I’m going to Joyce’s house for dinner. It’s a bit late to cancel, but I’ll call Elyse and talk to her,” I said, feeling more comfortable wit... the plan we were making together. “What do I tell Jennifer?”“That you and Debbie are dating; that you and Bethany are taking a break while you work out your issues. In other words, the truth, Big Brother,” Stephanie said sternly.“Yeah. I owe her that, don’t I?”“Yes. I bet she’ll agree with us. I know Melanie would.”“Yes, yes, all the girls are ganging up. I zipped him up and stepped back to admire howhe looked. I decided we would definitely be going shoe shopping at somepoint to find red high heels to match this dress. I also had hopes Icould get Bill to wear his new dress in public sometimes. Maybe get himto go out to dinner dressed like this."Time to pay for your dresses and head home," I told him as I gathered upthe pants, shirt and shoes he had worn into the store. We held hands asI guided him to the front cash where Darlene was. “I understand we are still working through all the bugs,” I said. “I just wanted to say that now that we’ve launched and proven we can operate the ship we should probably get the duty schedules settled. Unless we are fighting or doing a full crew training we can probably operate the ship with only a third of the crew active. For the railguns this means have two people up. For the missiles, I don’t worry so long as one missile station is fully manned. Ensign Daniels, you know what you need for. “Something we’ve been working on… I think you’ll like it. You’ve got a sweet tooth, right?” I said. We hung around for a while and had a couple beers with the waitresses and staff and then she tugged at my sleeve in the booth we were in. “Come on… I don’t want to get too wasted.” She gave me that look, and I agreed. We held hands as we said our goodbyes and New Year’s wishes to our friends who were in the process of getting shit-faced now that the bar was emptied of customers. My Studebaker.