Sid.

Sid, Sid, Sid. He left me aching, sated and wiser. But, he taught me his final lesson only after he left me. Where had I gone wrong? It was, I believe, the first moment I ever thought I could let myself just tell him things. Or was it the fact that I forgot we had a history?

In the next morning's blue haze of almost-dawn, I woke him from whatever it is he calls his rest period. It isn't really sleep, is it? I think he must turn off some switch just to stay in sync with us mere mortals.

I was so grateful for his attentions in that early hour. I whispered to him and he took me slowly to the edge before letting me drop over. I begged him and he brought me back. It was hard to believe we'd come to this place between us where he could even be gentle. Perhaps we'd both exorcised some demons in that long night. But whatever it was, things were not the same. I was calmer; the fiery chaos inside me was gone and in its place was cold acceptance.

And then I just knew. It was time for him to go. He was complacent about leaving me; I figured he was feeling that post-coital calm that seems to strike men. He might have pouted, but when I came back from taking my shower, he went willingly into the modem and let me send him straight back to his place in the nether.

When he was gone, I felt curiously ambivalent about him. I had to admit it, I liked him even though I knew I shouldn't.

But that feeling about Sid wouldn't last. I am not sure if I curse him more for the night's dangerous games or for the morning's tender illusions.

As I got dressed, I passed in front of the bedroom's mirror and it was the first time I noticed the bruises on my body. They weren't horrible but they weren't that attractive either. I pushed my index finger into a large bruise on the side of my left knee. Funny how I seemed grateful for the pain. Tried to remember exactly how it had come into being. Turned and stared outside the window at the blue-green water that was almost serene after last night's bitter storm had charged its way up the Gulf.

It made me wonder: Was I really better? Had I accomplished what I'd needed to?

Since the night before, I'd been turning a lot of things over in my mind. About who I was and which part of me was the real me. I still didn't really give a flying fuck, to be perfectly candid. I was still planning to walk away.

But there was this small part of me that was pretty sure someday I might care again. And when that day finally crept over the horizon, I did so want to have Jack still in love with me. I am so incredibly selfish in that regard. It's probably the worst thing about me. I should have been strong enough to walk away. He thought he was coming home to the person he'd left behind him a month ago. He might never have returned if he'd known what I'd done.

There wasn't a single cell in my body that was ashamed of what I'd been doing. Is that horrid of me to admit?

But ... Jack. God. He didn't deserve this; I didn't deserve him. He was due at my home in New Orleans the next day. There was no way I could see him now - not with the bruises and not in the dangerous mood that still seemed to hover around me like a poltergeist.

Sent Jack an email explaining how a client emergency had called me out of town. Told him to stay at his visit and to not come back to see me until ... God. Until when?

In this place I was, both spirit and body, there were only so many answers. But there was a promise of sun outside and a gentle surf that was pulling at me. I am a woman who connects with the ocean, perhaps more strongly than I've ever felt connected to the swamps of my homeland. So, that's saying something, eh?

I slipped long sweat pants over my shorts to keep the sand flies of the early morning from making a meal of me. Outside, the air was salty and sheer. Up the shore I walked, bent to the task of watching what the Gulf had tossed up on the sand in the storm's height. Flotsam, shells, seaweed, ocean critters.

About twenty minutes into my stroll, I saw it. What hand had placed it there for me to find as the sun's first strong rays of orange sliced across my arms?

A shell. A perfect shell. A shell I'd spent years wondering if I'd ever be lucky enough to find. In all my years of hunting seashells on beaches in Florida, the Gulf Coast, the Caribbean, Central America, California, Japan ... I had never thought you could find one of these, unbroken, washed up on the shore. I had always thought you'd only find them when scuba diving deep off shore. How could something this delicate have had the internal strength to survive the battering of a storm as it was tossed ashore by angry waves?

Fig shell. So fragile and brittle that it is incredibly rare to find one unbroken. This one was nearly perfect. I'd only seen ones in better shape than this in the shell museum on Sanibel Island. But this one was not the normal soft peach color. This one was white.

I dropped to the sand and studied the shell.

