The Scene That Changed Everything Between My Twin Sister and Me

—Will you take long? —Lucía shouted from the living room.

The popcorn still hadn’t finished popping in the microwave. There was well over a minute left, but my twin had never known how to wait for anything in her life.

—A minute, for fuck’s sake! —I shouted back.

That Saturday we had a plan neither of us would have signed up for a month earlier. The storm had been pounding the windows since noon, my head was still aching from Friday’s party, and my checking account wouldn’t even cover a beer at the bar on the corner. The night before had been a tidy catastrophe: open bar at a friend’s birthday, too much vodka with lemon, and a trip home at nine in the morning without quite understanding which streets I’d come by. Lucía had shown up even later, one shoe in her hand and her makeup smeared down to her chin. The telling-off from our parents over lunch had been the final push that kept either of us from wanting to set foot outside.

—Who did you end up with last night? —I asked her over lunch.

—I’d rather not remember.

—Did you sleep somewhere weird?

—Mateo, for God’s sake.

I laughed and left her alone. With Lucía there was something hard to explain: we were twins, we’d shared the same room until we were twelve, the same friends until we were twenty-two, and the same secrets until that very morning. We told each other things that any normal sibling would have kept under lock and key. Nothing had ever happened. Until that night.

—Are you coming or what? —I heard from the living room.

I shook my head. For a while I’d been absorbed, staring at the microwave turntable as if it were a black hole. I grabbed the bowl of popcorn and went to the living room. Lucía had put on an old pair of sweatpants and an oversized white tank top, one of mine that had somehow ended up in her closet by magic.

—Look at us, the pair of us —she said, making room for me on the sofa—. Saturday night, at home, with popcorn. We’re pathetic.

—Speak for yourself. I don’t know anyone more interesting to spend the night with.

—Poor you. If you knew the list I’ve got.

—Last night’s, for example?

She went red to the ears and gave me a light punch on the thigh.

—You’re an idiot.

We’d spent the whole afternoon arguing over what to watch. My twin had vetoed documentaries and I’d vetoed musicals. In the end we both gave in to an Italian film a friend from university had been recommending for months: a postwar drama about two orphaned brothers surviving alone in a half-ruined house in the countryside. The synopsis sounded like homework, but the rating on any movie site was over nine.

—Well, ready to cry for two hours? —I asked.

—Hit play and shut up.

I turned off the living room lamp. The only light came from the TV and, every so often, the lightning flashing in through the slat of the blind.

***

The film had something hypnotic about it. The long shots, the silences, the sound of the wind in the wheat fields. It didn’t take long for us to forget we were on the sofa. Lucía had curled up against the opposite armrest, her feet tucked under a cushion, but half an hour later she’d slid toward the middle and her knees were touching mine.

—Who’s that? —I asked.

—The cousin. The one who brings them food.

—You sure?

—Yes, shut up.

The conflict unfolded slowly, the way it does in good films. The two brothers, trapped in that house, realizing they only had each other. Their looks stretched on longer than was reasonable. The brushing touches stopped seeming like accidents. At the one hour twenty mark, the scene came.

The sister went into the barn looking for her brother. He was shirtless, sweaty, splitting wood. She stopped in the doorway, saying nothing. He let the axe fall. She took a step. And then another. The camera moved in close on their faces and the director had the decency, or the cruelty, not to cut. They kissed like they’d been wanting to do it for years. She climbed onto the woodpile table, he spread her legs, lifted her white skirt, and buried his face between her thighs. Then he turned her, bent her over the table, and fucked her from behind, one hand at the nape of her neck and the other gripping her breast under the dress.

A shiver ran down from the back of my neck straight to my groin. I looked at Lucía without moving my head, only with my eyes. Her mouth was slightly open and her neck tense, and when the actress let out a small, sharp moan, my twin swallowed. I saw it. I saw her throat moving in the bluish dimness of the television.

The scene lasted as long as it needed to. Then he let himself fall onto her back, both of them still, crying, and the camera stayed there a while, in the silence of the barn.

—They were… —I started.

—Brothers, yes.

My throat had gone dry.

The movie ended twenty minutes later. Neither of us commented on the scene. We talked about the cinematography, the ending, the actor, anything except that. When the credits rolled, Lucía stretched her arms and yawned.

—I’m going to bed, I can’t keep my eyes open.

—Aren’t you staying for another one?

—No, seriously. Tomorrow, okay?

She kissed me on the cheek, too close to the corner of my lips, and went upstairs. I heard her bedroom door close and then, a couple of minutes later, the creak of the wardrobe.

***

I stayed on the sofa with the remote in my hand, staring at the TV menu without seeing it. I needed to switch off and go upstairs, but I didn’t move. My whole body felt pressed tight against the sweatpants’ fabric, and every time I closed my eyes, the woodpile table came back, the little moans, my twin’s throat swallowing.

I rewound it. I didn’t know at what point I decided to rewind, but there was my thumb pressing the button. I turned the volume down until it was barely a whisper. And I watched the scene again. This time without pretending.

The actress was dark-haired, with her hair tied back and very pale skin. She didn’t look like Lucía. Lucía was blonde, with gray eyes and a back that seemed longer than the rest of her body. But the barn, the gestures, that way of tilting her head back when he spread her legs, all of it started to seep in. The actress’s face blurred. My twin’s face took its place. My hand slipped under my pants before I’d decided anything.

