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TOM

W atching Crew be so excited to go to the baseball game finally gave me the adrenaline boost I needed to get through pre-season.

Kelsey and Sam had traveled during last year's season, but Crew was still too young to show much interest in my games. The first time he’d seen me in uniform, he’d cried.

He had grown so fast and changed so quickly that I hated being away from him for even a day or two.

Calliope was technically still interviewing, but Sam, Kelsey, and I had already decided that she’d have to royally fuck-up tonight for us not to hire her.

She didn’t have nanny experience, but she’d been a natural with Crew and was one of the first people I’d felt competent enough to navigate the required travel.

We packed into Kelsey’s Beamer, which she parked in the player’s lot, which is one of the perks of being the family of one of the players.

Since it was unlikely that Calliope would ever take Crew to a baseball game without Kelsey, she didn’t feel it was necessary to fill her in on the family room and how to access it.

Sam hadn’t been able to get us our seats in the usual spot behind home plate, but we were seated with a group of WAGs and player families.

How would Calliope fit in with the WAGs on the Blizzards? As our nanny, she could access the family room with Crew when she attended the games. Who knew if the wives and girlfriends would accept her or not? I expected extra scrutiny about my relationship with her.

My eyes darted to Calliope for about the hundredth time since she arrived.

Yep, confirmed. She was hot, and even if I could get the guys to leave her alone, they wouldn’t miss that I was sharing a home with her.

I could already hear the teasing every single time I went home to her.

Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I could ignore it in such close quarters.

“Are you a baseball fan?” Kelsey asked her as she settled Crew on her lap in the stadium seat.

He’d spent the entire game moving back and forth between our laps at the last game we’d attended together.

While Kelsey had always been patient with him, I could tell that the heat and her pregnancy pushed her to capacity.

“Come on, Crew, come to Dadda,” I said as he launched himself into my arms. He sat there for less than a minute before leaning to Calliope with open arms.

“Ooof, easy, buddy,” the air was forced out of Calliope’s lungs as Crew forced his way into her lap. I watched as Calliope winced as my boy elbowed her chest.

Yeah, buddy, those girls are hard to miss. My eyes dropped quickly to her tits, which Crew’s little body mashed painfully.

Fuck, Tom. Stop thinking about your nanny’s tits.

“I do. My dad would bring us to as many Minutemen games as possible when we were kids. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about hockey, so I won’t be able to explain much to Crew while we’re at your games.”

“That’s fine. He won’t pick up much more than the social aspect right now. I have plenty of time to teach him the rules of the game,” I said, my mind wandering to the image of teaching my boy how to skate and then watching him grow into his own on the ice.

When the National Anthem was sung, we taught Crew to take his hat off and stand still. A few people in the stands recognized us at the game, and I watched as fans took pictures of Crew.

“Are they taking pictures of us?” Calliope asked, ducking her head towards me as she tried to ask the question privately.

“Yeah, I’ve gotten used to it. Since the news got out, we became people of interest. Sam always got attention, but people seem extra interested now that our story is tabloid-worthy,” Kelsey explained with a shrug.

In the last year, Kelsey has, as women usually do, taken the brunt of the heat in the press.

Sam and I were portrayed as unsuspecting heroes who had been manipulated and trapped in her supposedly tangled web.

One brutal article portrayed her as a woman desperate enough to try to trap me in a relationship, and when that failed, she sunk her claws into Sam.

Yes, the phrase sunk her claws was used in the article.

“Do you get recognized while you’re out?” Calliope asked, directing her question towards me.

“Not that often, maybe before and after the games and occasionally when I’m out with the other players.

Once that happens, there is a chain reaction.

But the Blizzards are a much smaller market than Boston, and it’s only my second year.

I mainly only get recognized when I’m with these guys,” I gestured to Kelsey and Sam, who had just taken the mound.

“Even in Boston, Sam and I can still find some anonymity. We can go running and visit small coffee shops; he even sat in a sports bar and wasn’t recognized. It’s the normal things people don’t expect us to be doing,” Kelsey explained.

Kelsey did her best to give Crew play-by-play, and to his credit, he paid attention to his mother as well as any toddler would.

“Did Monica share the preliminary schedule with you?” I asked, still worried that something would happen to disrupt our plans.

Calliope seemed a little too good to be true.

Yes, the color-coded masterpiece we showed Calliope at her first interview was a great visual.

Still, Monica always went further as she managed our electronic calendars.

Our schedules were so tightly managed that she even blocked out time for us to pack.

“She did but warned that the playoff schedule might impact it.”

“Yes, mainly because my doctor doesn’t want me to fly after October,” Kelsey explained. “They’re in first now, and while they will almost definitely make the playoffs, anything can happen in the post-season. I might still be able to make it to the games if they are driving distance.”

I could see the tension in Kelsey’s jaw as she contemplated the postseason.

Pre-season for hockey started in September, with our first regular season game at the beginning of October, with very few breaks for me until April.

Sam would be home with her when the baby was born, but she’d be alone a lot this fall.

As well as Kelsey had handled as a single mother before meeting Sam, anyone could see how Crew’s energy level had been taxing her.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’ll have me. I’m great at road trips, too. Our family took a yearly vacation to the Outer Banks, and my father always insisted on driving. I’m good for at least twelve hours,” Calliope assured Kelsey. “How does Crew handle long rides?”

“Well, he was better before he started walking. But he’s a travel baby. He’s flown more miles in his short life than I did in my first twenty years,” Kelsey said.

The crowd jumped to their feet, cheering as the Minutemen’s catcher, Carlos, hit a home run, adding some security to Sam’s pitching outing. Crew took on the crowd's excitement, clapped, and cheered along with us.

As Calliope flawlessly managed Crew, chatted comfortably with Kelsey, and impressed me, I relaxed, finally seeing that things would work out for us.