The Park Couple and What It Awoke in Me

The five o’clock sun fell sideways through the park trees, turning every leaf almost translucent. Valeria had sat down on the grass near the trunk of an old pine, knees drawn up, voice low. Marcos listened to her. He always did: elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on her, as if what she was saying mattered more than anything he could see or do at that moment.

The park was built on a hillside. From where they were, the view sloped down diagonally toward a path edged with shrubs, and from there they could see, several meters below, a couple sitting on the grass. A girl in a dark skirt and black stockings, her hair tied up in a messy bun. A broad-shouldered guy in a blue plaid shirt that hung a little too big on him. They had settled there before Valeria and Marcos arrived, and from the beginning they had been pressed close together.

Valeria didn’t want to look. She had things to tell Marcos: that Sebastián still hadn’t answered her last message, that her friends kept telling her she needed to go out more, that she still couldn’t fall asleep before three in the morning. But the people down below had that kind of movement that was hard to ignore. A brushing of shoulders. A hand finding the other without looking for it. That kind of thing Valeria knew by heart.

It had been three weeks since she and Sebastián had broken up. Since then she had called her friends one by one, under the pretext of going for a drink or walking through some park. Marcos was the last on the list, not because he mattered less, but because he was the best listener and with him the conversations always ran later than planned. Almost all the friends she called were men. Almost all of them, to different degrees, were in love with her. Valeria knew it and didn’t entirely ignore it: in the state she was in, she needed attention, and she had given herself permission to receive it without giving anything back.

—Are you still doing those two jobs? —Marcos asked, bringing her back to the thread she had lost.

—Sorry. It’s just... —she said, and gave a tiny gesture toward the couple below.

Marcos looked. The girl had leaned against the guy’s side. He draped an arm over her shoulders without thinking.

—They have a right to exist —Marcos said, with a half smile.

—I know. They just bring back memories, that’s all.

—Do you want us to go?

Valeria looked him over before answering. Marcos was tall, with his hair a little tousled and a few days’ worth of beard that gave him the look of someone who has better things to think about than shaving. He wore a dark green jacket, hands buried in the pockets. It had turned cold since the sun had started to go down.

—No —she said—. Let’s stay. I don’t have to be looking at them the whole time.

But she was looking at them. She had named them in her head: he was Diego, she was Clara. Diego was whispering something in her ear and Clara laughed, covering her mouth. It was a small laugh, conspiratorial, the kind you have with someone with whom there are no secrets left.

Valeria kept talking. She told Marcos that she had found a photo on her phone of Sebastián with Inés —the coworker she suspected he had left her for— at a dinner he had never told her about. She told him she deleted the photo and said nothing. That she stayed with him two more weeks after that, without mentioning what she had seen.

—Why? —Marcos asked.

Valeria opened her mouth to answer, but what her eyes said was clearer: because I still loved him and preferred not to know.

Down below, Diego had lain back on the grass. Clara stayed seated beside him, looking down at him. She picked up a dry twig and slowly ran it over his lips. He smiled without moving. She tempted him and he let himself be tempted; that seemed to be the game.

—That’s their game —Marcos said quietly, almost to himself.

Valeria nodded. She thought of Sebastián, of the first time they had been alone in his apartment, of the way he had also waited, patient, for her to take each step. Not like Diego, who at some point could no longer take it and stole a kiss from Clara between laughs. Clara rejected him for a second, pretending outrage, and then fell on top of him.

Valeria noticed how Clara’s tits flattened against Diego’s chest when she came down on him. How he spread his legs slightly and she, without thinking too much about it, slid one of hers between his. They started kissing for real then: unhurried but relentless, with their hands moving over each other’s sides. Clara’s tongue showed between kisses and Diego sought it with his, and from above Valeria could imagine the wet sound of those mouths meeting and parting.

—I guess the game’s over —Marcos said.

—Shhh —Valeria replied, with a smile that was not entirely ironic.

Clara was rubbing herself slowly over Diego, with a movement that was at once careless and calculated. She rode the boy’s thigh with her cunt over her panties, lifting and lowering her hips in a slow rhythm, as if searching for the exact friction. He had one hand on her ass and the other lost under her skirt, and by the way Clara arched her back, Valeria understood that Diego’s fingers were already between her legs, parting the fabric, touching her where she was wet. The girl let out a short moan that could be heard even from above, a moan Diego cut off by covering her mouth with his.

