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Jo has started flirting with the Blue Sox pitcher. Her name is Julia Babbit, and her hair falls out of her ponytail and sticks to her neck when she gets sweaty. She yells a lot, an unhinged scream coming out of her the second time in one game Jo scores a base hit off her. Even in her rage, she has a slight Minnesota accent, which Jo finds inexplicably charming.
“Think you might strike me out this time?” Jo yells the next time she’s up, swinging the bat carelessly around. “Or are ya gonna help me out again?”
“Getting mighty cocky after a couple lucky hits, De Luca.”
“Lucky? You weren’t just going easy on me?”
Jo winks. Babbit growls a little.
“Don’t think you can sweet talk me out of striking your ass out.”
“Aw, you think I’m sweet.”
Babbit grunts with her pitch. She’s someone who’s face paints a pretty picture, like they all have to out here, but there’s something feral in her eyes that Jo can’t stop looking at.
Jo hits a single, Babbit yells, and Jo laughs all the way to first, feeling Babbit’s gaze hot on her.
It’s become almost routine now, feeling eyes on her out here. She’s used to being looked at differently. Used to boys unable to categorize her and staring instead of asking. She remembers the way her grandma used to size her up, with a resignation that she could never get Jo to be like her. Occasionally, she’d feel eyes from a girl, curiosity bordering on something more, something wanting.
It’s become far less occasional. There are girls on the other teams, teenagers who ask for her autograph, wives who blush when Jo winks at them in the stands.
It’s new, this attention, but it’s addictive. It makes Jo not have to force her smiles, it makes the worry that spikes whenever she sees Greta going off with Shaw ease just a little.
After they cream the Sox, Jo lingers just a little when she shakes hands with Babbit.
“Good game,” she says, “love our little chats.”
“Good luck getting on base next time, De Luca,” Babbit snaps back, but Jo swears there’s a grin rising on one side of her mouth.
The summer Jo turns 14, her and Greta pick up shifts at a diner in Astoria. Jo can’t keep her eyes off a girl named Marcie Peters who comes in every week to sit at the counter and order a different flavor of milkshake, slightly crooked teeth on display when she grins at Jo. She’s probably a year or two older than Jo, purely confident in her skin while Jo is uneasy and fumbling in her own body.
“She’s gorgeous, right?” Greta says one day right after Marcie leaves, leaning against the counter.
“Yeah,” Jo says too quickly, “I mean, you know, if you care about that kind of thing.”
Greta gives her a look. Greta is someone who cares about that kind of thing, looking at models in magazines, trying out the newest styles on herself, catching the eyes of every teenage boy who walks into the drug store. Greta has an eye for beauty. Jo just—Jo just notices girls like how she noticed all the statues when her grandma took her to The Met; foreign and irreplaceable artifacts that cannot be touched under any circumstances.
“Joey, it’s okay,” Greta says easily, “she’s really pretty.”
Greta’s eyebrows raise a little when she says really, like she knows, like she too is exploring the ancient relics section of The Met, in awe of all its beauty.
Jo feels a smile start to rise on her face unbidden, a warmth spreading in her chest.
“I mean, she’s no Garbo.”
Greta laughs, eyes too knowing for a fourteen year old.
“Something about those Greta G’s, you know.”
Jo snorts.
“Oh, you wish.”
And it turns out, it’s easier for two kids to be bumbling around the Met sculpture court than just one.
When Greta practically begs Jo to go to the bar after they qualify for the championship, Jo acts more reluctant than she is. She’s curious to see what awaits, the vague description Shaw and Jess give her sounding almost unreal. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be surrounded completely by people like her. By people like them.
The eyes on her are stronger here. It’s admiration, it’s attraction, it’s lust, all without the usual mask in place. Jo soaks in it. She barely even minds that her best friend couldn’t care less to check in on her, not when a stunning woman has decided Jo is the most desirable thing in here.
“I think you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” Flo says to her while they are dancing.
Jo is, for once in her life, speechless. This random girl in the middle of fucking nowhere, Illinois says one sentence and it feels like Jo has won a game she’s being losing her whole fucking life. It’s been Jo against the world for years and years and finally, finally, Jo is scoring points.
The world, of course, has a few extra tricks up its sleeve.
When Jo is 18, she spends slow days at the diner she works at kissing Sara Goldstein in the stockroom. Sara started smiling at her and saving her an extra piece of cake months ago, looking at Jo in the way boys (and girls) look at Greta, but not her. Never her.
