Chapter 2: Silver Lining

It was pouring rain when our plane touched down in the tropics. Some freak change in weather had unexpectedly manifested a biblical downpour, just in time for our long-awaited “Summer Friend-cation.” The fifteen-foot sprint from our Lyft to the front porch of the vacation rental left us soaked to the bone. So much for a sunny week in paradise.

The door opened, and Annie and I both brightened as our friend Mina welcomed us inside. She was a sight to see: toweling off her hair and wearing nothing but a loosely-tied terrycloth bathrobe. My pulse instantly surged at the sight. Mina was a goddamn knockout: wavy chestnut hair, sapphire blue eyes, pouty lips that seemed to whisper “fuck me” every time she smiled...

And that body.

Mina was overflowing with curves: flaring hips, a full butt, and tits that could catch the attention of an astronaut looking down from orbit.

I’ll never forget the moment when I first laid eyes on her. I was 18, walking Annie back home after our first real date. We found Mina sitting casually in their dorm room, painting her toenails, dressed in nothing but a lacy black thong and a wafer-thin top. Her lack of a bra had been, shall we say, “enormously” noticeable to my teenage eyes.

I remember Mina looking up at me, completely unfazed by the strange random boy caught like a deer in her headlights. My eyes couldn’t help but drink in the vision of that glorious, nearly-naked body. She looked me up and down, gave Annie an approving thumbs up, and then went right back to painting her toenails.

I saw a lot of Mina after that, and not just because she was my girlfriend’s roommate. Mina knew full-well the effect her tits had on the opposite sex, and there was nothing she loved more than showing them off. By day, she paraded around campus in minuscule crop tops. By night, she lounged around the common areas in skimpy whiffs of satin.

As the years passed and we all evolved into respectable adults, Mina’s outrageous choice of wardrobe inevitably normalized–but her thirst for attention was still ever present in the ubiquitous winks, smirks, and dirty jokes; carbonated bubbles of flirtatious energy roiling in a persistent simmer below the surface.

“Mina!” Annie cheered. My wife moved to embrace our friend, but stopped short, remembering at the last moment that she was soaked to the bone with rainwater. “Actually, let’s postpone the hugs until we’ve had a chance to dry off.”

Mina’s husband Erik greeted us with a wave. “I know, right? What the fuck is this weather?! I can’t - um...”

Erik stammered as his eyes dropped to my wife’s soaking tank top. Annie’s cheeks went crimson and she quickly covered her tits with her hands.

“Sorry about the wet tee shirt contest,” she giggled.

Shaking himself back to reality, Erik strolled over to Annie and wrapped his big, muscular arms around her in a friendly embrace. “Come here, cutie, I don’t care about getting a little damp.”

Erik was the living embodiment of tall, dark, and handsome, with bright blue eyes and a chin that belonged on a GI:JOE action figure. Annie blushed even deeper as he planted a playful smooch on the top of her head. I knew his cocky personality wasn’t exactly her type, but there’s no way she didn’t appreciate all the hours the guy spent in the gym, nor the way his 6’4” figure towered over her petite body.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Mina interjected, pulling Erik and Annie apart. “Chris and Lisa’s plane lands soon. Go put on some dry clothes, and let’s all play a boardgame or something until this stupid storm blows over.”

“Do we have food in the house?” I asked.

Erik nodded. “Yeah, we’re good. Mina and I stocked up on a bunch of stuff at a grocery store earlier today, before the rain started. Good thing, too, I’d hate to go outside in this shit if I didn’t have to.”

Annie and I hurried into the second bedroom and stripped off our soaking garments. When she saw her reflection in the mirror, Annie gasped at the black streaks of mascara smeared across her face.

“Oh my god, I look like a monster!”

“No, no, honey. You look like a goth circus clown. Never a monster.”

“Gee thanks.”

Gesturing at her chest, I added, “For what it’s worth, I don’t think Erik even noticed your eyes.”

Annie gave me a playful smack on the arm. While she showered, I dutifully carried our clothes to the laundry room and popped open the dryer–

Oh.

The dryer wasn’t empty. Atop a heap of clothes sat a pair of skimpy blue panties. My mind immediately conjured a vision of them stretched around Mina’s shapely hips, the puckered back side dipping into the crack of her ass.

