What Should Never Have Happened in That Beach House

The sun beat down hard on the sand when Mateo suddenly sat up on the towel and shook his hands out.

—I’m going for another beer —he said, lifting the nearly empty can—. This one’s already warm.

Diego looked up at him from below, one arm crossed over his eyes to shield himself from the light.

—Another already?

—We’ve been here two hours, genius.

Diego hesitated for only a second before sitting up as well. He brushed the sand from his back and searched for the T-shirt tangled at the edge of the umbrella.

—I’m coming with you.

The two of them looked toward the water at the same time. Laura and Sofía were still out to sea, now a little farther away, letting the waves rock them as they talked to each other with that old complicity that needed no witnesses. From a distance you could make out only their heads and, every so often, an arm lifted to push wet hair away from their faces.

—We won’t be long —Diego murmured, more to himself than to his friend.

Mateo was already on his feet.

—I don’t think they’ll miss us.

They walked across the sand toward the beach bar at an unhurried pace, the kind of pace of people with no rush but a very clear intention. The sign was simple: “Chiringuito El Farol.” A wooden structure open to the sea, with high tables and a counter piled with little bottles just taken out of the ice. At the back, an industrial fan tried to disguise the heat.

—Two ice-cold beers —Mateo asked as soon as he leaned on the counter.

The bartender, a man in his sixties, dark-skinned, in a dark T-shirt and with an attentive expression, nodded.

—Coming right up.

His name was Ernesto, according to the badge pinned to his chest, and he had that air of someone who has spent too many summers watching how other people behave when they think no one is looking.

He set the bottles down in front of them, with two low glasses beside them.

—Here you go.

Mateo took a long, almost immediate gulp.

—That’s better.

Diego drank more slowly, resting his elbows on the counter while he glanced toward the beach. From there they could still see them. Tiny figures among the movement of the water.

—They’re not bad, huh? —Mateo said suddenly.

Diego didn’t need to ask.

—They never have been.

Mateo smiled with the bottle halfway to his mouth.

—But today…

He let the sentence hang there.

—Today’s different —Diego finished without looking at him.

—The context.

Diego gave a dry laugh.

—There you go again with that.

—It’s true —Mateo insisted—. Everything looks different here.

—Or it allows itself to be seen differently.

Mateo looked at him with interest.

—Exactly.

There was a brief pause. Outside, the wind kicked a little sand up against the floorboards.

—Have you noticed how Laura was this morning? —Mateo asked.

Diego took a moment to answer.

—Yes.

—That bikini isn’t accidental.

Diego narrowed his eyes, as if reconstructing the image.

—No.

—Your wife knows exactly what she’s doing.

Diego didn’t deny it.

—She always has.

Mateo let out a small, almost conspiratorial laugh.

—And Sofía…

Diego turned his head slightly toward him.

—What about Sofía?

Mateo shrugged.

—That she may not look it, but she does too. That body, Diego. Sorry to say it.

Diego frowned slightly, though he had trouble hiding the half smile.

—Jesus, you’re blunt.

—We’ve been friends since we were fourteen. What do you want me to do, lie to you?

Silence settled for a second. Diego took a longer sip this time. Mateo leaned slightly toward him, lowering his voice though without much intention of hiding.

—Do you think Laura doesn’t notice the way you look at her yourself?

Diego held his gaze.

—Laura always notices everything. She’s too smart not to.

Behind the counter, Ernesto pretended to be straightening glasses, but he couldn’t help catching fragments. He raised an eyebrow without intervening, like someone who has already seen this same script too many times.

—I’m going to tell you something —Mateo went on, now in that looser tone the second beer brings—. It seems to me we’re being too… polite.

Diego set the bottle down on the counter.

—Polite?

—Yes. All looks, all silences, all restraint. —He made an imprecise gesture with his hand—. Our whole lives like that.

Diego drew a half smile.

—Not everyone works the way you do.

—No, of course. —Mateo leaned in a little more—. But tell me you haven’t imagined it…

He stopped, searching for the words.

—What? —Diego asked.

—What all this would be like… without so much filtering.

