The Mature Woman at the Café Who Changed My Saturday

On Saturday mornings I usually let my body set the pace. That day I had slept little, barely four hours, but I had gotten up wanting to read the paper before stopping by the office to go over the reports my business partner had left on my desk.

The cafés I usually go to during the week are closed on Saturdays, so I went by memory and remembered a confectionery in the upper part of Barcelona that opened early. I changed course and parked halfway down the street.

There weren’t many people. I ordered an American coffee with saccharin, took the paper from a rack beside the counter, and sat at a side table, one of those that lets you keep an eye on the entrance and the bar in a single glance. Occupational habit, I suppose. I’d been turning pages for twenty minutes when the door opened and in came a tall guy with a tired face. I didn’t pay him any mind. I went back to the paper.

A few seconds later the alarm went off.

A woman walked in with a self-assurance that isn’t common at ten in the morning on a Saturday. Mid-thirties, maybe just forty, it was hard to say. Black knee-high boots, fishnet stockings with a discreet embroidered pattern, a green dress with darker blotches that mimicked camouflage, a V-neck sweater that opened her cleavage without shame, and a large shawl over her shoulders. The kind of image that forces you to look up.

The guy was waiting for her. And she, without hesitation, chose the table right next to mine, leaving only a narrow aisle between the two.

When she sat down she crossed her legs and, without meaning to, gave me a panoramic view of thigh and cleavage. I didn’t know where to look first. They ordered coffee. They talked about the café, how pleasant the place was, about the cinnamon bun in the display case. I was trying to go back to the paper, but her perfume reached my table and the newspaper cover lost all interest.

They didn’t seem like a couple. They were facing each other, talking fluently, but that knowing little gesture from people who sleep together was missing. Even so, I couldn’t be sure. I ordered another coffee.

Then I took the opportunity to look her in the eyes. She didn’t look away. She held my gaze just long enough to make me understand that she understood. From that moment on my eyes settled on her legs, on her neckline, on the small silver hoop that shone in her nose. The news mattered less to me than the rhythm with which she brought the cup to her lips.

The second coffee arrived, and we exchanged glances again. I saw the very brief, almost private smile that touched her lips. I liked that woman a hell of a lot. Not just for her beauty or her clothes, but for the flirtatious way she moved without moving, for that femininity some women have even when they’re just sitting there looking at their phone.

Several minutes passed. She leaned back a little, her hair gathered in a high bun. The guy got up when he received a call and went out into the street. Through the glass I saw him gesturing with the phone pressed to his ear.

She stood up, rummaged for something in her bag. When she bent over, she didn’t hide her ass, and when she straightened up the sweater’s neckline gave me a full view of the curve of her left breast. She looked at me before heading toward the back of the place. I smiled. She smiled back.

Now or never.

I’d been playing this game for years and I knew opportunities last as long as a phone call lasts. I waited thirty seconds, just long enough not to be obvious, and headed for the bathroom. Before turning the corner of the hallway I looked out to the street: the guy was still gesturing with the phone glued to his ear.

The bathroom was at the back of the place, up three steps, in a small landing with two doors. I leaned against the wall. Thirty seconds later the women’s door opened and she came out. She didn’t pretend to be surprised. She looked at me, smiled.

—Sorry to invade your space —I said, not giving the situation time to cool off—. I’d love it if you’d accept this card. I’d like to get to know you, if you’re not taken.

She held the card between two fingers.

—You’re very bold —she said softly, laughing—. I like that. I’m not taken.

—Andrés —I added—. If you feel like it, call me when you’re free.

—Lucía —she replied—. We’ll see.

She brushed past me, grazing my arm, and went back to the table. I didn’t return to mine. I paid at the counter, stepped out into the street, and walked the hundred meters that separated me from the car. As I was starting it up, I saw them come out. They got into a gray Audi. She looked at me from the passenger seat and smiled again. I nodded.

I’d taken a gamble. But if I hadn’t, I’d never have known her name.

***

I spent the morning at the office trying to concentrate on the reports, but my mind kept drifting to the card. That kind of woman doesn’t call. Or she calls when you’ve already stopped waiting for her.

At eleven at night I got home, stepped into the shower, and when I got out I saw the glow of my phone on the bedside table. A WhatsApp message.

“I liked your boldness, hahaha. If you feel like it we can talk when I’m free. Lucía”

I dried myself slowly so I wouldn’t get to the phone like an impatient teenager. I got into bed naked under the duvet and dialed.

