Chapter Text
Ruth comes back in the spring with a diamond ring on her finger and plans for a winter wedding, and it’s all anyone can talk about in their free time. By mid-season it’s still happening every night, each nook and cranny of the house filled with talk of flower arrangements, hair styles, the dress. Incessant, really.
Usually they can get a reprieve on the porch, but tonight, even Esti’s huddled over there on the wicker couch, poring over The Bride’s Magazine with her, their excited whispers mingling with the rustles of the turning pages. Ruth is teaching Esti the English words for veil, train, bouquet, Esti pointing and murmuring back to teach her encaje, bordado, tul.
Jess is doing her best to tune them out, focusing on how she’s running out of toothpicks here, letting Lupe win three hands in a row just to watch that self-satisfied smirk emerge. She hopes maybe Lupe’ll split the winnings down the middle once she’s out altogether, just so they can keep doing this.
They’re quiet tonight, not talking about much besides their calls and raises. It’s an easy silence: familiar, grounding. Jess still breaks it, eventually, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“You ever think about it?” She motions over to the couch with her head, even though Lupe’s usually pretty good at knowing what she means. Sure enough—
“Marriage?” Lupe’s eyebrows climb her forehead.
Jess nods, shrugs a shoulder.
Lupe’s eyes drop back to her cards and she gives her head a little shake. “Nah. Not for me. You?”
Jess wouldn’t be able to hold back her snort even if she tried. “Can you see me in a white dress?” She grimaces, trying to smile at the joke even as it cuts a little too close for comfort, slicing in behind her ribs.
Lupe’s quiet for a minute. She trades in two of her cards, muttering something under her breath when she sees the replacements. Eventually, she adds, “Thought I’d have to, you know. For a long time. First with, you know, the—baby, and then just— Just because, I guess. Didn’t know I didn’t have to, I think.”
Jess throws down a card and takes a new one for herself, considering her options. She tosses in a few toothpicks and waits for Lupe to continue.
“It’s something I was always told I should want, but.” She looks behind Jess, like she’s watching something in the distance. “Could never picture it being something I would, you know?”
“Yeah, me neither,” Jess agrees. “I don’t think anyone ever thought I would, though.” She laughs, humorlessly, because it’s not particularly funny.
“I mean, who in their right mind would? What, like you want to stay stuck with someone forever because the church tells you so? And a man of all people? Fuck off,” Lupe retorts, glimmers of bitterness and pain clear in her voice even through the sarcasm. A firefly lights up behind her in solidarity, like it’s echoing her ire.
Jess pulls out a new cigarette, lights it, takes a few drags. She watches Lupe’s hands shuffle the cards, her dexterous fingers flashing through the deck, tossing cards at Jess for the next hand as precisely as she does when she’s painting the black, dancing on that line to strike out the side looking.
“What about something like— Not a real marriage, exactly, but like what Vi and Edie have,” Jess wonders, seeing what the words sound like when she says them out loud.
Lupe looks up at her, a hint of longing flashing across her face before she sets her jaw, thinking. “Well, that’s different, I guess,” she eventually says, distractedly shuffling the deck again, even though she’d already started to deal, a couple cards sitting in front of each of them.
Jess reaches over, takes the cards out of her hands, gathers up the stragglers on the table, and shuffles them all together, starting anew.
Lupe spreads her fingers out on the table, palms down, like she’s stretching.
“I dunno. I mean, I’d obviously never wind up actually getting married, not for real.” She’s quiet for a while, and Jess thinks that maybe something broke, that this conversation went somewhere that she can’t navigate; the two of them just stuck now, lost without a map or a compass. Jess hasn’t really learned how to use the stars around here for wayfinding yet, not like she can at home, but she’ll try her best, always, for Lu.
Just as Jess is thinking of changing the subject altogether, Lupe takes a deep breath, like she’s gearing up for the last pitch of an inning, and murmurs, “But something like what they have could be nice.”
Jess hums in agreement, because it could.
And now it’s like Lupe got her momentum going, inertia tripping over itself, because she says the next part quickly, the words all running out of her at once. “I never thought I'd really, uh, meet someone like that.” She shrugs. “Didn’t know there was anyone who’d really be looking for that, not with me. Figured I’d just be a solo act, you know?” She looks across the table, her dark eyes hard for Jess to read in the moonlight.
Jess lets out another low hum under her breath. “Yep, I know the feeling. Didn’t really think about it before I saw them. Guess I didn’t really know that was an option. Not that it’s marriage, really, but maybe something else. Something better, I’d think.”
Lupe nods. “I think if you do that, you just wake up every day and choose to be with the person again, you know?”
Jess smiles a little bit at that, because she does know what that means. She deals them each a hand, and they play through it, trading in and betting efficiently, no words needed.
Lupe makes a face at her cards and tosses them down. “Fold.” She picks up her cigarette, taps off the ash, inhales and holds the smoke in her lungs for a moment, before exhaling all at once. “That’s more than any church marriage could mean, at least in my book.”
Jess kicks at Lupe’s foot under the table. Lupe kicks her back and then lets her foot still, just there next to Jess’s, a steady presence.
It's Lupe's turn to deal again, cards careening straight back towards Jess like homing pigeons returning to the coop. It's a decent hand, and Jess is down to her last little smattering of toothpicks, so she drops them all in the middle of the table, tiny hollow pops echoing in the night air.
“All in, Lu,” she shrugs. “Your bet.”
Lupe looks at her cards, then at her winnings, then up at Jess. She raises an eyebrow. “Call,” she returns, before pushing her pile forward.
Jess bites her lip to keep from smiling. “Well, all right, then. Hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Alright, let’s see ‘em, McCready.” Lupe arches an eyebrow, daring her to go first; so courageous, Jess thinks, even when all the chips are down.
Jess lays down her cards, three jacks staring up at them. “Three of a kind, how’s about that?”
Lupe scrunches up her face, lets out a groan. “Aw, man. Fold.” She scatters her cards face up on the table, the very picture of a useless hand: two, three, seven, nine, ace.
“Why’d you go all in with those?” Jess asks, incredulous, even though it’s just toothpicks.
“Well, you did, so.” Lupe shrugs, like it’s obvious.
“Hmm,” Jess allows, “all right, then,” already splitting the toothpicks back into equal shares so they can start all over again.
They play another few rounds, letting the summer breeze shuffle around them. Esti and Ruth eventually go up to bed and then it’s quiet, just the occasional car, the background hum of crickets, interspersed by the flick of Lupe’s lighter, their inhales of smoke.
“Hey, wanna do something tomorrow?” Jess tosses out, working the words around her cigarette.
Lupe levels Jess a look over her cards. “Maybe. What’d you have in mind?”
“Oh.” Jess frowns, thinks for a minute. “Well, I don’t know. Don’t really care.”
Lupe shoots her a fond look at that. “Yeah, sure. I don’t care either. We can figure it out tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, then.” Jess nods, before she lays down her hand. “Read ‘em and weep, Lu.”