What Ernesto Never Knew About My Tuesdays

I had learned to look at myself differently in the mirror. Not the way I had at twenty, searching for flaws, or the way I had at thirty-five, resigned to gravity. At forty-eight I looked at myself with the curiosity of someone discovering a map that had always been there but had never learned how to read. Damián had taught me that without meaning to.

At three in the afternoon on Tuesdays, Ernesto believed I was at the gym. He had been repeating that for almost four months. He never asked anything more, never checked the phone bills or asked me to go with him. We were that kind of couple: stable, predictable, comfortable like an armchair already sunken in the middle. Twenty years like that give you plenty of armchair.

I parked the car half a block from Damián’s workshop, always in the same spot, between a big tree and a white van that never moved. The neighborhood was the kind that never draws attention: wide streets, longtime shops, men in work clothes heading home. No one knew me there. That too was part of the ritual, of the small safety system I had built without even realizing it.

I met him in February, when the car started making that noise mechanics always describe as if they were speaking to you in another language. Ernesto never took care of those things; neither did I, until I had no choice. The workshop was near where I did the shopping, it had been recommended by a neighbor’s wife, and I went in with no hope of understanding anything.

Damián came out from under a car with dirty hands and asked me what was wrong with the vehicle. He was thirty-four, though I didn’t know that yet, and had a way of listening that consists of looking at you while you speak. That isn’t common. Most people look away or wait for you to finish so they can say their own piece. He didn’t. He stayed still, looked at me, and listened to everything I told him about the noise, which wasn’t much, but had worried me.

That was all. Nothing electric, nothing that would have made me think that months later I’d be lying to my husband every week to see him again.

The second time was because I had to pick up the car and he explained what he’d fixed. The third was because I passed by and it seemed to me the car was making the same noise again, though it probably wasn’t true. By the fourth time I no longer needed an excuse.

***

The workshop was at the end of a dead-end passage. A half-raised metal shutter, the smell of burnt oil and wood, the radio in the background with some song Damián was humming without even knowing it. I always found him like that, focused on something, hands full of work. That was the image I replayed on Sunday nights when Ernesto slept beside me with his same calm, even breathing.

That August afternoon I pushed up the shutter and went in without knocking. We had agreed on that since the third time I’d come with that noise excuse.

He was sanding something made of wood in the back, turned away. When he heard my footsteps he turned around and smiled in that way men lose with the years without anyone warning them. A smile that takes up the whole face.

—You’re here —he said, as if that was all he needed to know.

I didn’t answer. I crossed the workshop, took his face in both hands, and kissed him before he could say anything else. He smelled of sawdust and industrial soap and something underneath all that that was just him. I thrust my tongue into his mouth without preamble, as if I were starving, and he returned the kiss with the same urgency, biting my lower lip, sucking on my tongue. I felt immediately the bulge of his cock pressing against my stomach through his work pants, and without thinking I dropped one hand and squeezed him over the fabric. He was already rock hard. Damián gave a growl against my mouth.

Damián let the sandpaper fall to the floor. His hands, rough and large, held my waist. He had that way of grabbing me that I couldn’t find words to describe: firm but without urgency, as if he knew time was ours even when it wasn’t.

—Wait —he murmured against my mouth—. Let me wash my hands.

—No need —I told him, and squeezed his cock again—. Dirty me up.

He laughed softly, his mouth still pressed to mine.

—One minute —he insisted—. Then I’ll get you filthy all over.

I went to the workbench and leaned there while I watched him do it. The cold water, the soap, the circular motion of his palms. Small things that get etched into you when you don’t expect them and don’t defend yourself. I could feel my cunt already wet, throbbing against the seam of my panties just from watching him.

When he came back I kissed him again, and this time there was no pause.

***

We had finished with the folding bed Damián had in the back room, that half-storage, half-bedroom space where he kept spare parts, an old fridge, and a blanket folded on top of the mattress. It wasn’t elegant. It was exactly the opposite of the room I shared with Ernesto, with its lace curtains and its piqué pillowcases. I liked that. I liked the difference in everything.

