27 In stride
27
In stride
When I hear or read the word “ocean,” I always picture the Mediterranean. Not the Cantabrian or the Atlantic or the Caribbean. My head flies direct and nonstop straight to its shores, and I see it. I smell it too. I don’t know a single Madrileno who doesn’t have love, games, and sorrows buried in its sand, like in the Joan Manuel Serrat song. I could pick its color out of dozens of different seas because it’s the only one that can be dark, blue, green, black, or turquoise all at once. That’s why, as soon as I see it through the windows of the hotel, I know what day, what year, and what moment of my life I’ve woken up in. There’s no doubt.
Tristan is still asleep, so I allow myself a moment of reflection in the living room of our suite. But first I drink in my view for a few seconds: him, hugging his pillow with his back to me, swimming in the middle of a wave of white sheets that make his skin look so tan. His back. The top of that tight ass hidden down below…looks good enough to be an oil painting. Or a snack.
Have you ever felt anxiety and relief well up in your stomach? If your answer is no, you’re probably wondering how it’s possible to feel anxiety and relief at the same time and…well, human beings are amazing…especially when it comes to contradictions.
On one hand, I’m relieved to be traveling backward again. Yesterday, in the right year, I fell asleep wondering what would happen if I couldn’t do it again. And I was really overwhelmed by it. Grief, disorientation, and anxiety are just a few of the feelings even the possibility provokes, but…
On the other hand, I’m stressed not knowing what I’ll do if all this doesn’t stop. I makes me anxious to think my life is over, that I’ll only have an occasional glimpse, like yesterday, of the present. Or the future. I don’t even know what timeline I belong in anymore, but it scares me that I can only evoke the past and exist clearly in my memories.
Plus, 2020 is looming. And everyone knows what happened then.
Today is May 17, two years ago, and we’re in Barcelona. We took an AVE yesterday and arrived in the Condal City around 10 at night. We went straight to eat some tacos at the Gastro-Taquería Mexicana on Calle de París, and after dinner, we dragged our wheeled suitcases to a taxi, which took us to the Hotel Arts Barcelona, overlooking the ocean. I’m here for work, but the magazine always knows how to give me perks that make it feel like the opposite.
The issue that will hit the stands next month has a nostalgia theme, and the only article left to go to print is my review of the concert I’m going to tonight: the Backstreet Boys are performing at the Palau Sant Jordi, and I was a big fan back in the early 2000s. While I’m at it, I’m going to take advantage of the hotel’s invitations to see its facilities, and I’ll write a short article about them for the “Escapes” section. So we have the Mediterranean suite on the thirty-second floor, with stunning ocean and city views, all to ourselves.
Tristan and I are both telecommuting from here for the day…which essentially means we’ll be more or less tethered to our email in case there’s a fire to put out until cocktail hour.
Today is one of those memories that my father was telling me about: dormant rooms, every detail furnished by memory, the smells, the colors, the kind I wish I could stay and live in, good days, happy days. This doesn’t mean they’re not real, but they wouldn’t exist without balance. I’m thinking about my dad’s words when Tristan appears in the living room, his thick head of black hair mussed and his lips even fuller than usual, swollen by sleep.
“Hey…” He clears his throat, but his raspy voice still makes him sound like a bad boy. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“It’s early. It’s only eight thirty.”
“I have to be on the computer in half an hour.” He rubs his eyes. “Do we have time to get breakfast if I jump in the shower?”
“Probably not.” I shake my head very seriously. “You’re going to have to choose, although there are several combinations: shower and sex, shower and breakfast, sex and breakfast. You can’t have it all.”
He cracks up and spins on his heel to head to the bathroom. His tight little butt winks at me, encased in white boxers that make it…it’s crazy.
“Shower and breakfast, babe. This machine doesn’t work if you don’t give it fuel.”
We’ll see about that…
His back is pearled with drops of hot water when I sneak into the shower. A roar escapes from his throat when I kiss his spine and drape my arm around his waist; he lifts his face into the water falling over him, arching with pleasure… That pleasure you feel when you stretch or someone hugs you, not the kind I’m planning on him feeling in a few minutes. I press my breasts against his back, and my skin, cool from the hotel’s AC, warms against his. I can feel the heat of the water just how he likes it…scalding.
