Chapter Text
Greta flinched slightly as her hair snagged on a pin, and Carson’s hands paused their work.
“Sorry! I’m so sorry, Greta, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Greta reached over her shoulder to rest her hand reassuringly on Carson’s knee where she sat above and behind Greta on the edge of the bed, helping to set her pin curls for the evening. Greta sat on the floor leaning against Carson’s legs with her own tucked to the side. She squeezed Carson’s knee gently and then dropped her hand.
“That’s okay, Carson. Beauty is pain after all.” The platitude came easily—how many times had she reassured herself the same way? She’d first learned the words when she was small, and eventually they became a mantra. Beauty might sometimes hurt, but that pain was her armor against a world that would hurt her far worse if she gave it any opportunity.
Carson let out a hoarse laugh. “Well, you must be in pain a lot. Because you’re beautiful! Not that—I didn’t mean I wanted you to be in pain. I don’t want to hurt you. Nothing should hurt you.”
Greta sighed gently. “Carson, I’ve been sleeping in pin curls since I was 13. You aren’t going to hurt me. I promise.” She dropped the back of her head against Carson’s legs momentarily and then lifted it back up to signal her to keep working. Carson sectioned out another lock of hair and warmth thrilled through Greta at the graze of her fingertips on her scalp. It was pleasant, having someone to help her with her hair like this. Intimate, even, but innocent. Earlier that week she had shown Carson the curling pattern she preferred, and Carson had watched in the mirror over her shoulder in the bathroom with an earnestness that pierced straight to Greta’s heart, memorizing the style with the same intensity she gave to studying her gamecards. And now here they were, Carson replicating the pattern she had learned so carefully, sectioning, rolling, and pinning with gentle, clever fingers.
Greta rolled her shoulders back, trying to release the tension of the day. The scene was innocuous enough—no one would think anything of Carson helping her with her hair, and she had left the door partially open, enough that no one would suspect them of anything untoward. This way, they signaled their innocence to anyone walking past while still gaining a degree of privacy. She could let herself relax, indulge in this intimacy. Just a little.
This moment felt like a luxury. Not just being here with Carson but having someone else help her with this nightly ritual. Even in sleep, Greta prepared to face the world. She slept on her back so her skin cream wouldn’t smear on her pillowcase and years of pin curls had inured her to the ache of them pulling at her hair and pressing into her scalp. Greta Gill had perfect lipstick, perfect poise, and perfect curls. And none of those things came without effort and practice. Just like she drilled her swing, learned to run plays, and trained her awareness to encompass every player on the infield, Greta’s life was an exercise in striving for perfection. She applied her makeup every morning, spent every day vigilant to any moment that might turn into a threat without her intervention, and every evening she washed her face and checked her nails and set her pin curls to start it over again. As long as she was the right kind of pretty, the right kind of strong, the right kind of flirty, she could be safe. The people she loved could be safe.
Carson tapped gently as she set the last curl. “There! All finished.” Greta blinked. The tension in her shoulders was back, but so was the warmth of her affection for Carson. She twisted to face her, and with a glance at the door—she knew no one was out there, she would have heard them in the hallway—she pressed a kiss to the inside of Carson’s wrist.
“Thank you,” she said, and even though she had meant the expression of gratitude to be casual, she heard her voice come out husky and slightly raw. Carson, eyes wide, leaning in towards Greta like her body couldn’t possibly orient in any other direction, ghosted her fingers across Greta’s cheek. Greta’s torso was pressed against her legs, and she could smell the faint remnants of Carson’s soap. Carson’s pupils were blown wide in her warm eyes, a slight crease between her brows and her lips parted. She was so beautiful. And she looked at Greta with such adoration, such tenderness, such hunger. Greta felt like if she let herself, she could break in this moment. Her heart would burst, and there would be no defenses, no armor, nothing nothing nothing but Carson.
She pulled back. She picked herself up to her feet and let out a high, light laugh. “I appreciate it, Shaw,” and this time her voice came out in the timber she expected. Her eyes darted around, looking for a reason to leave her own room, and landed on the cold cream at her bedside. She grabbed it and blew Carson a kiss as she left for the bathroom, falling back on her comfortable show of friendly flirtation. Her public mask, her ready defense. The walls she kept between her and the world, protecting her. Isolating her.
She finished the rest of her evening routine, made sure her face and her hair and her armor would be ready in the morning. When she returned, Carson was gone. Greta pressed a hand to where she’d been sitting, felt the warmth Carson’s body had left on the mattress, and didn’t let herself wish that she could feel that warmth in bed beside her through the night.
