Chapter Text
“Do you feel like every decision you’ve ever made has been the wrong one?”
“Yeah, Shauna, I think that’s called your 20s,” Taissa teases her over the phone. “And I don’t think that’s the exact energy you should bring into today.”
Shauna rolls her eyes before managing to knock over a whole tub of counting cubes. Tai’s voice rings out, “Did you just die?”
Shauna would rather fucking die than deal with today.
“I’m good,” she practically seethes. “I’ll find some… good energy, or something. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
Taissa sighs. “Just be yourself, Shauna. But way more chill.” Shauna chuckles. “You’ve got this.”
“Thanks, Tai.”
“Way, way more chill!”
“Byeee, Tai!” Shauna sing-songs, hearing a classic Taissa laugh before hanging up the phone.
She lowers to the floor to hastily pick up all the cubes scattered across the rainbow rug, stabbing her knee with a staple embedded into the carpet.
Again: Shauna would rather fucking die than deal with today.
The beginning of the school year is rough enough, every new colleague of hers has told her—rougher in kindergarten—and before the shitshow can even start, she has to impress parents.
Don’t get her wrong, she’s expecting a lot of really shit aspects to being a teacher. This isn’t necessarily the lofty dream Shauna envisioned after getting her super cool, super useful degree in English Literature. She was hoping that her mid-20s would be spent reading American classics in the downtime from writing her own. She wanted to travel and stay out late and have a million experiences, and write and edit and write more about all of it. While maybe teaching at community college or something. For the money.
But after a couple years of failing to make ends meet with terrible freelance writing jobs (and some waitressing), Shauna’s parents convinced her to get a teaching credential and make some money. In order to, you know, live. It was one of the first things they were united on in a long time. So she got her credential and started looking for jobs straight away. And it didn’t end up leaving her with much free time to have experiences, much less write about them. Who knew?
(Her mom.)
(Her mom knew. And told her many times that it would be hard but she has to grow up.)
So now she’s here, at her old elementary school, the newest and greenest kindergarten teacher with absolutely no idea what she’s doing.
She’s got some idea, but the abstract is very fucking quickly becoming the reality. Yeah, she had to do some student teaching in a fifth grade class last year and she subbed at a middle school, but both were a total nightmare. Her hopes for a high school English class—the sole purpose for getting a combined multiple subject and single subject credential, which took longer—were quickly usurped by her need for a job in general. So to kindergarten she went.
And now it’s time for goddamn orientation.
She probably missed some cubes on the floor. And some other essential things for today. She looks down, checking that her button-down shirt peaks out just a little under her comfy, black crewneck and that her shirt collar is over the neckline instead of under. She leans down to needlessly adjust her trouser-style pants and wipe a smudge on one of her black chunky loafers. But she looks around her room, the walls emptier than they will be by the end of the year, and she takes a big breath in.
More chill. I can do that.
She checks the clock and walks across the room to open her classroom door, dreading the clamoring that's already greeting her.
“Hi! Hi everyone! I’m Ms. Shipman and I am so, so excited to meet everybody today. Come on in and lets get started.”
—
Okay, she can safely say that she was not exaggerating how awful this was gonna be.
The parents aren’t abjectly evil, sure, and all the kids (minus one or two) seem pretty sweet. They’re so little. No wonder Shauna doesn’t remember much from kindergarten— these kids are babies. But still. This is the beginning of a journey and a year that she’s not entirely looking forward to.
She splits the kids up in different areas of the classroom for them to get a taste of different activities, and sets the kitchen timer she stole from her mom so they know when to rotate. The parents are all sticking close to their kids, talking amongst themselves and helping the kids get used to the big scary entity that is school. The numbers are a little uneven because one kid and their parent still haven’t shown up, but it’s going surprisingly okay.
And then the door opens.
“Momma, bad word!”
Finally, something interesting. Or at least, a mom after her own heart given how hard it’s going to be to remember that expletives are pretty frowned upon in an elementary school.
Shauna looks in the direction of the voice.
And is met with the already locked stare of Jackie Taylor.
Jackie Taylor, whose mere presence defined the majority of Shauna’s life.
Jackie Taylor, whose absence has completely defined the latest years without it.
Jackie Taylor being called—
“Mommm.” The boy tugs her forward, further into the room. She slips (but catches herself) on a cube on the floor.
“I’m sorry we’re late,” Jackie starts. Jackie. She’s walking towards Shauna and all Shauna can think is Jackie Jackie Jackie. “There was an outfit mishap right before we left.”
She looks beautiful. Shauna’s sure without checking that other parents are looking at her, too, no doubt thinking the same thing everyone always has. Wow, she’s really beautiful.
