She Let Me Watch Her Undress in the Fitting Room

It was a morning in mid-May, much hotter than it usually was at that time of year. The city had woken early, and the streets were full of girls debuting the season’s first short skirts and tank tops.

I had made plans with Lorena, my ex-girlfriend, to do one of our stupid little traditions: instead of having coffee like normal people, we went shopping. There was nothing serious left between us anymore; there hadn’t been for two years, only a comfortable friendship, no bad vibes and no chance of relapse. She didn’t mind me seeing her half-naked while she tried on clothes, and I didn’t mind going into the women’s fitting room with her to give my opinion on whatever garment it was. Even lingerie, if necessary.

That morning we were in a department store downtown. Lorena had gotten herself tangled up in the bikini section and was lugging seven or eight hangers on her arm. I followed her with the patience of someone who has spent years going out at two in the morning because somebody suddenly feels like having ice cream.

“You giving me a verdict, yes or no?” she asked while looking for an empty fitting room.

“I’ll give you a verdict. Like always.”

The fitting area was a long room with about ten stalls on the right and, right across from them against the opposite wall, a row of single stools for the resigned companions. Lorena went into one halfway down the aisle and I sat facing her curtain, on one of the stools. We were almost alone: a couple farther back, a group of teenagers making more noise than was reasonable at the other end, and not much else. Most of the cubicles were empty.

I was just starting to kill time with my phone when another couple came into the area. He, funeral-faced, carrying three or four small kraft-paper bags. She, a rather petite girl, arms loaded with clothes and walking quickly, as if she wanted to be done before he completely lost patience.

The odd thing was that, with seven or eight empty fitting rooms to choose from, she went straight into the one to the left of Lorena’s. Right next to mine. Her boyfriend dropped onto the stool beside mine with an audible sigh, took his phone out of his pocket, and sank into it without once looking up again.

She drew the curtain shut, but not all the way. Maybe because she was carrying so much, maybe by mistake, the right side stayed open a couple of hand spans. Exactly the side that faced my stool.

From where I was sitting I could see almost the entire interior of the fitting room. What couldn’t be seen directly was reflected back by the large mirror at the back. It was like having theater seats and free admission.

The girl, not yet aware of my position at first, began to undress. She took off her pants and was left in a pair of cream-colored panties, the kind that cover very little and leave half your ass out. Then she pulled her T-shirt over her head and beneath it appeared a matching bra. The set wasn’t especially provocative, but it fit her like it had been painted on. You could tell her body was kept up, toned, almost like a dancer’s. The kind of figure you don’t build in a month.

She had a nice ass, round, with the exact shape that panties that are too small end up outlining. When she turned to hang up the clothes I could also see the front. Modest breasts, no padding in the bra, and tiny nipples pressing softly against the fabric.

And then she saw me.

She lifted her head looking for something and her eyes slammed into mine through the gap in the curtain. I didn’t look away. I don’t know why. I should have done the polite thing: looked at the ceiling, checked my phone, pretended to be interested in anything else. But no. I held her gaze as if to say, “keep going, it’s fine.”

For a second, embarrassment and anger mixed on her face. I was sure she was going to pull the curtain all the way shut and the show would be over. But she didn’t. She looked away, yes, but only to pick up another garment from the pile.

And that’s where something different started.

She began trying things on. A skirt, a top, denim shorts, a wraparound T-shirt. She did it slowly, very slowly, much more slowly than someone who only wanted to see whether the size fit would need. Every so often she shot me quick, fleeting glances, checking that I was still there, checking that I hadn’t taken my eyes off her.

Her boyfriend, meanwhile, was still glued to his phone. He laughed to himself at some video. He had no idea what was happening two steps away from him.

Lorena came out every now and then to show me a new bikini, each one smaller than the last.

“Too small?” she asked, turning around.

“You put it on and we’ll see.”

She smiled and went back in. I nodded with the most neutral expression I could manage, while two steps from me what was happening was happening. My situation inside my trousers was no longer something I could hide. I had half an erection and it was rising without any brakes.

***

There was a moment when I thought I was pushing my luck too far.

While the girl took off some shorts and bent slightly forward, I held her gaze and readjusted my dick inside my jeans with a brazen gesture, not hiding a thing. Barely two seconds. I stroked it once, then twice over the fabric, looking her in the eye.

Her eyes went wide. She turned red all the way to her neck, a flush that ran from her jaw down to her neckline. And then I saw it: the nipples beneath her bra suddenly stood out, in a way they hadn’t been doing before.

But something broke. She threw on her street clothes in a hurry, without folding anything, came out of the fitting room and grabbed her boyfriend by the arm almost yanking him away.

