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Jess’ fingers drum against her knee. Right there where a livid bruise is turning the whole hairy, scuffed up thing technicolour. Blue and yellow and purple and brown: the palette of a dozen bruises all laid up over each other. She hits the ground hard when she hits it, or not at all. It’s one of the things Lupe respects the most about her.
Just to be a dick, she nudges a knuckle against the bruise. Grins and snatches her hand back when Jess makes a noise of pain, and grabs for her. Her fingers miss by millimetres: Lupe feels the grazing heat of her touch when she reels her arm in, laughing, cradling her hand against her chest as Jess grits out, “Hurts, asshole.”
They both hurt, all over. It’s the name of the proverbial game. Besides, the corner of Jess’ mouth keeps tugging. She keeps sinking those overlarge teeth into the plush shape of her lower lip to keep her smile contained. She’s not that fucking mad. Lupe grins at her, lazily. Mutters, “Yeah, that’s the point.”
They lapse into silence. Jess, drumming at her knee again. Lupe, watching her. The shining curve of her sweaty top lip. The fine golden hairs on her thighs, catching in the high afternoon sunlight. If Lupe angles her head just so, she can look up Jess’ skirt. Can see the red bloomers beneath riding high on her upper thighs; just oversized enough that she can move in them easily. So she keeps angling her head. It’s past noon, on a Thursday. They’ve practised, eaten, are waiting for their food to settle to practise again. It’s not like she’s got anything better to do.
“I think if I were a bird I’d be an osprey,” Jess offers, unprompted, into the hot, still air. Lupe, watching the flex of her thigh muscles, mhmms in a way she hopes sounds attentive. “And you, you’d be a mallard.”
“Oh, sure,” Lupe murmurs, feeling the dry grass prickle at her through her uniform as she shifts in place. “You’ve got my number, McCready.”
They’ve both laid out on the field, sheltered by the hot shade of a rangy live oak; Jess on her back, ankle propped on her knee in an unladylike show of thigh and crotch and all the rest of it. Feet bare and flexing, ribboned with pink imprints of her socks and shoes. Absently, Lupe thinks about following them with her fingers, as she asks, “Bar tonight?”
“Always,” is Jess’ reply. She yawns, not bothering to cover her mouth. Lupe eyes the roof of her mouth: wet and pink. Barely listening when Jess adds, “Esti told me she wants to come with us next time.”
Dismissively: “Esti’s too young.” And then, when her brain catches up with her ears, Lupe disconnects from thoughts of thighs and calves and the roofs of mouths, bolts up from the scratchy grass and says, “She what?”
Jess is as unruffled as ever. Still thumbing at that bruise, her cap pulled down low over her eyes. “Yeah,” she says, and settles her hands over her sternum. That fraying, skinny braid laid out on the ground next to her like a tame little snake. “Hey, you know what they say about teenagers these days.”
Lupe doesn’t know. She doesn’t think Jess does either. She slumps back onto the ground. Mutters, “You think she knows what sort of place it is?”
Jess’ voice is noncommittal. Eyes closed, pale lashes kissing her cheeks when Lupe hazards a glance her way. “Maybe. Maybe not.” There’s a beat of silence, in which Lupe watches a cloud drift across the sun and considers her and Jess acting as Esti’s gay parents, before Jess adds: “Stop looking up my skirt.”
Lupe makes a noise, affronted. “I’m not.”
It’s the truth. She’d been watching the sky. But Jess just snorts, worries at the fraying bill of her cap, reaches for her smokes, and says: “You were.”
There comes the snap of a match through its book. The smell of sulphur on the air, replaced quickly by cigarette smoke. She doesn’t sit up. Just smokes away lying down, eyes needling at Lupe from the shadow of her ball cap. Something challenging in the jut of her jaw as, very deliberately, she lets her ankle drop from her knee. Legs parting, showing a flash of pale thigh and the shadowy dip where her bloomers part from her skin.
“Huh,” Lupe says.
Jess kisses her teeth, but doesn’t say anything. Just eases the butt of her smoke between her teeth, and winks. Sweat shining in the hollow of her throat, right there where she’s unbuttoned her uniform low enough that Lupe can see the wifebeater she wears underneath. Butch to her fucking core, even in a skirt. Lupe knows she doesn’t wear underwear. Knows she sometimes fits a folded pair of socks between her thighs when they go out looking for girls. Sometimes she thinks about snaking her hand around Jess’ waist and gripping it, just to feel the cotton squeeze between her fingers. But she’s not Jess’ type. It’s all just fun and games, made for this kind of thick afternoon languor.
She’s a study in extremes. All blunt edges and overlarge features. Lupe watches as she works her free hand past the loose placket on the front of her dress. Touches fingertips to her bony sternum, her expression hidden in shadow. When Lupe first met Jess she’d struck her off as too countrified to bother with. But now she thinks all that good clean rural air up in Canada must’ve worked a screw loose. The way she dives for a ball. The way she sucks a cigarette down to nothing in record time. The way she noses up to girls, unerring like something wild and distinctly animal. The way she watches Lupe; like Lupe isn’t wearing pants and fucking girls just like her. Sometimes she wonders who’d fuck who, if she gave in to Jess’ teasing. Sometimes, she feels like she doesn’t want to find out.
(It’d be Jess. She knows it. She’d have Lupe bent over something before either of them could think.)
“What’re you doing?” Lupe asks her.
Jess smiles, cocks an eyebrow. Rocks her smoke between her teeth and replies: “Smoking. What’re you doing?”
Wondering if you’ve got a pair of your old gym socks up those shorts, Lupe thinks. She rolls her head to the side, detaching from the world that lies under Jess’ skirt. Watches a bird settle on the roof of the dugout, in the hot shade of which she can see Jo and Greta, talking. Heads tipped together, one of Greta’s long legs stretched out into the sunlight. Lupe watches her foot rock idly back and forth, feeling drowsy. The sun beats down like a hammer. All she can smell is hot grass, and the faint musk of Jess’ sweat.
She dozes. Dreams of rubbing salve into the stitching of her glove. Easing her thumbs into the leather until it’s supple and shining, until her hands are as soft as the glove itself. When she wakes, Jess is gone. Nothing but a flattened patch of grass and a couple cigarette butts to show she’d been there at all.
Dreamily, Lupe reaches out to touch the bent grass. Feels the dry heat of the earth. From across the diamond, she can hear the unmistakable sound of someone playing catch. The rhythmic and comforting thump of baseball meeting glove. Soundtrack of their lives.
Next to her in the grass lies one cigarette. Filterless; the type Jess wouldn’t ever give a femme. At its side, a single match. A warm breeze makes both offerings shudder and roll together. Lupe plucks the cigarette from the ground, snaps the match against her sole, and lights it. Eyes fluttering shut as she relaxes back into the grass. From across the field comes the sound of a baseball hitting the side of the dugout, and then, Jess’ loud bark of a laugh.
“Foul ball!” she cries, to whoever it is she’s playing catch with. Lupe snorts, but doesn’t look up. Instead she smokes, drops ash on her uniform, turns her face to the sun. Lets herself get caught up in sticky summer daydreams concerning armpit hair, muscular forearms, chewed-up fingernails. Little red shorts pulling alluringly away from pale thighs.