Her hair’s dyed darker, all but her slight curtain bangs pulled back into the kind of quick ponytail that high school Jackie never would’ve left the house with before perfecting. She’s wearing straight-leg jeans and a boxy brown sweater-vest overtop a white babydoll tee. She seems to have swapped gold for silver and it suits her, Shauna thinks. (She’s thinking a lot of things.) The hoops in her ears compliment her hair and Shauna notices the new second and third piercing holes, too. Different rings adorn nearly all her fingers and if you asked Shauna why she cares, she would probably scream, but she desperately tries to confirm that none resemble a wedding band or an engagement ring or-or a promise ring—
“Shauna?”
And fuck, yeah, Shauna has to get it together. Her eyes are still stuck on the perfect stupid hands and hair and face in front of her. “Yeah, no–no, that’s okay.”
Jackie doesn’t look any less nervous, though, as she nods her head about a million miles per second. She blinks her wide eyes and looks down quickly before focusing again at Shauna, pulling the little human Shauna still has yet to even notice closer to her.
“This is, um— this is Henry!” She smiles and inhales sharply.
Then Shauna looks down at— at who? Jackie has to be a nanny or something. Maybe an aunt. Regardless of having no siblings.
But then this kid—with his mousy, honey blonde hair and his huge brown eyes—puts on a big goofy smile as he waves up at her and fuck.
Jackie’s son.
“Hi,” his voice is squeaky and scratchy and just like 5-year-old Jackie’s.
Jackie has a son.
And all of a sudden, Shauna’s only keeping it semi together and her hands are shaking and her eyes are bigger than big because she’s not sure that this isn’t a dream. Or even a really elaborate prank. So she bends down lightly and puts her hands on her knees the way she has for every kid today.
“Hi, Henry,”—god, her teacher voice is so fucking embarrassing—“I don’t know if it was you or your mom that had an outfit mishap, but I love your Star Wars shirt,” she smiles at him and he smiles back. She tries her hardest not to notice another smile in her periphery.
“Thank you,”—and of course he has manners—“it’s Han So-wo!”
Shauna chuckles. “It is?!”
“Yeah!” He squeaks. Jackie’s hand—Jackie’s hand. Jackie—reaches over to ruffle his hair. Shauna finally looks at her again and god.
How did she survive this long without looking at her?
She straightens her back and clears her throat. “So Henry, why don’t you go grab one of the papers from that desk over there and then see if you can find your name at one of these tables!”
Henry runs off before he has time to forget his task.
Jackie calls after him. “Walk, babe!”
And then it’s just Jackie and Shauna.
Jackie. And Shauna. Jackie Jackie JackieJackieJackie.
Now if anyone’s wondering what to say to the ex most important person in your life after imagining and reimagining this moment for years, look no further. Shauna’s got it covered.
“Hi.”
Jackie lets out a big, long breath and smiles sadly. “Hi.”
Shauna clenches her fist to stop herself from reaching out. “I didn’t know you”—had a kid, dyed your hair, had a kid—“were in town.”
“Yeah, you— you either.” The only thing that gives Jackie away is the stutter, the shake of her voice. Or, it should be, but Shauna knows Jackie’s nerves better than she knows her own. She knows that if she were to look down right now, she’d see Jackie’s index finger picking at the skin around her thumbnail. “I mean, I saw your name when classes got assigned but… before then, I didn’t—” she cuts herself off. “Anyway, sorry, you know I hate being late,” she tries to say lightly.
It feels like Shauna was just shot in the stomach because yeah. She does know that. What she doesn’t know is what the fuck to say or do or think or feel, so she just stands there. Looking probably pretty comatose.
“So, is everyone in groups or—”
“Jackie.” Shauna springs back to reality and, as usual, can’t fucking help herself, reaching out to grab her wrist. The contact is completely electrifying and she can’t help but tug. “Can we— could we maybe talk?”
Jackie’s smile wavers for only a moment, and a look Shauna’s never seen before flashes across her face. “We’re okay, Shauna. We don’t have to—”
“No, please,” Shauna pleads, stepping forward. Her thumb strokes up and down Jackie’s wrist, as if there’s not a million other people in the room with them. “I just… I think we should talk. Sometime.”
They look at each other long enough for Shauna to hear only buzzing in her ears. Jackie’s eyes are greener than Shauna remembers—which makes her jaw clench because how the fuck could she let herself forget—as they search back and forth between Shauna’s own. Shauna can feel tendons twitch beneath her fingers.
“Jackie, I miss—”
“Ms. Shipman, we might need your help with this scavenger hunt!”
Shauna looks over to Rebecca goddamn Bowman and the rest of the parents and plasters on her best smile. “Right there!” But she makes no move to go. She looks back at Jackie pleadingly.
Jackie tilts her head and huffs out a breath of acquiescence. “Later,” she nods at Shauna. “I have to go over there, too, anyway— remember?”
Shauna’s sure that her nods come a little too enthusiastically and her eyes shine a little too earnestly. “Okay.” Okay. Okay. “Later?”
Jackie at least looks a little endeared by her patheticness as she looks her face all over. “Later.”
Shauna doesn’t let go of Jackie’s wrist until they’ve settled in with the rest of the group.
