Chapter Text
When the Peaches lost the championship game two days ago, Lupe did not know where she was going to end up. Until that moment, her life had been nothing but baseball. She had tossed around a few bleak scenarios in her head as the season came to a close, but never really got further than picturing herself getting on a train and leaving Rockford.
And there she was. On a train, leaving Rockford, with no real plan laid out. The season was over, and no one knew if the League would be back in the spring. The last few months had been exhilarating, spent mostly on the mound where she belonged, and still, somehow, Lupe felt like she hadn’t done enough to appreciate it all.
So now there was the train, and trying to make sense of a life without baseball. Well, without pro ball. She had lived that life before, and she wasn’t sure how she would manage to go back to it.
She was different now. But then again, the world was different, too.
Not everything, sure. The aimless traveling, the countless day jobs, the makeshift barrio diamonds where she’d find a sense of peace at the end of the day—those would all probably stay the same.
But the biggest difference sat next to her, legs spread obnoxiously wide, cap pulled down over her face to block out the glare of the setting sun through the window.
Lupe knocked their knees together. “You’re hogging the leg room.”
Jess snorted. “Whatcha gonna do about it, fine me?” But she pulled herself upright all the same, long limbs shrinking back into her own space.
The warmth where her knee had leaned against Lupe’s lingered for a moment. Lupe ignored the way her leg twitched slightly at the loss of contact. “You ever been before?”
“No.” She gave up on the cap, letting it drop to her lap and opting to shield her eyes with her hand instead. She squinted back at Lupe through long, slender fingers. “America’s my oyster, now, though. With all we got from the League, might as well see the sights.”
“You’re gonna be disappointed. Everything costs more in New York.”
“But everything’s bigger, too. More people than Rockford.”
Lupe knew what that meant. More people like them. More bars for people like them.
Outside, the sun slowly sank into the flat fields of Illinois. Lupe watched as the yellow sharpened into bright orange, faded into soft pink, melted into deep indigo, and finally settled into darkness. Eventually, she was left with nothing but the reflection of her own face on the glass. There were dark circles under her eyes and a few new strands in the spiderweb of creases on her face.
She looked tired. She hadn’t fully realized it, but she was exhausted. Even though she hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact that she wouldn’t be back in Beyer the next morning, September sun beating down on her shoulders, maybe it was about time for a break.
She closed her eyes and let the muffled thudding of the train lull her to sleep.
-----
They found vacancy on the fourth floor of a tenement, a one-room with a kitchenette and a bedframe and a bathroom shared with two other units down the hall. It had a wide fire escape, just big enough for the two of them to huddle together, knees pressed to their chests, and smoke. It wasn't quite the porch in Rockford, but it had its own charm.
“City’s bigger than I thought it’d be,” Jess admitted as they settled in for their first night. “It’s a bit much.” She didn’t look over when she said it, just set her gaze outward into the darkness. It was already getting chilly at night up here, and her breath came out in clouds even before she lit up.
Lupe scooched closer, and Jess draped an arm over her shoulders. Lupe knew that she was thinking about teasing her for being cold, debating whether to regale her again with stories of the fierceness of Saskatchewan winter.
Instead, she sighed heavily, leaning some of her weight on Lupe. “I might even miss fuckin’ Rockford.”
“You mean you’ll miss baseball,” Lupe corrected with a laugh, stealing the smoke from her.
“Oh, we’ll still play ball. At least until it snows.” Jess pulled the spare cigarette from behind her ear and struck a match against the metal of the fire escape. “I’ll miss the girls, though.”
“Yeah.” Lupe would, too. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten lucky enough to end up with Jess still at her side now that the season was over, but she knew she’d be thanking God for it every day for the next six months. She’d known she was going to miss the Peaches, obviously. Most of them, at least. But the thought of not seeing Jess again, not knowing if the League would be back, had made her stomach drop, like someone had pulled the floor from under her.
