My Best Friend Asked Me for a Kiss on New Year’s Eve

Camila and Renata met in classroom 4B at school, back when they still wore skirts down to the knee and shared the earphones of a Walkman during recess. Twenty-two years later, one lived in Sydney and the other in Madrid, but they still took turns traveling to each other’s homes every southern summer. For Renata, escaping the European winter in December had become a sacred ritual.

Camila had just turned thirty-four. Renata was thirty-three. Neither of them had children, both took care of themselves devotedly, and both, when they looked in the mirror, still liked what they saw. In October, Camila had dressed up as Catwoman for a Halloween party in Bondi and posted the photos on Instagram. Renata had saved them in a private folder on her phone. She hadn’t told anyone, not even herself, really.

Camila’s features were reminiscent of a young Monica Bellucci: long black hair, deep eyes, a wide mouth that smiled crookedly. Renata, on the other hand, was constantly told she looked like an English independent-film actress, the one with high cheekbones and a melancholy air. A waitress in Barcelona had once asked her for an autograph, convinced she recognized her.

What brought them together at school was eighties music. Camila listened to New Order until she wore out her cassettes; Renata knew every groove of Depeche Mode by heart. One was obsessed with Madonna; the other defended David Bowie as if he were family. In adult life, the catalog expanded: travel, wine, small restaurants where the waiter called you by name, and well-shaved men who looked at them in airports.

Renata had always seen Camila as a goddess. Charisma, presence, that way of walking into a bar and making three tables turn their heads at once. Camila, meanwhile, said Renata was the smart one, the sharp wit, the one who ended every argument with a line that left the other person with nothing to say back. Both had had long-term partners. Both had been single for more than a year and were starting to suspect that this wasn’t a drama at all.

***

They had prepared the New Year’s Eve dinner together in Camila’s apartment kitchen, facing the harbor. Fresh pasta, garlic prawns, too much sauce, too much bread. On the table, two empty bottles of white wine and a third one opened. The balcony faced north, and in the distance the lights of the boats rocked against the violet sky of the southern summer.

—Another glass —Camila said, and poured it without waiting for an answer.

—You’re going to kill me.

—It’s New Year’s Eve, woman. Don’t be boring.

Renata smiled. She was barefoot, wearing a white cotton dress that clung to her back from the heat. Camila wore tiny shorts and a sleeveless top. Every time she leaned over to pour, Renata looked down and then back up, like a girl who thought no one had noticed.

At midnight they went up to the building rooftop with the bottle and two glasses. The fireworks over the bridge lasted almost fifteen minutes. Renata shouted like a teenager. Camila, beside her, wrapped an arm around her waist and pressed her against her hip. They said nothing. There was no need.

When they went back down to the apartment, they collapsed on the sofa laughing, mascara smudged and hair stuck to their temples with sweat. Music was still playing softly: an old record Camila had put on before dinner.

—Ask me for something —Renata said, setting her glass on the rug.

—Anything?

—Anything.

Camila was quiet for a second, looking at her. Then she came close enough that Renata felt the heat of her breath against her cheekbone.

—I want a kiss.

She said it just like that, without more, her voice a little broken from the wine.

Renata thought it would be a quick peck. Something brief, almost clumsy, the kind of kiss friends give when they’ve been drinking and laugh about the memory the next day. She leaned in expecting that brush of lips.

It wasn’t that.

Camila’s mouth found hers and pushed her into another dimension. The lips were warm, supple, hungry without haste. When she slid in her tongue, Renata received it, circled it, let it do what it wanted. She felt Camila’s hand sliding down her nape, then her neck, finally resting on her left breast through the cotton dress. The palm closed softly, measuring, and then the thumb found her nipple through the fabric and pinched it until a gasp escaped her into Camila’s mouth.

Renata pulled back two centimeters, just enough to breathe.

—We shouldn’t —she murmured, not at all convincingly.

—We shouldn’t do a lot of things —Camila replied, and kissed her again.

This time it was Renata who brought her hand to Camila’s tits. She’d spent years imagining them ever since that Catwoman photo. Camila had sensitive skin, a scent of vanilla, small pink nipples hardening against the thin fabric of the T-shirt. Renata could have written an entire symphony about that moment. She pulled the shirt up to her neck and the tits came free, round, with the areola darkened by desire. She bent down and sucked one whole, mouth open, tongue flat as she licked the nipple while her teeth barely grazed the soft flesh.