Diego didn’t answer right away. He looked out to sea again. The waves, the distance, the two figures moving in the water. Sofía had just climbed up onto Laura’s shoulders and the two of them were laughing out loud.

Of course I’ve imagined it. More times than I should have.

—I’ve imagined it —he said at last.

Mateo nodded, satisfied.

—Of course you have.

Ernesto cleared his throat on the other side of the counter.

—Another round?

Mateo held up the empty bottle.

—Yeah, come on.

Diego nodded. Ernesto served the beers without saying anything else, though his expression said enough.

—There are things —he murmured as he set the bottles down— that are better left unthought.

Mateo looked at him, amused.

—Oh, yeah?

Ernesto shrugged.

—Or, at the very least, not said out loud.

Diego let out a short laugh. Mateo, on the other hand, raised his beer.

—We’re the talking kind.

Ernesto shook his head, half smiling.

—I can see that.

He walked away a few steps, leaving them alone again.

—I like this place —Mateo said.

Diego drank too.

—Yeah. But we can’t take too long.

—No.

Their eyes met again.

—Besides —Mateo added, leaning back—, the interesting part isn’t here.

***

When they got to the house, the sky had turned that copper color you only see in August, when the sun takes forever to go down. They had rented a villa two streets from the beach, with a terrace and a small pool. Laura had the keys.

—Shower, now —Sofía announced as soon as they came through the door, setting the basket on the floor.

—Me first —Laura laughed.

—Both of us first —she replied, laughing too—. The downstairs one has a big screen.

Diego and Mateo looked at each other for a second. A long second.

—We’re… opening a bottle —Diego said.

Laura passed by him and, as she did, brushed his arm with two fingers. A tiny gesture, almost innocent. Almost.

—We’ll be down later.

When they disappeared down the hallway, Mateo went straight to the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine without asking. Diego rested his hands on the counter, breathing slowly.

—You okay? —Mateo asked without looking at him.

—I don’t know.

—Very honest.

Diego lifted his head.

—It’s just… the beach bar thing.

Mateo put the bottle on the table.

—The beach bar thing was real.

—Yeah.

—And you’ve imagined it too. Don’t start pretending you haven’t now.

Diego didn’t answer. From upstairs came the sound of the shower water and, a second later, Sofía’s muffled laugh. A laugh and another laugh, overlapping.

Mateo poured two glasses.

—If they come down separately, nothing’s happened. If they come down together… we decide.

—Decide what?

—How far we go.

Diego took his glass. His hand trembled slightly, and he resented himself for it.

—And them?

Mateo looked at him with the air of someone who has been thinking about it for years and had only been waiting for the moment.

—They’ve been telling us all day, Diego. The looks, the poses, Laura’s bikini, Sofía’s wrap. This doesn’t start now.

Diego drank.

—Then let them decide.

—Then let them decide —Mateo repeated.

The water stopped upstairs. There was a silence that seemed to last minutes and, finally, bare feet on the stairs. Not one set of footsteps. Two.

Laura appeared first, with a white towel tied around her chest and wet hair falling over one shoulder. Sofía behind her, in one of Mateo’s T-shirts that reached mid-thigh and, plainly visible, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

They both stood in the doorway.

—Have you opened wine? —Laura asked, as if she had just walked into any living room on any afternoon.

—Just did —Mateo answered.

Diego couldn’t say anything.

Sofía came up to the table, took the glass Mateo offered her and, without taking her eyes off Diego, took the first sip slowly. Very slowly.

—What were you talking about at the beach bar? —she asked, wiping a drop from her lip with her thumb.

Mateo arched an eyebrow.

—Why do you ask?

Laura crossed her arms under her chest. The towel rose a little.

—Because Ernesto greeted us when we passed by and laughed. He just laughed.

Diego felt his neck burning.

—We weren’t talking about anything.

—Diego —Laura said, without raising her voice—. We’ve been together fifteen years.

—And I’ve been with you ten —Sofía added, turning to Mateo—. So spare us.

Mateo was the first to laugh. A short laugh, almost of relief.

—Do you want the long version or the short one?

