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Carson Shaw wants to fall in love. She wants it more than anything. She wants butterflies in her stomach, she wants a blush on her cheeks. She wants to follow someone around and know them, every inch of them, and love them wholly with everything she has. Carson Shaw wants to be somebody’s person. It’s a fact of her life from the time she’s six years old.
That’s why Carson loves Charlie – later, she’ll say is in love with but for right now (and maybe it always was) it’s love, it’s just love. She loves his jokes and the way he plays baseball and the way he lets her play baseball too. He’s got a nice smile and he’s not too gentle or too rough with her. And this is Idaho, where pleasant company is all company, so Carson feels pretty lucky that her best friend will make plenty do as a husband, when the time comes.
Charlie gets to know her inside and out. He knows how she likes her eggs and what her favorite dresses are and who she can’t stand to sit next to in church. He knows her favorite class is Literature and that her favorite book is Pride and Prejudice.
When Carson tells him about it, she always tells him it’s stupid. They obviously are meant for each other, right from the start, and why can’t they just see that? But she reads it anyway, believes in what it’s telling her: there is a person who will be your person, no matter what it takes to get there.
And again, she’s lucky with Charlie, it didn’t take much. So, there. So, she shouldn’t feel so hopeless, so… sad.
Charlie asks Carson to marry him when they’re nineteen years old, and obviously she says yes, because obviously. The night after he asks her, falling asleep in a bed in scratchy sheets that need to be washed, her skin prickling in the oddest of ways, Carson feels herself smiling and knows she can’t stop. A dream, coming true. She can’t wait to belong to someone.
And for the most part, it’s good. It’s so good. Sure, she can’t have her own bank account – that’s fine. Sure, there’s a lot of social events they have to attend, faces they have to put on. But when it’s just her and Charlie at home, with the radio on, her reading a book and him with the newspaper in his lap, next to each other on the couch – Carson feels happy. Softly, quietly happy. A piece of her heart is settled.
And then Charlie goes away to war. And Carson knows the phrase – absence makes the heart grow fonder – and she thinks isn’t it the opposite? She loves Charlie when he’s there, kissing her cheek and holding her from behind and making her breakfast and talking about baseball with her. When he’s gone, and the house is just a little bit emptier… Carson doesn’t feel like much is missing at all. She makes her own breakfast. She calls her dad to talk about the Cubs’ stats. And a year into his absence, Carson starts to wonder, and to worry…
Maybe I never fell in love after all.
---
When Carson rereads Pride and Prejudice, she sees it in a different light. They were never in love with each other from the start. They were always learning about each other, and it was only at the right time, when they realized. And that’s okay, she decides. It’s okay to take longer to fall in love, to need time, obstacles in your way. Obstacles like a war, she thinks, and keeps the photo of Charlie in his uniform tucked into her well-worn Jane Austen copy. When he comes back, I will miss him so much, and I will know him so much better. It takes time to fall in love.
And in the meantime, Carson hears about the tryouts.
---
Greta Gill never wants to fall in love ever again. Not after Dana. She can’t take the risk.
But god… sometimes she wants to feel like she is home.
She gets the feeling in fits and starts. When sometimes, Jo’s easy camaraderie isn’t enough, and sometimes Greta feels out of place in her own skin, living the life of a passerby on the street and not a real person. She craves warmth, sometimes, more than she can get in another woman’s bed, more than she can get from Jo’s body pressed into her side – she wants many bodies pressed against her, the bodies of family that know her and that she can know too. Greta wants community.
She knows, in a conceptual way, that it exists. That there are bars, and underground meeting rooms, and parties in houses behind the train tracks where the noise won’t carry. She knows there are girls like them who have families made up of people who don’t share the same blood. Greta also knows families like that are dangerous. It’s harder to run in packs, harder to keep track of ten people you care about instead of just one when the police break down the door. Harder even to protect nine when one puts the rest in danger (trust is a foreign concept to Greta).
Jo has an easier time with it, because Greta thinks Jo is braver than she could ever be. Jo, after all, didn’t live through it with Dana, didn’t run for her life down an alley in Queens clutching her clothes to her chest, terrified of every footfall behind her, terrified that this was it. Greta holds nothing against Jo for not knowing… but it just isn’t the same.
