It is a question of fate.

Actually? You know me, Diary, it is more than that. It is a question about whether or not you can ever outrun your fate.

My eyes waited patiently on the door that I knew he was getting ready to walk through. When he did, I think there was some part of him that was actually a bit nonplussed that I was simply waiting patiently on him.

"You took your time," I told him as he slid into the booth across from me.

He didn't say a word but then I knew he wouldn't. I also knew he was waiting to see if I'd just blurt something out. This is such a typical thing he does; you'd think by now he'd know that I don't fall for it, wouldn't you, Diary? It's not like I ever have.

His eyes were sweeping the bar and they'd rest for fleeting, invasive seconds on me in between this almost instinctual obsession he has with staying constantly aware of every single thing going on around him. It wasn't until he'd sipped twice at his scotch that he seemed content that he had the lay of the land and it was only then that he simply examined me.

God. I hate him in this moment.

"Where is he?" he finally asked me.

You should see his eyes when he is trying to really read me, Diary. I always get the impression that he's never quite prepared for the way I can shut down his ability to see what's going on by masking true emotions with other true emotions.

"Fuck off," I whispered and gave him a nasty little laugh when his eyes narrowed at me. "C'mon, Dino. You think I didn't know you were nearby? Cut to the chase and then get out and leave me be."

"You been drinking, Annie?" he asked me softly, his hand coming across the table, another instinctual move to lend comfort when he thought a woman needed help.

"Christ." I shook my head and propped my chin in my hand. "No, Sir Galahad, I have not been drinking. Well, except this first glass of wine and as you can see, it's been barely dented."

"How about you drop the attitude."

"How about you tell me why you think this is any of your business?"

"I'm part of the group. That makes it my business."

"Oh, really? And, why, pray tell, did you even decide to come here? As if I didn't know."

"He just doesn't want you to make a mistake. Not this kind of mistake."

"Crap. It's the same old bullshit - he just thinks he ..." I got this sudden flash. And I knew it. I always had. I should never have told Terry that last secret. Why had I thought he'd let me find my own way in this? Why had I thought he wouldn't be thinking I needed him to watch out for me? Had I purposely left clues for him to figure out the rest? Maybe there was a part of me that didn't care anymore?

"Is he right, Annie? Are you having an affair?"

"You gotta be kidding me. Christ, Dino, you know how ludicrous that sounds considering what we do in the Game? No one owns me. I can be with whoever I want."

We stared at each other. His face never changed. I couldn't really tell what he was thinking until just before he got up and started to walk away from me.

"Dino, wait."

He took a big breath and turned around to look at me.

"Come sit back down. I'll tell you what you want to know."

You can never outrun your destiny.

Now, that's something someone told me once. I have always wondered if it's true. I asked a Jesuit priest one time about this idea that when you are born, your lot is pre-ordained. Why bother living out your life then, I had always wondered. If from the moment you are destined to come into this world, your fate is already set, then what's the point of living? You'd think God would get bored watching us live lives that he already knows the outcome to.

Jesuits don't believe that bit about your life being pre-ordained. Neither do Buddhists. 

Neither do I.

Maybe it's why I formed this theory about the portals. Or maybe I've gotten fatalistic. But all of this started back there and it came to intrude on this world, this life. It became obvious to me ... my fate from back there was chasing me here. I had this suspicion, see, that it only chased me because I went back there and did things differently. But, you know what, Diary? I damned sure didn't have to sit around and let fate kick me in the ass. I could kick back. Couldn't I?

But let's us be honest with each other, Diary. It always takes me a while to work through these things. It seems to me that other women in our group would have simply accepted that things were different and they might have even had fun with the ideas of the portals. But not me. Oh, no. Nope, I had to see the down side. I saw the black side to this and I still looked.

But I also didn't see the big picture. I was too close. If I'd been able to step back and really get a gander at what all was happening, then maybe it wouldn't have taken me so long to make the leap across the void.

But then again ... I never believe anymore, do I?

"I didn't mean for it to go this far," I told the redhead. My favorite redhead. The friend indeed when I'm most in need. "I'm trying to fix it."

