Rounding The Bases: An Erotic Baseball Romance

Rounding The Bases: Episode 40

The fading days of summer and the end of the youth travel baseball season soon gave way to the altered realities, and exciting potentialities, of the future. When the season began, Jack and Bethany were both single. Claire Cagle was mostly a fond memory in Jack's past. In a matter of months, all three lives had become intimately intertwined in the most unexpected ways imaginable.

As the leaves began to turn and crisp autumn evenings approached, Bethany was soon busy with the demands of teaching and a new school year. While Jack's work as a freelance environmental journalist allowed him to dictate his travel schedule for the most part, Bethany was locked into a new academic calendar that was mapped out and scheduled from the end of one summer to the start of another.

For Claire, the life she knew just a few months earlier was changing almost entirely. The one constant remaining was her job as an English professor at her alma mater. New students, new lessons, and sometimes new perspectives were the lifeblood of university life, and Claire always embraced each semester as a new beginning. The events of the past summer, however, had thrown the rest of her life into chaos. Separation and an imminent divorce left her feeling untethered in a way she'd never experienced before.

The chance meeting with Jack and Bethany at a travel ball tournament had changed her life irrevocably. While she had known for some time that her marriage was becoming untenable, the life she was moving toward now was never something she had envisioned for herself. The fact that she was even considering such a life, as one-third of a romantic relationship based in ethical non-monogamy, was surprising to even herself.

Several weeks had passed since that pivotal weekend when Jack and Bethany had visited Claire. They'd spent some very intimate moments together and the excitement of what might lie ahead was a sharp contrast to Claire's day-to-day reality of working through a separation and plans for eventual divorce.

When she had made the decision to leave her husband and file for divorce, her lawyer quickly laid out some stark restrictions for her to follow if she were to maintain possession of the house in the woods she loved so dearly. As with any divorce case, one of the first questions her counsel asked was whether or not Claire or her husband were having an affair.

Given the complicated and somewhat fluid state of her relationship with Jack and Claire, she opted to disclose only what she determined was need-to-know: that she had reconnected over the summer with an old friend from high school and college and his girlfriend. Pressed for details, she revealed only that there were some very real feelings involved and that she could foresee a future relationship with her old friend, Jack.

When asked about any physical relationship that might already exist with Jack, Claire's hesitation spoke volumes to the experienced divorce lawyer. If she hoped to have any chance of getting the settlement she was seeking, she could not have any contact with Jack until after the divorce was final. If her husband's lawyers sensed that there was anything going on with Jack, her counsel advised, they could potentially subpoena both Jack and Claire and they would be forced to answer, under oath, any questions about the nature of their relationship with Claire.

Claire's husband, Rick, had quickly concluded that something must have happened in the weeks leading up to Claire's decision to file for divorce. Because of that, she worried that the possibility that he might seek to humiliate her in court was very real. The advice of her lawyer was to cease all contact with Jack and for Claire to focus on being an exemplary mother to her son, Zach. While the former would be an inconvenience at worst, the latter was something she had been doing every day since the day her son was born.

The return to campus brought some normalcy to Claire's life, and she recommitted herself to her work. The memories of that special weekend on campus with Jack and Bethany tugged at her heart, however, as she yearned to reconnect with both of them and explore the relationships that had taken root.