They’d been in a cocoon since Penny was born, one made of sleep deprivation and endless feedings and the clinic and Jake’s counseling, which she sometimes went to with him. Work. Good, important work, all of it. Which meant it had been a good, important cocoon they’d been in. She wouldn’t have traded it for anything. But an outing like this was a total thrill.
At the stadium, Jake hoisted Pen into a baby carrier. Nora tried to tug the diaper bag from his shoulder, but he wouldn’t surrender it.
Nora had noticed, early in her friends-with-benefits phase with Jake, how easy it was to be with him. It still was. And she still marveled over it. She had been so adamant, when she got here, about not getting into a relationship, afraid that to do so would mean bending herself to fit into someone else’s life instead of living her own.
But it turned out that if you fell in love with a guy who liked your hair and didn’t mind zombie movies and never let you carry anything, you didn’t have to worry about any of that.
“We’re sitting here?” she asked as he led them to a spot about twenty rows up behind the catcher. He knew she was a center field aficionado—she had told him about how her grandma used to take them all to games, and they’d sit dead center.
So okay, maybe she’d spoken too hastily about Jake’s magical powers to make her happy. The man had to have one flaw.
“Yup.” He settled into his seat, extracted Penny from her carrier, and turned her around so she was facing the field. “Home base.”
Oh.
“I was thinking,” he went on, his eyes twinkling, “about the age-old question of what is home base. We talked about it so much, but we never figured it out. But in retrospect, it was obvious.”
“It was?”
“Yeah.” He gestured in front of them. “Home base is home base.”
She laughed. “Literal home base.”
“Yeah. First base is rolling around nearly naked in a pink room. Second base is talking about sexual insecurities while grilling trout. Third base is sex without a condom. So obviously, home base is sitting behind actual home base in Comerica Park with the world’s greatest kid.”
“I don’t know why we didn’t think of that before.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, well, we aren’t always the smartest.”
She grinned. “I’m not sure I agree with that. You suddenly seem super smart. Can you work out the zombie metaphor thing, too?”
“No, I cannot. Some things just have to remain a mystery.”
She swatted him on the shoulder. And kissed him on the cheek.
The jumbotron came to life as the music kicked on.
“It’s starting,” he said, shifting Penny to one arm and slinging the other one over Nora’s shoulders. “Watch the game, Doc.”