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There’s not much certain about Greta’s future when she clambers into the taxi. She’ll go to New York for the off season, and then she’ll see Carson at the beginning of the next. That’s what Greta holds onto as she drives away from Rockford, from Carson. She grips it tightly because if she doesn’t, she’ll drown in the storm of feelings raging inside her.
The journey into New York City goes by almost unnoticed as she tries to begin sorting out all of her thoughts. For the first time since Greta met Jo, she’s truly alone. At least when Jo left for the Blue Sox, she still had Carson. Now, stepping into her hotel room for the night, she has no one to talk to.
She doesn’t have a way to reach Carson, but Carson has the address for her hotel if, or when, she wants to write. Greta does, however, have a phone number to reach her oldest and best true friend, so she dials it before she even puts any of her clothes away. Tomorrow she’ll begin the search for an apartment, but tonight she calls Jo.
She picks up after the third ring, “Bazooka De Luca speaking.” She can practically hear the cocky smirk Jo’s wearing.
“Hey, Joey, it’s me. I made it to New York.” She can’t stop herself from holding her breath, waiting to see what Jo will do, now she knows Greta’s the one on the line.
“Oh,” a pause, “Hi, Bird.” She almost sobs when she hears the nickname come through the phone. She didn’t completely ruin their friendship when she brought Joey to the bar with them that night.
“How- how are you? Leg healing okay?” She feels awkward still, she wishes she could see Jo, but with Jo in the hospital in South Bend, there’s not much to be done about that.
“You’re back in the big apple and that’s what you wanna talk about? Well, the doctors said I’ll be okay if I do what they say, so I don’t know, I’m not much good at following instructions.”
They catch up for another hour or so before Greta starts yawning too frequently and Jo tells her she needs to get some sleep before her first day tomorrow.
As Greta climbs into the bed, and sleep begins fogging up the edges of her mind, she can’t stop herself from thinking about Carson. If she’s back at home in Idaho with Charlie in her house that’s not on a farm, if she’s thrown out the little piece of paper with the name of her hotel.
When she finally drifts off, her unconscious mind dreams up that maybe Carson has up and left Charlie and will be arriving any second in New York to sweep her off her feet. Greta would pull her in by her shoulders and kiss her like she’d die without Carson’s mouth on hers. They’d make love, and she’d fall asleep holding the smaller woman in her arms.
In the morning, when the alarm clock next to the hotel bed goes off, Greta wakes with a start. Chest heaving, heart racing, she pushes the covers off of her body and turns off the alarm. Pieces of her dream linger in her mind as she goes about getting ready for her first day at Vivienne’s office.
The first two weeks are difficult for her. Not just adjusting to the work she’s doing for Vivienne, but also adjusting to phone calls from Jo, and the buzzing under her skin every time she thinks about what Carson’s up to. Eventually, she’s spending a little less time actively thinking about her, and she moves into her new apartment, but not before leaving a forwarding address for anyone (Carson) who doesn’t know her new address.
Once she settles in her new apartment, her rhythm at work is even smoother and she gets a promotion which she tells Jo about. Carson occupies a special part of her mind, though, and when she lays awake in bed, her thoughts often turn to the beautiful catcher. She spends several nights working her hand in between her thighs pretending it was Carson, moaning her name softly into the empty room.
Jo tells her over the phone once that she should try sleeping with other women, since Carson isn’t writing to her, and there’s no guarantee she actually cares about Greta. She almost breaks the phone when she hangs up after that, Jo wasn’t there, she doesn’t know that when Carson kissed her on the side porch in broad daylight, it meant something real. She knows why Carson couldn’t come with her to New York, she needed to hear her own voice telling her what to do, not Greta’s.
This doesn’t mean the first baseman can feel entirely secure in what she has with the team captain. After all, she hasn’t received a single letter yet.
That changes the first week of November. Greta is coming home from a long day, followed by a night out with some of her coworkers, yawning as she enters her building. The letter escapes her notice at the late hour and it isn’t until she’s checking her mail the next morning that she notices the somewhat familiar handwriting on an envelope.
Her pulse picks up as she quickly runs back into her apartment to open the letter. Standing there, in her little kitchen, she can’t bring herself to slice it open, so she leaves it on the counter. Ten minutes later, she’s convinced herself to rip off the band-aid and she can’t even wait to grab the letter opener, instead tearing into it with her hands. Her red nail polish a bloody contrast to the crisp white paper of Carson’s envelope. Once she holds the actual letter in her hands, she has to restart reading it twice because she can’t focus on the words on the page, her mind racing with all the possibilities. She reigns herself in, taking a few deep breaths before she reads through the neat cursive.
