The New Softballers Ch 01

A college student joins a softball team and finds that some members are lesbian lovers. Part 1 of 5.

This story was "inspired" by a Beeline novel (remember them?) called "Softballers," though the final product bears practically no resemblance to the earlier book. About the only thing which survives is the idea of female students playing in an extracurricular league. Some characters here are "suggested" by real athletes, but they take on a life of their own.

This is almost a novella. Four different female couples make love, and at the end three of those couples go to bed with a seventh woman, the focal character of the story. It takes a lot of detail for me to go into their stories. There are five parts to this story.

I also apologize in advance, for this is a "Loving Wives" story of sorts. Although the central character is in a broken marriage, she still loves her soon-to-be-ex-husband very much and (in her mind and mine) cheats on him. There may be multiple cheating-spouses storylines at the end, if you count couples adding a third party, and two people (one of them attached) falling for one another.

Those of you who have read me know my style by now. With patricia51's kind permission, I'm using members of her Gibson family and interacting them with other characters of my own creation. The events take place around some as-yet-unwritten stories. For those of you who keep score, the main action is about three months after "S&P: Your Papa's a Pig."

"EEEEWWWWWWW," Carol Gibson said as she entered the breakfast nook.

"Can't he wait until I finish my milk?" Carol continued, addressing her mom. "That is so gross."

"Wait until you have kids," Pat Gibson replied as she deftly switched young Michael Gibson Junior from one breast to the other. "Mother's milk is so much healthier than the stuff you and I drink. Besides, it's kind of fun having him nurse – makes me feel like he's still part of me – ouch!"

"Oh yeah, 'bite me' just took on a whole new meaning," Carol said as she fetched bottled milk from the refrigerator and brought it to the breakfast table. "And I can't wait to hear the squeaks from your bedroom and then him crying and hearing you say, 'hold that thought, honey' and you going to feed him, and then 'where were we?' I heard plenty from your bedroom before he came along, believe me."

"Scarred you for life, did it?" Pat said with a little bit of an edge. "Honey, I'm thrilled you take sex seriously and don't do it with anybody, but don't take it away from Dad and me."

Carol was a little abashed. "I don't mean it's wrong for you, Jeez! Just here I am, almost ready for college and I literally have a baby brother? If we go out together and you have to feed him in front of everybody, I'll never hear the end of it. 'Hey, Carol, you mean your parents still do it? Can we buy tickets? Wooo, was your mom jailbait?' It's great what you did, but it feels silly to have a natural dad and an adoptive mom."

Pat smiled. "Actually, that was Linda's idea for me to adopt you. That way, you wouldn't have to introduce Mikie as your half-brother. It also gives me legal rights to bequeath my good stuff to you and Stephanie, not that I'm going anywhere. And," referring to Mikie, "you know perfectly well that he eats when he wants to. But yes, Miss Smarty Pants, I have seen moms nurse in public and I do NOT particularly think it is cool, and yes, I have bottles of spare milk to take with me when we go out in public. He didn't get all of it and neither did ..."

"EEEWWWWW!" Carol said when she thought of her dad sucking on her mom's breast when there was milk in it. Pat laughed uproariously. Actually, Michael Gibson Senior hadn't nursed on his wife's breast, but Pat had squirted milk during a big orgasm more than once, and Mike had cleaned her up with his tongue.

Carol crunched on her cereal and looked at her mom wistfully. "Thing is, I don't want to forget Mamma Lori. I wish you and Aunt Linda could have known her. I mean, you and Dad are so perfect together that it's hard for me to realize I have a birth mom in heaven."

Pat shrugged, and winced as she got bitten again. "I'll let her know when I see her how much I appreciate her, but I'm not going there before my time. Speaking of time, tell me again, when's your college orientation?"

Carol looked at the clock and winced. "I don't have much time. I'd better drive up there and start filling in the paperwork." She stood up and kissed both her mom and her baby brother on the forehead. "Tell Sleepyhead [her sister Stephanie] she better enjoy the summer while she can."

"Worry wart," Pat said teasingly. "You'll do fine. Just remember, this isn't high school. Don't get in over your head."

"I promise not to," Carol said as she gathered up notebooks and carrying bags and headed for the door.