Fuck, Mateo. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I masturbated in silence, eyes locked on the screen, feeling like the worst son of a bitch in the world and, at the same time, the most aroused I’d been in months. When I came, the room was so quiet I heard the lightning before the thunder. I wiped myself with a popcorn napkin, turned off the TV, and went up to my room stepping softly.

The door to Lucía’s room had a thin line of light beneath it. She was awake.

***

I didn’t sleep. I’d been tossing and turning for an hour, listening to the storm, when I went downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water. The most absurd thing about it all is that I wasn’t thirsty. I just needed to get out of the room.

I switched on the cooker hood light, that tiny yellow light we used so as not to wake our parents, and leaned against the counter. I drank slowly. And then I heard footsteps on the stairs.

Lucía appeared in the kitchen doorway in the same white tank top and socks pulled up to mid-calf. Her eyes were red, not from crying, but from not having slept. She crossed her arms over her chest when she saw me.

—I couldn’t sleep —she said.

—Neither could I.

—I’m getting water.

She walked to the sink. She had to pass by me, and although the kitchen was wide, she chose to pass so close her arm brushed mine. She poured herself a glass, drank three swallows, and set it on the marble. She didn’t leave. She stayed there, looking at the window, watching the water run down the glass in thin streams.

—The scene, right? —she said, not looking at me.

I felt the blood surge up into my neck.

—What scene?

—Mateo.

I braced both hands against the edge of the counter. The kitchen still smelled like the popcorn from the living room.

—Yes —I said at last—. The scene.

Lucía turned her head. The yellow light from the hood lit up one side of her face and left the other completely in shadow. She had a blonde strand falling over her left eye, and for the first time in my life I noticed that her eyelashes were incredibly long.

—Did you think of me? —she asked.

I didn’t know how to answer. It was a question only my twin could have asked, because only she knew how to read my silences as if they were subtitles.

—Yes —I said.

—While you were jerking off?

I nodded, not daring to look up.

Lucía took a deep breath. She didn’t move for a very long while. Then, slowly, she came closer. I was still gripping the marble edge as if it were the only thing holding me up. When she was a handspan away, she lifted one hand and brushed my fringe off my forehead.

—Me too —she whispered.

***

The first kiss was slow, almost shy. Neither of us dared open our mouths. It was the kiss of someone who still thinks they can turn back, that it can be treated like an experiment, like a stupid curiosity that will come to nothing. But after the first came the second, and by then there was no turning back.

Lucía put her hands on my neck and pressed herself against me. I felt the thin T-shirt against my bare chest, her hard nipples pressed through the cotton. I ran my hands down her back to her waist, and when I moved toward her hips she spread her legs, climbed onto the counter, and pulled me between her knees.

—If our parents walk in —she murmured against my mouth.

—They’re asleep. They’ve been asleep since one.

—You sure?

—I’m sure.

I pulled the straps of her shirt down to her waist. She had small white breasts, and a mole beside her sternum I’d been seeing since we were kids at the beach and that night discovered for the first time. I ran my tongue over it and heard her moan, a moan identical to the actress’s in the film, sharp and small and held back for fear of waking anyone.

I took off her socks. I took off her pajama pants. Lucía pulled down my sweats and laughed under her breath when she realized I wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

—You were ready —she said.

—Shut up.

I kissed her again so she’d shut up. And then I opened her legs on the counter and did exactly what that actor had done to his sister in the barn. I buried my face between her thighs until she grabbed my hair with both hands and started moving against my mouth, asking for more without saying a word. I had to hold her by the hips so she wouldn’t slide off the marble.

When I entered her, she looked me in the eyes for the first time since we’d started. She had that gray gaze of hers, the same one I remembered from when we were six and hid together under the bed because my parents were fighting, and at the same time it was a look I’d never seen on her before. Lucía dug her nails into my back and wrapped her legs around my waist.

—Don’t stop —she said softly, against my ear—. Don’t stop now, Mateo.

I didn’t stop.

We did it against the counter, in silence, trying not to make the cabinet creak, trying not to breathe too hard, trying not to let anything slip out that might be heard upstairs. The storm kept pounding the windows and the lightning lit us in flashes, like the separate shots in that film. When she came, my twin bit my shoulder to keep from crying out. She left the mark of her teeth there for a week.

***

Afterward we stayed like that for a while, her perched on the marble and me standing between her legs, not separating, listening to our breathing return. Lucía rested her forehead on my shoulder.

—This didn’t happen —she said.

—Okay.

—I mean, it did happen, but we’re not going to tell anyone.

—No, of course not.

—And we’re not going to talk about it. Not tomorrow, not ever.

I nodded. I helped her down from the counter. She got dressed in front of me, without shame, as if we’d been seeing each other naked all our lives. She collected the glasses, washed them, left them upside down in the draining rack. She turned off the hood light.

—Good night, idiot —she told me on the landing.

—Good night.

I waited to hear her bedroom door close before going into mine. That night I slept through till morning for the first time in months.

***

On Sunday we had breakfast with our parents as if nothing had happened. Lucía told a silly joke about my mother’s watery coffee. My father laughed. I laughed too. In the afternoon, when my parents went to my uncles’ place, my twin appeared in my bedroom doorway with her laptop under her arm and that same smile of hers.

—Want to watch another one? —she asked.

—Another one by the same director?

—He’s got more, yeah.

I made room for her on the bed and locked the door.