Jo, too, believes in future. One, perhaps, where they don’t have to be afraid. A changed world where Greta can hold a girl’s hand in public and Jo can wear pants whenever she wants. A world that Greta is certain exists only in dreams, the elusive magic land of freedom for people like them.
(There’s a whole lot of people in this world looking for freedom, and a whole lot of white guys looking to hoard it for themselves. Greta’s no stranger to the holding pattern.)
Greta’s not in love, and doesn’t want to be, but at night the burning emptiness in her chest is longing, yearning, and it makes it hard (almost impossible) because she doesn’t even know what she’s yearning for. Greta hates not having a plan, hates not being ahead of the ball.
So she ignores it. She has Jo, and that’s enough. That’s plenty. In fact, she probably got lucky.
---
Whatever thing that simmers between Greta and Carson is there from the first, something imperceptible in the inches of space between them as they walk to Baker Field. It doesn’t make any sense to Carson, she of the nineteenth century romance novels and husband overseas, but she knows it’s there all the same. Her mind is a spinning carousel, and at a time she wonders – is what she feels around Greta electric, like a static shock, or warm and soft like steam? She’s not sure yet, and attributes it all to Greta’s aura of red and strong perfume.
Greta, meanwhile, senses trouble automatically – the kind she enjoys. For as much as Carson will come to shake up her world – to open her up again – those first few hours at Baker Field feel like nothing much more than a fun experiment, which words and winks will get Carson to blush and stutter over her awkward sentences. The further Greta pushes, the more she recognizes Carson keeping cool, her determination and focus. It isn’t until the hotel, Carson out of her denim coveralls and out of her element, that Greta sees it on her face: the curiosity. It’s the same for her, curiosity leading her to flip open the cover of Carson’s notebook and read that one sentence – Dear Charlie, there’s something wrong with me and you deserve better – and she presses her lips together, knowing she’s gotten a bit more than she signed up for when she hopped on that train to Chicago.
(But what’s a little fun, here and there?)
---
Greta’s instincts tell her to push and prod and break down Carson’s defenses until she’s got her pressed close in the storage room of this random bar. She doesn’t regret it.
There’s something that happens in those very first moments with a woman, especially one who’s never ever before, when they realize. Greta sees it in Carson’s face, the way her eyes widen and search Greta’s for recognition, an oh, this is it. This is what’s supposed to happen. She feels Carson’s whole body tighten, sees her take the deepest of breaths before diving back in. To Greta – experienced Greta, Greta who thinks of love like a poison, a threat – she is understanding only half of what Carson says with her hands and hips and mouth: this feels good, I want more of this.
The other half, which will take Greta a season of baseball and a personal revelation to understand, is unspoken between them: Carson says this is what love could taste like and Carson says I’ve wanted it for so long.
---
So many emotions fill Carson’s chest in the days after the bar that she thinks she’s likely to implode. They’re like balloons, cramming into her and taking up all available space with their pressure and their hot air. She can’t stop thinking about the press of Greta’s lips on hers, the feeling of Greta’s hands skating along her back and tangling in her hair. She feels like a schoolgirl again, sneaking off with what Greta would probably call a “Freddie” to get naughty after math class.
Except Greta’s no Freddie, and Carson isn’t sure what to do with that.
A part of her is tangled up in the feeling and smell and taste of Greta still, itching to be near when she can, hoping to look over and catch Greta staring back at her with something in her eyes. A part of her feels infatuated, more than just with lust – she wants Greta to think she’s worth looking at. Wants to be wanted.
But Charlie floats across her mind at inopportune moments, reminding her that her future is tied to her past. Just because she’s spending the summer playing baseball in Illinois doesn’t mean she won’t go back to Idaho in September, won’t see Charlie’s face and kiss his cheek and make him dinner and return to his love-not-love that is comfortable and safe.
That part of Carson, who can’t stop thinking about the ring around her finger, doesn’t want to hurt Charlie, but has no qualms about hurting herself.