Carol certainly felt like she was in over her head at the student center. She came there to relax after a nightmarish scheduling session where the advisor did everything by rote and his computer kept breaking down. She checked her watch and figured she could squeeze in some time for lunch before going to what sounded like a really boring lecture on student life. Since she didn't plan to live in a dorm, things were going to go over her head.

En route to the cafeteria, Carol spotted Tracy Rivers, who had graduated a year before she had, at a sign-up table. Tracy and Carol had been on intramural athletic teams together and were fairly well acquainted.

"Hi! Remember me?" Carol asked the young lady. "We played softball together a couple years back."

"Oh, yes! Carol! How are you?" Tracy said, actually jumping up and giving Carol a hug. Another young lady came to the table at that time, and Tracy introduced Carol to her. "This is Sarah Yearwood. She's a senior and we're on the team together. Sarah plays third base and I play second. You played shortstop, right?"

"Sort of," Carol said sheepishly. "I could hit pretty well but I kicked a grounder and broke my toe. Was on crutches for a month and couldn't play anything."

"Believe me, it's all right," Sarah said in a rather motherly fashion. "I busted my elbow all to hell on a slide into third. Then the throw got away and I should have scored, but I was lying there screaming and puking. The coach Roto-Rootered me good. But I feel a lot better now."

"We have a pickup team going now if you're interested," Tracy said. "You ever hear of Bethany Ruth Garner?"

"Are you kidding?" Carol replied. "I went to her games when I was seven and she was eleven. The story was that all she needed was a catcher and maybe one fielder for pop-ups. Does she play here?"

"Not in the last couple of years," Sarah replied. "Got smashed up pretty bad in an auto accident, especially the knee she puts her weight on while on the mound. She's Beth Wilson now, got married to a guy she knew from the baseball team. He's graduated, but she's on the six-year plan. We're trying to get her to join the team too. She's still eligible for the 'real' team if she gets her stuff back, and I play for them and I think Tracy's going to make it, so a bunch of us got this late-summer league going to show them. You want a flyer?"

Carol wouldn't have considered college athletics, but then again she had had a lot of fun when she did it right. She took the flyer and puzzled through it. She realized that Tracy was looking at her with some anxiety.

"What's up, Tracy?" Carol asked.

"Dunno. I was just remembering us playing together," Tracy said with a shy smile. "You made me look good quite a few times. And you were never a bitch like some of the other girls. It'd be nice to see you around, at least."

Carol smiled. "You think you could take me? I mean, I kept in shape and all that, but I haven't played since spring of eleventh grade."

Sarah smiled conspiratorially. "Don't tell anybody, but the athletic department is so hot to have Beth back on the team that they loaned us coaches, trainers and full use of the practice facility. All we need are warm bodies. We'll get you into playing form in no time."

Carol thought it over and agreed to consider the idea. The start of classes was still a few weeks off, and she figured she could see how the practices were conducted at least. She left her name and number on a sign-up sheet and went off to grab a bite.

As soon as Carol was out of sight, Tracy looked at Sarah. "Warm bodies?"

"Slip of the tongue," Sarah said airily.

"Your tongue doesn't slip," Tracy said in some irritation.

Sarah looked at Tracy hard. "You had a crush on her in high school and you still do. Good thing I'm not jealous. But I do have a right to know if you want to do more than just play with her."

Tracy got very, very nervous. She swallowed hard a couple of times.

"She was nice, you know? I mean, not as nice as you, but nice. Of course, she was just a kid and you're a grown woman, and you really helped me a lot this past year and I love you and all, but ..."

"But, you'd like to make her cum and touch her everywhere and ask her to go down on you and all that shit."

Tracy stared at Sarah. "You don't even know her."

"I know she's damn pretty, that's all I can tell about her. I see lots of pretty girls. A lot of them are stuck-up bitches. You didn't become beautiful until I got to know you and ... oh, God, you are beautiful. I want to wake up with you every morning until I graduate, and longer than that if you still want me. But if you fall in love with somebody else, that's not gonna happen, is it?"

This was not the sort of thing Tracy wanted to take to bed with her that night. Sarah softened.

"Look," Sarah said, "she's pretty, she might be a good softball player and she might be a lot of things. She also might be totally grossed out that you have it for her. Play it cool, think about you and me, and see what happens. If she joins the team, I'll try to be her friend and we'll take it from there."

