroom was ajar, as always when no one else was home. I peeked in without thinking, out of habit.

Lucía was lying face down on the big bed, her head resting on her crossed arms on the pillow. She was wearing the black lace bra I’d seen a hundred times, unfastened, with her back completely bare. Her skin glistened with oil. Mom was sitting beside her on the mattress, her hands spread over Lucía’s shoulders, working in silence and with calm.

“Oh, right there, Valeria… just there,” Lucía murmured, her voice thick with the kind of person who’s half asleep or very relaxed.

Mom leaned forward a little and her curls fell over her face. She pushed them aside with her forearm without stopping. The blouse she was wearing was unbuttoned at the top and when she bent down, the neckline opened a little more, revealing the edge of the red bra she had on underneath.

The two of them saw me at the same time.

“Cami!” Mom exclaimed, not moving, not covering herself. With that face of someone caught doing something completely normal. “You’re back already?”

Lucía lifted her head slightly. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was stuck to her temples with oil.

“Hi, sweetheart. Early off?”

“The chemistry teacher was absent,” I said, still with my backpack hanging from one shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Lucía had her back all knotted up,” Mom replied, sliding her hands again over her friend’s oiled skin. “I’m giving her a massage. Go change and we’ll have a snack together, okay?”

I went to my room. It didn’t seem strange to me. I’d seen them a hundred times in bras, in towels, sharing the bathroom after the pool in summer. Lifelong friends have that kind of trust that doesn’t need explanation or apologies.

I locked the door because I had to finish a literature assignment, put on my headphones with the music blasting, and threw myself face down on the bed with my folder open. From that moment until they called me for snack time, almost two hours passed in which I heard absolutely nothing of what happened on the other side of the hallway.

Today, at twenty-two, with the WhatsApp conversations I accidentally saw on Mom’s phone last summer and with what I learned listening to them talk in the patio on the nights Lucía comes to visit and stays over, I can reconstruct every movement in that room as if I’d filmed it.

As soon as Mom heard my bedroom door close and the music I put on loud to focus, she leaned over Lucía again. But this time her hands didn’t work out any knot. Her thumbs slid down her spine, spread over her hips, and slipped under her body, reaching for those big tits that were spilling out of the unfastened bra against the mattress.

“Did she close it?” Lucía murmured without lifting her face from the pillow.

“With music blaring. She wouldn’t hear a cannon,” Mom replied, and she grabbed her nipples from underneath, pinching them between thumb and forefinger until Lucía let out a muffled moan against the pillowcase.

“God, Valeria… I haven’t been able to deal with this for two weeks,” Lucía panted, twisting her hip against the bed to seek friction. “I’ve been thinking about your mouth all day.”

Mom laughed into the nape of her neck, that low laugh I heard a thousand times without understanding what they were laughing at. She bit her trapezius, dragged her tongue over her oiled shoulder, licked the salty skin between her shoulder blades. Then she slid her hands down her waist to the elastic of her panties and yanked them down to her knees.

“Turn over. I want to see your face when you come.”

Lucía rolled onto her back. The unfastened bra hung from her arms and her tits spilled out to the sides. She finally pulled it off over her elbows and was left completely naked, with her hair stuck to her forehead and her cunt already shining with wetness between her open thighs.

Mom knelt between her legs and stared at Lucía’s wet cunt for a long moment, unhurried, before sliding her blouse off her shoulders. The red bra I’d glimpsed when I first came in was now fully visible, and then on the floor too. Lucía stretched her hands up, caught Mom’s tits, pinched her big nipples.

“Suck me, go on. Suck my tits first.”

Mom worked her way down Lucía’s neck, bit her collarbone, sucked her nipples one after the other with her mouth wide open, leaving them glossy with spit. Lucía pressed her head down against her chest with both hands, moaning louder and louder, without fear, because she knew I couldn’t hear anything on the other side of the hallway.

When Mom slid down her stomach and buried her mouth in her cunt, Lucía arched all over. Mom opened her wet lips with two fingers and ran her tongue all the way through, from bottom to top, pausing over the clit to suck it slowly, with her lips sealed around it, playing with the tip of her tongue against the hood. Lucía drove her thighs into the sides of her head and pulled her hair.

“Don’t stop… please don’t stop… like that, like that…”

Mom kept going. She sucked her with the skill of twenty years spent knowing that cunt by heart, alternating the tip of her tongue over the clit with two fingers slipping in and out slick with her arousal, curling inside, seeking the spot Lucía had marked as if it were a button. The mattress creaked with every thrust, the headboard bumped lightly against the wall, and Lucía bit the back of her hand so she wouldn’t scream.

