What the Waitress Gave Me for My Birthday

The toasts and laughter were still buzzing in my ears, the echoes of the “Happy Birthday” they had sung to me, turning our table into the center of attention in the restaurant. In the end, I had managed to convince almost everyone. A couple of guys from the warehouse, whom I’m not as close to, slipped away with one excuse or another, but Dani and Quique were still there, along with the three from the office: Charo, who acts a little like the mother of the whole company, and Noelia, the gray-eyed one who never looks at me the way I’d like her to.

Andrés, the boss, was missing; he wasn’t going to show up at the warehouse all day. In a rare display of generosity, he had granted us fifteen minutes of leeway before we went back to the afternoon shift. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that it was the same old daily-menu restaurant, that the topics of conversation were the same as always, or that in the end Charo and I had to finish the bottle of cheap cava because the other three had opted for a digestif of suspicious origin.

It didn’t matter, because what was important was celebrating somehow, even if it only meant treating my coworkers to the everyday set menu. The date deserved the extravagance, and at the end of the month the cobwebs in my bank account would take care of reminding me of it.

The bathroom in that restaurant, at the end of the lunch shift, was like the roundabout leading into the industrial estate during rush hour: a permanent traffic jam. And the fact that it was my birthday didn’t grant me any privileged lane. So, after paying, I found myself at the very back of the line. Just as one of my coworkers came out and I was about to go in, she appeared in the hallway once again.

We all called her Tina, although that isn’t her name. It’s the diminutive of something she detests and has never confessed, which has all of us imagining Faustinas, Celestinas, Albertinas, and other impossible creatures. So she stuck with that nickname which, let’s admit it, is a little too grand for her. Thin, tall, with lovely hazel eyes that nevertheless looked tired. Although she’s been here for a decade now, every so often an austral accent still slips out, giving away her origins on the other side of the ocean.

Tina, one more presence in the routine of my noontimes. As much a part of the scenery as the menu chalkboard or the stopped clock on the wall.

—Sorry, do you have to go in and clean or something? —I said when I saw her reach the restroom door.

—No, no —she replied.

—Can I go in, then?

—Yes, of course, go ahead —she invited me with the hint of a smile.

I went in without suspecting a thing. I didn’t expect her to slip in behind me and lock the door.

—What are you doing? You can’t… —I began, bewildered.

—Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you don’t tell a woman what she can or can’t do? —she shot back with a confidence I’d never known in her, while advancing toward me.

Perhaps intimidated, I had been backing away until my back struck the closed door of one of the stalls.

—But… —I stammered.

What the hell was happening?

Tina shushed me as her hands began struggling with the fastening of my pants. I had no choice but to let her do it. I lowered my gaze to watch her fingers deal first with my belt and then with the button. I raised my eyes to meet hers, challenging me. I let out a breath toward the ceiling when, in three clean movements, she tugged down my clothes and underwear until they were bunched around my knees, my cock already poking out, half-hard, into the cold air of the bathroom.

—Well, look at you, office boy —she said as she squatted down and the tips of her fingers began brushing my skin—. Who would’ve thought you were hiding this under those pleated trousers?

I opened my eyes wide and bent my neck again to make sure it was real. Her right hand held my shaft gently, barely a warm ring of fingers around the base, and began moving slowly, very slowly, up to the glans and back down to my balls, rousing from far too long a sleep a part of me that had been dormant for months. Her long brown hair, slightly untidy, was tied up as it was every day in a double bun on top of her head. I couldn’t see much else; her profile blocked almost everything. But I could feel her. Oh, could I feel her.

I felt her hand traveling up and down with increasing resolve, the hardness taking hold of me until my cock was tense and throbbing, the heat rising from I didn’t know where in that perpetually cold cubicle, and the sharp dampness of her tongue tracing my tip with calculated slowness, drawing circles around the crown, pausing for one eternal second at the frenulum, then moving down the shaft to lick my balls with the flat of her tongue before deciding to go further.

—You’ve got such a tasty one —she murmured without taking her lips quite off my skin, her voice husky—. So thick, so hard for me.

And at once her lips, small, thin, and surprisingly efficient, opened to swallow me whole, then closed around my cock and sucked with a rhythm of her own that kept climbing, step by step, with each movement of her head. I felt the tip brush the back of her throat, and how, instead of pulling away, she pushed an inch farther, swallowing with her eyes closed. She no longer needed to hold me with her hand: my cock had grown enough to form a right angle between my body and her mouth. Each time Tina allowed herself a breath and freed me from the warm, wet shelter of her palate, a thick strand of saliva hung from her lower lip to the tip of my glans. She used her fingers for a moment to guide me back, returning me to the horizontal position and the practiced skill of her lips, then swallowed me whole again in a single thrust.

Overcome, spent, I threw my head back until the nape of my neck struck the stall door, not knowing what to do with my hands, which hung uselessly at my sides. Outside, in the hallway, I could hear the dining room emptying, chairs scraping, a distant radio. Anyone could try the handle at any moment. Not now, please, not now. And yet that threat, far from stopping me, drove me even closer to the edge. The wet sounds of her mouth sucking my cock were, in the silence of the cubicle, more obscene than any moan: a constant, slobbering slurp, broken by the little grunts of pleasure that escaped her whenever she swallowed me all the way down.

With her arms wrapped around my bare thighs, turning them into the sturdy pillars they weren’t, she continued unfazed. I didn’t dare ask her anything, stop her, or say her name. My hands eventually settled on her head almost of their own accord. Her tacit permission, a slight movement that wasn’t rejection, invited me to slide them down to her nape and accompany the tireless rocking of her neck, pushing her a little farther each time, guiding her so she would take my cock right down to the root.