—
As it turns out, ’later’ means something different to Jackie than it would to any normal person because, for Shauna, it meant as soon as she was able to shake off the 30 or so parents she had to wrangle. But for Jackie, no, of course it has to be vague and of course Shauna has to feel stupid for assuming, because as soon as orientation ended, Jackie said she had to get to work.
Jackie at work. It’s such a foreign thought. Shauna wonders what it is— if she likes it. If she does something where she’s in charge of other people. If she has to use her hands.
“To another school year!” A voice pulls her out of her thoughts that would’ve certainly led to cardiac arrest.
“May it be uneventful and, most importantly, go by fast!”
“To Shauna’s first year!”
There’s a round of whooping and clanking glasses as everyone cheers each other.
Some of the teachers dragged Shauna out for drinks after everyone’s long, long day of getting to know their classes. Shauna’s not really one to let herself be dragged (anymore), but she really could use a fucking drink. Like, concerningly so.
There’s a million thoughts reverberating around her head, but the loudest by far has to be—
How did she not know that Jackie has a kid?
She saw the name ‘Taylor’ on the roster, yeah, and she had to shake off a weird shiver down her spine, sure, but it didn’t cross her mind that if Jackie had a kid, its last name would be Taylor.
Wow, Shauna. An alcoholic and sexist.
She has to know more. Why Jackie’s back in town, how she has a kid. Not logistically how she has a kid, because Shauna absolutely cannot think about that for longer than a beat without clenching her fists, but the rest of it: she needs to know.
It’s driving her up the wall because this is so fucking classic— even years later, Shauna’s immediately crawling and begging for scraps. She can’t help but feel the familiar pang of resentment at how much she’s willing to beg.
And, yeah. The falling out was Shauna’s fault.
The slow demise of the friendship? Both of their faults, probably. She can admit that now. But how it ended? That one’s on Shauna.
She let things fester and sour until Jackie couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t wait anymore for Shauna to break and tell her what was wrong. But by the time Jackie got to that point, Shauna already had one foot out the door on her way to Brown. She left just in time for a fight, but without enough time for Jackie to talk her out of it.
Which would have worked, by the way. Shauna’s aware.
But what haunts Shauna is the fact that Jackie still doesn’t know the biggest, darkest, awfullest, Jeff-shaped piece of the puzzle. Shauna never had the balls to tell her. And even now, she’ll take it to her grave if she can.
(It’s bad. She knows.)
“Shauna, you need a refill?”
She snaps out of her reverie to realize that she’s been sitting in silence since the toast, tapping her fingers on the table at record speed and sucking her drink through her straw at a new record speed.
Great first impression. Good job.
“Oh, uh,” she looks around the table. At everyone’s still very full drinks. “Yeah, sorry, I totally zoned.”
An older male teacher laughs. “Beginning of the year will do that to ya!”
Shauna’s glad for the kindness and pours herself another from the jug on the table.
God bless margarita pitchers.
“Hey, Shauna,” a woman further down the table calls. “Who was that young mom that I saw running to your class? I was trying to tell Amanda— not to be weird, but she has to be some kind of model or something right?”
Again: God bless margarita pitchers.
“That’s, um, that’s Jackie, she’s a-a new parent.” She clears her throat. “They’re all new for me, though, so hopefully no one noticed that I have no clue what I’m doing!” She takes a big sip. Second drink down.
The people at the table who aren’t involved their own conversations all ‘aww’ and reassure her.
“I’m gonna go to the bathroom real quick,” she stands up all too fast.
A model. Whatever.
Shauna’s gonna model walk her way to the bathroom and– oh god, she’s a little tipsy.
She makes her way through the bar, realizing she has no clue where the bathroom is. It’s a small town, but she’s only been to this place once, in a meetup with Taissa while they were both home from winter break one year. About a half a drink in, Tai saw Van crossing the street to the bar, walking and laughing with Lottie—seriously, coming back to Wiskayok for break just meant running into everyone you’ve ever known like you’re stuck in a pinball machine—and they made a break for it.
The point is, Shauna didn’t get the chance to scope out the bathroom. But she thinks she’s going in the right direction.
She feels her before she catches sight of her.
Once when they were little, Jackie came to her so seriously to say that she was psychic because she could feel where Shauna is in any room. And when Shauna—with equal seriousness—told her that she could do the same, they reached the only logical conclusion: that they were intrinsically, psychically connected, and they pinky promised not to ever tell a soul.
“Shauna?”
She’s never whipped her head around faster.
Jackie’s staring at her with wide eyes. “I thought I—” she cuts herself off with a shake of her head. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Shauna responds a little too loudly. She looks around but doesn’t see anyone obviously with Jackie.
“Is Henry…?”
“Not with me tonight,” Jackie answers extra clearly, enunciating every word so that Shauna doesn’t miss any. But that might just be Shauna’s imagination. “I was just here with some people after work, but they left,” she adds, more relaxedly.
