I shake my head, close my eyes, rub them. Then trembling, I look again. My brain shouts, two years – almost to the day! Then I think and correct mys...lf, two years to the day. The day we last spoke. A day I was so happy, complete. But the new day wasn’t as bright. And a week later, some doubt returned. Shaking my head again, I press my eye and stare. Could it just be my imagination? A trick of the light, or the mind, an anniversary reminder of what was… I move away from the door, mind working.. Real? Like, a whole new level of real--like, the kind of real that makes everything else seem a little bit unreal.It is solid black. On the front, there is a single line of golden print:Happy Birthday.Inside, he finds a note.You've been dealt a shitty hand, Marcus, but in the game of life you get to choose how to play. Do you want to play?Marcus shivers. The air seems cold. He feels like he's being watched. He feels like it matters, like the question is real, like he could answer it and it. ”I leaned back looking at my XO.”I admit I am not the best diplomat, but then I haven’t been to Command school so far, where they teach that I think.”--””--Alice more or less forgot about the recording of her mother. To her, the woman in the recording was a stranger. Other than looking a little like her there was no real connection. Most certainly not an emotional one.Alice had grown up in perhaps the harshest environment, fighting for basic survival every day. That she had been dumped like. " How do you know I won't disappoint you?" she asked."You're a beautiful woman Jeanne. You've got a body other women would kill for, but what tells me you'll be a tiger in bed is that you're married and looking for it. That kind of woman is always great under the sheets." You're that experienced are you?" That and more. I've had more White women than I can count. But I don't bed just any woman, Jeanne, White or Black. She's got to have something special. You do. So..."His hand crept down her.