Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Four years is a long time. 

For Shauna, it’s long enough for an English degree at Brown and for a couple of attempts at relationships—two private months with a female acquaintance who’d kissed her drunkenly one night after a party, and almost a year with a hazel-eyed boy who had been boring and easy. For hookups, for new friends, a new life emptied of anyone and everyone from Wiskayok save for her mother. 

No Jackie, finally, which was supposed to have been liberating. For a while, it had been. Stepping out of her shadow had felt like freedom, even if it had come at the price of her journal in Jackie’s hands, them screaming at each other, Jeff’s—now mediocre, she knows with more experience—dick inside of her more than once, all to try to one-up Jackie in a war Jackie had never understood they’d spent years waging.

But there had been an emptiness in her after their separation, and throughout her college years. An invisible and perhaps universal void that had begged to be filled. Some do it with drugs and alcohol. Others have religion. Shauna doesn’t realize until she doesn’t have her anymore that she’d always filled it with Jackie. 

Adjusting to feeling incomplete at Brown is a long and arduous process. So is ridding herself of the constant thoughts: I wonder how she’s—I wonder if she’s—I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. Though she never seeks out the answers to her questions, they never completely go away. 

She had kicked Jackie out of her life on a delay that first night with Jeff in Holmdel, and Jackie had made it final, mutual, a few months later, when she’d discovered the truth of it all, the thoughts and feelings Shauna had hidden, the things she’d done. They’d rejected each other, been done with each other. Signed a mutual unspoken contract that said I’ll fuck off forever now and so will you, and also, fuck you.

They’ve held steady to it for four years, and Shauna has rebuilt herself from the ground up over the course of that time, until it’s felt like forever since those days of trailing after Jackie Taylor in high school. She has kissed and fucked girls who aren’t Jackie and read books Jackie would scoff at and toned her body the way only Jackie’s body had used to be, and she’s not the same girl either of them had once known. She has worked long and hard not to be. 

So of course it all comes crashing down in one night. Of course her eyes meet Jackie’s from across a too-familiar living room at a Christmas party her mother had begged her to attend, and all at once four years feels like four months, four weeks, four days, four seconds.

That’s the thing about them, she’ll realize. No matter how much they run, how much they try to pretend they’ve become strangers, they’ll never be able to wash themselves off of each other completely.

-

2000

Shauna’s remained very purposefully cut off from Wiskayok since the summer of 1996, particularly where Jackie and Taissa are concerned. Jackie is an obvious one. Tai is because she’s the only one, ever—unless she’s told Van by now—who knows something Shauna never wants to confront again. Who Shauna had reached out to, perhaps feeling some sort of academic kinship with her, or perhaps because of her comfortingly strong political opinions, grasping at straws for anyone at the time. 

Tai had driven her. Tai knows what even her own mother doesn’t. Tai had held her hand in the lobby and even cried a little with her after, and then Shauna had never really spoken to her again. 

But Shauna is back in Wiskayok now, moved in with her mother temporarily now that she’s graduated and looking for a job—half-heartedly, because her mother’s missed her, or has maybe just felt lonely with the house empty, and has asked her to at least take a few months to stick around. She doesn’t ask if Jackie’s back too, though she suspects her mother would know the answer. 

The town hasn’t changed, but the people have forgotten. She can go shopping without furtive glances and overbearing whispers like I heard she’s that trollop Nancy mentioned at the church luncheon or I can’t believe she fucked her best friend’s boyfriend, depending on the age of the gossiper. 

She can eat lunches at parks and just exist peacefully. She can drive out to the city at night alone and drink with strangers in bars. She can read at the library she’d used to love. 

She just takes the long way around to those places, because something in her can’t drive past her old school, or past the turn she’d always used to take to drive Jackie home.

It’s early December when her mother broaches it carefully over dinner like it’s something inevitable, like it was always supposed to happen eventually: “I have some news. About an invite.”

Shauna fixes her with a confused look. “To what?” She assumes it’s for her mother. No one invites Shauna to anything. The few old acquaintances that hadn’t immediately judged her for Jeff had been happily left behind by Shauna anyway. Her connections at Brown are physically distant and increasingly fading out the longer Shauna stays in Wiskayok. She’s not sure she has anyone in her life she’d even call a friend. 

“A Christmas party.”

“Oh.” Now she’s certain it’s just for her mother. Christmas parties are for old people. She’s just not sure why she needs to be informed about it.

“‘Next week.”

“Cool.”

She feels her mother’s hesitance so palpably that it makes her pause and look up from her food.

“The Taylors are hosting.”

A faint memory winds through her mind, then, from her college years: her mom telling her about the tradition they’d started, how she attends with so many other families, still on good terms with the Taylors herself even after what Shauna had done. The party has usually already happened by the time Shauna comes home for the holidays. 

“Well,” Shauna says flatly, “have fun.”

“You don’t think it’s time?” her mother pushes, and it feels like a hot poker’s biting into Shauna’s chest. “You don’t think it’s been long enough that you two might—?”

“No,” Shauna snaps, gripping her fork so hard it hurts. Before she can stop herself, she asks, “Will she be there?”

“She’s always there.” A short pause, and then, “She’s doing we—“

“I don’t wanna know.” Shauna says it through gritted teeth. “I told you that.”

“It’s been four years, Shauna. Please.” And then her mother sighs and says, “I’ll make you a deal. Go, and if you hate it I’ll never say a word about Jackie again. But I think it could do some good. If anything, maybe provide some closure.”

Her mother’s been reading self-help books again. 

“I hate her,” Shauna reminds her, and loathes that it feels like a lie when it isn’t; she’s always felt something so strongly for Jackie and she’d decided long ago that it must be hate. 

“Then go, and you two can ignore each other,” her mother offers, like she doesn’t believe that’s how it’ll actually happen, like she still thinks their fallout had just been some light teen girl drama they can both move past. She’s clueless. “And I’ll never mention her again.”

And Shauna goes. Because the idea of her last remaining connection to Jackie Taylor going fully dormant about it is far too tempting. Because maybe this is what will finally help her scrub her thoughts of Jackie completely, when the classes and writing groups and men and women and alcohol hadn’t. 

And for no other reason at all.

-

Jackie looks older, which is a silly observation, because of course she does. She probably still counts calories like she had in high school, because she’s all slim and sharp-angled. Or maybe the sharpness is just in her jaw, because she looks pissed.

When four years feels like four seconds, Shauna supposes it makes sense that their wounds are still fresh. 

She’s not naive enough to think that it’s just about Jeff. He might be the least significant part of it. Bigger than Jeff is Brown, you’re leaving me, you lied, and biggest of all is what Shauna had written about Jackie in her journal. 

It feels stupid that she’s here, suddenly, and Jackie seems to agree, because as soon as she tears her eyes away from Shauna’s she stalks straight over to her mother, pulls her close, and hisses something angrily into her ear. 

Shauna takes the opportunity to study her properly, while her mother’s whispering something back to her that looks like —just get along?  

Her elegant little tea dress. The styled hair, the makeup. She hasn’t fucking changed. Still a perfect little Barbie. Shauna’s just surprised she’s here alone, not hanging off of some equally boring boy she’d met at a frat party. There has to be someone, the way Jackie’s always fed off of attention like it’s her life force. 

Jackie leans away from her mother and then her eyes dart to Shauna again. Shauna takes a sip from the champagne glass in her hand and hides an eye roll, then marches off to find her own mother.

“Are you behaving?” she’s greeted, and when Shauna just gives her mother a sarcastic smile she’s promptly tugged into a conversation with several other moms she hasn’t seen in years. She thinks one of them says she’s Allie’s mother, which is a name Shauna hasn’t heard since senior year. 

Shauna kills fifteen minutes talking about Brown, letting them fawn over her for it, everyone in the conversation pretending it isn’t fucking weird that Shauna had fucked Jackie’s ex-boyfriend four years ago and now she’s here tonight. 

It only gets weirder when Mrs. Taylor finally gets ahold of her.

It happens by the buffet set up in the kitchen, while Shauna’s examining quiches and trying to figure out what they are, and then a hand is turning her and there’s a too-bright smile and a, “Shauna! It’s so good to see you!” and Shauna’s being pulled into a hug she isn’t ready for.

She also isn’t ready for the sudden guilt, after years of being brought on vacations and welcomed into their home week after week, and she wonders if the reason for this invite could be just as simple as that they’d genuinely come to love her in spite of everything, given their history. Jackie’s parents have put the past behind them, even if Jackie hasn’t. Could they have missed her? She hadn’t let herself miss them. 

“I’m glad you’re doing well,” Mrs. Taylor murmurs sincerely to her before they part, and Shauna hasn’t said she’s doing well. She doesn’t know how she’s doing. Maybe her mother had relayed something that had made her life sound better than it is. She needs to keep applying for jobs. She needs to get a boyfriend. Or a—no, that had been fun in college, but a boyfriend now. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Taylor,” she says, and she wants to say more, but she has nothing else to offer. Not an apology; she isn’t sorry. Jackie had earned her punishment. Her parents were always going to be necessary collateral. 