Jess understood her, saw her in a way that nobody else did. And when she didn’t, she listened. Lupe wasn’t sure how, but somehow Jess had become her reference point, the only person who kept her on the ground. It was stupid, how intensely Lupe wanted to always be in her orbit. When Jess had offhandedly proposed they run off to New York a mere few hours before they were to be kicked out of the team house, how could she have said no?
She loved people, all the time, more than she would ever let on. She loved her hija, her familia, her old friends, and though she’d never admit it, she even loved Esti. She’d loved a woman or two, and had thought she’d loved a boy once, when she was young. But she never needed people. She had learned long ago that needing was dangerous. Girls like her didn’t get to lean on others for long.
Somehow, she had come to need Jess. She couldn’t help it.
This deep in the city, there weren’t many stars, even with the dimout. But the moon hung just above the line of buildings across the street, apartments stacked on top of barber shops and delicatessens. Jess’ braid was fraying, loose pieces hanging down, illuminated bright as cornsilk in the moonlight. She was paler than ever in this light, shadows dancing across her face like sheets flapping on a clothesline. Lupe would’ve sworn she was translucent if not for the pull of taut muscles in her cheek, the way her jaw jutted beneath her skin as she bullied the cigarette between her lips. And all this after a summer of playing ball. What would she look like in January?
***********************************************
Lupe’s own smoke had burned to the filter. She didn’t want to be staring anymore, so she experimentally pressed the butt to the spot where her jeans hiked up, somewhere between calf and ankle. It hissed against her skin, singeing the dark hair there. She swallowed back a gasp, focusing her attention on the pain, hoping it would burn up all the odd doubts running through her head.
“Hey.” Jess swatted her hand away. “You trying to show off or something?” There was no humor in her voice, though. Lupe could hear the sharp edge of concern poking through.
She didn’t respond, just dropped the butt and crushed it under her shoe.
Jess stomped out hers, too, and leaned over to examine the wound. She wrapped her hand around Lupe’s ankle, torso tilted parallel to the ground, braid falling over Lupe’s knee. Lupe didn’t know why, but her cheeks flushed in the darkness at the touch.
“It’ll be fine,” Jess concluded, sitting up again. “Probably won’t even scar.” She glanced over, eyes asking questions that her voice didn’t.
Lupe didn’t want to answer. She couldn’t explain the sudden urge that had made her put out a cigarette on her bare skin, couldn’t explain the way she felt when she caught herself staring at Jess and thanking God. The dumbest part was that she was grieving a loss that hadn’t even come yet. Jess was here with her, in New York City, for whatever foreseeable future there was until they were ballplayers again.
Lupe didn’t know how to be anything but a ballplayer. For years, she had lived in and out of her parents’ house, sending undetailed letters to her sister, floating solitarily from informal team to team. No one outside of Dallas had met the Lupe García that wasn’t a pitcher, wasn’t the “Spanish” fucking Striker, was just the Lupe García that went to work and to the bar and back to her lonely apartment.
But now Jess would meet that version of her. New York would. And she was ready for that, beyond grateful. But she was a little bit scared, too.
She didn’t say that, though. “Too bad. I could use a few more scars. You remember Rita, at Vi’s? That nasty scar? Everyone loved it.”
The concern drained out of Jess’ face, much to Lupe’s relief.
******************************************************
“You already got the famous thing going on. Now that, women love.”
“Not famous here,” she argued. “And I can’t pitch forever. What will I do when I’m forty?”
“Well, hey, some would say retirement is more alluring than current fame.”
“You saying you like older women, McCready?”
“Maybe.” Jess grinned and turned to crawl back into the apartment. “When was your birthday again?”
“Hey!”
-----
Lupe opened her eyes, expecting to find herself in her twin bed, in a drafty two-story house, with Esti across the room noisily preparing for the day, humming something by that cute little cantador cubano she was always talking about.
Instead, she woke on a bare queen mattress, in a stuffy little apartment, with Jess perched at the foot of the bed, pulling her socks on, yammering on about the Yankees season.
“What time is it?” she interrupted, not caring at this particular moment about Snuffy’s stats.
“Almost ten-thirty. Time to get up and at ‘em.”
Lupe had never been a morning person, but she also hadn’t slept past nine in months. “Shit.”
