Archive of Our Own

i.

“I believe in cookies,” Greta says, leaning against the doorframe and watching Carson continue to sort her cards. Carson thought she was the last one awake. And if she had to guess, that’s the reason Greta came back: because she was. 

“What?” she responds. 

“I believe in cookies,” Greta repeats, smiling one of her real smiles, the rare kind. “You asked me what I believe in: ice cubes, astrology, zoology, and… cookies.” She scrunches her face up a little, playful, wandering closer slowly until she can pull out the chair she was occupying earlier and slide back into the seat. 

“Is that all?” Carson teases, putting her last card on the stack, covering up the one just below it, the one with Greta’s lipstick pressed into the paper. 

“No, but now you have to tell me one,” Greta tells her like it’s obvious, like she should know that. 

“Oh.” Carson shrugs, shy. “I don’t know.” Nobody’s ever really asked her. It’s hard to know what you believe when you never have to think about it. But she doesn’t want to let this moment go so easily, can feel the scales of something tipping in her favor if she plays this right. “Does baseball count?” she asks. 

“Only because it’s you,” Greta says easily, and it’s true. 

With any other ball player, she wouldn’t accept such an answer, but with Carson, her cards and her symbols and her doodles, there’s really no choice. Greta likes that about her: that Carson really does believe in the sport, doesn’t say it just for the sake of saying it. 

Greta likes that Carson means everything she says. 

Carson watches as Greta twirls a strand of her hair between her fingers, coy and pretty. God, she’s so pretty. 

“What else?” Greta asks gently, shimmying her shoulders in that way that’s become familiar. So many things about Greta have become familiar. 

“I thought you were going to tell me another,” Carson says back, biting her lip around a grin. 

“Well, I already told you three others,” she answers, emphasizing her absolute generosity. Carson can’t help but laugh at that. 

“Right. Of course.” 

“So…” Greta gestures, turning her finger in a circular motion, asking for her to continue. “What else?” 

“Well, pie, obviously,” Carson begins, tilting her head to the side as she thinks. “Constellations.” She hesitates for a moment, her thoughts shifting into a more serious lane, but Greta is listening attentively, seems to care about what’s on the tip of her tongue even though she hasn’t said it yet. “I think… we should get to follow our dreams.” She pauses. “You know, even though we’re women.” 

“Well I think it shouldn’t matter that we’re women,” Greta answers, and Carson’s eyes widen, like she hadn’t thought of that – sweet, never-seen-the-world Carson Shaw. 

“Yeah, that’s what I mean!” Carson agrees, soft but excited. “I just feel like… it’s not fair, you know what I mean? We’re just as good. It shouldn’t matter.” 

Watching her, Greta smiles, thinks about how her mother always wanted sons – strong boys who could be strong out in the world without being too much. She thinks about how she tried to be the best at everything: the smartest girl, the sportiest girl, the strongest girl, the prettiest girl, just to make up for the fact she was a girl at all. It was never enough. 

She thinks about how it’s so obvious she’s enough for Carson. About how there’s never been a doubt in her mind. Maybe there was a doubt that Carson would accept the fact, but there was never any worry about the truthfulness of it. 

Greta likes that with Carson there’s no winding way to the truth, no white lies or dishonesties to sift through. There are no buts, no qualifiers. Carson just is. 

“Your turn now,” Carson says, ears red at her little outburst. 

Greta makes a show of contemplating her next conviction, but she already knows what it is. It’s always been something she’s a little too afraid to say aloud. But she feels it with Carson, and she feels safe enough to admit it, too: 

“I believe in tables to sit at,” she tells her quietly, reaching across the distance for Carson’s hand, turning it face up so she can trace the lines of her palm. “Someone to sit with.” 

“Oh…” Carson breathes, curling her fingers in to tangle them with Greta's. Greta trembles a little, scared of what she’ll say, and Carson feels it. She squeezes her grip, eyes wet as the right corner of her mouth turns up, her dimple showing immediately. “Me too,” she says, swallowing. “I believe in that too.  Someone to… to be with.” 

“Yeah?” Greta asks shyly. She bites at her bottom lip, looking down for a moment, and her hair falls into her face. Carson reaches to tuck it behind her ear, cupping her jaw so that Greta will look at her. 

“Yeah,” she replies, her lips curving further into a gentle smile. Charming. 

And at this kitchen table, something shifts between them. The light hits Greta’s blush differently as they look at each other, and Carson hasn’t stopped smiling since they started talking. This beating heart of the Rockford house - where the Peaches gather and laugh and drink and eat - holds them in all of its softness, watches them quietly in their falling and knows that they will catch each other. There is nothing more wonderful than being held this way, than feeling at home. 

“You should head to bed,” Greta says gently when she sees her suppress a yawn. 

“What about you?” 

“I’m going to stay up a little longer,” Greta tells her. “Maybe grab a night smoke or a little snack.” 

“Cookies?” Carson teases, raising her eyebrows. 

“Of course.” Greta’s eyes shine. 

“I am pretty tired,” Carson admits. 

“It’s all that coaching.” It’s flirtatious, but she also means it. She’s proud. 

Greta thinks it’s nice to have someone to be proud of. 

Carson can’t help but think it’s nice that someone is proud of her. 

She blushes. “Maybe.” 

“It is,” Greta says, certainty in her tone. “You deserve a good night’s sleep.” She’s gentle as she stands, brushing her fingers over Carson’s cheek since nobody will interrupt them. It’s too late in the night. “Here,” she murmurs, clipping the stack of cards together and folding down the corner on the other side like Carson’s done a thousand times to make sure they stay together. “Get some rest, Coach.” 

She leans down to press a kiss to her cheek, but Carson, bleary-eyed and soft, turns without thinking, catching Greta’s lips easily with hers. They both blush. 

“Sorry, wasn’t looking,” Carson mumbles, rubbing her right eye. It’s started to droop. 

“It’s okay.” Greta’s gaze drifts to the staircase, and it looks back at her, unmoving and uncreaking, tells her it’s safe. The quiet of the Peaches house puts her at enough ease that she pecks Carson’s lips again. “There. Now, time for bed.” 

“Yes ma’am,” Carson grumbles jokingly, standing finally and pushing her chair back. “Goodnight, Greta.” Her mouth rounds around each syllable. Greta loves how Carson says her name. 

“Sweet dreams.” Greta smiles at her, watches as Carson makes her way towards the living room to grab some of her other things, keeps watching until Carson looks back. She always looks back, like she just wants to be sure Greta is real. 

She wiggles her fingers in one last farewell gesture, and Carson presses her lips together, clearly doing her best not to grin and failing epically. 

The sight is so endearing – Carson’s face a little scrunched, both dimples evident, her eyes bright – that Greta’s heart flips, her throat closing a little as a gentle voice in the back of her mind whispers that maybe she should finally let herself believe in love again, too. 

ii.

And maybe, every once and a while, you’ll think of me. 

Carson’s words echo in her ears as Greta retreats to the opposite side of the kitchen, as the girls come piling in for more drinks and snacks. She doesn’t have eyes for any of them, though, craning her neck to hold Carson’s gaze.

There’s so much said in this one look, everything Greta wishes she could say. She wants to say she’ll think of Carson every day. She wants to say she feels a little new, that she’s breathing again and she’s a little scared because she was underwater for so long that she didn’t know what drowning was. But now, Carson is looking at her like they’re a ship about to wreck, and it was easy before for Greta to save herself. It isn’t so easy now. 

She wants to say come with me again, to slip her hand into Carson’s and tell her that all they have to do is run, but how goddamn unrealistic would that be? A girl telling her yes. A girl like Carson telling her yes. 

In less than a week, Carson will be in Idaho, and Greta will be in New York, and their lives will just… go on. That’s the worst part about life, Greta thinks: that it just goes on, that there is no way to live in a moment, or two, or three – or to relive a season and relearn to love again and again. 

In less than a week, Carson will be back with Charlie, just like Greta always thought, and she will be alone, the taste of Carson’s name still on her tongue. 

She hasn’t been alone in years. 

But she will be. 

iii.

There are dozens of love letters between them by the time winter comes. Greta watches the season change by herself, but she writes every detail to Carson, sending her letters to every corner of the states as her long-distance lover takes the long way moving east. 

She hasn’t been alone since Carson’s first envelope arrived. Looking back, Greta doesn’t know how she could have believed she would be.

Carson leaves her next address at the bottom of each correspondence when she’s further west, but by Pennsylvania, she writes that she’ll beat Greta’s letters to any destination, so they should stop writing to be safe. 

Carson learned how to be safe. 

Greta’s heart hurts a little, even though she knows it was bound to happen. 

In the days where she doesn’t hear from Carson, Greta rereads her words, admires the messy, loopy cursive of her penmanship, runs her fingers over it. She imagines Carson writing furiously, ink smudged on her palm as she tries to write as fast as she can think and talk. She imagines the low lamplight, Carson’s hair falling into her face like it does sometimes late at night. 

Sometimes, she notices that the pen changes color, or the strokes get thicker, and she knows that Carson put the letter down and picked it back up again to finish. Sometimes, it’s even obvious that she fell asleep as she tried to get every thought down. 

It’s comforting to recall some of Carson’s habits from when they were together. It makes Greta feel closer to her. 

Still, snow is beginning to pile up on the sidewalk, and Greta has nobody to write about it, nobody who would actually read every word and reply earnestly, at least. 

Carson is so earnest. It’s one of her qualities that Greta adores most. 

Her favorite letter is the one from when Carson crossed through Indianapolis. The leaves had begun to change as autumn rolled in, and Carson had described the scenery in technicolor, telling Greta that the trees were the shade of her hair and lipstick, that she thinks of her every second of the day because of it. Carson wrote of the people she met – there are more people like us than I ever imagined, Greta. I can’t believe it sometimes. I wish you could see it. Maybe one day! – and she told her about a bar she found. The password was Hope.

Greta liked that very much the first time she read it. She still does. 

The letter lives amongst her other papers, tucked between last month’s bills and a note from Jess asking how she is. They’ve been keeping up too; weirdly, Greta finds that she misses her Rockford roommate, not that she would ever admit such a thing. 

The letter was the first one Carson signed off differently. After weeks of thinking of you or be safe, the curve of the script at the bottom of the page made Greta’s heart catch, made her stop after weeks of going through the motions, weeks of pretending like the corner of her mind that Carson occupied wasn’t growing larger and larger by the day. Despite its simplicity, the signature changed everything. 

