The Game That Changed How I Felt About My Best Friend

Friday had been dragging rain along since morning, and Mariana and I no longer felt like going out. We shut ourselves in my bedroom with two cans of beer, an old playlist, and the blinds half-lowered so the afternoon would feel longer than it was. It was that gentle kind of rain that never quite goes away.

We’d been friends for six years. The kind of friendship where you know the other person is lying just by the way she breathes, or that she’s sad by the way she sets down her glass. What we’d never talked about was the other thing: that something that had been passing between us since the summer before, when she came to sleep over after breaking up with her boyfriend and we ended up sharing a bed without anything happening and, at the same time, feeling as if everything had happened.

“Truth or dare?” she asked that afternoon, turning the can between her hands.

“Are we fifteen?”

“If you’re brave enough, we’ll do it properly.”

I stared at her. She had the crooked smile she got when she was about to do something stupid. I burst out laughing and tossed a pillow at her face.

“All right.”

The first few rounds were silly. Old confessions from college, absurd dares like calling the delivery place and hanging up before they answered, telling me the last time she’d cried and who it had been over. But by the fourth beer, she stretched her legs out on my mattress, set the can on the floor, and said, without quite looking at me:

“It needs salt. The loser takes off a piece of clothing.”

I didn’t answer right away. I felt the heat in my ears before anywhere else. I looked at her, trying to figure out whether she was serious or waiting for me to get scared and say no.

“Deal,” I replied.

I lost the first round with the new rule. Mariana raised her eyebrows and pointed at my T-shirt.

“That one.”

I took it off without making a production of it, but I felt her eyes travel over me from my neck down to the edge of my bra. It was a plain white cotton bra, nothing special, and her eyes gleamed as if it were catalog lingerie.

She lost the next round. I didn’t give her time to choose.

“The pants.”

She got up from the bed and lowered them slowly, giving me her back at first, then turning around. She was wearing a thin black pair of panties, almost nothing, and the skin of her thigh trembled slightly when she bent her legs to sit back down. We both laughed, but it wasn’t the same laugh anymore. It was a teenage laugh, a mix of nerves and vertigo.

***

Three rounds later, Mariana was in a red bra and black panties. I’d lost mine and was trying to cross my arms without making it obvious that I was crossing them. She wasn’t even pretending not to stare at me.

“Dare,” she said when her turn came.

“Kiss my neck.”

I said it without thinking, as if I’d been keeping it inside for months. She crawled across the bed until she was inches away. Her hair brushed my shoulder. Then her mouth did, first barely touching the side of my neck, then opening, hotter than I’d expected. I felt the tip of her tongue draw a short line behind my ear, and every hair on my arm stood on end. When she let go, my eyes were closed and my panties were already soaked against the elastic of my shorts.

“Another round,” she said softly, and her voice had gone hoarse.

I lost again. She took off my shorts. She took off my socks. Then it was her turn, and she unclasped her bra with both hands behind her back, looking at me as if she were granting me permission. Her tits were smaller than I’d imagined the few times I’d allowed myself to imagine them, her nipples pink and hard as little points, and there was a tiny mole beneath the right one. I sat in silence, watching the slight movement of her chest as she breathed.

It wasn’t a game anymore.

“Your dare,” I murmured.

Mariana took a deep breath. She thought for a second. Then, with a calmness that undid me, she said:

“Touch yourself. But don’t close your eyes. Look at me.”

***

I leaned back against the headboard. I slid my hand beneath the elastic of my panties and felt, at the first touch, how wet I was. My fingers slid all the way in, without resistance, to my swollen clitoris, throbbing as if it had a pulse of its own. She didn’t move. She was kneeling in front of me, thighs spread, hands resting on her knees as if she were meditating, her gaze fixed on mine.

“Don’t close your eyes,” she repeated.

I started slowly. Small circles around my clitoris, controlling my breathing so nothing would escape me yet. Then I lowered two fingers, pushed them into my pussy to get them good and wet, and brought them back up, and the wet sound of the movement became so clear in the silence of the room that we both heard it. Her lips parted. Her gaze was another pressure, another hand. It was as if she were touching me with her eyes. I watched her bite her lower lip. I watched her lower one hand for a second and place it on her thigh, then slowly raise it, slip it beneath the elastic of her black panties, and leave it there, as if she were holding herself back, but not completely.

“Take off your panties,” I told her, my voice breaking. “I want to see you too.”

She raised her hips and slid them down her thighs without breaking eye contact. She spread her legs in front of me, and I saw her shaved pussy, pink and gleaming with how wet she was. She brought two fingers to her mouth, slowly licked them, then lowered them and began touching herself too, mirroring me, setting the pace.

“You’re doing it right,” she said. “Don’t stop.”

I sped up without realizing it. I slid in one finger, then two, curling them inside while my thumb kept working my clitoris. I started breathing through my mouth, my head tipped back against the headboard, my thighs spread for her, my tits rising and falling. She touched herself the same way, eyes glazed, and every so often she pulled her fingers out and showed them to me, shining all over, before sliding them back in.

“I’m about to come,” I panted.

“Not yet.”

And then, when I could no longer hold her gaze completely, she leaned forward, yanked my hand away, brought my fingers to her mouth, and sucked them clean while looking at me before kissing me.

The first kiss was impatient, almost clumsy. Our teeth bumped, and we laughed against each other’s lips for a second before returning to the kiss, this time more carefully. Her tongue slipped in slowly, tasting of my own pussy, and mine answered by sucking on it. And the bed, which a minute earlier had been a battlefield for a teenage game, became something else.