Jess whistled in agreement and offered up a cigarette. “Breakfast?”
“Well, since it’s been hand-delivered and everything.” She grabbed a matchbook from the bedside table and clumsily lit up.
“Sorry for waking ya. But we’ve only got one key and…” She said something else on the subject, but eventually resumed her recounting of a game against the Browns that she had heard from someone in Vi’s who had actually been there.
Right. The landlord had told them both to be at his place at eleven or else. They’d have to leave the key with him for a few hours to get a copy made, so the plan was to get groceries and a broom and maybe even find a fucking job before dinnertime.
Hell, some sheets for the bed, maybe?
Lupe pulled herself up and wandered over to her luggage, rifling through it for a shirt that was respectably feminine enough for meeting the landlord. She yanked her old undershirt from the days of traveling over her head and let it fall to the ground. They’d have to find a laundromat eventually.
“How’s this?” she asked, turning to Jess with a blouse held up to her bare chest.
Jess stopped her yammering abruptly, in the middle of a sentence, as if suddenly stricken in a trance. When had God become so merciful? Lupe wondered. She raised an eyebrow questioningly. “That bad, huh?”
The trance wore off, and Jess pulled a face. “Looks great, honey,” she joked flatly.
Lupe decided to let the gibe go, since she had gotten exactly the reaction she was looking for. “Good,” she said, pulling it on. “I hate it, too.”
-----
New York was huge, dirty, and crawling with weirdos. Lupe loved it. Jess pretended to be unimpressed, but she wasn’t fooling Lupe.
“Look at that,” she said, pointing up at the ashy clouds pluming out of an automobile factory. “That air’s no good. You need good country air in your lungs to be an athlete.”
Lupe rolled her eyes. “You smoke like a chimney.”
Jess took the rebuttal in full stride, even as she stopped to light up a cigarette. “And I can only get away with it because I was raised on good country air.”
They wandered closer to the factory to find that it was, indeed, hiring women. The white woman at the application stand gave them both a stern once-over, and her eyes lingered a little too long on the dark hair above Lupe’s lip, but she let them both put their names down.
The hardest part down, they spent the rest of the day wandering about the city, picking up necessities. By evening, they had ended up in Central Park, eating deli sandwiches and surveying their wares.
“New York, New York,” Jess stated grandly as she settled onto the grass. “In all her glory.”
“A big city is the second best thing in the world,” Lupe agreed.
There was a beat of silence before Jess took the bait. “What’s the first?”
“A game of baseball.”
Jess squinted, as if thinking about it. “City’s gotta be third, then,” she concluded. “It just doesn’t beat a good roll in the hay.”
Lupe snorted and gave her a shove. The patch of grass they’d found was a ways off the walking path, but not entirely out of earshot of the public.
She wouldn’t be surprised if Jess had literally rolled in hay before; her lack of modesty would easily allow it. She’d have to remember to ask some other time. But there were people around now, so she changed the subject.
“Is it too much?” she asked instead, recalling Jess’ weariness over the barrage of sights and sounds that accompanied a city of this magnitude. By the end of their day, she had drawn in on herself just slightly, face pinched in discomfort that hadn’t dissipated until they’d reached the green expanse of the park.
She gulped down the last bite of her sandwich before answering. “A little,” she admitted, crumpling the butcher paper in her hand. “It’s good, though. I’m glad you came with me.”
And for all that she’d teased Lupe for being a city kid, she seemed to mean it.
Lupe was glad, too. In the soft light of early evening, last night’s melancholic uncertainty seemed foolish. Things were simple and good. The season had ended, they’d lost the championship, but her closest friend was still at her side. It was easy, like it always was with Jess.
So she said what she hadn’t said the whole trip up, or the night before on the fire escape. The good, simple truth.
“Anywhere you’ll have me, hermano.”
Jess grinned. “Alright, then.”
-----
They settled quickly into a routine, coexisting like the sun and the moon. It was the most natural thing that Lupe had ever known, second only to the solid weight of a ball in her glove. Living with Jess was easier than living alone, easier than crashing at a friend’s place, and way fucking easier than staying in her parents’ house.
