Marine Corps

Chapter 24 - Every Day is Your Last

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I didn't hear about Jack or Rich until I'd been deployed to Bagram for over six months. When they extended our deployment another six, we were given ten-day Leaves. Mine came up first in rotation, so I got to fly back to Guam where I called Jenny as soon as I could get off base. She told me and I dug up the details after they were already buried and gone.

Heather got a letter from Rich's CO that he'd been killed while volunteering for picket duty, but he didn't know about the association between Rich and Jack, so Heather didn't find out about his death until she called to break the news to Erica. They met up at Arlington and it was the last time any of us in New Hampshire would see any of the California families again. Jenny was there to represent me as a 'friend of the family'. No one ever knew about us while I was serving. I made sure it never showed and Jenny was a rock! She passed the time I was gone with Heather, Faith, her folks, and a promise.

After the funeral, everyone just stopped communicating. It... it was like their deaths killed more than their bodies. It killed their families. Last I ever heard from Erica was a Christmas card from her that she must have sent before she got the letter about Jack, but I didn't even know about that until almost two years later when I came home. After so much time and pain, I just couldn't bring myself to call or write her.

When Erica finally wrote Heather, and she wrote back, none of us knew just how important those letters would become or how much they would change all our lives.

Chapter 23 - No Greater Love

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CAUTION - Highly Emotional Content
CAUTION - Violence

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We mourned with Heather and Rich when they got the news about her not being able to have any more kids. She and Rich wanted more, but things are the way they have to be, right? That's what Jack always used to say. They moved north that fall while Rich worked at fixing up the big house.

They surprised Jenny and I when they told us they were going to give the little house to us. No rent meant Jenny could quit and I could open my own salon with her as my office manager. So in spring of ninety-nine, just after Faith's first birthday, we moved to be with Heather and Rich in Pittsberg.

Meanwhile, Jack and Erica had their own share of troubles. She caught an ectopic pregnancy three months after Jenny and I moved, days after Heather's twenty-fifth birthday, that nearly killed her. She had a radical hysterectomy that saved her life, but meant they too would only have one child. Rich and Heather flew all four of us down there, staying nearly a month, but we had to come home eventually, leaving Jack and Erica alone again. Judith broke her promise and tried tearing them apart, and Frank separated from her over it, though they reconciled after... well...

Things were never the same after that. They never came back to visit us in New Hampshire. Jack couldn't leave his business and Jenny and I couldn't leave ours, and Heather had her practice, so that trip in summer of ninety-nine was the last I ever saw Jack or Erica. We kept in touch, but not enough.

Then everything changed... for everyone.

Chapter 22 - Moving On

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At very least the confrontation between Judith and Rich ended with, if not acceptance, at least tolerance, which is more than I can say about my own parents when I came out to them.

It went about as I'd predicted. Eventually they just stopped communicating with me, even when I reached out to them. I learned later that Dad died in oh-four of a heart attack, and Mom went last year from the same thing. They never returned any of my letters. I wrote twice a year. I just kept busy at a local salon, while Jenny worked her desk at the medical group.

Jenny's parents were out of the country when I came home, and I never met them the two weeks we were together before that, so we didn't meet 'til July of ninety-eight. They were surprised, but not half as much as Jenny was!

In the mean time, Rich and Heather were getting into the swing of being new parents. Rich loved being 'Mister Mom' to Faith and ran the house like his own personal fire team! Shortly after she was born, they started looking into moving. There were too many sad memories lurking around the home she grew up in, and Rich wanted a place that would be all their own.

Chapter 21 - Surprise, Surprise

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I stayed in touch with Jack and Rich while I was overseas. They would call and tell me what was going on in their lives and I in turn lied to them about how great my new posting was. The only benefit of being so bloody far away was that I was still accumulating Leave that I never took, so in the end I got out almost a month early, taking my last twenty-one days as Terminal Leave.

By September second, I was on my way back to CONUS... the Continental US... but things had changed. Jack and Erica were living in Newport Beach and Rich was in New Hampshire, which was where I was headed as fast as I could. I didn't even take the time to call anyone and let them know I got out early. I felt like I was abandoning Jack, especially after all that he'd done for me over the years, but I just had to follow my heart.

Chapter 20 - New Life

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Jenny and I spent the next two weeks together almost constantly. She got her time off of work, though I'm pretty sure Heather had something to do with that! Those weeks we spent together were all that we'd have for the next year. After I went back, I got my PCS notice effective the first of January ninety-seven. They were already drawing down ANAS and shipping us out to other duty stations.

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.

Chapter 19 - Love and Marriage

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Jack not only saw to it Jenny and I had time alone that night, he saw to it we had time the next day before the bridal shower and that night after it! I think Jack was a little in love with the idea of Jenny and I being in love! More than anything though, I think Jack wanted to make sure someone would be there to take care of me, because he knew that very soon, he wouldn't be.

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!