---
No one – scratch that, no woman, no woman she’s chasing – has ever told Greta she’s not normal before. Greta’s not often been wrong.
The second the words are out of Carson’s mouth, she looks sorry for it, but Greta’s caught between hurt and fear and feels the vice grip getting tighter every second. Not normal. Not normal.
Maybe she miscalculated – not with the way Shaw kissed her back – so she starts over – who will she tell, Shirley? please not Shirley – Carson won’t tell anyone but it’s Carson, Carson – Greta wants to kiss her, wants her, still – it hurts to hear it from Carson of all people – what does that say – what does that mean –
Carson told her it’s okay to want things but it’s not, it’s not. At least, it’s not okay to want Carson, not the way she does, which is what Carson is telling her point-blank – I’m not like you. A rejection that shouldn’t hurt just the way it does, but it punches Greta right in the gut and twists.
“Or maybe you’re just an asshole.” Greta throws the towel in and leaves.
---
Greta doesn’t want to fall in love, not at all – but Carson’s getting under her skin in ways she can’t explain.
All five feet five of her, balancing on the front of her feet, rocking in and out of Greta’s space like she’s readying herself for a swing. “Do you want me to say that I’m jealous? That I have feelings for you? Fine. I do.”
The penny drops.
If Greta had understood it, known it, prior to that moment, then she’d been ignoring it, shoving it down and out of the way so as not to look at it.
Greta doesn’t want to fall in love – but there’s so little you can do to keep yourself from falling in love with someone. You can ignore the way they play with their hair, rip out the passages of your favorite books that remind you of them, change the radio when that song comes on, keep yourself from touching and kissing and missing them, but the heart is a fickle creature, and it seeks its own pleasure.
What Greta really wants – or doesn’t want, is anyone else to fall in love with her.
It’s not love – it wouldn’t be fair to call it that, yet – but what she feels for Carson is more than what she feels for the married women she takes home from time to time. Not the first, nor the most earth-shattering – not quite yet – but it’s something, it’s there and warm and taking root in the soil of her stomach, growing vines through her ribs and sprouting flowers in the cavity of her chest. Slowly, assuredly, Carson Shaw is becoming something she can’t stop thinking about. And that’s fine, it’s whatever, it’s completely different-
From Carson having feelings for her.
That makes things dangerous. Carson, who doesn’t know the rules, who kissed Greta with a naked want and a reckless abandon – the idea of Carson falling asleep at night with Greta on the brain, catching her eye across the dugout, Carson with the imprint of Greta on her body.
Greta’s feelings for Carson have been growing since that first night in the hotel, and never in a million years would she have thought Carson was in the same place. Whether of willful ignorance or pessimism, the idea that anyone could love Greta the way she loves them is implausible. And in that moment, the briefest of moments, Greta lets herself forget, whispers: “Finally.”
Finally, she’s not the only one feeling things.
---
Carson makes her decision when she hangs up the phone with Charlie.
I meant what I said. I’m not like you, Greta. She is, she is, she is, she craves Greta’s touch and kiss the way she knows Greta craves that of other women – of Carson? – and instead of being scared of it, she feels exhilarated, finally knowing something that she wants, not something she was told she should.
It’s okay to want things, I think.
But I’m not like you, Greta, and she’s not: Greta’s brave, can pull Carson into a dark closet and kiss her senseless, can brazenly tease Vernon the Veterinarian while looking at Carson the whole time, can run and run and run without ever stopping because that’s the price of what she wants. Carson has to hit home eventually, has to round third and see something familiar in front of her. A place to return to the next half-inning. Greta may belong out on the bases, catching outs and keeping an eye on the wide world out there, but Carson’s feet have always belonged behind home plate.
(Or have they? Or has she just been told that?)
She wants to find out, so she goes to Greta’s room, sees the look on her face – how can she describe it? Relief. Joy. Adoration, in a way, a soft acceptance of her own happiness at seeing Carson standing there, making up a clumsy excuse about a rash just to get her alone for a minute or more. In that moment, Carson knows Greta knows, knows that this is the precursor to love; not knowing someone for years, not settling into a marriage like a hand-me-down dress, but bursting at the seams, too many feelings to say all at once, a custom fit.