“Buy a girl dinner first,” Jo jokes into Sara’s mouth the third time this happens, even though she is euphoric, like the power of kissing Sara could light the whole city.
“Shut up,” Sara says, biting on Jo’s lip. Jo struggles to stand upright.
“De Luca!” one of the line cooks shouts from the back. Jo and Sara spring apart. “You have a visitor.”
Jo gets her breath together, and tries to wipe Sara’s lipstick from her mouth.
“Finish this later?” she asks, trying to come off smooth, but knowing she sounds like she's full of wanting.
Sara smiles, color high in her cheeks, eyes alight.
"I'll be waiting."
“What’s up?” Jo asks when she gets back to the kitchen.
“Your friend’s here.”
And there’s Greta, standing at the back entrance to the diner, hands shaking and eyes wet. She has a bag over her shoulder, another at her feet. And Jo knows.
“Dana’s parents… they… they found out.”
Nausea rises in Jo’s throat, in her whole body. But she has to keep it together, has to be a pillar at that moment.
“It’s okay,” she says quickly. It’s not. “It’s okay, Bird. I’ll pack a bag.”
“Joey, what are you—”
“We can catch the 5pm to Boston. I’ve always wanted to see Fenway.”
“You don’t have to—”
But she does. She has to, they both have to, it was only a matter of time. So Jo quits the diner on the spot and runs with Greta to Grand Central to catch a train up to Boston, laughing all the way so they don’t cry.
She never sees Sara Goldstein again.
“No fucking way,” Julia Babbit says when Jo limps into the boarding house in South Bend. “Coach said we got a transfer, but I didn’t think we’d won the fucking lottery like this.”
Her eyes are fire, and they are only for Jo. Something sparks in Jo’s gut, something she has to tamp down after her stint in jail, after the hell her body has just gone through.
“Miss Babbit, language,” their chaperone says. This older woman who is not Bev in a house that is not their big sprawling blue one in a town that isn’t Rockford in a place where Jo doesn’t know anyone.
Jo throws on a grin.
“Figured it was time to join the winning team,” she says. The girls cheer. Jo wants to cry.
Her leg still hurts like hell the first day or two, but the doctor and her new coach give her exercises that she does on the hard floor of her new room. She doesn’t even have a roommate, just a cot in a study that was last minute converted into her room.
There’s a part of Jo that aches to be back in Rockford, to participate in a shared language you learn living with the same people for months, wants to go into this whole thing with her best friend.
But there’s another part of Jo that still smarts worse than the cut on her forehead, the feeling that she was nothing but a sacrificial lamb.
“We are gonna kill those peaches,” Babbit yells at Jo’s first practice, before turning to Jo, a question of loyalty in her eyes.
“Fuck yeah we are.” Jo declares.
She’s pretty sure that someone has told the team not to ask about her injuries, not to ask why she got transferred. It makes sense on paper, but not this late in the game, not under these circumstances. But the girls don’t ask. At first.
The morning they play the Peaches for the first time, Jo lingers in front of the mirror in this new locker room, eying the way the blue looks on her skin as opposed to the white.
“It suits you,” Babbit says, leaning on the locker behind her. The other girls are warming up outside. Babbit’s eyes linger.
“I think it just suits you that I’m not your competition any more, Babbit.”
Babbit laughs.
“You can call me Julia, you know. My friends call me Jules, even.”
“Oh, are we friends now? Now that I’m helpin’ you win?”
Babbit—Jules—grins.
“It’s like my prayers were finally answered.” Jules steps minutely closer, eyes flicking to the scar on Jo’s forehead. “What happened out there, Jo?”
It’s softer than anything she’s said to Jo before, the first time Jo’s first name has crossed Jules’ lips. It’s with a tenderness that almost hurts.
Jo swallows down her honesty. “Bar fight.”
“Bar fight?”
“Yeah, some guy thought he could talk shit about my swing.”
“What a dick.”
“It was a whole thing, cops got involved.” Jo isn’t making eye contact with Jules any more, hating anything adjacent to the truth coming out of her mouth almost as much as she hates lying. “Watch Gill when you’re pitching, yeah? She sneaks up on ya.”