Chapter 18 - Turkey Surprise

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While Jack and them were greeting Rich's parents, I was inside with a bunch of strangers, the only person in uniform, in a place where I didn't even know people's opinions regarding the military. To say I was a bit jumpy is to put it lightly! Even when someone did talk to me, I always felt like a curiosity more than a Marine, or even the supposed Maid of Honor.

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.

Chapter 17 - Giving Thanks

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Jack and I had a blast at the pizza parlor that day while Heather and Erica saw to the fittings. We talked for what seemed like hours, laughed, and had a great time. At one point, the waitress that brought us our drinks said we made a cute couple. I wanted to rip her head off at the time, but Jack just laughed. Looking back, it was kind of funny, and I suppose we did make a cute couple, as weird as that sounds! I guess that's why people believed it so easily for so long.

The next several days were a blur. Not only were we getting ready for the wedding on Saturday, but Thanksgiving was that Thursday and Heather had planned a large get together at her family home for both the wedding party and guests and friends of hers and Rich's from their jobs. Sort of a hybrid Rehearsal Dinner, Office Party, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one. I had doubts if even her huge home could fit everyone.

The biggest worry was Rich and Erica's parents. They were invited of course, but none of us knew if Judith would show or not, what with Jack being the Best Man, and even if she did show, if she would make a scene. Erica told me that she was feeling nervous, like a cat on an unplugged electric fence, scared that at any moment it'd go live. Meanwhile, I was struggling with my own issues. I just didn't know if I could be what Heather needed me to be, and I wanted her to have what she deserved.

So Thanksgiving began with a lot of question marks and ended with more.

Chapter 16 - Wedding Bell Blues

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Heather wasn't kidding or bragging, either. Five huge bedrooms, seven full baths, a great room, a formal dining room, and an adjacent kitchen, all with flawless pinewood floors that shined with two centuries of care and attention. In the wings off the main building was the library, den, music room, and what Heather called the 'Meeting Room'. It had marble floors and it's own huge fireplace, in addition to the one in the great room.

The bedrooms were all on the second and third floors, each with their own private bath, with two bathrooms on the main floor. The attached garage had chauffeur's quarters, as well as a machine shop... and that was just the house!

The property itself was almost beyond description. Forty-five acres with a private pond, apple orchard, woods, walkways, green space, equestrian trails, and, oh yes, lets not forget the 'barn'! The three-story barn with heated stalls and tack room and its own laundry! The second floor was a home for stable workers. Kitchen, living area, bathroom, with the three bedrooms on the third floor, and all of it surrounded by forestlands and fields that were donated to the state as a preserve. It was truly magnificent!

When we first arrived, I thought Heather was trying to show off, but she was just as warm and friendly as she'd always been. She was just very proud of her family home.

Chapter 15 - Homecoming

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True to his word, Jack called the CO first thing Monday and laid it out for him, that he and I had never had a relationship, that it was always a ruse so I wouldn't be pressured for dates, and Erica backed him up the whole way! He was skeptical, but when Erica nearly bit his head off at the accusation that Jack was cheating on her, that sold him. He dropped the whole deal, with no ticklish questions about why. Within hours, I heard that it had gotten around that Jack and I had been a big lie the whole time.

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.

Chapter 14 - Everything Changes

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That established the pattern. Jack and Erica would go out with me when I had Liberty and I'd trawl for Ms. Right. Never really got anywhere, but the three of us sure had fun trying! We got together with Rich and Heather a few times for dinner, but it was becoming clear that the guys started getting too busy with their own things to spend any real time together.

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.

Chapter 13 - The New Normal

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When Rich, Heather, and I drove back to the bay area in his car, mine stayed with Jack and Erica after we three had properly 'decorated' it. By then I was feeling a little better about things, but not much. I think I did a pretty good job of keeping the boys blissfully unaware, but not Heather. She knew I was upset, and why, without me saying a word.

That week was hell for me. Once word got around that Jack and Erica had gotten married, I had every single serviceman at that base 'dropping by' the shop to give their condolences on the breakup of our relationship, and not too casually expressing their interest at taking his fictional place in my bed. I managed to duck out of them all that week by saying how I was still kind of heartbroken over the whole thing and just wanted to take time away from dating anyone, but I knew they'd be back.

I never realized before that week just how much Jack had helped my time in the Corps be as enjoyable as it was. After he got married, it was a chore. Just work... and I had eighteen months left in my cruise.

When Jack finally returned the next weekend, I got to hear all the details of their Honeymoon. Romantic evenings, dinners at the lake, feeding ducks at some park, I wanted to puke it was so sweet! I'll admit it. I was bitter. Bitter, jealous, and angry with Jack for taking away my protective cloak. I think that's why he did what he did.

Chapter 12 - Big Things Come in Small Buildings

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They buried Mary in the plot next to his father Danny there in Pittsburgh the following Saturday. It was just the two of them and Erica's father Frank there to say goodbye. They flew back the next day and Jack went to work on his big plan.

