That Night I Understood I Loved Them Both

Sebastián was running late that night. He sent a message saying he had something pending, that they shouldn’t wait for him. Valeria and Mateo had dinner alone, the two of them at the small table with the television humming in the background, though neither of them was watching. When they finished, Mateo cleared the plates and Valeria stayed with her wine, watching him move around the kitchen with that two-year familiarity that was unlike anything else she had ever had.

—Mateo.

—What.

—Sit down for a moment.

He dried his hands and sat down in front of her. Valeria turned the glass between her fingers, looking for where to begin.

—Are you okay with everything that’s happening?

—Yes —he said.

—I’m not asking out of politeness. I’m asking you for real.

Mateo looked at her. He knew that expression of hers, that way of asking that left no room for courteous answers.

—Yes —he repeated—. I’m fine. More than fine, actually. Though I don’t know exactly what to call what we’re living through.

—Neither do I —said Valeria—. But I’ve been turning it over lately. What it’s called.

—And?

—I think it still doesn’t have a name. Or it has many, and none of them quite fit.

Mateo waited. Valeria took a sip of wine.

—My whole life I was taught that one person has to be everything to another —she said—. Your best friend, your lover, your partner, your confidant, the one who makes you laugh, the one who challenges you, the one who desires you, the one who knows you. Everything in one. And if they aren’t, then something is wrong: with them, with you, or with both of you.

—That’s too much for one person —said Mateo.

—It’s unfair to both —said Valeria—. To the one who needs it and to the one who has to be everything. Nobody can be that. It’s an expectation that crushes relationships before they can become what they might have been.

Mateo looked at her in silence. He knew what she was saying was true because he had thought it too, from another angle, in other words, in the last few weeks.

—I couldn’t imagine my life without you —said Valeria—. That hasn’t changed. What you and I have is untouched. But Sebastián arrived and there’s something that… gets added. It doesn’t replace anything. It doesn’t compete with anything. It’s something else I didn’t know could exist.

—Like what?

—I don’t know. A friendship that is also desire. A complicity I didn’t have before. The three of us together are something different from what each of us is separately, and that seems to me… extraordinary. I didn’t have it on any map.

Mateo nodded slowly. He turned his own glass.

—Me too —he said.

Valeria looked at him.

—Me too how?

Mateo took a moment. Not because he didn’t know, but because he was choosing his words with the care you give fragile things.

—Sebastián didn’t just arrive to complement you —he said at last.

Valeria said nothing. She waited.

—Something is happening to me too —said Mateo—. Something I still don’t know how to name. I hadn’t felt it before. Not with a man.

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the silence of someone who is receiving something and wants to receive it well.

—What kind of something? —Valeria asked softly.

—I’m not entirely sure yet —said Mateo—. But it’s something. And I thought you should know before anyone else.

Valeria looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached her hand across the table and laid it over his.

—Thank you for telling me —she said.

—You’re my best friend —said Mateo—. You’re my everything. Who else was I going to tell?

Valeria squeezed his hand. Outside, the Medellín night with its constant noise. Inside, the two of them alone with everything they had just said and everything they still had yet to understand.

—You know what’s the strangest thing? —Valeria said after a while.

—What.

—That I’m not scared. I should be, I guess. By every rule I was taught, I should be terrified. And I’m not.

—Me neither —said Mateo.

—Do you think Sebastián knows what’s happening between the three of us?

Mateo thought of the last Sunday in the kitchen. The conversation. What Sebastián had said about taking it slow.

—I think so —he said—. I think Sebastián knows a lot of things before you tell him.

Valeria smiled. It was the smile of someone who is exactly where she wants to be, even if that place looks nothing like anything she had planned.

—I’m glad he came —she said.

—Yeah —said Mateo—. I’m glad too.

They stayed like that a while longer, her hand over his, the wine almost gone, the apartment breathing with them.

***

Sebastián arrived at ten with a bottle of wine nobody had asked him to bring and that way of his of entering a space and reading it immediately. He looked at them both, saw something on their faces that he didn’t ask about, and set the bottle on the table.