Yours, 
CS 

Hers. 

Carson put it in writing, and she never took it back after that, ended each letter with a declaration that she belonged to Greta. And Greta began to do the same. 

Suddenly, they were each other’s. They have been ever since, and Greta can’t help but think they were before, before they left in September, before they even started writing back and forth. Maybe before they even really knew each other. 

Carson is hers and she is Carson’s. It’s nice to be someone’s, to have someone to think about when the days are long and the world is cold. 

It’s early afternoon on a Saturday when she pulls it out to reread once more, settling onto her sofa with Carson’s words in lieu of her actual presence. Carson writes how she talks: shy and careful in the beginning, with a nervous flourish at the end that tells Greta she’s holding back before the actual reason she’s put pen to paper comes to light. The first paragraph always makes her smile, a series of questions asking how she’s doing, telling her she misses her, telling her she can’t wait to be in the same city again. 

She’s just getting to her favorite part: the part about the bar and Carson’s friends and the I promise I’m being careful! fun she’s having when there’s a soft knock at the door. Greta folds the letter and carefully slides it back into its envelope, placing it inside the coffee table book for safekeeping before she pads over to the door. She doesn’t bother to look through the keyhole; it’s likely her landlord with a package that got sent to the wrong unit. 

But when she opens the door, she stumbles back, only barely catching herself on the handle. 

Carson. 

It’s Carson.

“Hi,” she breathes, waving. Her suitcases are on either side of her, and her coat is drawn around her, the sleeves rolled up meticulously. It’s clear she’s been standing outside for more than a few minutes, though whether it was to steel her resolve or sweetly fold her cuffs up to her elbows, Greta will never know. 

“Hey,” she says back, grip tight on the doorknob. 

“Hey,” Carson repeats, shifting from foot to foot, suddenly breathless. 

“Hi,” Greta replies. She swallows hard, her body tense and loose at the same time at the sight of Carson, like no part of her – mind, body, or heart – can really believe that she’s here. “I– sorry.” She scrubs her free hand over her face. “Do you want to come in?” 

“I thought you’d never ask,” Carson teases as Greta steps aside to let her pass with her suitcases. 

Greta continues to stare at her like she’s a novelty. Like she’s never seen her before. And part of her thinks that’s true. Carson looks… different. Happier. More herself than ever before. 

“Greta?” she says gently. “Is everything okay?” 

Finally, that shakes her out of her trance, and as the door swings shut, Greta steps forward, cupping Carson’s face in both of her hands and she kisses her. 

This kiss is worth months of letters and declarations of belonging, months of missing Carson and writing as much, meaning it more than she’s ever known how to mean pretty much anything. This is a kiss that Greta hopes will tell Carson everything she feels, a kiss that holds everything she didn’t know how to say, didn’t know how to write. She’s never been quite as good with words as Carson. 

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she murmurs as Carson drops her things again with a thud, as she backs Carson towards the kitchen, their lips still pressed together. Suddenly, a wave of desperation overtakes her, and all of the adoration between her ribs rushes through her. Desire. Her hands fist in the skirt of Carson’s dress, a sensible, checkered red thing that reminds Greta of Rockford. “Is this okay?” she whispers.

Carson nods immediately, because yes, yes, of course it’s okay, tilting her head back a little to deepen the kiss, smiling when Greta pins her to the counter. “Wow, maybe I should take the long way here more often,” she jokes. 

“Don’t you dare,” Greta huffs back, amused, but there’s a hollowness to her quiet laugh. She pauses, looking down at Carson softly. 

“Oh.” Carson reaches up to thumb over her cheek. “Oh, Greta.” 

Greta shudders at the way Carson says her name. “Carson.” Tears spring to her eyes. 

“Greta,” Carson says back, pulling her down to kiss her again, and she tastes salt. “Greta–”

“It’s just… you’re here,” she says again, brushing her nose against Carson’s cheek, against her jaw. “You’re really, really here.” You left him. You left Idaho. You’re here, and you’re mine. 

“I’m here. I’m here,” Carson assures. I did. I did. I am, and I’m yours. Her fingers tangle in Greta’s hair as she kisses her neck slowly, hands still caught up in the pleats of her dress, teasing as her touch rises against her thighs. 

Greta touches her everywhere she can reach, soft and sweet and serious and searching all at the same time, like she’s afraid Carson will disappear. She’s slow about it, tender, too much and not enough in all of the best ways until Carson is gasping in her ear as Greta’s nails brush gently up and down her thigh for the fifth time and she tongues at her pulse. 

“Fuck,” she breathes, pressing her hips into Greta’s hands. “God–”

“You’re so pretty,” Greta whispers, fingertips hooking at the top of her panties, ghosting against her stomach. It’s obvious she’s trying to memorize every detail. “I missed you. I missed this.”

“I missed you too,” Carson murmurs, a little whine caught in the back of her throat. “Missed you so much, Greta. Please.” 

Greta surges up to kiss her at that, pressing their foreheads together for a moment to meet Carson’s gaze, wide and open and dark, before she pecks the corner of her mouth one last time and drops to her knees. 

She shoves the skirt of Carson’s dress up with no more preamble, letting it fall back over her head. She doesn’t need sight for this. 

Instead, she’s guided by the arch and curve of Carson’s body, how she holds her head and whimpers. Greta tilts back easily until she can circle her tongue over her clit, humming at the taste of her, at the way Carson is so wet that she’s smeared against her chin. She’s grinding against her mouth already, trembling. 

“Greta,” Carson chokes out, gasping when Greta shoves her legs a little further apart and pins her harder against the counter, sucking her clit into her mouth. “Fuck, fuck, close, baby– Oh God–” 

Greta’s heart catches. Carson called her baby. 

It ignites something in her, makes her press closer to Carson’s cunt, fitting so sweetly between her lover’s thighs with Carson’s hands tangled up in her hair through the fabric of her own dress. An ache starts to take hold at the base of Greta’s spine, but she ignores it, thinks that maybe, in this moment, she knows God in a way she never did before: kneeling on her own hardwood floor between the legs of the woman who set her heart free. She feels sacred and whole as Carson moans softly into the emptiness of the apartment, no longer guilty or godless even as Carson presses her own palm over her own lips to silence her cries. Greta still does have neighbors. 

The secrecy, for this moment, feels seductive, feels beautiful as Greta’s tongue flickers against Carson’s clit until she comes, until she moans and her hips lift further into Greta’s waiting hands, until her knees shake and Greta rises to her feet just in time to catch her before they give out. 

“Woah,” she teases, biting her lip around a smirk as Carson reaches for her shoulder to steady herself. “Hey there.”

“Hi.” Carson laughs, looking up at her. 

“Hi,” Greta says softly, leaning to kiss the corner of her mouth again. “Are you hungry?” 

“For what?” Carson’s eyes sparkle, full of mirth. 

“Either thing,” she flirts, reaching down to link their fingers together. “Though I do remember you saying something about saving your money and not always getting in your three meals–”

“That was only a week or two in the midway stretch,” Carson groans, but she softens; there’s something about knowing that Greta read every word, about knowing that she committed it to memory, too. “It was a long day though,” she admits. “And I am kinda craving a good sandwich.”

“Never trust a woman who loves a sandwich,” Greta teases. “Isn’t that what Shirley always used to say?” 

Carson rolls her eyes. “Yes.” She presses her lips together, blinking up at her love. “You trust me though, right?” It’s half-flirtatious and half-caution, a mess of distance-created doubt and desperation all at the same time. 

“Of course,” Greta murmurs, kissing the side of her head. “Can I get you soup with that sandwich?” 

“Only if it’s not too much trouble.” Carson hides her smile horribly. 

“It’s never too much trouble,” Greta tells her easily, dropping her hands from Carson’s hips. She immediately misses the warmth, but she also can’t help but enjoy watching Greta in her own space. A space where she feels safe. “Just make sure you save room for dessert.” She winks. 

Carson blushes, her dimples revealing themselves. “Oh baby, if I wasn’t so hungry, I’d, y’know, have dessert right now.” It’s her attempt at being flirty, at being as good as Greta at making her blush. 

Greta laughs, throwing her head back. She has such a good laugh when it’s real. Finally, she softens, lips playing around a grin. “Wait. Did you–”

Carson looks at her curiously. “Did I what?” 

“I–” Greta blushes. “Nothing.” She waves out a gesture that says don’t worry about it, as she rounds back towards Carson’s side of the counter with water and tea to start. “Just… say that thing again?”

“What thing, baby?” 

“That,” Greta says quickly, leaning against the counter. “I like it when you–”

“When I call you baby?” Carson guesses, really smiling now. 

Greta flushes, looking down, refusing to answer, and Carson knows that means yes. She smiles harder. 

Later, after they’ve both eaten and Carson has showered and Greta moves her suitcases from the front entrance, Carson, with her hair still wet and smelling like Greta’s soap, pins her to the counter just like Greta did to her hours prior. 

Later, she murmurs baby, baby, you’re so good, curls three fingers inside of her until Greta comes and comes again. 

Later, Greta buries her face in Carson’s neck and breathes stay, stay until next season, please, and Carson nods, answers yes, yes, I’d love to, lifts Greta onto the kitchen island and makes her believe that she will. 

In three weeks time, so very much later, Carson admits in the heat of the moment, walking with her fingertips brushing Greta’s in Central Park, that she loves her. It’s the easiest thing in the world for Greta to say those words back. 

That night, they sit on the floor and eat sandwiches. Two women who can be trusted with each other’s hearts. 

iv.

Greta and Carson move in and out of the League’s kitchens season after season, Carson bringing her pie tins to bake and Greta behind her with the best whiskey you can get in the city. They become a mostly open secret as they become fixtures in the League, and in the best way, most of those closest to them couldn’t care less. There will always be people, though, so they are still careful. They always have to be careful. 

They don’t even room together all the time – there are still also prying eyes from the outside – but they spend nights together when they’re back at the house when they can, receiving a wink from Jess or Bev who are always up the latest.

Except tonight. 

Tonight, everyone has made themselves scarce. 

“It keeps us safe, Carson,” Greta says for what feels like the fifteenth time while Carson furiously does the dishes in the sink. It’s not even her night on the chore wheel that Shirley made. It’s not her night for another week and a half. 