“Miri…what are you doing?” he plays along.
I could play the “fortune teller” with him and tell him that it’ll be fine, that the sex is going to be good, even if it’s a quickie, but I’d rather be more direct.
“Ah…” He gives a short moan when I grab his cock firmly.
“This. Looks like you were thinking about it too.”
“I’m always thinking about it. I’m just like you… I just hide it better.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh yeah? Try me.”
From the tone of his voice, I’d say he’s even hornier than I remember.
“What do you want me to try?”
He turns around before I even put the final question mark on the sentence and devours my lips; our tongues chase and find each other, but before the kiss goes on for too long, he slips his hand into my hair and drags me back, pulling away.
“No. Let me,” I beg when I realize he’s stopping me from leaning in to kiss him again.
“Put it in your mouth.”
His hand travels down a little, and…you don’t have to be a genius to figure out what he wants.
“You want a blow job?” I call him out.
“I want a blow job. The kind you like.”
“Oh yeah? You’re going to shove your cock in until I choke on it?”
His hand tugs the hair at the nape of my neck down again, this time a little more forcefully. I moan with pleasure.
Everyone has their vices. This is my vice: when he gets a little rough during sex. And when he obeys when I’m the one who wants to dominate.
I get on my knees and open my mouth. He keeps a firm grip on my wet hair. With his other hand, he pushes his erection toward the tongue that’s waiting for him hungrily and slides it back until it makes me gag. He wants to apologize. Deep down, he wants to, but he knows it would ruin the mood I love so much, so he withdraws slowly, enjoying every inch of my wet mouth…and starts thrusting again. I moan. Sometimes it seems wrong how much I love sucking his cock.
We rock back and forth like this for a few minutes, me alternating between my lips and my tongue, which I trail down his cock to tease him. I try to use my hands, but he pulls them away; when I grip the back of his thighs, I feel him get even harder in my mouth.
“You like that?” I ask when he pulls out after an intense thrust, scared he’s going to come already.
“I love fucking your mouth, Miranda, but now all I can think about is spreading your legs and licking you until they tremble.”
I’m stubborn. I like rough sex, but deep down, I love being the one in charge: deciding when we do something, when we stop doing it, and when we start doing something new. Even if that something new is pleasuring me. So I move my mouth closer until the tip brushes my lips, and then I devour it even more eagerly. He almost comes three times before I give in and let him carry me to the bedroom.
I leave a wet mark on the cover of the armchair where he puts me down, but I don’t care. When I put each leg over the armrests, the last thing I’m thinking about is whether it’ll dry before someone comes to clean the room or if they’ll suspect the reason the chair is damp. And even less when he kneels in front of me and buries his head between my thighs. I think he likes licking me almost as much as I like blowing him.
For a few minutes, the only sound is his tongue between my wet folds. That and my moans. He knows exactly what to do to get me close to coming and then leave me there, hanging in the air, in no-man’s-land, on the brink. He does something with his mouth… No one else has ever done it. He sucks and licks, and it even feels like he’s vibrating down there, attached to my clit.
“Fingers, Tristan…please…”
I’m not even fully aware of it, but I beg like a cat in heat because I need to feel him penetrate me with them.
He goes slowly at first, just one finger. A caress, a brief penetration that he does again and again and again before he picks up speed and stops pulling out, staying inside me and pumping rhythmically. I don’t know how he knows exactly when to put another finger in, but he does and…so much pleasure bursts inside me that my legs usually squeeze shut.
He pulls his mouth away and wipes it on the inside of my thigh; I’ve always liked that way of cleaning himself, intimately, on the way up to my mouth. We kiss like two crazy people, like we’re depraved, as his strokes slow down. His fingers move up and down until we hear a splash, and suddenly I can’t hear anymore because I’m lost, soaring toward the ceiling.
I’m close, so, so close, when he takes his fingers out and wraps both hands around my ankles, yanking me up. When he has me on the floor, he parts my legs and penetrates me hard. We both let out a roar. For a few minutes, we fuck like wild animals.
“Don’t stop…” I beg him, even though I know he won’t.
“Pounding you drives me crazy.”
We smile at each other wolfishly and speed up. Our skin doesn’t crash. It explodes against each other. And I writhe as my fingers grip his ass.