—Shall we open it? —he asked.

—Let’s open it —said Valeria.

The three of them drank with music in the background that Mateo put on, and the conversation flowed with that ease that was already the usual one. But there was something different that night, a new lightness, as if the conversation Valeria and Mateo had had earlier had cleared something in the apartment’s air. Sebastián noticed it without saying so.

It was Valeria who began. She rose from the floor and settled on the sofa between the two of them, one shoulder against Mateo, one hand on Sebastián’s thigh. She kissed Mateo first, slowly, with that intimacy that resembled nothing else. Then she turned and kissed Sebastián, differently, with another texture. After that she leaned back between the two of them and looked at them both at once.

—I want you both —she said, simply.

Neither of them answered with words.

What followed was slow and without instructions. Sebastián took off her blouse, Mateo her pants, and between the two of them they undressed her with a coordination that was no longer new but that night had something more in it. Valeria was left naked between them and watched them take off their clothes: the two of them different, the two of them present, the two of them hers in different ways.

Sebastián knelt in front of her and licked her slowly while Mateo kissed her from above, his hands on her breasts and his mouth on her neck. Valeria had half-lidded eyes and one hand in each of their hair.

When Sebastián straightened up, Valeria took him in her hand. She stroked him slowly, feeling the weight and the veins, and then looked at Mateo. She extended her other hand and took him too. The two of them at the same time, one in each hand. Mateo looked at his own hand and then at Valeria’s over Sebastián’s cock. He put his hand over hers, barely covering it, and the two of them stroked him together for a moment.

Valeria looked at both of them. At Mateo especially, at that new expression on his face, more open and more sure than any earlier version of him she had ever known. She had never seen him like this. She loved him in a new way in that moment.

She knelt in front of Sebastián and took him into her mouth. Mateo knelt at her side. He watched her do what she knew how to do and then, with a naturalness that surprised all three of them, he leaned down and placed his tongue at the base of Sebastián’s cock while Valeria had him in her mouth. The two of them at the same time, from different angles, and Sebastián had to brace one hand on the back of the sofa.

Valeria pulled her mouth away and looked at Mateo. Then she took Sebastián’s cock and guided it toward Mateo’s mouth, and he took him slowly, with more ease than the first time. Valeria watched him and felt something nameless: seeing him like that, sure, present, completely himself in something new, stirred in her a desire that was also tenderness and also pride.

They took turns. Valeria, Mateo, the two of them together, Sebastián’s cock moving from one mouth to the other with a generosity he received with his eyes closed and his hands in both of their hair.

Then Sebastián knelt in front of Mateo. Valeria stayed still, watching. Sebastián took him in his mouth with that ease of his and Mateo closed his eyes and threw his head back. Valeria watched them and felt something reach her chest before anywhere else. It wasn’t jealousy. It was love. The love of seeing someone you want receive something he needed without knowing he needed it. Mateo searched for her with his eyes. She held his gaze. The two of them connected while Sebastián went on.

After that Sebastián laid her back on the sofa and entered her slowly, missionary. Valeria took him with her eyes closed and her hands on his back, that ever-present openness that filled every available space. Mateo was beside her, kissing her, his hands running over her while Sebastián pushed with a slow, deep rhythm.

Sebastián gradually increased the pace. Valeria had one hand in Mateo’s hair and the other on Sebastián’s back, and her body surrendered completely to that constant, precise motion. They changed positions: Valeria on top of Sebastián, riding him, his hands on her hips guiding her. Mateo behind her, kissing her neck, her shoulders, his hands caressing her breasts while she moved. The three of them finding a shared rhythm that grew on its own.

Then on all fours, Sebastián behind her thrusting hard, Valeria with her face buried in the cushion letting every sound out without holding back a single one. Mateo in front of her, his cock in Valeria’s mouth, which she took with that new hunger he already knew. Sebastián pushed deep and steady, his hands firm on her hips, and Mateo looked down at her with dark eyes.