—Oh, fuck —Camila hissed, gripping the back of her neck—. Bite it. A little. More.

Renata closed her teeth slowly over the tip and Camila arched her back against the sofa with a guttural moan. The other tit waited for her, hard, nipple pointing at her. Renata bit that one too, harder, and slid one hand down her friend’s flat belly until she slipped it inside the shorts. She found her soaked. The seam of the shorts was already dark on the inside, and Renata’s fingers sank without resistance between warm, sticky lips.

—You’re dripping —Renata murmured against her chest.

—I’ve been like this all fucking night, dummy.

—Wait —Camila said suddenly, wrenching her hand away with effort.

Renata lifted her head, dazed, looking at her heart-shaped face. Camila had that mocking smile of hers, the one that at school always announced a dangerous idea.

—Do you have a vibrator?

Renata laughed, a nervous, almost childish laugh.

—In the bedside drawer. The bottom one.

—Stay here. Take off your panties.

Camila got up from the sofa with the ease of someone who has rehearsed the scene in her head for months. Renata bit her lip, raised her hips, and slid her panties down to her ankles. She let them fall to the floor. They were soaked, a little cord of moisture hanging between her thigh and the fabric when she kicked them off one foot. The dress rode up to her thighs when she crossed her legs again, and she felt her own cunt, swollen and throbbing, pressing against itself.

She heard footsteps in the hallway. A drawer opening and closing. The rustle of Camila’s red-painted nails over the wood. And, finally, the buzz. Low, steady, promising.

***

Camila came back into the room with the vibrator in her hand and bright eyes. She had taken off her shorts in the hallway: the T-shirt covered her just to the navel and beneath it she was naked, with a shaved pubis and lips shining with wetness. She knelt in front of Renata, shoved her knees apart, and kissed her mouth again, slowly, before anything else.

—Before the machine, I want to taste you —she whispered against her lips—. I’ve spent years imagining what you taste like.

She yanked the dress up over her head. Renata was left completely naked on the sofa, tits exposed, legs open, cunt soaked and gleaming under the low light of the living room. Camila lowered her face without ceremony, parted the lips with two fingers, and ran her tongue all the way through her in one slow stroke from bottom to top.

—Fuck —Renata moaned, gripping the backrest—. Fuck, fuck, Camila.

—You taste like salt and fruit.

Camila’s tongue worked with a precision that didn’t feel like the first time. She drew circles around the clit without touching it, licked her from top to bottom, penetrated her with the tip, sinking it inside and then coming back up to suck the whole thing, drawing in with her lips sealed around it. Renata grabbed her black hair with both hands and pressed her face into her cunt without a shred of shame.

—There, don’t stop, don’t stop.

Camila slipped two fingers in at once. Renata let out a short howl and the inner walls clenched around them in a greedy spasm. Camila curled them upward, searching for that rough spot, and when she found it she started to move them firmly while she kept sucking her clit at a different rhythm, crossed, as if she were playing two instruments at once.

Renata was on the verge of coming right there. Camila noticed, because she stopped dead, pulled out her shining fingers, and put them to her mouth, sucking them one by one.

—Not yet. Turn around —she ordered—. Lean against the backrest.

Renata obeyed without thinking. She braced her hands on the sofa, palms sinking into the cushion, and let herself be positioned like an expensive doll. The breeze coming through the open window brushed her bare skin and raised goosebumps all the way to her neck. Her ass was left lifted, her cunt open and exposed, a thread of wetness sliding down the inside of her thigh.

—Don’t touch yourself until I tell you —Camila murmured behind her.

Renata closed her eyes. She felt Camila’s firm hand settle on the small of her back, guiding her, adjusting the angle. Then the buzz began to come closer. First against her thigh. Then against her lower belly. Then, right over her clit, barely a touch, enough to make Renata blow all the air from her lungs.

—Open your legs wider —Camila said softly.

Renata opened them. She planted her feet on the floor and arched her back. The smell of her cunt, mixed with Camila’s, filled Sydney’s cool night air. Somewhere in the building, someone was still celebrating with music at full volume, but in there the only sounds were the buzz and Renata’s ragged breathing.

—There —she panted—. There, right there.

—Should I turn it up?

Renata nodded, her head pressed into the cushion, frantic. She pushed her hips back, searching for more. The vibrator went up a level and the sensation multiplied inside her, not just on the skin: it was something deeper, a vibration that traveled down her legs and up her spine at the same time. Camila ran the rounded tip over the entrance to her cunt, pushed in barely a centimeter, and brought it back up to her clit. She repeated the movement three times, four, toying with her.