Jackie married is looking further away as a possibility and Shauna’s trying extremely hard not to focus on the warmth flooding her chest at the thought.
And by the little knowing, intrigued glint in Jackie’s eye, Shauna knows she must not be hiding the hopefulness very well from her face.
Jackie looks good. Shauna was almost too in shock earlier to really notice it. (Almost.) Her hair’s freed now from the effortless-looking ponytail from earlier, her natural waves flowing past her collarbones, a little longer than Shauna’s seen it in a long time. Shauna notices a leather jacket that she doesn’t recognize thrown over the small backrest of her bar stool before focusing her eyes on Jackie’s hands, adorned with all her new rings, circling loosely around her nearly empty glass. Shauna’s only had two drinks (way too fucking quickly) but the only discernible thought swirling around her head is the silver is working for you.
Suddenly, Jackie’s laughing and her ears are turning red. “Thanks, Shipman.”
Oh my god, she said that out loud.
“Do you need another drink?” Jackie raises her eyebrows, an amused look on her face.
“Yes, yeah,” Shauna doesn’t even think about it. “I– yes.”
“Unless— sorry, you’re probably here with someone,” Jackie’s cool resolve cracks just a little and she looks nervous for the answer.
Shauna should lie. She should say she’s on a date. She doesn’t know why, or why Jackie would care. But she knows that she would.
Fortunately, space has made her weak. “No, no, I’m just here with some teachers.”
Jackie looks happy about it. You should have lied, you dumb fucking—
“Sit.”
The stool scratches the floor with the swiftness that Shauna pulls it out.
—asshole.
“So, how, um–,” Jackie takes a big breath. “How was the rest of—”
“Jackie, you have a kid?”
The tequila’s catching up to her.
Jackie lets out a small, nervous huff of laughter and looks down at her lap before pulling her eyes back up to Shauna. “Yeah, I have a kid.”
They stare at each other for a second or maybe a zillion years. There’s an unspoken this isn’t how it was supposed to be between them, their eyes shining at each other like they’ve come home but they can’t really get the door open.
Shauna’s not used to this more reserved, less bubbly Jackie. To anyone else, this Jackie probably seems entirely collected and confident and perfect. But to Shauna she seems—
She seems almost defeated.
“So you… you were twenty-one?”
“Yeah,” Jackie nods. “Just about.”
Shauna was trying acid at a cabin with her English major friends (never again, to all of these things, by the way) and Jackie was having a fucking baby.
“How did that— I mean— like,” Shauna fumbles over any discernible sentence. “In the least offensive way, I know that that wasn’t, like— a part of your plan.”
“Yeah, it…” Jackie sucks in a deep breath. “It’s a long story.”
Shauna just raises her eyebrows in what she hopes reads as curiosity, but fears is desperation.
Jackie at least looks at her like she’d give in either way. (Would she? Would she always have?) “He wasn’t planned, yeah, but he’s—”
A bartender suddenly fucking materializes and asks what they’ll have. Jackie smiles at him and politely orders just another vodka cran, please, and Shauna barely looks away from her to ask for a tequila soda with a lime.
That makes Jackie smile for real, which she so valiantly tries to hide by pressing her lips together between her teeth.
“You’re totally thinking about Malibu Milk right now, aren’t you?” Shauna tries to banter with her. Jackie shakes her head way too many times to be genuine, her smile finally breaking through.
“You so are.” Shauna rolls her eyes disingenuously as she smiles. “Those were dire circumstances, okay, and it’s not like wine coolers were much better.”
“They were absolutely better, Shauna,” Jackie laughs. “Milk?!”
Shauna kicks her shin playfully under the bar as the man comes back with their drinks. “Whatever, I’ve matured.” She nods to the bartender and takes a big sip from the little cocktail straw. Jackie watches the movement.
“Do you wanna start a tab?” The man asks. If Shauna had bothered looking away from Jackie at all, she’d notice that he hasn’t looked away from her either.
Jackie interjects, “Just add that one onto mine.”
“Oh, Jax, you don’t have to—”
“It’s easier, it’s okay.” She nods at Shauna. Like if she nods enough Shauna will start nodding, too.
She does. “Okay,” she breathes out. “Thanks.”
The bartender’s already left, zipping around to the next patron who’ll hopefully pay him more attention than Jackie has. Poor guy. He’ll never know how addictive Jackie’s attention can be. Shauna takes a sip in his honor, cheers-ing to him in her mind.
“Better than milk?” Jackie teases.
Shauna keeps the straw in her mouth while she flips her off. Jackie laughs and the sound does something to Shauna that she can’t explain, but she knows she needs more of it.
“I can get your next one, if you’re staying.” Shauna sounds so fucking embarrassingly hopeful, she could die. “Or maybe a–a coffee? Sometime?”
