Rachel and I had been married for four years before we moved from Illinois to Virginia. We were college sweethearts for two years, seemed compatible in every way – including sexually – and got married several months after we graduated. We're fairly normal looking people, although both in much better physical shape than the average American, even the average one our age. I'm a 5'11", 180 pound blonde (dirty blonde – the color, not how sanitary it is), Rachel is a 5'5", 120 pound brunette.
Rachel is pretty laid back; although I don't think that she's smarter than I am (at least not by much) she is more intellectual. I'm fairly aggressive in most things that I do, including when I used to play lacrosse and wrestle, and now in business. I'm a fairly clueless and transparent whereas Rachel is extraordinarily perceptive and enigmatic.
Some of the first people that we met when we moved to Virginia were Rick and Tanya. They were quite a pair – seemingly not well suited for each other, but both with highly likable and idiosyncratic personalities. They lived only a few houses down in the same starter-home development that we did. Rick was the same age as Rachel and I, while Tanya was a year younger. They had also met in college.
For all practical purposes Rick was exactly my size, and even had the same dirty blonde hair color. After we had known Rick and Tanya only a couple of weeks while they were sitting by the community pool and we all had sunglasses on several times Tanya called me "Rick" and Rachel called Rick "Bob." I gave her shit about that since she prides herself on how perceptive she is, but when they took photos of us from the back with the same pose and with the same color towel wrapped around our waist, even Rick and I couldn't tell who was who.
Tanya was never mistaken for Rachel. Tanya is about 5'1" tall, probably 110 pounds. She probably would weigh only 100 except that her tits are way oversized for a woman her body type. She has natural "ruby red" hair (the color that Carrie Preston, of True Blood, The Good Wife, and Crowded fame, dies her blonde hair) and her personality is as fiery as her hair color. While Rick is one of the few people I know more laid back than (and as intellectual as) Rachel, Tanya is as aggressive as they come – while still being fun to be around.
After we had known Rick and Tanya for about two months another couple that we immediately liked moved into our neighborhood about a block away. Larry and Brenda were both a year older than me and Rachel but had been married a year less than we had. Larry is easy to describe – Brenda hard.
Larry looks like a classic ex-football player; which is what he is. He's probably 6'4" tall, 250 pounds with very little fat, and has physical strength even out of proportion to his size. While not really handsome he has what I'm sure most women would consider an attractive look and manner, and he holds himself with a real air of confidence. While being as funny and pleasant as they come, he has a real competitive streak and with the exception of Tanya is more aggressive than anyone else Rachel or I have ever met since college.
Brenda is – I know of no other way to describe her – sultry. She doesn't put on airs, doesn't strike sexy poses or wear provocative clothes, and she wouldn't win a beauty contest; however, there is something about her that knocked my socks off the first time that I met her. Maybe it's her penetrating intense blue eyes, which to me are indistinguishable from Olivia Wilde's. She's probably about 5'9" tall (she says that she's 5'8" but when she has three inch heels on, and I have a classic man's one inch heel, she's exactly the same height that I am) and thin, probably only 125 pounds. She is a brunette with natural subtle red highlights.
As young marrieds with fun outlooks on life, the six of us easily made friends with almost everyone that we came into contact with, but – despite our diverse personalities – especially with each other. We interfaced with each other one way or another almost every weekend and sometimes during the week too. This is despite the fact that shortly after they met Tanya and Larry seemed to develop a love-hate relationship. Maybe it was because they both were so aggressive, maybe because their size discrepancy was laughably dramatic, maybe it was something from their past, but the other four of us – even perceptive Rachel – couldn't quite figure it out.
There were some dramatic examples of the seemingly bi-polar (maybe "yo-yo" is a better term) interactions between Larry and Tanya. Once time when Tanya was giving Larry unmitigated shit at a pool party because he could barely swim a lap ("Too much muscle" was his excuse, obviously made in jest but probably some truth to it), he picked Tanya up like she weighed nothing, turned her over, and gave her two quick swats on her ass. She seemed to be mortified and immediately exited the immediate area. It turned out to be an act.
As Larry was talking to several other people near the edge of the pool with his back turned to Tanya, she snuck up on him, poured a bucket of ice – with just enough water to make it penetrate – down the back of his trunks, and as he was hopping around trying to dislodge the ice without exposing his privates she hit him like a linebacker would a running back and knocked him flat into the pool, to the hilarious laughter of all around.
After the six of us had been interacting for about a year, having more fun than we had had in college as long as we could prevent Tanya and Larry from pranking – or at least killing – each other, I started having some strange feelings. As I said, clearly NOT the most perceptive person in the world, but the strange feelings were at least in part fueled by a change in the way Brenda reacted to me.
As previously indicated, when I first met Brenda she knocked my socks off – and my reaction changed little from the first one every time that I saw her. However, I was happily married to Rachel, Brenda appeared happily married to Larry, I hated cheaters, and our group dynamic didn't lend itself to anything more than friendly interaction. However, I swear that her greeting and parting hugs were getting a little longer and more intense, that she solicited my opinion more often than previously, and whe was more appreciative of little things that I did for her – which I had done constantly for her, Rachel and Tanya over the entire lengths of our relationships.
I started to enjoy Brenda's company more and more.
It was almost exactly fourteen months since I met Brenda (and Larry) when I organized a combination treasure hunt, scavenger hunt, and immersive team building event. We had four teams of four. When making up the teams I discussed them with Rachel to make sure that she felt like I did, namely that we wanted two people from our group on each of three teams.
"How about if you and Rick are on one of the teams, Brenda and me on another, and Larry and Tanya on a third?" I asked Rachel, without making eye contact, as one night I played with the list of the sixteen participants.
"You little devil," she chuckled. "By putting Larry and Tanya together you're trying to be sure that both your team and mine will at least not come in last; let's hope that they don't kill each other or alienate their other team members."
"So you figured it out, huh?" I snickered.
"Hard not to," she laughed.
The event was designed to require each team of four to transport themselves around an area of about twenty miles in diameter, centered at our housing development. People would have to solve clues, fill out a sheet that required information that could only be obtained at various locations, retrieve some objects, and complete some tasks. I had paid an organization to execute the details, after I gave them the general parameters, so I didn't have an advantage over the other participants. I actually had a legitimate prize for the winners, a reunion dinner for the four teammates that won at one of the nicest restaurants in the area. I was planning on winning and using that as an excuse to go out with Brenda – and two other teammates – sans spouses.
Both the contest helpers and I believed that the fastest possible time for completion would be about four hours, and every team had to report to the finish line (restaurant) within six hours from the start whether or not it had compiled all of the information or completed all of the tasks.
I drove with Brenda riding shotgun for our team. Brenda had a map, our two teammates in the back seat had the clues and game sheets to be filled out, and we took off from the start in a hurry on a beautiful sunny spring day with the temperature in the 70s. Brenda and I gave each other knowing looks and laughed as Larry and Tanya were already arguing about which vehicle to use before their team even got started.
To make a long story short, we had a blast. More important to me than even the fun of the contest was almost five hours of interaction with Brenda, which included some significant body contact, and one particularly desirable task when she and I had to do something together in a lake with our bathing suits on.
Did I mention that in a bikini Brenda looked hotter than a Carolina Reaper pepper?
