After that day, Jack, Rich, and I were inseparable. There were rumors that I was dating Jack while sleeping with Rich, but we didn't care. Rich about killed PFC Ricks the one time he called Jack a cuck and wasn't just shitting around. We had lots of fun and I never got caught. Jack made sure of that.
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.