Jackie smiles softly and looks around the bar. She’s picking at the skin around her nails. It’s gotten more crowded since Shauna came in, and Jackie’s visibly shrinking in on herself in all the rowdiness. She always got overwhelmed easily as a kid— only Shauna could ever really tell. But the more she stayed in control of wherever she was and whoever she was with, the more she could manage it. Shauna wonders if she’s the same still, or if she loosened her grip on having control sometime in the last few years.
(She wonders if maybe she gave up after the one person who she thought was easy to control turned the tables on her.)
Shauna finishes her drink in one quick slam. That’s probably why she says
“Do you wanna come to my place?”
Jackie’s already enormous eyes turn into saucers as she looks at Shauna like she just said do you wanna streak through the bar.
“I–I just,” Shauna reaches her hand over the bar, closer to Jackie’s but not quite there. “I wanna catch up, and stuff,” she adds, super cooly.
Jackie looks a little rattled, either from the overcrowded bar or Shauna suggesting leaving it, but she plasters on the same sad smile she wore in the classroom earlier. “Maybe sometime on a weekend we could—”
“I miss you.”
Jackie lets out this little exhalation of a laugh at Shauna’s bluntness. “I miss you, too.” Her eyebrows furrow a bit, like she’s surprised she’s saying it.
Shauna stretches those last few inches and lays her hand on top of Jackie’s forearm.
Jackie stares at her hand as the look on her face fades into contemplation. Shauna’s prepared to launch into some ill-conceived ramble about how this is actually a good idea, and maybe Jackie should come over and never leave, but all she can seem to get out is—
“Jackie.”
Jackie looks back up at Shauna, who leans her head down and into her space to maintain eye contact. “Please.”
They stare for a long moment. Jackie once said that it wasn’t fair— that Shauna had such big doe eyes that she could get anything she wanted. Shauna thought it was a dig. One of those ‘oh, but brown eyes are pretty, too!’ faux compliments from someone with actual gorgeous eyes.
But when Jackie’s blinking turns more to fluttering and she starts almost imperceptibly nodding, Shauna thinks that maybe she meant it.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Shauna raises her eyebrows.
For a fraction of a second, Shauna’s brain screams oh no— and she feels suddenly scared that maybe she’s inviting a stranger into her apartment, that she doesn’t actually know the girl in front of her anymore. That her memory’s overstating how important she was to Jackie, and that even if it isn’t, maybe that girl who she was important to doesn’t exist anymore.
“Okay, but… but you have to tell your friends or else they’ll poison the coffee or steal your teaching ideas, or something. Like Working Girl.”
Nope. She’s still in there.
—
Abort fucking mission.
Because now, the fact that Jackie’s still Jackie is freaking Shauna the fuck out because she one hundred percent didn’t think this through, and Jackie, Shauna’s Jackie, is real and here and about fifteen steps away from infiltrating Shauna’s safe little Jackie-free bubble.
The trek to her apartment included a fight over who would drive (which Jackie won, a surprise to no one because she’s always taken drinking and driving very seriously), and an in-car argument over the plot of Working Girl that would’ve ended right after it started if they weren’t too nervous to talk about anything else. Shauna found herself annoyed at Taissa at one point because the thought that Van would eat this conversation up crosses her mind, reminding Shauna of how much she misses that angel of a human. And then her annoyance quickly turned to Jackie instead, who said “If Van were here, she’d back me up,” because why the fuck did Jackie get to keep Van in the breakup?
Or. Van got to keep Jackie. In Van’s breakup.
That’s what she means.
But they make it to her apartment—which, you guessed it, is a fucking mess—and Shauna’s nerves are out and proud as Jackie waltzes in, instantly popping bubble that Shauna has worked so hard to create.
Jackie looks around like she’s found Narnia.
Shauna hasn’t decorated much since she moved in. There are a couple small posters grouped together and some fabric tapestries strewn across the walls. There’s a stack of framed photos on a shelf that, one day, she’ll put up. Her kitchen table is just a pile of all her paperwork for the first week of school. She wonders as Jackie’s eyes roam the couch and its mismatched pillows for a little too long if she can tell that Shauna’s been sleeping there more often than not.
Her CDs are literally everywhere, and there’s a big pile of— FUCK.
SHIT, FUCK, FUCK ME SO HARD.
Right at the top of a stack of VHS tapes on her coffee table, one tape rests with its incredibly visible label in Shauna’s handwriting, shining right at them, screaming for Jackie to see it.
‘the L word – 4/04/04’
“Okay!” Shauna blurts out. Jackie jumps next to her. “I’ve had to go to the bathroom since before I saw you at the bar so I’m gonna go really fast, I’ll be right back,” Shauna rushes out. She doesn’t even wait for Jackie to answer.
She does actually still have to use the bathroom, but the odds of her just throwing up instead are about 50/50.
God, Shauna, you IDIOT. Now she’s just gonna snoop.
What if she leaves?
