What Happened on the Balcony with the Other Couple
We had spent almost two months texting before we finally worked up the nerve. First it was silly questions, then photos, and in the end a long, late-night conversation in which the four of us laid out what we were looking for. Mariano and I had been flirting with the idea of sharing our bed with another couple for a while, but fantasizing about it in a low voice before sleep is one thing, and booking a house facing the sea so it would stop being a game of words is something else entirely.
The couple was named Lucía and Damián. They lived in another city, so the meeting had something of a trip and an escape to it at the same time. We met at a rented house on the coast, with a huge balcony that looked straight out over the beach and the sound of the water sneaking in through every window. We arrived on a Friday in the middle of the afternoon, loaded down with bags, nerves, and a tension that you could have cut with your hand.
—Relax —Mariano told me in the elevator, squeezing my waist—. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.
The problem was exactly that. I wanted to.
Lucía opened the door barefoot, wearing a thin dress that clung to her body, still damp from the sea. Damián appeared behind her, tall, with a smile I had already seen in the photos but that in person carried a different weight. We greeted each other with two awkward kisses, like old acquaintances who in reality didn’t know each other from Adam, and someone quickly opened a bottle of wine to cover the silence.
***
The first night almost nothing happened, and that was the best decision we made. We had dinner on the terrace—fish and salad—talked until late, laughed about how awkward everything was, and little by little the awkwardness turned into something else. Lucía told me how it had started for them, I told her about Mariano, and all the while our legs inched closer under the table without anyone saying it out loud.
When I got up to fetch more ice, Damián came with me into the kitchen. He leaned against the counter while I opened the freezer, and I felt his gaze sliding over my back like a hand.
—Are you okay with all this? —he asked softly.
—More than I should be —I answered, and my own honesty surprised me.
He didn’t touch me. He just stayed there, close, letting distance do the work. We went back out to the terrace with the ice and no one suspected that in those thirty seconds something had been decided.
***
Saturday dawned an impossible blue. We spent the morning on the sand, the four of us sprawled under a beach umbrella, and there the rules we had agreed on by message started to loosen on their own. Mariano was rubbing sunscreen onto Lucía’s back and she arched her neck like a cat. Damián offered me water and our fingers brushed more than necessary. No one was pretending anymore. We had come for this and the body knew it before the mind did.
We went back to the house after midday with hot skin and dry mouths. Lucía suggested a shower and, laughing, we ended up splitting between the two bathrooms, the couples no longer matching up as they had arrived. When I came out wrapped in a towel, Damián was waiting for me in the hallway.
This time he did touch me.
He pressed me against the wall with a slowness that made my skin crawl, moved my wet hair off my neck, and kissed me just below the ear. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that asks permission. It was the kind that takes it. I felt his hand making its way beneath the towel, up my thigh, and a sigh slipped out of me that I couldn’t hold back.
—Here? —I murmured.
—Anywhere you want —he said against my skin.
From the living room came Lucía’s laughter and Mariano’s low murmur. Knowing they were on the other side, doing exactly what we were doing, lit me on fire in a way I hadn’t expected. There was no guilt. There was permission. And permission, I discovered, was the most exciting thing of all.
***
That afternoon the arrangement became clear without anyone having to say it. Me with Damián, Mariano with Lucía. My husband and I didn’t touch each other at all that entire weekend, and far from bothering us, there was something almost tender in looking at each other from opposite ends of the bed, each one surrendering to someone else, holding each other’s gaze a second too long.
Damián had patient hands. He untied my towel in the main bedroom and took his time, as if he had all day, tracing my neck, my chest, my belly with his mouth, slowly going down until he made me close my eyes and clutch the sheets. When I finally had him on top of me we used a condom, as the four of us had agreed, and even so the feeling of having him inside me for the first time, of a new body learning mine, made me bite my lip to keep from crying out.
From the next room over, the sounds of Mariano and Lucía leaked through. Far from making me uncomfortable, they set my rhythm. It was as if the whole house were breathing in the same tempo, the two couples separated by a wall and joined by the same thing. I ended up trembling, my face buried in Damián’s shoulder, laughing from sheer adrenaline.
