happy new year, 2087!

Happy New Year, 2087! Keri Riley is 25, Tyler Jackson is 23, Janie Trudgen is 45, Pamela Collins is 38, Madison Riley is 62, Marc Hall is 42, Levi Bachman is 52, Bentley Booth is 24.

*Warnings: Grab a cup of tea, this one is long! Both in words and pictures! (If the pictures don't all load the first time, try refreshing the page. I don't know how it is on your end, but the pictures have been wonky for me when there's a lot of them.) 

** Also NSFW!


On New Year's Eve, Keri finally had a reason to wear this gown. It had been her mother's gown, although Madison never had a chance to wear it while it still fit. Then in time Madison felt too old for it, with its deep scooping back and bare arms, so she finally passed it over. Keri and her mother were never the same size at the same age, but where Madison filled out in curves, Keri filled out in muscle. So the gown fit.

"But don't get too bulky," her mother told her. "Men like their women a bit softer, you know. How will you ever find someone again if your arms are stronger than his?"

"Only date athletes?" Keri quipped. At least Tyler's arms were reliably stronger than hers. Maybe she could consider it, though. Another check to add to her long list of impossible traits a man should have: doting, but not smothering, independent, passionate, ambitious, likes his own space, won't nag for children, won't ask her to be a housewife, and has strong arms?

Keri was never under the impression that Tyler checked all of those boxes, although he certainly managed to check a few of them.



Tyler called her on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, around two o'clock. "Hey! What are you up to tonight? Got plans? Wanna hang out?"


It was ten hours to midnight, and she was already dressed. "Little late to be asking now, huh?"

As ever before, thinking of her too little and too late. That was fine. It would just make this easier. It was perfect, really. They could go out with as little effort as they started.

She was headed out in two weeks to help set up the new launch site, after which, she would be at the Lunar Colony for who knows how long. It might be a year before she set foot on earth again, and with the time she had left she figured she should probably pop up north to visit the ex and the rugrats before she went.  She didn’t want to give Tyler the impression that he should wait for her or anything. What was the point? How many people could she keep disappointing?

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I managed to arrange something."


"Are you mad?"

"No, I'm not mad. I was just teasing."

"Well, if your plans end up being lame, you can come hang out at Cloud 9 with us. You can meet April!"

Keri kept putting off meeting his sister-in-law, April, although she must have run into the girl a time or two in college, probably. Tyler insisted they’d get along great, but Keri didn’t know. She seemed intense. And it seemed a little too... much, making friends with his sister-in-law. Because why? What was the point of nudging herself into his family?

That's when she decided it was time, before it went too far.


"Listen, we had some fun, right? No hard feelings. Next week, I'm about to head up north for work for a few months, then it's out to the lunar colony for who knows how long. Months, over a year maybe. Who even knows what could change in a year."

Someday soon, it would be five years gone while all of them kept living without her.

"Okay," he said. "So this is goodbye then?"

"Yes, goodbye Tyler. It was wild."

"Wild. I like the sound of that," he said. "Make sure that's what you tell all your future lovers about me."

"I will, I promise."

"And hey, who knows what could happen in a year. If you're single and bored, hit me up."

"Sure, we’ll see. Take care."

"You, too," he said.

There, done.


Tyler hung up his phone, recognizing the strange novelty of this moment. He had broken up with a lot of girls in his time, but this was new.


"I just got dumped on New Year’s Eve," Tyler said to his brother. "Over the phone."



April began to cackle with laughter at the hilarity of it.

"Thanks, April. That's great, way to be supportive."

—

In Fort Palmetto, Janie Trudgen arrived at the Collins' home to drop off her kids and pick up Pamela for the New Year's Eve gala. Bruce and his parents had offered to watch a combined four families worth of preteens so that some of them could attend the gala. Janie's children barely wished her a "good night" before they ran off to join the party. The room smelled like teen angst, hairspray, and cinnamon holiday candles.

"Thank you so much, Bruce, Mr. and Mrs. Collins. I hope the kids won’t be too much trouble. Mine anyway, I can't speak for the rest of them."

"I hope Pam isn’t too much trouble for you," Mrs. Collins joked.

"I’ll take good care of her for you. It’ll be nice not to go alone, you know."

"Of course," Mrs. Collins said.

"I know it's been years, practically. Ha, and it's the second time around. It's not like I'm new to the dead husband thing. They ought to steer clear of me, or else maybe I'll acquire a third dead husband. Maybe Pam could be my cheerleader. I hear she was good at that once. It looks so festive in here. Did Pam do that?"


Bruce cracked up. "Pam? Oh, no, Susie did all of this. Pam doesn't decorate."

"So where’s my date?"