Jack told me about his plan for the weekend of March twenty-third, ninety-six. He'd thought of everything, but needed Heather and me to help pull it off. So we spent four weeks between Jack burying his mom and the weekend of the twenty-third plotting, scheming, and basically having a blast planning the surprise of a lifetime for both Erica and Richard. Rich almost caught us once. He walked into the shop while I had stuff out he shouldn't see, but he could be a bit oblivious at times. He never had a clue!

Rich once told me that he thought Jack didn't know how to plan ahead... that he seemed incapable of thinking more than five minutes into the future. He thought Jack was wasting his time and opportunities by not going to college on the government dime. We'd earned it, so why not take advantage? The truth is Jack did have a plan for what he wanted to do, he just had different priorities than Rich. He thought love and happiness, even in total poverty, were better than living in the lap of luxury...

...but Jack did know how to plan.

Chapter 11 - The Impatience and Patience of Love

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CAUTION - Highly Emotional Content

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Erica once told me that the night she and Jack talked upstairs was one of the most romantic experiences of her life. Sounds great when you say it, but if you think about it you come to realize that the logical corollary to that is that it must have been all worse after that! Luckily for her, Jack was only getting started. Besides, Erica had a tendency to exaggerate!

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.

Chapter 10 - Revelations

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I spent my next Liberty with Erica. She talked while I listened and messed with her hair. I learned a lot about Jack, things he never told me. I understand why he'd kept it to himself, though. He'd endured so much pain, it's amazing he was only as nuts as he seemed to be! No one want's that to show.

I learned a lot about Rich, too. She didn't talk as animatedly about him as she did Jack, but she knew all his secrets! I don't know what it is about being a beautician, but women will bear their souls to us the way guys do with a bartender. They tell us things they won't even tell their shrink!

For Jack's part, he was just so damnably, blissfully, innocently, ignorant of Erica's feelings toward him it was hard to watch! It wasn't that Jack didn't see her that way because she was younger, but because of something much more basic. She was his best friend's sister, and that made her almost like his own. It's a little creepy if you think too hard about it!

Jack wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, though. Erica loved him, and had loved him through some of the worst times of his life. He wasn't about to let that get away, no matter who she was.

Chapter 9 - Christmas Gifts

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The next day Rich called Heather and told her that Jack stepped aside, but Heather wouldn't have it. She insisted on a date with Jack and wouldn't take no for an answer. Jack said it was good, friendly and warm, but they quickly learned that he and Heather would never have worked out in the end. She was made for Rich and Jack could already see she was in love with him.

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.

Chapter 8 - Fate or Chance

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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.

Chapter 7 - What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing

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I came out of MCRD Paris Island in January of ninety-one, days before the start of Operation Desert Storm. From there I went to Camp Geiger for MCT and Lejeune for MOS. By the time I got my first posting later that year, the war was over and the country had a different attitude toward the military.

Before the Gulf, most people looked down on a military career, leftover crap from Vietnam, I guess. After the Gulf though, the country almost seemed to be on overkill trying to apologize to every service member for the treatment of Vets after Vietnam by being overly proud of them. I hadn't even gotten a posting outside the US yet and I had people thanking me for my service! It was bizarre when you think that just a year earlier I had every friend I ever knew telling me what a mistake it was to join up.

I was posted to The Bricks... Marine Barracks, Alameda Naval Air Station as an eleven forty-two, Electrical Equipment Repair Specialist, about July of that year. I met Jack about a week later. At first I thought he was rude, boisterous, pigheaded, and inconsiderate. Later I found out he was all that and so much more!

Chapter 6 - Graduation and Beyond

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Jack told me a story once about things that he said happened later that night, but Rich insisted that he was exaggerating, so I don't know what happened after that, really. Jack says Anne made a scene, trying to tell Jack to leave and quit embarrassing himself by taking his mother to the Prom, but Rich says she only wanted to make peace now that school was ending. I don't know what the truth is, but I suspect Rich was just defending her out of his sense of loyalty. He could be like that sometimes. Besides, he still put almost all the blame on Wendy and his mom. He never said so, but I think he always believed that Wendy broke up he and Anne, not vice versa.

Their graduation was apparently as uneventful as they usually are. There was apparently a party afterwards, but both of them said it was boring and not worthy of a story. Just things that happened, but then I think a lot of life is that way... just things that happen.

In the weeks that followed, Jack was working at his physical therapy. He said he was concerned that the Corps wouldn't take him due to his injury, but in the end, with Rich's help, he passed MEPS and, with his mother's signature, headed off to Paris Island in July while he was still seventeen.

Boot is Boot, so telling you what it would have been like for them isn't really telling you about them. It wasn't until they came home after MCRD and before heading out for SOI that things got interesting.

Every Day is Your Last

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Jack Dunning was just a poor kid from Pittsburgh, no better or worse than any other. When he met Richard, it seemed to be a one-sided friendship; Jack needing Richard much more than the other way around. As the years passed however, it became clear to them both just how important their friendship was, eventually culminating in both learning the hardest lesson in life; that every day is a gift and you should treat each one as though it were your last.

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