No, no, she won’t leave. She probably won’t even care, even if she does see it. She doesn’t care about you, Shauna. Relax. That thought actually relaxes her even less. She tries to focus on her breathing as she uses the restroom and quickly washes her hands. In for three, hold for four, out for five. In for three, hold for four, out for five. She stares at the mirror and grips either side of her sink, hard. She’s gotta get it together.
She brought Jackie here to talk. Maybe to get some things off her chest so she doesn’t feel the hot, rotting, pit of guilt sitting in her stomach anymore. Maybe to get her back.
She makes her way back down the hall, pulling her hair up into a low ponytail as she walks. She finds Jackie moving around the little, white word magnets on her fridge. Her back is to Shauna, but Shauna’d bet her first paycheck that she’s got the same little furrowed-brow, tongue-sticking-out kind of face she always gets when she’s focused, even on something silly.
Shauna moves quietly to lean against the counter opposite the fridge.
“You a poet now?”
Jackie jumps, yelps, and instinctively flings a magnet in Shauna’s vague direction. She immediately throws a hand over her mouth, either out of shock or to stifle the laughter. Shauna, for her part, pokes her tongue into the side of her cheek. “Wow.”
Jackie snorts. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry,” Shauna can see her stop herself from stepping towards her. “You scared me!” Her voice sounds about 14 years old, screaming around every turn of Shauna’s house because Shauna decided to scare her every day of October leading up to Halloween.
(She thought it was funny. But she really did it because she got to scoop Jackie up in a hug to make up for it.)
Shauna can’t keep up the cocky ruse for too long and breaks, dropping her head in laughter and rubbing at the back of her neck. Jackie leans back against the fridge with her arms crossed over her chest.
Say something, Shauna.
“What did you wanna talk about, Shauna.” It’s a question but Jackie has a way of phrasing things as demands.
Shauna’s breath comes out a little shaky.
“Us.”
She can’t help but notice that Jackie’s sharp inhale has a shake to it, too.
Jackie stands up straighter, adjusts her arms tighter. “I don’t really wanna think about the past.” She cricks her neck.
“I know, trust me, I know, but it’s,” Shauna starts. She takes a breath. It’s strange, really. Jackie was always the one trying to talk things through, while Shauna tried to think her way through everything. Now she’s begging to talk about it. “It’s all I think about.”
They stand there heavy-breathing at each other. And Shauna decides to try.
“Jackie, I’m so sorry—”
Jackie starts shaking her head. “Shauna, you don’t have—”
“No, Jax, I’m so”—her voice breaks—“so sorry I didn’t tell you about Brown.”
“Shauna—” Jackie’s voice gets a little firmer.
Shauna steps away from the counter and closer to Jackie. The words are just spewing out of her— she doesn’t even know if they’re true. “I couldn’t get myself to tell you, I–I just couldn’t, and I thought maybe if I just left—”
“Shauna, STOP!”
The dam breaks. Jackie jerks away from the fridge and into the living room like she’s been pushed. Shauna follows.
The mask of matured nonchalance falls and suddenly, they’re both 17 again, Jackie five milliseconds from losing it and Shauna waiting, terrified. Invigorated.
“You can’t do this, Shauna!” Jackie’s voice is shrill. She turns slightly back towards her but still doesn’t look at her. Shauna tries to grab her wrist but she flinches away. “You had years to apologize and you just… didn’t! You didn’t, and–and you can’t expect me to think that actually mean it now. You can’t throw me away and then try to act—” She shakes her head, her eyebrows knitted together as if in pain. “You know what, it’s my fault. It’s been half a decade but still— still all it takes is one fucking ‘please’ from you and I’m standing in your goddamn apartment.”
Shauna comes a little alive at that because “What the fuck”—she stomps closer to her—“is that supposed to mean, Jackie? Because I spent our–my— my entire life feeling like I was being tugged around on the shortest leash in history.”
Jackie has the audacity to scoff. She finally looks at her. “That’s bullshit, Shauna, and you know it.”
She lets Shauna grab her wrist.
They’re both waiting. For Shauna to say something she’ll regret, for Jackie to say something she doesn’t mean.
Shauna knows that goading Jackie into anger isn’t going to work. All her instincts immediately switched from apologizing to winning this fight, but she—for maybe the first time—thinks past her instincts. Winning means losing Jackie.
Shauna takes a breath. Several, actually, and way too fast.
Jackie watches her pull them in past her lips and release them through her nostrils.
After a long, tense moment of Jackie being nowhere remotely close to backing down, Shauna brings her free hand up to join the other, holding Jackie’s wrist cautiously between them both. She strokes her thumbs across freckles and veins like they’re part of a map that she has to feel to read. She pulls Jackie’s hand up, up, up until she can press Jackie’s palm flat against her chest, right in the middle of her sternum.
Shauna steps closer, just slightly, and dips her head down in shame, a familiar gesture from what used to be her life. She looks at Jackie through her eyelashes, her voice so serious that she startles even herself. “I’m sorry.”