The next morning, Greta was walking by Jo’s room when she heard Joey say something she couldn’t quite make out and Maybelle giggle in reply. She knocked on the door and heard Maybelle’s chipper but slightly muffled reply.
“Come on in!” Greta pushed the door open and stopped in the entryway. Jo sat at the edge of her bed just as Carson had sat on Greta’s the evening before. Half of her hair was in one braided pigtail, and the other half was well on its way. Greta hadn’t seen Jo in braids since they were children. Maybelle perched up on her knees behind her with a hair tie in her mouth and a brush discarded on the bed beside her, a look of absolute glee on her face. She spat the hair tie out to rest beside the brush and turned to Greta, bouncing a little in her exuberance.
“Josephine is letting me do her hair! Doesn’t she look positively precious like this?” Maybelle said with glee, leaning around Jo and pulling her shoulder to get a look at her face, keeping the braid-in-progress gripped safely in one hand. With the other she reached up to give Jo a playful pinch on the cheek, and Joey let her before laughingly batting her hand away.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t badger me into this, blondie. I just figured letting you get your way was the best bet for getting you to leave me alone.” But her cheeks were dusted lightly pink, and Greta cocked an eyebrow. She hadn’t realized Joey was so far gone for her roommate. Her heart clenched a little; she hoped Joey was being safe. Greta didn’t quite have a read on Maybelle. She was a sweet girl, certainly, but people like her and Joey had never come up between them, and Greta knew even the sweetest seeming women could turn cruel and cold.
Not that she could say so to Jo. She would call out her hypocrisy, the way she was carrying on with Carson, and she’d be right to. She and Jo, they kept each other safe, each in their own ways. Jo had put her body on the line for Greta more times than she could count, shielding Greta from police violence and handsy men and virulent women alike. Her style, her swagger, drew judgmental eyes away from Greta. Greta did her best to draw those eyes back to herself in safe, socially acceptable ways. Her carefully curated hair and wardrobe, her practiced flirtation and meticulously directed attention all served to bring people’s focus toward her and her show of harmless, hyper-femininity, and Jo was made more acceptable by association. But she could only protect Jo if she kept herself safe first. They had their rules for a reason.
She ran her eyes over Jo laughing under Maybelle’s ministrations. Jo made sacrifices for the social show too. She understood the need for dresses and skirts, occasionally let Greta do her hair or her makeup. But even in skirts, Jo’s blouses emphasized the breadth of her shoulders, the strength of her arms. Deluca the Bazooka, the best slugger in the league, and Greta knew that she could throw a punch with the same focused power she used to swing a bat. She might put on a skirt or some lipstick, but she always held herself like a butch. The set of her chin, the confidence in her stride, her shoulders back and chest out, presenting herself as a challenge. Jo didn’t know how to make herself smaller, even in a world that demanded it, and Greta would never ask that of her.
That made it all the sweeter, to see Jo like this, letting Maybelle put her hair in a little girl’s style. Stepping outside of the presentation she was comfortable with not to make herself more palatable but to experience this moment of joy and intimacy with someone she cared for. Maybelle tied off the braid and smacked a kiss on Jo’s cheek, plopping down beside her and leaning back on her hands. Jo shifted her weight as Mabelle sat, pressing their shoulders together.
“Greta, how’s it looking?” Maybelle asked. Greta approached, and Joey beamed up at her.
“What’s the verdict, Bird? Am I a fetching lady?” Greta reached out to stroke a stray hair off Joey’s forehead, her heart full of memories of their childhood together, a time before they knew how to hide themselves from the world or even that they should.
“You look real cute, Joey,” Greta said as she gently flicked her on the nose. Jo scrunched up her face, and Maybelle laughed beside them.
“Don’t she just? I knew you were a woman of taste, Gill.” Maybelle poked a finger into Jo’s cheek, who rolled her eyes and leaned away, fighting a smile. Maybelle grinned, obviously pleased by the affect she had on Jo, and then sprang to her feet.
“Oh! Actually, Greta, I sure could use your help.” She went to her dresser and pulled out a bowl, a comb, a brush, a bottle of peroxide, and a small dropper of what Greta assumed was ammonia. Maybelle turned, her dark eyes big and pleading. “Will you help me touch up my roots? I want to make sure I get the back even.”
Greta cocked an eyebrow. “You bleach your hair, Maybelle?”