What Greta and Carson have is just theirs, theirs alone. It’s the closest Carson’s come to calling anything love in a long time.
---
Carson remembers rereading Pride and Prejudice – explaining, or maybe over-explaining, her complicated thoughts to an elderly woman on the train – and thinking it takes a long time to fall in love. So prudent, so wise when she thought it, that she wrote it on an index card and used it as a bookmark for years.
Maybe, she thinks, it takes a long time to fall in love. It takes no time at all, she’s learning, to fall in lust.
Every nerve ending in her sets on fire when Greta so much as looks in her direction. Now that she knows – or better remembers – what it feels like to have Greta’s hands tugging at her hair and palming at her chest, Greta’s leg slotting between her own and Greta’s ankle wrapping around hers to keep her pinned closer, Greta’s lips, Greta’s lips everywhere… Carson’s not sure how she’s maintaining her composure at all.
Before Greta, Carson’s only known one other person like that – Charlie, obviously, and it meant something to her, and always would. Carson got lucky that Charlie was a good guy, did it well, cared about how she felt. And it was a turning point, in a way – Carson knew that she was his now, and would be his. Their love felt different afterwards. Maybe stronger, maybe just… different.
With Greta, she gets the sense that other than scratching an itch that won’t seem to go away, making them both feel better – eliminating a little of that mid-season frustration – it won’t change much at all. Whatever she feels for Greta now is the strongest it’s ever been, a want and a need and a craving that Carson can’t describe beyond its name. She needs to know what Greta’s hands feel like against her bare skin. She needs to know what Greta looks like when she falls apart.
And then it happens – gloriously, beautifully, lit by orange-ish lamps and supervised by a crucifix, of all things. As Carson falls asleep in Greta’s arms that night, she can’t think much beyond wow and fuck and felt good. When she wakes up the next morning and sees the sunlight that spills through the curtains shining in Greta’s sex-mussed curls, her lips rubbed bare and parted as she breathes, Carson feels nothing but warmth.
It’s not until they’re home in Rockford that Carson realizes anything has really changed – it takes time to fall in love – and thinks maybe she’s the only one that’s noticed it.
---
For Greta’s part, she’s noticed it – noticed it, and tried to push it back as hard as possible.
Getting her hands on Carson was more than just the sex – it was good sex, but that wasn’t all – it was about proving a point. The part of her hardened by years of rules and restrictions and running thought this will be it, you’ll have her and it’ll be over. Not that Greta could really leave Carson like that, because Carson deserves more than Greta could ever give her, but she thought that after Kenosha, the beat of her heart might slow, the swirling in her chest might cease, and she might finally be able to sleep without seeing Carson’s dimples imprinted on the backs of her eyelids, hearing her laugh on repeat.
Instead, it gets worse. Greta sees Carson across the field at practice and can’t stop herself from smiling. She’s drawn next to her when they stand in clumps, falling deeper into her orbit. She has to physically force herself not to sit next to Carson in the living room, knowing she won’t be able to stop herself from sinking into Carson’s soft embrace. And sure, she still thinks about kissing her silly, taking her on the front seat of Bev’s car – but the feelings Greta’s been so afraid of are still lurking, stronger, even, than they were before.
Greta never wanted to fall in love again. But she’s so close, now, and missed the feeling – forgot how good it felt, to want, and to be wanted back.
Carson wants her, she knows. Wants her physically, but wants more than that – Greta knows so from makeout session after makeout session interrupted by Carson’s nervous rambling, apologies, questions, talking points that in another world, had Greta not been burned a million times, she might have entertained.
I don’t really feel like talking, Carson. She wants to bathe in this, this good feeling, without really admitting it exists – when Carson’s lips are pressed to her own, she can swallow any emotion and bury it further inside of her, and maybe by doing so she can drag it out of Carson and make it all hurt less when it eventually, inevitably, ends.
But of course, Carson doesn’t understand. She’s hurt, and confused, and pissed, a little. Greta likes Carson angry, but not at her. So she asks Jo – Jo is the wisest person she’s ever met – and gets this in return:
What if right here, right now, we forget the rules?