—The honest one —Laura replied.

Mateo set his glass on the table.

—We were talking about you. About the way you move together. That today it seemed like you were playing with us from the water.

Sofía smiled.

—We were playing.

Laura turned her face toward Diego.

—And what were you saying?

—I was listening more than I was talking.

—You always listen more than you talk.

—This time I said it too.

Laura took a step toward him. The towel brushed the edge of the counter.

—What did you say?

—That I’d imagined it.

A different silence. Heavier. Sofía set the glass on the table and sat down in a chair with one leg over the other.

—And how did you imagine it? —she asked, not looking at anyone in particular.

Mateo drew a breath.

—Like this, more or less. The two of you coming down together. Us not knowing what to say.

—And what do you want us to do? —Laura asked.

—Whatever you want —he answered.

She let a second pass.

—I want to stay.

—Me too —Sofía said.

They looked at each other. A quick, complicit, almost amused glance. Diego understood all at once that they had already talked about it in the shower. That they had been waiting for this moment for hours, maybe days. That he and Mateo had been the last to find out about something that had been decided without them.

Laura loosened the knot of the towel with a calm gesture, like someone taking off a coat in her own house, and the towel fell to the floor without a sound.

—Then let’s decide who stays with whom —she said—. Or whether we don’t need to decide anything at all.

Mateo set down his glass. Diego did too. Sofía stood up from the chair with the T-shirt still on and, as she passed her husband, kissed the corner of his lips before moving closer to Diego.

—Not today, Mateo —she murmured against his ear—. Today we cross over.

Laura crossed the kitchen toward Mateo with the confidence of someone walking through her own skin.

—You don’t mind, do you? —she asked, more statement than question.

Mateo took a second to answer. Just one second.

—No.

Diego felt Sofía’s hand on the back of his neck before he saw her face. The first kiss was slow, almost tentative, like someone testing whether the floor could hold the weight. It lasted only a few seconds and, when they pulled apart, they looked at each other as if they had just recognized something they had been avoiding for years.

—Upstairs —Sofía said—. In the guest room. Not in ours.

Diego nodded. Behind them, Laura already had her hand on Mateo’s chest and was gently pushing him against the counter where, an hour earlier, Diego had rested his own hands to steady himself.

They climbed the stairs. Sofía in front, him behind. Halfway up, she turned and looked at him from one step above, unhurried.

—If anything doesn’t feel right, we stop.

—Same goes for me.

—But you don’t tell anyone.

—Never.

—Not Mateo or Laura afterward either. Whatever happens here, stays here.

—I swear.

She tugged him up by the wrist, with a strength that surprised him. In the hallway, from the kitchen, Laura’s low voice was already heard laughing under her breath and Mateo’s breathing answered her without words.

Diego closed the guest room door behind them and, for the first time in twenty years of friendship with Mateo and fifteen years of marriage to Laura, understood that context, as his friend had said only a couple of hours earlier at the beach bar, changes everything.

The beach, the heat, the two extra beers, Ernesto pretending not to listen, the laughter from the water. All of it led, though none of them had said it out loud, to that exact moment in a room in a rented house.

Sofía took her T-shirt off over her head without taking her eyes off him. Underneath, she had only the skin still damp from the shower and a fine chain with a medallion he had never seen up close.

—Come here.

And Diego did.

The door stayed ajar and the house air, hot and thick, mixed with the faint smell of salt they still carried on them. Sofía came closer first without hurry, stopping in front of him with that brief, crooked smile of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing and has no intention of apologizing for breathing. Diego put his hands around her waist, feeling the warm skin and the slight moisture still left on her back after the shower. She pressed closer, just enough for him to feel the weight of her body and the firm pressure of her breasts against his T-shirt.

—You’ve been watching me all afternoon —she whispered.

—And you knew it.

—Of course I knew it.

She kissed him again, this time without trial or courtesy. She opened her mouth hungrily, pushing her tongue into his with a confidence that instantly loosened the back of his neck. Diego responded just as fast, feeling his cock hardening against the fabric of his swim trunks, an immediate, almost painful tension that made him let out a low groan against her lips. Sofía smiled into the kiss, satisfied, and ran her fingers through his hair, tugging just enough to force him to tilt his head and offer her his mouth better.