“Of course I do, sugar, you didn’t think I came outta my mama with hair this blonde and brows this dark? That’s why I need your help though, I don’t want anybody not in the know to know, you know?” Maybelle juggled her armload to tap the side of her nose and wink at Greta conspiratorially. “So, what do you say?”
“I’d say you’re in luck, Belle. It just so happens I’ve bleached a head or two in my time.” Behind Maybelle’s back, Jo rolled her eyes at the oblique reference to one of the ways Greta explained her presence in her lovers’ houses. Maybelle squealed in delight, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“Thanks a million, Greta, you’re saving my life. Josephine! You should go downstairs so everyone can see my hard work, you adorable thing!” She bounded out of the room, one hand balancing her supplies and the other dragging Greta along by her wrist. Greta laughed a goodbye to Jo over her shoulder and saw her eyes follow Maybelle, soft and fond as the blonde hurried to the bathroom. Greta’s joy hardened slightly. She adored Maybelle as much as the next Peach, but if she hurt Joey, Greta would ruin her. She needed Joey to stay safe. But she wanted Jo to trust her choices, so she trusted Jo’s and followed Maybelle into the bathroom.
As they entered, Maybelle dropped Greta’s wrist and busied herself setting up her supplies. She poured the peroxide into the bowl and started to open the ammonia dropper.
Greta interjected, “You sure you know how to use this stuff? It can be pretty strong.”
“You betcha, buttercup. One of my friends from school works in a salon now, and she showed a bunch of us what to do when she was learning.”
Greta nodded, reassured, and watched Maybelle in the mirror as she mixed her bleach.
“So why do you do this anyway? Bleach your hair?”
“I guess it helps me feel more like me. Like who I was meant to be. Sure, it’s not the hair God gave me, but it feels like I was always meant to be a blonde. And, you know, with tits like these, I’m practically duty bound to lean into the bit,” Maybelle laughed.
Greta chuckled along with her. “Well, let it never be said that you let down your tits, Maybelle. You serve them well.”
Maybelle chortled as she parted her hair and brushed the mixture onto her roots. “I just feel like I’ve always been meant to be a pretty girl, and this is what makes me feel prettiest, I suppose. I don’t mind putting in the work for it. I remember the first time when that girl I mention—her name was Elsie. We used to call her Easy Elsie, but she’s the one who started it! And you know I’m not one to talk,” she said, grinning at Greta in the mirror. “Anyway, the first time Elsie wanted to practice bleaching hair, I volunteered, and I’ll tell you, seeing myself, like that? First time ever I felt like I looked how I was meant to. And I’ve been blonde ever since.”
Maybelle kept chatting as she brushed on the bleach, but Greta was only halfway paying attention. Maybelle did her hair like this because it made her feel pretty, and she knew she was a pretty girl. When she looked in the mirror, she saw the person she wanted to be. Greta couldn’t help but feel a seed of envy alongside her fondness for Maybelle. Greta was a pretty girl too, but she didn’t feel that joy, that self-actualization as she looked at her reflection over Maybelle’s shoulder. Her hair and her lipstick—they didn’t make her feel like her. They made her feel armed. She wore them like armor, wielded them like a shield and weapon both, to protect herself, to protect Jo, to protect the women she slept with and refused to let herself love. To protect Carson, and she didn’t think about the way she separated her from the other women there had been.
Maybe the difference between them was that Maybelle was straight, although after the way she’d been teasing Joey, Greta wasn’t as sure as she’d been. But Greta didn’t know a thing about Maybelle’s knowledge of women like them, and Jo never had been as quick to clock people as Greta. She’d been known to fall for a straight girl a time or two. Maybe there was that fundamental difference between Maybelle and her. Maybe that was why Maybelle enjoyed putting this effort into her appearance, while Greta was left exhausted by her own pursuit of perfection. Because Maybelle wanted the world to see who she was, and Greta desperately, despairingly didn’t.
“Sugar? You mind helping me just finish up the back?” Greta startled and moved automatically forward to accept the bleach brush Maybelle held out to her. “I think I’ve got most all of it, so if you could just make sure the parts I can’t see are covered, that would be golden.”
Greta applied the bleach and knew Maybelle’s eyes on her were a little too gentle. Despite the delight she had in her blonde hair and her own jokes about it, Maybelle had always been sharper than she usually let on. Greta felt a little too seen, a little too known.
