Page 4 of The Third Baseman

Unease gripped my insides again, and I stopped walking until it passed so I didn’t have a full-on meltdown my very first day.

Jesus, Marnie. Pull yourself together.

A small shiver zipped along my spine, but that was more due to the fact I’d left the seventy-eight degree Houston heat for New York’s significantly lower temperature, and wrapped my sweater and jacket tighter round myself.

The weather – another reason I didn’t want to be here.

Two minutes later and I reached the one space I was about to call mine, punched in the entry code, stepped inside and looked around for the second time this morning. When I’d briefly peered in earlier, I hadn’t noticed much more than the size of the space – easily four times that of my last office – with an enormous desk at one end, and a blank white wall at the other, in front of which were two stainless steel tables. But on this second glance, I could see it also contained all the equipment I’d requested over the last six months, since Penn Shepherd had caught me at a weak moment and coerced me into joining his mission.

The mission being to turn his new baseball club into a winning team.

I remembered it as vividly as if it were yesterday.

That day had started with me filing for divorce. The day had ended with me accepting a job offer and a million-dollar salary to leave my role at N.A.S.A., and build a program that got the worst team in the MLB winning.

And how was I going to do that exactly? Astrodynamics and baseball are not the same thing.

Your guess is as good as mine.

So why did I agree?

The first reason we’ve already ascertained: I’m an idiot. The second… I didn’t want to think about.

I closed my eyes and stood there in silence. I stood there so long concentrating on the stillness that I almost fell asleep to the muffled whirr of the lawnmowers on the baseball field the other side of the huge window at the end of the room. I startled myself back to the present when I nearly toppled over.

I walked further in, just a little further, but enough to drop my bag on the desk with a soft thud. Tentatively brushing my fingers over the cool edge of metal around the massive computer screen also placed there, I scanned slowly around and let out a quiet chuckle; my shoulders relaxed a fraction. Penn Shepherd must have emptied an office supplies store for the amount of note pads, pens, highlighters, and sticky notes in every color, all neatly lined up like a rainbow.

Picking up the pink pad on the end, I mindlessly flicked the edges between my fingers while wondering – for the thousandth time – what had possessed me to come here, beyond the year-long air-tight contract I’d signed and couldn’t get out of.

My therapist said for the closure, apparently, which I’d been repeating to myself like a mantra since I accepted the position.

But why do you still need closure after fourteen years? After you’ve already given yourself to another man in marriage? Is itreallynecessary?

Making the best of a situation that wasn’t just bad, it was catastrophic – that’s what this was, especially as this morning it seemed I was more interested in going out of my way to avoid seeing anyone.

Or one person in particular; the one I didn’t want to think about – namely a very large baseball player; though in this building, that didn’t narrow it down all that well.

But this one I’d last seen fourteen years ago, as I collapsed, sobbing on my front porch, and watched him walk away with my heart in his hands. Until two days ago, that is.

I looked back down at my palm. It didn’t appear any different to how it usually was; small, fleshy, pink, but somehow I could still feel the bristle of his whiskers from when my hand made contact with his cheek.

It had been a long time since I’d imagined I could feel him next to me. Feel his strength; his smooth golden skin stretched across thickening muscles. Feel his hot breath as he smiled through his soft kisses.

And when I’d last seen him, he’d been a boy growing into adulthood.

Now Jupiter Reeves wasallman.

I hadn’t expected to be so shaken, so affected by his closeness; being in his presence.

I hadn’t expected him to still be so beautiful, as if age had decided it would only harden the line of his jaw, and sharpen his cheekbones.

I groaned again and slumped down in the chair, spinning it around with the force of my movement.

What was I doing? Maybe I actually had lost my mind.

I’d lost something.

What a mess.

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