She came with Mom’s mouth pressed to her cunt, trembling all over, her thighs closing around her lifelong friend’s head. Mom didn’t let her go. She kept licking slowly, swallowing the slick of her orgasm, calming her with her tongue until Lucía told her to stop because she couldn’t take any more.

Then Mom climbed up Lucía’s oiled body, took off her pants and soaked panties, and sat on her face without asking permission. Lucía grabbed her ass with both hands, parted it, and buried her tongue in her cunt with two weeks’ worth of hunger, sucking her from below while Mom braced herself against the headboard and crushed her tits, moaning those deep sounds I’d heard in passing during the fake massage.

“Suck me harder, Luci, like that… that’s how I like it… I’m going to come on your face…”

She came over Lucía’s face twice in a row. The first time fast, choked against the palm of her own hand. The second time long, with a spasm that lasted a full half minute in her legs and pulled from Lucía spit mixed with the orgasm down the corners of her lips.

Afterward they stayed wrapped around each other, naked and slick between the tangled sheets, their legs crossed and their mouths still seeking each other. They laughed softly. That same conspiratorial laugh I’d heard from far away without understanding. They showered together in my parents’ bathroom—Mom had the habit of letting Lucía into the master bathroom, another detail I never paid attention to—got dressed, changed the pillowcases, aired out the room by opening the window to the patio.

When I came down from my room with my folder under my arm, everything smelled like soap and almond oil and the two of them were in the kitchen cutting sponge cake like nothing had happened.

That afternoon the three of us had snack in the kitchen. Cookies and sponge cake, tea for them and mate for me. Everything was completely normal. I went off to do my homework and they kept talking in low voices, as they always did when they were together and the house was theirs.

From my room, between paragraph and paragraph of history, I heard their laughter one last time. That low, conspiratorial laugh. I shut it out and kept studying.

***

The second time was one Friday in July. Dad was away on a three-day work trip and my sister Daniela had slept over at a classmate’s place. The house belonged to Mom alone, and when the house belonged to Mom, Lucía came over.

I joined in on the movie they had put on, sprawled on the big sofa with the fleece blanket up to my chin. But after forty minutes I was already falling asleep. It was one of those slow romantic stories they were fascinated by and that made me sleepy in a way that was hard to fight.

“I’m going to bed,” I announced, yawning.

Mom kissed my forehead. Lucía tousled my hair with that same familiar ease.

“Rest up, pretty girl.”

I went upstairs, put on my pajamas, and fell asleep almost without noticing.

I heard from the ceiling how the movie music kept playing downstairs, how the slow dialogues went on, how Mom laughed once at something Lucía said in a low voice. I didn’t notice when the sound of the movie stopped. I was deeply asleep.

With what I know now, with the nights I heard them talking in the patio thinking I was already asleep, with the things two women say who have loved each other this way for forty years, I can reconstruct that night without much effort.

As soon as they stopped hearing my footsteps upstairs, Mom cut off the movie’s sound with the remote without saying anything. Lucía looked at her from the far end of the sofa. Mom dropped the fleece blanket to the floor and motioned for her to come closer.

Lucía climbed on top of her. She’d been waiting for her since I said I was going to bed. She straddled her hips and cupped her face with both hands.

“Quiet,” Mom murmured against her lips.

“She’s out like a light. You know her,” Lucía replied, and pressed her mouth to hers.

They kissed for a long time, with tongue, with that built-up hunger of two friends who can only do this when the house is entirely theirs. Mom slipped her hands under Lucía’s sweater, yanked her bra open in one motion, grabbed her tits from under her clothes while Lucía moved seated on top of her, rubbing her wet cunt against Mom’s pubis through the fabric.

They got their clothes off fast, clumsily, not wanting to waste a second. Mom’s pants flew to the floor, and her thin cotton shirt hung halfway down her arm from her elbow. Lucía ended up naked from the waist up with her skirt hiked up to her waist and no panties on.

“Suck my tits first,” Lucía asked, pushing them against her face. “Hard, like you like it.”

Mom sucked her nipples one after the other, long and voraciously, while Lucía moved seated on top of her with her soaking cunt pressed against Mom’s pubis. She rubbed herself with her mouth open, moaning softly, seeking friction against bone, her hair falling into her face.

“You’re not getting me there like that,” Lucía panted after a while. “I need your tongue now.”

She got down to the floor, settled on her knees between Mom’s legs, and buried her face in Mom’s cunt with all the naturalness in the world. She ran her tongue all the way through several times, opened her lips with her fingers, sucked her clit with her lips sealed around it while sliding two fingers in from the front and one, wet with saliva, in her ass, moving them in the same rhythm.

