The Summer Two Men Waited for Me at the Lake

Belén lived in a narrow apartment in Echesortu, in Rosario, with a leaky bathroom ceiling and a four-year-old daughter named Mía. It had been three months since her partner had left without any explanation beyond a note on the refrigerator. Since then, every day had been the same: her shift at the clinic reception desk, kindergarten, dinner, bath time for the little girl, lights out at nine.

The hard part started after that. When Mía was asleep and the house fell silent, Belén would get into bed and feel the emptiness on that side of the mattress like a presence. She was thirty, with a body that motherhood had made softer and wider in the hips, and with a build-up of desire that no longer calmed down on its own. She touched herself in the dark, biting her lip so she wouldn’t make a sound, imagining чужие hands, a weight on top of her, a mouth on her neck. Then she would lie there staring at the ceiling, still worked up, thinking she needed something her own fingers couldn’t give her.

One of those nights, bored and hot, she went onto a dating app and started swiping through profiles without much faith. That’s how Gustavo showed up.

***

He was forty-seven and lived in Valle Sereno, a mountain town in Córdoba right beside a lake. In the photos he looked sturdy, with a short beard and calm eyes, the kind that don’t need to raise their voice. He shared a low house with his nephew Damián, twenty-four, who in one picture appeared in the background, tall and easy-smiling, drying his hair after a swim.

The first messages were utterly ordinary. The heat, the lake, her job, how quiet the town was out of season. Gustavo wrote slowly, without rushing, and Belén liked that. One night, though, he finally dared to ask what they had both been circling around.

—Are you alone? —he typed.

Belén looked at the closed door of her daughter’s room. Then she told the truth: that her partner had left her, that the little girl was sleeping two meters away, and that she was dying to feel someone.

From that point on, the messages changed temperature. Gustavo told her what he would do if she were close, slowly, describing it like someone laying out a plan rather than bragging. Belén answered with short breaths, one hand on the keyboard and the other buried between her legs. They started sending each other photos. She showed him her cleavage, then a little more, then everything. He sent back images that made her press her thighs together against the chair.

One of those nights, Gustavo slid something new into the conversation.

—I have to confess something to you. Damián, my nephew, lives with me. And sometimes we share more than the house. Does that bother you?

Belén read the line twice. Instead of making her uncomfortable, it gave her a new shiver, an idea she had never quite allowed herself to have. Two men. The mere possibility sped up her pulse in a way that frightened and aroused her at the same time.

—It doesn’t bother me —she wrote, and erased the rest three times before daring to send it—. I’m curious.

***

The invitation came after three weeks of conversations that left her trembling.

—Come spend the summer here, with the little girl —Gustavo wrote—. The house is small but comfortable. There’s a pool, the lake is two blocks away, and a huge yard for Mía to play in. You can rest from Rosario. And we’ll make sure you don’t get bored.

Belén didn’t think about it as much as she should have. She asked for her accumulated vacation time, sold a couple of things she no longer used, and bought two bus tickets. A week later, on January tenth, she got off at the Valle Sereno bus station with Mía asleep in her arms and a suitcase that was far too light.

The Córdoba heat fell like a blanket. Gustavo was waiting, leaning against an old pickup truck, and Damián was with him. The two of them watched her get off, top to bottom, without bothering to hide it. Belén was wearing denim shorts and a thin T-shirt, and she felt those two gazes run over her like hands.

Gustavo hugged her. He smelled of sun and tobacco.

—You finally made it —he whispered in her ear, softly, so only she could hear.

Damián kissed her cheek and squeezed her waist lightly, a quick gesture that raised goosebumps on her skin.

The house was at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by trees, with the lake shining through the branches. They had a blow-up pool ready for Mía and a room with a little bed for her. The girl, fascinated by the water and the yard, fell asleep early, worn out from the trip. Belén tucked her in, left the door ajar, and went back to the living room with her heart pounding in her throat.

***

Gustavo didn’t wait. As soon as the door to the main bedroom closed, he took her by the waist and pressed her against the wall.

—Three months waiting for you —he murmured—. Three months imagining this.

He kissed her long and slow, slipping his hand beneath her shorts. Belén was already wet, and when he noticed it he smiled against her mouth without saying a word. She pulled down the zipper of his pants, found him, and felt him hard in the palm of her hand.

Damián came up behind her. He lifted her shirt slowly, wrapped his arms around her torso, and took her breasts in his hands. He ran his thumbs over her nipples until Belén threw her head back, resting it on the younger man’s shoulder.

—You taste so good —he told her in her ear.

The two of them undressed her without hurry, as if they had the whole summer ahead of them. Gustavo knelt in front of her, opened her legs, and tasted her with his tongue, slowly, insisting on the exact spot that made her tremble. Belén gripped his hair while Damián kept working from behind, biting her neck, whispering things to her.

—Don’t stop —she begged, her voice broken—. Please, don’t stop.

They took her to the bed between them. Belén lay on her back, open, offered up, without a trace of the shame she had brought with her from Rosario. Damián knelt beside her face and she took him into her mouth; he was longer than his uncle, and she took all of him, eyes closed. Meanwhile Gustavo settled between her legs and entered her in one go, slowly but all the way, to the hilt.