The young ladies went back to work, and talked with a couple of other softballers on high-school or junior-college squads who showed an interest. Sarah wasn't happy, though, when the day was over and she and Tracy put up the table.

"We're gonna have to be damn good to get Beth back playing again. She's the bitch from hell when her knee starts acting up, and even when she isn't she acts like she'd bean you in the mouth if you made a mistake. I saw her hit seven batters in a row in one game. They all got it in the ass so they weren't hurt bad, but she throws something like 80-plus when she's on. And I know she's concerned about tearing up her arm."

"Question," Tracy asked. "Do you know Joey? Is he a ... good guy? You think she's less of a bitch when she's with him?"

"I know him a little, and I know he really loves her, but I don't know if she feels the same for him. You heard how they got married. She had a miscarriage two weeks later and got hooked on booze and pain pills. She's grateful to him for getting her out of that, but I don't know if she loves him that much."

"Shit," Tracy said. Then she had a thought. "Do you have a crush on her?"

"Yes," Sarah said flatly. Then, "Shit. Are you pissed off at me now?"

Tracy smiled. "No. Just kind of relieved. Now we kind of know how we learned to do what we like."

"Really?" Sarah said. "I take down the bitch and leave her helpless, you bring out the inner little girl in the big tough woman?"

Tracy looked around to see if anyone was looking, then kissed Sarah on the neck.

"Fuck," Sarah said under her breath. "You know how much I 'love' PDAs. I'm gonna spank your ass tonight but good."

Tracy looked a little concerned, but then Sarah smiled. Sarah continued: "I still want to keep this quiet, just you and me knowing. When I go to grad school in the spring, we might not have time for each other and it's going to hurt if we don't. I'll have to cut the strings and let you find a real girlfriend."

"How much studying you have to do tonight?" Tracy asked. "I'll come by your room when you're finished. I wish you hadn't decided to graduate in three years, seems like it's all work and no fun."

"If you make the team, Coach will be on your ass to keep your GPA high and get 15 hours a semester and a full load in the summer," Sarah replied. "We can't just play softball for a living. You still want to be an English teacher?"

Tracy smiled. "Yes. Probably I'll get a bunch of snot-nosed punks who can't conjugate a verb, but I love books."

Sarah smiled. "I hope you'll read to me tonight. It's a lot of fun."

"Deal."

It was late that afternoon, on a campus tour, that Carol saw the athletic training facility – and the woman working mightily to strengthen her knee.

Carol had seen Beth Garner, now Beth Wilson, on the mound nearly a decade ago. The young lady – then in seventh grade – had made an impression. But Carol was still unprepared for the woman she saw now. Beth must have been six one or six two, big-boned (literally) and had muscles on top of muscles. She would have been beautiful if not for the expression on her face, caused by a rep to test her heavily-bandaged right knee.

Carol caught herself staring. She made the best of it. "I haven't seen a woman look like that since my mom went into labor," she quipped.

Beth stopped and stared. Carol could see the nasty retort coming.

"Yeah, how long ago was that?"

"Three months ago," Carol said very quickly. As hoped, it threw Beth for a moment. Then Carol saw the next one coming.

"Daddy and Mommy fuck like bunnies, do they?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Carol replied. "Makes me envious as hell sometimes."

Beth didn't have a response to that one. She wanted to ignore the kid and hope she'd move on, so she put on her game face again and did another rep. Carol looked at her with a careful eye.

"You have a personal trainer or a team trainer?" she asked.

Beth looked, and then decided not to smart-mouth. "Both. I'm not on the team now, but the trainer gives me a schedule. And yeah, my husband and his brother were both athletes. They work with me a lot."

"I heard a little about your husband," Carol said. "Just that he graduated and is working on playing pro baseball."

"Yeah?" said Beth, adjusting the already formidable weights to get even heavier. "Where'd you hear about us?"

"From the girls who put this together," Carol said as she displayed the flyer. Beth looked at it in perfunctory fashion.

"Damn kids' league," she said. "But I'll probably try out. Gotta do rehab work. I just hope they don't get a bunch of sorority bitches who couldn't hit slo-pitch."

"I hit .450 one year," Carol said quietly.

"Hooray for you," Beth said as she strained through another rep.

The tour guide was gathering everybody up to return to the bus.