“You like them?” Mina asked from behind me.

I froze, then quickly tried to disguise where my attention had been. Still wearing nothing more than her bathrobe, Mina leaned in and reached over my shoulder–pressing her massive breasts against my back–and plucked her underwear away. The smug look on her face made it clear that I’d been caught red-handed.

I blushed, stammering, “I was just ... uh, yeah.”

Mina gave me another naughty smile and coyly cocked an eyebrow. “Glad to see you approve.”

With a wink, she took the bundle of dry clothes and walked off, hips swaying, leaving my dick feeling decidedly heavier than it had a few moments earlier.

___

Annie and Mina's Dorm Room, seven years earlier...

I’m nineteen years old.

Annie’s nude, nubile body undulates beneath me. My cock drifts down her belly, through soft red curls of hair, and finally across the warm length of her slit. Our eyes meet, then suddenly I’m inside her, reveling in the delicious ecstasy of her body as she groans in my ear.

“Shhh,”I whisper, “Mina’s gonna hear us!”

We both hazard a glance at the neighboring bed, where Annie’s voluptuous roommate is sound asleep. At least, I think she’s sleeping. In the near-perfect darkness it’s hard to tell for certain. For all we know, Mina is secretly wide awake, watching through half-lidded eyes as I withdraw my cock and then slowly penetrate Annie once again, filling her to the core.

Even in the darkness of the dorm room–even with a blanket covering Mina from neck to toe–the ample curves of her body are impossible to miss. I’ve spent many wonderful nights hanging out with the girls in this very dorm room, trying my damndest not to stare at Mina’s enormous, braless boobs.

Wait, is it just a trick of the shadows, or is there subtle motion beneath the blankets on Mina’s bed? A guilty smile creeps onto my face and I can’t help but wonder if she’s spying on us; quietly touching herself beneath the blankets? Is she–just maybe–privately wishing that she was the one writhing beneath me?

Annie touches a finger to my chin and turns my attention back to the task at hand. Her slender legs criss-cross behind my back, holding me in place as she grinds her clit against my pelvis.

“Mmm!” she moans, reflexively clapping a hand over her own mouth to muffle the sound. I thrust into her again, trying to be quiet, but the bed springs whine with our every movement. Annie’s erect, ruby nipples tickle my chest.

“Mmm!” Annie moans again, this time with urgency.

I pick up the pace, unable to control my young body any longer. Annie’s fingernails bite into my shoulders, her face contorts into a silent scream of ecstasy...

“Ahh!” I hear a sudden gasp of pleasure from Mina’s bed.

Annie is too far gone to notice; too lost in the fever of orgasm. My head swings around reflexively at the sound, squinting into the darkness towards Mina’s side of the room.

But I can’t see anything. My vision blurs as my own impending climax rushes to overwhelm me, my thoughts racing:

Oh god, Mina! If you’re really watching, then please just get your sexy ass out of that bed and come join us. Strip off your clothes and show me that incredible body of yours–just one glimpse–feed me those tits! Oh god!

I explode, coming harder inside Annie than I can ever remember.

When the fugue of pleasure finally subsides, I cast another quick glance at Mina’s bed.

She lies still and silent. Sleeping peacefully. I sigh, shaking myself back to reality. Did I imagine the whole thing?

___

Present Day

An hour later, the final two members of the party arrived.

Whereas Annie and I had shown up looking like a pair of drowned rodents, Lisa and Chris had demonstrated enough common sense to buy umbrellas at the airport before stepping out into the rain, so they arrived in dry clothes, like ordinary human beings.

Well, perhaps “ordinary” isn’t exactly the right word to describe Lisa.

She and I had known each other since the third grade. Growing up, we’d shared pretty much every class, but we ran in different social circles. It wasn’t until high school, when my parents insisted I join drama club to build some self-confidence, that Lisa and I became friends.

Eight school plays and ten thousand shared memories later, Lisa and I had become thick as thieves. There was never anything romantic between us (I considered her comically out of my league), but we could finish each other’s sentences and we were always each other’s first phone call when teenage life got too rough to handle. We even went as each other’s dates to our Senior Prom, albeit in a purely platonic capacity.

