The Birthday Gift I Tried Out in Front of My Friends

There are five women in my group, and we all share the same curiosity about sex, with no hang-ups or shame. We talk about everything when we get together: men, what we like, what we’ve never dared to do. Last year, between laughter and a couple too many drinks, we came up with an idea: to give each other sex toys for our birthdays. I was going to be the first to start the tradition, because my birthday came before the others’.

That day I woke up to my phone vibrating nonstop. Messages from all over, birthday wishes from people who hadn’t written to me in months, and, above all, the usual chaos in the group chat: voice messages, old photos, plans changing every five minutes. They had organized a dinner to celebrate, and I spent the morning feeling nervous, answering calls and eating cake with my family, unable to get that damn tradition we’d promised to keep out of my head.

That afternoon I stayed in the shower longer than necessary. I shaved, put on lotion, and dried my hair slowly. I chose a black dress that clung exactly where I wanted it to and did my makeup carefully, looking at myself in the mirror for longer than I would admit to anyone. By eight, I was already at our usual bar, the one we’d been going to since we were twenty and where the bartender already knew our names.

“The birthday girl has finally arrived!” Lucía shouted as soon as I walked through the door, and the others all turned at once.

We spent a couple of hours having drinks, picking at everything they ordered, and laughing about things only we understood. At one point, the four of them stood up without warning and sang “Happy Birthday” to me at the top of their lungs in front of the entire bar. I wanted to crawl under the table from embarrassment, but I laughed so hard that I burst into tears.

“This is nothing,” Marta warned me with a crooked smile. “The good part comes at home.”

We had arranged dinner at Carla’s place, since she had the biggest apartment and was the best cook. The five of us walked there, bundled up against the dry night air and the half-empty streets. Along the way they kept dropping hints about the gift, the promise, and what I would have to tell them afterward. I pretended not to understand, but inside I was beginning to feel a tingling that wasn’t just from the wine.

When we went inside, I was left speechless. Carla had set the table like something out of a magazine: a cloth tablecloth, candles, the good glasses, and a string of lights hanging from the bookcase. This woman has really gone overboard, I thought, and my throat tightened with sheer emotion.

“Don’t say anything,” she cut me off before I could open my mouth. “Sit down and enjoy yourself—that’s what tonight is for.”

We had dinner amid laughter, reminiscing about parties from years ago, trips that had gone wrong, and one-night stands that had ended up becoming anecdotes we’d tell for the rest of our lives. Nuria told the story of the guy from Lisbon for the umpteenth time, and we kept interrupting her to correct the details she exaggerated. I had completely forgotten about the gifts until Lucía tapped her glass with a fork.

“A solemn moment,” she announced. “Tradition number one. Someone give her the bag.”

Carla disappeared for a second and came back with a shiny paper bag. Inside was a box wrapped with a ribbon. I took it out carefully, feeling four pairs of eyes fixed on my hands, and tore the paper open slowly just to make them suffer a little.

It was a clitoral suction vibrator. A good one, too—the kind that appeared in all the advertisements. I turned bright red, and they all burst out laughing.

“A promise is a promise,” Marta said, pointing at me. “You have to tell us how it works.”

“Every last detail,” Nuria added.

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you,” I replied, putting the box back in the bag, still unable to imagine how far the night was going to go.

***

The hours and the bottles kept passing. At some point we left the table and spread out around the living room: two on the sofa, one in the armchair, another on the floor among some cushions. The music played softly, the candles were still lit, and the atmosphere had become intimate, the kind where people say things no one repeats the next day.

“Hey,” Lucía suddenly said, her eyes bright from the wine. “What if we tried it now?”

“Tried what?” I asked, although I knew perfectly well what she meant.

“The gift. I want to see how it really works, not in an advertisement.”

Carla laughed and nudged her arm, but she didn’t contradict her. Marta sat up straighter on the sofa, one eyebrow raised, while Nuria, from the cushions, smiled like a child with a secret.

“Come on, it’s your night,” Lucía insisted. “Use it in front of us. There’s no one else here, anyway.”