So they separate, just like that, and Shauna wanders around the house she half grew up in like she’s a stranger to it, and feels eyes on her every now and then like she was built to sense them, just that one pair. 

Jackie's gaze itches at her, and grates on her, and she wants to get away from it but there are people outside and in every room on the ground floor, so finally she just charts a familiar path up the stairs and takes a turn and opens a door and then she’s just there before she’s ready for it.

It hasn’t changed. Even the comforter is the same. Jackie must not have used it much. Must have avoided coming home like Shauna did.

Even that information is too much. Shauna wants to un-know it right away. But her thoughts are racing instead. Has Jackie shown anyone new this room? Tossed out the old photos of Shauna and herself she’d used to keep in frames? Fucked boys in that bed?

The photos are gone, she realizes. The other two questions have answers she hopes to never know.

She’s just standing in the open doorway now, and she swallows thickly and takes the room in one last time before she steps back out of it rapidly, slams straight into a body and earns an angry gasp and a, “What the fuck, Shauna?”

Which, it turns out, is the first thing Jackie says to her in four years.

There’s a hand on her wrist, and then Shauna’s being wrenched into Jackie’s room, led like a dog, and the door is slamming shut behind the both of them and Jackie’s rounding furiously on her to ask her, “What are you doing here?”

Shauna blinks at her and then shrugs, something already bubbling in her chest. She thinks it might be anger. They shouldn’t talk. They’ll fight. Their parents will be upset. “My mom made me come,” she says, and is too aware that it’s the first thing she’s said to Jackie in four years.

There’s no ring on Jackie’s finger. She hates that she’s noticing it now. Jackie had always used to talk about wanting to get married young.

Something flickers behind Jackie’s eyes—a moment of something that maybe could’ve been vulnerable—and then it’s gone. “Right. So you aren’t even here to—“ She stops herself, tensing up.

To what? Shauna needs to know, suddenly. More than she’s ever needed to know anything. She can feel Jackie pincering her, squeezing her tight, pulling her back in. It’s scary how easily it starts to happen. Jackie is quicksand. 

“To what?” Shauna asks, and starts to drown. 

“To—“ Jackie presses her lips together tightly, angrily. “Well, obviously, to apologize.”

Something flares hotly in Shauna’s chest. “I don’t owe you an apology.”

It’s abundantly, immediately obvious that this isn’t going to go anywhere. Jackie scoffs at her like she’s astounded. “You can’t be serious.”

They’re eighteen again, like Jackie had just read her journal yesterday. This is silly. And Jackie isn’t done. 

“You fucked my boyfriend. You wrote horrible things about me. You lied about Brown!”

“I had to,” Shauna reminds her. “You wouldn’t have let me go.”

Jackie’s eyes widen and Shauna can see what she hadn’t been able to focus on last time: that beneath the anger there is so much hurt. “I would’ve.”

Shauna laughs dryly. She’s not going to argue about this.

Jackie, smartly, changes gears. “And you didn’t have to write anything about me, or go after Jeff. You just wanted to hurt me.”

No, that’s not it. It’s more complicated than that. Shauna still feels, sometimes, like something’s missing about it all, like she’s never quite been able to fit the final piece in and solve it herself. But it had never been about hurting her. “That’s not true, Jackie. You can play the victim all you want—“

“Fuck you,” Jackie bites out, cutting her off, and this still isn’t productive; it wasn’t ever going to be. They’ve never been good at talking to each other. It’s always just been Jackie talking at Shauna. 

Shauna reaches back, turning a little, already trying to find the doorknob. “This is—“ she starts, and doesn’t know how to finish it. Stupid. Pointless. A waste of time. 

“Don’t go,” Jackie demands, something so abruptly desperate in her tone that it almost sounds like she’s letting out a sob. 

And then Shauna’s back is hitting the door hard and there’s a body pressed to her body and a guiding hand on her cheek and a mouth on hers.

That’s new.

Or it’s not. They had done this before throughout high school. Giggling, practicing, and then kept doing it even after Shauna felt like she didn’t need to practice anymore. Drunk, sober, high. While Jackie was dating Jeff, and during their breakups. It had never meant anything. Shauna had told herself many times that it didn’t. Jackie had made it clear even more times that it didn’t, between her flippant comments about it in private and the way she’d hung all over Jeff every chance she’d gotten in public. 

But this time is new, because it has to mean something. It can’t not, with the way Jackie’s hands have grabbed at her hips now and pinned her so forcefully—it was never forceful before—and Shauna wants to stop it right away because it’s Jackie, and also kisses back immediately because it’s Jackie. 

Kisses back hard, like it’s a competition, pushing her head forward to force Jackie’s back, opening her mouth, invading Jackie’s. 

Their teeth clatter unpleasantly. Their tongues meet. It’s so messy and angry. Jackie’s hands move to Shauna’s shoulders and shove her back against the door again, and Shauna’s hands grab at her waist automatically, tugging her closer, squeezing hard. They part just briefly enough to try again, lips on lips this time, finding a rhythm, and Shauna can’t think past the heat in her cheeks and her abdomen and the feel of Jackie’s mouth. 

They’d never used to use their tongues much; Jackie had always said it was gross. Now she tilts her head and sucks on Shauna’s tongue like she’s done it before, and slides her own over it after. Arousal winds tight in Shauna’s gut and her hips roll forward on instinct and meet Jackie’s thigh. She chokes back a moan.

Jackie parts from her again, millimeters between their mouths, breathing hard now, panting, “Fuck.” 

“What—?” Shauna barely manages to get out, dizzy, before Jackie silences her with her mouth again.

It’s a brief kiss, and Jackie whispers, “Shut up,” when it’s over, and then there are hands darting down to the button of the black jeans Shauna’s worn tonight and popping it open. “Just shut up.”

A zipper, and then Shauna’s eyes are fluttering shut and her teeth are sinking into her bottom lip, and Jackie’s hand is there, straight into her underwear, and her fingers are moving like they know what they’re doing, and Shauna’s whole body is blazing.

“Oh my God,” Shauna gasps, and doesn’t stop her, just lets that scorching feeling take control of her impulses and then grabs at Jackie’s wrist, shoving it down further into her jeans with a soft whine. It’s never felt quite like this. She’s never wanted anyone like this. “Jackie—”

“Shut up,” Jackie says again, but this time she sounds uneven, affected. Less forceful and angry. Her fingers trace circles, slide low. “Just—“ Her exhale is heavy and shaky. “Let me do this.”

Shauna nods and lets her head empty; she feels like her thoughts might drive her crazy with self-loathing otherwise. She’s letting Jackie Taylor—self-obsessed, condescending, controlling Jackie Taylor, the fucking bane of her teenaged existence—touch her like this. Letting Jackie’s fingers curl in, push deep, pull another gasp out of her. Letting Jackie inside of her, letting Jackie fuck her. 

It’s too tight in Shauna’s pants, too cramped, there’s not enough movement, and she fumbles with shaky hands for her jeans and shoves them down her thighs just far enough to give Jackie space to take her harder, faster. And Jackie does. She presses in even closer, chest to chest, and puts her arm into it, little sounds from her puffs of exertion filling Shauna’s ear, little breaths tickling the shell. 

Shauna barely recognizes her own voice, her own breathing, her own gasps and sighs and moans and the way she can’t stop saying Jackie’s name like it’s a reminder of her own humiliation. She knows who’s inside of her, driving into her up against a bedroom door. She knows, and she’s letting Jackie know that she knows, and she likes it, and she’s going to finish soon. 

She’s so close, but not quite there yet, when Jackie must feel something, or just know somehow, because she mouths at Shauna’s ear and then moans, “Fuck, you’re coming,” and Shauna zips over the edge like it’s on command, shuddering, nails dragging down Jackie’s back through her dress, Jackie buried deep and moving like she’s trying to get even deeper.

“Jax,” she whines, which is a nickname she hasn’t said or even thought in years, and Jackie moans in her ear and then bites at the lobe, and Shauna flutters on her thrusting fingers and something smaller rolls through her body that she thinks might be a second orgasm. 

And then it’s over, just like that, and they’re just Jackie and Shauna again, who hate each other and haven’t spoken in four years, and Jackie pulls out of Shauna so quickly that it hurts and then won’t look at her, like it’s sinking in for her who they are and what they’ve done now, too.

Shauna bends down and pulls her pants up, cheeks burning with humiliation, a lump in her throat. She doesn’t dare look at Jackie either. She feels like something’s been stolen from her. She feels like she’s in high school again and Jackie wants to kiss her and so Shauna’s done what she always does, which is to nod and say yes.

She hates every bit of it. She hates that she doesn’t have the guts to grab Jackie and fuck her back. That she’s pathetic and weak and eighteen again. 

“Have you done that before?” Jackie asks her quietly, piercing the silence between them, and of all the things to ask after four years apart, after what they’ve just done, of course it’s that. 

Am I your first girl?

Do I own some part of you again now?

Jackie is different now, and yet she also hasn’t changed at all. 

