My alarm went off at 6:45 AM. I was alone in my bedroom and in some ways it felt strange to be in bed alone. As I lay in my waterbed, I was thinking that it was time to go back to the office. I put that thought about the office aside and thought of the last few days on the train and in Chicago with Catie. The addition of Jody to the mix was an unexpected pleasure. I was already hard and erect and I started stroking myself at the thoughts of the train and the weekend. It was still feeling surreal like it was just something I had dreamed. Once again, my balls emptied out. It had been a long time since I had been in a situation where I had multiple orgasms in succession over an extended period of time. And added to that in the last couple of days with two women.

I was glad I was in really good physical condition. All that training for mountain climbing and running sure paid off.

As I got ready to go to the office I realized that I wasn't suffering jet lag. Sleep deprivation from fucking at all hours of the day and night over an extended period of time. But not jet lag.

I drove to the office and entered my office to a pile of mail. Fortunately, we were not in an age of email. Most of my phone messages over the past 5+ weeks I had already handled while I was away. Of course, I hadn't seen most of my coworkers in more than 6 weeks and some of them for more than 3 months. There was "catching up" to do both on the work-side and social side of being coworkers. I couldn't exactly just blurt out all that had occurred. Sometime during my initial hours in the office, our administrative assistant (who knew all about the upcoming divorce) asked if I had met someone during my trip. I told her that I had.

"Is she nice?" she asked.

"Very," I replied.

"Good for you!"

I eased myself back into the office routine after being on the road and away from home and office much of the time since early June. There were reports to complete and other reports to start. There were courses to plan and teach (I was an instructor in several workshops that we had produced). And there was the social/family side of my life. Both my son and Catie were never far from my thoughts.

My son was very glad to see me when I picked him up from daycare that afternoon. He had been with me at the beginning of this last trip to the Portland area as we (my mom, my son, and I) had flown out together for 10 days of travel in this Pacific Northwest region. He had flown back with my mom to North Carolina and my mom had stayed at my house until she was ready to go back to the DC area.

Since there was no real food in the house after my return, we went to eat dinner (first) and then to the grocery store. We quickly dropped back into our usual routine.

In the meantime, there were nighttime calls with Catie. In addition to the mundane conversations about how our days had gone, they also were very erotic. We slept with each other's clothes beside us though she had an advantage. She could pull out the sheets we'd slept and fucked on to give her a fuller sensory experience. While the logistics of her being in Chicago and me being in Raleigh were something for a future conversation, it was something that I thought about then.

My son's 5th birthday was that first weekend I was back in NC. For his 5th birthday, I gave him a trip to Disneyworld and EPCOT. Now that he was five years old he could travel by air unescorted by a parent or guardian and with the airlines personnel as escort to make sure that he was on the airplane and was picked up by designated personnel. I was travelling to Tallahassee the week after his birthday to teach a course and after it was completed on Thursday afternoon I would travel to Orlando to meet him for his arrival at the airport for an extended weekend trip. In addition to going to the Disney complex, my grandmother (his great grandmother) lived in Winter Park and she hadn't seen him since he was about one-month old. He was certainly too young to know her when she first came to NC after he was born.

It came up in passing during our phone conversations about the possibility of having Catie join us; to have her fly down from Chicago to Orlando to be with us. I know I gave that some thought. It might have been great for her and I and she might have been great with my son. In the end, I thought it to be both too soon and it would distract from the family time together between my son and I and the time we had with my grandmother.

My son's travel to Orlando went without a hitch and I greeted him as he came off the plane. After showing my identification and signing the documents with respect to his travel, we went to the nearest pay phone bank to call his mom (and my soon-to-be ex-wife) just to let her know that he had arrived and that I had picked him up.

We stayed at a hotel that wasn't too far from future site of Universal Studio's theme park or from Sea World. We checked in, had dinner and settled in for the night. We went to the swimming pool for a little while that first night. Our first day was spent in the Magic Kingdom and it was a very busy day. We hit all the high points in the Magic Kingdom. The next day it was EPCOT. My son loved the Kodak Pavilion, the Exxon exhibit with dinosaurs, Spaceship Earth, the World Pavilion and a whole host of other places there that may no longer exist. That night we went to visit my grandmother and take her to dinner.

Our Sunday was an easy day. We had an afternoon flight home so we had time to swim in the pool and take it easy before going to the airport and flying home. We got home early in the evening and I think my son spent the night with me.