“Greta? What makes you feel pretty? Like really pretty, pretty in the way you’re meant to be?” Greta had known something like it was coming, but the question struck deep. She thought about Jo cupping her cheek, the love they had for each other, the way they built a life together. She thought about the warmth of labored breaths, soft against her face as a woman fell apart under her, trusting Greta with her pleasure and her marriage and her secrets. She thought about Carson, Carson and her earnestness and her eagerness, and the pleasure and the joy and the fear were too much to articulate. She looked at Maybelle, their gazes separated by the mirror. Maybelle’s eyes were soft and a little sad, and Greta’s own were shiny with tears she would not shed.
Maybelle gently took the brush from her hand. “I don’t know who or what you were thinking of, but whatever it is I suggest you do more of it. Nevermind your hair and your clothes, sugar. That look on your face, that love in your heart? That’s what makes you pretty. It makes you beautiful.” She paused for a beat and then added, “Thank you for helping me, Greta. I just have to wait about twenty minutes and then wash it out.”
Greta was grateful for the dismissal. She passed Shirley in the hall as she left, and heard her shriek, “Maybelle! What is in your hair? Is that safe? It cannot possibly be safe, just the smell is making my eyes water. Maybelle, what are you doing?”
Greta didn’t turn around to help rescue Maybelle from the concern of their neurotic teammate. She needed a moment to bring all her walls back up around her heart.
Later that evening, feeling more grounded after an afternoon practice, Greta sat in an armchair, with a book open in her hands. Carson was up in her room, but Shirley was there too, and Carson had told Greta she wanted to review her cards before bed. So Greta was here, without her, watching the people around her. Ana sat nearby with a foot propped up on the chair across from her. She was sipping a beer and reading, some Agatha Christie novel. Greta wouldn’t have guessed those to be her taste, but she was certainly enjoying it. Esti shared the table with her, writing a letter, and occasionally Ana paused to show her something, reading out loud while tracing the words with her finger, accompanied by exaggerated facial expressions. Esti didn’t seem like she understood everything Ana read, but she clearly reveled in the attention, and Greta could see her mouthing the shape of the words after Ana read them.
Lupe was planted on the arm of the couch. She leaned forward with her elbows resting on her knees, legs wide and braced on either side of Jess’s back. Her lower lip was sucked between her teeth in concentration as she carefully sectioned Jess’s hair, her nimble pitcher’s fingers weaving the strands into the low, tight braid Jess preferred. Jess sat sideways with one leg bent against the back supporting her elbow and the other hanging off the seat, loose and languid. Jess twisted, trying to look at Lupe whenever she got animated, and Lupe kept corralling her with swats to the side of the head when she had a hand free or a foot jabbed into her side when she didn’t. The two of them were ribbing each other, recalling memories of some adventure Greta was both glad and strangely wistful to have missed.
The aching rawness from earlier returned, and she bit her lip to try and keep the feeling tamped down in her chest. She couldn’t stop looking at Jess. The way she sat, so sprawled and comfortable. Greta envied, sometimes, the exuberant freedom with which Jess lived her life, the fitness she so clearly felt inhabiting her body. Jess’s existence seemed almost entirely physical. Greta never heard her say all that much, but she slung her arms around her friends, rough housed with Lupe and Jo, celebrated victory and mourned failure with the same sheer physicality with which she threw a ball or swung a bat.
But Greta also thought about the pinched, hurt look on Jess’s face when they first saw that their uniforms were dresses, the bitter defiance with which she wore her pants, the immense discomfort she felt, stuffed in a dress and painted with makeup when Greta had saved her at charm school. She would do it again, to keep Jess and her lightning reflexes and long reach on the team, but she couldn’t forget the frantic look in Jess’s eyes as she raged in the street like a trapped animal. Even with the aid of Greta’s best lipstick and hairstyling expertise, Jess didn’t pass. She couldn’t pass, and that struck Greta to her core. Greta carefully crafted her image, always desperately conscious of presenting a woman who was palatable and expected and noteworthy only in the ways she wished to be. But Jess didn’t know how to be anything other than herself, feral and wild and so clearly queer that it frightened Greta.
Greta saw how Jess pressed herself into the feeling of Lupe’s legs supporting her, how Lupe’s surprisingly gentle fingers sometimes ghosted across Jess’s jaw and neck as she gathered the hair. It was so obvious to Greta, that something was going on between the two of them. She didn’t know what exactly it was, but she hoped that they were being careful. Jess was her shortstop and her roommate and maybe her friend, and Lupe was their pitcher, and Greta wanted them safe. Jess was the antithesis of all the ways Greta protected herself, absolutely authentic in her queerness and her passion, her manner of dress and her mode of being. Even with her place on the team in question, a place Greta knew Jess prized, she hadn’t been able to hide herself for more than moments.