"Well, it was nice to meet you," Carol said. "My name is Carol Gibson. Maybe I'll see you on the mound this spring."

Carol heard a grunt in response as she left. She didn't realize the grunt was in puzzlement. Beth was thinking about the name and where she had heard it.

Carol had so much stuff piled on the supper table that her mom, dad, sister and, yes, little brother had to take their dinners in the living room. Michael Gibson Senior declared that he hadn't seen so much paperwork since he did requisitions in the Marines. Stephanie Gibson looked wide-eyed at the papers, thinking of what she would have to go through to follow up on her dream of medical school. Among the many items were loan and grant applications, housing forms (Carol was to live at home, but she had to file for a waiver), activity sign-up forms, consent forms waiving liability for said activities, tuition-payment vouchers, credit-union applications, fees for usage of just about every building on the campus, and others even I forget. Top that off with book lists, student catalogues, schedules for every class and every activity, and several types of student handbooks, and the young woman looked kind of stupefied.

"Did you meet anybody there you knew?" Pat asked as she sat rocking Mikie.

Carol counted up a fair number from her graduating class and three or four more, including the softballers, she had known previously. "But it's a college, not a university. Most of the people I know are going to Georgia or Georgia Tech or the big sports schools." She sounded a bit wistful.

Mike sat next to his eldest and gave her a reassuring grin. "If you went to some 50,000-student university halfway across the state, you'd have to recharge your phone every night. Either you or mom or I would be making three, four-hour calls. Besides, those schools eat freshmen for breakfast. Aunt Linda told me once that her ex-husband flunked the same basic course twice because it was a monster class and he couldn't hear the lectures, or fell asleep, or both."

Stephanie winced. It was true that Butler College was quite respectable, but she wanted to go to a big university for medical school and she knew money was tight. Mike noticed and put a big arm around each of his daughters.

"We can't make you be a cop, Steph. I'll stand up for you two in anything you do – except politics or hosting reality shows." He grinned. Stephanie grinned shyly.

"I probably won't retire until they have to push me out," Mike said, "but I've got the GI Bill and Mamma Lori did too, and I'd love for me and Mom to go back to school whenever we hang it up. Carol, you sure you want to stop at an associate's degree and then go into the Sheriff's Academy? We'll manage somehow if you go all the way."

Carol's eyes were moist, but she had long since decided to finish up before Stephanie started, to save family money. She changed the subject.

"I met a girl from the softball team today. They're starting a late-summer league and it seems kind of cool. They practice in the evenings and have a couple of games a week. Will you have any problems with me coming in late?"

Mike chuckled. "Knowing you, you'll be in the library studying until God knows when. How long do they run?"

"Eight weeks," Carol said. "I know it'll be kind of crazy with classes starting halfway through, but it's a big thing for some of the girls. I promise I won't go to team parties if they serve anything ... well, you know."

"Thank you for the promise," Pat said, smiling. "Do they have away games? A long way off, that is?"

Carol nodded. "Colleges around the state. Could be six, eight hours each way. I'll try to talk to my advisors and see what I can do about assignments."

Pat looked at Mike in a way Carol couldn't define. "You'd better get along with all the girls on your team if you're going to spend that much time with them. Trust me on that one."

Carol nodded.

It was about ten that night when Sarah's cell phone rang. It was Tracy, asking if she could come up to Sarah's room. Sarah said sure thing.

Sarah changed into a nightgown and panties, and was putting up her hair when the knock came on the door. Tracy was wearing a too-small T-shirt and too-small shorts. She wore underwear beneath both, as Sarah noted from the lines. Oh well, Sarah said to herself, Tracy looks great in anything ... I just wish she'd be more comfortable being sexy.

"Going to sleep early tonight?" Tracy asked with some concern.

"Naahhh," Sarah said with a smile. "I got this on sale. It's comfortable and I like how it looks. I'll put a robe on over it if I leave the room, but I don't feel like going anywhere." She took Tracy's hand, noting approvingly that Tracy had brought a book of poetry and some classical and jazz CDs.

Then she shut the door.

Tracy sat on a chair; Sarah on her bed. Tracy had already activated the player and thumbed through the poetry book. She found one she liked and read through it. After finishing the first poem, she got up, bent over at the waist (with Sarah's eyes following her all the time) and found another music selection to go with a longer poem.