Valeria’s orgasm built slowly from within, gathering with each thrust from Sebastián, with every movement of her own mouth around Mateo, until it broke long and complete with a sound that filled the whole apartment.

When she finished trembling, Sebastián withdrew. He repositioned himself slowly, and Valeria felt where he was going before he got there: the tip of his cock pressing against her ass.

—No —she said. Soft, but completely clear.

Sebastián stopped without asking.

Valeria turned her head toward Mateo. She looked at him directly, with that way of hers of saying things without words. Mateo read her immediately.

Sebastián understood too. He moved aside without drama, without comment. He gave Mateo the space.

Mateo looked at her for a moment, checking, and she nodded slowly.

It was slow. Slower than anything they had done before. Mateo went for the oil without anyone asking him to, put it on his fingers, and started at the rim of Valeria’s asshole with slow, patient circles, reading every reaction of her body. Her face was against the cushion and she breathed deeply, letting the tension give way in layers. One finger slipped in slowly and she accepted it without asking him to stop. Mateo waited, not moving, until he felt her loosen. Then a little more. More oil. Two fingers, spread patiently, stretching slowly.

—Okay? —Mateo said softly.

—Yes —she said—. Keep going.

When Mateo pulled his fingers out and positioned himself behind her, Valeria felt the difference immediately: he was different from Sebastián in size, but not smaller, and the entry was its own process, its own negotiation between what the body knew and what it was learning. Mateo pressed slowly and Valeria’s asshole gave way, opening around him millimeter by millimeter, and the two of them stayed still when he was fully inside.

Valeria had her fists clenched in the cushion and her breathing short but whole.

It’s him. She thought it very softly, almost to herself, as if confirming something.

Mateo traced slow circles along her back with his hand.

—Yes —he said, as if he had heard her—. It’s me.

He began to move slowly, almost without pulling out, only the minimum motion that allowed Valeria to feel every centimeter. She brought her hand down and started touching herself, and the combination was immediate: her own fingers on her clit and Mateo’s cock completely filling her ass together created something that had no equivalent in anything before. Valeria let go of the cushion, opened her palms against the sheet, and let her body learn that new language.

Mateo gradually increased the pace. His hips struck her with a firmness that grew on its own, his hands holding her at the waist, his eyes closed and his breathing increasingly committed. Valeria’s ass was completely open around him, and each thrust came deeper and produced sensations that radiated from the inside out in a way she didn’t know how to describe, except that she didn’t want him to stop.

Sebastián watched them from the side. He had his cock in his hand and was stroking slowly, eyes fixed on the two of them, on Valeria’s back arching with each of Mateo’s thrusts, on Mateo’s hands gripping her hips with a firmness Sebastián recognized as new in him. Mateo was someone else there: more present, more inside himself than at any previous moment. Sebastián sped up his hand to the rhythm of the two of them.

Valeria’s orgasm came from deep inside, long and profound, radiating in waves that made her clench her ass around Mateo with involuntary force. She let out every sound without holding anything back, her hand still moving between her legs while the waves spaced out.

Mateo felt her contracting around him and lost the controlled rhythm he had kept. He thrust three more times, deep and without calculation, and came inside her with a low sound that Valeria felt vibrating against her back. The hot pulses filled her from within, one by one, until he went still, hands gripping her hips and forehead resting between her shoulders.

Sebastián finished almost at the same time, spilling over his own belly in long pulses while his eyes stayed fixed on the two of them, on that moment that was entirely theirs and of which he was the privileged witness.

The three of them stayed still. Valeria felt her ass open and Mateo still inside her and the apartment in absolute silence. Mateo withdrew slowly. He lay down beside her. Sebastián wiped himself in silence and settled on Valeria’s other side.

Nobody spoke for a long while.

Valeria had one hand over Mateo’s belly, her head on his chest, and her eyes closed. She felt what he had left still inside her, and somewhere at the edge of consciousness she thought that was a choice too, that she had chosen for it to be him, and that it needed no explanation beyond the one it already had.

—I love you —she said, very softly. For both of them. For what the three of them were together.

Neither of them answered. There was no need.