Greta didn’t know much about Moose Horn or wherever it was that Jess had come from, but she thought that if Jess had come from there like this, so bold and free and true to herself, maybe it was a place Greta might like to be some day. Some place like it. She couldn’t quite imagine that. She wasn’t sure she knew who she would be if she didn’t have to hide.
Lupe was at the nape of Jess’s neck now, but her sections were wildly uneven, and she spat out something in Spanish that had Jess thrusting an elbow into her calf and hissing, “Not in front of the kid!” Esti looked up and rolled her eyes, mumbled something that Greta didn’t catch but had Jess barking out a short laugh, and then returned to her letter.
Lupe undid half the braid and ran her fingers through the loosened ends to detangled them. Jess’s eyes closed briefly at the touch of Lupe’s fingers on her scalp, and a silent shudder ran through Greta. She remembered Carson’s fingers in her hair and her heart yearned both for the woman sequestered upstairs and for the longing for a place where she didn’t have to hide what she felt for her. Where she and Carson and Jo and Jess all were free to be and to love as they were. Without fear and without pain. Without the walls that shielded and separated them.
Even rooming with Jess—Jess, who Greta had clocked within seconds, who risked her freedom and her livelihood daily because she couldn’t bear to hide herself—even with Jess, the truth remained unspoken. Greta didn’t know if Jess had clocked her, although she suspected she had. There had been a number of raised eyebrows and broad smirks that suggested Jess picked up on more than she let on. But whatever Jess knew, she kept to herself and let Greta keep the barrier of her lipstick and her pin curls between them. Even if Greta had wanted to let Jess in, she wasn’t sure she knew how to be seen any more. She wasn’t sure she knew how to see herself. She wondered what it would be like, to look in the mirror and have a person who felt like her reflected back. To inhabit her body without the pressure of carefully honed instincts and curated looks weighing her down. She couldn’t even imagine existing like that, risking like that. Greta was welded inside of her armor. If she tried to take it off at all it would be ruined forever. She would never be able to put it back on.
Lupe finally finished the braid and gave it a sharp tug after tying it off, jerking Jess’s head back. Jess cursed, the hypocrite, and she drove that pointy elbow back into Lupe’s leg again and just like that they were tussling on the couch, all elbows and headlocks and excuses to touch each other. Lupe’s dark eyes were shining, and Jess’s entire face was splitting with the force of her smile. As the two roughhoused, Esti came back into the room. Greta hadn’t even seen her leave, but she was carrying some hair supplies. She stopped in front of the couch, and Jess pulled away from Lupe to turn her attention over, still grinning. Her eyes were soft as she looked up at Esti, who asked something in Spanish.
“Sure kid,” said Jess, giving Lupe a sharp pinch to the ribs as she opened her mouth. Jess obviously expected Lupe to deny whatever Esti asked, and Greta agreed with her assessment. Jess pulled farther away from Lupe and patted the couch between them. “Sit here. I’ll do your hair.” Esti sat, perching on the edge of the cushion so that Jess had room to work behind her, and she looked so happy to be participating in something that Greta’s heart ached. They all should really pay more attention to the kid.
Jess was trying to replicate the twists that usually led into Esti’s pigtails, but she was out of her depth. Lupe tried to remain aloof, but she was clearly getting frustrated by Jess’s fumbling. Finally, as the top of the twist fell loose a third time, Lupe muttered something under her breath and reached behind Esti to grab Jess’s wrist. She didn’t make eye contact, but she snapped, “You’re doing it wrong,” and her voice was low and tight. Jess put up her free hand in surrender and gave Lupe the brush.
Lupe divided Esti’s hair, draping half over toward Jess, and smoothed back her own half before returning the brush. She started sectioning and twisting the hair back from Esti’s face, and Jess copied her motions, tongue pressed into her cheek as she concentrated. As they worked, Esti chattered in Spanish, nearly vibrating off her seat with the effort of keeping still despite her excitement at having Jess and Lupe’s attention. Anyone’s attention. Greta really should try harder with her. It warmed and broke her heart both, to see Esti shine with the smallest modicum of care from the people she admired.