They win the first game easy. Jules pitches like her life depends on it, not a single run coming in from the Peaches. And Jo hits a mean triple in the eighth inning that sends two girls home. Plus, something is off with the Peaches, anyone can tell. The girls are barely making eye contact with each other, an undeniable shift in their energy. Jo swallows her curiosity; this is working out for her.
After the game, she sees a man in uniform come down and head over to the Peaches dugout, pull Shaw into an embrace. Oh shit. That’s why the fucking energy’s off. Jo’s eyes involuntarily flick to Greta, who is looking anywhere but at Shaw. Part of Jo wants to go over there, wants to buy Greta shots like they did in Houston when that blonde left Greta in the dust for some cowboy, wants to bond over their broken hearts like the old days.
But it’s not the old days anymore. Her knee hurts like hell and a stadium of people just chanted her name.
“You were fucking amazing,” Jules says when they get back to the locker room, low and slow in her ear.
A week ago, Jo would have set aside her caution for this, would have waited until they were alone together, then tucked some of that loose hair behind Jules’ ear, would have seen where that takes her.
Instead, she takes a long bath when she gets back, feels the ache in her leg from a day of running, the ache in her chest that has lingered ever since those cops busted down that door.
“De Luca,” the chaperone accosts her when she gets back to her room. “Sarge left these for you.”
“Huh?” Jo says.
The chaperone nods to a bunch of papers on the bed, then sees herself out.
Jo flops down on her bed and picks them up, maybe a spare paycheck or more paperwork for her transfer.
It’s not paperwork.
Josephine,
Some of the girls got sentimental at your departure. I don’t count myself among them. Though, I will say, your absence is noticeable.
Sergeant Beverly
They all fall out after that, one after another.
Jo-
If I was there that night, those fucking cops wouldn’t have stood a chance.
- Jess
PS: If you want to freeze your ass off this winter, my little shack in Moose Jaw fits three on a good day. Still gotta teach you how to piss standing up.
My Dearest Josephine,
I know it hasn’t even been a week yet, but we all miss ya around here. And I ain’t just saying that because our ace hitter is playing for the competition.
Back at home when it’s just my Ma and the kiddos, there’s no one around to gab with, and I didn’t realize how much I missed having someone who will listen to every silly thought that flies in my head, until I got to live with you.
No one can fill that void like you can, sugar. Shirley keeps coming in our room these days and staying in your bed, saying she doesn’t want to be around Carson much anymore, that she’s “off” or whatever. I think that’s plenty rich coming from Shirl, but hey, I just live here.
Yesterday though, she said “the energy’s wrong in this house now” and I can’t say I disagree. And it’s not a mystery why. We all miss ya, sister.
As I said, I live with my Ma and the little rascals back in ol’ HeeHaw, but if you ever need somewhere to crash in the off season, we got a spare bed in the attic. God knows I could use the company.
Yours,
Maybelle
Jo-
If I was there that night, at least two cops would be sporting worse black eyes than you. Assholes.
Fuck you for that triple though.
Lu
Joey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re always my number one. You and me, kid. I don’t know what my life looks like without you. I fucking love you to the ends of the Earth.
Love,
Bird
When Jo is 16, her grandmother kicks her out of their rundown apartment in Queens, after a fight that leaves Jo raw and empty. Jo doesn’t let herself cry until she has a bag packed, cash stolen from under the mattress, and makes the 15 block walk to Greta’s. She will not let herself cry because some old Italian lady doesn’t like the only parts of Jo that she likes about herself.
So she keeps it together, even as she bangs on the door of Greta’s apartment, praying that Mrs. Gill won’t answer, praying that it will be the face of her best friend, of the only person who will understand, of…
“Oh, Joey, what happened? Get in here.”
That’s when she starts crying.
She cries again now, on her stupid rickety bed in this house that doesn’t feel like home, with these people she barely knows, with her fucking leg still unable to just be better already. She holds the letters close to her chest and sobs in earnest for the first time since she spent that awful night in that jail cell, for the first time since she saw Greta run the other way and knew she was truly fucking alone.
They lose their first game in Rockford.
It doesn’t feel right playing here, having her runs go up on the ‘Away’ side of the scoreboard. Seeing fans that she’s grown to recognize cheering against her.
But Maybelle waves to her when she’s up to bat, like it’s a fun little secret they have, Lupe flips her off before pitching, Jess punches her arm as she passes her at the inning change.