—That’s it —she murmured—. Like that.

He slid his hands down to the hem of the T-shirt she was wearing and lifted it slowly, never taking his eyes off her. When he took it off, the fine chain hung between her breasts and the warm light from the lamp drew the outline of her nipples, already hardened by the air. Sofía lifted her arms without stopping her teasing stare, and Diego spent a full second looking at that body that was familiar and new at the same time: the smooth stomach, the rounded hips, the pale bikini mark, the long legs still damp.

—Look at me properly —she said.

—I am looking at you.

—No. Properly.

He swallowed and ran his mouth over her chest, first one slow kiss between her breasts, then another at the edge of one nipple. Sofía arched her back with a short gasp, and when he suckled harder a clearer moan escaped her, shameless, with no intention of hiding it. Diego held her by the hips, feeling her whole body tighten around his increasingly hard cock. She grabbed his hair, guiding him where she wanted, and he flicked his tongue over the nipple before biting it just enough to hear her breathe deeper.

—Fuck, Diego...

—You like it like that?

—Stop talking so much and keep going.

He sat her on the edge of the bed with a firm hand at her waist, pushing her back until she lay against the mattress. The T-shirt fell to the floor. Sofía opened her legs without ceremony, inviting him with obscene naturalness, her cunt covered only by a thin triangle of fabric he parted with two fingers. She was hot, already wet, and when he brushed the lips of her cunt with the tips of his fingers, she shuddered all over.

—Already this wet —he said, more to himself than to her.

—Your fault.

—Yeah?

—Yeah. And the face you make when you look at me.

Diego lowered his head and licked her over her underwear, tasting the salty flavor mixed with the heat of her skin. Sofía threw her head back and spread her legs wider, trapping him against her face with a hand on the back of his neck. He pushed the fabric aside with his fingers and found her naked cunt, shiny, throbbing with need. Then he licked her for real, slowly at first, tracing her center with his tongue before burying himself between her lips and sucking her clit with firm pressure. Sofía let out a small, sharp cry, then another, already out of control, pressing his head against her while she writhed on the mattress.

—There... there... don’t stop...

Diego kept going, working her with his tongue, pushing it between the wet folds, sucking, licking, parting her with his fingers so he could see her even more open. The sound was obscene, wet, and her breathing broke into short gasps, each one more desperate. When he slid two fingers inside her, she arched violently and dug her nails into his shoulders.

—You’re going to make me come —she said in broken breaths.

—That’s the point.

—Then do it right.

He picked up the pace of his hand and went back to sucking her clit hungrily, hard, without delicacy. Sofía trembled against the sheets, began moaning more openly and, after a few seconds of sweet torture, came with a deep jerk of her hips that left her cunt throbbing against his mouth. Diego kept licking her as she emptied herself, swallowing her release with his tongue and not pulling away until she stopped shaking.

—Shit... —she said, still breathing hard—. Come here.

She sat up and grabbed him by the waist to unfasten his swim trunks with an urgency that was no longer playful. The fabric fell to the floor and Diego’s cock sprang free, thick, tight, the head already wet with pre-cum. Sofía took it in her hand and stroked it slowly from top to bottom, feeling the weight and hardness with a smile that spread wider across her face.

—Fuck —she whispered—. You were that turned on by me.

—Don’t make me talk.

—I want to hear you.

She leaned in and licked the tip, tasting him with a slowness that made him close his eyes for a second. Then she took his cock into her mouth, swallowing it halfway, and Diego let out a low curse, thrusting his hips forward by instinct. Sofía held his thighs to set the pace, sucking hard, wetting his whole shaft with her tongue and lips, taking him out and taking him back in with obscene precision. The sound of her mouth around his cock filled the room.

—Shit, Sofía... like that, yes... —he gasped.

She let his cock out for a moment only to speak.

—Do you want to fuck me or are you going to stand there staring at me all night?

—I want to make you come again.