He pulls out suddenly, probably because he’s starting to feel that tingling in his back, that heat that makes him throb even harder. And he doesn’t want to. Not yet. So I take the chance to sit up, but before I can pounce on him, he throws me onto the mattress, on my stomach, and pulls my hips to the edge of the bed. In that position, I feel him everywhere, deep, strong, hard as a rock. In that position, sometimes the pleasure can make me lose control.
His hips thrust until he’s deep, so deep. He thrusts over and over without pulling out, as if he wants to stay inside forever.
“Harder…” I beg him.
“Wait, wait…” he pants, his chest pressing into my back and his lips on my neck. “If I keep going, I’m gonna come.”
“Come.”
“Wait.”
“Come inside me.”
My right hand gets lost stroking myself, and his grab the flesh on my hips so hard it almost hurts. Almost. The thrusting becomes feverish; it’s a pathway to pleasure that…well…never misses.
I know he’s close because I can feel him throbbing. Much more than I’ve noticed in any of these relived times. He wants to let go, but he doesn’t know if he should yet; he’s waiting for me.
My moans get louder when the tingling starts, and it acts as a starting gun to his instincts; he’s not stopping now. He’s not stopping…until I feel the explosion inside me. His orgasm and mine intertwine.
He groans…or more like roars, a few expletives. I think “fuck” and “ah,” but I’m gone, so it could’ve been half the list of the Gothic kings. How can I not be gone when he groans and thrusts that hard? Even though he’s moving to a different rhythm now, until there’s nothing left inside him and I’m completely filled.
I collapse onto the bed, my legs trembling and my clit on fire. He does the same on top of me and kisses my neck, my shoulder, and my back before he sits up again.
“Fuck…” he pants.
When he pulls out, I can see his semen leaving a trail from my thighs to the bed.
“They’re gonna have to burn these sheets,” I say when I see the stain we left.
“They can burn the whole room down if they want.”
I lie down next to him with a satisfied smile. It’s like a drunken torpor. The ecstasy of a saint that has come close to God. The happiness of a child surprised by candy.
“Even your eyelids are heavy.” I run my fingertip gently across his forehead until I get to his eyes.
This would be the perfect moment for an “I love you” or an “I can’t imagine life without you,” but it’s Tristan, and I’ve never even heard something like that come out of his mouth. But the smile he gives me feels the same.
“I’m going to take a shower…for real this time,” he says after he kisses me.
“I need one too.”
“And the people on the floor below, probably.”
I whack him on the arm, and he bursts into laughter.
When I sit up, Tristan holds me before I can get up.
“Hey…”
“What?”
“I love you.”
And I feel like my father was right; maybe revisiting your memories somehow lets you rewrite them.
We get to El Nacional at happy hour and perch on stools at the oyster and wine bar at the back. Despite our postcoital breakfast, we eat as if we’ve never experienced such delicious flavors in our lives. The oysters are soft, salty, and delicious. They’re like every bit of sea that trickles down your throat and leaves a tasty note in its wake. The sparkling wine bubbles tickle us gently as we chatter away. And we laugh as if it’s all hilarious, because we have our own language. Funny or not, we’re in love, and that’s what matters.
I know he wasn’t that hyped about this trip at first because he thought he’d have to follow me around everywhere like a fanboy and then go to a concert he had no interest in at all.
“But do it for me. I loved them when I was little,” I said to him at the time.
“Don’t you have some girlfriend who likes them too and who’ll jump at the offer?”
“My friends were more into NSYNC. They’re traitors.”
He reluctantly accepted, clearly, mostly because I laid on the emotional blackmail pretty thick. But back then, neither of us knew that this trip would become a sweet memory.
“Doesn’t seem so terrible now, does it?”
“I never said it seemed terrible.” He laughs, holding his glass with a little smile. “It’s just that…I didn’t think it was really my thing. It sounded more like a…girls’ night.”
“Just wait and see. You’re gonna have a blast at the concert.”
“If I’m gonna be watching four dudes in their fifties doing intense choreography, I probably will have a great time.”
“There’s five of them, and they’re mostly in their forties. Don’t be a snob. Age is just a number.”
He rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his drink.
“If it makes your inner child happy, let’s give her whatever she wants.”
“My inner child wants you to dance to ‘I’ll Never Break Your Heart’ or, even better, the Spanish version, ‘Nunca te haré llorar.’”