Funny the little things in life that can make you so happy, isn't it?

I haven't a clue as to why finding that shell seemed to fill me with light. My instant thought when I really understood what I was holding and how happy I was to have it? I said it out loud to the water: "I can't wait to show this to Jack!"

God. An unguarded moment of reflection, an unbidden impulse.

What was the part of me I would choose to shelter and grow? What was the part of me I could walk away from?

It was the shell ... it wasn't the shell ... it was the complications of the patterns of my life ... it was the simple way my emotions could speak to me. Something within this moment bid me to pay attention to what I was doing with the little things in life.

I sat there in the sand for so long that the Gulf's warm waters began tugging at my toes. My skin was almost hot before I came to with a start and remembered where I was.

Is it a surprise to know that I might have been certain of only one thing just then? That I was no longer sure walking away had ever been possible.

Inside the cottage, I sat at my laptop with my fingers on the keyboard. I needed to send a message, to reach out to someone in our world who could help me figure out what to do next. I didn't know what it should say. Worse, I didn't know to whom it should go. My immediate thought was, "I need to talk to Hando."

Why him? Perhaps it was because he was the one who'd first seen the part of me that had come chasing back out this last week or so. Perhaps I hoped he could help me decide to either banish it or embrace it. Or maybe I just thought he was the only one who'd understand the struggle.

But I never got the chance. As soon as I logged on, IM boxes started popping up on my screen like it was infected with them.

What was happening? There were boxes from several of the women. There were also boxes from Cort, Bud and John. Even one from Hando: "What the fuck's going on in the thing you call a brain?"

Okay. So something was up but I didn't quite know what. But I was getting mighty suspicious because so many of these little messages were questioning either my sanity or my intelligence.

My cell phone gave that annoying tone it does to tell me I had voice mail. Dialed in and found myself listening to prattle from Uma, concern from Tig and annoyance from Bud. Each of them mentioned Sid's name. And I thought to myself, well, what's the big deal? They all knew days ago that I had invited him. I'd done it in his thread; wasn't like it was some big secret. And suddenly now they're worried about me being with him? Well, hey, I am a big girl. I did just fine with Sid so get off my back. Anger flared in me at this.

I punched off my cell phone so I wouldn't have to hear from any more of them. I'd just tell off the next person anyway.

But something Tig said began to echo annoyingly and I began to worry. She said: "None of them ever let you down, sweetie. And you know it. How could you trust Sid over them?"

And just how would she have known about me discussing that with Sid, I wondered. I'd written about it in my diary, but I had carefully saved that entry in the file for diaries that would never be posted. If I posted about Sid's visit, it would be sanitized so it contained only the truths I was willing to divulge. And for sure, I'd remove anything I thought might hurt any one else's feelings. Like that discussion between Sid and I because it could hurt Jack, Terry and Cort.

Strange feeling clutching at my heart as I suddenly worried about what it meant that she knew about that. And why was everyone suddenly trying to reach me that morning? Odd sensation to my fingers as I went into the site and checked the Game threads. And there it was. Posted. For everyone in our group to see. My private thoughts, unfiltered, unchaste and unwise.

Fucking Sid. I knew it then. No wonder the bastard had been so easy to zip back in the modem. He must have used the time I'd been in the shower to post my diary entry. He knew me well enough to know I would never have wanted it posted. He knew the problems it could cause me.

Oh God.

He'd been playing me all along. And this final lesson he left me with? Never trust anything that seems too easy. I'd thought I'd been in charge until that last night. I wondered if I'd ever been anything but a toy he was playing with until he enticed me down a path I should never have walked. I'd been in trouble, in a dark place, seeking something. He'd just egged me on, hadn't he? Other men would have protected me from myself but Sid's danger was that he'd let me dig too deep into where I should never have gone.

And with a certainty, the reason swept over me. It was the Devils bit. He'd hated that we'd tormented him that way.  I thought he'd gotten revenge on me already for that. Cold awareness ... he'd told us he would get back at Jack and Terry for what they'd done in retaliation. And it was them he'd keyed in on with me; I'd always been open about the depth of my attachment to them both.