While I was working in Tallahassee I called Catie most nights after I had called back to North Carolina to talk to my son. I think I talked to her both nights while we were in Orlando and shared with her what my son and I did during the day. I took one of her pair of underwear with me. Fortunately, I didn't have to explain them to him. My son talked to his mom both nights. We saw a lot and had a really great time. I could see that additional trips like this were in the offing.

I wasn't sure where this relationship with Catie was going but it certainly looked promising as September ended and we moved into October. I talked to her most evenings (my long distance phone bills took a definitive increase). I made reservations to fly back to Chicago mid-October. I had hoped to be able to see the Chicago/ Green Bay game in person but that didn't work out as planned.

We had also made plans to take the train from Chicago to Portland (and back) over an extended Thanksgiving holiday to further explore our kinkiness on the train. This time, however, she would be a legitimate travel companion on the Empire Builder in the room together. Since my son would be with my ex-wife at Thanksgiving (and with me during part of Christmas), Catie and I would be going to her parents house for Thanksgiving. We were working on the assumption that this relationship was going forward and it would be time to introduce this relationship to our families in person. Similarly, Catie and I were planning to go to the DC area so she could meet my family at Christmas. We hadn't worked out the logistics. I wanted Catie to come to NC before Christmas and we'd drive up DC with my son. She could either leave from DC or come back to NC and stay with me before flying back to Chicago.

Two things happened in the week before I flew up to Chicago to be with Catie. First, on the Saturday before I was to fly to Chicago, I was back into the routine of taking my son to "gymnastics" on Saturday morning. I would take him there, drop him off at 10 AM and then return to pick him up at noontime. Before I left for the summer, I might run errands while he was at gymnastics. Other times, I would return home. It was only about a 10 minute drive from the house to the gymnastics studio.

On this particular morning (October 12), I returned home after dropping him off. I had only been home for a few minutes when the doorbell rang. I don't even remember what I was doing, though it hadn't involved an enema or masturbation (yet). When I opened the door, my soon-to-be ex-wife was standing there holding the storm door open (Note: she had the keys to get in if she had wanted to. We had already arranged for my purchasing of her share of the house). She asked if she could come in. I invited her in.

"I've just been missing you a lot," she said. She stepped up to me and gave me a hug and a kiss. I returned it.

Now that was both a surprise and expected. I had been warned that somewhere in the year long waiting period to file and be granted a divorce (at around 10 months) that she might decide it was all a mistake and I would have some serious choices to contemplate. But she had shown no indication of veering off from her original path where she had an affair, didn't want to end it once it was discovered, moved out, had him move in with her, etc.

Since I was home, she knew that we had a little over an hour before I had to leave and pick up our son. I had no idea of where this was going to go. At one level I had always wanted her to come back to me (but only if that was what she wanted to do and she was committed to working things out). She knew of Catie because I had left Catie's contact information with her in case I needed to be reached when I was in Chicago. She also knew I was going back to Chicago for a long weekend with Catie. My ex-wife and I hadn't talked about Catie much since I returned beyond telling her about us meeting on the train from Portland to Chicago, that her parents lived in the Portland area, and that she had invited me to stay with her in Chicago. I think the fact I was going back to Chicago may have been a factor in this conversation.

"It's tough being in love with two people at the same time," she said. Well, we weren't headed to bed together yet. I invited her to sit down and talk with me in the living room. Clearly from our conversation, she was torn by her feelings about me and how everything had turned out and how I had been since she moved out. Nothing was quite the way it seemed when she started her affair or in the ensuing months after she had moved out.

Eventually, my ex-wife got to what she really wanted to say: "Maybe we could start going out and dating again." There were so many thoughts that flooded my mind at the time and the complications that were associated with that prospect. But it wasn't my relationship with Catie that leapt to the front. It was the fact that the guy she had left me for was living with her. It didn't appear that she was prepared to ask him to move out. All I could see at the moment was a nightmarish situation that could ultimately put our son at risk.

"And how would he feel about you going out on dates with me?"

"He wouldn't like it."

It seemed that, at the very least, she would have to ask him to move out and get his own place. His living with her was a complicating issue and she didn't seem ready to ask him to do that so that she and I could see if we could reconcile our marriage. She didn't want to lose him if things between us didn't work out. Catie never entered our discussion.

We talked for a while longer until it was time for me to go pick up our son. I thanked her coming by and she thanked me for listening. I told her that she had some tough choices to make and I'd be there to talk some more if she needed or wanted to.

She left and I drove to pick up our son. My ex-wife did eventually become my ex without us dating or trying to reconcile again.

The other thing happened just before I flew to Chicago. I asked Catie if she wanted me to come to Chicago later in the month. She told me that everything seemed okay and that she wanted me in Chicago with her.