So two weeks after I said goodbye to Jenny, Heather, and Rich, I was saying goodbye to Jack and Erica, too. I was being shipped off to Okinawa, which left me so far from everyone else it wasn't worth trying to get home to see anyone. I poured myself into my job and counted the days. All I had to get me though it was the memory of those blissful two weeks and the occasional phone call that I made off base.

In the interim, Erica graduated with a degree in Psychology, and she and Jack were getting ready to start their new life.

The day of the wedding came and everyone was frantic... except Heather. I worked overtime doing everyone's hair, then getting myself put together, but Heather never faltered or got nervous. That woman's a rock! Unshakable! We girls piled in Heather's limo afterwards, and Gregory drove us to the church in good time.

Later, Jack told me that Rich begged off his own Bachelor Party. Jack still threw it, but Rich didn't go, so neither did Jack! It ended up they spent the evening at a bar around the corner, nursing at beers and reminiscing, while Rich's guests partied hard a block away. It must have been a beauty of a party though, because Jack wouldn't say a word to me about what happened!

So November thirtieth nineteen ninety-six, Rich finally got Heather to say 'I Do'. The wedding was nice. The reception was... well... memorable!

Later on, when Jack and I were talking, everyone else being busy, he told me about Judith and what all happened between them that day. I wanted Jack to know that no matter what, I would be there for him and Erica both. There's not a lot of things you can count on in this world, but I think my friendship with Jack and Rich could be counted as one of them.

Most of the time, you think you know what's going to happen in life. Things like Thanksgiving come around and you... you expect certain things. Turkey, stuffing, football, napping on the couch, talking and laughing with family and friends... You know, the predictable things that are why we have things like Thanksgiving in the first place. To take time together with the people we love and make a memory.

Sometimes things happen that you don't expect though, and would and could, never see coming.

The funny thing is, it didn't get worse. In fact, I hardly ever got hit on again after that! Seems once they learned Jack and I had never been a couple, that I hadn't dated anyone for over five years, the trouser hounds lost interest. Oh sure, I got a few asks right afterwards, but all I had to say was 'no' and they wouldn't ask again. My rep went from 'she must be great in bed' to 'she's frigid' in two days. I was never so thankful for being unpopular!

So my Leave started the last week of November and, since I hadn't used any that year, I was able to take three full weeks. I decided I wanted to take a trip back home on the way out to Heather and Richard's place and spend a day to introduce my best friends to my folks.

Jack got a job managing a dry-cleaners in Palo Alto, meanwhile Rich was busy finishing his degree. With Heather and Rich graduating shortly after he and Jack were officially shifted to the Reserves, a full year ahead of Erica's graduation and sixteen months before the end of my cruise, we all knew it meant big changes were coming in our lives. Rich had talked about taking an office job somewhere in LA so he could be close to Jack, Erica, and his parents, but he never got into any details. I guess he was just stalling.

I remember the last dinner we had all together that summer. It was at Heather and Rich's apartment because it was bigger. I'm pretty sure Jack knew what was coming, but it didn't make it any easier to take.

Jack told me that they talked, cried, kissed a few times, and professed their love for one another. That and a bunch of stuff about living in contentment with pain and such. Blah, blah, blah. Richard was a wreck. He hid it well, but I knew him better than anyone except Jack, even better than Heather. He was torn between wanting to see Jack happy against his protectiveness of Erica. I guess that means protecting her from ever growing up, having fun, sex, a marriage, children... etc. Men are idiots!

The rest of New Years morning was uneventful, unless of course you count Jack's proposal to Erica, but then I'm pretty sure they both knew it was only Jack being Jack. I told you that story already, though. The next few weeks were hard on them. Jack had no Liberty and Erica was swamped with school. Richard and Heather had gotten to the 'comfortable' part of being a couple, so they were used to the separation. Plus, they were sleeping together, which took off a lot of the tension. Jack and Erica... well... Erica told me what they weren't doing.

It got difficult for them to go slowly after only six weeks. Their needs pushed them father and faster than they'd planned to go, but sometimes you realize you gotta to take hold of life fast, and live it while you still have the chance.

Heather and Rich were inseparable after that. For about six weeks, every minute of Liberty Rich had was spent with her, leaving Jack and I to fumble around on our own. It wasn't until Rich's twenty-fourth birthday that Jack and I got to spend any time with him again, but by then it was a foursome.

Rich was done dating and Jack was stuck as my 'boyfriend' for the interim. We went on a triple date once. Rich and Heather, Jack and... Marie I think her name was... and me and Julie. It was awkward because they were first dates for Jack and me, but Heather and Rich were a permanent couple, so I think it made our dates a little uncomfortable. We never did it again.

By the end of the following year, Jack was in a bit of a depression. He was happy for Rich and Heather, but he'd begun to feel like he was never going to find anyone that would love him. It was shortly before Christmas ninety-five that I found myself in a position to repay all the help Jack had ever given me, plus interest.

Not that I was sleeping around a lot, mind you, but I went on a few dates, mostly with college girls. I never risked dating a fellow W-M. While Rich and Jack were running cover for me, I couldn't count on any of them having similar arrangements. We also never went anywhere that was near the base.

If I had a date, which was rare, it was always somewhere remote and out of the way... never any of the usual places the Hellcats or anchor-clankers might go. The only times we'd go places like the Warf or any place we could get seen it was the three of us, sometimes with a girl Rich was seeing, but never with a girl Jack was seeing. That wasn't often and never the same girl more than once, for any of us!

By ninety-four, things got easier with 'don't ask, don't tell', but we kept up the pretense of Jack being my boyfriend because it just made things easier. For me, anyway. Most W-Ms got hit on all the time, but once it got around that Jack and I were an item, I was off limits. Grunts had no qualms about hitting on W-Ms if they we're seeing a civi or were even married to one, but they'd rarely turn on a fellow member of the Corps. I felt bad for Jack, though. It made his success rate with the ladies track nearly to zero.

Even when it looked like maybe Jack had a shot at a terrific girl, something would always screw it up.