Three Minutes in the Dark novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: Sunscreen
Natalia insisted so much that Keila come with us that I stopped arguing.
"She's my best friend, Camilo, and she hasn't had a vacation in a year."
I wanted a week alone with my girlfriend, but three years together had taught me when to keep my mouth shut.
So on December twentieth, the three of us arrived in Palomino, the car stuffed with suitcases and sand even in our teeth.
The cabin was called Los Almendros, and it was ten steps from the sea.
It had two bedrooms, a wooden terrace, a hammock, and an outdoor shower behind a palm curtain.
The owner handed us the keys and a warning.
"The power goes out at eleven, every night. Three minutes. Keep candles handy."
Natalia was already looking at her phone.
"There's no signal here," she said, annoyed. "I'm going to have to walk up to the road to call my mom."
I carried the bags into the big room.
Keila stayed in the small one, and I heard her laugh to herself as she unpacked.
Fifteen minutes later, she came out to the terrace.
She was wearing a white shirt, open, and underneath only a black thong, so small it covered nothing.
She bent over in front of me to pick up a towel from the floor.
I kept my eyes fixed on the ocean, very carefully.
"How do I look?" she asked without looking at me.
"You're in your friend's cabin," I said. "And on her boyfriend's terrace."
She laughed with her mouth closed, low, like someone keeping a secret.
"Nice answer, Cami."
Natalia came out behind her, phone pressed to her ear, eyes somewhere else.
"Babe, put sunscreen on Keli's back, please. She burns in a second."
She said it without looking at us, and kept talking to whoever was on the other end.
Keila lay face down on the lounge chair and unclasped her bikini top.
"It's all yours, Cami," she said, face in the towel. "But be careful."
I opened the bottle, and the smell of coconut filled my nose.
I put the cream on her shoulders first.
Her skin was warm and smooth, with tiny freckles along her spine.
I moved my hands slowly down her back.
She let out a breath as if she'd been waiting all day for that moment.
"Lower," she murmured.
"The sun doesn't reach there."
"You don't know where the sun reaches me."
My thumbs reached the elastic of her thong, and I stopped there.
Keila turned her head and looked at me sideways, with just one eye.
"I told you it was all yours."
I pulled my hands away and closed the bottle.
Natalia walked past behind us, still turned away, laughing at something someone was saying on the phone.
"My two cuties," she said without looking back.
I wiped my hands on my shorts and sat far from the lounge chair.
My pants were tight, and Keila knew it.
That night we had dinner on the terrace, by the light of thick candles the owner had left on the table.
Fried fish, coconut rice, and patacones.
Natalia ate with one hand and checked her phone with the other.
At ten fifty, she stood up suddenly.
"I'm going up to find signal. Tonight I need to talk to my mom for a while."
"I'll go with you," I said.
"No, no, stay. The path is dark and you need to finish your beer."
She gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and walked off down the trail with the flashlight.
The light faded between the palm trees until it disappeared.
Keila and I were alone, with the candles and the sound of the sea.
She had put on a short dress of thin fabric, with nothing underneath.
I noticed when she sat across from me and crossed her legs.
"Your girlfriend talks to her mom a lot," she said.
"They love each other."
"Yeah. They love each other a lot."
She said it staring straight at me, and I didn't understand why she said it like that.
Then it struck eleven, and everything went dark.
Not a light remained on the beach, or in the cabin, or in the cloudy sky.
Someone had blown out the candles, or the wind had.
I heard a chair move and the wood creak.
"Keila," I said in a low voice.
"Three minutes, Cami."
Her bare foot slid up my calf, slowly, to my knee.
Then her hand came, and she grabbed my thigh under the table.
"Stop," I whispered, with no strength at all.
"Tell me to stop for real and I'll stop."
I said nothing.
Her fingers climbed to the edge of my shorts and stroked me over the fabric.
I was already hard, and she felt it.
"Look at you," she said with a little laugh.
She pulled the waistband down with two fingers and took my cock out.
She gripped it fully in her warm hand, and squeezed.
A sound escaped me that I'd never made with Natalia.
"Shhh," she said. "The sea can be heard, but you can't."
She started stroking me slowly, from base to tip, her thumb brushing the head every time.
She was wet from the coconut cream, or from something else, and her hand slid easily.
I gripped the edge of the table with both hands.
My girlfriend was two hundred meters away, talking to her mom, and I was about to come with her best friend on her terrace.
"Faster," I said. I don't know why I said it.
Keila sped up, and my breathing turned into noise.
"That's it. Like that. I want you to finish me in your hand."
I closed my eyes and came between her fingers, silently, my body rigid from holding back so much.
She kept going for another second, milking me dry.
Then I heard the click of the light, and everything came back.
The ceiling bulbs blinded me.
Keila was sitting in her chair again, legs crossed, a glass of water in her hand.
My shorts were back in place, though I don't remember pulling them up.
She raised her right hand, still glistening, and sucked her thumb while looking me in the eye.
Natalia's flashlight was coming down the path, bouncing between the palm trees.
"What's with those faces?" my girlfriend asked when she reached the terrace. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Keila smiled with all the calm in the world.
"Cami was telling me about the blackout. We got a little scared."
Natalia laughed, gave each of us a kiss on the cheek, and went to bed.
Keila waited until the bedroom door closed.
"Tomorrow at eleven," she whispered, "you'll have to last longer than three minutes."
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