After a while, Clara got off. They both lay on their sides, looking at each other. Diego put his hand to her breast and began to stroke it over her clothes, pinching the nipple between thumb and forefinger until Valeria saw Clara bite her lip. They drew closer, as if they wanted to disappear into each other, and Valeria just made out the moment Diego’s hand slipped under Clara’s sweater, pushed the bra up, and freed one breast. The girl, without thinking, lifted her sweater just enough with her free hand to let him suck on it. Diego’s mouth closed over the dark nipple and Clara threw her head back, eyes closed, her throat exposed to the last of the sun.

Marcos had noticed that Valeria was no longer pretending. She was watching with the same attention you give a movie you’ve already absorbed. He decided to join her and kept watching too.

Down below, Clara unbuttoned Diego’s pants. She did it with soft clumsiness, biting her lips, and pulled down his jeans and boxers just enough to get his cock out. It was hard, pointing upward, and from where Valeria and Marcos were they could see the full length of his dick perfectly, Clara’s hand wrapping around it from the base, moving slowly up and down. Valeria swallowed. Clara bent down and took his cock into her mouth without ceremony, sinking her head until her nose almost touched Diego’s stomach. Then she came back up, sucking hard, cheeks hollowed. Diego put a hand on the back of her neck and guided her in an increasingly marked rhythm. Clara’s tongue could be seen at the base when she went down, and a fine thread of saliva hung from her when she came back up. The boy grabbed the grass with his other hand and arched his back slightly.

After a while, Clara let the cock go, shiny with saliva, hiked her skirt up to her waist, tugged her panties to one side, and mounted Diego facing the path. She guided the dick with her hand and sat down on it. Valeria watched the cock disappear inside her centimeter by centimeter, and how Clara went still for a second when she had it all the way in, mouth open, silent. Then she started moving. She lifted almost all the way off it and dropped down hard, and every descent drew out a gasp that reached clear up to where they were. Diego grabbed her ass with both hands, helped her up, drove into her again. The skirt covered the middle but everything else was visible: the rocking, the thighs opening and closing, Clara’s tits bouncing inside her wrinkled sweater.

***

—Do you think Sebastián and I went further than they did? —Valeria asked suddenly.

Marcos took a second to answer.

—They were together a long time. It would be weird if you didn’t.

—Yeah. And no. —She paused—. I didn’t want to. Or I did want to, but I couldn’t want to. Do you know what I mean?

Marcos looked at her, waiting.

—It’s strange being the one who’s supposed not to want. One day I gave myself permission. Or half permission. I don’t know how to explain it to you.

Since she lacked the words, Valeria used what was closest at hand. She brought her right hand to her left breast and squeezed it twice, briefly, with pressure that was anything but gentle. Then, with thumb and forefinger, she pinched her own nipple through her clothes and twisted it just a little. That’s how he touched me. She didn’t say it out loud but it was obvious.

—I understand —Marcos said.

—And also...

Now she brought her hands to the inner thighs, with her thumbs almost at her groin, and pressed. One second. Nothing more. But it was enough. Then, as if to complete the idea, she let one finger brush the seam of her jeans right in the center, over her cunt, and pressed once before taking her hand away.

Marcos said nothing. Valeria took his silence as understanding and, in a movement she herself hadn’t fully foreseen, brought her hand to his crotch. She stopped just before touching him, fingers a centimeter away. She looked at him. He nodded.

She laid her hand on him. Slowly closed her fingers. And found what she hadn’t expected to find so quickly: a full erection, hard, that had been there who knew how long. She felt the heat through the fabric, the whole length of the cock pressed against her thigh, the swollen tip bulging against the seam of his pants. She moved her fingers just a little, sliding from the base to the head, and noticed Marcos clench his jaw without saying anything.

The discovery stopped her. Not because of rejection, but because suddenly everything became real. Did she want to keep going? What did keeping going mean? She withdrew her hand without hurry, as if nothing had happened, and asked:

—Would you say I’m still a virgin?

Marcos blinked.

—That depends on how you define it.

—What I’m asking is whether you would define it that way.

—I think you’re a virgin if you still feel like a virgin.

—I still feel like a virgin.

Marcos nodded without irony. There was no mockery on his face. That was what made Valeria want to keep talking.

—Have you ever been with a virgin?