We started standing, by the door. He unbuttoned my blouse slowly, button by button, without hurry. I watched him do it, with that strange mix of shame and exhibitionism I never would have imagined feeling at this age. I had the body of a woman nearing fifty: hips wider than at thirty, a belly no longer flat, breasts heavier than they had been, the marks of time distributed fairly. Damián never acted as if any of that needed apology or correction.

—You’re incredible —he would say, and he said it looking at me, which is the only way those words mean anything—. Look at these tits. You drive me crazy.

He took off my bra and stood still for a moment, his hands spread over my breasts. I could feel the heat of his palms even before he fully touched me. Then he began to squeeze them, pinching my nipples between thumb and forefinger until they hardened and a gasp slipped out of me. When he bent his head and started at my neck, moving downward slowly, following a line that seemed drawn from memory, I closed my eyes and stopped thinking about the gym, about Ernesto, about that night’s dinner. His mouth closed over one of my nipples and he sucked hard, tugging with his teeth, while with the other hand he kneaded my other breast. I felt a jolt run straight down between my legs.

I braced myself against the wall. My knees didn’t give way, but it was close. He kept sucking my tits with a devotion Ernesto had never had, shifting from one to the other, running his broad, hot tongue over the nipples before sucking them again. One hand dropped and unfastened my skirt. It fell to the floor without resistance. I was left in my panties, breathing hard, and felt his fingers slip under the edge of the fabric.

—You’re soaked —he said, almost smiling, his fingers already sliding between my wet lips—. You came like that, didn’t you? You were already hot in the car.

—Yes —I admitted, without opening my eyes.

—Say it.

—I came hot. I drove thinking about your cock.

He slid two fingers inside me, slowly, and pulled them out shining. He lifted them to my face and ran them over my lips before putting them in my mouth. I sucked them, tasting myself, salty and thick, while he watched me intently. Then he pulled them out and took them to his own mouth and cleaned them with his tongue.

—Delicious —he murmured.

What I had with Damián wasn’t love. I had understood that from the first time, though it took me a while to admit it. It was something else, more like hunger: a need that is never fully satisfied because the moment you’re full, it comes back. In the first months I lied to myself by calling it something else. Not anymore.

I yanked his T-shirt off over his head and pulled down his work pants in one tug. His cock sprang out, hard, thick, the tip already shining with pre-cum. I crouched down without thinking, right there, against the wall, and took it into my mouth as far as I could. Damián let out a hoarse moan and grabbed my hair. I sucked him eagerly, with both hands: one at the base of his cock, the other squeezing his balls. I ran my tongue along the whole length, played with the head, pushed it back down my throat until my eyes watered.

—Fuck, like that, like that —he panted, his hips gently pushing against my face.

I sucked his cock until I felt his thighs tightening, and then I stopped. I looked up at him from below with my mouth still full of saliva and him.

—To the bed —I told him.

We lay down on the folding bed, which creaked with every movement. At that point the creaking no longer mattered to me. The blanket that smelled of wood didn’t matter either, nor the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. What mattered was his mouth on my neck and his hands that knew the way.

His fingers traced my sides, my back, the curve of my hips, slipped between my thighs and opened me. He knew my body in a way Ernesto had never wanted to know it, or perhaps had never suspected that possibility existed. Desire as exploration, not routine. The difference was enormous, and it took me forty-eight years to realize it.

—What do you want? —he asked me, his mouth close to my ear, while two of his fingers went in and out of me at a slow, cruel rhythm.

It was a simple question and the hardest question anyone had asked me in years. With Ernesto things happened in the same way every time: same order, same duration, same darkness. Like washing dishes or taking out the trash. With Damián it was different every time, because he asked, and I, very slowly, had learned to answer.

—Eat my cunt —I told him, still surprised to hear myself talk like that—. Eat it until I come in your mouth.

He smiled against my neck.