Well ... as platonic as could be expected when the guy is masturbating to thoughts of the girl every other night.

By the time I started college and sorted out my insecurities enough to even consider asking Lisa out, I’d already fallen in love with Annie. A couple years later, Lisa met Chris, and the rest was history. After a lifetime of wondering “will we or won’t we?” Lisa and I had decisively acknowledged: “we won’t.”

Still, with a girl as gorgeous as Lisa, it was impossible for my wandering fantasies to ever disappear completely, even long after we were both married to other people.

Lisa had piercing green eyes accentuated by a stylish set of spectacles, toned legs beneath a pleated skirt, and disproportionately-large breasts thrusting out above an unusually-slender waist (stress-testing the structural integrity of her many button-up sweaters). Dark Rapunzel-length hair framed a face so beautiful she could cause actual, physical pain if you looked at her for too long.

Her hyper-conservative “librarian” fashion style wasn’t an accident. Lisa was a best-selling author of children’s books; tales of fairies and kittens learning the true meaning of friendship. If you have kids, chances are you’ve got something she wrote in your home, right now.

Both Lisa and her publisher were careful to craft a public image that wouldn’t frighten away uptight, pearl-clutching mothers. She remembered all-too-well the cautionary tale when the world found out Youtube’s toddler-whisperer “Miss Rachel” had (gasp!) pierced nipples. There was a very real fear that Lisa’s livelihood would take a hit if conservative mommy bloggers realized that she’d been blessed with the sort of body that caused car accidents whenever she crossed the street. The solution? A daily regiment of ankle-length skirts and frumpy grandma sweaters.

It all turned out to be a pointless effort, in the end. “Internet gonna internet,” as the ancient proverb says.

The Lisa-meme went viral last month. After years of keeping a low profile, she became an unwitting TikTok trend overnight. Noxious internet bros would steal a video from her Youtube channel–Lisa innocently reading an adorable story to some preschoolers–then juxtapose it alongside a running commentary detailing all the creative things they wanted to do with her various orifices.

Ha ha. So funny.

Turns out, for all the work Lisa did to conceal her figure from the book-buying public, there was no way to hide that stunningly beautiful face. Last I heard, variations of this trend had been shared more than 140 million times.

To their credit, Lisa and her husband Chris took it all in stride. A lesser man would have gotten jealous and insecure about the army of pervy, so-called “content creators” gushing over his wife, but Chris had a relaxed and effortless confidence about everything that helped keep the situation in perspective. I suspect he secretly got a charge out of knowing so many guys were jerking it to his wife.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Chris was a great guy–a statement which, I realize, sounds patronizing and dismissive (but in his case, it was true). Funny, friendly, loyal, and upbeat, Chris was the kind of friend who would go out of his way to volunteer to help you move, or bring you homemade soup when you had a fever. Annie nicknamed him “Hallmark guy” when Lisa started dating him, because his dimpled good looks and puppy-dog personality reminded her of the Christmas-loving, sweater-vested heartthrobs that populated those movies.

With the whole crew finally assembled, we all hoped the summer storm would blow over so we could enjoy our overdue reunion in the tropical sun.

It didn’t.

By lunchtime, the weather forecast predicted another two days of brutal rain. Two days! We gave up on any hope of a beach day and broke out the booze and a tattered pack of Uno cards we found under the TV. The downpour was now accompanied by cracks of thunder and huge spiderwebs of lightning arcing across the sea. We gazed longingly outside the huge bay windows, feeling the mood dampen more and more by the minute.

“Well, this sucks,” Erik sighed. “I’ve been looking forward to that private beach for months!”

A grumbling of agreement echoed his sentiment.

I looked around the spacious room, seeing the moping faces of my wife and friends, and suddenly an idea popped into my head.

“Why don’t we just set up a private beach right here?”

Everyone turned to me, not sure they’d heard correctly.

Lisa cocked her head to the side. “‘Right here?’ As in ... the living room?”

“I mean, not with sand and ocean,” I quickly clarified, “Just, like, the other stuff. We clear away the furniture, set out some beach towels on the carpet, grab a beach ball to bop around, play some luau music. It’s a big space, we ought to try and salvage what we can from a shitty situation.”