“For the love of God…” He covers his face with both hands. “So cheesy.”
“It was the end of the nineties…and I was really young… I still think it’s a banger.”
He dies laughing, leaning into me.
“I think this stuff makes me fall more in love with you.”
“What stuff?”
“Well…this stuff. How you can be cold, burning hot, or tender enough to admit that you still like a song you listened to when you were eleven all at once.”
“I was really in love with Brian, you have to understand.”
“I don’t even wanna know the age difference.”
“I had planned our wedding down the very last detail.”
“Nutjob.”
He kisses my forehead and my nose.
“This nutjob makes you nutty,” I say brazenly.
“Definitely. But I think I’m actually the nutjob. I’ve been crazy about you since the day I met you and…here we are. About to go to a Backstreet Boys concert. It will be a beautiful memory we’ll treasure for the rest of our lives.”
I know he’s being sarcastic, but I can’t help but think that this memory…we will actually treasure this memory. Until the day it starts to fade.
“Your face changed. What happened?” he asks. “Was I being a dick again without realizing?”
“No. It’s just that…my father… He told me that over time, memories can be rewritten.”
“That makes sense.” He turns on his stool again. “Do you want another oyster?”
“Do you think time can make memories grow more valuable but also less valuable?”
He raises his eyebrows, and his fingers strum the bar rhythmically. He moves his head, not really sure.
“Maybe it’s like…a coin when a country goes through inflation.”
“What?” I ask petulantly.
“Yeah, you know…like when prices keep going up and…so in the end, the coin loses value in a reflection of the loss of acquisitive power.”
“But what does that have to do with this?” It would piss me off that he was making these comparisons if I didn’t know this was his way of being romantic.
“Well, maybe the value of memories depends on…the availability of resources, which in this context would be the person you love and time with them. Is that what you mean?”
“Tristan…” I pout. “Do you really have to answer the question I just asked you in economic jargon?”
“I know a little something about the economy, eh…”
“Tristan!” I groan.
“Ay, babe…what I’m trying to say is that memories are probably only worth their weight in gold when they’re the only thing you have left of the person you lived through them with.”
“Or when they love each other a lot, right? Because time passes quickly…and people are scared of running out of it.”
“You’re a romantic.” He smiles. And he smiles nicely. “Yes. Probably. And that’s why, when I’m ninety and I’m very, very, very wrinkly, today’s concert will seem like a wonderful memory to me.”
“Because the only thing lovers should be afraid of is being left without time to love each other.”
Tristan looks at me slightly condescendingly. I know he doesn’t feel the same way, that his romanticism only stretches to much more practical matters.
“What? Are you making fun of me?” I ask him, unbothered.
He furrows his brow but keeps his smile.
“No. Of course not. I was just thinking that…I wish you had designed the world, because you would’ve made it beautiful.”
I don’t know if the world would’ve been beautiful in my hands when it was just a ball of clay waiting to be transformed, but I do know that, hours later, this man gives the girl I was what I was so afraid I would never live again.
It’s not during “I’ll Never Break Your Heart,” and it happens in the solitude of a half-lit hallway, while we’re on the way back from the bathroom. I’m running ahead of him, hustling because I don’t want to miss anything, when the first chords of “As Long as You Love Me” ring out. The Palau Sant Jordi is shaking with the audience’s applause. And Tristan pulls me back.
“I’m missing it! And I love this song!” I complain, red from the beers we drank earlier and nostalgia and excitement and love and heat and…
Then I understand that he just wants to dance where nobody can see us. He wants to slow dance to a song that doesn’t seem like it would work for a slow dance. Maybe I’m about to tell him we shouldn’t be ridiculous, but here, in the dwindling light of a deserted hallway, my inner child shoves me aside, takes over, and hangs from his neck. She laughs like a bell, happy to have found a love like they talk about in songs.
She, the girl, dances excitedly with the hot boy from the story while I think about the lyrics from the song. No, I don’t care who he is…or where he’s from or what he did… I don’t care, as long as he loves me.
And now that I know he’s going to stop one day…I should abandon the refuge of these happy memories. Stop clinging to them. Especially because 2020 is waiting in ambush around the corner. And we all know what that means for us. Although, maybe this time, we can take it in stride.