—That’s it, office boy —she panted when, for a second, she pulled me from her mouth to spit a mouthful of saliva onto my glans and keep jerking me with her wet hand—. Fuck my mouth. Fuck my throat like it’s a cunt.

I obeyed. I closed my fingers around her bun and pushed, not too hard, just enough to feel her tongue flatten against the underside of my shaft and her throat yield obediently to the pressure. She didn’t even protest. She clung to my thighs more tightly, digging in her fingers, and let me use her. Every thrust tore a spasm from the base of my spine and a guttural sound from her that vibrated along my cock and made me clench my teeth to keep from shouting.

One of her hands then ventured down my leg. I felt her caresses, the occasional brush of her nails, the path along the inside of my thigh, across my groin, until her palm enclosed my balls. She kneaded them. She squeezed my balls or stroked them without any set pattern, playing, gauging my reactions by the way my breathing caught. With her middle finger she ventured one step farther, farther back, and brushed my perineum with gentle, precise pressure that drew a surprised moan from me. And between the work of her fingers, the tongue that traced my glans whenever she pulled me from her mouth, and the tireless work of her lips pressed tight against my shaft, she was pushing me inexorably toward the end.

—I’m going to come —I stammered, without her changing a thing.

If anything, her movements grew firmer, more determined, as if my warning were an invitation rather than a warning. She sped up the rocking of her head, tightened her lips, and began making a deep, rhythmic suction as she pulled back, as if she wanted to draw my orgasm out in gulps.

—I can’t hold it… Tina —I had to repeat, and saying her nickname suddenly made me aware of the place, the company, the madness we were committing barely a yard from my coworkers.

I didn’t know what to imagine, because for the past couple of minutes everything had far exceeded my ability to imagine it. At my new warning, perhaps sensing from the fluttering of her tongue against my frenulum that the end was near, she gripped me firmly at the base of my cock again and guided me, without taking me from her mouth for even an instant. She closed her eyes, buried her face against my pubis, and looked up at me with dilated pupils, waiting.

Four or five more movements of her neck, barely ten seconds, were enough for the announced orgasm to arrive. I exploded in bursts separated by endless seconds, sending the first jet of semen against the back of her throat with such force that I felt her choke for a moment before she quickly regained her rhythm. I came the second spurt onto her tongue, and she held it there for a second before swallowing it with a wet gurgle. Then there was a third, and a fourth, each less violent, each longer, which Tina milked out of me with her hand traveling along the shaft from base to glans as though squeezing out the last drop. I rested my hands on her head while my hips moved on their own, fucking her mouth in small, uncontrolled thrusts, following the contractions that shook me from my kidneys. A thread of semen mixed with saliva escaped the corner of her mouth and ran down to her chin.

***

For several seconds I couldn’t form a word. I stayed propped against the door, breathing unevenly, my cock still hard and gleaming with saliva as it hung in the air, my gaze lost on the white ceiling light fixture, while she stood up with a calmness that contrasted with the chaos inside me. She ran her thumb over the corner of her mouth, gathered the rest of my come that remained on her chin, and sucked it off without taking her eyes from me. She went over to the sink, turned on the faucet, and rinsed her mouth with astonishing naturalness, as if she had just cleared away a plate.

—But why? —I wanted to know when I could finally speak again.

—I heard it was your birthday —she said simply, shrugging as she dried the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand—. Someone needed to suck you off properly, office boy. It’s been written all over your face for months.

—…

My only response was a hiccupping attempt at laughter that quickly turned into a grateful smile. I couldn’t get the words out. I had spent years crossing paths with her almost every day, exchanging orders and exact change, and suddenly I discovered that behind that gray presence was someone capable of sucking me off with such devotion, swallowing my semen without blinking, leaving my cock trembling against my thigh like a teenager’s. Something I hadn’t expected, hadn’t asked for, and suspected would never happen again.

—Just a little something —she added, playing it down, like someone explaining why they had put a couple of extra olives in the appetizer.

—Compliments of the house? —I joked, my pulse still racing.

A drop of the water she had rinsed with escaped along the shy smile playing on her lips. I followed its path in the mirror, and my gaze was lost at the lower edge of the reflection, precisely where her fingers were still bestowing one last distracted caress along my limp, satisfied cock. I slowly pulled up my underwear and trousers, still unable to believe it, while she rearranged her bun and instantly recovered her usual expression, that of the anonymous waitress anyone forgets as soon as she turns her back.

—Thank you —I managed to say, and no word so short had ever weighed so heavily in my mouth.

—Many happy returns —she replied.

She slid back the bolt, peeked into the hallway to make sure no one was there, and went out first. I waited a few prudent seconds, just long enough to compose my face and check that there was no trace of her left on my shirt, then returned to the dining room as though nothing had happened. Charo was waiting for me with the bill and a look that suspected nothing.

—We thought you’d fallen in —she said, laughing.

—Long line —I replied, surprised by how steady my voice sounded.

On the way back to the warehouse, with an afternoon of work ahead of me and the bitter taste of cava still on my palate, I couldn’t stop thinking about Tina, her austral accent, that real name she would never confess, and the precise way her lips had closed around my cock as though she had been practicing for years. I went back to that industrial-estate restaurant many more noons. I ordered the set menu, left the exact change, and thanked her. And never, not once, did either of us make the slightest gesture to show we remembered what had happened behind the bolt on that birthday. As if it had been a dream. As if, after all, it had only been a little something.