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Evelyn swoops past Ginny the moment she opens the door. No hi, no hello, no check in to make sure that Ginny's arm doesn't get slammed into the wall with how quick she moves. Nope, just a straight shot right over to Ginny's closet.

Ev throws it open and full on stares at the mountain of duffle bags inside. Most are flattened, but it's still a pretty impressive collection at this point. Kind of normal when you live life mostly on the road like Ginny. But it only stalls Evelyn for a second. Enough time to breathe, prep, and dive in for the largest duffle she can find. She pulls that open too while Ginny tries to make sense of what's actually happening here.

"Ev?"

She doesn't respond, so Ginny holds the rest of her words somewhere in the back of her throat. She tracks Evelyn yanking hangers off the rack, notes the way Ev pulls sweaters down and drops them into the duffle without trying to fold them even a little bit. Ginny's mom used to do that when they had a family trip. Just make piles of everything Ginny should pack and leave them messy so Ginny would eventually head over and fold them however she wanted to. But there's no trip right now. No reason for any of this since Ginny's basically grounded in recovery for weeks, and yet... here's Evelyn, packing.

Once the sweaters start to turn into jackets, Ginny snaps back to the moment. "Ev, wait, what are you doing?"

Evelyn glances back. "This is - Ginny, sweetie, enough." Evelyn practically strangles one of the Nike jackets. "You've been in San Diego for months, Gin. Months. And you're still living out of this freaking hotel room. And it's a nice room, don't get me wrong, but I can't deal with this anymore." She drops the jacket and grabs a hanger. "Are these yours or theirs? Wait, why am I even asking? You wouldn't've packed them." She sets the hangers back on the rack and goes for another jacket.

Ginny almost laughs, not in the funny kind of way, but in the still processing how intense my best friend is kind of way. "Hey, Ev, slow down. You can't just pack my stuff away. I don't..." Ginny pushes at her hair with her good arm while the other hangs out in its sling. Though both sets of her fingers clench up. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

There's no point in buying a place with no job security, and renting a space means actually being responsible for making it her own. Staying in the hotel made everything easier on Ginny. No strings, nothing to hold all her loose hopes in.

But Ev spins around with her smile tucking a bit into her teeth. The grin widens and brightens as her eyes just about double in size. It's like she got Blip to agree to go on all the rollercoasters with the twins until college. Evelyn hugs that jacket tight to her chest and says, "Actually, you do." She pitches up on her toes, her actual height mirroring the way her voice hitches up. "We didn't mention it before because we didn't know how well this whole thing would work out, but honestly I can't think of a better time for a trial run."

"A trial run - Ev, I don't -"

Evelyn starts listing pros with her fingers. "You wouldn't have to live off what other people cook for you all the time. You'd have unlimited access to the kind of fans that don't constantly want your picture." She throws her hands up. "You can even spoil them with whatever age inappropriate show from the nineties feeds your awful need to have a late childhood. Ginny, just, please."

Please what? Ginny's definitely listening, but she can't be hearing this right. She can't. Ginny's spent the last two months reminding herself that she's on her own. She might adore Blip and Evelyn, but she's never going to be a part of their family. Blip said as much when he almost got traded from the Padres, and time and time again, it comes down to this division between her and them. And moving in with them doesn't necessarily change that. It just means that Ginny will be even closer when they eventually send her away, or something goes wrong.

But what if nothing does go wrong?

What if, for once, Ginny gets to just be a part of something? Unconditionally?

"You're serious?"

Evelyn nods, first slowly and then about a million times over the course of five seconds. "Yes! Of course I'm serious! Gin, I have a bellboy coming up here with a luggage cart in two hours." They laugh together at that. Relief bubbling over. "Not that it'll take that long to pack your stuff. Seriously, all you have are a ridiculous amount of yoga pants. How many pairs do you own?"

At another time, Ginny will totally go into how many pairs she owns and how important it is to have a never-ending supply of athletic gear since she barely ever does laundry, but for now - now she screams. And she jumps. And she might jostle her arm a little too much, but who cares? She's going home!

(Their* home.)

(The Sanders* home.)

(Whatever.)

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Just because Ginny moves in doesn't mean she actually starts unpacking. She spends three days hiding out in the living room when she's not staring at all her stuff. There's the duffles from the hotel, sure, but somehow Evelyn must've talked to Amelia, found out about Ginny's storage space, and gotten a few boxes of her stuff brought over. Blip had groaned when he carried them in on Ginny's first day. Now, he just stares at them with her.

Of course, Blip stares from the doorway while Ginny stares from her place on the guest bed. His bones click a bit. It's a perfect out for a real conversation. Now she can dig into him about sounding as bad as Mike. She could call him old. Tell him he's already halfway done with his Mike transformation so he might want to just give up on that resentment thing before he winds up being a dad hating cliche.

Dad hating's more her speed than his though. Not that she hated her dad. She loved her dad. She just... Being in the house is a lot like being in her house as a kid. Lots going on, everyone has their own lives, and they intersect mostly over this one thing: the baseball. And without the baseball, then there's not really a point to them being together. There's not a point to Ginny at all.

Blip clears his throat. She starts, jolts her elbow too quick and sends lightning scorching through her in an instant. He breathes out, "Sorry."

"It's fine. I'm too jumpy. That's what living alone does to you." Even though she technically lived with hundreds of people in that hotel. Soundproof walls are always a lie, so she heard a lot when music wasn't playing. Tons of overlapping lives and petty arguments about how no one could find parking in Southern California and how a lot of people spoke Spanish down there and did they know that Ginny Baker stayed somewhere in this hotel?

