A Rainy Day in Paradise

“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.

---

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 & 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?”