He went down slowly. He was patient in a way I found almost unbearable. He sucked my nipples again, bit them, licked my belly, kissed my hips and the insides of my thighs until I was on the verge of begging. Every part of my body he touched with his mouth became a point of tension that took time to release. I breathed with my mouth open, eyes closed, clutching the blanket that smelled like him.

When he reached where he wanted to reach, I let him do it without instructions. He opened me with his thumbs and ran the flat of his tongue from below up to my clit, all of it, slowly, and I almost arched off the bed. Then he began licking my clit in small circles with the tip of his tongue, alternating with sucks that ripped gasps from me. He slipped two fingers inside me, then three, curling them upward, searching for that exact spot Ernesto had never found and that he had memorized months ago. He knew what he was doing. He had learned with me, or maybe he had known it before; it didn’t matter, the result was a heat that began in the center and spread to my feet, to my fingertips, to my eyelids.

I grabbed his head with both hands and pressed his face into my cunt, leaving him no escape. He kept eating me, sucking my clit with an intensity I could no longer stand, and I felt the orgasm climb from somewhere deep inside. I focused on that sensation and didn’t think about anything else for a while that I couldn’t measure.

I came almost silently, biting my lower lip, my thighs pressed against his ears and my pelvis lifted off the bed. I had learned not to scream in that room. The workshop walls were thin and the passage echoed. A long, muffled moan slipped out of me and I felt liquid run between my ass cheeks while he kept licking, gentler now, drinking it all down.

Afterward I sat up, my legs still trembling, and gently pushed him toward the bed. It was my turn. There was always a turn, that was another thing Ernesto didn’t know. With Damián pleasure was reciprocal and we both knew it and neither of us made the effort to pretend it was otherwise.

I took my time. I ran my tongue over his neck, his chest, his hard, flat stomach, until I got back to the cock that had stayed hard the whole time. I sucked it again, slower now, enjoying the weight in my mouth, the slightly salty taste of the head. I licked his balls one by one, took them into my mouth while I gave him a slow handjob. Damián had his head thrown back and was breathing through his mouth.

—Come here —he told me in a rough voice—. I want to fuck you.

I climbed on top. I grabbed his cock with my hand, dragged the head along the lips of my cunt to wet it well, and then lowered myself onto it slowly, feeling him open me centimeter by centimeter. I let out my breath when I had him all the way inside. We stayed like that for a moment, still, looking at each other, he with his hands on my hips and I with my palms resting on his chest.

I started moving. At first slowly, up and down, letting my full weight drop. He squeezed my tits, pinched my nipples, and every so often lifted his hips to drive deeper from below. I changed the rhythm, started moving in circles, rubbing my clit against his pubic bone, and felt another orgasm building.

—Like that, like that —I told him—. Don’t stop.

Damián grabbed the nape of my neck and pulled my head down to kiss me while he kept thrusting up into me. The folding bed was creaking outrageously, the blanket had wrinkled under us, and I no longer remembered anything that wasn’t that cock going in and out of me.

Then he turned me over. He put me on all fours at the edge of the bed, stood behind me, and shoved it in with one thrust. I bit the blanket to keep from screaming. He started fucking me hard, his hands squeezing my hips, so hard I was sure I’d have the marks of his fingers the next day. He slapped my ass between thrusts, sharp slaps that made me clamp around his cock. He moaned every time I squeezed him.

—You’re tight like a virgin —he told me through clenched teeth—. You like it like this? Tell me if you like it.

—I love it —I panted into the blanket—. Harder. Fuck me harder.

He obeyed. He leaned over my back, grabbed a fistful of hair with one hand and put the fingers of the other in my mouth. I sucked them while he kept hammering into me from behind, with a savage rhythm that made his balls slap against my cunt. He took his hand out of my mouth and found my clit. He started rubbing it in fast circles, never stopping fucking me.

I came for the second time, this time with a muffled moan I couldn’t fully hold back. My legs trembled, my vision blurred, and I collapsed against the blanket with his cock still inside me.