Greta slides into third and Jo misses tagging her out by three seconds. This isn’t like the playful teasing with the other Peaches. There’s history here. History that Jo can’t dwell on right now, not when she has a championship to win.
They lose the second game too.
“Motherfucker!” Jules screams after, slamming a hand against the locker.
“Babbit, calm down,” Coach says. “We just gotta focus up for tomorrow, okay? It’s make or break.”
“Yes, sir,” Jules says, but Jo sees her jaw clenched. She looks good when she’s angry, alive. Jo likes it.
“Hey,” Jo says once they’re back at their hotel, “let’s go on a walk.”
“A walk?” Jules blinks, like the concept is foreign. “Your leg will make it?”
“Psh, this old thing? Come on, I’ll show you my old stomping ground.”
They wind up downtown. Jo doesn’t know why her feet move that way, but they do. She talks strategy with Jules until she’s standing in front of the bright white marquee of the movie theater.
“You asked me about why I transferred.” Jo nods her head toward the movie theater, toward the patch of cement her face was crushed into. “That’s why.”
She knows it doesn't make a lick of sense, just pointing to a building in lieu of explanation, but Jules nods.
“I’ve been here,” she whispers, though no one else is around.
“To the theater?” Jo asks.
“No, dumbass, to… the establishment that was here.”
Something in Jo’s throat catches. Not like she didn’t get an inkling that Jules was inclined that way. But something about it being confirmed in this physical space, the space that was so close to being perfect, until it was the opposite.
“Oh,” she breathes, “how did that…?”
“Me and Martha snuck out after one of our away games.”
“Martha? Martha the shortstop?”
“Damn right. She’s was fucking obsessed with that Peaches pitcher.”
“Lupe? No shit.” Jo grins, lets herself step closer to the threshold of the building, relief flooding through her when she’s not struck down because of proximity. “What about you?”
“Me? Oh, I had a thing for the third baseman.”
Every Sunday afternoon growing up, Jo counts down the seconds she has to stay in church. After they get home, the minute her grandma allows it, Jo runs over to Astoria park and gets in a pickup game with some of the boys in the neighborhood. Nothing feels quite as good as swapping out her stiff church dress for a pair of stolen pants she had cut into shorts, grabbing her glove and getting the hell outside.
She gets on base more than any of the boys, even though she’s often stuck out there, no one else good enough to actually get a good enough hit to send Jo home.
One September Sunday when Jo is eleven, there’s a new face among the usual suspects.
“This is my cousin Greta,” one of the boys says, “she kicked my ass in our grandparents backyard.”
The new girl grins. She’s tall and skinny, the opposite of Jo in every way, except the way she holds the bat with confidence, the way she doesn’t waste time with introductions, just asks, “so what are the teams?”
Jo isn’t sure exactly how to feel about Greta, both relieved and defensive that she’s not the only girl here anymore.
“You can be on my team,” she says, offering Greta a grin.
Jo is up to bat first, followed by two of the boys, then Greta. Jo immediately hits a double, flipping the bird at the kid playing second base as she gets in. The next boy up to bat strikes out, then the one after him hits an easy pop up that is immediately caught. Jo groans. What’s the point of being good at this if no one else is?
Then Greta is up to bat. She doesn’t look bothered in the least when one ball gets past her, then another. On the third pitch, she hits a beautiful fly to center field, just past where the last kid is standing, and Jo is on the run, gleefully rounding third and making her way home.
“Fuck yeah, new girl!” she calls.
Greta grins mock salutes at her, grin electric.
“She’s always gonna be on my team from now on,” Jo tells the boys, “finally someone can actually get me home.”
Jo’s weight is mostly on Shaw and Greta when her bum leg finally hits home, but she feels support from every angle. The crowd erupts when she makes it. Jo is weeping, she knows, outright bawling in front of all these people in the stands, in front of both of her teams. The arms are strong around her, holding her tight and close, until gently passing her into the arms of her new team.
“Jo, you were... you were... outstanding,” Jules breathes as she embraces her.
Jo holds her tight, catches Greta’s eye over Jules’ shoulder. Greta sticks out her tongue and winks. Jo flips her off.
It feels like hours of interviews and photos, of being held on her teammates shoulders, of hugs from the girls and handshakes from the men who own the league, of Jules locking eyes with her for long, hot moments. Martha snuck a 12-pack into the dugout and they cheers with cheap Illinois beer and Jo lets herself laugh and laugh.