—Put it in me —Renata begged—. Put the whole thing in me, you bitch.

—Like this?

Camila slid the entire vibrator into her with one firm shove. Renata let out a growl of pleasure that scraped her throat raw. She felt the toy filling her from within, vibrating against the hot walls, while two of Camila’s fingers spread her ass cheeks and another sought out her clit from the front, tracing wet, fast circles.

—Fuck me like that —Renata panted—. Hard. Hard, please.

Camila started pumping the vibrator with her wrist. It went in and out with a wet, obscene smack, mingling with the moans and the old music in the background. The other hand never stopped working her clit. Renata began rubbing herself against the vibrator almost without realizing it, pushing her ass back to take every thrust. She couldn’t help it. The action gave her pleasure in the most exquisite way and, at the same time, made her want even more: harder, faster, deeper. Her inner walls contracted in rhythmic waves, delicious, beyond any will.

At some point she began to hear moans. Deep, low, mixed with others, higher and pleading. At first she thought they were coming from Camila, behind her. Then she heard her friend’s voice murmuring, with unexpected tenderness:

—That’s it. Take it. Take it all. Open that little cunt for me, slut. Like that.

And then she realized the moans were hers. That she’d been moaning like an animal for minutes and hadn’t heard herself.

Camila adjusted the angle of the vibrator by a millimeter. She found the exact spot, the one Renata could never reach with the same precision alone, and at the same time trapped her clit between index finger and thumb, pinching it in a short squeeze. Renata moved her hips with almost animal concentration, synchronizing every rocking motion with the buzz. She closed her eyes and visualized Camila’s cunt, glossy and shaved, waiting for her afterward.

Renata exploded into stars.

Her whole body tightened at once. The cry that tore out of her didn’t resemble anything she’d ever heard before. She came in spurts around the vibrator, soaking Camila’s hand to the wrist, with spasms that shook her entire belly. Every cell of her tingled. The buzz amplified in her ears until it turned white, until she heard nothing else, until the final sob unraveled into a long purr that left her limp against the sofa back.

Camila switched off the vibrator and pulled it out slowly, carefully. She stayed still behind her, hand still on her back, waiting for her breathing to settle.

—Come here —Renata asked without opening her eyes—. Now it’s your turn.

—Mine?

—Climb up. Here. On my face.

Camila gave a soft, surprised laugh and didn’t think twice. Renata let herself fall back on the sofa, still trembling, and Camila crawled over her until she was straddling her face, knees sunk into the cushions on either side of her head. Her naked, soaked cunt was two fingers away from Renata’s mouth. Renata lifted her chin and licked her in one full stroke of her tongue, hungry, without warning.

—Oh, fuck me —Camila moaned, gripping the back of the sofa—. Oh, Renata, like that, like that.

Renata dug her hands into her ass cheeks and pressed her against her face. She sucked her lips one by one, nibbled at them, shoved her entire tongue into her as far as it would go. Camila rocked against her mouth with short circular hip movements, riding her tongue shamelessly. Her clit stuck out hard and pink, and when Renata caught it between her lips and started sucking in rhythmic pulls, Camila let out a long moan that could be heard all the way to the balcony.

—Don’t stop. Don’t stop. I’m right there, don’t stop.

Renata slipped two fingers underneath, searching for the spot inside while her tongue kept working her clit. Camila grabbed her hair, threw her head back, and started screaming. She came over Renata’s mouth in a long tremor, soaking her chin, and kept shaking on top of her until she collapsed to the side, exhausted, laughing between gasps.

The two of them lay on the sofa staring at the ceiling, breathing unevenly, skin sticky, flavors mingling in their mouths. Renata wiped her chin with the back of her hand and laughed.

—I’ve been wanting to do that for years —Camila said.

—Me too.

—Why didn’t we say so sooner?

Renata gave a low, tired, happy laugh.

—Because we were idiots.

Outside, one last stray firework burst over the harbor. Camila stretched over to the coffee table, found the music remote, and turned the volume up. An old eighties song was playing, one they both knew by heart. In the chorus, the singer’s voice repeated something about girlfriends who kiss and are the best company in the world.

Both of them laughed at the same time.

Camila rested her head on Renata’s shoulder. It was the first minute of the new year in Sydney, long before the southern sunlight would come through the window, and neither of them had the slightest intention of sleeping yet.