Chris shrugged, “I could grill up some food in the kitchen.”

“I’ve bought stuff for some fun tropical cocktails,” Erik offered.

Mina raised an eyebrow and asked, “So, we’d be playing make-believe? Like, I would make-believe work on my tan?”

I shrugged, trying to play it cool as I said, “Sure. Just for a goof. We would all put on our swimsuits and –”

“A-ha!” Mina shouted. “This isn’t about the beach at all, you guys just want an excuse to see us in our bikinis!”

I went deep red as the rest of the room burst into laughter. With a bashful grin, I muttered, “Can you blame me?”

Annie elbowed me with a mock-scolding look on her face. Mina just grinned.

Erik added, “Since the view outside has been decisively fucking ruined, we may as well have a nice view to enjoy inside, right?”

Lisa looked at Chris, uncertain. “You don’t think it would be weird?” she asked.

He wrapped an arm around her and answered, “We were all gonna see each other in our swimsuits, anyway. It’s not like we’d be doing anything more daring than we were already planning to.”

“Yeah, but, what about ... you know...” Lisa blushed and hurriedly whispered the rest of her sentence in Chris’s ear, too quietly for the rest of us to hear.

Whatever she was hinting at took a moment to register on Chris’s face, then his eyes opened wide with a dopey grin. “Oh!” he said finally. Then he thought for a moment, looked over at the rest of us, and finally told Lisa, “Yeah, I’m fine with it if you are.”

Annie playfully ruffled my hair, “None of us should be surprised my horny husband wants everyone to run around half-naked. He’s eager to escape our life of ‘soul-crushing monogamy,’ remember?”

“It was the auto-correct!” I groaned. “Monotony! ‘Soul-crushing monotony!’ Am I gonna be hearing this shit all week?”

“All week? No way, buddy,” Erik said, slugging me on the shoulder, “We’re gonna give you shit about it for the rest of your goddamn life.”

The explosion of laughter at my expense seemed to relax Lisa’s nerves a bit. She threw back a final swig of rum and said, “Oh, why not. It could be fun. Just remember: look, but don’t touch!”

With an excited giggle, the three wives hopped to their feet and hurried off to change. Annie paused and glanced back at me for a moment, just outside the door to our room. Despite all the years we’d been together, all the ups and downs and intimate moments, I had no idea what she was thinking about, nor what the quizzical look on her face meant.

“Good idea, Tristan,” Chris whispered.

“Yeah, I was starting to worry we wouldn’t be seeing a single bikini this week!” Erik added.

Chris just smirked, “I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said, then he dropped his voice, conspiratory: “Lisa showed me the suit she packed for this trip. You guys are in for a treat.”

___

Prom Night, eight years earlier...

I’m eighteen years old.

“You look incredible,” I whisper, drinking in the sight of my gorgeous prom date. “You’re the most beautiful woman here, no question.”

Lisa beams at the compliment. She takes me by the hand out onto the dance floor.

“Lookin’ pretty fine yourself, Double-Oh-Seven,” she says with a wink.

Lisa’s beauty is otherworldly tonight. She’s draped in a dark, iridescent purple gown. The heart-shaped neckline cups two of the most ample, mouth-watering tits my eyes have ever seen. She’s never shown this much cleavage before.

But my gaze isn’t as fixated on her bust as you might assume. No, tonight I can’t stop gazing into Lisa’s eyes. She’s traded her glasses for contacts, and she’s done her makeup with a dramatic purple flourish to match her dress. It’s striking; she looks like an entirely different woman. This isn’t my long-time friend, tonight she’s a smokey-eyed supermodel that’s accidentally gone to prom with me.

“You can stop looking so hard, Tristan,” she whispers. “You’re making me self-conscious.”

“Sorry! You just ... that dress, and ... I’m only human, Lisa.”

The music kicks up a notch, and Lisa’s impossibly long hair swirls behind her. Her fingers feel electric in mine, even though I know she’s only here with me as a friend.

“What a waste!” comes an obnoxious voice from nearby.