“God, Luci… like that… don’t stop…”

Mom arched her back against the sofa, grabbed her hair with both hands, and came biting her forearm so she wouldn’t wake me. Her thighs shook around Lucía’s head. When she finished trembling, she put her legs up on the back of the sofa and let herself be licked a while longer, quivering, while Lucía kept sucking her slowly and stroking her tits with her free hand.

Then they switched. Lucía lay back on the sofa with her legs open and her feet braced on the backrest, and Mom settled between her thighs. She ate her cunt with that mouth that already knew it perfectly, sucking her clit and alternating with long licks from the ass up, until she made her come twice in a row. The second time with two fingers inside, curling upward and her thumb pressing her clit, and Lucía had to cover her mouth with both hands to muffle the scream.

When they calmed down, they were sprawled on the sofa, naked, laughing the way the two of them laughed when the house was theirs. They put their bras back on, more out of habit than modesty. They covered themselves with the fleece blanket. They got into spooning position, Mom behind Lucía, one arm around her waist and her palm open over her stomach. That stomach I would see an hour later when I came downstairs to the bathroom thinking they were only sleeping embraced.

They fell asleep like that.

I woke up at three in the morning wanting to go to the bathroom. The house was silent but a faint light seeped in from the hallway. I went downstairs barefoot, trying not to make any noise, and peeked from the stairs to see if anyone was still awake.

The TV was still on, with the screen on the streaming start menu. On the big sofa, covered with the same fleece blanket I’d left over them when I went upstairs, the two of them were asleep.

They were hugging.

Lucía on her side, facing the back of the sofa. Mom behind her, in perfect spooning position, her arm around her waist. Mom’s head rested against Lucía’s neck and their hair mixed together on the pillow. The blanket had slipped on Lucía’s side and showed the strap of the bra she was still wearing.

Mom’s hand was open over her friend’s stomach.

Flat, calm, as if that were the most natural place in the world for a hand.

I stood looking at them for a few seconds. I smiled softly. It was cold that night and they loved each other like sisters. It was completely logical that they’d curled up together to sleep. I myself used to fall asleep like that with Mom when I was younger and afraid of thunderstorms.

I went upstairs to the bathroom, went back to bed, and didn’t think about it any further.

Today I think about that hand. How calm it was, how many times they must have slept like that without my knowing. About those nights when Dad was traveling and Daniela was sleeping somewhere else and the house belonged completely to the two of them.

I wonder if they knew what they were doing. I wonder if they preferred not to think about it.

***

The third was the one that stayed circling in my head the longest, though at the time I didn’t understand it any better than the others.

I came home early once more, because of the same teacher. This time, from the street I could already hear the music: something slow and soft, the kind Mom put on when she wanted to disconnect from the day.

I opened the door and peeked into the living room.

Mom was lying lengthwise on the sofa, her back against the armrest and her legs stretched out over the cushions. She was wearing a thin cotton T-shirt and short summer shorts. Her bare feet rested in Lucía’s lap.

Lucía was sitting at the end of the sofa, legs crossed and leaning slightly forward. She had Mom’s right foot held between both hands. On the side table, a small open bottle of oil and a folded cloth.

Lucía’s thumbs moved along the arch of the foot. Slowly. With a calculated pressure that was neither too hard nor too soft, but exactly right, like someone who knows that body well and knows where to press. Each pass went from the heel to the base of the toes, which Lucía separated one by one with care before bringing them together again.

Mom’s nails were painted red. A bright, intense red that reflected the afternoon light coming in through the window.

“God, Lucía… there,” Mom murmured, her eyes half-closed and her voice deeper than the one I heard her use in other situations.

Lucía didn’t answer. She smiled. A slow smile, with her lips slightly parted and her eyes lowered, focused on what her hands were doing. Then she lifted her gaze just enough toward the foot she was holding and kept going, as if she’d looked up to decide what to do next.

Her hands climbed over the instep, circled the ankle with circular motions, and slid back down toward the arch. The oil gleamed under the light. Mom’s toes flexed slightly every time the pressure reached the exact right point.

Mom let out a sound that wasn’t just a sigh. Something longer, deeper, more profound.

“Keep going like that,” she said, almost breathlessly. “Please.”

Lucía bit her lower lip and kept going.

It was at that moment that Mom saw me.

“Cami!” She opened her eyes without jumping, without moving her feet from Lucía’s lap. “You’re back, love?”

Lucía looked up too. Her smile didn’t disappear.

“Hi, pretty girl. Your mom spent the day shopping in those new sandals. I’m loosening up her feet so she can walk properly tomorrow.”

The explanation was perfect. Mom always complained about her feet after wearing new shoes or standing for a long time. There was nothing to question.

“Should I make something for snack?” I offered, setting my backpack down on the sofa beside me. “I think there are alfajores.”