“That doesn’t make it safe, Greta,” Carson grits out, scrubbing at a particularly stuck-in food particle in the pan. “It doesn’t mean I have to like it.” 

“Oh my God,” Greta scoffs, laughing more harshly than she originally meant to. “You’re jealous.” 

“I am not–” Carson slams the water off. “I am not jealous.” 

“You so are.” Greta huffs. “What is it? Do you think you can’t trust me or something?”

“That’s not what I said.” Dropping the pan in the sink, Carson turns to her. “Stop putting words in my mouth.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault that you want me to stop going on the dates?” Greta drops her hand onto the counter with a dull thud. “It’s just business, baby. Why are you acting like this is new?”

“I’m not!” Carson groans. “There’s just too much in my head right now, and you’re adding to it, okay?” she says, regretting it immediately when Greta shrinks back. “I– I mean– I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–” 

“I’m sorry I’m adding to your list of problems, Carson,” she snaps, throwing the towel that was over her shoulder towards the island like she did so many years ago, that time Carson said something else she couldn’t take back. “I’m going to have a smoke. Don’t wait up for me.” 

She walks out without another word, the click of her heels receding into the night, and Carson watches her go helplessly. Intrusively, the little, doubtful voice in her head, the one that tells her she’s always been lucky to have Greta and that she would find someone better eventually, tells her that by walking out of the kitchen, Greta is walking out of her life.

In reality, she knows it’s untrue, and as she turns back to the dishes, she thinks about how Greta is disarming and beautiful and makes her say things she doesn’t mean. She thinks about how love isn’t always perfect or good or kind. It rarely is. She wishes it were. She wishes she could take it back, knows that she’s one of the few people on this Earth with the power to hurt Greta, and she managed to do it by saying one of the few things she never should. 

And so, hands practically burning under the hot water as she angrily turns back to the dishes, Carson stands in the heart of this home, worried that she might have just broken her own. 

v.

It’s two nights before Carson lures Greta to the kitchen with the scent and promise of cherry pie, her favorite. They both know it means Carson is sorry, and if Greta comes in for a slice, it means they’re both ready to talk. 

“I was jealous.” Carson admits it the second Greta is in the doorway, looking down, cutting her a piece that Greta is almost sure she will be unable to finish. She forces herself to suppress her affection when Carson scoops ice cream onto her plate too. “I was jealous, and I said stupid things because I was jealous.” She pauses, inhaling deeply. “And I was scared too.” 

“Scared of what?” Greta asks, sliding into one of the tall stools and accepting the dessert that Carson slides across the counter with even gentler eyes. 

“That I would lose you,” Carson says, still not looking at her. She shoves the spatula angrily under the crust of her own piece. “Or that… that– God forbid– something would happen to you. And that I wouldn’t have done everything I could to stop you from going out with those– those men who don’t deserve you and disrespect you and– and– try to touch you when you say no–”

“Carson,” Greta tries to interrupt, but Carson ignores her, giving herself two scoops of vanilla. She must be really upset. 

“I can fix a lot of things,” she says, forcing the drawer with the utensils open so hard that they shudder inside, aware of Carson’s emotion. “I can make a lot of things. But there are some things I can’t make better. There are some things I can’t fix. And I’m so scared, Greta. Every time you go out on those dates without one of the chaperones or me. I’m scared when you don’t come home on time. I–” 

I remember that night at Vi’s. And that night two years ago when you told me that Half-Beard – that’s what Lupe calls him when she and Jess still wish hell upon him – grabbed you and you ran all the way back. I remember a month ago, that guy who catcalled you from the stands. I remember that we are women, and we should follow our dreams, but it still comes at a price. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair.

Carson bites her lip around a sob. 

“Oh, my love,” Greta breathes, standing from her stool and rounding the island in the blink of an eye, wrapping her arms around Carson from behind. “Hey.” She squeezes her tight, pressing her lips into her hair. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Part of me was scared you’d just walked out,” Carson admits quietly, hands coming to rest against Greta’s where they’re pressed against her stomach. “That it meant we were over.”

“Honey, an argument doesn’t mean things end then and there,” Greta says gently. “People don’t just leave like that.” 

“Sometimes they do,” Carson says, practically swallowing her words. She never really talks about her mom, even after all of this time. 

“Well not me,” Greta tells her, certain. “Not with you.” 

It’s a strange promise for her to make, one that she never thought she would. But Carson changed her, made her better and more certain and more true. She was a bird in a cage. and Carson set her free. Free to make choices – to make the choice to stay, to learn how to. 

Greta is learning that sometimes, love is a little bit ugly. But you can’t walk out the door, not if that person doesn’t know you’re coming back. She’s learning that love is active. That it’s a choice. That it feels impossible sometimes, and that you just have to keep going despite that fact. 

She’s learned how to give herself to someone else. She’s been broken and burned so many times, but now she realizes she doesn’t have to worry about those things anymore – not with Carson. 

It was just last week that Greta realized that she stopped rolling with the punches some time ago. She stopped because she wasn’t fighting anymore. She’d stepped out of the ring and into Carson’s arms, and so for the better.

At some point, the burning certainty of her own difference started to feel like a blessing after Carson walked into her life. It started to keep her warm. 

At some point, love became a choice. At some point, Greta got good at it: loving. Loving Carson. 

“Hey,” she says, pressing a kiss to Carson’s neck. “I love you.” 

Carson relaxes in her grip, finally. “I love you too.” 

“I love you,” Greta repeats, tickling at Carson’s sides until she’s squirming and laughing, most of her worry forgotten, until she’s trying to duck away from Greta who strategically pinned Carson to the counter the second she started to giggle–

“Stop! Stop!” Carson cries, eyes filling with joyful tears. 

“Never!” Greta declares, and she means so much more than just the tickling. 

She means she’ll spend the rest of her life waking up beside her if Carson lets her. She means she’ll spend the rest of her life wrapped around her if she’s so allowed. She means she’ll spend the rest of her life loving Carson, that she feels more for her than she ever thought it was possible to feel for another person, truthfully. 

There was a time in her life where Greta thought she was made of grief. It's only in recent years that she realized it means she's made of love, too. 

All that grief she had, for the people she’s lost and the lives she had to leave behind, has become something new: this new life she has with Carson, one she will never leave behind. 

Greta is made of hope, and now, she’s learning to take hold of it, to feel full of it. 

Hope always comes after grief. Tells you that you can build again. And again. That you can’t just be what you once were – you can be better. And so Greta had to grieve; she carried all of her sadness in her hands for too long, so long that when Carson lifted it from her, she didn’t know what to be. She’s learning. She’s learning that hope is just mourning that has found meaning. 

Hope is what happens when love stays long enough. 

The password was Hope all of those years ago, at that bar in Indianapolis. And it still is. 

“Do you want to eat the pie?” Carson asks. “It’s getting cold.” 

“Oh, the apology pie?” Greta teases, even as her hands roam Carson’s stomach, as she touches her so gently that Carson thinks she could melt. 

“Yes,” Carson concedes, sighing softly. “Our apology pie.” 

“I would love to,” Greta says, letting go just in time as Esti and Terri come bounding down the stairs, pretending like they didn’t hear a word. 

“We smelled pie,” they say together. 

Carson smiles, her first real smile in two days. “It’s fresh out the oven,” she confirms with a nod toward the tin. “Come have a slice with us.” 

vi.

It’s Greta who suggests that they redo the kitchen in their apartment. They both just received bonuses from their off-season jobs, and it’s about time they treated themselves to something a bit more permanent and meaningful than the practicalities like new lamps and a reupholstery of the sofa. 

They get their story straight: that both of their husbands are still working overseas, so they live together to save money, and that they want to surprise them when they come home with something new and beautiful. 

The fact that they have to lie leaves a bad taste in both of their mouths, especially because their contractor is so nice, but Greta reminds Carson later, lying beside her, pressing soft kisses to her shoulder, that he probably wouldn’t be so kind if he knew the truth. 

Everything on their list gets checked off one by one: new, real countertops, a new drawer that isn’t sticky beside the sink, a larger oven, more cabinet space.

All the while, Carson and Greta’s stuff that was once tucked away is lined up against the wall: Carson’s tins holding Greta’s once-singular cookbook and the companions she’s bought for it along the way, Greta’s half-finished bottle of whiskey tucked beside Carson’s other baking supplies. 

It’s all mixed in. At this point, they’ve stopped thinking of it as each other’s stuff and started thinking about it as theirs. 

“The kitchen looks naked,” Carson laughs one morning, staring at the place where cabinetry used to be, at the drawers without any stone counter laid on top. 

She laughs and laughs into her coffee cup until Greta is laughing with her; sometimes, it’s easy to forget how young they are, that between them two and their friends and their bosses, they are still a young couple who giggles in the morning at their half-done kitchen, in the process of settling down. 

Greta smiles at the thought. She’s settling down. 

vii.

“Let’s test it out,” Carson murmurs into her mouth, when the countertops are in and sealed and the island is stable, when their contractor is no longer coming back, and it is their apartment again. Only theirs. 

“You can’t be serious,” Greta laughs, but Carson seems pretty certain, kissing her neck and backing her towards the kitchen island like they both did on that first night she arrived. 

She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t hot for Carson’s confidence. 

Before she knows it, she’s perched on the edge of the counter, her legs spread and her hand thrown over her eyes as Carson fucks her within an inch of breath, her tongue on her clit, two fingers inside of her. She hums at the taste of her, working her to the edge only to pull back more than once, until Greta is whining, shoving a hand into Carson’s hair and keeping her close, but it does nothing to deter the rhythm of Carson’s push and pull. 

“Baby, please,” she begs as Carson teases her again. Her thighs shake. “Carson–”

“Okay, okay,” she murmurs, pulling her fingers out, and Greta whines at the emptiness, confused, tightens around nothing and bucks her hips. 

“Please let me–” Greta whimpers, eyes flying open when Carson’s tongue slips inside her. “Oh. Oh fuck–”

Carson rubs a hand over her hip, their silent code for I’ve got you, and she doesn’t let up this time, pressing herself harder, deeper inside until Greta cries out.

Heat explodes behind her eyelids. Her hips rise, and God, God, she’s so–

Carson presses a thumb over her clit, sliding back and forth slowly. She’s so wet. Fuck. Even now, she’ll never be used to the way Carson touches her, how easily her body arches and gives in. 

