El Coño de Teresa

Teresa sat on the edge of the pool, her toes barely breaking the water’s surface, and I knew. We both knew. Me and Timmy had been friends since we were seven, stealing mangoes from Señora Ruiz’s yard, and we’d learned to read each other without words. He looked at me across the patio, the cigarette burning down to his fingers, and he gave me that nod. The one that said, *Yeah, brother. You see it too.*

She wasn’t beautiful. Not in the way the magazines said. Her nose was too wide, her teeth a little crooked, and her laugh came out like a donkey’s bray when she really let go. But there was something about the way she moved. The way her hips settled into the plastic chair like they owned it. The way her voice dropped an octave when she got tired, got low and smoky, like she was telling secrets to the dark.

We’d known her for three years. She worked at the bodega on Calle 12, counting change with her long fingers, her nails always painted some shade of red that chipped off by Wednesday. We’d watched her from the curb, drinking beer, pretending we weren’t watching. But that night, the night of the pool party at Miguel’s house, something shifted.

She wore a yellow sundress. Cheap cotton. The straps kept falling off her shoulders. Every time she pushed one back up, Timmy would suck air through his teeth. I wanted to tell him to stop, but my own throat was dry.

“You think she knows?” he asked me, his voice low.

“Knows what?”

“Don’t be stupid, Jack.”

I wasn’t stupid. I knew exactly what he meant. We’d been with women before. Plenty of them. The barrio had a way of making you grow up fast, and by eighteen we’d both learned that bodies were just bodies. You took what you could get. You moved on. But Teresa was different. Teresa was the kind of woman who made you forget there were other women.

She stood up and walked to the cooler. The dress rode up the back of her thighs, and I saw the pale skin there, the soft curve where her leg met her ass. Timmy dropped his cigarette. It sizzled in a puddle of beer.

“I’m telling you, Jack,” he said. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

“Like what?”

“You know what.”

I did know. We’d talked about it once, drunk at three in the morning, sitting on the hood of his father’s Impala. He’d said it first, and I’d laughed, but then I’d stopped laughing because it was true. Teresa had the tightest, most perfect body we’d ever known. Not just tight. There was a heat to her, a grip that stayed with you for days after. You’d be walking down the street and your mind would drift back to her, and you’d have to stop and lean against a wall until it passed.

“It’s not just the sex,” Timmy said. “It’s the way she looks at you. Like she sees through you. Like she knows exactly what you want and she’s deciding if you deserve it.”

I watched her pull a beer from the cooler. She cracked it open, tilted her head back, and drank. Her throat moved. A bead of condensation ran down the bottle and dripped onto her chest. She wiped it with the back of her hand, casual, like she didn’t know we were staring.

But she knew. Women always know.

“I tried to forget her,” I said. “Last month I went with that girl from the bakery. Rosario. Remember?”

Timmy nodded.

“It was fine. She was fine. But I closed my eyes and all I could think about was Teresa. The way she feels. The way she moves. I couldn’t finish. I had to pretend I was sick and leave.”

Timmy laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. It was the sound of a man who understood exactly what I meant.

“Same,” he said. “I went to San Juan last weekend. Found a woman in a bar. Beautiful. Long hair, perfect skin. I paid her, Jack. I paid her to let me pretend she was someone else.”

The confession hung between us. We’d never said it out loud before. We’d danced around it, made jokes, let the silence do the talking. But now it was out there, real and ugly, and neither of us knew what to do with it.

Teresa walked back to the pool. She sat down again, this time closer to us. Close enough that I could smell her perfume. Something floral and cheap, the kind you buy at the pharmacy for three dollars. But on her skin it smelled like honey. Like summer. Like everything you ever wanted and couldn’t have.

She looked at us. Both of us. Her eyes moved from Timmy to me, and she smiled. It was a small smile, barely there, but it said everything.

*I know.*

*I know what you think about.*

*I know what you want.*

And the worst part was, she didn’t care. She didn’t care that we were both in love with her, both ruined by her, both unable to look at another woman without comparing her to Teresa and finding her lacking. She just sat there, sipping her beer, her toes in the water, and let us burn.

“We should stop,” I said.

“Stop what?”

“This. Watching her. Thinking about her. It’s not healthy.”

Timmy turned to me. His eyes were red. He looked older than nineteen. He looked like a man who had already lost something he couldn’t name.

“I can’t stop,” he said. “Can you?”

I opened my mouth to lie. But the lie wouldn’t come.

Teresa stood up. She walked toward us, her sandals slapping against the wet concrete. She stopped right in front of me, close enough that I could see the tiny scar above her eyebrow, the one she got when she was ten, falling off a bicycle.

“You boys look thirsty,” she said. “Want another beer?”

Her voice was soft. Almost kind. But there was a challenge in it. A dare.

Timmy looked at me. I looked at him.

And neither of us said no.