***
Saturday night we had dinner together again, this time with no trace of shyness, all mixed up, hands wandering with complete naturalness. The party went on late, with low music and plenty of wine, and at some point the two couples ended up together, with no wall between us, watching each other and letting ourselves be watched. It was the most intense night of my life, no exaggeration. Good food, good wine, good company, and a desire that renewed itself every time I thought I had nothing left.
And then came the balcony.
It was the middle of the night. Lucía and Mariano had fallen asleep tangled up on the sofa, and Damián and I went out to smoke in the open air, still naked under two towels, with the black sea roaring below. The breeze was cold and the sky was full of stars. I leaned on the railing and he stood behind me, holding me, and what began as an affectionate gesture turned into something else in a matter of seconds.
—Again —I asked him, and I didn’t even think about it.
We did it right there, against the railing, with the sleeping city and the sound of the water drowning out everything else. It was fast, urgent, with none of the patience of the afternoon. And in the heat of the moment, neither of us remembered the condom. I knew it and didn’t stop. He knew it and didn’t stop either. We let ourselves go, and when he came inside me we both stood there in silence for a long while, holding each other, looking at the sea.
—Let’s not tell anyone —I murmured.
—All right —he said.
It was the last secret I had left to keep, and I kept it like an idiot.
***
On Sunday we said goodbye with that mix of happy exhaustion and anticipatory nostalgia that good trips leave behind. Lucía hugged me hard and made me promise we’d do it again. Damián gave me a long kiss on the forehead. In the car, on the way back home, Mariano took my hand and didn’t let go the whole way. We didn’t talk much. There was no need. We both knew we had crossed a line together and that on the other side, things were good.
I kept the balcony to myself.
***
A month and a half went by before my body started talking to me. My period didn’t come, and with each passing day the silence of my calendar grew louder. At first I denied it. Then I started counting the days with my phone calculator, over and over again, as if the sum were going to change. It didn’t.
One night, while we were washing the dishes, I gathered my courage.
—I need to tell you something —I told Mariano—. And I’d rather say it to your face.
I told him about the balcony. About the lapse. About what I had been swallowing down alone for weeks. I saw his face change, saw his jaw clench, saw him put the plate in the sink with more care than necessary so he wouldn’t break it.
—Why didn’t you tell me আগে? —he asked, and his voice came out more hurt than angry.
—Because I was embarrassed. Because it was a stupid moment of stupidity.
He stayed quiet for a long while, watching the water run. Then he sighed and hugged me from behind, resting his forehead on my shoulder.
—It’s okay —he said at last—. We’re both in this together. We set the rules together and we broke them together. You’re not going through this alone.
I cried there in the kitchen, my hands full of foam. Not from fear, but from relief. He was angry, of course he was, but he didn’t let me go.
***
We bought a test that same night, one of the quick pharmacy ones. We waited the three minutes sitting on the edge of the bathtub, holding hands like two teenagers. It came back negative. But the days kept passing and my period still didn’t show up, so the calm didn’t last long.
We made an appointment with a doctor. Blood tests, an ultrasound, awkward questions I answered truthfully. The wait in the office was endless. Mariano held my hand the whole time, with no reproaches, reading the signs on the wall with me so we wouldn’t think about it.
I wasn’t pregnant.
The doctor talked about stress, hormonal changes, how a big scare can delay the cycle on its own. The body, she said, sometimes reacts to fear before anything else. We left the office and sat in the car for a while, in silence, until Mariano burst out laughing, a nervous laugh that infected me at once.
—I swear I’m never forgetting anything again —I told him.
—You’d better not —he answered, and kissed me.
***
It was only a scare. One of those that suddenly put your head in order. We didn’t regret that weekend—it was one of the best of our lives and we still remember it that way—but we learned that desire needs rules precisely so it can let itself go without fear. Rules aren’t there to put out the fire. They’re there so the fire won’t burn the house down.
We saw Lucía and Damián again months later, this time with clearer heads and condoms closer at hand. But that’s another story. The balcony story, the one that nearly changed our lives, I prefer to tell it this way, in full, so it’s clear that behind every fantasy there are two real people who are afraid too, and that sometimes the most intimate thing isn’t sex, but what you decide to tell the person sleeping beside you.