“Oh. Oh– Carson.” She whimpers, pressing a hand to her forehead, canting her hips–

Carson smirks against her and just like that, she comes, trembling, her toes curling and warmth rushing all the way through her. Her eyes slam shut as she throws her head back, grinding hard against Carson’s face as she fucks her through it until finally, she settles, still shaking a little. She reaches to hold herself up on the counter with one hand, breathing in deep as Carson keeps tonguing at her clit until finally, she’s too sensitive. 

“Fuck, baby. No more,” she mumbles with a laugh, guiding Carson up by the hair and into a kiss. 

Carson smiles into her mouth, slow and sweet and satisfied, for so long that she’s breathless, and Greta gets it, suddenly, why Carson wanted to take her time with it. It’s the way that Greta didn’t look around, didn’t listen for footsteps in the next room or tell Carson that she can only use her fingers in case someone’s nearby. 

It was to prove that they were safe. That there was nobody there to catch them. 

This is their place. Their home. And they can do what they like. 

Greta kisses her harder. 

viii.

Max and Esther make it to New York while they’re still touring with the All-Stars, spending time playing and coaching in a shocking, beautiful turn of events. 

Greta makes dinner while Carson puts her finishing touches on the pie to go in the oven, and they laugh over whiskey and the story of Carson telling Max about the yips for the first time. 

“She told me to look them in the mouth,” Max cries. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“I was panicking!” Carson argues, but she’s still smiling, and Esther and Greta are both choking on their drinks. They’ve met a few times before like this when Max came home to Rockford and when Greta and Carson were there, too. 

It always dissolves into laughter within minutes, reminiscing and reliving that first year. Their very own origin story. 

“So where do you think you’ll go?” Greta asks later when they sit down for dinner. “You know, after this baseball business is done.” 

“We’re not sure,” Esther admits, looking to Max who nods reassuringly. It’s clear they’re in the beginning stages and that not much is set in stone. “But somewhere west. It’s better there. Not perfect. But better.” 

“I hope it works out,” Carson chimes in. 

Max huffs out a good-natured laugh. She raises her glass. “To… things working out,” she offers, looking around at Greta and Carson’s apartment, taking Esther’s hand across the table. 

They clink glasses, nodding, a little solemn, a little joyful. 

To things working out. 

ix.

The hills in San Francisco should cease to exist.

This is what Carson decides by the third hill that they reach even though Greta seems just fine. Quite honestly, Carson is struggling a little to keep up with her. And Greta is wearing stilettos. 

She trails behind gently – apparently now that she’s retired from catching, all she gets is this annoying ache in her hips and this breathless feeling that’s only offset slightly by the fact that her shins aren’t sore – and because of that, she takes the time to look at Greta. 

Greta Gill, the love of her life. 

Her life’s greatest gift. 

Carson can’t really be mad at the hills because she has her. Because this is one of their first real vacations where they’ve felt safe and sure, and they’re climbing the hill between the Castro District neighborhoods. 

It’s 1973, and the world is changing. 

Greta and Carson have stayed the same, but it feels like the world loves them more, loves them better. 

And so they keep walking, Carson in her sneakers and Greta in her best red pumps, and really, all Carson can think to do is watch her, listen to the click of her heels that leads the way – how feminine, how formidable. 

Greta is an ode to femininity, to scarlet and strength and softness all at once. She’s lived in it for so long now, tempered the edges she once used to keep herself safe, and she is just as beautiful as the moment Carson saw her, but more herself each day, each year. 

Carson loves her for it. God, how she loves her. 

Every time Greta outclasses her in a walk, Carson is reminded how strength comes from unsuspecting places. How the heel should wobble, but Greta has mastered it – she’s mastered so much. She’s mastered moving with the times, taking and letting go of Carson’s hand when it’s safe, aligning what she says and what she means when she must. 

Carson has watched her grow, watched her change. And she’s grown and changed with her. It’s one of the things she loves most about their life together. 

When they reach the top, Carson notices an ice cream parlor, and more than anything, she wants to rest her feet. She doesn’t have to look to her left to know that Greta notices.

“Let’s get some,” she offers, and this is not one of those times where Greta has to say what she means. Instead, it’s the fact that she doesn’t. It’s the fact that in those three words, what she’s really saying is that she’s noticed the way Carson winced and touched her hip at the last crosswalk, what she says is let’s stop until you feel better. 

The shop is so tiny that there’s barely room to stand, so they order quickly: salted caramel for Carson and strawberry with chocolate cookie crunch on top for Greta. The man inside is nice and clearly like them, his eyes bright as he sees them enter together, holding hands. 

“Take a discount on the topping.” He winks at Greta, like even though he knows this is a neighborhood full of their people, it’s still special to see. It always is. 

“Thank you,” she says with a smile, tipping him the difference with her own wink. He beams. 

Greta and Carson take their ice cream to the curb, sitting side by side. It’s a perfect, San Francisco day: the sky is clear with no signs of fog coming in, and it’s just above the usual chill so neither of them need sweaters. 

They mostly sit in silence as they eat, stealing glances at each other like they haven’t been looking at each other for so many years at this point

Greta watches Carson eat her ice cream, slow and deliberate, sugar dripping down the back of her hand, and she falls in love with her all over again, feels like she’s twenty-five again. 

Carson watches Greta people watch, and she can’t help her smile; it feels a bit like it’s rising up from her heart, into her throat and onto her lips. Unstoppable, untamable joy.

They arrive back at their hotel as the sun begins to set. They’d grabbed dinner at a tiny hole-in-the-wall diner they’d seen on the climb up the first hill, and as they settle in for the night, Carson uses their little kitchenette to make them tea. 

For a few moments, they move in silence: Greta changing out of her dress and into an old Rockford shirt and a pair of Carson’s old pajama pants that have only gotten looser with the amount of times they’ve gone through the wash. Listening to her hum and put her things away in the drawer, Carson takes out an herbal blend for her and a green tea for herself in the next room. They have their nightly routine by now, but it’s different, too, because they are older and they are in San Francisco and this is a neighborhood full of their people. 

Of course it’s different. They heard about the migration, about how it was safe and the streets were for them, but it’s clear they’re both thinking about it. 

There are no words for it: all of the years of hiding, and finally finding a spot in the sun, eating ice cream together. How they took turns being convinced that the world would never change. How it feels to see their people take up space so obviously, to watch them learn, in the best way, how to be selfish with their love and their lives and their hearts. How it feels to see the world become more honest. More good. More true. 

It’s isn’t perfect, but it’s better. And it’s real: their people out in the world, how Carson is Greta’s person and Greta is hers, how they’ve been tired for so long, and as they sit across from each other, they finally feel safe to rest. They’ve never been tired of being who they are, but they do understand that being who they are sometimes means being tired. 

For so long, being in the closet was a staring contest. And now it isn’t, not the way it used to be. Losing isn’t so scary, and life isn’t so much a competition anymore. They don’t have to look back so hard at everyone who comes their way to prove they exist. Now, it’s possible to be real quietly, carefully private but no longer a secret. 

God, it feels so good to not be a secret anymore. 

x.

It’s their fourth and final night when it happens. 

Carson goes out for a walk when Greta falls asleep around three o’clock. She’s like a cat, sometimes, curling up in a sunny patch and dozing off in a matter of moments. Carson was sure to cover her with a blanket before she left. 

When she returns, her right pocket a little bit heavier, Greta is awake at the little, wobbly kitchen table, rereading the article she fell asleep scanning earlier. She has this content little smile on her lips, this sparkle in her eye. 

God, Carson is so in love with her. It’s why she wandered into that antique shop up the hill in the first place when she went out. Still, nerves pound through her as she approaches Greta, feeling like a schoolgirl walking up to her crush even after all this time. 

For a moment, she thinks she might bow out. She thinks maybe this was a stupid idea. But then, Greta looks up and smiles, and every ounce of doubt leaves Carson behind, tells her to swing for the fences the way she did for all those years at Baker Field. 

Carson swallows hard before she pulls the box out of her pocket, keeping her hand on the lid for a moment as she places it down next to Greta’s elbow, standing right beside her now.

Head tilting to the side curiously, Greta puts the paper aside gently in favor of studying her.

“What’s this, baby?” 

“Nothing,” Carson says quickly, biting her lip, anxious. “Or… it could be everything.” 

“Yeah?” Greta eyes her, suspicious and playful, her nose scrunching up, and the words fall out of Carson’s mouth instantly at that, just from that look alone. 

“Marry me.” 

“What?” Greta breathes, all of the air visibly leaving her lungs.

“Marry me, Greta… please,” she says, voice cracking a little. 

“Carson–” Greta says, sighing a little, eyes still gentle. But her voice betrays her confusion, her knowledge of the way this country works and moves and does not move for them. 

Carson cuts her off before she can continue, feels a ramble coming on before she can stop herself. “I– I know the state won’t recognize it,” she begins quickly. “They won’t now, and maybe they never will. But we would, and it could be real and it could be ours, and nobody would get to say whether it is or not except us, you know?” She wrings her hands, swallowing hard. “And I know we’ve said so many times we weren’t going to worry about what other people thought, and I know we said we wouldn’t spend any more money after this trip, but I had to.” 

She gestures to the box. Her heart feels like it’s going to fall out of her chest. 

“Baby–” Greta tries to interrupt and fails. 

“Because you’re worth more to me than all of my savings or anything like that. It matters more to me that we’re each other’s, and I know we already are, but I– it just–” she waves her hands around awkwardly, uncertain, breathless, before she drops them back at her side– “Marry me, Greta. We can have a wedding! Or not! We can also not. Whatever you want to do. Or not do.” She swears she might swallow her own tongue in her haste to get all the words out. “But it would be nice to have the people– our people, who matter– it would be nice for them to know. We could host something small, just at our place in New York, just the girls and the kids and everyone’s partners…” 

Carson trails off, her nerves overtaking her too much in this moment, because Greta is staring at her now, clearly thinking. And Carson knows she has no reason to be worried, but blood is still roaring in her ears. 

She watches Greta, how she folds her hands, almost in prayer, and places them under her chin. She expected this might come from Carson eventually, and she also never thought it would. All of this time, Greta has been hesitant to believe in the permanence of it all, even after so much time, even though they’re older. It’s hard to believe in something you want so much. Greta’s learned that usually means getting hurt. 