Shauna only answers to deny her what she wants. “Yes. A lot.”

Then she leaves, because if she doesn’t she might ask have you, and it feels like everything will be easier if she can pretend that she can’t tell what the answer is.

They don’t speak for the rest of Shauna's time in Wiskayok. She doesn’t see Jackie for another year, but she starts thinking of her every day—though she’s not sure she ever truly stopped in the first place. 

-

2001

She moves to Trenton after she gets a front desk job with the local paper there. It’s probably beneath a Brown graduate, but she’d gone with English over Journalism and it’s a foot in the door and a way out of her mother’s house in Wiskayok, so she’ll take it.

She’s told her mother that she’d ignored Jackie at the party and that now it’s her mother’s turn to hold up her end of the bargain. A permanent embargo on Jackie information—for life this time. Her mother, though transparently disappointed about it, agrees.

She doesn’t get a roommate when she moves, preferring the solitude and the privacy, but she does get a cell phone from her mother as a birthday present when she turns twenty-three—an age she hates, because people won’t stop fucking quoting that stupid song from a couple of years ago at her when they find out, nobody likes you when you’re twenty-three, which is annoying enough on its own but even more annoying when it feels true now that she’s as friendless as she is independent. 

For a while, the phone only has six numbers in it: her parents and then a few coworkers, just in case they need to reach her outside of the office sometimes. Eventually, there are a couple of new friends she keeps at arms’ length, and an old roommate from Brown who reaches out. And then a few more numbers get added over the course of the year: bar hookups that are good enough for a repeat visit or two.

It’s pathetic, but she’s chasing a high. She’s made the drug addict comparison to herself so many times that it’s gotten stale by summer. She’s had men outperform every college boy she’d ever been with and women pull all-nighters with their mouths between her thighs, and none of it feels as good as two minutes up against Jackie Taylor’s stupid fucking bedroom door. 

She’s not an idiot, so it’s not like it isn’t obvious to her what it means, what it is, but she’d tried to deny it to herself for a few months after that December just because it’s felt like another self-inflicted humiliation ritual—the first being letting Jackie fuck her in the first place—to acknowledge the truth. To take I wanted to fuck Jeff because he wanted to fuck Jackie and add and because I wanted to fuck Jackie too. 

To admit that I wanted him because he was hers had always, deep down, gone hand-in-hand with I wanted him because I wanted her. 

To know, finally, that the mortifying truth of wanting to be Jackie back in high school was something she’d only accepted in herself in college because to accept it was to avoid having to dig deeper for the greater, entire truth: I wanted to be with her, too.

She hates everything about it: the idea of Jackie having any sort of hold on her, continuing to occupy any sort of space. It had been bad enough to have her in her head, and knowing that she’s been in her heart the whole time too feels like another unwelcome invasion. That’s all Jackie’s done from the day they’d become friends: invade, take, own. 

Shauna thinks of her constantly. She goes out with friends for Halloween and wonders if Jackie does the same, what she might be dressed up as, what variant of “sexy version of an occupation” she’s likely gone with. 

A month before that, she turns on her television and watches the Twin Towers burn less than 100 miles away and has a brief and terrifying thought—what if Jackie lives in New York City—because she doesn’t know where Jackie’s wound up and NYC seems like just the kind of place she could’ve been drawn to if she’d decided to actually make something of herself. She gets anxious enough to call her mother on the day and ask, tentatively, “Do we know anyone who lives there?” and her mother, all-too-knowingly, gives her a soft reassurance that they don’t.

After, she wonders if Jackie has done something with her life, or at least is trying to, has aspirations beyond finding a husband and moving back to Wiskayok. Maybe she’s moved back already; maybe she went straight back to her parents after college. Did she stick to the Marketing degree? Did she even finish school? What else has changed, made her into the Jackie Taylor that would shove her hand down Shauna’s pants after four years of no contact?

Maybe she lives out west somewhere. A girl Shauna fucked once in college had told her afterward that things are easier there for “people like us”. Is Jackie a people like us? Does she think of herself that way? Does she hate herself for it? Who taught her how to touch a girl? Did she practice just for Shauna? Did she even enjoy it with anyone else? Is she so perfect at it because she’s Jackie Taylor and she could’ve done anything and Shauna would’ve gotten off no matter what? Was it even about desire, touching Shauna, or just a way to take some power back?

Maybe it really had only felt good for Shauna because it’d been Jackie, and Shauna had been her first girl. Maybe Jackie lives in fucking Antarctica and flies home just for Christmas parties. Maybe she’d dressed up as a gender-bent Brad Pitt for Halloween and Shauna doesn’t know her at all anymore. 

Shauna hates herself for the unending wondering, and hates that she makes the drive back to Wiskayok in December, and that the Taylors throw their yearly party, and that she goes again.

She doesn’t actually want to know anything about Jackie—what she’s doing, who she’s with, what last year meant—and so she really wishes her brain would stop screaming at her like it needs her to go find out.

But she shows up, because she has no impulse control, and pretends to her mother that it’s a chore and that she’s doing her another favor—she knows she’s unconvincing, but she can’t not tell the lie anyway—and tells herself that she doesn’t want to see Jackie and that she hopes she’s skipped it this year even as her eyes hunt through the crowd on the Taylor’s ground floor in search of her. 

She’s easy to find. Schmoozing with the local mother hens that had gushed over Shauna’s Brown degree last year, a wine glass in her hand, another dress on, the same hair, the same makeup. Unaltered physically by her own mouth on Shauna’s mouth and by pressing inside of her and feeling her come apart around her. 

It shouldn’t be unexpected; what is she supposed to look like? Wearing an ‘I Fucked Shauna Shipman’ Christmas sweater? (Admittedly a fun gag gift idea, if they were—if things were different in a way they’d never be.)

(And Shauna gets a brief flash of it: them cross-legged together on her apartment floor, Jackie in red and green pajamas, grinning and pulling at wrapping paper—)

Stop, stop, stop. 

That she looks so normal pisses Shauna off anyway. Maybe because Shauna’s spent every day of the past year feeling like she has what they’d done written all over her, like it’s in her veins and being pumped through her system. She hasn’t been able to scrub or fuck it out of herself, and there Jackie is, existing, laughing at some joke there’s no way she actually finds funny like her whole world hasn’t been upturned and her life hasn’t been split into Before and After I Fucked Shauna Shipman.

Shauna should definitely just leave, and also doesn’t even consider actually leaving. 

She drinks instead, and knows Jackie’s spotted her at some point because that itchy feeling is back, and this time Shauna’s body warms under the heat of Jackie’s attention, the knowledge that it’s on her. It’s just like high school. Just like the way Jackie beaming at her, eyes crinkling, would make her feel like the most important person in the world.

Right before she gave someone else—usually Jeff—that very same look and made it clear that it was just a Jackie thing, not a Jackie-and-Shauna thing. 

The memories leave a bitter taste in Shauna’s mouth, and the white wine isn’t helping. She downs her third glass anyway and then steps outside after to get some air on the Taylor’s back porch, and she’s not there for long before she hears the door swing open and shut, and then someone’s crossing the short distance to join Shauna up against the balcony.

She knows it’s Jackie before she even sees her; maybe it’s gut instinct, or the sound of her familiar footsteps, or just that her body lights up of its own volition when it’s near Jackie’s body.

“Don’t get drunk,” Jackie greets her unkindly in Shauna’s periphery, leaving a foot of distance between them, “and make an ass out of yourself in front of our parents and their friends.” She pauses. “Well, more than you already did five years ago, anyway.”

Shauna doesn’t look at her, just lets her lips curl unpleasantly. “Counting my drinks tonight? Kinda pathetic and obsessive of you, Jax.” She glances at her, tries to seem flippant even with her heart hammering unevenly behind her ribs. She thinks maybe she’s been waiting twelve months for this little moment, this little spat that will probably go nowhere and will definitely fix nothing. It’s fucked up, but this is the most alive she’s felt since last December. “So is chasing me down like this. Are you that desperate for my attention?”

That’ll hit a nerve with Jackie. Push her buttons just right. Shauna had called her attention-seeking during their big journal blowup. 

Shauna looks at her now, feels a satisfied thrill when there’s a flicker of sharp anger behind Jackie’s eyes. But then Jackie smooths her expression over, forces a dry laugh, and says, “You’re the one back here again.”

Back here. Shauna knows she doesn’t mean Wiskayok. She means this party, where Shauna no doubt had expected Jackie to be. She bristles, too aware that it’s a trump card Jackie’s played right away, so early. She’s not here to prolong this. She just wants to win. Like she’d won last time.

Why doesn’t she want to prolong this?

Something drops like a stone into Shauna’s gut, and she plays the last card she has: Fine. I don’t care either.

“Are you done?” She turns away, facing out toward the backyard again. “Goodbye, Jackie.”

Jackie stiffens next to her, and Shauna knows right away that she’s flipped this on its head, that she’s tasting victory. She still hears it in her mind every day: that Don’t go said so desperately, and then Jackie’s mouth on hers. Jackie’s fingers inside of her.