Pamela's entrance was announced by young Oliver, who showed his interest in the female form early and strong—much to Janie's surprise after how little interest her eldest had shown thus far—and who had forgotten about all the pretty teenage girls in the room and said, "Wow, Mrs. Collins, you look like a movie star."


"What about your old mom?" Janie asked her son, pulling him away so Bruce and Pam could chat. "Don't I look like a movie star? I got my hair done."

"Yeah, mom, you look okay," Oliver said.

"Wow, Pam, that’s some dress," Bruce said. "How much did it cost?"

"Oh, don’t worry, I charged it," she said. "We’ll pay it off with the tax refund."

"Well, it looks great on you. Are you sure you don’t want me to come? I could go throw something on and tag along."

"Oh, don’t be silly, Bruce. Your parents would go mad with all these kids. And anyway, I think it might be too late. I gave your ticket to Janie."

"We could buy another ticket." He attempted to wink, but Bruce was always such a fumbling flirt. It came out like a clumsy squint. "We could put my ticket on the credit card with that dress. Maybe add a room for the night at that swanky resort."


"Oh, no, let’s not," Pamela said.

Her gaping expression was a finality that sucked the idea dead.

"Right, silly idea," Bruce said. "I guess my parents would go crazy with all of these kids."


Janie rounded up her little ones among the crowd. "Goodnight, my precious little feral monkeys. Listen to your elders. Don’t trash the place. No throwing, no spilling, no liquor, no fighting, no R-rated movies, and no means no. After midnight, girls upstairs, boys downstairs. Have a good time!"


As they left together, any silly notion that Janie might have had of feeling like Cinderella was squashed next to her glamorous best friend. It was Pamela who looked like a transformed princess going to a ball to meet a prince.

"Are you sure you don’t want to grab a sweater? You’re practically naked."

"We’ll be dancing," Pam said. "It’ll be warm enough."

"I envy your tits though. My goodness, what holds it all together? Is that tape?"

Pamela just smiled. "A girl can't give away all of her secrets."

—

Keri finished her makeup and emerged from her bedroom to find her mother already two glasses into her new year's festivities.

"There she is!" Madison cooed. "That looks lovely on you. Doesn't she look pretty, Bryson?"

"Mom, are you drunk already?"

"So how about your date?" Madison asked. "Will he meet you here, or there? Should we send a driver?"

"I'm not bringing a date," Keri said.

"You didn’t invite anyone? I thought you would invite someone. Your father bought four tickets. I’ve seen that boy you sneak out of the house in the mornings, I know you're seeing someone. I thought we might finally get to meet him."

"We broke up."

"What? When?"

"This morning," Keri said. "It doesn’t matter."

"You broke up with him before we ever met him? You broke up with him on New Year's Eve?"


"Doesn’t matter, Mom! He was just a fuck buddy!"

Madison cringed. "Oh, Keri! Don't be so vulgar in front of your father!" She huffed. "So what was wrong with him this time? You don't have very much time left. How will you find someone before you go?"

"To the party?"

"No, not the party. To your project. To Cassiopeia. You only have a couple of years, and that's not very much time to find someone, marry, and have a baby, or possibly a couple of babies. You know what they said about your eggs in space."

"Jesus, Mom, can we not talk about my eggs right now? When did you get all of that in your head?"

"I thought you might find someone to start something with before you go. It's not a bad idea. You'll only be gone a few years. That's nothing really, in the scope of a whole life. You can pick back up right where you left off. Are you really going to give up on the idea just because it failed once? That's nothing. Everybody fails sometimes. You'll find someone better this time. Someone stronger, someone with a backbone, someone loyal. Because if you don't, I think you'll regret it. You'll be nearly forty when you get back. It'll be too late. You have to get started before you go."

"I don’t want to find someone before I go. What’s the point? I don't want another angry ex-husband and half a family somewhere. I'm going alone. I'm going to space alone, and I'm going to this party alone."

"Let her go alone if she wants to go alone," Bryson said. "Tell you what, I'm going to this party alone at this rate."

Bryson got up and called for the driver.

Then they were both silent, so quiet they could hear each other's heated breathing.

Keri never exactly wanted to be alone, it wasn’t exactly that simple.

Keri followed her father first to the car waiting outside. Madison followed after. Neither of them spoke for the whole ride, and they didn't enter together, either.

Keri made her entrance first, alone.

—

Pamela didn't want to sit in this dress for fear that it might fall apart as she bent. Although the third-floor terrace was open to the mid-Atlantic winter, Pamela didn't feel cold. She had nerves and the enthralling warmth of danger to keep her warm.


Because there he was, just as he promised. Marc Hall. Pamela met Marc some months ago when she traveled to Sierra Nova for a sports conference. She felt like it was nearly her last chance to relive those old glory days. Her body wouldn't look like this for very much longer, and nobody wanted to look at a withered up former cheerleader.