The first one she breaks (it sure isn’t the first one, but it’s easier to tell herself that) is telling Carson about Dana, something she’s never done with another girl, not even once. You remind me of her, she says. I think that’s been scaring me, she says. She says it with conviction, wants Carson to know exactly how she means it: not I think of her when I think of you but I think of you and think of how it felt to love her, and I know I’m so, so close to making all of the same mistakes.
And Greta will make them. It’s inevitable, just like September, just like California, just like Charlie. Greta will make a million mistakes to keep Carson around just a second longer, looking at her like she hung the moon.
---
When Carson goes to the bar for the first time – when she sees the bar for the first time – it feels like home in a way she can’t explain. The homes she’s had: the baseball diamond, the Peaches house, Greta’s arms, all of them mean something entirely different than this place made of people, not really a physical space at all, but a woven net of familiarity and sameness that Carson understands intrinsically. It’s not about the bar, really, but it’s about herself, making a choice to stay there. This is where I want to be.
Carson never really made the conscious choice to fall in love with Greta, or to keep falling in love with her, to trip headfirst into everything that makes her up and have it become a part of her. But she makes the choice, here, right now, to sit with Lupe and Jess and that feels like falling in love with something, too – falling in love with herself.
(It says something, about these past few months, that Carson’s lifelong dream made way for a new one.)
---
When Greta first hears about the bar, she panics. Greta, everyone was like us.
I know, Carson, she wants to say, and that’s what scares me.
Jo’s been to the bars before, has an innate ability to find them in every city they end up in. She’s asked Greta to go once or twice – come on, bird, it’ll be safe, it’ll be fun – but Greta drags her feet and makes excuses every time. She knows better than anyone that nowhere is safe, not even an empty house and a bedroom with a locked door. Somewhere along the way, she decided it wasn’t worth it, and that was fine with her.
It was.
And as much as safety’s always a factor, Greta believes Carson when she says it will be fine, and knows she wouldn’t even have suggested it if it wasn’t. It’s not Greta’s real reason for saying no – maybe at first, but not really, not deep down.
Instead, Greta pictures it, the room full of women and men and in-between so much more comfortable in their skins than she’s ever been, dressing the way they like, makeup applied perfectly or wiped clean, no thought spared to what the normal people outside are thinking. All Greta’s ever been able to think about is the outside world. She dresses for it, she curls her hair and applies and reapplies lipstick for it – the girls she catches with her looks are a bonus, but they’re not the aim. Greta dresses to draw in the men and push away the prying eyes. Everything Greta does to stand out keeps her more and more hidden.
She wonders, sometimes, what Jess and Lupe and others like them think of her, a walking, talking lie. Do they think she’s safer, smarter? More cowardly? Do they not even question it – plenty of girls like them like makeup and hair and pretty clothes, and it’s not that Greta doesn’t, just… maybe not as much as she makes others believe.
Being around others like them just makes it that much easier to feel left out, somehow.
(She and Carson had talked about loneliness once. After their first kiss, but before Kenosha. Carson had mentioned wanting a someone, a partner to be with, to confide in. Someone to belong to and who belongs to her in return. That, she said, was the source of her loneliness.
“What makes you lonely,” Carson had asked. Greta had brushed off the question – I have Jo, I have the team, I have you, I’m not lonely, and didn’t say what she was really thinking, which is all the family I’ve always wanted but am too afraid to claim for myself.)
---
Greta goes to the bar with Carson – a miracle bigger than the fact that they won, Carson thinks privately. And she’s happy to, giddy the whole evening, teasing Lupe and Jess, even dragging Jo out with them to find her a girl of her own to celebrate with.
Carson’s known for a while, a few weeks or so – since Kenosha, really – but holding Greta’s hand in front of all of those people, holding her close as they dance, kissing her – this is when Carson really, truly thinks it for the first time: I’ve actually, finally fallen in love.
She’s fallen in love. All on her own.
“What would happen if I came to California with you?”
She can’t read Greta’s face, can’t interpret the pinch of her lips and shine in her eyes. “I think a lot would happen,” Greta says, in that matter of fact way she has, like Carson hasn’t just suggested something life changing, like it all makes sense.