Revenge. The cycle doesn't end until someone chooses to walk away. Maybe that's what I'd been trying to walk away from the whole time. Instead, I'd been just as bad as Sid, just as childish. When would I learn?

The cottage's phone rang. I answered it only because I thought it would be family; they're the only ones with the number. But this soft voice with the wrong accent was waiting for me. Only he would have made the effort to track me down like this.

"Annie?" When I didn't say anything, Terry said, "Is he still there?"

Shaky whisper: "No. He left hours ago."

"You all right?"

What was it about those words, that voice? I was crying for the first time in so long and it felt cleansing. "I will be. I think."

"Wanna talk about this?"

"No." Choking on it. Swallowing hard around this lump in my throat. "Terry? I ... I didn't post that diary. I wrote it, but I never meant for it to go out like that. I swear. Sid must have posted it when I was out of the room and I ... He did it on purpose, you know? He knew it would ... I just want you to know that I would never have made some of that public. Because I ... Did I hurt your feelings?"

"Are you leaving us?"

"No." Small voice. "I was never really even thinking about it. I just ... I may have thought about it, Terry. But it was like I couldn't figure out what I wanted and I wondered if maybe ... All I was really thinking of doing was getting off all the lists. Yours, Cort's and Jack's. Like maybe I needed to be free from those connections in order to really play."

A pause and I heard his annoyed breathing. I could picture his face. I heard him drag in on a cigarette and blow out the smoke. When he spoke, I knew he was controlling himself and I wondered what he would have really wanted to say to me except that he was worried about me: "What would that do for you?"

"Well, see, that's just the thing. I was going to ... but I couldn't do it. Don't you see?"

"No, I don't." His voice was no longer soft. "Forget about me and Cort for a sec. You'd do that to Jack? What's he ever done to deserve that? You're his Number One. You have some responsibilities to him. Not to mention that he loves you."

"He loves us all. He truly does. He's the one of all you men who sees the simplicity in it. He loves whatever one of us he's with and he loves with everything he possesses while he's with us. And then he moves on but he never loses that love. And if I wasn't his Number One, someone else would be and he'd be just as happy as he is now."

"You don't get it, do you? Christ, when did you get this selfish? Annie, you promised to take care of Jack. Better find him and make sure he's okay."

"He's with one of the other women. He's fine. He was on his way to another visit when he leaves her and ..."

"No, Annie. He left her place this morning. He flew to New Orleans."

"No. He leaves tomorrow, the 16th."

"Today's the 16th, love. You've lost a day somehow."

"Oh, God." I thought of Jack reading this diary, of believing that I'd believed Sid's assessment of him, of us. "I have to call home."

"Yeah, you do." And just when I thought he was hanging up, he whispered to me, "Look, go take care of Jack. But what happened between us, it was ... Annie? I'm here for you. Always. You know that, don't you?"

"I do know that, amant. I do. But thank you for saying it. And thank you for loving me enough to listen to me. I am so sorry for what has happened."

"Next time you want to be bad? Call me. I can do bad. You know I do a mean Hando, right? I'll put the Sidster in my routine if that'll help you."

It made me laugh and I felt so much better hearing him chuckle with me. When I hung up, I dialed my home. No one answered. I left a message on the machine. Started packing up. After I loaded the car, I called my house again. Still no answer. On the drive home, I started calling every so often. No one ever answered.

By the time I hit the Mississippi state line, I was worried. Jack should have been at my house by then. I called my neighbor; she said he'd left there with a seabag two hours earlier. That might have been before my first call, I thought. I called Terry but he could find no record of Jack taking a flight back out of New Orleans. Think, he ordered me, where would Jack go?

The billboards lining the interstate, advertising the floating casinos now dotting the Mississippi shore at Biloxi and Gulfport, caught my eye. And that's when I knew. At the Bay St. Louis exit, I headed south. Twenty minutes later, I was running from the car, down the dock and to Jack's new boat. Still in its slip. But with new life aboard.