“Let’s go, I don’t like this place.”

He, bewildered, put his phone away and followed her, lugging the bags. They left the fitting-room aisle like people making a getaway.

That’s enough. You went way too far.

I sat there with my blood still hammering in my temples, trying to calm down before Lorena came out again. To my shame, I wasn’t sorry. I was disappointed.

And then, after a long minute, I saw them come back.

***

They came back together. He, once again looking bored. She, this time without her arms full: just five or six hangers. All of them, as I could check, bikinis.

She chose the same fitting room as before. The boyfriend sat on the same stool. And she, this time, drew the curtain even less than the first time. Much less. So much less that anyone walking past in front could have seen inside if they’d wanted to.

But the only person in the front row was me.

She undressed slowly, looking me in the eye. This time she didn’t look away once. I checked that the boyfriend was still lost in his screen, slipped a hand discreetly into my trouser pocket, and started touching myself. To her eyes it was obvious what I was doing: the movement of the fabric gave me away without mercy.

When she was down to panties and bra, she didn’t stop there.

She hooked her thumbs into the sides of the elastic on her panties and bent forward to slide them down to the floor, slowly, pushing her ass out toward me in a posture of total vulnerability. From my stool I saw wide hips, a perfectly round ass, the prettiest I had ever seen naked in my life.

Then she straightened up, turned fully toward me, and reached behind her back. She unclasped the bra with the measured movements of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. One strap slipped free. Then the other. The garment fell to the floor.

Pink nipples, small, fully erect. Impossible to pretend she wasn’t aroused.

She stayed like that for a few endless seconds, naked in the middle of the fitting room, not caring that her boyfriend was a meter away or that any stranger might walk past the half-open curtain. I let my gaze travel over her entire body, slowly: the neck, the shoulders, the small pointed breasts, the navel, the hips, the mons pubis with short, neatly kept hair, the swollen vaginal lips shining with moisture. Strong legs, knees, small feet.

It was a properly proportioned body, genuinely beautiful, unaltered.

My cock hurt from how hard I had it. Her mouth had gone slack, lips parted, her breathing visibly ragged. At that moment I couldn’t have said which one of us was closer to the edge.

“Marina, how much longer?” the boyfriend complained all of a sudden, without looking up from his phone. “We’ve been here all morning, Jesus.”

That voice snapped her out of it. She bit her lip, blinked, seemed to remember where she was. She started trying on the bikinis at a more normal pace, but without stopping herself from giving me every change: she’d put the set on in front of the mirror, slowly turning her body, pull one strap down to adjust it properly, tug the bikini bottom into place, sliding a finger inside the elastic.

Always looking, always looking toward me.

***

Lorena, meanwhile, was finishing up. She was going to come out of her fitting room any second, and I would have no choice but to get up with a horse hard-on and leave that aisle as if nothing had happened.

Think. This chance isn’t coming back.

I opened the backpack I’d brought with me, looked for a pencil I kept tucked away for work notes, and a cardboard tag I’d torn off some gift days earlier. I rested the card against my knee and wrote my cell number on it. Just the number, no name, not one more word.

I waited for her to look at me again. I showed her the paper between my fingers, not raising it too much, and then, with the boyfriend half a meter away lost in his phone, I bent down as if tying my shoelace and dropped the piece of cardboard into one of the paper bags he had at his feet.

Marina’s mouth fell open. Pure stunned face. A face that said, “that’s enough, now you’re really overdoing it.”

Right then Lorena’s fitting-room curtain opened.

“Done, I’ve got two now,” she said, totally oblivious. “Let’s go before I regret it and come back for the other one.”

I stood up, smiled at her, slipped back into my usual rhythm, and we left the fitting-room aisle. Before turning the corner I glanced back once. Marina was still behind the half-open curtain, now dressed, staring at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

We paid for the bikinis, left the mall, and said goodbye at the mouth of the subway. Lorena went home and I went to mine, still thinking about the paper inside that bag.

***

The days passed. Three. Five. A whole week.

Every time my phone buzzed I looked at the screen thinking it would be her. And every time it was the neighborhood football order group, or my mother, or the bank. I convinced myself the paper had fallen out along the way, or that she had crumpled it up herself the second she got home. Worse still: that the boyfriend had found it and a proper scene had erupted as soon as they got to the building entrance.

On the tenth day I was on the sofa watching a series when the phone vibrated. Unknown number.

I opened the message with a finger still wet from the beer can.

“Hi, is this you? I’m the girl from the fitting room.”

It took me a full second to realize I had stopped breathing while I was reading.

To be continued…