Dear Greta,
I split with Charlie. It was necessary, but it still broke my heart. I meant what I said, he really was my best friend. He saw something he shouldn’t have that last day, and I couldn’t in good conscience stay with him any longer.
I wish I could come to New York, but I think I need to figure out who I am if I’m not Mrs. Charlie Shaw. I look forward to seeing you next season, and I have missed your company dearly. I hope New York is treating you well and you like your new coworkers. Selfishly, I hope you don’t like any body there as much as you like the Peaches.
I hope that in the coming season we can be even better. We had something special, and I think that if we work hard we can win the championships together next season.
Sincerely yours,
Carson Shaw
Greta almost cries with joy when she reads that Carson still wants to be with her. She knows Carson is doing her best to be careful with the language she uses in the letter. She can imagine that cute little face she’d pull as she was choosing how best to word her feelings.
She wants to cry, or laugh, or sing, she’s not quite sure. In a few short months, she’ll get to see Carson again, hold her close, curl her hands in her hair. She wants these things even more desperately now that she has confirmation Carson feels the same.
She drafts up a response in no time, forgetting her errands for the day in favor of daydreaming of her catcher. She tells her of the exciting place she feels she now occupies, star baseball player and employee of one of the most powerful women in the world. She also tells her that she misses the team (Carson) just as much as the catcher does. It feels euphoric to get to say as much.
The next weeks pass by faster now that she and Carson are writing. Neither one of them includes a phone number when they correspond, and she knows it is because they won’t have the strength to get through a whole conversation when they’re so far apart. She suspects it also has to do with adding to the anticipation of when they will finally get to see each other again in the spring.
Soon, New York is draped in the cold of winter, decorations springing up in time for Christmas and then New Year’s. She walks through the busy streets always a little lost in thought of what the holidays would be like with the short brunette. On Christmas Day, she writes a letter to Carson explaining just how much she wishes they could be together for the holiday and then touches herself imagining it.
Once the holiday cheer has evaporated in the grey January sky, time seems to move slowly again. The days are counting down, but not nearly fast enough. When she’s out at night and it’s clear enough to see stars despite the light pollution in the city, she reminisces on that night spent laying on the field stargazing with Carson.
Soon the remaining months have melted into weeks, and Greta can hardly go a day without sporting a cheesy smile and daydreaming about seeing Carson again. She can hardly go a night without dreaming about her, either.
They keep their correspondence up, and Carson tells her about the black pitcher, Max, whom she used to play catch with at night. Apparently, Max is playing for a traveling team, Red Wright’s All-Stars.
Soon, Vivienne is handing Greta her last paycheck, telling her she’ll see her in Rockford soon. She also sends her final letter to Carson, giddy as she explains that because New York is so far away, any letter Carson would send won’t make it before she has to leave to come back to the Peaches. Greta packs up her small apartment and gets on a train for Rockford, practically vibrating in her seat the whole way.
She signs a few autographs on the train, and a few younger girls sit across from her for a few hours asking her about baseball and the Peaches before their exhausted mothers catch up to them and tell them to ‘say thank you and goodbye to Ms. Gill because they’re getting off at the next stop.’ Her heart tugs a little as she watches the girls leave.
Soon she’s arriving to the Peaches’ house, looking just as it did nearly nine months ago, wondering where Carson is. When she walks through the doors she sees some of her old teammates sitting around joking, while others are hauling their stuff around. Beverly greets her just before the stairs, telling her of her room assignment. Some of the other girls call her name, and she laughs, promising to come back down as soon as she’s a little more settled in.
“Oh why do you have to make so much sense?” Maybelle whines, foot kicking toward her from where she sits in the living room.
As she walks into her room, she’s almost surprised when the object of her desire is sitting on one of the beds, book in hand. Carson immediately looks up at her and smiles big and wide, eyes crinkling. She stands up hurriedly and walks over to where Greta has just come in, while Greta herself places her bags down as gently as she can before rushing forward into Carson’s arms. She has enough presence of mind to pull back for a moment to close and lock the door before she places her hands on Carson’s face and pulls her in for a long and deep kiss.
Carson pushes her against the door and steps closer, bringing their bodies flush against one another. Carson’s hands are at her waist and she brings hers down to the shorter woman’s back to hold her close to her. The heat doesn’t last forever though, as they each start smiling too much to continue the kiss.