Marc was not a former teammate of hers, or even affiliated with the NFL at all. He was a diver and an Olympian, attending the conference as a world-class athlete who belonged there. She attended as a desperate housewife trying to cling to her former glory days as they rushed out of her hands. She didn't know what he saw in her.


But he did see her. Yes, he definitely did. He was staring, maybe a little too much. She had asked him to be discreet. She knew too many people here. But she had to admit, it must be hard for him not to stare when she wore this dress. She intended to be the most glamorous woman in the room. She better be for what she paid for this dress.


"Earth to Pam?" Janie said. "What are you looking at? Do you know him?"


"No! I don’t know him." Pamela shrugged, cool as a cucumber.

"Isn’t that Marc Hall? Two-time Olympic diver?"

"Janie, I didn’t know you were into sports."

"Oh, I’m not, but he was on the cover of GQ, and isn't he just divine? I wonder if his body is as chiseled as those fantastic cheek bones. Maybe I should get to know him."

"Oh, don’t," Pam said.

"Why not? I’ve been a widow for two years now."

"He wouldn’t be right for your kids."

Janie waggled her eyebrows. "Well, maybe I’m not in the market for someone to introduce to my kids."


"Listen to you," Pamela blushed. "Like a school girl with a crush."

That’s why they call it a crush, Pamela thought, because she felt crushed under the weight of such overwhelming desire. She needed him to touch her, but it was too dangerous here. She knew too many of these people, yet when he told her that he’d be here, she couldn’t resist. Nobody else knew about their dirty little secret that started in Arizona and followed her here, the kind of secret that could jump-start a cold, boring, disappointing, suburban life. She was dead on arrival and he’d shocked her alive.

Pamela knew Janie wasn’t the type to judge, but she wasn’t ready to divulge her secrets just yet. She wanted it all to herself, every last delicious moment.

"Never mind Marc Hall," Pamela said. "You're right, he's a sports star. He's got his pick of the room, I'm sure. What would he want with two old biddies like us? Let's go sing some karaoke before someone else snatches it up again."

—

"How about the DJ?" Keri joked at her mother. "He's pretty cute, and you guys would love to have some more musical genes in the family DNA. Better get started, huh? Why don't we all just go over there together? He can meet my parents the same night he meets me. I'll take him home tonight, we'll do it a few times just to make sure we've got enough sperm up in there to get the job done by morning. Then we'll schedule the wedding for some time around noon. But you'll still have to wait nine months for that baby. No way to speed that up as far as current technology knows."

Her mother sighed heavily.


With that, Keri went to the bar and let her cousin's husband take over the conversation with her parents before she made things worse. She hadn't intended to ruin the night. She actually thought she might have some fun tonight. She knew her cousin, Bella, would be here, so at least she'd have someone to talk to besides her parents. That would have been fine, but she hadn't anticipated how much her mother's brilliant four-year "husband and a baby" plan would get under her skin.


As if. That would never, ever work. Even if she entertained the idea of getting pregnant again—she still hadn't decided if she ever wanted another child—she would not, not, not leave a husband and baby behind. Again. She'd tried that once, and it was horrible for everyone involved.

Keri had no perfect match in the whole world. Her father once said that her match would be one in a million. One in a billion was more accurate, and those impossible odds were just not fair.


"Hot damn!" said a man in bright purple sunglasses and a scarf. "Hey, girl, did you hear it's gonna snow tonight?"

"Uh, no. I didn't," Keri said.

"Cause I'm no weatherman, but I'd sure like to give you a few inches."


Keri tried to decide whether she was supposed to laugh. Was he joking or serious? If he was joking, that was a bad joke. If he was serious, she would just have to kick him in the nuts. Except the thought of coming into contact with his nuts, even through her pointy-toed shoes, was gross. So instead, she'd just go find her cousin. It's a shame her cousin's husband wasn't the brawling type.


"Hey, Casanova," the guy in the muddy brown shirt said. "That's not how you speak to a lady."

"Don't worry about it," Keri said. "You don't have to defend my honor. I'm going. I was already going. I'm gone. Pretend I was never here."

—

"Is this seat taken?"

Pamela stuttered, "Yes. I mean, it was. I mean, I seem to have lost my friend."

"That's a shame. May I keep you company for a while?"


Oh, no, Pamela thought. This was too much. They shouldn't be sitting together. Although this was also perfectly innocent. They were both ticket-holding members of this event and the seats were not assigned. He could sit anywhere he liked, she realized. Even right there. He could talk to whomever he wanted. Even her.

There was nothing wrong with talking.