Damián pulled out, turned me over, and made me spread my legs again. He came back in while looking at my face. I watched him. I watched him when he came, eyes squeezed shut and the tendons in his neck taut. He pulled out at the very last second and came on my stomach, thick hot spurts reaching my tits. He stayed there, kneeling between my thighs, breathing hard, his cock still in his hand. I liked that too: watching him lose control, proving to myself I was capable of making a man fourteen years younger than me lose it.

I ran a finger through the semen that had landed on my stomach and took it to my mouth. He watched me do that and a tired smile escaped him.

—You’re a filthy bitch —he said, affectionately.

—You taught me —I answered.

***

After that we stayed silent for a while. He wiped my stomach with a clean rag he took from a drawer, with a strange care after what he had just done to me. The radio was still playing in the workshop. Outside, someone was unloading boxes in the passage with that heavy rhythm of late-afternoon labor.

—What time do you have to go? —he asked.

—Five-thirty.

It was four fifteen. I had time.

I leaned against his chest and closed my eyes. I thought of Ernesto, who at that hour would be in his office reviewing spreadsheets or in some meeting that mattered far more to him than any meeting ever had to me. I thought of the dinner I would have to prepare when I got home. I thought of the bed with the piqué cover and the twenty years of habit. I felt something like guilt, but smaller than the first times. More manageable.

I wasn’t a woman without a conscience. That too I knew. I was a woman who had discovered too late that desire doesn’t go out just because you ignore it long enough. It only accumulates. And when it reaches a certain point, it finds a way out however it can.

Damián stroked my shoulder without saying anything. Sometimes we talked about unimportant things: his work, some movie, the heat of that summer that never seemed to end. Never about Ernesto. That was the only rule neither of us had spoken aloud and that both of us followed without exception.

—On Thursday I’ve got an important job coming in —he said—. I’m going to be buried here until late.

—So next Tuesday? —I asked.

—Next Tuesday, yes.

I sat up and looked for my blouse. He watched me while I got dressed, with that look of a man who has just come and knows he’s going to do it again the following week. That look was part of it too, of that exchange that had no proper name but had its own rhythm and its own unwritten rules that we both understood without needing to discuss them.

When I finished getting dressed I went to the small bathroom in the back, washed my face with cold water, cleaned myself between my legs with paper, still feeling swollen and slick, and looked at myself in the stained mirror above the sink. My cheeks were flushed and my mascara a little smudged at one corner. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed in thirty seconds.

I went back to the workshop. He was already working again, turned away, as when I’d arrived. The same man, the same workshop, the same radio. I was the only thing that changed when I came in and when I left.

—See you Tuesday —I said.

—See you Tuesday.

I lifted the shutter and stepped out into the passage. The five o’clock sun was still hot. I walked to the car without hurrying, without looking back, keys in hand, feeling between my thighs the warm memory of what had just happened. In the rearview mirror I checked my mascara before starting the engine. It looked fine.

When I got home, Ernesto still hadn’t arrived. I went in, left my bag on the usual chair, went to the kitchen, and started making dinner. Onion, garlic, a little tomato. The same motions, the same hands doing the usual thing while my head was still somewhere else.

He arrived at a quarter to eight. He kissed me on the cheek, poured himself water from the tap, and asked how my day had been.

—Good —I said—. I went to the gym and then did a few things.

—And the car? Is it still fine?

—Perfect —I replied—. Better than ever.

He sat down in front of the television while I finished cooking. Dinner was quiet, as always. We talked about his meetings, about the neighbor on the third floor who kept parking badly, about the heat that wouldn’t let up even at night. Conversations that weigh nothing and fill space efficiently.

That night, when we turned off the light, Ernesto fell asleep in ten minutes. I stayed staring at the ceiling for a while, listening to his calm, even breathing, thinking of very little. The room smelled of the same cologne as always, of the same clean sheets as always. Everything in its place.

Next Tuesday was four days away.