Jackie looks back at her with teary, sad, slightly stunned eyes. “For what?” she whispers.
Shauna stares down at her feet and Jackie’s hand presses harder against her chest, her fingertips curling into the neckline of her sweater until she looks back up.
“I never wanted to throw you away.”
All at once, in what feels like slow motion, Jackie’s face crumples, her other hand comes up so that both are gripping at Shauna’s neckline, and Shauna’s hand just takes hold of the side of her neck before her whole body falls forward into Shauna’s chest.
And that’s how they hug for the first time since it ended. That’s how Shauna comes back to life. With Jackie’s nails digging into the thick fabric of her sweater, and Shauna’s thumb swiping at her jaw.
Jackie sobs. Like, truly, deeply sobs. All Shauna can do is wrap her other arm—the one that isn’t stuck between them—around her shoulders and pull her in somehow tighter. Jackie’s face is tucked as far as she can get it into Shauna’s neck, Shauna’s nose burying itself in her hair, around her ear.
Shauna’s never felt more sorry.
“Shh, Jax,” her voice is garbled and scratchy, stuck in her throat along with everything else she can’t get herself to say. “Breathe, babe, you need to breathe.”
Jackie lets out a particularly pathetic cry, so that wasn’t the right thing to say.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Shauna tries again softly, pressing her lips to the side of her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
At some point, Jackie had snaked her hands up to clutch at either side of Shauna’s neck, her thumbs reaching up to stroke back and forth along her jaw. Shauna only takes notice when she tells Jackie to breathe again and feels one nail scratching lightly.
But eventually she does breathe. And the whole world starts to slow down. Heaving cries turn to shaky sniffles and they breathe each other in, slower and deeper with every inhale, neither of them budging on their grip.
Now, this—
This is where Shauna makes a dumb choice. Definitely not her dumbest, but one that deserves a smack to the head nonetheless.
She pulls her head back to get a look at Jackie, just enough to press their foreheads together. Jackie hates letting people see her cry. Shauna knows this, so she lets Jackie press the top of her forehead into the bridge of Shauna’s nose instead. “Jackie.” Another small sniffle and a smaller shake of her head. Shauna pulls Jackie’s hair back behind her ears, her fingers lingering there, threaded through darker, unfamiliar feeling locks.
Jackie wipes at the tears collected on her cupid’s bow with the back of her wrist. She finally lifts her head up just the smallest bit, but doesn’t pull back to let Shauna see her. Their noses press against each other and their breaths intermingle.
Jackie, again, sniffles. “I didn’t mean to keep you on a leash.” Her voice is sad and small and so unlike Jackie.
Shauna threads her fingers through her hair again and again. “No?” She says it as gently as she can.
“No, I–I just,” Jackie almost whines. Then, quieter, “I just held you too tight, I guess.”
Her thumbs press into Shauna’s jaw.
This is probably where Shauna should get smacked upside the head.
Because she closes whatever minuscule distance exists between them and presses her lips to Jackie’s. She doesn’t even think about it. But as soon as she does it, she realizes that maybe she’s been thinking about this for a long, long time. Like. Maybe she’s never not thinking about this.
Neither of them move a muscle. Their hands stay the same, their lips don’t even twitch, they don’t breathe. It could barely even really be considered a kiss— but rather a stiff pressing together of two faces. That is, until the this is all I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time of it all catches up to Shauna and she presses harder into Jackie, her lips bruising and her hand moving to hold the back of her neck. Jackie responds with a sharp inhale through her nose, and then they both, as if someone directed them to move at the same time, slot their lips together properly. And then again. And again.
Shauna guesses that she always imagined Jackie going limp in her arms, melting and letting Shauna take control. She guesses. But Jackie doesn’t dare to melt— her entire body tightens as she plants herself firmly where she is. She lets Shauna move her hands from her neck and shoulders down to her waist, wrapping completely around her and pulling, like a python waiting for the poison to kick in.
(Pythons aren’t poisonous. Shauna’s brain’s not working.)
Every part of them fits together perfectly. There was never any doubt, but fuck. She didn’t know it would be like this. The pace of their breaths quickens and they drag each other in somehow closer— always closer, always clinging. They’re grabbing and pulling and gasping and devouring. Until Jackie pulls back for a breath.
Shauna chases her lips, but ends up just breathing into Jackie’s mouth.
“I think,” Jackie breathes out into hers. “I think we’re maybe just drunk.”
Shauna’s voice is unrecognizable to herself. “I’m not— Jackie, are you drunk?”
Jackie dares to make eye contact. She looks offended. Beyond that, she looks completely wrecked and never more beautiful. “No!”
“Jackie, you just said—!”
“I don’t know what I’m saying!”
