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You see her alone with a drink sitting on the bar, untouched, and wave to her. She waves back.
Carson, whose hair you cut just last night. And you helped her write that letter, drunk letter writing. Laughter, exchange of words and ideas, and annoying poor Henry from the front desk. You’re surprised that you and Carson weren’t escorted back up to your rooms for your very drunk and not appropriate behavior in the public eye. (What public eye? It was just you, Carson and Henry.) You got lucky.
Like that’s all it was. Luck. Luck, that after that night, you were put on the same team. Luck, that you ran into each other on the streets of Chicago because she would’ve been lost without you and Jo and Jo’s fucking map, mostly Jo’s map. You didn’t really do anything besides gift Carson a smoke that she shoved right into her pocket.
Or maybe it was destiny. Your destiny, the map guiding you to Carson. You were meant to meet her. You are meant to be in this bar, together, talking about robbing a bank. Not actually robbing a bank. You mean, to make the most of all of this, take advantage of the opportunity that lay before you.
Since then, Chicago, tryouts, you can’t get her out of your head.
Perhaps it started when you first heard her voice, heard her speak about a wall, no less. And as she did, you let your eyes wander, study her figure, how she stood before you, still facing that silly wall.
During tryouts. You told her to watch herself instead of the other women trying out. You didn’t take your own advice, a whispered damn floating from your lips after the ball she hit almost went over the hedges of the stadium.
“Guess it was just… a lucky one.”
Your stomach knotted, the good kind of knotted, but you ignored it.
When you read what she wrote in her notebook. Journal. Whatever she calls it. You grabbed the spray bottle for her hair, and once you knew her eyes were closed, you flipped the book back open. There’s something wrong with me…
You know what that feels like.
And you latch on to that.
For a few songs, you dance with Jo, then wind up back at the bar with Carson and a new drink, one you don’t like. She asks you about the letter again that you somehow remember. Every single line. You thought then that Carson was speaking her truth, and that's the best she could've done. Say how she felt. But you guess with not knowing comes not being able to let go. You don't believe it.
"I think you know what you wrote."
You wait, patient. Lost in the quiet, except for the soft tune of the current song and mixture of distant conversations.
"I feel like I'm screwing up my entire life and I don't know why. Everything that I have always wanted..." She bows her head. "No."
No?
Your eyes linger for a moment too long, a subtle glance to her lips. You want to be alone with her. Alone, alone. Private, so you can—
"But I'm not stopping because it feels good."
Kiss her.
That's how it is now. Having to hide to feel something, feel like yourself, who you were born to be, born to become. Feel... good.
"Come with me."
You abandon the bar, the shitty drinks, the dancing, the bartenders in their suits, to lead Carson to some storage closet and away from the eyes of others. Her words echo in your ears.
“I have never met anyone like you.”
Of course, you said it back. You didn't say it back just to say it, but to say it because you mean it. You’ve never met anyone like Carson. She's not like the many other women you’ve been with who were also married. Not like anyone else on the team. Not like… Not like Dana, your first love, whose ring you still wear.
Beside the shelves and shelves of drinking glasses in the closet, you kiss her. And it felt how you thought it would—new, a dream. When she kisses you back, against the wall made of brick, and tangles her fingers in your hair, you fall.