Quietly, she thinks of Dana, and it’s like no time has passed as Greta recalls her laughter, remembers her smile, has a vision of all the years she spent with Dana softly moving between her heartbeats. Finally, Greta just hears her voice, feels teenage memory rush through her, saying do it, saying this is what you’ve always wanted, saying, it’s okay. It’s time to let go. And hold on. 

“And you don’t have to say anything or you can say something. I don’t know, but I thought– I thought–” 

“You thought right.” Greta finally finds her voice, standing in one fluid motion to kiss Carson. 

She sinks into it deeply, doesn’t realize that she’s crying a little bit until she realizes that Carson is too. The kiss is salty and perfect, Carson sliding their lips together and humming, her hand tangling up in Greta’s hair, and they stand there, kissing and kissing, and the world looks new. 

“And you’re sure?” Carson asks softly when they finally pull away. 

“I’m sure,” Greta promises, reaching to open the box and more tears springing to her eyes when she sees the ring: it’s gold with two, tiny rubies set softly into the band. It’s simple and pretty and not at all flashy. It’s perfect. “Yes,” she finally says, realizing she hadn’t as she plucks the ring out of the box. “I will marry you.” 

And there’s a part that she doesn’t say: that this affirms all of the years she’s spent giving Carson her heart, that it’s been Carson’s all this time, that it’s taken so long, but that Greta is ready. She always knew she wouldn’t run, not now, but this ring, this night in this Castro kitchenette, means that she’ll be here. 

She will always be here, and she will be Carson’s the entire time. And Carson will be hers. 

Slowly, Greta starts to slide Dana’s ring off of her pinky finger, but Carson stops her. 

“You don’t have to take it off,” she says gently, holding Greta’s hand. “Please don’t.” 

“She’s always with me,” Greta tells Carson easily. “It barely fits anymore.” 

“We can get it resized,” Carson says earnestly, and Greta doesn’t know why Carson is pushing this, but she’s curious. “I got this one because it reminded me of you, of us,” Carson says quickly, pointing to her engagement ring. “But also because it– it matches.” 

Greta presses her lips together so she doesn’t start to cry again, and she falls in love with Carson all over again in this moment. 

She gets it, suddenly, why it matters so much to Carson: because she wants to be sure that Greta knows she doesn’t want her to take it off.  So much so that she wants her to wear it, made certain there would be no excuses. That’s what Greta loves about her, that Carson understands that Greta can’t let go; it’s one of the reasons that she has felt safe enough to loosen her grip in the first place, just the tiniest bit, to reach for the good memories in a way she never let herself before. 

It was that teenage love that pulled her into herself, that made her. But it was Carson who broke her open. And when Greta meets Carson’s eyes again, she can see the soft horror in her eyes, that Greta would think that she wanted Dana gone at all. 

“You don’t have to take it off,” Carson repeats. “I don’t want you to think you have to–”

“I don’t think that, my love.” Greta shakes her head, affectionate.

“Oh. Okay,” Carson breathes, relieved. “Good. Good. Yeah. Good.” 

“I love you,” Greta says, and she doesn’t know if she’s ever meant it so much, if she ever knew how to mean it this much before today. 

“I love you too,” Carson answers readily, looking up at her. She has so many more laugh lines than she did when they played in the League, and she is no less wonderful than that first day they met. But she is different. 

They both are. 

Breathing in the air between them, Greta can’t help but think the world will change if you let it. She can’t help but think about how Jo always told her so. She’s going to have to give her a call and tell her that she was right – so many years too late. 

And again, if Greta thinks enough, if she lets herself, it’s really just about hope. This sudden, endless supply. She’s so changed in this moment. So new. She’s spent most of her life living moment to moment, afraid she might ruin each one, but she’s here now and she’s here hoping and she doesn’t think that will ever change. Not from this day forward. 

She has so much hope in her hands. She doesn’t plan on letting it go.

“So, something at our apartment to seal the deal?” she asks Carson, a little teasing, a little intrigued.

“It was just an idea,” Carson says quickly. “Maybe we can think of something better.”

“Okay. We can start brainstorming when we get back home.” Greta smiles, kissing her forehead. “But we’ll have to tell everyone at the same time. Otherwise someone’s going to get mad.” 

“Oh, of course,” Carson agrees, playfully shuddering at the thought of Jess, Lupe, and Esti – who are the only three that live in New York, too – knocking on their door after finding out that Shirley or Jo or Maybelle found out first. “We can write letters.” 

xi.

Carson isn’t home like usual when Greta gets in. She searches in the usual nooks and corners of their apartment where Carson usually works or may have fallen asleep reading in, but there’s no sign of her. 

Still, it’s Friday, so Greta isn’t worried. It’s likely Carson went to the market or to run an errand. She takes advantage of the quiet to draw herself a bath and catch up on the last two issues of both of her favorite magazines. Work has been so busy that she’s had no time. 

By the time steps out, she can hear movement in the kitchen and smiles to herself, grabbing her fluffy robe from the hook and tying it around herself and stepping out into the living room, stopping immediately at the sight in front of her: Carson perched on the counter, a screwdriver in one hand and a screw in the other, determination in the furrow of her brow and her cap backwards. 

“Hi, honey, what are you doing?” Greta asks carefully, noticing how Carson’s hand is pressed to the window just above the sink. 

“I bought a screen, and now I’m installing it so we can still open the window when we want to,” Carson tells her over her shoulder, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Why did you do that?” Greta cranes her neck, trying to see how far along Carson has gotten. They’re not exactly young anymore, and she doesn’t like the idea of her wife climbing around on top of the counter. 

“You mentioned you didn’t like the bugs,” she answers, again, like it shouldn’t be difficult to understand. “So I’m fixing it. I went to see Jess earlier, who told me that Lupe and her did the same for Esti’s apartment a few weeks ago.” 

“Oh,” Greta says softly, her whole body flushing a little which she thinks is totally, wildly irrational – to be attracted to Carson because she’s fixing something, because she was listening and doing that thing she always does: finding a solution, asking their friends to see if anybody’s already done the same.

It’s just… sometimes she forgets how easy Carson makes things. Everything is so simple with Carson. To Greta, it may feel sweeping and grand. But to Carson, there’s nothing in between the idea and the doing. 

This morning, and the morning before, and the night before, she heard Greta complaining that too many flies were getting in, so she’s doing something about it. 

Of course she is. 

xii.

The world changes right in front of them again. The city changes. Their city. The lives of their people become staring contests again, but Greta and Carson are experienced and secure enough that they are not afraid to blink. 

Certain things do not terrify them anymore. They won’t allow it. Together, they have seen and known too much to be truly scared anymore, at least in the way the sheltered and the conformists insist on. Greta and Carson may be horrified by what’s happening, but they are doing their best to expel the fear rushing through them and their community. 

So they open their doors to the men in their building who ought to be married by now but aren’t, that have roommates and classmates and coworkers that they see more often than family. 

Greta and Carson open their doors carefully because they still aren’t out, not to everyone, but the ones that can guess that the two women at the end of the hall – one more serious looking, her red hair streaked with white and the other with laugh lines carved out of the side of a cliff – aren’t just widows of men long-passed are welcomed past the threshold. 

Friends of these men begin to die or lose hope that they may live, and at the darkest of times, those two things feel like the same thing. 

The boys from the hall – because that’s what they really are: boys – stick around Greta and Carson’s apartment most nights. They don’t really go out anymore. It’s too risky, too scary because they’re healthy right now – nobody knows what it is and the President refuses to speak and it feels like the world is ending every minute of every day. It’s not fair. They should get to see the world. They want to see the world, but the world is breaking and bending, and right now, they have to focus on living, on saying fuck you and going on. They have to go on. It’s the only way: to fight like hell, to protest by pressing on. 

But they’re boys: twenty-one and twenty-three and twenty-six, generous boys who deserve better, and so Greta and Carson open up their home and they tell them to stay. Stay as long as they need. 

They start to use the empty guest rooms and the living room, and they stand guard over children that aren’t theirs. They adopt this tiny sliver of this tiny neighborhood. They become a satellite to orbit when Earth fades from view. 

It’s their duty. And so their kitchen begins to feed more than just the two of them for the first time in years. All five of them gather around the island and share snacks while they cook dinner together, and Greta and Carson tell stories of the time before: when they were young and falling in love and terrified, how it never stops being scary, but at some point, you stop being scared. How they’ve watched the world change over and over, and that they have hope that it will again. 

The boys listen astutely: Daniel, who makes them think of Danny at the bar all of those years ago, hopeful, bright-eyed, like he’s seeing everything in color for the first time each day he wakes. Chris, blond and handsome and protective, who hates the world a little bit more than it hates him, enough that it’s kept him alive. And the oldest, Michael – Michael who seems resigned to the world, not in hatred of it. Michael who hasn’t given up, but has accepted that the future is a long way’s away. Michael who doesn’t tell Daniel or Chris any of this, who sits at the counter with his coffee. He reminds Greta of herself before Carson: the way he thinks he knows everything despite his age, the permanent furrow in his brow. 

She manages a smile when she looks at him. He has so much to learn and he doesn’t even know it. 

Apartment 819 becomes a lighthouse in the storm, and Greta and Carson are the keepers. A safe place to go. They’ve always needed safe places. 

There’s a night where the baseball game is on: the Cubs vs. the Mets, and Greta paints her nails and Daniel’s too because it’s Friday night and he can scrub them clean on Sunday night to go to work the next morning. 

The Mets are losing, so Carson and Michael are both in terrible moods, complaining that the championship will never come home. They're both incredibly dramatic. 

Greta rolls her eyes to herself, muttering to herself not with that attitude, which earns a snort from Dan next to her. It’s by the fifth inning that Greta realizes that Chris has been in the kitchen for almost the entire game, and so she stands, finding herself suddenly taken by a familiar sight: flour all over the counter, a stack of dirty bowls in the sink, measuring cups strewn everywhere. 

He’s baking. He’s stress baking by the looks of it, a lock of his normally perfect hair falling down into his eyes. 

“You okay, sweetheart?” she asks, coming up to the counter. 

Chris rubs at his nose with the back of his forearm and manages to get flour on his forehead. “I’m fine,” he tells her, not looking up. “Just got inspired, you know? And I thought why not make some cookies! But then I heard that the Mets were losing, so I thought I should make something else too–”

“Christopher,” Greta says, and his eyes jump to her face. 