“Yes, please,” Mom replied, closing her eyes again when Lucía’s hands picked up the rhythm. “And a glass of cold water if you can, I’m dying of thirst.”

I went up to the kitchen. I put the water on to heat, took the alfajores out of the cupboard, cut the lemon, chose the cups calmly. From upstairs the slow music kept coming and, between songs, the soft sound of Mom’s voice.

Today I know what happened downstairs while I was preparing the tray.

As soon as they heard me opening the fridge upstairs, Lucía let go of Mom’s foot and ran her hand up her calf. She slid up the inner side of her thigh, slowly, her palm wide open against the skin. She reached the edge of the short summer shorts and slipped underneath them without changing pace.

“Take them off,” she asked, her voice low but clear. “Quick, she’s upstairs.”

Mom stood up from the sofa, pulled down her shorts and panties in one motion, and let them fall to the floor beside the new sandals. She lay back down as she had been before, with her back against the armrest, but now with her legs open and her thin cotton T-shirt hiked up under her tits.

Lucía settled between her thighs. She ran her tongue over Mom’s stomach, pressed it into her navel, slid it down over her pubis, and ate her cunt calmly, as if she had all the time in the world. Mom grabbed her hair with both hands, held her head where she needed it, and started moving against her face without stopping listening to the noises I was making upstairs.

“Just with your tongue… don’t make me finish fast, I want it to last,” Mom whispered.

Lucía obeyed. She licked her clit with the tip of her tongue for a long while, unhurried, drawing from Mom those deep moans I’d heard a few minutes earlier without fully understanding them. She slipped in one finger, then two, then three, curling them inside slowly while she kept licking. Mom squeezed her tits under the shirt, pinched her nipples, murmured Lucía’s name more and more breathlessly.

“Suck my clit, go on… hard…”

When they heard the squeak of the microwave door—I was heating the water—Lucía picked up the pace. She closed her lips around the clit and sucked it firmly, driving her fingers in hard, seeking the exact point she’d spent the whole afternoon preparing with the excuse of the massage. Mom came biting her lip, pushing her hips against her face, trying not to moan too loudly. It lasted a good while. Her legs kept trembling while Lucía calmed her with her tongue, licking slowly between her thighs until she came down.

They got up quickly. Mom put her shorts back on, ran her hands through her hair, adjusted her shirt. Lucía wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, rinsed with the glass of water she had on the side table, grabbed the bottle of oil and the folded cloth as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She sat back down at the end of the sofa with her legs crossed and waited.

When I came down with the tray, Mom had her feet resting on Lucía’s lap again and Lucía was holding her right ankle with the perfect calm of someone simply easing a few muscle knots.

I prepared snack, brought it down, and the three of us spent a while together. Cookies, alfajores, tea. Lucía talked about a show she was watching. Mom asked questions. I ate while looking at my phone, not paying much attention.

Absolutely normal.

Today that scene is impossible for me to remember the same way.

Because I also know what it feels like to have your feet massaged with that kind of sustained attention. The heat that starts in the sole and slowly rises through the calves, through the thighs, until it settles somewhere else. When you’re receptive, that massage doesn’t stay in your feet. It never stays only in the feet.

The way Lucía held Mom’s foot was too attentive. Too slow. There was something in that smile she never let drop, in the way Mom surrendered to it without a single reservation, that didn’t fit only with the dynamic of two friends indulging each other after a long day.

Or maybe it did fit. Maybe forty years of affection has that texture when it’s real, and the line between deep affection and desire becomes blurry without either of them deciding it, without either naming or acknowledging it.

Now I know they had named it a long time ago. That they had decided long before that. That only I, the kid who came and went from the house with a backpack slung over one shoulder, was the one who didn’t see it.

***

What I do know is that the three situations ended the same way: with the two of them laughing softly at something I didn’t hear, as if they shared a private language no one else had access to and that closed itself off the moment someone else appeared in the room.

Lucía moved to another city for work three years ago. She’s still Mom’s best friend. They call each other every Sunday without fail and visit two or three times a year. When they meet at the front door, the hug they give each other is unhurried. It always seemed like a different hug from the one Mom gives her other friends, though I couldn’t say exactly why.

I look at them and think of those three afternoons. Of Lucía’s hands on Mom’s back. Of the spooning on the sofa at three in the morning, that open, calm hand over the other woman’s stomach. Of the foot held with a tenderness that wasn’t only functional, and of that smile Lucía kept the whole time, slow and conspiratorial.

I know it happened. I don’t say it. It’s not for me to say. I still set the table when Lucía comes to visit, still lend her my room when she stays over and Dad is traveling, still come downstairs in the morning and find them in the kitchen with two cups and the same low laughter that has accompanied them since before I was born.

But I can’t keep remembering it as if it meant nothing.