Carson pulls back, bringing her left hand up to hold Greta’s, “Hi.” All Greta can do is laugh a little at the other woman.
“Yeah,” She says, “hi.” Carson steps away completely and stoops to pick up one of Greta’s bags, placing it over on her side of the room. “Crazy how we ended up roommates this season.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with it did you?” Greta feels the need to ask, anxiety bubbling up in her chest and threatening to spill over into the rest of her body. They have to be careful, and Carson should know that.
“No, no, I didn’t do anything. I suggested to Beverly that we switch things up a little this season, and this is how it shook out, I guess.” Greta lets herself release some of that tension, ease her shoulders back down, and she smiles before telling Carson she has to head back downstairs to say hi to the other girls. “Okay, that’s smart. I’ll be down in a minute I want to finish this chapter I’m reading.” She nods to her bed, where Greta can now see the book was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
She smiles as she heads back out the door and down the stairs, trying to ignore looking at Beverly for too long, in case her affection for Carson is still written all over her face. As she turns into the living room she sees most of the Peaches spread out talking, and they greet her cheerily as she joins them.
The afternoon and early evening are spent chatting, everyone catching up on what’s happened during the off-season. Esti has learned a good deal more English and is able to actually contribute, her humor pulling several unladylike laughs out of the group. Carson joined them at some point, sitting across the room from Greta, next to Jess, and both of them try not to look at each other too much. Eventually, they each start yawning and stretching out, eyes drooping lower and lower until Beverly comes in and recommends they turn in so as to get a good night’s sleep before their early morning tomorrow.
They head into their rooms in pairs, calling out goodnights and making their last few jokes. Soon enough, Greta and Carson are alone together, in their room. The room they will be sharing for the duration of the season, and in which they can have privacy.
Quickly shutting the door behind them, the sounds of the night outside are drowned out by the blood rushing through her body. Carson looks over her shoulder at her and picks up her hand before slowly leading her to her bed. Greta sits down dutifully before Carson leans in and once again kisses her.
She kisses back eagerly, body thrumming with arousal and something else, something she’d been ignoring since she left for New York at the end of the last season. Carson pulls back and she tries to follow her, but she’s stopped by the catcher’s strong hands pushing on her shoulders.
“Wait, wait, Greta- we, we have time, right?” Greta nods, thinking she knows where this conversation is headed, but unable to prevent a slight smirk at hearing her words parroted back to her. Carson brings up a hand to scratch her neck before barreling forward, “I just think we should talk about this.” A brief pause before she gets quieter, “About us.”
“I think that’s a brilliant idea, Shaw.” She smiles, “I’m not the same person I was last season, and clearly you aren’t either.” Carson nods at her, a sheepish smile on her face. “I’m not as scared anymore. I can’t be happy if I don’t take any risks, so I want this, with you.”
Carson grins and nods vigorously, “Me too, Greta, me too. Well, you’ve read my letters, I want whatever I can have with-with you. I still want to, uh, rob the bank, I just don’t want there to be an expiration date on us anymore. I didn’t say this before, and I didn’t want to say it in a letter, it just felt like I needed to, I don’t know, say it out loud, and also, you know, to your face.” She takes a deep breath, looks down, and entwines their hands, “I love you, Greta Gill. I’m in love with you, and I have been since last year.” Greta can’t help it, she starts tearing up. When one drop manages to escape out of the corner of her eye, Carson wipes it away with impossible gentleness.
“I’m in love with you, too, Carson Shaw.” Her voice breaks a little, and Carson just sits down before pulling her into her arms, and they lay there for a little while, happy. Eventually, Greta insists they prepare for a proper night’s sleep and they change into their pajamas. They get back in the same bed, though, and Greta relishes being able to fall asleep next to her girl again.
The morning comes and they have to get ready to go out to the field and have their first practice of the new season. Carson’s still coaching because it saves the team money, but none of the girls complain because Carson’s still a damn good coach.
She gives a short speech, explaining how happy she is to see all of them again, and how she’s looking forward to what they’ll be able to do this season, how they’ll each improve, and how much fun they’ll get to have playing baseball again together. Then, they separate into groups and begin having warm-ups before they get to running some drills.
Each minute that passes by the team seems lighter, and Greta herself feels like a hot air balloon, rising into the air with the warmth of the love of her team, the game, and Carson filling her chest.
She still doesn’t know what the future will hold, not in it’s entirety. But she knows she has good friends, a good team, and she wants to keep all of them in her life as long as possible. Especially Carson, with her beautiful smile, incredible intelligence, and everlasting charm.