He sighs, his hands dropping down onto the counter. “Nicholas got fired.” He swallows hard. “For violating company policy.” 

Nicholas is Chris’ coworker. They’re cubicle neighbors at a boring paper company, but it pays the bills and they’re rarely looked at closely. It’s the perfect job for somebody who doesn’t want to, who can’t, be seen for who they really are. 

“Oh.” Greta’s breath leaves her. “You mean for– for being…” 

“Gay?” Chris asks bitterly, laughing harshly. “Yeah.”

“Oh, honey,” she says, rounding the corner. “Are you okay?”

“He doesn’t have a job anymore, and nobody is going to hire him,” Chris says, looking away, gnawing at his lip. “They won’t give him references or anything like that, and it’s– it’s not fair–” 

Greta wraps her arms around him gently. He’s slightly taller than her so she hooks her chin over his shoulder. “He can come here. If it’s safe. For him and us.” 

“It would be safe,” he assures. “He’s safe. But that’s also because he and I– we–” He stops, realizing what he’s just let slip. 

Greta squeezes his arm, tender. “That’s because…?” she trails off. She’s always known. She and Carson knew from the moment Chris first told them about his coworker. 

“That’s because we’ve– we’ve always been careful,” he says quietly. “We made a deal to be careful. And only to be with each other.” 

“So Nicholas is your…?” 

“Boyfriend,” Chris confirms, looking down at his hands, the flour caking his fingernails. “He has been for a little while now.” 

“That’s great,” Greta tells him, and she means it. She doesn’t want him to be lonely. She doesn’t want that for Dan or Michael either. “He’s welcome around anytime.” 

“Just like that?” he asks. It’s that easy?

“Just like that.” She smiles back. It is. “As long as you clean up this mess,” she jokes. “I already have my hands full with Carson’s stress baking.”

“Yes ma’am,” he laughs, sniffling. “Do you want a cookie?” He gestures to the batch he’s about to put in the oven. 

“I’d love one.” She hugs him again. “And it seems like those nerds in there probably need one too.” 

“We literally met on a baseball team, Greta!” Carson yells from the other room, making it clear she’s been listening the whole time but giving them space. 

“I stand by my words!” Greta calls back, winking at Chris. 

He smiles back. 

***

It is another night, a night like any other nights, when Greta allows the realization that has been searching for a voice to finally fly free. 

Carson is making dinner: chicken and spinach pasta, and Greta is keeping her company, telling her about her day while the boys hang out in the living room. 

She tells her wife about the annoyances of her job, about the window washer who scared her out of her seat today, about one of the other VPs who’s been dancing around a relationship with John from floor three for almost three months, and how they finally got together last week. 

“And now I think they’re going to get married,” Greta declares while Carson laughs and shakes her head a little. 

“Isn’t it a little early?” she asks with a smile, straining the spaghetti. 

“You just haven’t seen them together, honey,” Greta tells her emphatically. “If you saw them, you’d see it too.” 

“Whatever you say,” Carson sighs good naturedly. 

“Thank you, baby. You always know just the right thing to say,” Greta answers with a pleased lilt to her voice, and Carson rolls her eyes, but they both stop in their faux-argument as a raucous laugh erupts from the living room. 

“I wonder what’s so funny.” Carson hums as she stirs oil into the pasta, and Greta goes to look, trying to drum up something that will make her wife smile.

But the sight before her freezes her in her tracks, makes her heart jump into her throat and do the monkey bars on her rib cage: Chris and Nicholas leaning with their heads pressed together, joyful tears in their eyes as Michael lies back in defeat. Dan beat him in an arm wrestle, and while Michael physically seems okay, his pride is definitely wounded. 

The four of them look… happy, and it reminds Greta of all those years she and Carson spent in League living rooms, drinking with Joey, Lupe, and Jess, sharing stories and snacks late into the night. They’d laugh so hard their stomachs hurt, so hard that they would cry and fall to the floor. Bev would turn a blind eye every time. The year of her retirement, she even joined them sometimes. 

Greta can’t take her eyes off of each of the boys’ faces. 

Michael has started growing a beard, and his olive complexion is still darker from the summer sun, even as autumn rolls in. There’s a sparkle in his eyes in this moment, one that only ignites when he forgets the world and his weariness. Daniel seems pleased with his strength still, gloating a little and adjusting his glasses with a smug little grin. And Chris and Nicholas are caught up in their own little bubble, holding hands sweetly. Nick did end up finding a new job, even though it took a few months, and so he’s gone back to his apartment more often so as not to arouse suspicion, but he’s planning to stay for dinner tonight. 

Carson and Greta welcomed him with open arms. He’s been a fixture of their weekly routine ever since. 

But Greta still can’t stop looking at them, bracing herself against the door frame, a hand coming to her mouth as she takes a shaky inhale. It’s been a difficult few weeks for them; Jimmy, one of their friends, went to the hospital two weeks ago, and they don’t know if he’ll make it. Another friend, who Greta and Carson never even got the name of, died suddenly last Monday. It’s been a funeral march for the better part of the decade, but it’s different when you know someone well enough to write him a eulogy. All of the boys knew him that well. They whisper about him, like saying his name would mean that he’s really gone. 

Through it all, Greta and Carson have wrapped their arms around the boys, prayed once the apartment goes dark each night – two women who haven’t spoken to God in decades – that they may all make it through. So far, it’s worked. They will keep praying until they don’t have to anymore. Until it’s safe. 

And tonight, it seems that they’ve all managed to remember the world is not only made of darkness, and Greta is glad for it. The joy in her living room is bright and full, and she feels full because of it. The kind of fullness that’s rare and earned and breathless. 

“Carson,” she says softly, looking back at her wife, her wife who is making them all a meal. 

“Yes?” Carson turns to her, softening when she sees the look on Greta’s face. 

“We…” She purses her lips for a moment, salt in the back of her throat as she gestures, helplessly overcome, towards the sofa, their sofa that they’ve reupholstered three or four times by now. “We have kids.” 

Stopping, Carson gazes at her, unblinking and wide-eyed. 

“Look at them,” Greta says softly. 

And Carson does, manages to breathe, “Oh.” Her heart expands, pounds loudly in her chest. “Oh. Yeah.” Her breath catches. “Yeah.” It’s all she can say. 

Because they do. It’s true. They built a family without even realizing it, gave out keys to their lighthouse in a way they never let themselves before. They crowded their table with people searching for a home and made theirs bigger in the process. 

Greta and Carson have sons, found them in such a cosmically unforgiving way, but pain is an expression of creation, and they crafted something from all of the awfulness. Something that will last. Something that has helped them through the sorrow and the suffering and continues to. 

Because they all make it through. And they all grow older. 

When Carson and Greta retire, the boys – men, now, but always the boys to the women who welcomed them home– come by to help out where they can. They water the plants and record the baseball games, and between these tasks, the world changes right outside Apartment 819. Through the screen on the kitchen window  – which Michael reinstalls more than once as the screws come loose overtime – they watch as their people fill the streets more freely once more. 

In that time, Carson teaches Chris her pie recipes, and Greta sits with Nicholas in the living room. She and Daniel stick pins in his clothing to help fit him for a proper tuxedo. He’s never had one before. 

He and Chris are going to have a quiet ceremony in the spring, and he can’t be looking scruffy, not on Greta’s watch. 

xiii.

Greta sits on the couch while their favorite record plays, waiting for Carson to come back with their tea. It’s something they’ve done for decades now, and this fact catches Greta at the throat more and more unexpectedly as the years pass. 

She listens to Carson hum along in the kitchen, and she smiles to herself. It’s so hard not to smile around Carson, even after so long. She finds new things to smile about each day, and lately, so much of it has to do with the fact that they’ve lasted. That she comes home to her heart each night – though she mostly just runs errands, goes to the park, and takes an art class here and there lately – and that she’s come home to her heart for hundreds of seasons’ changes by now. 

All she ever wanted was somebody to curl up with when the night was over. Somebody to turn to when the joke was funny. A soul to share the rest of the time she had left with. And then Carson walked into her life. And she didn’t leave. She curled up to Greta even when it wasn’t safe, even when they weren’t sure, and she stayed. 

As time has passed, Greta has taken great care to look at herself, to watch herself change: her laugh lines and scars and dark spots from too many hours in the sun. As time has passed, she’s realized that she hasn’t been lonely in years. She never will be again. 

She knows the exact point where Carson stops humming in the song because she can’t reach the high note. She knows that the reason Carson is shuffling around the kitchen is because Daniel put the cookies somewhere they don’t go, and she can’t find them. 

A warmth floods Greta’s entire body. Her heart pounds. She has given up so little to be here with Carson in this moment, in the long run, when she really thinks about it; all of those sacrifices seem like a drop in the ocean, looking back. She always thought she would have to give something up she would miss forever. That she would owe the world a debt she could never pay back. But she doesn’t. She has Carson, and this couch, and they are happy. 

They don’t have to meet each other or themselves in the darkness anymore. 

Greta thinks about how she spent her life before Carson being scared. She thinks about how she’s really not scared anymore. Not now. And she hasn’t been for a while. 

They’ve built a life together where she doesn’t have to be. They have carpet and pots and pans and a coat rack by the door. They have made something worthwhile, something that cannot be erased. They refuse to be lost to time. 

From the beginning, Greta always wanted their place to scream people live here; we have lives and stories. After everything they’ve been through, she thought they deserved at least that much. They still do.

And it does. The art on the walls. The dishes in the sink. The risotto is still on the stove from dinnertime. People live here. They live here. It’s theirs. 

“Hey,” Carson whispers, kissing the top of her head as she comes back into the living room. “Here.” She places a steaming mug into Greta’s hands. 

“Thank you,” Greta says softly, leaning into her, and she means thank you for so many things. She doesn’t remember when exactly she learned to be grateful again. Maybe it was the moment Carson first kissed her, but she hasn’t stopped since. 

It feels right to cherish what she holds, who holds her. 

“Do you need any milk before I sit down?” Carson asks. “I bought the soy kind that you like.” 

Greta shakes her head. “I’m okay. Come sit with me?” 

Carson nods. “Let me get mine and I’ll come right back.”

“Any stories from the day?” Greta calls while Carson slips back into the kitchen. 

“Oh, so many,” her wife laughs. 