"You're doing a fucked up job of fixing it, Annie." He settled in across from me and just fixed me with those eyes.

"How would you know?"

"Because Terry knows you that well. He wouldn't have sent me if he didn't have a good idea of what's going on. You should have heard him, Annie. He's afraid that whatever it is you're up to is going to cause you problems with Jack and maybe others among the men that you will really regret. Suppose he's hoping I'd stop you before it's too late."

"God. I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't. I thought I'd have it all cleaned up and no one would even know about this part." It felt like a hard knuckle rubbing against my heart. "I'm a pretty bad person."

Gotta love the redhead. He reached across the table and squeezed my arm. Looked right in my eyes. Got all intense and sincere. "Even good people make mistakes."

I got this déjà vu moment. Whispered it to him and tried not to cry. "I remember Terry telling me once ... after I came back through my portal and he wanted to apologize ... he said something to the effect that even people who love you can let you down."

So, Terry knew. Or suspected. Why hadn't I thought about that? I should have been more circumspect in my last diary because he must have read cleanly between the lines and figured out that my mistakes had followed me through the portal. Or rather ... I'd continued making mistakes after coming back.

Is it just me or do I seem to fuck up too much? I remember asking Terry, the last time I saw him, if I was destined to torture him. I remember the number of times recently I've had to apologize to Jack ... it seems to me that my life's been off-track more than snug in the rails ever since I've been back from my portal. I am beginning to wonder if I've got some instant karma going from one world to the next ... retribution from the forces of life for having done something bad that was so out of character for me.

"So tell me something, Annie. Why did you do it?"

I looked deep inside Dino and wondered ... when did he start reading my mind? Because that's the question I'd been asking myself ever since I knew he'd been trailing me to the bar and I realized I must have been an idiot to think I could have ever gotten away with this and not paid for it.

"Because I think he is the man I was destined to marry in another life. Guess I just had to know what he was supposed to be to me in this one."

I have this vision of these two parallel worlds, mine and this one. 

No, I'm not saying I have the portals figured out. But here's my theory about our worlds.

Somehow, in this one specific moment, my old world and this other world met. And that's when I came here, Diary. That meeting is what made my portal possible.

But in coming here, I brought with me all the things that made me 'me' and I brought along my destiny as well. Fate. Kismet.

Kismet.

I have always liked that word. It sounds so ... exotic. It sounds like excitement waiting over the next hill.

Diary, what if my fate chased me across the portal? The first time through, I brought the fate that held the group of men I've come to know here. The second time through, I brought the fate that held Pat.

What if that's true?

Doesn't that then mean that I now have two fates on a collision course in this world?

Or perhaps it's so much simpler than that. Perhaps it's that I was always fated to go back through and meet Pat. Perhaps I'm meant to have the same major fateful milestones in both lives. And maybe that means that here, I was fated to meet the Pat of this world.

What if fate or karma is insisting I resolve this matter of Pat? I made a decision back in that other world, to leave him behind and to not follow through on what my heart felt for him because the truth of my heart was that I could never give up Jack for him. So I walked away clean. Only maybe it wasn't so clean after all.

What if leaving it unresolved in the other world has meant that I must resolve it in this one? That would be a sorta Buddhist circle.

But ... oh, yeah, Diary. With me, there's always a 'but' lurking, isn't there?

So here's the 'but': in both worlds, I made the same choice. And it wasn't Pat.

"None of you have any idea of what I gave up to come back here. Well, no, I take that back. Jack knows." 

I waited while Dino signaled for another round and then I waited until the barmaid sauntered over to deliver our drinks. I had to smile at Dino's smooth attempt to watch her walk away without making it obvious what he was up to. But when he looked back at me, I sighed at the look he gave me and got serious again. "I gave up having a man who was happy just with me. It wasn't complicated and he wasn't in love with me because of magic or whatever it is that happens here. He asked me to marry him. Pat, I mean. Back in my real world."

Not even a pause before he asked the question I'd only given the most casual gloss over way back when I'd made the decision to return with Jack to this world. "Why didn't you say yes and stay there?"