I didn't see him at first but I knew he was there. There's just something about him that fills the places around him with his presence. And I think it was also the first time I realized that I could feel him when he was near me.

His head popped up from the cabin when he heard me jump aboard the boat. I was crying and he was grinning at me. Like he was so happy to see me. His arms out, calling me to him, laughing that delighted, full body way he has.

"Sweetheart! Ah ha ha ha! You're here!" And grabbing me to him, planting a kiss on me that overpowered me. And then just holding me because I couldn't stop crying. "Come now, come now, my little dear. What is all this, then? God's teeth, amorata, say something."

"I thought you'd left," I finally sputtered out.

"No, no. Forgive me, sweetheart. I was anxious to check out the riggings. But I would not have taken the first cruise without you. Surely you knew that? I promised, did I not? But your email to me ... I got it this morning ... it said you were out of town and would not be back for several days. You know I did not get it until I got here. I thought I could put my time to better use making sure these scoundrels in this yard had outfitted the boat properly."

His hands on my face and his eyes studied me. He took my hand and led me down into the cabin. Made me sit on the little couch there while he made us coffee. He chattered at me; I think he knew something was wrong with me and that I couldn't make a lot of sense just then.

But when he came to sit with me and we sipped our coffees, I made him listen. I told him about what had happened to me. About the last weeks of the election, about losing it and how it had chased me into seeking even though I didn't know for what I was looking. About Terry and Dino's visit and how that just seemed to add to my confusion instead of clearing it up. And about Sid. About how I thought whatever I might have been seeking was something he could help me find.

"I don't mind that I have a past," I finally told him. "We all do. Don't we? I think ... no, I know, that I just got confused that just because I got truly angry and wanted revenge after what happened with the nastiness in the campaign, that this meant that I'd somehow gone back to that period of my youth when I let myself just be a destructive person. But the truth is, that person is still inside me, she's still a part of me. But I don't have to be her. Do I?"

"Never in life, my little dear. That person is not you anymore," he whispered to me in that voice that gets right down into me. "And you have learned a difficult lesson, have you not? What I would give that I had been there to help you face this trial. But we are here now together and I will do all in my power to help you remember you are the woman I love. Now surely you will let me hold you, amorata. And I will show you that nothing so trifling as a scrub like Sid can shake my faith in you."

I crawled into his lap and buried my face in his neck. Just to feel those arms around me and know how close I'd come to being led so far from them. "I'm so sorry about the diary, Jack. So much in it was just there to remind me but it wasn't ever written in a way for others to read."

"Hush, now. I never read it."

Everything seemed so quiet in there. Even the boat creaking against the dock slip was a strange mute white noise. "I'm so glad."

"I never read your diaries, Ann, not anymore. Only the ones from before me and then only because you gave them to me to read."

"Why not, Jack? Does it bother you so to read of me with others?"

Deep breath and a long slow exhalation. His fingers soft on my cheek. "I don't need to read them, Ann. All that I need to know of you, I already do. My dear, I came into this world of yours from another time. I had to accept where I was because there was no other choice. And I am a man who wants to enjoy wherever I am. I am so happy to be alive and to be living here with you. What happens when we are apart is not my reality of you. Only this is. When we are together. You have never given me a moment to doubt the pledge we made in the first blush of our union. Do you remember?"

Nodding into his chest and hugging in tighter. "I remember. First in each other's hearts, beloved."

"And it still leaves us room to shelter other loves in there as well, does it not?"

"I love you, Jack. I hope you know that."

We sat like that, just making these almost pitiful noises of contentment. Until our little movements against each other became a bit more purposeful. His mouth pressed in upon my temple and then he dipped down to kiss me hard and deep. Pulling away, looking into me like he could see me. Deep voice of need: "It has been too long since I have held you, amorata. I have missed you so dearly. Do you know that all I could think of, coming home, is the color your eyes turn when I first enter you? And it did seem to me, I could even hear your voice. Will you cry out for me in this day?"

My hand on his face and I studied him for so long. His hair loose, just as I always picture him when he's gone from me. That intense ardor that shines in his eyes was back. The set to his shoulders. The particular crook of his neck. The languor that settles on his lips.