Lisa and I turn to see Brian Hoff—homecoming king, team quarterback, and pathological narcissist—shaking his drunken head in mock dismay at the spectacle of me and Lisa dancing together.

“What was that?” Lisa calls back.

“It’s fucking pathetic,” he jeers. “You only get one prom, Lisa, and you squandered your whole experience on a pity date. On some guy you’re not even into!”

I feel my stomach tighten in embarrassment and I look down at my shoes. Brian is one of the reasons I’ve had severe self-esteem issues since grammar school.

A moment later, I feel Lisa’s hand on my chin, lifting my gaze to meet her beautiful eyes. As always, her face is so pretty, it hurts.

Then her lips are on mine, and my heart about explodes in my chest. Her kisses are soft and warm, tasting of the sweet wine we smuggled into the limousine on the way here.

By the time my sense of time and space have returned, Brian Hoff has departed for some far corner of the dance floor. The music switches to a slow song.

“Dance with me?” Lisa whispers.

“But it’s a slow song,” I whisper back, confused.

She nods.

“Yeah! Yeah, ok,” I say, taking her in my arms. I’m over the moon with arousal and excitement. I pull Lisa’s body to mine, feeling her busty chest squashing against me. My tongue teases at her mouth...

The song ends. I remind myself to breathe. Lisa is smiling.

“That was...” I start to say something, but then a horrible realization pops into my head. I shake some sense into myself. “That was just for Brian, right? For show? To shut him up for being a jerk to you?”

Lisa cocks her head to one side, her expression inscrutable. “What do you think?” she asks.

I start rambling, embarrassed, “Yeah, of course it was. Sorry if I got a little caught up in the moment. It’s just, you’re extra-extra beautiful tonight. Of course that’s all it was. Just a goof.”

She smiles and nods in agreement, but I swear she seems to deflate a little bit. As if I had somehow disappointed her when I dismissed her kiss as an act of make-believe, no more meaningful than the occasional ones we’d shared in drama class, when we’d done scene work together.

But was it all a goof? Or had Lisa been as wrapped up in the moment as I had?

My brain dismisses the thought as preposterous: Wishful thinking, nerd. Lisa just likes you as a friend. You don’t want to screw it up by making tonight weird.

We dance the rest of the night away at a more comfortable distance, just a couple good buddies having fun together.

A couple of good buddies who’d shared a hot, awkward moment that would haunt my dreams for the next fifty thousand years.

___

Present Day

While the women changed in the other room, Erik, Chris, and I got the living room transformed into a makeshift “beach” scene:

Cheesy luau music strummed from Erik’s portable speakers. On the TV, I played a looping Youtube video of waves lapping at white sand. With a little teamwork, we even managed to get the ocean-blue curtains down from the giant bay windows to act as “water.”

The last step was to spread out our beach towels and plop down an ice chest full of beer.

“Beach is open!” I called out.

Shameless as ever, Mina was the first of the wives to appear, strutting out in a skimpy black triangle top that did almost nothing to support her spectacular tits. Another small triangle covered her down below, held up by a tiny gold chain circling shapely hips. Mina’s walk was hypnotic - the swaying of her ass, the bouncing of her bosom, and the flirtatious smile that always seemed to whisper, “Look harder, boys, I like it.”

Mina’s bountiful, barely-covered body was the gift that kept on giving.

Look, I don’t want to overstate the matter here, but if global politics was decided by who had the best rack, Mina would be queen of the fucking planet.

My Annie came out second, wearing a lavender-and-white striped bikini that really showed off her toned, athletic legs (Annie has killer legs), heart-shaped butt, and creamy soft breasts.

Realizing the other men were staring at her, Annie blushed, gave them both a bashful little curtsy, and sat down on my lap.

Something about the realization that those guys were fantasizing about my wife gave me a sudden surge of excitement. Unbidden, mental images swirled around my brain; thoughts of Annie moaning uncontrollably, her eyelids fluttering and her body shaking as Erik and Chris took turns pounding her beautiful body, or spitroasting her on the living room carpet with their hard cocks thrusting into her mouth and pussy...

Woah! I shook the thought away. Why the hell was I suddenly fantasizing about that?