I gave him this tired chuckle and closed my eyes. "I'm not the marrying kinda gal, Dino. Isn't that obvious? I suck at marriage."

He asked. I didn't say no.

He gave me a ring. I left it behind.

His hope versus my non-belief.

I've been on the run from that kind of commitment for too many years. I'm no good at allowing a man that much power over me.

So tell me what it means that I was going to say yes, Diary?

It's why I was at the beach with Reggie. My whole life was in my hands and I didn't know what to do. All I knew was that I'd never have thought I would have been in this position. How do you love several men at once?

I loved him.

Think about someone you love enough to consider giving up everything you ever thought you wanted, Diary. Think about someone you love enough to make you think you might have been wrong all along about what you wanted.

And with that in mind, think how it felt for me to see Pat again in this world.

Into our third drink and Dino got philosophical on me. "You should have stayed there and married him. Pat. He was offering you something no one here could."

"Oh, you dear man. You think every woman wants to be married? Well, then, meet a woman who doesn't. Learned my lesson on that score, believe me."

"So you made the choice to come back here. You know the men in our group expect that you'll only be involved with them. And yet, you ... Why are you having an affair?" he asked me suddenly. "It's not like you don't have enough lovers here already."

And for some reason, I rather ignored his question in favor of a philosophical meandering of my own. In a way, actually, I was answering him. "What's reality, Dino? Ever think about that? You know something Terry and I talked about the last time he was with me? Reality and this world. Terry figures it isn't a big deal that the people here aren't the real people I knew. He says they're the same. Essentially. Ever been curious about that?"

"Not in the least."

I started laughing at his tone; nobody does understated smart-ass better than the redhead. In a minute, he was laughing with me.

"Yeah, well, Jack's not much interested in that topic of discussion either," I said. "But I am. Or was, I guess. I mean, if Pat's the same or essentially the same, was it meant to be that we would be attracted to each other here? Wouldn't our spirits rather know each other?"

"How did it start?"

"Mmm. Like all such things. It started innocently."

I'd given him my business card when I met him here. That day I met him and what's really ironic is that it was that night that I gave Terry the burden of a secret. I told him about loving Pat in my other world. We never really talked about it after I told him. We got too swept up in the Creator's arrival and then life sped up ...

And then, Jack was leaving after Temple Week to go sailing with Teener.

Pat called me the first day Jack was gone.

I was still trying to find answers to the questions from my portal experience. I know, I know. I did talk some of this over with Terry and he made some sense. And I talked around about it to Jack so much that it had put a strain between us because he thought I was saying one thing but I was saying another. But, hey, I'm me. Some answers I just have to understand before I accept them.

We met for lunch. God. I knew him so well. I still felt this fluttery good feeling just to be with him. And I just wanted to know ... did he at least share the same spirit with my Pat? Ah, the reality was I felt so drawn to him and ... I let it go too far. Too fast and ... zoom ... there I was again. Unfaithful. A woman I was ashamed of.

Crazy, crazy. How could I have done it? I look back on it and wonder ... I used to think I learned from my mistakes and never repeated them. Why couldn't I have learned from mistakes against me?

Unfaithful. Knowing if anyone found out, it could spell the end of things for me with lovers who expected me to stay within careful parameters of a crazy set up that worked for me like I still can't believe.

But what if it was meant to be? Simply meant to be and something I had to find out. What if I hadn't been meant to leave this love?

What would you have done?

My wish? That I had simply been honest from the beginning. That I hadn't been curious. That I hadn't asked questions. That I'd been a different person.

"Why didn't Terry just call me?"

I felt like jelly by then. I don't normally drink that much. And I don't normally have this whirlwind of chaos around me, either.

Dino's hand slid into mine and we laced our fingers. I took a sip of wine and leaned my head back against the back of the booth. Studied the redhead. What a sweetie he is.

"He wanted it to be your decision."

"Well, then he should have left me alone to do whatever I wanted. He shouldn't have sent you."

"Mmm. Well, I think perhaps he hoped I'd be the voice of reason. And as you and I are not lovers, I think maybe there's less confusion about why I'd care enough to help you see that this is something with real consequences."