"I will always strike my colors for you, my pretty Captain." Whispering it to him, so low he had to bend closer to me to catch my words as well as my emotions. "You conquered me from the first moment we met. I've never forgotten that. I've never recovered from it."

We undressed each other quickly, enjoying the flush of familiar skin and the warmth of knowing hands. He paused when he saw the first of the bruises but I'd warned him they were there so he never said a word in judgment. But I noticed a reluctance to be as ruthlessly forward with me as he normally was the first time we come together after absences. But Jack is Jack, after all, and he finally forgot to hold back.

We'd shed clothes in an erratic trail back to the sleeping cabin. As he nibbled up my neck to plant a long tender kiss beneath my ear, I held him in my hand and teased him that he always seemed to gain an extra something from the sea air. I got that deep growl from him and if I hadn't already been wet from what he'd been doing to me on the way to the cabin, that would have been all it took. It made me sag against him and moan.

His thick, knowing fingers were stroking me and he murmured satisfaction at my response. "Prepare for boarding, my lady," he said in that voice, the one that came naturally to a man used to commanding abject allegiance.

I felt my back hit the bed and then Jack was creeping up toward me. His hands spread my legs, placed carefully to avoid bruises. But when I whimpered to him that I needed him and needed him badly, his cock came charging aboard just as his mouth swarmed over mine.

It was the most delicious surrender. Giving in to all he was to me. Rocking with him. Feeling him fill me. Coming on an ebb of desire so strong. Crying out for him because he asked it of me. Never shutting my eyes because the sight of him above me was just what I needed.

Even sore, I couldn't bring myself to care. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I would care and we would only be gentle with each other. This day, I needed his normal style of taking me by force. Because even then, Jack never went too far with me.

We set sail the next day from Bay St. Louis. Jack had planned a shakedown cruise for us in which we would go a short ways out into the Gulf but would be able to get back to the boat yard without a lot of difficulty if the boat had any problems. Within a few hours, it was obvious the sailboat met Jack's critical level of satisfaction.

Having carefully stored enough supplies to last for days just in case, Jack suggested we make a real trip of it and sail where the wind took us.

"I trust the captain. He's never let me down yet." I snuggled in next to him at the wheel, and he bent over to kiss me. I doubt I'll soon forget the mix of sapphire sky, white sail and Jack's peaceful smile. He was so at home.

Our days were spent chasing waves; our nights were devoted to counting stars. In the grace of this time, I felt the person I wanted to be come seeping back in. It was my choice, and made with resolution.

We are all running from our pasts, whether we admit it or not. What we do when it catches up with us is what counts in the end.

The longer I stay in this place, the more gifts it brings me. In here, I believe the greatest gift I've found is the growing knowledge I have of myself. It is through the diaries I have explored what I am and what I can be. For a writer, can there be anything greater than exploring how your view of life is affected by who you are and what you've been? I spent years observing other humans to gain the ability to write about people; it is in turning my gaze inward that I have been able to write more honestly about the human condition.

But something occurred to me in the wake of that trip. There really is something else I have been seeking: the courage to play this game's ultimate challenge to myself.

There is one man in this Game who still is a mystery to me only because I will not seek him out. I hid from him because of fear. He has sought me out lately, sending me emails, asking me to meet him. I got my first email from him the day after Sid arrived. And in emails over the next two days, I did my level best to discourage this man's interest in me. However, my transparent attempts to evade him only served to intrigue him. I finally told him that I would give it serious thought to invite him so we could meet. But I never really planned to do that.

Truth is, it might take me a while to face my fears. But there does eventually come a day when I will meet them eye-to-eye and hope that I bring the requisite armor of courage into the battle. This is the time when I step into that void. Soon, I will ask to be placed on this man's schedule. He will come to me; I know this because it is the message he sent me. I am seeking friendship; it's the only way I could ever invite him. I don't know what he seeks from me, but I suspect he's just curious to explore the new freedoms he finds in our world.

I am the last of the women for him to meet. I will rectify that by issuing an invitation to the one I'm finally ready for: Maximus.