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“That’s baseball,” she says, and smiles, shark-like, but it’s a familiar one. I’ve seen the same exact expression on my own face countless times before. Good. We understand each other.

“It is,” I agree, and stand from my seat. Something in the last handful of minutes must have shifted because, when I do, all of the others follow suit, except Stew, still lounging in his chair. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. When do you need my answer?”

“When you have one,” Stew says, interrupting whatever Hannah was going to say, probably to try to save some face before the meeting is over.

“You’ll hear from me soon,” I promise, as I turn on my heel and stride out of the boardroom. When the door clicks shut behind me, it literally vibrates with the level of grumbling that kicks up once they’re sure I’m gone.

“Well?” Nancy says, expectantly from her desk, like she wasn’t probably listening in anyway.

“We’ll see,” I say, “but you’ll hear it from me first.”

“I better,” she warns. “Gregory thinks he runs things around here, but I’m not dead yet.”

And I leave, thinking about how Gregory’s work nemesis is a woman old enough to be his grandmother and, honestly, watching that play out for the next few years adds a little pro to the Brooklyn Eagles column in the rapidly building pro/con list in my head.

Because now I have a choice.

A choice with no right or wrong answer, just a decision to make, one that will change my life entirely going forward, and there’s only one person in the world I want to help me make it.

He’s there waiting for me, chatting with the security guard at the main desk, who he says goodbye to quickly with a casual dap and I wave goodbye as well.

“How’d it go?” he asks, as we step out onto the sidewalk, the stadium looming high in the air at our backs.

“Did you know what Stew had planned?”

We walk slowly and I wave off Vlad, who tips his cap and drives away.

“He didn’t explicitly tell me, but I had a feeling he had something up his sleeve. Did he offer you his job?”

“He did,” I say, shaking my head, still in disbelief.

“What did you say?” he asks, his hand falling to the small of my back and I notice it this time as we wait at the corner for the light to change.

“I asked for some time to think about it.”

“Okay,” he says, simply, as he follows me across Washington Avenue and down Park Side to Ocean, the same path we’d take to get home, but instead of hanging a right, I lead him into Prospect Park.

“You’re not really dressed for this,” he says, but I keep walking and he follows, and when I step closer, his hand comes up from my back and his arm slides around my shoulder, holding me to his side as we slowly make our way down the pathway.

The trees are almost entirely bare now and the leaves are mostly gone, blown away by the wind or crushed under the feet of walkers and joggers and bird watchers and kids cutting school.

He might think we’re just wandering, but I know exactly where I’m going and, thanks to my heels, I take the fastest route there.

“Really?” he asks, when the ballfields come into view as we round a corner.

They’re deserted, obviously. Even the diehard fall leagues like the guys we saw a few weeks ago are done as November creeps closer to December and baseball feels like a distant memory for most people, even when it’s still an everyday reality for us.

“I do my best thinking on the field,” I say.

“Is that a fact?”

I keep a decent hold of him as we leave the concrete trail for the uneven grass and then eventually the dirt near the home plate of the first field.

There are a handful of others in the distance, but this one will have to do.

And despite the Louboutins on my feet and the Veronica Beard label inside my skirt, I squat behind home plate and let the tension seep out of me.

It’s basically the view I had for my entire playing career, the only defensive player to see the entire field in front of them. They call the catcher “the field general” for a reason. We direct the defense. We call the pitches. And when things go wrong, it’s on us. At least I always felt that way.

“Been a while since I had a view like this,” Charlie says, settling beside me with only a slight groan from taking the weight off his knee.

“What do you think I should do?” I ask.

“It’s not up to me.”

“No, it isn’t,” I agree, “but I’m asking. What would you do?”

“The Eagles offered you more money, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s the Yankees, I’m sure they’ll match it and, besides, it’s not about the money, not at this point.”

“I know that feeling,” he says. “So, what is it about?”

“It’s about . . . I don’t know. Respect. A chance to win. Building a team I can be proud of. Winning a championship. Winning more than one. Being happy.”

“Those are the most important things.”

“They are.”

“And what makes you happy, Francesca?”

“You.”

“You have me, either way,” he says, and I know that.

He said it before, but it’s nice to hear it again.

I rest my head on his shoulder and take one of his big, calloused hands in mine, holding it in my lap, for comfort and for warmth, because as poetic as this felt before I sat down, the ground is freaking freezing.

“Cold?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for my answer, he just wraps his arm around me and holds me closer. “Better?”

“Yeah, but still no idea what I should do.”

“I can’t decide for you.”

“No, but it’s nice that you’re here,” I say, and he hums his agreement, and then it hits me, my conversation with Stew earlier, and I ask, “Did you know people thought we were together back in LA ?”

“What?”

“That’s what Stew said. Said it was pretty universal.”

“Huh, maybe we should have been? Feels like we wasted a lot of time.”

“I mean, we were both married and, after Shane, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t ready.”

“Not because of the working together thing?”

“That too, at the time. I was in a different place in my career. I still had so many things to learn, so many mountains to climb to prove myself. It would have been career suicide.”

“But everyone thought it.”

“Yeah, but nobody knew . It was just a thing to say, a thing to think. If we’d been like this . . .” I trail off.

“. . . they wouldn’t have taken you seriously.”

“No, they wouldn’t have.”

“So, you’re not worried about being with me and working for the Eagles?”

“No, not anymore.”

“Then it’s just that it’s the Yankees.”

I let out a groan, my knees finally unable to support me on these heels anymore and I sink down to the dirt with him.

“It is and it’s funny, because I hated them growing up. Hated their stupid pinstripes and their dumb no facial hair rule for the players and how, no matter what you say to their fans, they’re just entirely smug that they always have a chance to win and all the money to make it happen.”

“You grew up a Dodgers fan.”

“Yeah.”

“You had the same things.”

“Twenty-seven championships,” I mutter, in a mocking tone. “As if they were alive for all of them and they personally watched Babe Ruth hit his 60 th homer at the old stadium.”

“And yet . . .” he trails off, knowing I’m not done.

“It’s the Yankees . The greatest franchise in the history of modern sport, and I’d be their general manager, their first female general manager.”

He lets out a low whistle. “That is something.”

“It is. It really is.”

“So, Frankie Sullivan, what’s it going to be?”