We talked for an hour and a half. Lucía laughed easily, and she laughed from her throat, not out of politeness. She told me the guy from the café was the moving supervisor. He had gone down to Tarragona to pick up her things and on Monday he would unload them into her new apartment, because she was joining her company’s branch with a new responsibility. She would be working in L’Hospitalet, like almost everyone in the logistics sector.

Before hanging up, I offered to pick her up in the morning. A vermouth, a drive, lunch if she felt like it. She agreed.

***

At noon I parked in front of the hotel where she was staying. I saw her through the lobby glass, sitting with her legs crossed and a book in her hand that she wasn’t reading. She was wearing the same kind of boots, a different dress, also fitted, and the shawl over her shoulders. I greeted her with a hug and two kisses and we walked out.

—The car? —she asked.

—Back here. There wasn’t room close by.

When we reached the black sports car, the passenger door lifted upward with a hydraulic whisper and Lucía burst out laughing.

—What a machine —she said as she got in—. Don’t tell me you run a car rental business?

—If you ran it, I’d open it tomorrow.

She laughed. I closed the door and went around the car. When I sat behind the wheel she looked at me differently.

—You know how to handle a date. Are you really single?

—I told you last night. I wasn’t lying then.

She smiled slyly and I drove off to a restaurant I had booked on the coast. The conversation during the drive was almost entirely her monologue; I preferred her to talk, to feel heard, to recognize herself in the voice she used when describing her last few years. She had spent three years studying in Ireland, had worked in a pub in Galway, and spoke English with an accent that didn’t sound like a classroom’s.

We ate by the sea. She ordered fish, I had rice. She accepted only one shot of coffee liqueur at the end. She didn’t normally drink, she said as a warning. When we went out to the parking lot I offered her the keys.

—Do you dare?

—Do you trust me?

—I’m doing it.

She got into the driver’s seat without stopping smiling. I explained the car’s controls and, while I did, I rested the palm of my right hand on the lower part of her back, right at the point where her hip began to curve. She didn’t pull away. She turned for a second and looked back at me with that half smile again.

She drove back to my place carefully. She drove well, despite the heels. I parked in the driveway myself because the other cars left little room.

—It’s beautiful —she said when she got out—. And you have a lot of cars.

—Things from my twenties. Now I prefer experiences.

I showed her the house. The kitchen, the bedrooms, the living room. Out on the back terrace she asked me about the pool and the garden. When we reached the basement and I saw her looking at the sauna, I came up behind her, placed my hands on her waist, and spoke into her ear.

—Lucía, the most beautiful thing in this house is you.

She turned slowly. She took my hand between hers. We kissed without rushing, without assault, aware that we were choosing every millimeter. We went up to the living room without separating our lips. I stroked her back, let my hand slide down to the edge of the dress fabric, and through the thin material I felt the string of her thong.

—This isn’t right —she murmured against my mouth—. It’s our first date.

I kissed her again. I took her under the arms and we let ourselves fall onto the sofa. I kissed her neck, her cleavage, the hollow between her breasts. Lucía was puffing out little laughs and closing her eyes. The shot of coffee liqueur was doing its part, but the heat wasn’t from the liquor: it was built up, two years built up, as she confessed later.

—You’re gorgeous —I told her in her ear—. But I like everything else even more. Your head. The way you held my gaze in the café. That’s what drove me crazy.

She didn’t answer. She moved her hips to straddle me, and I let the situation pick up speed. Her dress rode up to her waist. Only the thong separated her from my pants. She started rubbing against me with her head on my shoulder. When she came back for my mouth, she held my face between her hands as if afraid I might get away.

—You got me rock hard without doing anything —she said—. I haven’t felt this in a long time.

I helped her take off the dress slowly, as if the act of undressing her were also a way of fucking her before actually getting inside her. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts, firm and generous, filled my hands. Her nipples were hard, outlined under the living room light, and when I bent to bite one she let out a short moan, the kind that escapes without permission. I pulled the thong down her thighs, revealing her neatly trimmed cunt, already wet, open with anticipation. She twisted beneath me, not from modesty, but from wanting.

I laid her on the sofa. I knelt between her legs and opened her thighs with my hands, slowly, like someone parting a curtain to enter a hot room. My tongue went straight to her pussy, no detours. Lucía threw her head back and grabbed the cushions when I started licking her from the entrance to the clit, with pressure, with hunger, with exactly the right persistence. The smell was clean and sexual at the same time, a mix of skin, perfume, and freshly awakened desire.

—Fuck —she said, almost laughing—. What a mouth you have.

