2404 December Mer: My clothes, are on the floor, with the wet bathing suit I was wearing when I got here. Last night? I just lost my poker mind-set. I put the shirt on that he had tossed over to me, and buttoned it up a bit, thank you for the shirt.
BJ: I see, was all I said. When I had finished eating, I set my fork down and asked how her husband hunt was going. She swung her fork at me and I caught her wrist. I won't marry you Mercedes! I'll make love with you if you'd like I said,as I pushed her back onto the bed and held her down, but I won't marry you. What do you want?
Mer: I smiled at him, there is no husband hunt. I want to make love to you.
BJ: This won't be a regular thing, not like before, I kissed her. I don't know how you can settle for this, I kissed her again, stronger harder,you deserve so much more. I wasn't waiting for her this time, I didn't have to, she was with me all the way!
Mer: He was kissing me and telling me I deserved better, that it wouldn't be like before. Why? Why can't you give me at least (kissing now) what we had before? He didn't answer me right away; you might say we were too busy for chatter. I took in as much of this time as I could, I still hadn't gotten an answer to my earlier question, and was sure that I wouldn't. All I wanted was to spend whatever might be left of my life making love to and spending time with BJ. I didn't expect him to marry me, but he could have at least left room for the possibility that he might actually love someone. I cuddled up to him while he slept, I would milk this as long as he allowed me to.

BJ: When I woke at noon,with the warmth from her body behind me. I had just rolled off her, turned over and gone to sleep earlier. Now, I stretched and turned to face her. Your still here my groggy voice said, with a touch of wonder in it. I kissed her gently and made love to her the way I should have earlier. We spent the rest of the weekend together. We went diving, shot skeet , gambled and of course we had sex.
Mer: I was becoming more desperate as the weekend progressed, the end of it kept getting closer and I wasn't looking forward to it. I'm not talking about the kind of desperate where I'd be sabotaging the ship to delay the ride home, just the emotional side of it. I needed to know when I could see him next, wanted to know why I couldn't just have maybe a little less even than we had before he knew I loved him. I knew he wanted me, that much was obvious. Maybe we could just spend weekends together, maybe even if it was just one weekend a month, I knew he wouldn't. But I couldn't say goodbye to him like last time-- I would leave on my own this time. We made love Sunday evening before the ship docked. I love you BJ King, I whispered. I kissed him one last time, and began gathering my things to leave, I prayed that he would stop me before things went back to the way they had been the past year; and got ready to leave for home.

BJ: The Whale had dropped anchor. People were getting into transport boats and heading for shore, so were we. I said good bye to Mercedes,got into my car and left. I hadn't given her any answers, I wasn't sure I could. I just knew that I couldn't let her have that much of my life.
I went home and straight to bed, the smell of her still on me. The music I used to play to lift my mood wasn't working now. Her voice singing in my ears. I wasn't hearing the words of the song, I was hearing her words of just a few hours ago and before. I should have given her something to hang on to , I hadn't . I was a cruel son of a bitch( sorry mom). I hit the playback on my machine. Boyd, I need you are you there? It's Skyler. She needn't have told me, I knew when I first heard her voice. I waited but that was it. I pushed replay to see if there was a time for the call. It was yesterday . I pushed the return call bottom , Roman answered. I asked for Skyler, and he told me she had to go out of town and he had no number for her yet . He would let me know when she called . We chatted about the kids and I said good bye. God, I thought what now and why hadn't she come here!
Mer: I wish my kids would drop things as easily as BJ could. I walked into my house, and it was like an intervention, or a family reunion! They were all there, all my children and grandchildren, every single one of them. What are you doing here? Surprise, they said. I was dumbfounded, I spent nearly two days playing with my grandchildren, and ignoring questions about my personal life. In fact, I told my own children, to leave the kids with me, they could come get them friday. We went to the zoo, the park, the movies, I spent as much time with my grandchildren as I could during that week. Took tons of digital photos, it made me happy to spend so much time with them. I figured that we had done something that each child wanted to do, each one of them had told me they wanted to do a thing, and I did my best to fit it in. Then, I sent them back to their parents, and slept a few days. When I finally got out of bed, it was probably about three days later, and I went out for breakfast. I suppose that would make it monday morning. I took my laptop with me, I needed to get some work done. I set up a family website, complete with my photo collection, current and past. I made sure that it was password protected, so that the entire world wouldn't have access to these photos. It was easier than going through the whole paper version, cutting, framing out, decorating, and binding. Maybe next week I'd do that, while I was building up the family website though, I found that I could simply do up one version, scan it, upload it, and have it printed in book form without having to do that myself!

Done with the website, I decided to go and visit with some friends. If anything could lift my spirits they could. Russ and Dionne were parents now...or is it again? I made the rounds, visiting Lionel and Faith, and then Adara and Andre', etc. I went to see Dee and Russ and their twins; and experienced once again the warm fuzzy feeling you get around babies. I talked with Russ, he was wondering how things with BJ turned out. I told him that BJ was just a different version of the same faulty software, and laughed. I was glad to see Russ and Dionne so happy together. I talked with Dionne in more detail about what was really going on with Boyd, or not going on depending on how you looked at it.
After leaving Russ and Dionne', I ran into Joe, my grandson, and we went for a walk. He was very angry about something involving me, and wanted to talk about it. It was BJ, He had seen us on the Whale together. It was clear that I wasn't going to avoid this conversation. I told him that my personal life was really not his business; he responded by telling me that yes it was his business, he had been there, seen my behavior; seen BJ's behavior, and wanted answers. We sat down, and I told him that yes, I love BJ King, and No, he doesn't love me. Now please stop reading magazines and telling me how to live my life, or what's left of it.