Her heart thumps out of rhythm. Her cheeks feel hot. Jackie looks good tonight. Her early twenties have been kind to her.

“I’m not done,” Jackie says, defensive. “You owe me an apology.”

It’s not annoying like it had been a year ago. Now it makes Shauna’s stomach flutter. Jackie hasn’t gone, even despite Shauna’s dismissal. She’s still here, using her time on Shauna and no one else. Injecting her attention straight into Shauna’s veins. “I don’t owe you anything,” Shauna says shortly. “It’s been five years, Jackie. Let it go.”

Jackie scoffs. “Take your own advice.”

Flames lick at Shauna’s chest. The memories stab at her like knives: Jackie flaunting Jeff in front of her, Jackie choosing everything about Shauna down to what she wore, pushing Randy Walsh on her, making her feel like less than nothing. 

She’ll never let it go. “No.”

“Then don’t expect me to.”

They’re at an impasse. A long silence stretches between them, and Shauna wishes Jackie would say more, even if there’s nothing more to say. She’s not ready to end this yet.

She lets her eyes flick over to Jackie, meeting her gaze. Jackie’s jaw is clenched angrily and her hazel eyes have gone dark and beady. Shauna’s stomach flutters again, and it intensifies when their eye contact holds for several beats.

“You’re fucking exhausting,” Jackie bites out, finally. “I need to lie down.”

Then she pushes off the balcony and storms inside, and Shauna’s pulse is starting to thud between her thighs. By the time the back door shuts her out, her breathing is shallow.

Is she—? she wonders, and then turns it over in her head again and again, trying to find a meaning in it that isn’t the one lodged in her brain. Her fingers curl around the railing of the balcony and grip tight. 

She could show up to Jackie’s bedroom and pick a fight again, if it’s not that. Say something like I’m not done with you and just argue with her again. It would spare her from the embarrassment in the event that she’s wrong.

Yeah, she thinks, nodding to herself with flushed cheeks. Okay.

(If she’s right, she could win for good by not showing up anyway. Just leave the party, leave Jackie hanging, go home with all the power. But she doesn’t. She can’t.)

She waits a full minute after Jackie goes, then heads back inside with a racing heart and makes her way through the oblivious crowd, double-checking that no one’s paying her any mind and then hurrying up the stairs to the empty second floor. She goes to Jackie’s bedroom door, takes a breath, and then pushes it open just enough to slip inside. 

She shuts it behind herself and looks over at Jackie, who’s standing by her old vanity like she’s been examining herself in the mirror, maybe. 

Still as vain as you always were, Shauna thinks, watching Jackie twist toward her with dark, unfriendly eyes and a hint of a smug smile on her lips. She can tell that Jackie thinks this is a victory for herself, but that they’re up here together in the first place makes Shauna feel like she’s won.

Jackie’s expectancy gives it away. She’d wanted Shauna to follow. That’s all Shauna needs. 

She won’t be reduced to her younger self this time. She’s ran through so many fantasies of herself and Jackie over the course of the past year that it almost feels familiar to lock the door and cross the room swiftly to her, then haul her in by her neck for a bruising kiss.

Jackie’s hands fly straight to the front of Shauna’s pants, and Shauna grips them tight to stop them, bites down on Jackie’s bottom lip and grunts, “No, I’m fucking you,” and they have to be so quick about this before they’re missed. 

She doesn’t know what to expect, but Jackie just pulls her hands from Shauna’s and then tangles them into her hair, holding her close, deepening their kiss with a breathy moan, and God, Shauna could live here forever in these short few minutes, even though it’s hate sex, even though her brain blaring Fuck Jackie Taylor still means it in two different ways. 

It’s like her blood can finally circulate properly, like her boring fucking life has finally been injected with some temporary meaning. She’d earned her Brown degree and felt nothing. She’s been with so many people and felt only a fleeting sense of pleasure from them all. Two minutes of Jackie had occupied her body and her thoughts for a year. What might a few more do for her? 

What might a lifetime?

Stop.

She pushes Jackie back toward the bed, watches her knees buckle, her ass hit the mattress, her body scoot back to make room for Shauna. She should savor it—Jackie looking up at her for once instead of the reverse in that dress that looks so sexy on her, flushed and already panting—but she doesn’t, just crawls over her and joins their mouths again. 

Her hand slips under Jackie’s dress and cups her, and Jackie moans into her mouth. She’s so wet already. 

“Beg me for it,” Shauna tries lowly, and Jackie’s nails dig into her neck harshly, stinging. Her voice is like knives.

“Fuck me or leave, Shauna.”

Okay, yeah, she can’t win everything, and the fact that she’s on top of Jackie is definitely enough of a victory on its own.

She yanks Jackie’s underwear down, all the way off, then tucks it into the back of her pants pocket as a souvenir while Jackie watches with a mixture of distaste and arousal. Then she flattens herself onto Jackie, mouth at Jackie’s neck, and Jackie’s arms are winding around her and Shauna’s hand is back under her dress. 

She doesn’t wait, too impatient, too aware of their circumstances. Jackie’s so warm and slick, familiar to her after so many nights with other women, but also so different because it’s Jackie. 

She hears the hitch in Jackie’s breath and she can’t suppress her own groan. “You want me so fucking badly,” she murmurs haughtily, and then scrapes her teeth along Jackie’s neck.

“If you give me hickeys I’ll—“ Jackie starts to threaten, and then can’t seem to find an end to her sentence.

“Treat me like shit for years? Control my whole life?” Shauna thumbs over her clit, then starts to trace firm circles around it, and Jackie moans brokenly beneath her.

“Shut up.”

Shauna’s so turned on she can feel herself throbbing. This is the best moment of her life. Nothing even comes close. “I remember every time you ditched me to go hook up with him.” She doesn’t have to say his name. They both know. “He didn’t even make you come.” She pushes two fingers in deep, thumb still working, and Jackie whimpers and wraps her legs around Shauna, pulling her closer with all four limbs: arms at her neck, legs at her waist.

She could cut into her like a knife, slice straight through her. The words are there on the tip of her tongue; He made me come.

What comes out instead isn’t in her head beforehand. It just spills straight out of her. “I could’ve made you come.”

It’s a confession. Of her jealousy, of the feelings she’s only just worked out herself in the past year. I wanted you; it could’ve been me, she’s saying, and she knows Jackie’s caught onto it too, because she squeezes hard on Shauna’s thrusting fingers and cries out softly into Shauna’s ear, like the confession alone had almost set her off. It makes the most sense in the world, Jackie getting off on being wanted by the person she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life subjugating. 

Feeling vulnerable, ears burning, Shauna drives into her harder, faster, a little angrily, like it’ll compensate somehow, and Jackie’s hips roll to meet her fingers like she’s done it a hundred times—Does she do it with men or women or both, Shauna wonders before she shuts down the thought; she doesn’t actually want to know. 

“You were…” Jackie starts, breathy and uneven, cutting herself off to moan. “A… a little occupied.” Shauna knows where she’s going with this, curls her fingers to make her whimper, to delay it. But Jackie pushes through it. “With fucking him instead.”

As if Jackie ever would’ve given Shauna what she’d wanted back then, even if Shauna had known what to ask for, even if she’d figured it out and then been brave enough to express it aloud. It’s a ludicrous assertion. Shauna should be laughing at Jackie for even implying it. It should start another argument. 

“We shouldn’t talk,” she decides, and bows her head to suck gently at Jackie’s neck even as she puts her body into her thrusts.

Jackie, to her credit, falls silent save for her suppressed sounds of pleasure, her thighs trembling, her hips starting to get jerkier. She’s taking longer than Shauna took, which Shauna will be self-conscious about later, but right now she’s mostly just happy it isn’t over yet.

She plants sloppy kisses along Jackie’s neck and up to her jaw, enjoying the feeling of her body starting to tense, the sound and feel of Jackie’s breathy little moans against her ear.

She feels the change right away when it happens, too attuned to Jackie’s body, and understands exactly how Jackie had known right away with her a year ago. She’s known with women before, but never this early, this acutely—never been so hyper focused on the woman beneath her like she is with Jackie. 

“Yeah?” she teases at Jackie’s ear. Jackie scrabbles at her back, too lost in the climb to retort, and Shauna feels her starting to squeeze tighter and tighter on her fingers. Jackie’s jaw clamps shut like she wants to make sure she’s quiet when she comes, and Shauna’s heart pangs. “Say my name,” she demands. “I said yours last year.” She works her fingers deep, hitting Jackie hard and fast where it feels best for herself, and Jackie arches and lets out a strangled moan, jaw unclenching. Shauna tries one last time, voice softer, with Jackie seconds from the edge. “Say it.”

Jackie clutches her just a fraction tighter, then stiffens with a sharp gasp, and Shauna feels her clamp down hard between her thighs, her body shuddering. “Shauna,” she whines, and then her orgasm’s coming in waves, making her tremble and struggle to pull in air. “Fuck.” 

She groans pathetically when it tapers off, sinking back to the mattress at last, and Shauna’s whole body is ablaze, Jackie whimpering her name on repeat in her head.

