Two married couples are forced to share a hotel room.
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Sometimes there are moments in life that have the potential to radically alter the course of your marriage. For my wife Lara and I, that moment happened on the first night of a vacation in Aruba.
We’d been married for 11 years and it was the first time we’d left the kids for more than a night. We were with our friends, Bryan and Stephanie, who were basically carbon copies of us. Like us, they’d been married for over a decade and had two kids. Like us, they were both professionals who had met in grad school. Like us, they worked too hard and hadn’t had a real vacation away from their kids since they’d been born. Like us, they’d been looking forward to this vacation for a long time.
Lara and I had a good, though not particularly adventurous sex life. We kept ourselves in pretty good shape, and Lara, now 37, didn’t look a day older that she had when we married. She was beautiful, with long curly brown hair and a lean, athletic body. She was about 5’6” with olive skin and a strikingly pretty face. She was the kind of person who would wear yoga pants every day if she could, and no one would mind. We had sex pretty often for a couple that had been together as long as we had, usually 2-3 times a week, but it had gotten somewhat stale and predictable. Lara was certainly a willing lover — she rarely turned me down — and she enjoyed sex, especially once I’d warmed her up. But even after 13+ years of sex with me, she was pretty reserved in bed. She rarely took the initiative and was content to follow my lead, do what I wanted. For example, she liked using a vibrator, but always waited for me to suggest it (and would never have suggested purchasing one in the first place; I had to buy it for her). And she never, ever said anything dirty in bed. When she was really into it, she’d say things like “deeper” or “faster” but never anything like “fuck” or “cock” or “pussy.” I never really understood where this shyness came from because she wasn’t otherwise a shy person. She was outgoing, funny, very personable, the kind of person who lit up a room and everyone enjoyed being around.
Stephanie was like her in many ways, which is why they were such good friends. They were both over-achievers and good little Jewish girls who talked to their moms five times a day. Stephanie too was very pretty, very friendly, very intelligent, and very hard for me to picture having sex (though I’d certainly tried). She was a petite girl, just over five feet tall, but slender and well proportioned. She had long, straight brown hair and a girlish voice. And like Lara, I’d never heard her utter a curse word and was skeptical she ever did, even in private. Unlike my wife, who was very outgoing and had a wacky sense of humor, Stephanie had an almost Stepford-wife quality; she was nice, pleasant to be around, but tightly wound. I never got the sense that I knew the “real” her.
Bryan and I weren’t nearly as close as Lara and Stephanie, but we got along fine. We talked sports and drank beer and talked shop (we had similar jobs). We were pretty similar people personality-wise, but quite different physically. Bryan was a much bigger guy. He was at least 6’4” and pretty solid. He had dark hair, a square jaw, and very deep voice. I was a shade under 6’0,” but slender, no more than 160 pounds soaking wet. I had brown hair, with a bit of gray mixed in, but very little of it. Not that I was balding or anything, I just wore my hair very short, almost buzzed. I looked a bit like Justin Timberlake (not to flatter myself).
We were headed to Aruba for a four night stay at a nice resort (I’ll leave out the name to avoid any unwanted publicity). It was an adults only resort that Stephanie’s brother had raved about. When we got there, it was early afternoon and we were all still energized by the knowledge that we had four days of no parental or work responsibilities ahead of. It was a feeling none of us had experienced for the better part of a decade, and it was liberating and intoxicating at the same time. Then came the first hiccup.
When we went to check in, the person behind the desk immediately went to get a supervisor, never a good sign. A man in his 50s, with dark skin and a plump round face, came out with a look of abject apology. His name was Arlo, and he explained that there had been a fire that morning and it had caused significant damage to one wing of the resort, rendering eight guest rooms uninhabitable, including both of the rooms that had been slotted for us. He said that there was only one unoccupied room left in the entire resort. He said that they had been trying all afternoon to reserve alternative accommodations for us at another resort, but had so far been unsuccessful. He offered to move a second bed into the open room so that we would all have a place to stay in case he wasn’t able to find something for us that night. He seemed optimistic that this would, at worst, be a one night thing, that something else would open up by tomorrow. He apologized profusely and offered to cover all of our food and drinks for the night, which we gladly accepted.
To his obvious relief, we all took the news pretty well. I think we were just so happy to be away that we would have taken most anything in stride. When we got to the room, it was obvious that it wasn’t built to hold two king beds. The beds were practically touching and there was very little open space remaining in the main part of the room. But the room was otherwise very nice, and opened right out onto the beach.
Before long, we had all changed into our bathing suits and were sitting on the beach sipping free drinks and laughing about our predicament. There’s really no better feeling than that buzz you get from the first drink of the afternoon, particularly when you’re drinking outside in nice weather. I was feeling good, and I couldn’t help but stare at Lara and Stephanie. The sight of a beautiful, slender girl in a bikini is pretty intoxicating in and of itself, particularly when you’ve just endured a brutally long winter (it had been snowing when we drove to the airport that morning). Both Lara and Stephanie looked fabulous. Lara had on a black two piece. It didn’t show any real cleavage but the contrast against her olive skin was certainly pleasing to the eye. I couldn’t help but notice Bryan giving her several once-overs. And I didn’t blame him because I’d certainly glanced at Stephanie more than a few times already. Her suit was less modest than I had expected, showing a good deal of cleavage. She certainly had Lara beat when it came to breast size, sporting surprisingly large tits for such a petite girl. But Lara made up for it in the leg department. I’m really not sure anyone could have better legs than my wife.
We continued to drink through dinner and into the evening, when we eventually retired to our shared room. It was at that point that the awkwardness of the situation began to be apparent. I couldn’t remember the last time I had shared a bedroom with anyone other than my wife, and I’m sure everyone else was thinking the same thing. Bryan apologized ahead of time for any snoring. The lack of privacy really started to sink in too, as we competed for bathroom space to change into our respective sleep clothes, brush our teeth, and do all our typical nighttime rituals. Bryan and I got ready pretty quickly and then sat on our respective king beds, watching TV as we waited for the girls. We were both in boxers and t-shirts.