---
Carson throws out the idea of a future like a gauntlet in an arena and leaves Greta defenseless against the attack.
What would happen if I came to California with you?
Greta knows not all of Carson wants to, knows there’s a part of her that still belongs to Charlie, in name if nothing else, and a part of her that, more and more, belongs to herself as well.
Still, she says, “I think a lot would happen.”
And lets herself pretend, if only for a moment, that as much as Greta knows she loves Carson, in all of the ways she does, Carson loves Greta right back.
---
After the bar, when Greta still looks like she might bolt at any moment, when Carson knows she’s been sitting up at the window all night, it comes to a head:
We have two weeks left. Are you gonna come with me to California? You gonna do that? Like you said? Are you telling me that you’re gonna leave your husband and your comfortable life for this?
For me?
And when Carson can’t answer, they both know the truth.
---
Carson Shaw always wanted to fall in love. And she did. She fell in love with the most beautiful girl she’d ever met, who changed her entire life… and realized, in the process, that she’d never really known herself at all.
Greta Gill never wanted to fall in love again. But she did. She fell in love with someone who, through innocence and naivete and heart, opened her up again. But at the heart of her, she knew it wouldn’t be fair to rely on her as a home.
---
Carson has a way of bringing Greta back to herself – I’m not good… for anyone. Yes, you are – and all she can think about, those last days, hours, minutes, the whole final game, is how much she wishes it wasn’t over. She knows it isn’t, yet – won’t be, until she gets on the train to New York and Rockford turns small in the distance – but it feels like it is. She feels like she’s kissed, held, known Carson for the last time.
It hurts more than she ever thought it would.
She’s never felt this way about a woman before – but it’s old hat, saying that by this point. Nothing about Carson has been anything like anyone Greta’s ever known.
(I’ve never met anyone like you.)
As Greta packs, plans to escape as soon as she’s able, without saying goodbye – it’s a bad play, but it’s safe, and it will keep her heart from shattering into a thousand pieces – she swallows down the fear: at being on her own, at making something of herself. Fear that Carson won’t write. Fear that she will. Fear that somewhere, someone else will get her guard down far enough that she gets caught. Fear that no one will ever make her feel this way again.
Because as harrowing as that night at the bar was, as much as Greta regrets it, as close as she was to her worst nightmares, one thing is still true: it felt good, dancing with Carson in that dimly lit bar where they weren’t alone. It felt… real. Like a home.
Fear has been Greta’s whole life for ten years, and it’s not a pattern that will break easy.
But Carson is right, and now is as good a time as any to try.
---
Carson kisses Greta goodbye like a promise.
She doesn’t let herself think of the what ifs – what if Greta doesn’t come back next season, what if none of us come back next season, what if she finds someone else in New York, what if, what if – and instead focuses on right here and now, Greta’s hands on her neck and in her hair, the way she chases her lips, her leg finding its place between Carson’s own and their ankles intertwining, keeping each other upright, balanced.
She can’t go to New York with Greta.
Greta knows.
She can’t go back to Idaho either.
Carson doesn’t know where she can go, really, other than forward; one foot in front of the other. Her whole life has been spent living according to other people: her town’s standards, Charlie’s service, the league’s ups and downs, even Greta’s rules. Carson only has the vaguest idea of what a Carson on her own looks like, a shimmering mirage, but she wants to find out – she wants it bad.
A piece of her will stay with Greta, just like a piece of her will stay with the other Peaches – and a smaller piece with Charlie, too, probably. She’ll find it next summer, when she’s with them again – when she’s with her again. Carson, the girl who always wanted to fall in love, confident enough to leave bits of her scattered around without having to pick them all back up again. Willing to let her heart get broken, if only for a little while. Willing to let go of the one good thing she’s had, in order to find herself a million others.
---
Carson believes love is a swear. Greta believes love is a touch. Carson has learned love is knowing something; Greta has realized love is absolving. It’s breathtaking, a miracle, a dream; love is a heart, a word. Love is fear. Love is strength.
It’s real, above all else. That’s what Carson and Greta get to decide.