She went to the community garden today where she and Jess volunteer, and there is always some story that makes them both laugh so hard they cry. Greta doesn’t know if it’s in the way Carson tells it or whether what happened is actually that funny, but neither of them care. 

“Do you want me to start with the one Jess said to tell you or to save it for the end?” Carson asks when she comes back into view, curling up on her end of the couch, sticking her legs out to tangle with Greta’s, who’s wedged in the other corner. 

“Hmm.” Greta pauses for a moment, playful. “Dealer’s choice,” she decides.

“Alright.” Carson thinks, clearly replaying the day in her head. “I’ve got one then.” 

Greta smiles, settling in. “Sounds perfect.” 

xiv.

They spend the holidays upstate. 

Jess has a place she’s been keeping up, renting it out in the spring and summer months and heading up for late autumn and winter when the snow begins to fall. It’s beautiful. 

The Peaches and their partners and their children – chosen and blood – come from all over, piling into the guest rooms and finding their way into the kitchen when they smell spice and sugar through the whole house. Shirley makes sure they wash their hands upon entrance. 

Still a well-oiled machine, the Peaches move between the spaces around the kitchen island and the stove, working together like they haven’t missed a beat and talking shit as they do. 

Jo stirs the pasta while Maybelle tells everyone about her neighbors: the excessive number of bushes they have in the front yard – sixteen, I counted! And at that point, it’s just unnecessary! – and Lupe complains about the dad who doesn’t trust her to teach his son how to swing a bat. They all laugh at that. Imagine doubting a former professional baseball player. 

As the day goes on, hands are shaken between the people who have never met, and the kids flock to their favorite aunts and uncles. Carson gets dragged outside by the wrist to throw a baseball in the snow with her nephews and grandnephews. 

Greta waggles her fingers in farewell where she’s sitting, earning a playful glare, but then Nick, Dan, and Eloise, one of Maybelle’s daughters, all sit down across from her at the kitchen table.

“Yes?” She raises an eyebrow at them.

“How about a story?” Nick asks, sat in the middle. 

Daniel and Eloise nod, older and more grown and therefore more curious in ways that they didn’t know how to be before. They lean in, elbows resting on the table. For once, Greta doesn’t chide about manners. 

“I don’t know if I have anything left to tell…” Greta half-sings, trailing off in good fun before she begins easily: “Alright. Picture April, 1943.” 

And so, she starts from the beginning. She tells them about meeting Carson on the street with Jo by her side, about Carson and her wall and how stringing words together didn’t seem to be her forte. Of course, it turned out that she just wasn’t good at stringing words together in front of Greta. 

She tells them about the adventure that was the first few games, about how the Peaches weren’t always the family they know now. She tells them about how life was never sweet or perfect during that first year, about the pain and the suffering and how luck found them late – too late. How they didn’t win, but that they found something better. That many of them had never known something better than baseball. 

Greta spins a tale that softens the hardest blows because certain moments should never be relived, instead detailing the smoke breaks and how many of them had to hide and how they don’t have to hide anymore. How life is different and better now, how they’ve grown, everyone that’s spending the holidays at Jess’. 

Watching Carson throw a baseball around, visible through the kitchen window, Greta softens when she sees her wife laugh. Carson is almost fully grey now, and her laugh lines are so full and soft – evidence that she’s happy, that Greta made her happy, that they made each other happy and have been happy together. 

What beautiful sorcery by the skin that laughter leaves a mark. 

It’s some time later when Carson trails in, telling the kids to take off their shoes before they go walking on the carpet, and rejoins Greta in the kitchen where she’s still sitting with the boys and Eloise. She heads to pour herself some hot water from the kettle to make tea, dropping a kiss on Greta’s head as she goes. 

“Hey,” Greta says, flirty and soft, tilting her head back to look up at Carson. 

“Hey,” Carson says back, looking down at her, brushing her fingers against her shoulder, her neck softly. 

Greta presses her lips together around a smile. “Hey there.” She’s gazing at an upside-down Carson, and she couldn’t be happier about it. 

Carson’s dimples show as she suppresses a grin. “Hello.” 

“Hi,” Greta says, reaching and placing her finger against one. 

“I love you,” Carson murmurs. 

“I love you,” Greta replies easily, knowing that every greeting before that meant I love you, too, quite honestly, from the moment they met and every day since, and finally, Carson pulls away to get her tea, pressing one last kiss to Greta’s forehead. 

“Why do you do that?” Eloise asks after a moment. 

“Because Carson used to not be able to string words together,” Greta repeats the words from her story, loudly enough that her wife hears and laughs back. 

“That’s true,” she confirms, unwrapping a tea bag now. “Thankfully, she still liked me.”

“I thought it was endearing!” 

“Only you would.”

“Hey, watch your mouth,” Greta snaps playfully. 

She doesn’t even have to look to know that Carson raised her hands in surrender, and Greta knows that if her past could sit at the table, too, she would be so taken by what she’s made with Carson, that she would think this is how their love ought to be. How it ought to have always been: no disaster or destruction, just softness and fresh snow and sweetness. 

This is how it ought to be. And this is how it is, too. That’s the best part. 

xv.

Terri goes first.

The call comes just before dinnertime from a number not programmed into their landline yet, so Greta only picks up after it rings twice. The words come quickly, trembling through the phone, until Greta is trembling with them. 

One moment, Carson is chopping vegetables, cataloguing what to tell Greta about her day, and the next, she’s catching her wife up in her hands as the receiver drops from Greta’s grasp and onto the floor. They recently went cordless. 

The words bad fall and stroke comes through, and Carson can tell it’s Terri and Irving’s son, Ethan, even though it’s not on speaker. 

Terri dies three and a half weeks into March, and she’s to be buried in New York beside her mother the Sunday after next. The funeral will be a small affair – Terri never was the flashy kind – and the wake will be even smaller. Over the years, Terri was the glue that held the Peaches together. Of course, she played every position on the field at one point or another, but more than that, she led them quietly even when they did not want to be led: when people were shifted and traded, when arguments broke out. And she was always kind. So, so kind. 

She would fill in the cracks, hold whoever couldn’t sleep. She spent a night telling Greta about God, once, made her believe in religion again, told her that it’s a spiritual landing pad and nothing more. God can look like anybody. And she meant it. She meant it so much that she told Greta she knew about her and Carson, and she told her that she loved them together just before the sun came up.

Greta thinks about that early morning all the time. 

And now, Terri is gone, and Greta searches for her spiritual landing pad, finds it in the way Carson holds her hand. In the way they hold each other after they tell Ethan goodbye and offer their condolences, adding that his father is welcome to stay with them when they arrive in the city. 

That night, they eat in silence and only because they have to eat, trying to sum up how their friend could be gone so instantly. Trying to understand how she could have died at all. She always took such good care of herself. 

That night, neither of them sleep, staring up at the ceiling, Greta’s hand over Carson’s heart just so she can feel it beating, just so that she can be sure it is. 

“I’m scared,” Carson says into the darkness, a little broken. 

Terri is gone, and things will never be the same. They are getting older, and they are not the same. It’s easy to forget they aren’t invincible. 

What horrifying sorcery by the skin that age leaves a mark. 

“I’m scared too,” Greta admits, shifting to hold her better. 

“We’ll be okay though,” Carson murmurs, kissing her shoulder. She’s shaking the tiniest bit. “Tell me we’ll be okay.”

“We’ll be okay,” Greta says immediately, breathing her in, trying to convince herself, too. “We’ll be just fine, my love.” 

xvi.

They barely sleep the entire week. 

Carson cooks up a storm, and Greta accepts all of the condolence cards, casseroles, and sweets that end up at their door. They had them all redirected to their apartment since it will be the landing strip for anyone coming into the city until they can find a hotel room or somewhere else to stay. 

Besides Irving. 

Irving gets in on Friday, looking more weary and exhausted than he ever has before, his smile missing for the first time in decades. 

Greta and Carson welcome him with open arms, hugging him tightly in the doorway until he relaxes into their grasp, dinner and apple pie. His favorite. Greta takes his hat and coat and puts it in the guest room, and Carson leads him by the hand into the kitchen. They take great care to be gentle; it’s what Terri would have wished for most. 

Carson makes him a plate and Greta sits down beside him, smiling soft and a little sad but trying not to call attention to everything he’s lost. The woman missing. 

They eat dinner together every night he’s with them, and silence joins them at the table more and more often leading up to the day of the funeral. On Friday, his and Terri’s kids come to join, and the table is only slightly more lively as they attempt to hide from the loss. But Saturday, Irving just seems tired. It’s difficult to imagine how much he must be feeling. There’s something terrifyingly and comfortingly domestic about death, the way it brings everyone together, even the ghosts. 

On Sunday, after the funeral, he breathes a little easier at the kitchen table. At least now, his wife is laid to rest. It seems to lift a weight from his shoulders, a weight that will never really leave him now. 

“You know,” he says, fingers drawing patterns in the condensation on his water glass, “when I was in the army… I had friends just like you.” It’s clear he’s searching for the right way to say it, and that he isn’t quite sure how. 

“You mean… gay?” Greta asks, raising her eyebrows. She isn’t offended, but she is curious. 

He nods, shrugging. “Terri always said I had a kind face. That’s why they told me things.” A little grin plays on his lips as he thinks of his late wife; it’s the first time he’s really smiled in front of them while thinking of her. “She said that’s why she would tell me things, too.” He huffs out a chuckle. “She told me all about you two. About how hard it was and how brave you were. That you always knew your own minds.” 

Carson places her fork down, looking away. She won’t let him see her cry. Greta reaches for her hand. 

“It made us sorry, sometimes,” he admits, scratching behind his ear. “That it was so easy for us. That so many of our friends didn’t get everything they wanted. Our friends like you. But I see now that we’re all different kinds of lucky, too.” 

“We learned it was okay to want things.” Carson finally finds her voice. “Even if we might not get them.”

“Yeah,” Irving says softly, curling the end of his napkin. “Terri always said you’d say that.” His eyes shine with grief, all of the love he still has for her. The love he will always have. 

***

Carson is cleaning the counter when Irving comes in, looking to refill his water glass. Greta is in the bathtub, and the water is still running. Carson smiles, listening to her wife hum to herself, echoing against the tile. 

“So, what did you want?” Irving asks as he comes to the sink. 

Snapping back into the room, Carson’s gaze flips to him. “I’m sorry?” she asks. 

