Bea and Diego Spend Their First Night Together in Santander

Bea and Diego’s first night together in Santander begins with a kiss on the roadside and becomes a secret encounter that brings desire, laughter, and an abrupt decision to part from the experience without pursuing it again. Recalled later by Bea, the night matters not as a promise of a relationship but as a moment when attraction becomes unmistakably mutual—and when both recognize the complications that make secrecy seem necessary.

From the Roadside to Santander

The immediate turning point comes in a car pulled onto the roadside. Diego switches off the engine and kisses Bea: a long, warm kiss that, in her account, quiets a thirst and seems to undo the meaning of the kisses she has received over the preceding two years. Its effect is physical before it is settled into any explanation. Bea loses her sense of where she is, and when Diego kisses her again, the contact both satisfies and intensifies her desire.

That second kiss leads Bea to suggest going to Santander. The change of destination turns an unplanned pause into a choice to continue together. The encounter’s beginning is therefore not a formal declaration or a negotiated relationship, but a sequence of bodily responses followed by a direct decision to leave the roadside and go elsewhere. The later recollection gives the journey its significance: the night they reach in Santander will be intimate, but it will also remain bounded by an agreement not to make it into a continuing affair.

The Night in the Suite

In Santander, the pair are together in a luxurious hotel suite. Bea’s later account emphasizes how unusually at ease she feels with Diego. She describes their first sexual encounter as both unfamiliar and strangely familiar: their rhythms and desire seem to match, even as his skin, embraces, and movements are new to her. The comparison she reaches for is a first visit to New York after seeing it repeatedly in films—recognition without prior experience, followed by the force of encountering the real thing. In her telling, Diego surpasses even that comparison.

The night is not described as a single, solemn consummation. Bea remembers three sexual encounters, laughter, and the happiness of desire fulfilled. The recollection holds those details together: intensity does not exclude playfulness, and the novelty of being with Diego coexists with an ease she says she has not expected. Afterward, she comes out of the suite’s luxurious bathroom wearing only her underwear. Being able to appear so exposed after sex feels, to her, like a rare feat; with Diego, she feels comfortable rather than self-conscious.

An Intimacy Interrupted

The encounter continues into another scene of physical intimacy, then breaks when a familiar voice comes from the television. Bea recognizes it and is startled out of the moment. The interruption brings the outside world into a private room, but it also gives Diego an opportunity to make clear where his attention lies. He takes the remote control from beneath his back and switches off the television, theatrically aiming it at the screen as if firing a revolver.

For Bea, this small gesture changes the emotional charge of the scene. She understands it as Diego choosing to silence the TV News Presenter, and her desire sharpens into what she identifies as love. The moment is strikingly disproportionate in scale: a remote control and a dark screen, rather than a grand declaration, become the immediate occasion for that feeling. The narrative ties her response to the specific act of turning the television off, making the gesture part of the night’s intimacy rather than a separate public statement about their future.

Secrecy and the Decision to Stop

Later, Bea explains why she intends to deny what happened. She and Diego had agreed that the hotel night would remain between them and that they would tell no one. Diego did not want his in-laws to learn that he had become involved with the architect living practically in their garden; his wife, Diana, had been dead only two years, a period Bea recognizes may still be too short for those around him. Bea also has her own reasons for silence. She had promised Ingrid that she would not sleep with a client, and she does not want her family to discover that she ended up in bed with Diego after speaking against him.

The secrecy is reinforced by a second agreement: one night is enough, and what happened is not to happen again. Bea acknowledges that the encounter was extraordinary, but the pair do not treat its intensity as permission to disregard its consequences. Their private formula for the night keeps Santander separate from the life they must return to. The agreement does not erase what Bea felt; rather, it gives the event its defining tension. The encounter brings her closer to Diego while obliging both of them to present it as something that will not continue.