Jess would make coffee and Lupe would make toast, and then they’d head down to the subway—which had taken a few queasy trips before Lupe’s stomach stopped flipping—and end up at the factory, where they worked an assembly line until afternoon. Then, they’d go home, sometimes go out, and start it all over again the next day.
It was comfortable. It was nice. It was easy.
All except for sleeping. Lupe hadn’t shared a bed with anyone since she was thirteen, when her familia had moved to Texas, into a house big enough for her sister to finally have her own space. Lupe had slept alone since then. Well, other than the obvious exceptions, which were different, not relevant to her and Jess.
At first, it had been nothing. But it seemed that every night, Jess would end up closer than the night before. Her limbs seemed impossibly longer and ganglier in her sleep, and she was a blanket hog. Just when Lupe was about to drift off, she’d be woken again by some bony appendage brushing against her ankle beneath the covers.
It wasn’t that Lupe minded it. It was that she didn’t.
She had thought that she would mind it. She’d never pictured herself sharing a bed with someone, not for the long term, at least. She wasn’t the kind of person who could have that kind of casual domesticity with another person. She was a ballplayer, a runaway, and an invert. She’d more or less accepted these things long ago, and that had always meant that she would never share a bed again.
But that was before Jess.
And now Lupe had to come to terms with the surprising reality that sharing a bed with Jess was just as nice—if not particularly easy—as sharing everything else with her was.
There was something strange about how she caught herself straining her leg just slightly farther towards the other side of the bed, hoping for a brief moment of contact. There was something off about the flutter of pleasure in her chest when her efforts were rewarded.
They could get a second bed. It was a possibility. But beds were expensive. Mattresses were, too. The apartment had such limited space. And they lived on the fourth floor. They wouldn’t even be able to keep them, if they returned to Rockford in the Spring. Really, it would be impractical.
So Lupe tried not to think about it, tried not to think about Jess, even as she lay beside her, their breathing lining up in the quiet of their little room.
-----
A week or so of wandering about the city had eventually brought them to a little diamond where various factory teams would play semi-formal games. It only took a little scouting to find that, when the men weren’t playing, women from all across the borough would cobble together makeshift teams for friendly play, once or twice a week.
Coverage of their games hadn’t made it very far East, but a few of the women recognized their names, and all were fascinated by stories of the League. Lupe noticed that Jess started wearing her Rockford cap more often, just so she could pass it around in the batting line.
Games were casual, the way they had always been before the League. All of her youth, Lupe had been the odd one out, with how much she lived and breathed baseball compared to her teammates. It was the same here, but she didn’t mind it as much, having finally tasted the gravity of playing pro. It was kind of nice, to play with no stakes after a grueling summer.
That said, Lupe wasn’t one to lose, especially when it came to friendly competition against Jess.
“It really ain’t fair to have both pro players on the same team,” Eileen, who was quite good herself, declared at their third game there. She scrunched her face, looking between them for a long moment, before deciding. “We’ll take Lupe.”
Lupe liked Eileen.
There were a few players who stood out to Lupe as she played, a couple who she hoped would make it down to Chicago if the League returned. But mostly, she threw strike after strike. It felt good, to be in control of herself again. Her arm was still tight some days when she woke up, and occasionally a dull pain would bother her, so faint she almost thought she was imagining it, but it would pass with a few stretches.
She could pitch again. Sure, these women hadn’t been training daily for months, but the practice was good for her anyway, and she was grateful to not have to worry so much about it.
Eileen, who hopped around positions depending on who could make it, played catcher. She didn’t bother with calls for the weaker batters, instead just dropping her hand to the inside of her thigh in a way that was a bit too poised to be accidental, different from how Carson and Ana would sign to her.
It was interesting. Lupe tucked the gesture to the back of her mind, curious.
Eventually, Jess came up, looking especially cocky as she spit over the plate. Her gaze met Lupe’s as she easily sidled the bat up over her shoulder.
“Cute,” Lupe remarked, earning her a wry grin in response.