—Once.

—And what was it like?

Valeria didn’t wait for the answer. She went on:

—With Sebastián we got close. He wanted to. I wanted to too, but I told him he could only get in a little. And he did. He respected me. The first time was in his bed, in the afternoon, with the blinds down. He made me come with his mouth first, so I’d be wet, and he was licking my cunt until I grabbed his head with both hands and came shaking. Then he got on top. I was open and wet and it still hurt. He put the tip of his cock in, nothing more, and stayed still, like he was waiting for permission for the next centimeter. I told him he couldn’t. To take it out. And he did. It was me who wanted more after that, but I couldn’t. It hurt too much. I put it in my hand, in my mouth, sucked him and made him come between my tits. But inside we never managed to finish. Not that time or any other.

Marcos listened without interrupting.

—Does that change your answer? —she asked—. Do you still think I’m a virgin?

—Do you still feel like a virgin?

—Yes.

Valeria said it without hesitation. There was no sadness in her voice at that moment, but something more like contained excitement: the pleasure of saying something true to someone who wasn’t going to judge her for it.

—You know you didn’t owe Sebastián anything, right? —Marcos said—. You decided how far you wanted to go.

Valeria laughed softly through her nose.

—That’s what people say. But if you were my boyfriend, would you tell me the same thing? Wouldn’t you expect something?

—I’d expect what I can expect.

—I don’t believe you. Put yourself in Sebastián’s place. If you were... you know... inside...

—Fucking you? —Marcos said, without lowering his voice—. With my cock in your cunt?

Valeria smiled, a little surprised that he had said it so directly. The word went through her like a current and she felt, without meaning to, her panties growing damp.

—Yeah. Could you really stop when I asked you to? Even if you had your whole dick inside me and I was squeezing you?

—It’s not a matter of whether I could. It’s what you owe any person.

—That doesn’t exist in real life. Look at what Diego was doing down there. At some point he couldn’t take it anymore.

And he hadn’t been able to take any less: at that moment down below, Diego had turned Clara around and had her on all fours on the grass, with her skirt hiked up to her waist and her panties hanging off one knee. He was fucking her from behind, holding her by the hip, and with each thrust Clara let out a longer moan. You could see the girl’s white ass shaking with the blows, and Diego’s hand suddenly came up and grabbed a fistful of the bun of hair to yank her head back. Clara arched her back, opened her mouth, and kept pushing her ass against him as if it were never enough.

—That was a game —Marcos said, looking too—. They both wanted it.

Valeria didn’t answer. Instead, she moved closer to him. Little by little, without haste, until their foreheads touched. Marcos didn’t move. She looked at him closely, searching for the moment he would give in. He didn’t.

Interesting, she thought.

She narrowed her eyes. Brought her lips closer. Valeria’s lower lip brushed Marcos’s, barely, and began to move from side to side in a tiny friction that was more question than kiss. She felt his warm breath against her own, and again, without realizing it, she pressed her thighs together because her cunt was pulsing. He stayed still. He neither pulled away nor came forward. She tried a little more: she just stuck out the tip of her tongue and ran it along the edge of his lower lip. Marcos closed his eyes for a second, but he didn’t kiss her back.

Valeria turned her head for a moment. The couple below was no longer there.

The park was almost empty. The cold had grown and the last people remaining were walking quickly toward the exit. The light between the trees was already orange and sparse.

Valeria kept looking at the place where Clara and Diego had been. The flattened grass where she had fallen on top of him, the knee-shaped mark where they had put her on all fours. The twig Clara had used to tempt him, lying on the ground. She imagined, unable to help herself, Diego’s cum running down Clara’s thigh as they walked back to the bus stop.

—This doesn’t mean anything —Valeria said, though she wasn’t very sure who she was saying it to.

—I know —Marcos replied.

—If you were with a girl like me, I’m telling you seriously, you wouldn’t be able to control yourself.

Marcos looked at her for a moment. Then he looked at the empty place where the couple had been. Then he looked back at her.

—Maybe you’re right —he said, and he said it in a way that was not defeat but concession.

Valeria smiled. It was a strange smile: half satisfied, half sad. She stood up, brushed the grass off her clothes, and waited for Marcos to get to his feet. They walked toward the park exit without taking each other’s hand, separated by a few centimeters, in a silence neither of them wanted to break yet.