"Fuck you, Dino. You think I don't already know about consequences? Christ. I mean, why do you think I told everyone about what happened in the portal with Pat?"

"Yeah. About that. Do you see the danger you're running? Why tell? You never have revealed this much before. Why now? And this shit about atoning for that mistake? What -- you thought making him your lover here makes up for treating him like shit in your other world? Kiddo, you're making a serious mistake."

"That wasn't how I was going to atone."

"This isn't the first day I've followed you."

"Yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Here's the truth. Unvarnished. Ready?" I sat up straight and looked hard in his eyes. "I know you won't believe this, but I asked Pat to meet me here in Biloxi so I could tell him it was over between us. I told him I was involved with another man."

We looked at each other.

"So, see? If you'd both have left me alone, I was doing the right thing in the end. It was wrong from the beginning and ... Even now, I am not sure why I would do that. What kind of person does that?" Bitter voice from me. Anger that surprised me. "So, yeah. I wasn't continuing the affair. I was stopping it cold and trying like hell to make it right. I did it good, Dino. I broke his heart. Proud of me?"

"Relieved for you, Annie. That's all." Squeezing my hand and then lifting it up to kiss my knuckles. "Wanna tell me about how you're feeling then?"

"I am tired of crying over what a bitch I've turned out to be. So, no."

"Ah, honey. You're not a bitch. Would we love you if you were?"

God. I hate him in this moment.

"Stop being nice to me."

I got his sweet smile and a warm hand along my cheek. "Want you to consider something, Annie. Don't write about this. Keep it as a secret. Telling this is only going to cause you problems with Jack and maybe some of the other men you're close to ... and maybe some of the women. We won't say anything, me and Terry. You know that. And we don't care about this because ... well, because we want you to be happy with whatever choice you make."

"So you don't even care about what I did? Either of you?"

"No. We aren't judging you. We just wanted you to consider the wisdom of your actions."

And I am not sure why, but for some ungodly reason, I at least needed someone to care enough about me to be pissed off and angry about this. I needed someone to feel passionately enough about me as an individual to feel I'd hurt him. Someone. Jack. Terry. Anyone. Someone had to love me enough for it to matter, right?

"It means nothing to Terry? I mean that little to him? Geez. I remember a time when I mattered at least enough for him to be jealous of the parts of me I was giving to other men in our group. I remember a time when he felt possessive enough of me to ask me not to get involved sexually with you. Guess that tells me all I need to know about how he feels about me."

"You need someone to hate you? Is that the only way you'll feel like you've been punished?"

"No. I just thought if a man loved me, then he would be hurt if I ..." A reflection on my past. On how I'd felt in the wake of what Cal did in cheating on me. "Gosh, this is funny. I feel like you've turned on a light for me. The only one who cares is Jack. I've been worrying for nothing."

"Maybe Terry just loves you enough to be able to support you no matter what your decision is. Maybe he'd be willing to take the personal pain of you choosing another life simply because he wants what's best for you."

I gave him this half-hearted chuckle. "Bullshit. Truth is that Terry's only interested in his 'marriage' to Uma now. There's no room for whatever it was we had when he's got that kind of feeling for another woman. Game or no Game."

His big sigh. The one he makes instead of saying, 'you're a fucking idiot.'

"Yeah, I know. I have some room to talk. I guess I just want it all. Want them all to be happy in their 'marriages' and still want to feel it won't change whatever I had with them. Life doesn't work that way. And, of course, I want the freedom to be absorbed in my love of Jack while still having what I used to have with Terry. Ah, not to mention the others -- Egan, East. God, and ... and Max. No wonder I don't understand the other women in the group. I don't even understand myself. How could they be so important to me and I'd be willing to jeopardize that just to find out about this other man I left behind me?"

Repercussions.

It was always my choice.

I chose to come back to this world. I chose the men in our group. I chose Jack.

And this time around, I made the same choice in men. It was always the ones in our group. Most specifically, it was always Jack.

Why I did it, I may never understand. How could I explain it to you, Diary? I have never, not in all my life, ever been anything less than loyal. Even in this Game of multiple partners, I have been loyal to the ideals of our world.