I didn’t answer her. I kept licking, alternating the tip of my tongue with the pressure of my lips, and I slid two fingers into her to match the motion. I felt her tighten, contract, cling to my fingers as if she never wanted to let me go. Lucía started panting harder, moving her hips to seek more, faster, deeper. I licked her cunt dry until her body went tense and she pressed my head with both hands, guiding me with a urgency that was no longer shy in the least.

—Like that, like that —she murmured—. Don’t stop, don’t stop.

I let her come right there. She came with a long shiver, opening her legs as if pleasure were spilling out through the center of her body. I held her by the hips while I kept licking her slowly, squeezing the last spasms out of her, until she let out a muffled sound and pushed me back a little with her hand on my forehead.

—God... —she whispered—. I can’t believe it.

I kissed the inside of her thigh, her knee, her belly, and went up to her mouth. She was already breathing raggedly. She kissed me hungrily, testing herself against my tongue. When she reached for my erection again, she opened my fly with quick, sure fingers and took my cock out with a natural ease that made it clear she wasn’t going to hold back. Her hand was warm and firm. She started stroking me from the base, squeezing the head with her thumb right where I like it most, and then leaned down to suck the tip, slowly, letting saliva slide down the shaft.

—I’ve been on hold for two years —she said, looking up at me from below with wet lips—. But I know how to suck cock.

—You just proved it.

She took me deeper, swallowing me almost completely, her mouth open in a dirty, precise rhythm. She sucked hungrily, her tongue playing under the foreskin, her cheeks hollowing on every stroke. I held her head without squeezing, enjoying the way she licked my balls from time to time, the way she lingered on the head until it became shiny and sensitive. She had a delicious technique, the kind of woman who doesn’t improvise, and that only got the blood rushing to my cock even more.

I lifted her into my arms and carried her to the bedroom. Lucía weighed very little; she held on to my neck as if this were the most natural thing in the world. I laid her on the bed, opened the nightstand drawer, and took out a condom. When I got back between her legs, I kissed her slowly before pushing in.

—Slowly —she asked in a low voice.

I obeyed. I spread her thighs with my hands, placed the tip at her entrance, and went in millimeter by millimeter, feeling her cunt wrap around me, hot and tight, until I reached the bottom and a long, broken sigh escaped her. I didn’t move at first. I kissed her while I stayed still inside her, letting her feel the weight, the pressure, the pulse. When she started pushing too, there was no turning back.

We stayed like that for a long while, in an almost motionless position that seems less but is much more, because it forces you to feel everything. I filled her slowly, and she moved barely at all, her hips drawing tiny circles, her cunt squeezing me in such a precise way that every rub felt like a jolt. When I started moving in rhythm, I opened her legs wider and went deeper until I felt the hard blow of my pelvis against hers. Lucía answered by arching her back, grabbing my shoulders, asking for more with a shameless moan.

She came again before I decided to change positions. I put her on all fours, lifted her hips, and went back in slowly, this time with one firm hand on her waist and the other on her ass, kneading it while I fucked her from behind. The sound was obscene: skin against skin, my balls slapping her thighs, her breathing turning into broken gasps. I drove in to the hilt and kept the pace until her body tightened, her cunt clenching around my cock in spasms, and she fell back onto the sheets with a long whimper.

—I want you to cum —she said, turning her face, her hair stuck to her forehead—. Tell me how.

I made her turn around, opened her up again, and kissed her between the legs, then on the mouth, then back down, until she was wet enough for me to slide in again as if nothing had happened. She propped herself up a little and grabbed my neck with both hands, guiding me toward her.

—Come here.

She lay down with her legs open and I entered her again, now harder, deeper, faster. Her cunt was soaked, slippery, and every thrust sounded like a wet little smack lost in the room. She moaned with her mouth open, showing her teeth when the pleasure climbed too high. She scratched my back, squeezed my ass, asked me not to slow down. The connection between us was pure filth and need by then.

I was reaching the edge when I grabbed her by the nape and forced her to look at me. I told her to hold my gaze while I kept driving into her. She did. Her eyes were bright, her face flushed, her chest rising and falling violently. When I felt she was about to come again, I pulled her against me and set the rhythm with short, precise strokes until the tension shot up my legs and I finished with a deep, dry shudder that left my breathing shredded inside the condom.

She didn’t move away. She stayed there, breathing over me, her mouth slightly open and a huge, satisfied smile on her face, truly satisfied, as if she had just discovered something she had wanted for far too long.

***

The next morning I took her to the office without her changing clothes. That afternoon we did it again. And since that day, three nights a week, I stop by her apartment. Lucía is affectionate, giving, and she doesn’t calculate. And that, at this point in life, is what matters most.

I still have that Saturday’s newspaper, folded to the page where I saw her come in. One day I’ll frame it.