The Perfect Wife an App Chose for Me

The app was called Soulmates, and it cost more than my car. It wasn’t one of those dating apps where you swipe through a hundred faces until you feel sick. This one was different. You paid an absurd sum, filled out a three-hour questionnaire, and an algorithm gave you back a single name. One person. The one who, according to them, fit you even in the folds you didn’t know you had.

I was thirty-eight, with a divorce behind me and the uncomfortable certainty that every relationship I’d ever had had just been a patch. I was looking for something final. I was looking, without daring to say it out loud, for the woman I would stop looking after.

The questionnaire had stripped me bare more than any lover ever had. Questions about fear, about what I kept quiet at family dinners, about the fantasies I’d never written in any chat. I answered with a sincerity that scared me. Maybe that was why, when the result arrived, it wasn’t what I expected.

The email said only one line: “Your match is ninety-seven percent. Her name is Daniela.”

***

The profile photo was understated, almost elegant. A woman with dark hair down to her shoulders, brown eyes, and a smile that seemed to hold a question. Thirty-six years old, literary translator, living in a coastal city two hours from mine. There was nothing exaggerated about the image. No staged poses or filters erasing the person. That was the first thing I liked.

We started writing to each other that same night. And then I understood why the algorithm had given us ninety-seven.

Daniela wrote the way I thought. She finished the sentences I left hanging. She laughed at the same absurd things, despised the same clichés. We talked about books until three in the morning, about the difference between being alone and feeling alone, about why both of us had paid a fortune to a machine so it could tell us whom to love.

She told me she translated crime novels from French, that she had an old cat named Borges, and that she hated people who said “everything happens for a reason.” I told her about my divorce without the rehearsed script I used with everyone else, without polishing my share of the blame. It was strange telling the truth to someone who existed for me only as a voice on a screen. But with her the truth came out on its own, effortlessly, as if speaking any other way would have taken more work.

This is ridiculous, I thought at dawn, with the phone hot in my hand. I’ve been talking to a stranger for twelve hours and I don’t want to stop.

There was one thing, however, that I noticed from the start. A caution in her. Every time the conversation edged toward the body, toward desire, toward “what would you do if we were in the same room,” Daniela pulled back with precise elegance. Not with fear. With care. Like someone protecting something that had already been broken before.

—There are things I’d rather say while looking you in the eyes —she wrote on the third night—. Not over the phone. Does that sound old-fashioned?

—It sounds perfect to me —I answered.

We agreed to meet at a hotel halfway between the two cities. Neutral ground, she said. A place where neither of us had home-field advantage.

***

I arrived half an hour early. I sat at the lobby bar, ordered a whiskey I didn’t touch, and watched the revolving door like a teenager. Every dark-haired woman who walked in made my pulse jump. None of them were her.

And then one was.

Daniela crossed the lobby with a calm that filled the space. She wore a midnight-blue dress, simple, one of those that don’t shout but force you to look. She was taller than I’d imagined. The way she walked had a confidence that hadn’t been in her photos, as if the camera hadn’t dared capture her whole.

She stopped in front of me and, before sitting down, said something I hadn’t expected.

—Before you order another drink, I want to tell you something. And if after hearing it you want to leave, I’ll understand and I won’t say a word.

My heart clenched like a fist. I thought of a thousand things: that she was married, that it was a scam, that the algorithm had made a spectacular mistake.

—I’m a trans woman —she said, her eyes fixed on mine—. I’m telling you now because you deserve to know before anything else. Not after three drinks, not after going up to a room. Now.

The silence between us lasted as long as a heartbeat. I waited to feel the rejection you’re supposed to feel, that automatic recoil they teach you without your realizing it. It didn’t come. What came was something else: the sudden realization that this woman had spoken to me for three full nights and every word she’d said had been real. And also, unable to help myself, a tug in my groin. I pictured her naked, with a hard cock between her legs, and instead of being scared my mouth went dry.

—Is that why you held back? —I asked—. When we talked about touching.

She blinked, surprised that that was my answer.

—That’s why. I’ve seen too many faces change.

—Mine isn’t changing —I said—. Mine is getting horny.

And it was true. I looked at her and saw only Daniela: the one who finished my sentences, the one who laughed at three in the morning, the one who had paid a fortune for the same reason I had. The algorithm hadn’t been wrong. I’d been the fool for thinking I knew what I was looking for.

***

We went up without hurry. In the elevator we didn’t touch; we only looked at each other in the mirror, both of us in profile, measuring the exact distance left to cross. She smelled warm, of cedar and clean skin. I was too aware of my own breathing and of my cock straining against my fly.

The room had a huge window overlooking the lit-up city below. Daniela set her bag on the dresser and turned to me, and for the first time all night I saw that she was trembling a little too.

—You can change your mind —she murmured.

—Stop giving me outs —I answered, and took the final step.

I kissed her slowly, holding her face with both hands. She answered with a contained intensity, as if she’d been storing it for months. I felt the brush of her fingers climbing my neck, the heat of her body pressing against mine, and against my thigh, unmistakably, the hard bulge of her cock pressing through the dress. Instead of pulling back, I pushed my hip against her so she’d know I had noticed and wanted it. Daniela let out a low moan into my mouth, one of those sounds that slip out when you finally stop holding your breath.

—Fuck me —she whispered against my lips—. I’ve spent three nights thinking about how you’re going to fuck me.

I lowered the zipper of her dress without taking my eyes off hers. The fabric fell to the floor with a whisper. Underneath she wore black lace panties that barely contained her erection, and small round tits with nipples already hard and pointing at me. I ran my open palm down her back, the curve of her waist, and slid lower to grab her ass with both hands, a firm high ass that filled my palms as if it had been made to measure.