For each love that has been given me, I have tried to be loyal. I do not confuse the all-consuming love I feel for Jack with the affectionate love I feel for Cort. I do not compare the soul-deep passionate love I feel for Terry with the confrontational passion of the lovemaking I have with Maximus. I have never once tried to make my instinctive, sex-craving adoration of Hando into my massive, sexually-adventurous, loving worship of Bud. And even in learning about my new lovers East and Lachlan, I could never mistake that it is East who makes me feel like the older woman and it is Lachlan who makes me feel like I've just met an old soul who sees my ability to remain naïve in the face of the life I've led. Does that make any kind of sense, Diary? To me, it does. To me, it is being loyal to the truth of the unique bond I have with each of these unique men.

Yes, I struggle but that is who I am. Yet even today, I could sit here and write you a long essay that describes in moving detail the gifts that each of these men has given me as well as the shape of the love I feel for them. And in spite of that, I broke this rule.

I assigned my own punishment for this crime against my personal ethics. And my sentence is this diary. To just say it out loud to the men. To let the women know that of all of them, it is me who violates our values.

Here at my keyboard, I face an uncertain time. Will the women condemn me? Will they perhaps feel I owe something more to this world than I am giving?

What will the men think of me now? It was not fun to worry over what they thought of me after finding out some of this. What will it be like when they know the rest? When they know that I have been having an affair here in Perve World. They were pretty gracious in finding out about me having screwed around with another man back in my portal. But this is another story because now it's here. Right in their faces.

Bud. Very, very, very fucking pissed at me right now. But swallowing it all in the course of one conversation to tell me that he still loves me. To him, what I did in the portal was excusable if not great. But if it had happened here, I asked him. That would be very different, he told me. He may never speak to me again after knowing this.

Cort. Re-evaluating the spiritual side of me that could withhold the information about Pat from him and wondering why I never confide in him anymore. Will he even be comfortable with me as a friend when he realizes just how much I held away from him?

East. The only one who knew about the current affair. Still talking to me and I sense he is reserving judgment until I make a clean break and figure out how to atone.

Lachlan. Max. Newly important to me. Why should they even give me a break? It's not like they will lose out on much if they write me off. But Lachlan assures me he is never in a position to judge such things as he feels he knows only too well that you cannot choose whom you love. And Max is ever cryptic with me; telling me that regardless of family, duty, obligation or love, we can only take our own road. What if I took the wrong road, I asked him. "Your life is what you do, not what you do not do," he replied.

Hando. He didn't blink an eye over the affair I had back in the portal. He may care about this though. For all his "out there" quality, I think he is much like Bud in his expectations of his women remaining faithful. I also imagine he'll be pissed that I'd think of screwing a man not of our group when I could have had him instead.

Terry. Who even knows with him? He may disapprove, but he'd stand by me. Maybe it's because he knew about Pat already. But, here's the thing: why did he send Dino but he never calls me? What's that say? I think I know. Maybe it's better we pull back from each other. Maybe it's what I deserve or maybe he just doesn't have room in his life anymore to care that much.

Jack. Another story. Like Terry, Jack already knew about Pat. I told him back in the portal. After we made love, I came clean. He's never held it against me. I think there's a part of him that understands how devastated I felt to think I'd never have him again. That part of him holds no grudges against me for how I got myself through those bad times. But this revelation?

Ah, Diary. I really do hold some important things back, don't I? Here's one: Jack already knows. I told him just a few days ago. His reaction? Just know this ... it is Jack who gave me the courage to go there and break it off cleanly with Pat. It is Jack whom I know will be there waiting for me when I get home. It is Jack with whom I will deal with the repercussions that will come in the wake of this diary. It may not be smooth sailing, but between Jack and I is where I will resolve it.

There are changes happening all around me in Perve World. But I've been so self-absorbed that I've failed to see the reality of these changes can actually be just what I've needed.

I see the men with Number Ones wanting and building relationships that are exclusive and primary. Marriages. That's what they want and they are going for them. That is something good for them because it signals a deepening of their loves and commitment. Up to this point, all I've seen is the impact it has on me -- that it changes the way I'll feel when I'm with them. So selfish, eh?

