Chapter Text
Carson took a deep breath and focused on the motion of the train. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back onto her seat. “Next stop…” Her mind trailed off before she processed what town they were approaching. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Carson knew her final destination.
What was that, Carson? Charlie’s voice rattled through her brain like the train against the track. With Greta? Did you kiss her?
He’d ruined her euphoric moment of freedom and even worse, witnessed her last moments with Greta. It felt like a betrayal. Carson and Greta weren’t the only two people with a memory of their bodies pressed together against the side of the house. Carson wasn’t the only one who might be able to recall how Greta looked simultaneously so beautiful and devastated—like she was putting on a brave face after crying all night.
Since the moment Greta left for New York, Carson thought of her on and off all day, every day. The smell of her perfume, the feeling of her lips, her hands tangling into her hair—thoughts of her were pervasive and felt like home.
As a child, Carson used to hide in a field behind the ballpark with a book and a blanket. She’d spend hours reading, basking in the feeling of the sun on her skin and listening to the tall grass rustling around her. Greta felt like that memory.
The first one always gets ya. Jess repeated it to her like a mantra. She’d said it jokingly, but deep down Carson knew Jess meant it like advice. Greta had become a permanent fixture in her brain. She knew she’d need to distance herself from her “first” to move onto her second or third. Admittedly, she’d tried, but it was easier said than done.
After the season ended, Jess and Lupe opened up some of their world to her. They’d jumped into a used car that Jess and Lupe bought and hit the road to ride their newfound baseball fame into towns across America.
Jess and Lupe never ceased to fascinate her. They moved through the world with so much confidence. Even without baseball and the Peaches, the pair just made sense to themselves and to one another. The most fascinating was their ability to find spaces where they could be themselves—hidden bars and houses of people just like them. After the bar in Rockford, Carson could only imagine how many people were just like them. At night, she went to sleep dreaming of them all dancing and kissing in dim lit rooms across the country, maybe even the world.
Carson kissed another woman inside one of those bars in Oklahoma. If the first one always sticks with you, maybe the second doesn’t stick at all.
She was blonde, made the first move and said Carson’s name in a breathy tone that made her temperature rise. But they were only in town for a few days and Carson thought about Greta every time they kissed.
Deep down, the issue was that she wasn’t trying to move past Greta. Not at all. She wanted her to stick. To see her again. To kiss her again. Her mind didn’t even allow for the possibility that her memory on the porch might be the last they would have together.
On their last night, they’d joked that they’d see each other in 15 years. Deep in her soul, Carson knew that couldn’t be their story. She couldn’t live with it. Greta had sent one postcard to Jess and Lupe to let them know she had a semi-permanent Manhattan address. Carson had swiped it and kept it safely tucked in between the pages of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
She sighed and turned her head to look out the window. Buildings were beginning to shuffle past as they crept closer to wherever their next stop might be. She tried to imagine Greta among the tall buildings and bustling backdrop of Manhattan. She knew she must fit in beautifully—a chameleon who could somehow be the most dazzling person in the room and make it seem like she belonged everywhere she went.
Carson, I need you. She squeezed her eyes tight and tried to imagine her and Greta living together in a Manhattan apartment. A space completely their own, without any fear of being caught or needing to hide. If she could write her own future, her next adventure would entirely consist of simple, easy moments with Greta.
They’d have the windows wide open, a cool breeze drifting around them while they cooked Sunday morning breakfast. Carson would be scrambling eggs and Greta’s arms would be wrapped around her.
I need you. Charlie’s voice from their last phone call crept into the daydream—the phone call that had lifted her out of her adventure with Jess and Lupe and onto the seat of this train.
One phone call from him and she was on her way back to Idaho. She was finally getting to know herself. The last thing she wanted to do was leave. But he’d sounded like the scared little boy she’d grown up with. He needed a friend.
The next day, she gave her address to Jess and Lupe and boarded the train. They promised to keep her updated wherever they went. She would join back up with them when she could. For now, she was back on the train that had taken her to the Peaches and the adventure that helped her find herself. This time, it felt like going back to Square 1.