Last out was Lisa, and it was immediately obvious why she had been so nervous about parading around the house in her swimwear. After years of wearing uber-conservative swimsuits in public, our gorgeous friend was now wearing maybe the skimpiest swimsuit I’d ever seen in my life.

Let me be clear: There are string bikinis and then there are string bikinis. This was the latter. It was an intricately-woven macrame two piece, literally made of string.

The color was a brilliant green to match her eyes, though none of us were exactly focused on Lisa’s eyes at the moment. The top stretched around her oversized breasts and the bottoms rode high on her hips to form a deep “V” that made her barely-covered ass look phenomenal. I instantly had a very real urge to jump to my feet, bend Lisa over the sofa, and drive my cock into her while our spouses watched.

I somehow held it in check.

Mina couldn’t believe her eyes, either. “Damn, damn, damn! Look at you! You were gonna wear this in public? Who are you and what have you done with my sweet, Mary Poppins-looking friend Lisa?”

Lisa gave everyone a little wave, her cheeks warming as she said, “Just thought it’d be fun to go a little crazy on this vacation after all those years dressing like a librarian from 1897.”

Chris proudly draped an arm across his wife’s shoulders and said, “When all those pervy memes about Lisa went viral a few months ago, she decided it wasn’t worth the effort anymore, trying to hide how gorgeous she is.”

Lisa gave him a nudge in the ribs. “No! It’s just, I’m tired of dressing a certain way just to appease a bunch of uptight, judgmental people I’m never even going to meet. I figured this trip with our friends was the perfect time to finally let my hair down and go a little wild again. I just figured I’d be on an actual beach when it happened. Speaking of...”

Lisa turned her attention to the transformed living room:

“You boys really outdid yourselves. The room looks awesome!”

“We were just motivated by the prospect of seeing you ladies in your beachwear,” Erik answered.

“Imagine what they’d be capable of if we had offered to go skinny dipping,” Mina joked.

Lisa kicked off her sandals and skipped playfully onto the blue curtain we had spread across the floor. “Ah, so refreshing to dip my toes in the ‘ocean,’” she laughed, sending a nice jiggle through her breasts.

We all quickly settled into the charade. The husbands stripped off our shirts and changed into our own swim suits, everyone laid out on the beach towels, and fruity drinks and fragrant food flowed freely. For the next hour, we all settled into the glow of each other’s company after far too long apart.

There was a buzzing of electricity in the air, and not just because of the ever-present lightning screaming across the distant horizon. The women–bless their hearts–were all pretty generous with the views they provided us, arching their backs to accentuate their tits, stretching out their legs, and generally feigning innocence while they posed like Sports Illustrated models.

The men weren’t quite so overt about showing off, but the women didn’t seem to mind. We were all pretty athletic, and I could tell from the defined musculature on Chris and Erik that I wasn’t the only guy who’d been hitting the gym extra hard leading up to this vacation, hoping to look my best at the beach.

Is that a form of cheating? I thought to myself. Wanting to look extra good with my shirt off in front of these other women? Maybe it was “micro-infidelity,” or something. One of those buzzwords you hear on a podcast and then wonder if it’s a legitimate relationship concept, or just some random idea dreamed up by a shmuck with too much confidence and a recording booth in their garage.

Well, I had enough alcohol in me at that point that I wasn’t going to question it.

It was a bit surreal. Sure, we’d all seen each other in our swimsuits plenty of times over the years–especially back in college–but the atmosphere in that living room was decidedly different than I could ever remember. At a real beach, there’s always a perfectly rational reason a girl puts on a bikini and a guy takes off his shirt. It’s just the normal, accepted thing.

That day, however, the only reason we were showing some skin was to show some skin. There was no polite excuse to hide behind. No feigning innocence when someone caught you staring. Everyone understood exactly what was going on:

We were checking out each other’s spouses.

An undercurrent of unspoken but obvious desire permeated every lingering glance and hid behind every teasing smile. I kept catching Annie looking my way, checking in that I was okay with everything that was happening. She was clearly enjoying herself plenty.

Still, despite all that, I reminded myself it was all just harmless flirting and teasing. Nothing we couldn’t all just laugh off the next day...