She had pitched to Jess dozens of times before, at just about every practice, provided her elbow wasn’t aching too bad. And Jess was good, especially for a shortstop. She was good at everything. Maybe there really was something to be said about being raised on country air. Lupe had gotten countless pitches past her, because she was good, too. Still, against all odds, she could count the amount of times she’d struck Jess out on her fingers.
Normally, she took the call offered up to her and focused on it, rather than on the batter. Carson kept tabs on which Peaches fumbled where, and she always made them work for it in practice. It was just Lupe’s job to keep her form in good shape. But things switched up often with Jess, who was as unpredictable and voracious at the plate as she was everywhere else. She demanded an unpredictable and voracious pitch from Lupe in response.
Eileen seemed uncertain about whether or not to signal, but decided against it. She looked to Lupe to lead, winking at her from underneath the ratty mask, fingers twisting the fabric on the leg of her shorts.
The motion piqued Lupe’s interest again. But Jess was standing in wait just in front of Eileen, blue eyes glinting beneath her Rockford cap in the waning afternoon light. “Anytime, Lu,” she taunted.
Lupe hadn’t been quite as attentive from the bench as she maybe should have been, during practices at least. But she had caught a few things. For example: Terri was fond of offspeed pitches. Jess was not.
She wound up as if for a fast ball, but turned her hand just slightly at release, sending the ball hard towards home, where it dropped.
Jess swung for it, whiffed. She cracked her jaw, smiling but obviously irritated. A swell of pride warmed Lupe. She wouldn’t let it go to her head, though. It wasn’t over yet.
She threw a curve. Jess missed. A fast ball. Fouled.
With the other girls, Lupe was all for professionalism. But with Jess, she couldn’t help herself. “You feeling shy, shortstop?”
Jess didn’t dignify her with a response, just spat with a little more force than usual. If anything, her silence said more than retaliation would have.
Two strikes. There was a runner on second. Until now, the games had been casual--a chance to have a good time, to keep her arm working. But Lupe felt the pressure of competition building up now, the blood thrumming in her ears.
Eileen shifted behind Jess. She loudly slapped her knee, catching Lupe’s attention. Jess, in turn, was watching her intently, clocking the interaction. Even though Jess had no way of knowing what the call was behind her, Lupe, who was proud to say she had no tells, wondered briefly if she could read her mind, the way she was eyeing her down.
She focused her attention on Eileen, who ran her hand delicately back up her thigh before dropping it into Lupe’s line of sight, one finger down.
Lupe considered. It was a solid choice. She had a faster throw than most pitchers in the League, and she had often startled batters who were used to lesser speeds.
But Jess didn’t practice with other pitchers. She knew Lupe. And the way she was watching her, intense and a little sullen, was thick with expectation. Lupe knew she must be thinking through the odds of the call, ready to make a decision on the swing as soon as the ball was out of Lupe’s hand. A fastball wouldn’t surprise her.
An old creeping urge to throw a forkball pricked at her. It had been glorious, the way it’d caught so many batters off guard at the start of the season. But at what cost. A phantom twinge in her elbow pushed the urge away.
Eileen raised her eyebrows at her, and Lupe watched them rise up into her short red hair. She licked her lips, and Lupe was sure now that there was something up with the way she’d been looking at her all day.
She wound up, squashing the idea down and thinking only of Jess. At the last second, she changed her mind, and threw another slow ball down the plate.
But Jess hesitated. She waited, just a hair longer than she would’ve for a fastball, and Lupe heard the crack of the bat making contact before she could process what had happened.
It was a liner, and Jess was off. Lupe turned, watching as the outfielders scrambled for it. Jess rounded first, safe, and kept on going. At her cue, the other runner abandoned third and sailed towards home.
“They’re going for both!” Lupe yelled, even though everyone already knew. The ball was picked up and came towards her. She caught it and hurled it back to Eileen, but it was too late. The run was good, and Jess had already made it to second. Lupe could feel Jess’ self-satisfied grin on her back.