***

We took off what was left without saying a word. No more dares were needed. We ended up naked, facing each other, in a room where the light outside had turned almost orange with the sunset filtering through the clouds. She looked at me without shame, and I let her. Her skin was lighter than mine, her hips wide, a tiny flower tattoo on her left side that I’d seen hundreds of times at the pool but had never looked at like this.

She pushed me down onto the bed and settled on top of me, one thigh between mine, both our breathing already ragged. I felt her wet pussy pressed against my hip, leaving a hot trail behind. She kissed my neck, then my collarbone, then one of my tits. When she sucked my nipple, tugging lightly with her teeth, I felt a pull somewhere I hadn’t known could connect to another woman’s mouth. I grabbed the back of her neck with both hands and pressed her face against my chest.

“Don’t stop,” I begged.

She moved to the other nipple, licked it in circles, then bit it, and I arched my back. She went lower. She kissed my navel, my hips, the inside of my thigh, biting lightly to leave a tiny mark I wouldn’t be able to explain. She opened my legs with both hands, pressing her thumbs into the insides of my thighs to hold me wide open, and paused for a second, looking closely at my pussy as if deciding where to begin. I was open, exposed, and for the first time that afternoon I didn’t care. When her tongue touched me, flat and hot, moving from bottom to top in one long lick, I let out a sound I didn’t even recognize as my own.

She licked patiently, as if she had all the time in the world. She circled my clitoris with the tip of her tongue, then sucked it whole, then moved lower, slipped her tongue inside me, and moved it as if she were fucking me with her mouth. She drew circles, stayed still, and blew lightly so the cold would sink right into that spot. Then she slid two fingers into me and kept sucking my clitoris at the same time, curling them inside against the upper wall, and I clutched the sheet, then her hair, then the sheet again. I tugged her hair without meaning to, and she moaned against my pussy, the vibrations traveling up through me. I was about to come, my legs trembling over her shoulders, when she stopped.

“Not yet,” she said, her mouth shining, her chin wet with me.

“You’re such a fucking bitch,” I said, laughing, almost breathless.

“You’re going to come when I say so.”

***

She shifted on top of me in a different position. She crossed one leg over mine until our hips were pressed together, pussy against pussy. I felt her hot, wet, open against me, and the first brush of slick skin against slick skin made us both moan at the same time. We looked at each other in surprise, as if neither of us had expected the sound to match.

She began to move. Slowly at first, searching for the angle, rubbing herself against me until our clitorises met and we both jolted. I raised my hands to her tits, squeezed them, tugged her nipples between my forefinger and thumb, then lowered one hand to her hip and pulled her against me so she wouldn’t move so slowly. She understood. The rhythm changed.

She braced both hands beside my head and began fucking me like that, wet against wet, clitoris against clitoris, her tits hanging over my face. I grabbed one with my mouth and sucked her nipple without letting go, biting it lightly as she moved faster and faster. The sound of the bed, the sound of our wet pussies colliding, that sticky, unmistakable noise of skin sliding against skin, the moans growing less and less restrained—all of it filled the room with a density that no longer resembled a Friday afternoon with beer in the slightest.

“Harder,” I begged, my mouth still full of her tit. “Harder, Mariana, fuck me harder.”

“Say it again.”

“Fuck me.”

She supported herself on one hand, giving me a better angle, and lowered the other between us. She began rubbing my clitoris with two fingers while continuing to move her hips, and I took her by the waist with both hands and guided her, nearly digging my fingers into her skin. Then I raised one hand and slid two fingers into her pussy from below, and she let out a long, guttural moan and began moving against my hand and my hip at the same time, as if she couldn’t decide what she wanted first.

“Like that,” I panted. “Like that.”

“Look at me,” she said, just as before. “Don’t close your eyes.”

I held her gaze as best I could. Her pupils were dilated, her mouth open, her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, a thread of saliva running from the corner of her mouth. I saw her about to come before I felt it in myself: her whole body tensed, her eyes closed for a second, then opened again so she wouldn’t miss my face. I felt the fingers inside her clench, suck, as if her pussy were asking for more. I gave her more, curling my fingers, while she kept rubbing my clitoris.

“Come with me,” she said. “Now.”

We came almost together, one a second before the other, and the first to come dragged the other along in a long shudder. I felt her pussy contract around my fingers in waves, squeezing them hard, while my orgasm rose from my feet and made me arch my back against the mattress, a cry sticking to her mouth because she kissed me just as I came. We stayed pressed together, panting, foreheads touching, legs still entwined, our pussies still dripping against each other.

***

We stayed like that for a long while. She was on top, I was underneath, still connected, our breathing slowly settling, sweat cooling our skin. I carefully pulled my fingers out and brought them to my mouth to suck them, watching her. She laughed softly and took them from my mouth to suck them herself. Outside, the rain had stopped. Inside, everything was new.

“It wasn’t a game,” she said afterward, speaking against my neck.

“I know.”

“It hasn’t been a game for a long time.”

I stroked her back from top to bottom without answering right away. I was thinking about all the times I’d watched her from a distance, all the times I’d lied to myself with “it’s just the affection between friends,” all the beers we’d shared, waiting without knowing it for one of us to find the courage for an afternoon like this.

“Not for me either,” I finally replied.

She laughed softly, still pressed against my neck. I felt the laughter against my skin.

“Another round?” she asked.

“Truth or dare.”

“Dare.”

“Stay.”

She lifted her head to look at me. Her eyes were small with exhaustion and her smile was enormous.

“That’s not a dare,” she said. “That one’s already won.”