Belén moaned around Damián’s cock. The two men found a rhythm, synchronized, one thrusting into her mouth and the other into her hips, and she surrendered completely to that feeling of being filled everywhere, of not having to think about anything, of being nothing but a desired body.

They changed positions several times that night. They sat her astride them, put her on all fours, fucked her against the bathroom wall under the shower water. Belén lost count of how many times she came. When they finally stayed still, piled together on the big bed, her legs were weak and a silly smile wouldn’t leave her face.

It had been three months since I last felt alive, she thought before falling asleep between the two of them.

***

The days that followed developed their own routine. In the morning, while Mía played in the yard with the toys they had bought her, Belén would have a late, sloppy breakfast, almost always interrupted by a hand searching for her under the table. At midday they would go down to the pool. In the afternoon, siesta wasn’t for sleeping. At night, when the little girl gave in, the back room turned into something else.

Belén had never felt so desired. In Rosario she had been invisible; here they wanted her at every hour, and she responded with a devotion that surprised even herself.

***

It was around those days that she became friends with Mónica, the neighbor. She was thirty-eight, divorced, and lived alone on the other side of the dividing wall. They started by chatting over the fence while Mía played, then with mate on the porch, and in a few afternoons the trust grew enough for Belén to say out loud what she was living through.

—I’m going to tell you something, but you have to keep quiet —she asked one afternoon, red all the way to her ears.

Mónica raised an eyebrow, amused.

—Gustavo and Damián —Belén said, biting her lip—. Both of them. Every day.

Mónica’s eyes widened.

—Both at the same time?

—Both of them —Belén repeated, lowering her voice—. Something like that had never happened to me. I’d never felt like this.

Mónica leaned forward, clearly interested, and made her promise she’d tell her every detail. Belén laughed, nervous and turned on by talking about it. And then she dared to ask her for something.

—This afternoon I want some quiet time with them by the pool. Will you watch Mía for a while? Tell her they’re going to make cookies, or whatever.

Mónica smiled slyly.

—I’ll watch her. But then you tell me everything. Every last detail.

***

That afternoon, with the girl on the other side of the fence, the patio belonged only to the three of them. The sun beat hard on the still water of the pool. Gustavo pulled her out of the water, tugged her swimsuit to one side, and bent her against the plastic edge. Damián stood in front of her, and Belén took him in her mouth while his uncle entered her from behind.

The sun burned her wet back. She didn’t care if anyone could hear her from the neighboring houses; she moaned loudly, freely, without holding back. Then they turned her around. Damián lay down on a towel and sat her on top of him, with her back to him; Gustavo settled in front. Belén felt both of them at once, completely filled, trembling under the open sky.

—Don’t stop —she begged, holding on to Gustavo’s shoulders—. Please, don’t stop.

They didn’t stop until they left her wrecked on the grass, with her legs no longer obeying her and a loose laugh spilling out of her without permission.

***

That same night, after putting Mía to bed, Belén was still on fire. She took her phone and wrote to Mónica: “The little girl’s asleep. Are you coming? And if you’re brave enough, don’t come just to listen.”

The reply arrived in less than a minute: “Leave the door unlocked. I’ve been wet since you told me about the pool.”

Ten minutes later Mónica slipped in silently, wearing a light dress and nothing underneath. She had a mature, generous body, heavy breasts and wide hips, and she walked to the bedroom with a confidence that turned Belén on even more. Gustavo and Damián were waiting for her.

—Come in —Belén told her, sitting on the bed with a new smile—. Tonight it’s your turn to find out what I was talking about.

Mónica tore off her dress in one motion. Gustavo looked her up and down and held out his hand. What followed was a long hour in which the two women took turns and kept each other company, in which Belén stopped being the only one and discovered that watching turned her on too. She licked Mónica’s breasts while the men had her between them, ran her fingers over places where no mouth could reach, whispered in her ear the same things they had whispered to her that first night.

Mónica came more than once, shaking, clinging to the sheets. When they were done, she got up unsteadily, with a tired smile and a distant look.

—God —she murmured, hoarse—. It’s been years since anyone treated me like that.

Belén helped her dress and walked her to the door. Mónica went back home slowly, and both of them knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

***

The rest of the summer passed in that same key. The kitchen, the pool, the living room, and once even the boat in the middle of the lake one afternoon when Mónica took Mía fishing by the shore. Belén had never felt so desired or so free. The loneliness of Rosario, the leaks, the note on the refrigerator, all of it now seemed like another life.

When February arrived and she had to go back, she already knew she would return. Gustavo hugged her at the bus station, against the same pickup truck where he had welcomed her, and spoke softly in her ear.

—The house will always be open for you and for the little girl.

Damián left her a kiss on the cheek and a similar promise.

Belén got on the bus with Mía asleep in her arms and her forehead resting against the window. As the mountain town disappeared in the distance, she smiled. Next summer was far away, but she was already starting to count it.