Eileen furrowed her brow at Lupe as the next batter came up to plate. If Lupe had listened and thrown a fastball, Jess would’ve been late on the swing and struck out. But as much as Eileen intrigued her, Lupe found that Jess was the one who had gotten in her head, the fucking mind reader.
She couldn’t help but smile bitterly at her own expense. Losing this one stung, but damn, was McCready fun to watch.
The rest of the inning passed uneventfully, slower than usual. Lupe stayed passively aware of Jess on second, keeping track of movement in her peripheral vision. She was restless, overly-eager here where the stakes were low. She kept creeping away from the base, too impatient to wait for a hit.
Lupe waited until she was sure, then threw to second, a woman they worked with named Carlota. She threw hard, but Jess threw herself harder, and slid face-first into the base, a cloud of red dirt rising up around her. Safe.
Lupe was annoyed, a little bit, but then Jess stood up, grinning big as a circus clown, her chin bloody and dripping down onto her white tee-shirt. She’d abandoned her overshirt at some point earlier in the game.
It was hard to hear from a distance, but Lupe thought maybe Carlota was saying, “¿Estás herida?” to which Jess shook her head in response. She untucked her shirt, pulling it brazenly up to wipe her chin. It warmed from dusty white to bright red, seeping outward like a grotesque flower unfolding its petals.
The sun was setting, its angular light falling harshly on the planes of Jess’ exposed stomach. Her muscled abdomen heaved with her heavy breathing, and sunlight caught the sheen of sweat across the untanned expanse of pale skin. It seemed like she stood there like that for ages, bold and indecent, before letting her shirt fall back down, the red already darkening to a rusty brown.
The sight complicated Lupe’s breathing, just slightly, although Jess had caught her eye more than a few times before. She’d never been the type to loiter in the locker room, not wanting to look too closely at her teammates. Not to mention, she had always hated the stupid League uniforms too much to take her time with changing. It wasn’t just their impracticality, but everything else they represented. It was what men wanted to look at, that’s what Vivienne Hughes had said.
But now a whole new reason to hate the uniforms had illuminated itself to Lupe. There was something far too glorious about the way Jess looked, playing baseball in men’s pants, casually hiking her tee-shirt up like it was nothing. She never would’ve done such a thing back in Beyer, never could’ve lifted her skirt like that.
Lupe had almost forgotten the haven that baseball had once provided for people like them. On the sandlot, no one wore skirts, and no one expected them to, either. In a game with no spectators, the only red that had to be on your lips was the hot, wet consequence of a brutal slide to safety. The League had given Lupe everything she had ever wanted, but it had also taken that reckless freedom of the sport away from her, made the diamond into another place she had to perform just to get by.
But not here. And there was no denying, even to herself, that there were additional selfish reasons that the sight of Jess baring her stomach to the sun delighted her, too.
As she tucked her shirt back in, Jess caught Lupe staring, and grinned pointedly back. She pulled her hand out from the front of her pants and ran the back of it across her mouth, getting the last of the blood off. She cocked her head in a nice try gesture and licked her lips.
Eileen, who was alluring and funny and good at baseball, had done the same thing just minutes earlier, much more purposeful and invitational, and lit something up in Lupe. And Lupe was interested, of course she was. But something about the shameless, effortless manner that Jess conducted herself in, not even trying to get a rise out of her as she tasted the blood on her lips, had taken Eileen’s little spark and fanned it into a full flame.
Lupe looked back to plate, breathing deeply to extinguish the heat in her abdomen, and found Eileen was staring her down, waiting silently for her to realize that the next batter was already up. Lupe was embarrassed at getting so openly distracted, but also newly intrigued by the knowing look on Eileen’s face. There was recognition and slight teasing to her smirk. She wondered idly if Eileen had been noticing Jess herself.
The game was close, but Lupe’s team just barely pulled ahead at the bottom of the ninth. Jess was grumpy about it as they walked home from the subway station. Normally, after a lost game, they’d commiserate together in silence, each beating themself up internally while in passive company. But today, Lupe was satisfied, even though the game had been nothing particularly special. She reveled in Jess’ moodiness, completely aware that she was making it worse solely by being in good spirits.