Not like that time, months ago, in Sierra Nova. That was definitely, certifiably wrong. They had done so many wrong things together that night.


Their conversation moved out onto the dance floor after a while. They were cautious, but clearly eager to see each other again.


That was when Janie found them. Pamela recognized that look on Janie's face, that she'd just figured out everything.

"Janie, where have you been?"

"Like you said, with the space heaters and all this dancing, it's actually kind of warm. I took my jacket to the coat room. I met someone while I was down there. We talked for a while."

"That's fantastic," Pamela said. "Where is he? Let's meet him."

"But first, I'm more interested to hear who you've met."


"Oh, we didn't really meet. We just bumped into each other on the dance floor and started talking. I don't even know his name. Martin? Miles? No, it was nothing. Just talking about sports. You know those meatheads. Now, let's meet this new hunk of yours!"


Janie wasn't going to pry. Not yet, anyway. She introduced Pamela to her "new hunk" whom she'd known for all of fifteen minutes. Levi had great hair for fifty-two years old. He was in some government work, the Department of Development, and he owned property in town. He was happily divorced. The ex-wife was still a little bristly, he told her, but his two grown daughters were over it.


With Janie's attention occupied, Pamela gravitated to Marc again. A moth to a flame.


Marc said, "You know I can only think of one thing right now."

"And what's that?"

He looked down at her dress. "All that skin. What do you say we find a more private place to dance?"

This was what it felt like to be truly alive, Pamela thought. Moth, flame. It felt partly like danger, and another part like imminent death. She followed him off the dance floor.

—

"Keri Riley?"

"Uh, yeah. Do I know you?" She figured she would have remembered anyone with that much bushy hair on his head.

"You might have heard of me. Bentley Booth, I'm with Lunar Division, Supply Shuttle Pilot, just out of flight training. Top of my class, actually. You might have seen my name on the wall in the E corridor?"

"Well, congratulations, I guess. Sorry, um, we already hired pilots for all our available positions, if that's what you're after."

Bentley laughed. "No. That wasn't what I wanted to say. I have a job. I like the shuttle supply run. I mean, it's okay for now. But I was wondering if—"


Some teenager nudged his way between them. "Hi. Your dress is really pretty," the boy said to Keri with swoony eyes. He was more looking at Keri's deeply exposed back, where it met her round and accentuated behind, than the actual dress itself.

The next time Keri went to a party, she would wear a potato sack.

"Anthony, get lost!" Bentley said, pushing the boy out onto the dance floor. "Sorry, my kid brother. He just grew his hormones and he's out of control."

"He's cute," Keri said.

"Don't let him hear you say that. You'll never hear the end of it."


"You were just wondering if I wanted to dance?"

"Uh, yeah. That was it."

"Sorry, I don't dance," she said.

"Why not?"

Because, what's the point?

No, she wouldn't say that. It wasn't as simple as not wanting to dance, and she didn't have enough words to explain it all before the countdown to midnight started. So she said, "Bunions."

"Oh, do you need to sit down somewhere?"

Keri laughed. "Standing is fine."

Since she wouldn't dance, they talked instead. Bentley was here with his family, same as she was. Except his family looked precious while hers was a mess. He told her all about them. She knew of his father already, the brain surgeon who operated on Justin. His mother wrote vampire novels and owned a bookstore. His sister went to university on a violin scholarship. His little brother with the smooth lines wanted to be a brain surgeon like his dad. They all belonged in a Hallmark holiday greeting card ad.

One look at him, and Keri knew he only left his high school sweetheart back home to go seek some adventure among the stars. In that way, they weren't so different. But she knew, some day, when he'd had his fill of adventure, he would want to go back to Wisconsin to settle down with a pretty wife, three kids, a dog, and a house on the bay.

The DJ stopped the music and people looked to the sky, counting down from thirty seconds.


Somewhere around, "seven, six, five..." Bentley said, "Everybody's right, though. You look pretty amazing in that dress."

BOOM!





Meanwhile, downstairs in a hotel room somewhere... 

—

footnotes: someday her prince will come? // eggs in space 

outtakes & extras: fanboy, a love story & subtlety is not Pamela’s strong suit // the food, the staff // the other guests

Keri’s gown is by Rusty Nail.

Pamela's gown from the Luxury Party Stuff pack.

Whose dress caused more trouble? lol!

You might or might not notice that some of my 2091 stories having to do with Keri & Bentley are missing. I'm not un-writing any of the events that were planned to happen, but I might tweak the timeline a little and retake some of the pictures. I will repost the stories at their appointed times when they happen. 

Pamela's 2091 stories are still up and will be left completely as-is. They are too closely related to Jake & Susie's 2091 stories to risk changing, and anyway, I didn't do too badly with the pictures for some of those.