“What did you want, Carson?” he repeats gently. “I don’t mean to pry. Just… at dinner, what you said. About learning it was okay to want things. I wondered what you wanted when you were young, when you met Greta and knew she was the one. If Terri was right, that you always knew your own minds.”

“Well, we didn’t always,” Carson admits with a soft laugh. “We definitely didn’t. I didn’t know my own mind until I met Greta. Until I met all of the girls, really.” 

“That’s not how my Terri told it,” Irving teases sweetly. 

“Well I’m flattered, then,” she answers with a careful smile. “But honestly, I didn’t know it was possible to want so much until I got to Chicago that first year. And after that, it was impossible to go back to pretending like I didn’t know exactly what I wanted.” 

Irving turns on the faucet, filling his cup. “You fell in love,” he states simply, kind and grey, a man who has loved deeply, loved somebody for their entire forever. “And things felt different. More real.” 

“And I had no idea they could feel that real.” Carson nods, flushing a little. “All I ever wanted after Greta was a good life. To have a good life with her and to watch the people we cared about grow.” Carson shrugs. “And– and more material things too, I guess. A balcony to sit on with her.” She has it. It’s right outside their bedroom. They watch the sunset together most nights. “And a good kitchen to cook in.” She has that too, has hosted friends and coworkers and family in it. Most of her life has happened with at least one hand on these countertops. She pauses for a moment, thinking. “And before her… I think I wanted someone I wanted to grow old with?” Feeling her eyes well with tears, Carson presses her face into her shoulder for a moment. “And because of her, I got that?” 

“Of course,” he says, a spark of memory lighting up in his gaze. “The best thing in the world.”

“Irving–” she says immediately, going to apologize, but he holds up a hand and shakes his head. 

“No, you misunderstand me.”

“I do?” 

“Yes, Carson. You do.” He softens. “I got all of those things, and I miss her. Of course I do.” Sighing heavily, he looks down, clearly thinking of his wife. “But please don’t tiptoe around me like I might be angry that you two are happy. That’s not what I want.” Leaning against the counter, he gestures to her, to Greta who’s still humming in the bathroom. “Be happy, Carson. With all of the time you have left.” Irving breathes in deeply. “I hate to make you think of the end. I really, really do. But just… love her for every minute. I know you do. It’s what my Terri would have wanted me to tell you, to learn, instead of us being even more sad that she’s gone.” 

For a moment, Carson stands there, stunned. Irving places his hand down on hers for a moment, squeezing. His wedding ring is cold against her skin. 

“Goodnight, Carson,” he says gently, and he takes his glass, and he’s gone. 

xvii.

The afternoon after Irving leaves, Carson curls around Greta in the kitchen, wound around her like ivy while her wife makes them sandwiches. 

That afternoon, they make lemonade and sit together at the island until it’s growing dark outside. They hold hands the entire time, making each other smile and talking about dinner plans and a visit to Esti’s new apartment, all frivolous things that are simultaneously equally worthwhile and important. 

At sunset, Carson puts on their favorite record and offers Greta a hand, and they dance the entire night away, pressed so close that it’s hard to tell where they each begin and end. 

Carson lays her head on Greta’s chest, stepping to the beat of her heart, feeling perfectly, infinitely whole. 

xviii.

Greta wakes because Carson isn’t next to her. Her absence is odd this early in the morning – she has had the same sleep schedule for nearly the entire time they’ve been together – but when Greta hears crashing around in the kitchen, she immediately knows that Carson must be trying to do something she doesn’t need to do. 

Squinting at the clock, Greta sees that it’s barely six-thirty, but she hoists herself out of bed anyway, wincing at the crack of her knees as she does. 

She pads through their apartment, and as soon as she sees Carson, bathed in the single kitchen light, Greta melts a little at the familiar sight. Some things, across moments and places and kitchens, don’t change. She feels young again, watching Carson move with flour dashed across her nose and her sleeves rolled up, and she finally makes herself known as the oven timer goes off. 

“You’re not supposed to be up,” Carson says, seeing her as she grabs her oven mitts. 

“I couldn’t sleep without you,” Greta admits, taking a seat across from her at the counter. “What are you doing up so early?”

“I made you a pie,” Carson tells her, brow furrowing. It’s obvious what she’s doing. She pulls the tin out of the oven.

“I can see that, chickadee,” Greta laughs. “But why?” 

“Because I wanted to,” her wife says, shrugging. “Because I can. I wanted you to have a slice with your breakfast.” 

“Oh,” she says softly, and it never gets old – this way Carson loves her, with no space between thought and action, with little doubt or distance. “Well, thank you.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” Carson tells her, reaching for her spatula. “Here, have some now. Just to test.” 

“Carson–” Greta tries to say. 

“Just a little,” she insists. “I’ll have some too. We can share.” 

Greta relents easily. It is cherry, afterall. “Alright,” she agrees, and Carson smiles at her. 

God, the dimples. Greta loves them. 

They eat together in the quiet. There’s no conversation that needs to be had over the pie, not anymore. 

Over the years, silence has become sweetness between them. Over the years, they stopped needing to talk, and they instead started to listen. They began to settle into the softness, did away with the presentation and performance and perfection when they realized that they’d both met their match, when they realized that together, they were two people who wanted nothing from each other except to be each other’s in the first place. 

It was new then, and some days, it is still new. And that is what makes it beautiful: how they’ve made a nest and landed in it, how the tree they’ve built around is old and steady and strong but grows new branches each year. How love should always feel novel and familiar all at the same time. 

xix.

“It’s a little crooked, Michael,” Daniel says from where he’s cutting the pie, cider in his free hand. 

“Why don’t you come and do it then, Dan?” he teases, but he does fix the positioning of his left hand where it’s pressed against the wood of the frame he’s trying to put up. 

“Don’t be rude, honey,” Greta chides, perched against the kitchen table, watching. 

“Sorry,” he grumbles, running a hand through his hair. It’s salt and pepper now, shorter than it’s ever been. He shifts just slightly to the right on his step ladder. “Does it look okay to everyone now?” 

“It looks great,” Carson says, looking up at the license certificate. She swallows, salt in the back of her throat. “Thanks for coming over, guys.”

“Of course,” Chris says, his daughter, Stella, hanging tightly to his leg. “It’s not everyday your gay moms get officially unionized in the eyes of our lord and the stupidity of the state government.” 

“Stupid’s a bad word, Dad,” Stella reprimands, two feet tall, looking up at him. 

“You’re right, baby, I’m sorry,” he says, brushing some of her hair back. 

“We’re still really glad you’re here,” Greta says. “All of you.”

She looks around at the kitchen: Daniel and Michael’s partners lingering to help Chris, Nick entertaining his and Chris’ newborn, James, in the next room. Lupe, Jess, and Esti and her husband all managed their way over here, sitting in the other chairs around the table. Their joy comes off of them in waves as their own gazes scan the room, the beating heart of Greta and Carson’s apartment since the day they moved in together, the place where they learned to fall in love with each other again and again, where they built bridges and burned them too, where they began to build their family. 

The kitchen is alive. Everyone in it has given it life, their stories and their sorrow and their sweetness pressed into the wallpaper and tiling, the promises they’ve made and their pride. 

“It’s about damn time.” Lupe finally chimes in, breaking the silence and raising her glass. “To Carson and Greta,” she toasts. “The world’s two most lovable and annoying idiots to date.”

The kitchen shakes with laughter.

“And to the world changing,” Jess adds, gesturing with her cup, too. 

Echoes of that’s right and finally echo through the room, and Michael takes the nail he tucked away in his shirt pocket out. 

“Okay, I’m putting this thing up,” he announces, twirling his hammer with his patented unnecessary-but-endearing flourish and tapping away until it’s secure. 

He takes a step back, admiring it with everyone else: Greta and Carson’s names signed on the line, the date and the year in script, the weight of the paper obvious even behind the glass. The frame has been given a grand spot on the wall in the kitchen where most things that are hanging have been up for at least a few years by now. 

Nestled between the doorway into the kitchen from the front hall and the nook for the kitchen table, Greta and Carson’s certificate of civil union rests above their photo of all of the original Rockford Peaches, arm in arm and grinning, unaware of how they will change, who they will become, what will become of the world. 

And there it stays, watching over them like a guardian and an oath all at once, its power and purpose obvious even as they spend the rest of the evening gathered together, and the tools and step ladder get put away. As the sun sets, they drink, and they eat pie, and they trade stories. Around eight, Carson orders too much Chinese takeout because she can’t be bothered to cook, forgetting that none of them eat as much as they used to, but Greta still kisses her because her wife got her orange chicken. 

“I love you,” Greta says into her mouth like she’s done a thousand times, half-leaning on the counter, her eyelashes fluttering against Carson’s cheek. 

“And I love you,” Carson replies, linking their opposite hands together so that their rings press together for the briefest moment. “I’m so glad you’re mine.”

“Me too,” her wife says, nudging their noses together. “I mean, look, I even got it in writing.”

Carson breathes a laugh out through her nose. “You sure did. No takebacks, by the way.” 

“Oh, my love.” Greta smiles, eyes soft and adoring and open. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” 

“Good,” Carson answers, tangling her fingers further with Greta’s and squeezing. Greta squeezes back. 

For the rest of the evening, they don’t let go of each other, moving to dance together when Nick puts on music as his son wakes up, and soon, Jess is showing off a complicated step, and Chris is twirling Stella around the room. Lupe and Esti chat, still at the table, in a mix of Spanish and English, replacing syllables halfway through words at points in this special kind of third language. 

And in the corner, between the shelf of cookbooks and the kitchen island, Greta and Carson find themselves in their own little world, hands clasped together over their hearts as they sway, caught up in each other even after so many years. 

Soon, one of their favorite songs comes on. Its rhythm is so recognizable: slow and tender and searching all at once. Immediately, Greta begins to hum along with the melody, and she lifts her arm so that Carson can spin under it, bright-eyed and beautiful. Still, not a day goes by where Greta doesn’t think Carson beautiful. 

Softly, Greta tells her as much, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, and Carson blushes like she’s never heard Greta say it before. Greta thinks her even more gorgeous because of it. She tells her so until Carson is burying her face in her chest, laying a kiss over Greta’s heart as she laughs and laughs that she can still make her wife blush like a schoolgirl on her very first date. They spend the rest of the evening laughing that way, and the night rolls on, and they are happy. 

Irrevocably, unfathomably happy.