“You’re awful proud of yourself, for having done this to me,” Jess said, finally, jutting her chin out for Lupe to look at. She was pretending to be grumpy, but Lupe knew she wore scabs like badges of honor, and didn’t actually care.
“I did that? What, didn’t let you steal?”
“Yeah,” Jess said, pouting. “Just couldn’t let me liven things up.”
“That’s the game,” Lupe shrugged, pleased. But she touched a gentle fingertip to Jess’ chin as they rounded their block. It was decently torn up, lined with dirt along the edges. “Does it hurt?”
Jess shrugged, but she pulled away from the touch. “I’m tough.”
"There's ointment in the kit under the bed."
"Pfft. God made the dirt; the dirt don't hurt."
"What?"
She grinned cheekily in response. "I'll be fine. I've lived this long."
Lupe rolled her eyes. "God knows how. Sloppiest slide I ever saw. You should know well enough how to keep your head up."
“I was safe, wasn’t I?”
Lupe scoffed lightly, unable to deny it, and stuffed her hands into her pockets, absentmindedly reaching for her cigarettes. She opened the carton, pulled out a pair, and found a scrap of paper tucked inside.
Lupe-
Good game.
DE 5-4486
-E
"Eileen?" Jess asked idly, plucking one of the smokes from her hand.
She nodded. "How'd you know?"
Jess raised an eyebrow. Her lighter snapped open, flame blooming and curling around the end of her cigarette, then Lupe's. "Catcher has the best view," she concluded easily, like it was obvious.
The answer surprised Lupe, and she snorted in amusement.
"It's true," Jess insisted matter-of-factly, lisping around the smoke as she tried to examine her own chin. "Except,” she added as an afterthought, “the rest of us get to see your ass."
Lupe pinched her upper arm. “Cállate.”
“Yeah, you’re right, there’s not much there to look at, really.”
This time, she aimed with a full fist, but Jess dodged out of the way, laughing.
“Should I find somewhere to spend the evening?” she asked as they approached the building.
“Maybe. I’ll call first. You think she’s got a better place than us?”
“Nah,” Jess exhaled, smoke billowing into the space between them. “Might have more than one room, though.”
“That counts as better.”
Jess grinned, her cigarette bobbing up and down. “You think so?” She knocked shoulders with Lupe, nodded towards the payphone across the street, then veered off in the opposite direction, back to the tenement.
Luckily, Lupe had a few coins still in her pockets from her morning run to the deli.
Luckily, Eileen had made it home already, and picked up right away.
"Got a note from an adoring fan," Lupe explained. "Looking for an E?"
A voice hummed on the other end of the line. "I might know her," Eileen answered. "What makes you so sure she's an adoring fan?"
"Process of elimination. Pretty sure it wasn't a ransom note, so…"
"I see." There was a brief pause, then: "I take it you're interested?"
The image of dainty fingertips grazing along the inside of a thigh flashed through Lupe's head.
"Yours or mine?" she asked as an answer.
Eileen laughed and gave her address. "Come 'round six, yeah? My sister's making stew. Don't worry, though; I'll have her out by six fifteen."
When Lupe made it upstairs, Jess was holding what looked like a table leg and shaving bits off with a knife, shedding slivers of wood on the floor. She raised her eyebrows at Lupe.
In lieu of response, Lupe began hastily changing out of her game clothes and into a nice button up and jeans.
"Attaboy!" Jess grinned, saluting her as she hurried out the door.
-----
Eileen was fun. So much fun that they had skipped right over the soup and onto the main course, then gone back to reheat it afterwards. The soup was just okay.
After dinner, Eileen offered a cigarette in return for some easy conversation, mostly about baseball and how Lupe was liking New York.
“City’s big,” Lupe said with a playful wink. “A lot more broads like you than in Rockford.”
“Mm. And you’ve been enjoying them, I take it?” She grinned and tapped a finger on Lupe’s knee. “How do I rank?”
They both laughed and lapsed into a comfortable quiet for a moment, before Eileen spoke again.