When they were done, Jess’s side was looser and less even than Lupe’s, but it seemed secure enough when Esti twisted and flung her arms around Jess, exclaiming in Spanish. Greta heard gracias, which she knew was thank you, and Esti apparently knew that too because she pulled back from Jess with her hands still around her neck and said, “Thank you, Jess. You are kind. To me.” Then she turned to Lupe, whose shoulders were drawn up tight and hunched, and reached for her wrist.
“Gracias, Lupe.” She said more, earnest and effusive, that Greta didn’t know. She thought Esti was thanking Lupe for helping Jess get her hair right from the way Lupe’s eyes flicked over to Jess as Esti spoke. Esti gave Lupe’s wrist a squeeze and then returned to the table with Ana, who had been watching with amusement and gave Esti a friendly punch on the shoulder as she sat back down. Lupe’s shoulders stayed drawn, and she didn’t move, looking resolutely off into an unoccupied corner of the room. Greta didn’t know what was between her and the kid, but she thought Lupe could stand to be a damn sight kinder to her. Jess didn’t look at Lupe, but she moved casually until their legs were pressed against each other and then slung an arm across her shoulders.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she admitted, and Greta had lived with Jess long enough to know that meant thank you. Lupe relaxed slightly into the hold, but it only lasted for a moment before there were footsteps in the hallway. Jess pulled back, and Lupe went upright, and they were both still closer together than Greta would have ever dared here with the others around, but their guard was up. They sat there, joking and laughing as Greta read her book, and the touches between them remained cautious. Esti watched them. Greta didn’t know if she was projecting, but she thought maybe Esti looked sad at the space between them too.
Carson came to Greta’s room as she was getting ready for bed. Greta didn’t know if Jess was still downstairs or if she and Lupe had snuck off to wherever they’d been going, but in the moment, she wasn’t even sure she cared. Greta had already taken off her makeup and applied her cold cream. She’d checked her manicure, filed her nails, and worked strengthening oil into her cuticles, thinking of Jess and her ragged, dirty nails as she did. When Carson came knocking at her door, asking if she wanted help with her hair again, Greta didn’t know whether or not she did. All she knew was that she was tired. She wanted to go to bed. She wanted to go to bed with Carson and hold her and be held. She wanted to sleep without fear of the morning. She wanted a world where she was safe and Carson was safe and Jo was safe and so were Jess and Lupe and all of the women Greta had kissed and held and touched in fear. A world where Dana was safe and free and loved.
She was so tired of spending every second hiding who she was, preparing to defend the people she loved. She ached for envy of Jess’s unmitigated authenticity but also for the shadows in her eyes when she drew away from Lupe. For Maybelle’s joy in her femininity and the pity in her face as she looked at Greta in the mirror. For Jo’s bashful pride at Maybelle’s ministrations and her tentative uncertainty. For Carson. Carson, who threw herself into every rendezvous with an abandon Greta could scarcely believe. Carson, who was normal before Greta. Carson, who was here, now, asking Greta if she could help her again with the ritual she completed every night to prepare to defend herself against the world. Help her pin up her hair and put on her armor and make herself palatable to the people who would hate her if they knew her.
She said yes. She sat down on the floor as Carson went to her dresser. She knew what supplies they needed and where Greta kept them. Carson sat behind her on the edge of the bed, her legs bracketing Greta’s body and she leaned forward to start sectioning her hair. Greta thought of Lupe’s legs around Jess and Maybelle’s hands in Jo’s hair and the swelling ache of the space where Carson resided in her heart. All those people and everyone she loved depended on her to protect them with her laughs and calculated touches and carefully directed winks. And she couldn’t take off her armor, she couldn’t let down her walls.
But maybe, if her walls couldn’t come down and her armor couldn’t come off, she could still let Carson inside with her. And she would keep on smiling and blowing kisses and tossing her hair, but maybe, just once, just for tomorrow, it would be okay if her waves were flatter. She could roll up the front into victory rolls, and maybe no one would care. Just this piece of the ritual, just this time, she could leave behind.
As Carson reached for a pin, Greta touched the back of her hand, and she froze.
“Actually, Carson—” and she felt like she might choke on the words in her throat, but she wanted so desperately to say them—“do you think maybe you could just brush my hair tonight? I just want to be with you.” And Carson swallowed audibly, and Greta felt her own throat convulse around the lump lodged in it, but Carson grazed her hand down Greta’s hair and rested it on her shoulder, firm and solid.
“Of course, Greta. Whatever you want.”
The lump dissipated, and something loosened in her chest, and it still almost hurt to let it in, but Greta thought it might be hope. Hope that, one day, she would live and love and be known without her armor. Hope that, one day, she would be at ease.