She wants to stay in Jackie for a while longer, and five minutes ago she’d wanted to touch Jackie and then leave because it’d felt like winning somehow, but now she’s aching so badly it hurts. 

She pulls gingerly out of Jackie and sits up quickly, fumbling frantically for the button of her pants, cursing herself for fucking wearing them in the first place. Jackie’s dress had been much smarter, much easier access. 

Jackie watches her, face still flushed, and makes no move to help her as Shauna wriggles herself out of her pants. Her eyes drop to the dark patch in Shauna’s underwear. 

“I’ll take like two seconds,” Shauna reassures her, mindful of the party downstairs, temporarily uncaring about how pathetic it makes her sound.

Jackie doesn’t make a jab about it anyway, just lets Shauna straddle her and grab at Jackie’s wrist, then moves the rest of the way of her own volition, a hunger trickling into her expression, replacing the breathless emptiness of her post-orgasm haze. 

Shauna pulls her underwear aside haphazardly, and Jackie’s fingers bury themselves inside of her without preemption. Shauna shoves her own hand into her underwear and circles her clit furiously, hips rocking on Jackie’s fingers, and oh, it really will be just a few seconds. 

“Fuck,” she whispers, letting her head tip back, too embarrassed to look directly at Jackie. Their fingers are touching, brushing, and she knows Jackie can see and feel how desperately she’s touching herself. 

Jackie’s fingers are working in her too; curling, searching, and quickly hooking into a spot that makes Shauna see stars. She’s so experienced. So fucking good with her hands. Shauna can’t deny it to herself anymore. Jackie’s probably done this even more than Shauna has. And that she must’ve done it so much, must’ve sought it out so much with women even with male alternatives available… What that says about Jackie, about…

Jeff never being able to touch her right. All the times she’d pushed for kissing with Shauna.

A hot new jealousy winds through her, images of how Jackie’s college years must’ve gone playing out behind her eyelids, and Jackie rubs her fingers hard into that delicious spot one last time and Shauna breaks, coming apart with a moan and a final rock of her hips. 

She catches her breath, whole body feeling like jelly, and stares at the shiny slick on Jackie’s hand when she pulls her fingers out. She follows that hand all the way up on its journey to Jackie’s mouth, where Jackie slides them between her lips like it’s nothing, her own eyes on Shauna’s.

It breaks her. “We should do this again.”

Jackie’s fingers leave her mouth with a soft pop. “Maybe,” she says evasively, her eyes searching Shauna’s expectantly. 

That one word is enough to send the resentment coursing through Shauna anew. She feels stripped bare out of nowhere. “Whatever. Or we could not.”

She grabs for her pants, but Jackie reaches them first—only to pluck her underwear out of the back pocket with a pointed look at Shauna. Shauna can’t get off of her fast enough, fumbling away from the bed on shaky legs, her back to Jackie as she tugs her pants up and buttons them. She heads for the door as soon as they’re on.

“See you next year,” Jackie says to her back—not angrily, but maybe just a little bit resigned.

-

2002

She gets her first boyfriend since college in March—It takes seven dates and the realization that he’s happy to let Shauna take complete charge in bed before she decides to fully commit to him. She fucks two girls in the interim, but no one after; she’ll cheat on him eventually in December if the opportunity arises, but Jackie’s a special case that precludes him and also matters more than him, and just not telling him about it seems easier than explaining, Hey, so I think I might start doing this thing where I fuck my best friend who I hate and also love every December in her childhood bedroom. It’s non-negotiable; are we still cool? What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, which means that it won’t affect their relationship. And he seems to like her, so it’d be a shame for him to have to lose out on dating her over one little yearly quirk of hers that might not even come to fruition. 

(If it doesn’t happen with Jackie this year, she might shatter from the inside out. It’s all she feels like she has to look forward to most days.)

He’s fine. His name is Mark. She’d met him at a bar, zeroed in on him and his thick-rimmed glasses and messy suit and tie and overall sad demeanor, slouched over the bar with a whiskey in front of him, and figured they could be each other’s pick-me-ups because she’d been thinking of Jackie even more than usual that night. 

Then she’d climbed on top of him in his bed a few hours later and he’d let her use his tie to bind his wrists to the headboard and then asked her to choke him a little, and it’d been the most satisfying sex she’s ever had with a man, so she’d decided eventually that he would do.

He’s boring, aside from the bedroom stuff, which is how Shauna feels sometimes too, so she thinks maybe she understands him. He works in finance. He hates his life, mostly, which is another thing they have in common. Her mother likes him just fine. Her friends like him too. She doesn’t bother introducing him to her father. 

So it works for a little while. The sex works best of all, but the one time she lets him be on top, she can’t come—and she lets him know it; none of that pathetic “faking it” shit Jackie had done to feed Jeff’s ego in high school. 

Jackie’s broken her, is what it is—with her let me do this and shut up and the humiliation of that first time, and then the way she’d laid underneath Shauna and whimpered her name and sucked Shauna off of her fingers and watched Shauna ride her the second time and all of it had been so insanely perfect that Shauna had let slip how badly she’d wanted to do it again.

Sex has always been a little bit more about control and power than it ever was about lust or love for her—Jeff was the beginning of it, or maybe Jackie was the beginning of it back when they were teenagers, given how transparently Jackie had always derived non-sexual pleasure from controlling Shauna, and given that Shauna had simply adopted the same trait in the name of vengeance when she’d gone after Jeff—but Jackie’s cleaved the concepts in two so perfectly clearly for her that she can never go back, never unsee it. Being vulnerable is akin to humiliation. Making someone else vulnerable is power. Power turns her on. Vulnerability doesn’t—unless it’s Jackie, apparently, telling her to shut up, kissing her so hard it almost hurts.

If Mark ever took control and then told her to shut up in bed, Shauna thinks she might legitimately bludgeon him with the nearest available heavy object. (If a woman did it, she’d have to think harder about it. Maybe she’d just roll them over and get a little bite-y.)

She doesn’t dig deeper into her own psyche about it, however, beyond that this is how she is, she knows what she likes, and it’s Jackie’s fault, and December needs to come now. 

In May, she gets a promotion. It starts with one of the few coworkers she actually likes bringing her up when her boss is trying to put him on a story about the local high school soccer team making States. He doesn’t want it, because it’s boring, and brings up Shauna and the Yellowjackets, and Shauna’s been wanting to actually get to write something beyond the short stories she’s been submitting to lit mags, especially with the rejection letters piling up, so when her boss gives her a shot at the story, she throws herself into it. 

It goes well. It’s the proudest she’s ever been of herself since she got into Brown. Her first excited thought upon finding out that she’s officially getting a byline is that she needs to tell Jackie. They haven’t been friends in six years. She’s pathetic. 

She tells Mark instead, who picks her up in his arms and swings her around, beaming, and then takes her out to an expensive dinner to celebrate. She feels nothing.

She gets another story, and then another, and they’re all higher-page stuff, filler, but she gets moved off of the front desk and she’s actually a professional writer now, which is so much less embarrassing than being a receptionist. She drives to places she’s never been and gets paid to do it, and talks to people she’d never normally talk to, and thinks sometimes that it all feels like something Jackie would’ve been amazing at in some other life.

Jackie must have a job, assuming she’s not mooching off of her parents, because she isn’t a married housewife (yet?), but Shauna has no clue what it is. She won’t ask her mother. Asking feels like losing somehow.

Mark takes her out to a fancy dinner again in late November, and Shauna’s halfway through a forty-dollar steak when he gets out of his seat and kneels in front of an audience of their fellow diners, pulling out a ring box to a chorus of gasps and anticipatory smiles.

Shauna’s mortified when he pops the question. If they were alone, she’d have probably laughed, probably thought it was a joke. “We’ve been together for less than nine months,” she blurts, her mind racing. When that doesn’t feel like enough, she almost says, You barely even know me, we hardly ever say ‘I love you’, I never wanted to get married before I’ve even turned twenty-five, but then has the good sense to not.

It’s all so humiliating, and he apologizes profusely on the car ride home, insisting, “You’re right, Shauna. It’s too soon. I’ll wait as long as you need me to. I just… I love you so much. You know that, right?”

It’s sweet, Shauna supposes. She accepts his apology and then lays awake all night with the realization that she’s been lonely since her freshman year of college and it’s never really gone away. Her friends only know the surface-level things about her life because that’s all she’ll give them. She doesn’t share how she feels with anyone, ever, unless it’s Mark and what she’s feeling is simple and easily explained. Most of what goes on in her head feels too complicated to ever unleash into the world. She feels disconnected. So empty, still.

Mr. Taylor dresses up as Santa at the next Christmas party. His generation of Wiskayok’s resident upper-class families are starting to become grandparents, and there are three small children whose parents come armed with disposable cameras for their children's time on Mr. Taylor’s knee. It’s a little sickening, but if Shauna reins her cynicism in for more than two seconds she can concede that it’s also cute. 

Mark had tried to join her this year and had been shut down before the suggestion could fully leave his lips. Then she’d told her mother he’d be too busy with work to attend. 