No more.

No, now I see how this actually can fit so well in the determination I have to make changes and return more to the woman I should have been all along.

Independent.

That's always been more me than anything else. It's when I stop remembering that I can only truly rely on myself that I begin to drift from the person I really am.

People change.

And that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It just means you have to be fluid and you have to celebrate that change is essential and it is important in life. Everyone around me is changing and it's time to embrace that rather than childishly trying to cling to a past that isn't the present.

Love dies.

But that's okay because who wants to keep a love alive on artificial respiration? Why not bury it with dignity and grace? And just because it dies isn't necessarily a bad thing. It isn't a good or a bad thing. It just is. It's reality. Right? Isn't it? Am I wrong, Diary? But in the dying, isn't it far healthier to have it be a cherished memory than to harbor a deep resentment toward the person who no longer loves you like you still love him?

If you're independent, can it hurt you if someone drifts away from you? No, it doesn't. And if you're independent, you can even be happy for that person when you see that they haven't really drifted away from you so much as they've been drawn to someone who makes them happier than you could have ever done. How can you not be happy for the men who have found deep loves with their Number Ones? I will be happy for them all and recognize that their way is not mine. I never seem to take the same path as others, Diary. I think I've mentioned that before.

This is why Jack and I work. We can love each other full out but we are both instinctively going to maintain our independence. 

This is also why I will change in my relationships to Terry, Bud and Cort ... the 'married' Number Ones I shared love with. I see no reason at all why I cannot maintain loving friendships that are based on all they have been for me. But I also see no reason to continue to be as selfish as I've always been with them. I'm going to stop taking so much and I'll back off so I'm not always drowning them in my needs.

Maybe that's as much why I went outside this family as anything else I've thought of. Maybe it's all part of what I should have learned through my portal experiences and never did. Maybe I'm ready to really open my eyes at last and learn the lessons I might have been running away from.

Maybe I've changed most of all. I came into this world and obviously needed to be consumed in a love so badly that I mistook Terry for the man I could love. I do love him, in my way. He loved me, in his way. I had thought all the recent, intense experiences we've shared had made our love change and grow; now I think it was just clarifying for Terry that whatever we had is not what he wants in his life anymore. It's the best explanation I have for why he sent Dino to talk to me and why he didn't feel the need to be there himself.

But here's how I've changed. This reality would have devastated me not too long ago. What I feel for Terry is that intense. It's still that vital to my emotional ability to cope in this world. But I can see now that if I love him, I have to be happy for him and not see this as anything other than a good thing for him.

Because Terry's changed. It used to be a need of his -- to be needed like I need him. But he doesn't want that anymore and isn't that a good thing? Now that he has come fully into this fulfilling love with Uma, he has changed into a man who wants women in his life who will give as much as they take ... women he feels he can reveal himself to instead of having to show them only the face of him they need. He's got a few women in his life like that; it's obvious he doesn't see me as one of them.

And that's okay. In fact, it's better than okay. It means that for once, I see him and still love him to distraction even knowing I have to back off from him because it's what he needs most.

My only responsibility toward Terry is to not be sad or resentful about this but to hold what we had together as a memory that I will always cherish. We can be friends now. All that passion and love ... maybe it hasn't died; maybe it's just changed.

Independence.

That gives me grace. It allows me to move within this Game, to enjoy this Game as I wish. No more emotional ties that are any more involved than affectionate friendship. New parameters that will allow me to adore each man I am with when I am with them but will allow me to remain aloof when I am not.

No more pain, no more angst, no more ... passion. Sex in its place, just like I wanted from the beginning. But sex along with affection and respect.

Even as I change, I revert to form.

Kismet.

Funny thing -- that word doesn't sound quite as exciting to me, Diary.

Why then am I determined to continue to challenge my fate? Jack feels it is what I must do to set myself free to choose my own way in this life. But then, Jack is sure my fate is linked with his. What better man than Jack Aubrey with whom to have an adventure in which my past and my future hang in twin balances?