Sofía laughed, hoarse, and sat up to push him back onto the bed with both hands on his chest. Diego let himself fall onto the mattress, and she positioned herself above him astride, guiding the tip of his cock to the entrance of her cunt with a slowness that was an open provocation. She lowered only a few inches, just enough for him to feel the tight heat around the glans, and then stopped.

—Ask me.

—Fuck...

—Ask me properly.

Diego grabbed her hips and pulled her toward him until the tip opened her cunt all the way. Sofía let out a long, deep moan and began to lower herself slowly, swallowing his cock centimeter by centimeter until she had him all the way inside. The impact of her body on top of him drew a low growl from him. They stayed still for a second, looking at each other closely, feeling how their breathing mixed.

—Like that —she said, hoarse—. That’s how I like you.

Then she started moving. At first it was short, controlled up-and-down motions, her cunt squeezing him with a wet friction that pulled a tense moan from him. Then she picked up speed, driving herself down on his cock with an almost cruel determination, bouncing on him with every stroke until the bed started to complain. Diego held her by the hips, helping her ride him, feeling the head of his cock graze her depths again and again while she leaned forward and bit his neck.

—Harder —she whispered in his ear.

And he gave it to her. He lifted his hips and fucked up into her with hard, deep thrusts that made her cry out without restraint. Her cunt squeezed him brutally, slick, hot, as if it were swallowing him whole every time he entered. Diego looked up at her above him, hair messed up, mouth open, breasts bouncing with the motion, and the sight sent savage heat shooting through his gut. He grabbed the back of her neck and kissed her furiously, pushing his tongue into her until she was gasping against his mouth.

—Yeah, fuck... give me that cock —she murmured, with no shame left at all.

—I’m giving it to you whole.

—Then don’t stop.

The words bounced between their gasps, filthy, direct, unadorned. The bed slammed against the wall, the air filled with broken breaths and skin on skin. Sofía let one hand fall between them, wrapped her fingers around his cock and began stroking it at the same time as she moved over him, driving the rhythm to the limit. Diego felt himself nearing the edge with brutal speed, his release rising from his balls, thick, inevitable. Sofía noticed at once.

—You’re coming, aren’t you?

—Yeah... fuck, yes.

—Then hold out a little longer.

She squeezed his cock harder and kissed him with swollen lips, sucking his tongue as if she wanted to steal his last breath. Diego held on as long as he could, with hard muscles, his belly taut, until she arched her hips one last time and came around him again, trembling and moaning with a violence that stripped away his control completely. Then Diego let out a deep groan, dug his hands into her ass and emptied himself inside her with a hot, thick, brutal release, filling her cunt while his whole body spasmed over and over.

Sofía stayed on top of him for a few seconds, feeling how his cock kept throbbing inside her and how his seed filled her with a warm sensation that made her close her eyes and smile against his neck.

—That was it —she whispered—. That’s what I wanted.

Diego held her tight, still gasping, while she slowly slid to one side without pulling his cock out completely right away. They lay there, naked, sweating, listening to the distant hum of the house and the muffled voices in the hallway. A few seconds passed before Sofía gave him a slow kiss on the chest.

—Not bad —she said, with that satisfied woman’s smile she no longer tried to hide.

—That’s putting it mildly.

She laughed under her breath and, sitting up, gave him a look full of promise before picking up the T-shirt from the floor and looking him over again from head to toe.

—We should go back down. If we take too long, they’ll think we killed each other.

Diego ran a hand over his face and let out a dry laugh, still breathing hard.

—Mateo and Laura are probably busy enough not to worry.

—Exactly.

They dressed without hurry, with that strange calm that remains after a real shock. When they opened the door, the hallway was still dim and from downstairs there still came the low murmur of two voices, a muffled laugh, and the soft thump of something against the counter. Laura and Mateo were still in their own private war on the other side of the house.

Sofía turned back one last time toward Diego before going down.

—Remember what I told you.

—I remember everything.

—You’d better.

And he followed her down the stairs, still with his body burning and the taste of her cunt in his mouth, knowing that night nothing would ever be the same.