The knot of anxiety in her stomach doesn’t loosen through the greetings, the “nice to see you again”s, the shallow praises and catch-ups. She’s here for Jackie.

And Jackie is nowhere to be found.

She checks the back porch where they’d argued last year, makes an excuse to sweep the entire outside of the house, sneaks upstairs and checks Jackie’s bedroom. Nothing. A lump forms in her throat that she can barely swallow past.

She needs this. She can’t go another year without it. She might die if she’s meant to go forever without it now.

An hour passes before the front door swings open and Jackie traipses inside, an air of disinterest toward the whole party radiating off of her, her legs a little unsteady with inebriation. Mrs. Taylor collects her before she can make it any more obvious that she’s drunk, hisses something angry into Jackie’s ear, and hauls her off down the hall.

Shauna’s so relieved that Jackie’s at least here that she gives up all pretense and follows them out not long after they’ve gone, down the hallway and then through the open door to the basement steps. She can hear the faint, angry echoes of Jackie’s mother as she comes down the stairs. 

“—what’s gotten into you these past few months, Jacqueline, but if you think for one second I’ll let you embarrass—“

“Hey,” Shauna interjects quietly, reaching the bottom step and offering them a meek wave. Jackie’s sitting on a couch with her mother leaning over her, and Shauna watches Mrs. Taylor straighten up and smooth her expression out.

“Shauna. It’s good to see you.”

Jackie’s staring at her with those piercing hazel eyes, and it takes everything in Shauna not to look back at her yet. “You too, Mrs. Taylor.” She hesitates. “I can stay down here with Jackie for a little while, if you’d like to get back to your guests.”

Jackie’s eyes sharpen with interest. Mrs. Taylor looks back and forth between them, taken aback, but then gives a swift nod. “Sure. I’d be very grateful. Thank you, Shauna.”

She sweeps past Shauna, ascending the stairs, and Shauna hears the basement door shut a moment later. 

She recognizes that her hands are trembling as she moves to Jackie and sinks down into the couch. Jackie rises as soon as Shauna sits, and panic swells in Shauna’s chest, but then she sees that Jackie’s just going to the far side of the basement, to a familiar loose wooden panel in the wall that Jackie eyes curiously and then pries back. Shauna watches her reach in, and then a moment later she’s withdrawing a small, half-filled bottle of vodka and laughing out, “Wow, I can’t believe this is still here.”

She brings it back and offers it to Shauna silently, then sits down next to her when Shauna accepts it. Shauna studies the bottle for a moment and then recalls, “We used to buy them from Nat Scatorccio and stash them there.”

“Ironically, she still sells alcohol,” Jackie says conversationally. She’s not slurring her words. “She bartends over in—“ She pauses, seems to rethink elaborating, and then her eyes flicker down to Shauna’s hands on the bottle and instead she asks flatly, “Where’s your ring?”

Shauna blanches, eyes darting sharply to Jackie’s. “What?” She hadn’t told anyone about Mark’s proposal. 

Jackie looks away, her jaw clenching. “Just something I heard. That you had a boyfriend who was planning on proposing last month.” She takes the bottle out of Shauna’s hands and spins the cap. “Sorry if I just spoiled the surprise,” she says, not sounding sorry at all, and then takes a long swig from it.

Shauna puts the pieces together in the only way she thinks they might fit. He’d come home with her for Thanksgiving. Spent some time alone with her mother. Plenty of opportunity to ask for permission. Shauna’s mother to Jackie’s mother, Jackie’s mother to Jackie.

Something hot flickers unpleasantly behind Shauna’s ribs. “Your mom tells you about me?”

“Not usually.” Jackie takes another swig. “I’ve asked her not to. But she loves her gossip. A proposal’s pretty juicy. So was you getting a boyfriend.” Her eyes narrow, dropping to Shauna’s ring finger. “Is he getting it resized? Does he not know you’re a seven? You sure know how to pick them, Shipman.” Another swig. “Sounds like a fucking moron.”

It picks at something in her that makes her empty fists clench. “Says the girl who dated Jeff fucking Sadecki for four years.”

“Says the girl who had sex with him,” Jackie says easily, capping the bottle, letting it drop to her feet between them.

Shauna’s nostrils flare, and then she lunges forward, but by the time her fists reach Jackie they’ve unclenched again, they’re grasping for her face, they’re holding her still so that Shauna’s mouth can find its target. 

Jackie’s scrambling into her lap in seconds, in a skirt this time, lips and mouth and tongue all over Shauna’s, teeth nipping and pulling and biting. Shauna's worn a dress this time and it’s backfiring, making it harder to maneuver herself beneath Jackie, but they manage to settle with Shauna’s back pressing into the couch cushions and Jackie leaning over her, hands on Shauna’s cheeks as Shauna’s hands glide down her sides and squeeze greedily at her hips.

She’s home. It’s so temporary, always, and there’s anger at Jackie and herself fueling their messy kisses, also like always, but she finally feels life being breathed into her again. 

Jackie ends it abruptly, jerking backward like she’s being yanked back into reality, accusing, “You’re engaged.” Shauna doesn’t answer at first, and then almost starts to, but Jackie’s face slackens and she adds, “And I’m seeing someone too.”

Shauna feels like she’s been dipped into an ice bath.

“Not seriously,” Jackie adds quietly, her brow furrowing, “but it’s—you’re engaged, Shauna.”

Doesn’t Jackie know that they don’t count the same as other people? That this matters too much to not transcend whatever they have with anyone else? Is it not that important to her?

Her stomach sinks. “I’m not engaged,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. “I said no. But if you’ve got—“

“You said no?” Jackie interjects sharply, her eyes widening.

Shauna sighs, not sure what the point of this is. It doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. She’d thought so, anyway. Felt so. “Yeah. For now.” Jackie doesn't react to her second admission. She doesn’t seem surprised. And Shauna wants a reaction; to something, to anything. “But I’d do this with you tonight either way. Even if I was.”

Jackie blinks at her, gaze dropping to her lips, and a dark arousal fills her eyes. “Oh,” she says, and there it is.

“You’re seeing someone,” Shauna recalls, and doesn’t mean what she starts to say next. “If you don’t—“

“Forget that,” Jackie interjects. “Forget I said that.” 

Gladly. 

Shauna will have to unpack so many things about tonight later on.  

“So,” Jackie goes on lowly, thighs flexing over Shauna’s, “once a cheater, always a cheater, huh, Shipman?”

“Me or you?” Shauna fires back. Jackie’s the one who had made out with her over and over again while she’d been dating Jeff. “I was single in high school. You made sure of it.”

Jackie’s fingers curl around her neck. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, it’s my fault no one wanted to fuck you other than Randy Walsh, right?”

“Randy Walsh and your boyfriend,” Shauna snips haughtily. She remembers last time, one year ago. She remembers what they’d said: about how Shauna could’ve made Jackie come, and then Jackie throwing in her face that Shauna had been too busy with Jeff instead. Shauna remembers how ridiculous she’d thought that was. As if Jackie would’ve been interested in anyone other than whoever could earn her the most social approval back then. 

She uses it now anyway, adds, “And you.”

“I didn’t,” Jackie breathes out, but she’s leaning closer, her mouth brushing against Shauna’s. “I didn’t know I wanted to fuck you until college.”

Shauna feels that everywhere in her body, from the crown of her head down to her toes. Her fingers tighten on Jackie’s waist, and Jackie cups Shauna’s neck as she starts to roll her hips slowly into Shauna’s abdomen.

She’s twenty-four, and Jackie is twenty-five, and she feels like an inexperienced teenager, suddenly, trying not to combust from just a few words, from Jackie’s mouth dragging up her jawline and Jackie murmuring, “When did you know?”

“When you stuck your hand in my underwear two years ago,” Shauna admits, her voice raspier than she’s used to, more strangled. 

Jackie huffs at the corner of her jaw, then bites at her ear and murmurs, “That Ivy League brain and all of those Ivy League girls I bet you hooked up with and you never got that it was really all about me?”

Shauna’s hand slips from her hip and around to the front of her skirt, pushing her back, creating space between them. Jackie stops moving, and Shauna’s hand slides lower to her inner thigh. Her fingers brush upward, grazing bare skin, teasing. “You always thought everything was about you,” Shauna whispers, feeling Jackie’s chest rising and falling faster, hearing her breathing picking up. “You’re so fucking obsessed with yourself.”

“It’s only narcissistic when I’m wrong,” Jackie murmurs. “Now touch me. Before someone comes down here.”

Shauna won’t take orders. She’s running this. From now on, she’s running this. “No.” 

Jackie squeezes her neck out of frustration, just enough to apply pressure, and Shauna pulses once between her thighs at the cloudy fuzz it creates in her brain and then tries to get ahold of herself. Her thumb brushes over damp fabric and Jackie’s hips twitch as a groan punches out of her. “Just do something to me.”

Jackie’s more desperate this year. Last year she’d refused to beg. Shauna wonders if it’s getting to Jackie, too. If nothing else can scratch the itch like this for her, either. 

