At this point, it was becoming hard to pretend like our neighbours weren't fighting. The sound of their yelling was making it through the walls.
"Are they at it again?" Rachel, my wife, asked me.
"They've been fighting for an hour, you can really hear them from over here. Here, take a listen."
"IF YOU HAD KEPT YOUR DICK IN YOUR PANTS, WE WOULDN'T BE HAVING THIS FIGHT!" Stella yelled at Richard.
"STOP THROWING IT IN MY FACE!"
Their shouting matches were a daily occurrence now. It's hard to believe how different things had been.
The day we moved into this apartment, a little over a year ago, we had heard a knock on the door.
An older man and woman stood at the door with a warm smile and a casserole in hand.
"Howdy neighbours! We figured you could do with a home cooked meal since you won't have all your stuff unpacked yet!" Stella said to us that day.
We invited them in to share that meal with us and since that day, we've been inseparable. They were both 15 years older than us and took us under their wing.
They showed us where they shopped, got us memberships at their country club, took us along to jazz nights at their favourite clubs.
They introduced us to their vintage wine collection, shared recipes with us and showed us how to make cocktails.
On most nights, we ate dinner together. They regaled us with stories of how the city looked back when they first moved here and what dating was like before dating apps.
Neither they nor we had kids and all of us lived far from family. So in that year, we created a kind of a family of our own.
Richard, Stella, Rachel and Josh - a found family.
That's why when Richard and Stella started fighting, we thought this would be the end of our life as we knew it. What if they divorced? What if they both moved away?
In the early months, they'd seemed like the perfect couple - something Rachel and I could aspire to. They were high school sweethearts who ran away together, more best friends than husband and wife.
"I climbed through her bedroom window and she was ready her bags packed. Her dad chased after my car with his shotgun!" Richard said to us one night, over many glasses of wine.
He had a twinkle in his bright brown eyes whenever he talked about his wife.
"That last part is a lie! My father was an angel," Stella corrected him, tousling his salt and pepper hair.
"Ok fine, there was no shotgun but he hated my guts for eloping with his only daughter," Richard said, drawing laughs from the room.
Just the perfect couple. But of course, there's no such thing. The problem was that Richard was a serial cheater.
A handsome man of 6'2 who kept in fantastic shape, Richard had no dearth of attention from young, beautiful women.
I noticed it first when we went to the beach. A 20-something with firm tits and blonde hair got suddenly curious about where Richard got his sunglasses from. She looked like she had only just started drinking legally.
"What's your name, sweetheart?" Richard asked her.
"Me? I'm Ashleigh!" She said with a jump, which made her b-cup breasts jiggle in her green bikini.
I thought this girl was pretty hot, but I wasn't about to flirt with her in front of my wife. But Richard had no such scruples. And after three beers on a sunny beach day, he was letting himself go.
"Well, Ashleigh. Do you want to try them on?" he asked her.
"Sure!"
He took off his sunglasses and got up to stand in front of her.
"Let's see..."
He placed the glasses on her face, removed her blonde tresses from her face and stepped back. As he surveyed her, he placed his hands on her waist.
"These sunglasses look better on you than they ever did on me."
Richard had an obvious erection under his swimming trunks. Pretty sure Ashleigh noticed too. She was certainly grinning, trying to steal glances at his crotch.
What baffled me most about Richard's wandering eye was that he was married to an incredibly hot woman.
Stella was a tall woman, with dark brown hair and dark eyes. She wasn't as obsessive about working out as her husband, but she had kept herself in shape.
Even in her 40s, she could turn heads. Most guys passing by were shamelessly checking out both her and Rachel, both dressed in bikinis.
Even though they both had overshirts on, Stella's D cups could hardly be restrained.
I looked over at Stella's embarrassed face, which seemed to say, "This happens all the time but I wish he wouldn't do it when we have company."
Richard was beginning to piss me off now. Little Miss Sugar Tits may be hot, but Rachel and I loved Stella and I'll be damned if he was going to embarrass her in front of us.
"Umm... Richard, the sun is looking like it's about to go down. Maybe we should head back?"
"What? Oh yeah, right. Sorry hon, gotta go. You keep the sunglasses, though."
"Bye handsome," she said to him. What a slut.
But that wasn't the last of it. Richard was flirting with waitresses at the jazz club, with women at the gym we both went to and with any woman who gave him attention.
Eventually, the tension started to spill over. Richard and Stella would bicker at the dinner table, they were shouting at each all day and the worst of all, they stopped coming for the same outings.
We still did dinner together with all four of us, but we had to start going to the outings with them separately.
Stella took us to the museums and art shows, Richard took us to the jazz clubs and we stopped going to the beach altogether - too many 21 year olds with firm tits.
This mostly worked out well, until one day when an art exhibit and a jazz festival at the local jazz club were on the same night.
We didn't want to disappoint either of them, so we decided we'd split up for the night. Rachel, the music aficionado between the two of us, accompanied Richard while I went with Stella.
This was such a conflict for me. I loved him too. He'd become such an important part of Rachel and my life. But we could tell Stella was hurting and not saying anything.
Rachel began noticing things too. "I wonder how many affairs he's got going on." she said to me the next night while we were getting ready for dinner with the older couple.
"Pretty sure he's sleeping around wherever he can get some, I feel so- wow..." I trailed off because I just looked at Rachel as she stepped into the living room.
She was wearing a low cut black dress. The hem was just above her knees. Her curly black hair fell in rivulets over her cleavage.
Rachel's breasts were not as big as Stella's, but they were a pair of delectable C cups. And boy, they seemed to defy gravity. Her skin was taught and nipples pointy.
Every time she went braless, you could see the outline of her nipples. And today, they were poking through her dress.
God, I was a lucky man.
"That's an interesting dress to wear tonight, with Richard and his wandering eye out and about," I teased her.
"Very funny!" She slapped my arm but blushed slightly.
"I'm only teasing, babe. I don't think he'd make a move on you. You're like family to him."
"Uh, yeah... I suppose..."
"What's that look?"
"What look?"