I stayed silent for a couple of seconds. Normally I would have laughed and changed the subject, but the drinks I’d had had silenced the cautious voice that usually held me back. I felt heat rising up my neck, my heart racing, and a strange mixture of embarrassment and arousal that surprised even me.

“All right,” I said, and my own voice sounded unfamiliar.

The living room fell silent for a moment, as if none of them could believe I had agreed. Then nervous laughter broke out, along with a flurry of cushions as they settled themselves.

“Sit on the floor, in front of the sofa,” I asked, trying not to let my voice tremble. “And don’t laugh, or you’ll throw me off.”

The four of them obeyed as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They sat in a semicircle on the rug, looking up at me with their glasses in their hands. I stood in the middle of the living room, all those eyes on me, and reached for the straps of my dress.

I let it fall slowly. The black fabric slipped to the floor, leaving me in my underwear in front of them, wearing a lace set that luckily I had put on that morning without any ulterior motive. No one said anything. I only heard Nuria swallow.

I sat on the sofa, opened my legs just enough to give them a good view, and took the suction vibrator out of its box. My fingers trembled slightly as I searched for the button. When I switched it on, it gave off the deep, gentle hum I felt vibrating in the palm of my hand.

“My God,” Marta murmured.

I began running it over my body without hurrying, almost to draw out the moment. Over my neck, my collarbone, above the lace. I could feel myself warming up, not so much because of the toy as because of four pairs of eyes following every movement. I slowly lowered it toward my belly, and when I reached my crotch, I realized my thong was in the way.

Before I could take it off, Carla got up on her knees and moved closer to the sofa.

“Here, let me help,” she said softly.

She carefully pulled my thong down, sliding it over my legs, and before returning to her place she leaned in and gave me a soft kiss right there, between my thighs. It was barely a brush of her lips, but it brought a smile to my face that I couldn’t hide. She sat back down on the rug as if nothing had happened, biting her lip.

***

I pressed the suction vibrator directly against my clitoris, at the lowest setting. The first wave swept through my entire body, and a sigh escaped me. I began to feel myself growing wetter as I increased the intensity, one level at a time, and little by little I forgot where I was and who was watching me.

I turned it up another notch. Then another. With my free hand I unclasped my bra and squeezed one breast, playing with the nipple while the buzzing grew stronger between my legs. The moans began coming out on their own, restrained at first, then completely unfiltered. I tilted my head back against the sofa and closed my eyes.

There was no living room, no friends, no candles in my head anymore. I was alone in my bedroom, surrendering to that rhythmic suction that drew pleasure upward through me without letting me breathe. I bit my lip, arched my back, and increased the intensity again because my body wanted nothing but more. The sound of my own breathing filled my ears.

“Don’t stop,” I heard someone say, very far away.

I had no intention of stopping. I stayed that way for quite a while, feeling the tension gather at a single point that grew and grew until it became unbearably good. And then I came. I came harder than I had in a long time, with a tremor running down my legs and leaving my knees weak, clutching the cushion with my free hand and my mouth open without hardly a sound escaping.

It took me a while to come back down. I left the suction vibrator switched off on the sofa, my chest rising and falling, and slowly opened my eyes, still halfway between pleasure and reality.

What I saw finally brought me fully back.

The four of them were still on the floor, exactly where I had left them, but they weren’t just watching anymore. Lucía’s skirt was hiked up and her hand was between her thighs. Marta had undone her jeans. Nuria, her eyes closed, was stroking herself over her underwear, while Carla—the one who had taken off my thong—stared fixedly at me as she touched herself openly, biting her lip just as she had before.

None of them had been able to hold back. They had come, or were about to, all at once, watching me try out the gift they themselves had bought me.

I was left speechless, still panting, feeling my heart begin to race again for an entirely different reason. Carla was the first to smile.

“Well,” she said in a hoarse voice, “I think we know how it works now.”

And we all laughed, this time in a different way, knowing that our tradition had just turned into something far more interesting than we had planned. There were four more birthdays to celebrate. And I was already looking forward to the next one.