Shauna slams their lips together again. Her hands dig into Jackie’s hips as Jackie’s thread through her hair at her scalp and pull her closer. Jackie makes so many fucking noises. One particular little whiny gasp into Shauna’s mouth pushes her over the edge and she hastily backs Jackie up into— into whatever’s behind her. Could be the back of the couch, could be the not-at-all decorated credenza. Shauna has no idea where they are.
They hit a wall.
Not figuratively, because Jackie shifts just right to slot Shauna’s leg between hers, but literally, a physical wall. Shauna really has got to memorize the layout of her apartment more.
Shauna flattens one hand against it to steady herself, right next to Jackie’s head. Their lips never disconnect. Jackie’s hands have finally had enough and pull her hair out of her ponytail, and then they’re running through it, clawing at the back of her neck, at her collarbones, on her chest. Shauna presses even closer into her, every part of them connected. When her thigh moves of its own fucking accord and presses against her, that’s when Jackie comes back to herself.
First, she moans. It’s the exact sound Shauna has been chasing and never quite reaching all of her life. And then, Shauna’s getting pushed back. Lightly, and still being clung to, but pushed nonetheless.
Jackie looks thoroughly fucked and all they did was kiss. Her lips are a deep red, and her hair looks somehow like its been blown out. She shuts her darker-than-ever eyes and tries to catch her breath before whispering a ‘fuck’ and shimmying to the side, out of Shauna’s grasp. She ducks her head to get around the arm Shauna has planted against the wall.
Shauna wants to say something. Anything. But nothing comes out. Just harsh breathing as she falls forward, resting her head against wall and running her tongue over lips.
She can feel Jackie staring at her as she composes herself. She waits, as if daring Shauna to move, but Shauna cannot physically get herself to look away from the wall in front of her, still huffing in a valiant effort to catch her breath. Jackie waits until the grace period ends.
“I should go.”
Shauna still can’t pull away from the wall, the only thought in her head a swirling, screaming stream of holyshitholyshitholyshit. “Wait”—it speaks!—“wait, Jackie.” She admirably pulls it together and moves to stand in front of Jackie, in between her and the door.
Jackie looks scared.
It’s Shauna’s least favorite feeling, Jackie scared.
She pushes some of Jackie’s hair behind her ear and holds the side of her face. Jackie can’t help but lean into the touch and Shauna can’t help but notice. She lets Shauna look her all over, her puffy lips and her wide eyes, her new freckles and old ones. Her neck that Shauna didn’t get to make her way to. Shauna leans forward to rest their foreheads against each other. Where Jackie’s breaths come shaky and uneven, Shauna’s grow steady. Certain. (Though hopefully Jackie doesn’t notice the shake of her thumb as it strokes her cheek.)
Jackie pulls back and raises her lips to Shauna’s forehead, pressing a long, gentle kiss as she exhales. She mumbles, not separating her lips from skin, “I have to go.”
Shauna unconsciously grips the sides of Jackie’s jacket, but nods. God, she feels like crying. There’s one more barely-there kiss, right between her eyebrows, and Jackie pulls away from her toward the door.
Shauna sniffles and she fucking hates it. “You can get home? Are–are you sure?”
Jackie nods and checks for her keys in her purse. “Promise.”
Shauna thinks they say bye to each other, but she’s pretty sure she’s not in her body. Then Jackie’s gone. She stares at the door, her hands shaking at her sides even after she forms them into fists.
Once she starts seeing double of her front door, she walks back to the kitchen, picking up the word magnet that was flung at her and sticking it to the fridge. The spot where Jackie was rearranging reads ‘MR hungry booty’ and Shauna lets out a sharp laugh. She pulls the freezer door open to find a half-empty bottle of tequila and some ice left in her ice trays. Not ideal. But it’ll do.
She sits with her cold glass of just straight tequila at her little kitchen table, not even bothering to wipe the drying tears on her face. When did she start crying? Is any of this real? Did she hit her head on a desk this morning when she bent down to pick up the stupid counting cubes?
She runs through all the facts.
She kissed Jackie. And Jackie definitely kissed her back.
Jackie has a son. Shauna is going to be his teacher.
Jackie’s still upset about how Shauna left.
Shauna will never, ever tell her about Jeff.
Hm.
So, there’s a lot going on.
And what does any self-respecting woman do when there’s a lot going on— after just making out with their ex best friend in the most humiliating of fashions? They get drunk and finally look through all the shit they need to do for their newly complicated fucking job.
She takes a big gulp, her face twisting up in disgust. “Blegh,” she shakes her head.
There’s too many papers and too many folders for the papers on her kitchen table to go through. But she realizes after another horrendous sip from her glass that she didn’t even look at the forms that all the parents filled out today. She flips and flips and flips through them until she sees Jackie’s name, Jackie’s handwriting.
VOLUNTEER SCHEDULE
MONDAYS: Rebecca Bowman
TUESDAYS: _______
WEDNESDAYS: Jenny Fowler, Matt Rollins
THURSDAYS: Rebecca Bowman (if no one else is available!)
FRIDAYS: Jackie Taylor