“I wouldn’t mind doing this again sometime, if ya wanted to.” She raised an eyebrow in question. “That is, unless there’s another gal on your mind.”
The comment took Lupe by surprise. What kind of post-coital assumption was that? If Lupe had a girl, why would she be here in Eileen’s apartment?
“Ah.” Apparently recognizing her surprise, Eileen explained. “Thought maybe you were sweet on your shortstop.”
“Jess?”
"That’s the one.”
Sweet on Jess? No one had ever assumed that before, even though they’d been all but attached at the hip all summer. She thought it was plain to anyone who knew what to look for that they were butch brothers and nothing more, but maybe New York was different than Rockford.
As if reading her mind, Eileen continued. “I didn’t think so, really, but Rose—“ She was the first baseman with the natural curls, Lupe was pretty sure. “She coulda sworn you were spoken for. Don’t hardly see two broads like y’all living together—you know, cut from the same cloth as ya are.”
“We’re not,” Lupe clarified. “I like to…wander free,” she joked awkwardly, hoping to cut the tension.
It was true, Lupe didn’t seek out anything more than the occasional hookup, as a rule. She had gone steady once or twice before when she was young, and had learned quickly that commitment of any kind just wasn’t in the cards for queers. Things were always easier with expectations of longevity out of the picture.
But there was some truth to the other end of it, too. Even just as a friend, Lupe had never stuck with someone the way she stuck with Jess. It didn’t matter that she was ‘wandering free’ in other girls’ beds, because at the end of the day, she’d crawl back into the one she shared with Jess. It was strictly platonic, no doubt about that, but still, she’d somehow fallen into a shared rent agreement and habit of codependency that she’d always avoided, without even realizing it. There was something about Jess that she was willing to put her trust in, maybe against her better judgment.
“Well,” Eileen propositioned, “if you ever change your mind about going solo, my bed is plenty big enough for three.”
Lupe choked on her drag, coughing up smoke into the space between them. Did she mean—?
Eileen grinned as she stole the cigarette. “I saw her today, too. Looks like she’d make for a fun time.”
Lupe quickly shook her head, too stunned to verbalize it. There was no way that would ever happen. She knew Jess too well; it would—
She couldn’t—
No.
“Okay, no dice,” Eileen ceded with a good-natured laugh, and placed her hand on Lupe’s thigh. “I’m perfectly happy with you alone.” She traced a finger up Lupe’s arm. “What’d’ya say?”
-----
The second round was fun, too, sure, but Lupe hadn’t been able to get Eileen’s proposal out of her mind. The sight of Jess earlier that day kept flickering through her head even when it was between Eileen’s legs.
They had played at something like it once before, early in the season. Heady after a well-won game, something about the shameless way Jess licked a spot of blood from her forearm had made Lupe purposely take longer than usual to clean herself up. She knew Jess would wait—she always did—and her patience had paid off when the locker room was cleared of everyone else.
They’d postured a bit, danced around the premise, but Carson had come rushing back into the locker room to grab her stupid play cards and asked them why they were hanging around. Jess had patted Lupe’s cheek teasingly and said, “Guess the stars just aren’t aligned for us, García.” And that was that. It never came up again, and Lupe had easily cut her losses.
She hadn’t thought of it in the months since, especially given that everything had pretty much gone to shit very shortly afterwards. Plus, they’d found Vi’s, and the need had been easily taken care of in its cramped bathroom stalls and dark back room.
But now the thought was back, and way more inappropriate in these new circumstances. Especially when she returned home and got into bed next to Jess, still unable to put the idea from her mind. She knew Jess now, better than she’d known anyone since she’d first left home at twenty-two. That mattered to her more than lust, so she would have to shake the thought loose before it became a problem. That night she lay in stiff silence, listening to Jess’ slow breathing until she finally fell into a fitful sleep.
And if she dreamed about Jess’ pale stomach heaving in the sunlight, or of her hand swiping wetness from her raw, reddened mouth, well… It would all be over come morning, and she would force herself to think nothing of the familiar feeling in the pit of her stomach when she woke.