—Look at me when you do it —she asked, voice hoarse—. I don’t want you closing your eyes.

I didn’t close them. Not once.

I pushed her to the edge of the bed and knelt in front of her. I pulled down her panties slowly, with my teeth first and then my hands, and her cock sprang free in front of my face: thick, hard, the tip already shining with liquid. I’d never had another in my mouth before, but I didn’t hesitate. I closed my lips over the tip and she let out a long gasp, grabbing my hair with both hands.

—Fuck —she breathed—. Fuck, fuck.

I sucked her the way I’d wanted someone to suck me. I went down slowly to the root, feeling my mouth fill, feeling the hot flesh pushing against my palate. I came back up licking the vein underneath, paused at the tip to taste the salty drop, and swallowed it whole again. Daniela looked down at me with her mouth open, eyes glassy, not quite believing what she was seeing.

—You’re going to make me come in your mouth if you keep that up —she gasped, tugging my hair to pull me away—. And I don’t want to come yet. Not yet.

She let herself fall back onto the bed and dragged me on top of her. I ripped off my own shirt, my pants, my boxers, everything, until we were skin to skin, my hard cock against hers, sliding against each other in a friction that made me growl. We kissed with our mouths open, biting each other’s lips, while our hands fought to touch everything at once.

I kissed my way down her body. I licked her tits one by one, nibbling her nipples until they got so hard they made her groan each time my tongue brushed them. I went down her flat stomach, over the line of dark hair, and took her back into my mouth, this time grabbing her balls with my other hand, playing with them while I sucked her whole.

—Wait, wait —she said, writhing—. Turn around. I want to suck you too. I want to taste you.

I obeyed. I lay on my side, she turned in the bed, and suddenly her hot mouth closed around my cock while mine stayed on hers. We sucked at the same time, to the same rhythm, as if even there we understood each other without speaking. I felt her tongue sliding under my glans, taking me all the way into her mouth, and I had to let her go for a moment because I couldn’t take it, because if she kept going like that I’d end up in her throat too soon.

—Come here —I told her, pulling her up toward me—. I want to fuck you. I want to put it in now.

Daniela smiled, that smile from the photos that now I understood completely, and turned around. She got on all fours on the bed, her round ass lifted toward me, her hard cock hanging between her legs, and turned her head to look at me over her shoulder.

—Fuck me hard —she said—. Don’t treat me like I’m going to break.

I found the lube in the bag she’d indicated with a gesture and slicked it over my cock, then poured a good stream between her cheeks. I ran my thumb over her ass, pushing slowly, and she opened for me with a hoarse moan. I lined up the tip and pushed, and that tight, closed heat, resisting and opening at the same time, made me clench my fingers into her hips so I wouldn’t come right there.

—All of it —she gasped—. Put it all in at once.

I pushed all the way in. I felt her tremble through and through, heard her let out a long “fuck,” and stayed still for a second inside her, feeling her body adapt to mine. Then I started moving. At first slowly, pulling almost all the way out and going back in to the root, watching my cock disappear again and again between her cheeks. She pushed back to take me, moaning with every thrust, her face buried in the pillow.

—Harder —she begged—. More, more, don’t stop.

I grabbed her hair with one hand, pulled at her hip with the other, and started fucking her for real. The sound of my hips slapping against her ass filled the room, mixed with her moans, with my groans, with the dirty broken words that slipped out of both of us without thinking. I reached around and grabbed her cock, hard and leaking, and started jerking her off at the same rhythm I was pounding her.

—Like that, like that, like that —she kept repeating—. I’m going to come, fuck, I’m going to come.

And she did. Her whole cock throbbed in my hand and I felt the hot jet explode onto the sheets, one, two, three, four spurts, while her ass clenched around my dick in waves that almost dragged me with her. But I held on. I wanted more. I pulled out, turned her over, lifted her legs until I had them on my shoulders, and buried myself in her ass again, this time face to face, so I wouldn’t lose her expression.

—Look at me —I asked, the way she had asked me before—. Look at me while I come inside.

She held my gaze. I drove into her hard, deep, my hands digging into her thighs, feeling everything rise up from my balls, feeling the heat gather at the base and burst upward. I came inside her with a long groan, emptying myself in waves, never taking my eyes off her, while she squeezed me with her thighs and whispered yes, there, inside.

We stayed like that, locked together, breathing hard, until I pulled out slowly and collapsed beside her. She had her chest covered in her own cum, I had my cock dripping with hers, and neither of us made a move to clean up yet.

***

Afterward we lay in silence, her head on my chest, my hand tracing slow circles on her back. The city was still lit up beyond the window. Neither of us was in a hurry to speak.

—You know what’s the strangest thing? —she said at last—. That the app got it right. It really got it right. And I almost didn’t come.

—Why did you come?

—Because you talked to me like you already knew who I am. And it turned out you did. You were just missing one detail.

I laughed softly, and she felt the vibration in my chest and smiled against my skin.

I thought about the three-hour questionnaire, about all those questions about fear and what I kept hidden. Maybe the machine had read between the lines something I hadn’t admitted even to myself. Maybe it had understood that what I was looking for wasn’t shaped the way I thought. Or maybe it had just been lucky, and we’d supplied the rest ourselves.

—Are you going to tell your friends how we met? —she asked, half joking.

—I’m going to tell them I paid a fortune to find the perfect woman —I said—. And that, against all odds, I found her.

Daniela lifted her head and looked at me for a long while, searching for the catch, the empty politeness. She didn’t find it, because there wasn’t any.

—Old-fashioned —she murmured, and kissed me again.

Outside, dawn was beginning to break. For the first time in years, I was in no hurry to look for anything else.