“Next year, the league’s gonna be even bigger,” Jules is saying to anyone who will listen, “and you know they will wanna keep the winning team together. World domination, baby!”
“Fuck yeah,” Jo says.
“Especially our number one girl!” She raises her beer to Jo and the other girls join in, loud and euphoric and unladylike.
Jules is half carrying her to their bus home, beer and excitement on her breath, when Jo feels a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey,” Greta says, “can I talk to the star hitter for one second?”
“You good?” Jules grunts.
Jo nods, shifts her weight to sit on the sidewalk while Jules and the other girls board the bus.
Greta sits down beside her, leans in close enough to whisper, "so that girl’s in love with you.”
Jo chokes out a laugh, before grinning.
“Well, you’re not wrong on that one.”
“That’s my Joey." Greta nudges her shoulder. "Hey, remember Marcie Peters from the drug store when we were kids?”
“How could I forget?”
“She would always smile bigger for you than anyone else. Looked at you like you were a god.”
Jo snorts.
“You’re kidding. I was a little awkward twerp back then, no girls looked at me like that.”
Greta is suddenly serious. “Yes they did. They do.”
Jo rolls her eyes. “Like a god? Come on.”
“You are a god, Joey. The almighty Apollo. People are just finally treating you like one. Like you deserve.”
Jo nods, throat suddenly thick.
“I should’ve,” Greta starts, “I should’ve always let you know you were the number one, even when—”
“Don’t,” Jo says. Not because she’s still angry. But because Greta shouldn’t have to grovel, shouldn’t have to beg to be loved by someone who will always love her. “You’re family, okay?”
“Family.” Greta sniffs a little, before swinging an arm over Jo’s shoulders. “So I’ll be back in the Big Apple after this.”
“Yeah? Gonna fist fight your mother?”
Greta laughs. “I wish. I got a job. A good one too, a real money, apartment in Manhattan, kind of job.”
“Shit, Bird.”
“Yep. And it wouldn’t be—it wouldn’t be New York if you weren’t there with me, Joey.”
“I don’t know, I got offers to stay in both Moose Jaw and HeeHaw township—”
“Neither of those are real places.”
“—But maybe I can squeeze New York in on the victory tour.”
Greta grins, the same smile she’s had since she was eleven years old, handing boys asses to them back in Queens.
“I’d be honored to be a stop. Wherever I am, there’s a place for you.”
Jo nods, sniffs a little, leans her head on Greta’s shoulder.
“Back atcha.”
“De Luca!” Coach calls from the bus. “Even game-winning hitters need to get on the bus!”
“Game-winning hitters,” Greta repeats, squeezing Jo’s side before helping her up and whispering in her ear, “go get your girl.”
Jo grins at her, pulls her into a hug. “Back atcha, Bird. See you soon.”
“Before you know it.”
For the first time since arriving in South Bend, Jo isn’t upset her room is just a study with a cot in it. After almost all the girls have passed out on cheap liquor and heat and the joy of victory, Jo makes her way back to her room, looks at herself in the mirror. Her face is red from the sun and the endurance, still some sweat from the afternoon in her hair.
But she looks good, she looks like someone who just won the first ever fucking championship for women’s professional baseball. She looks like someone who is about to have a gorgeous woman knock on her door. She looks like a god.
There’s three raps at her door in quick succession, and Jo opens it to see Jules leaning on the door frame, grin plastered on her face. She’s holding a thin gold necklace in her hand.
“I think you left this in the living room,” she says.
Jo has never seen that necklace in her life.
“Thank you so much, Julia. So kind. Why don’t you come on in?”
Jo clicks the lock behind them.
When Jules pitches, she is one hundred percent focused. She’s the same way when her her arms wrap around Jo’s waist and she kisses her like she’s been starving.
And Jo’s been starving too, she thinks, starving to be wanted like this, to be touched like this. She buries her hands in Jules’ hair and kisses her with nothing held back, open mouthed and heated.
“Jesus,” Jules says when they break apart. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”
“Oh, I know,” Jo says, kissing her again and again until neither of them can stand anymore, until the world that isn’t this tiny cot doesn't feel important.
Jules is on her lap, kissing behind her ear while still managing to unbutton her shirt.
“Jo,” Jules breathes, looking down on Jo shirtless, eyes hungry, “do you know how fucking incredible you are?”
Jo grins, pulls Jules even closer.
“Yes. Yes I do.”