Blip nods. "Right. Hey. You want to be here, right, Gin?" He bats those endless eyelashes towards the boxes instead of her. Talks over the way her heart starts racing. "Evie got so excited about having you here. Bounced around for days, begging and pleading for me to ask you. She got it in her head somehow that it'd be easier if it came from me. You know it'd be casual. A friend asking another if they want a chill place to bulk up again. But I figured that it'd be better coming from her."

If Blip had asked, he would've brought beers. Something cold and simple, like Stella, so that they could lose their words into the white wrapping right under the lip of the bottle. Take sips to stall until he kicked at the coffee table and asked if she wanted to be eating take out forever. He'd probably say something about making a pretty mean brunch and forcing Gabe and Marcus to help her with her physical therapy. Teach his kids something useful instead of just playing games with them. Then he'd shrug. Say it's up to her, that they've got a spare room and only ask for a nice date night every once in a while.

If Blip had asked, Ginny could've played it off. Could've swallowed down the part of her screaming to actually be around people. Could've sipped at that beer and reminded herself that this wasn't her life. This wasn't her life, and he just felt bad. He just wanted to look out for her and thought this was the right way to do it.

But Blip stayed home. And Evelyn charged in there and smiled at Ginny like this was as much for Evelyn as it was for her. Like it might be nice to have another person in the house who could guzzle down Bloody Mary's and kick her ass in Scrabble at the same time.

Blip rolls her shoulders back. "All I'm saying is, you're our friend, Ginny. One of the best we got, so you can sit around and act like this isn't happening. Or, you can accept that with everything going on, it might be nice to be around people who care about you while you work towards being okay again. But that's all this is. Just another way to be okay." And because he can't resist a dig, he adds, "Just like your stats."

"Hey!" She snaps her good arm up so quick that Blip flinches. She reaches for something to throw, but Evelyn's voice cuts through the whole house instantly.

Evelyn yells, "No throwing in the house!"

"We won't!" But that doesn't mean Ginny can't hit him manually. She leaps up from the bed in a charge, and Blip sprints pretty quick for a guy who couldn't make it to second in time during the game. "Oh, now you run! Where was that support earlier, Sanders!?"

Blip glares at her over his shoulder. "I did my part. I did-" He slides to a stop at the kitchen island, which gives Evelyn all the space she needs for a full power pose on her side. She stares down both Blip and Ginny, who has the forethought to at least slow down before she crashes into Blip's back. Blip says, "Baby, why'd you even let her watch?"

Evelyn repeats, "Let her?" at the same time as Ginny barks, "Let me!?" Their speeches overlap from there, but through the rants about how Ginny's a grown woman who makes her own decisions and how, as a Padre, she has every right to see what he's doing with their team and how he has no say in what goes on in this house when he isn't home, all that really happens is that the three of them wind up yelling at each other with dopey grins on their faces between slaps to the countertop and quick checks to make sure that they weren't loud enough to attract the boys.

"Fine! Fine!" Blip throws his hands up in defeat. "I'm wrong, you're right, women are the greatest, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." He walks around the island towards the fridge.

Evelyn turns her victory eyes onto Ginny. "God, it's so good to have another girl in the house."

Ginny's smile hasn't quite faded yet, so it's easy to send it back to Evelyn. Easy to shift her arm in its sling and actually admit, "It's good to be here." The words bring up some emotion. Her throat tightens up a bit. Jaw starts locking. She glances away to get away from it, but Blip holds out a beer to her, and there's not really an escape from this moment, is there? No way to run and hide when Ev's looking at her like she's finally doing something right and Blip's got that grin like a parent giving their child the Christmas present they swore they weren't getting them.

(Is Ginny the kid in this scenario? That's what she is, right? Blip's giving her a chance to play family, and he's proud for doing that. It's not like he's proud for putting that grin on Ev's face. Not like he's only saying yes to get another few points on the scoreboard after royally fucking up over the last few weeks. Ginny's here to be their friend, their surrogate daughter. Nothing more.)

By the time Ginny refocuses, Blip's next to Evelyn, and Evelyn's leaning into his shoulder with her own. Ev doesn't have a beer since she's not really a fan of drinking in the house without food around. Something's simmering on the stove though, so it probably won't be long until Ev's got a drink too. The boys'll rush from their room, and Ginny'll set the table, and Blip will pretend to make a playlist so he can say he's helping when he's really just playing a game on his phone. That's how things go here, and Ginny might already be getting a little too attached. The thing is, maybe that's not a bad thing.

Ginny taps the bottom of her beer on the counter a few times. "I should probably unpack a few things. Can't have my armies of yoga pants getting all wrinkled, can I?"

Blip's eyebrows furrow. "They can get wrinkled?"

Evelyn pats her husband's cheek before pecking him on the lips. "Everything wrinkles, babe. Even you." She pokes near his eyes. "See, right there. And there. And there."

Ginny cackles. "Yes, the wrinkles! The bones! You're dying on me, man."

Blip shakes his head. "Nope. We're not doing this again. I take it back." He points his beer at Ginny. "You can't live here. I can't have both of you running circles around me all the time."

"Aww, honey, we won't run all the time. Right, Gin?"

Ginny nods. She hoists up her beer. "Sometimes we'll jog. Just like you. On your way to second."

Blip seriously splashes his drink at her. "Get out of my kitchen!"

She jogs her way back to the guest room. Smiles into her drink while Evelyn's laughter trails behind her. Then it's just Ginny, alone in the room with all of her stuff.

They really should've brought the hangers. Ginny has to put her stuff in the dresser now. Has to figure out which drawer's perfect for shirts and whether or not she can justify having a whole drawer for the pile of mismatched black socks that she never bothers to group into pairs. Has to create a whole system of organization that says that this is her space and this is exactly how she likes it.

And if she hums to herself while doing it, for once, there's no one else around to hear it.

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