With a fresh Jack o’ the Rocks in each hand, I slipped back into the pool, Gretchen accepting hers when I settled beside her in the water. Taking a... tentative sip, testing the amber liquid with finesse, she looked up at me again. “I think two men are HOT,” she said, laying extra emphasis on “hot.” She perused me closely for my reaction, then asked, “What do you think of two guys indulging in each other?” I held her eyes and tried to maintain a poker face as I recalled, while at Top Gun, one. It's main engine in the rear lit up and the craft streaked upward. Before it even had a chance to disappear from sight, the next landing craft — the one that had been directly behind it, rose into the air to start its own launch sequence.In all it took forty-five minutes to launch all of the landing craft. They streaked upward one by one and disappeared, leaving nothing but a few smashed pieces of armor and patches of fused Martian sand to mark where they'd been.The ground combat troops were. Moronic. She hated him. She hated his greasy hair. She hated his disgusting moustache which looked more like pubic hair taped to his upper lip. She hated that they’d dated. She hated that she let it go on for two years of her life. She hated that her sophomore and junior years were filled with being cheated on, lied to, and emotionally abused.But most of all she hated that those years were also filled with sex. Sex in a car, sex in a department store changing room, sex in the school itself,. “What do you want?” I asked, watching her glare across the room at me. Her gaze drawn to the opening in my jeans.“He’ll kill you, and probably me as well if he finds out,” she countered. I’m not stupid and the thought had crossed my mind on more than one occasion. And she was right of course, this was indeed crazy.Downstairs I heard the referee blow the final whistle. If my calculations were correct, I guessed that we had about forty-five minutes before Alfie came home. In forty-five minutes.