She wonders what Jackie would give up. How much she’d give in to be touched, finally.

Her thumb sweeps upward in one firm stroke, touching Jackie through her underwear, and Jackie goes limp against her with a whimper, resting her weight on Shauna, hips rocking just once. Shauna turns her head, finds Jackie’s ear. Whispers it. “Say it was your fault. Say you deserved it.”

Jackie goes from limp to tense all over. Her fingers dig into Shauna’s neck until Shauna thinks they might leave bruises. 

Shauna closes her eyes and keeps pushing anyway. “Say I was right about you.”

A beat passes. The basement feels too still, too silent. 

And then Jackie’s pushing off of her, not looking at her, getting to her feet, muttering, “I shouldn’t have come. I knew I shouldn’t have come.”

Shauna scrambles up after her, watching Jackie bend down to retrieve the vodka and go to return it to their old hiding spot. She feels ant-sized, suddenly. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving. Going home.” Jackie sounds lifeless. She presses the panel back into place and turns toward Shauna. 

“Okay,” Shauna says quickly, placatingly, panic coursing through her like wildfire. “Let’s just not fucking talk. Okay? Let’s just… do this, like the last two times, and not talk.”

Jackie tries to push past her, but Shauna grabs at her biceps, holding her in place. Jackie’s eyes look hauntingly empty, suddenly, and something in Shauna’s chest cracks at the sight of it. 

“Jackie. Jax. Don’t go.”

She’s not unaware of the role reversal. She’s incredibly conscious of it, actually. She hates it. But Jackie can’t leave. Not for another year. Not without handing over a piece of her to get Shauna through another twelve months of her own muted existence. 

“Stay,” she asks, adjusting herself to force her face into Jackie’s eyeline. “Please. I need to do this.”

Jackie swallows thickly, looks her up and down with disdain, and then says, “Say you were wrong. For everything you said about me, for what you did. For Jeff and for not telling me about Brown.”

Shauna’s jaw tightens. She can’t. She’d be abandoning her younger self. Lying. Pretending that her suffering at Jackie’s hands never happened. She won’t do that to herself. Not even for this.

“I can’t,” she says quietly, her voice cracking. She shakes her head.

Jackie’s mouth twitches, and Shauna sees her eyes starting to shimmer. “I can’t, either.”

Shauna squeezes her arms gently, loosening her grip there. She’s buzzing with a mixture of heat and anger and hurt and panic. She just needs… To not be talking. Like always, with Jackie. It only makes things worse.

“Sit down,” she tries instead, finding her voice, sounding firmer. “On the couch.”

Jackie hesitates, and then slips from Shauna’s grip. She could go to the stairs—and for a terrifying moment Shauna thinks she will—but she returns to the couch and sinks into it, releasing an uneven breath. 

Relieved, Shauna follows her, comes to a stop in front of her, and then lowers herself slowly to her knees. 

Jackie’s breath catches, and Shauna only has to press one kiss to her knee before her thighs part, and then Jackie’s lifting her own hips to slip her underwear almost mechanically down to her knees. Shauna pulls them the rest of the way to her ankles and doesn’t try to keep them for herself this time. 

But Jackie exhales shakily and then says, “You can have them if I can have yours.”

Shauna’s eyes snap up to hers. It feels like the best lifeline Jackie ever could’ve thrown her. Something else to help her after tonight. A form of connection. Until next time. 

“Yeah,” she rasps. She doesn’t have anywhere to store them. She’ll have to wear them. They can swap. “You can put mine on when I’m done with you.”

She dips her head, kissing slowly up Jackie’s inner thigh, and Jackie’s fingers tangle loosely into her hair. Her breathing is so shallow and loud. 

“Pull it,” Shauna mumbles, already lost in the silky skin beneath her mouth. Her teeth scrape over a small, shiny line: a tiny stretch mark Jackie’s gained at some point over the years. She licks it like running her tongue over it might claim it for her. Like this piece of their years spent apart might become hers if she lavishes it with enough attention. “Hurt me.”

Jackie’s hand tugs gently at her hair. It feels good, but it’s not enough. “I don’t want to,” Jackie whispers, and this isn’t how this is supposed to go. It’s supposed to be heated and angry and filled with frustration, like they’re taking their history out on each other.

But Shauna doesn’t feel any of that now, either. Jackie’s thigh muscle flexes against her mouth and Shauna buries a groan into it. Her tongue drags inward, over, and she slides her hands under Jackie’s thighs and tugs her forward, then buries her mouth and tongue between Jackie’s legs with a soft moan.

She can put a taste to what she craves, finally. She can sear a memory into her mind of Jackie arching above her and then looking down at her, fingers stroking softly through Shauna’s hair, breathing heavy and laden with muted gasps. 

For the first time, a moment between them feels as precious as it is. Shauna knows it isn’t just sex; there’s a tenderness to the way Jackie cradles her head. And they are still angry on the inside, because they’ll always be angry, but none of it shows. 

Jackie tastes like anyone else, moans and cries out and comes against her tongue like anyone else, but it’s that she’s Jackie that makes it special. The way they’re tied together doesn’t feel like a chain for a moment. Coming home doesn’t feel like a death march toward another year of emptiness after they part. It just… is. It’s the way things are, the way they are. And for a moment, Shauna accepts it without feeling bitter about it.

This is her person. She loves her too much to love anyone else, and hates her too much to love her properly. It’s tragic, and maybe it’s pathetic of her too, but she wouldn’t give these moments up for anything. 

Jackie comes down slowly, petting Shauna’s head, lungs expanding over and over again beneath her ribs as she tries to get her body back under her own control.

Shauna sits back on her calves, Jackie’s hands shift to cup her face and stroke at her cheeks, and Shauna licks what she can off of her own lips, then wipes at the rest with her wrist. When she’s done, she tips forward to give one final kiss to the inside of Jackie’s knee. She reaches beneath her dress, pulls her damp underwear off, and then guides it up along Jackie’s legs, where it rests halfway up her thighs, because Jackie’s still too drained to lift her hips. 

They sit with it all for a moment, and Shauna waits for Jackie to speak first. They’ve probably been here for too long now. Shauna resigns herself to not being touched this year. It’s okay. Having Jackie like this will do; it’s not like anything could ever truly tide her over completely anyway. 

Finally, Jackie lets her eyes flutter shut and then says, “I don’t think I’ll be at next year’s party.”

Shauna’s eyes dart up to hers, and she swallows hard and tries to smother the sudden wave of emotions before Jackie can read them all over her face. Jackie’s eyes open and fill with guilt.

“Okay,” Shauna says evenly. She doesn’t know what else she’s supposed to say. She feels silly, suddenly, kneeling between Jackie’s legs like she’s praying to her. She can’t fathom this being the last time she sees her.

Jackie licks her lips. “We should… We need a new way.”

To do this goes unspoken. Shauna’s body does an internal 180. It’s a shot of adrenaline straight to her chest. 

“Maybe,” Jackie goes on, visibly choosing her words very carefully, “I could give you my number. I’ll still be visiting Wiskayok next December. You can text or call on the night of the party, and I’ll let you know where to come meet me. A hotel or something. Away from my parents.”

It sounds like something out of Shauna’s wildest fantasies. But with one horrific stipulation. She doesn’t want Jackie’s number. She’d torture herself with the knowledge of it.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “But I’ll give you my number instead. You can just text an address on the day. It’s simpler. You won’t have to wait for me to contact you first.” It’s also a complete obfuscation of the real reason she’s trying to put it all back on Jackie to reach out in a year.

Jackie blanches, glances away from her, and then tries, tone even, “It’s fine. I don’t mind. I’ll give you mine.” 

“No,” Shauna blurts, and at Jackie’s startled look she takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and reins herself in. “What if… We just figure it out now?”

Jackie considers this for a moment. “There’s a Motel 6 near the—“

“I know it,” Shauna says.

“Okay.” Jackie thinks for a moment. “Okay, so, after the party, come to the front desk there. I’ll leave them your name and they can give you the room number. I’ll know what day my parents are hosting even if I don’t go. And then we’ll meet.”

She doesn’t say the rest, but Shauna knows the rest. They won’t have to hurry. They’ll have the whole night. 

Shauna trails a hand up the smooth skin of Jackie’s calf, blinking up at her. “You gonna stop me after five minutes there?” She just wants to hear Jackie say it.

“You can stay the night,” Jackie murmurs. 

The basement door swings open distantly. Shauna’s up in a flash, snatching at Jackie’s underwear and balling it up in her hand to hide it. Jackie lifts her hips and hastily pulls Shauna’s underwear on beneath her skirt.

“Girls,” Mrs. Taylor calls out from the top of the stairs, out of view, “Ms. Matthews is asking after the both of you.”

“We’ll be there in a second, Mom,” Jackie calls back.

The door shuts, and Shauna tries to suppress a snort. “Wait, Lottie’s mom is here this year? Shouldn’t she be off in some vacation house in Australia for the Winter?”

Jackie offers her a half-smile. “She got divorced this year. Lottie isn’t exactly mad about it.”

First the Nat mention, now Lottie. “You keep in touch with the Yellowjackets?”

“Some of them.” Jackie gives the stairs a lingering glance. “We should head up.”

It all feels strangely… normal. For the first time. Their wounds haven’t healed, but they’re getting easier to put aside and ignore. It’s not a fix, but a Bandaid that can maybe hold for a little while. A few hours. A night? 

They’ll find out in a year, Shauna supposes. “What do we tell our parents?”

Jackie shrugs. She seems uncertain. “Do you want them to think we’re getting along now?”

Shauna follows the thought to its natural conclusion. Imagines calling her mom in a world where her mother thinks Jackie and Shauna are trying to be civil again. She’d leak details about Jackie’s life, and—

No. She doesn’t want that at all.

“No,” she says.

Jackie looks away from her, body language going frostier. Shauna feels herself closing off too. The moment has passed. How can they last a night if even a few minutes is a chore?

“Then we’ll tell them we tried and it’s not working,” Jackie suggests shortly. She steps toward the stairs.

Shauna grabs her hand unthinkingly, body moving before her synapses can consciously fire, and pulls Jackie back into her arms. She only catches a glimpse of the alarmed look on Jackie’s face before she’s yanking her in for a harsh kiss, sharing the taste of her, cupping her jaw. Jackie leans into it, and when their kiss breaks she rests her forehead against Shauna’s. 

“Merry Christmas,” Shauna breathes out. “Bye, Jax.”

Jackie’s hand is trembling when it rises to rest on her cheek. She opens her mouth like she wants to say something, closes it, and then whispers a quiet, “Goodbye, Shauna,” instead.

It isn’t until Jackie’s gone and Shauna’s left standing alone in her basement that she realizes there are tears on her cheeks. She isn’t sure whose eyes they’d come from.

Later, when it’s all over, she gives her mother their pre-planned story, makes sure she knows that nothing has changed, that she’d only babysat Jackie for a few minutes until she’d gotten ahold of herself as a favor to Mrs. Taylor. 

She spends the night in her old bed that evening. She changes into her pajamas alone in her childhood room—vanity painfully bare, the old photos of herself and Jackie torn down in a rage over six years ago now. Her underwear—Jackie’s underwear—comes off. She lays in bed with it crumpled and still damp in her fist, painfully aware of how Jackie hadn’t touched her this year. She’s still aching.

She hasn’t forgotten that Jackie is fucking someone else now. She probably always has been, here and there, just like Shauna, but now it’s one special person. Even if it’s not serious. Someone has Jackie except for the one night that Shauna gets her. 

She unclenches her fist and stares darkly at the half-dried spot in the fabric. The part of Jackie she gets to own. Something minuscule but permanent. 

She shoves her hand down her pants and brings Jackie to her nose and mouth, and for a moment she’s alive all over again.

-

2003

A few days after she gets back from Wiskayok, she’s eating dinner with Mark in her apartment when he looks across the table at her with furrowed brows and asks, “Why didn’t you ever tell me that you’re bisexual?”

Shauna just stares at him, not sure which of the emotions fighting for dominance in her chest is going to win out: panic, fear, apprehension, uncertainty, confusion. He can’t have found out about Jackie. He’s too calm. 

Right. He’s calm. Not upset. She relaxes, takes a bite, and stays calm too. “I’m not. I’m not anything.”

He laughs shortly: light, almost affectionate. “Okay, well, I ran into a friend of a friend while you were back home. A woman who used to know you.” There’s something in the way he says it, the inflection on the word know. Shauna understands what he really means. “You could’ve told me. I’m not, you know.” He gives an idle shrug. “Against it, if you need…”

Shauna’s jaw tightens. “Need what?”

He notices the change in her demeanor and deflates a little. “Shit. Is it not—-?”

“I like whoever,” Shauna mutters quickly, wishing they could just go back to their food. “It’s not like I get fucking cravings. Jesus.”

Except she does. But it’s different from what he’s suggesting. She just craves one person.

She processes what he’d said—really processes it—and then looks at him strangely. “You want me to cheat on you?”

That is… workable. Maybe she can tell him about December after all.

He colors. “I mean, I don’t think of it as—Like, if it’s with me there…”

Nevermind.

She hides her disappointment. “Oh.”

“Is that something you’re interested in?” he asks far too casually, feigning it, transparently pretending he isn’t incredibly invested in her answer. 

She scowls at him. “…No?” It’s another reminder that he doesn’t really know her. Not once in her life has Shauna ever wanted to share possession of anything. She’s only shared Jackie, and shared with Jackie, and only because she’s had to. “You’re mine,” she adds, and the poorly-hidden disappointment on his face vanishes, replaced by a familiar hunger. 

She knows he’s in the mood, but she kicks him out anyway later, all of it rubbing her the wrong way. She can’t really articulate why.

Weeks pass. The days start to bleed together. She does a story on a dog saving a drowning child. She does a story on a new museum opening up down the street from her apartment. She does a story on the best places in Trenton to take a date for Valentine’s Day.

Mark starts to grate on her. He’s clingier, more insecure after the rejected proposal and their conversation about Shauna with women, and he starts talking about wanting to move in together. Shauna likes having her own space, but feels like she can’t say so without it starting an argument, so she just gives him maybes and she nods along with half-baked plans. Sure, sometime this year, she agrees.

She likes the way Jackie’s underwear digs into her hips when she wears it, always just tight enough that she can feel it there, that it leaves little lines behind in her skin. It gets washed and reworn weekly, so it really is only a matter of time before she’s wearing it on an evening Mark comes over—just for dinner, he says, just because he had a bad day at work, and they can put on a movie and have a nice, quiet night.

He catches sight of the lace when Shauna stretches on the couch, says with interest, “Those are new,” and doesn’t notice the way she stiffens when he leans in and starts kissing down her neck.

“I’m not in the mood,” she says shortly, which is usually good enough, but he mumbles something about missing her, about it having been a few weeks, and she’s not scared but for the first time she feels uncomfortable with his hands on her. “Mark—“

“Can I get you in the mood?” he teases, and she hears his playful smile same as she can feel it against her skin. “Tell me what you want.”

His hand skims down her body. His fingers brush the lace. Jackie’s lace.

“Not tonight,” Shauna says, but his mouth does feel good on her neck, and her voice is probably just a little too breathy, just enough that he thinks it’s a game, that she doesn’t mean it. His fingers dip into Jackie’s underwear, and Shauna feels sick. “Stop,” she says firmly, and his hand stills, but he’s not out, he’s invading something that was just for Jackie and Shauna, poisoning it, and Shauna might actually vomit. “Get out,” she snaps, seizing his wrist, pulling, and he flinches and draws his arm back, but it’s not fast enough, it’s too late, it was theirs and he’s tainted it, gotten in between Shauna and the fabric like it’s something that belongs to him now, like Shauna belongs to him and not to Jackie—

He cups her cheek worriedly. “What—?“

She flinches back from him. “Don’t touch me.”

He’s away now, his hand gone, and he’s blinking at her with fear and alarm, crestfallen. “Shauna…”

It takes her a moment to realize that she’s breathing hard. Too hard, like she might be panicking. She stumbles to the kitchen for a glass of water, head spinning, and then sags against the counter with her face in her hands.

He goes to her, hesitant, keeping his distance. “Babe,” he says gently, and it’s another word that doesn’t feel like it’s for him, that’s never sounded right coming out of his mouth. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

Shauna shakes her head. She feels so hollow. She doesn’t want to marry him. She doesn’t want to move in with him. He doesn’t make her feel any less alone, and she doesn’t even know why she’d done this for so long in the first place beyond that it had felt like she should. 

She drops her hands, stares off to the side at the kitchen wall, and says emptily, “I cheated on you.”

She feels the air get sucked out of the room. He’s not saying anything. She can see him just standing there out of the corner of her eye, just staring at her.

She doesn’t know what else to do but to keep going. “It was when I went back home in December. With a woman.” She senses that last detail might soften the blow. It’s so silly. Jackie’s a bigger threat to him than any man could ever be.

He shifts from one foot to the other, and says, finally, “That makes sense.” His tone is placating, kinder than she thinks it should be. “Shauna… if… if you need that, we can—“

“Stop,” she huffs out, squeezing her eyes shut, frustrated. “You don’t get it. You should be pissed. You should hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” he says automatically. “I love—“

She doesn’t let him finish. “You’re pathetic.” There’s an icy fist closing around her heart. She doesn’t feel anything at all. “I’m in love with her.” Her eyes snap to him, and finally he looks wounded. It’s annoying. She bites out, “Can’t you fucking tell? You wanted to marry me and you can’t tell I think about someone else every single fucking day?”

His jaw has gone tight. His eyes are shimmering as his gaze drops to the floor. “I just…” He swallows thickly. “Thought you were like that.”

“A fucking husk?” Shauna pushes, offended.

“Yeah,” he breathes out softly. “Like me. But… worse, maybe.” He looks up and around, suddenly, like he’s seeing their surroundings anew, her apartment anew. Bare walls, everything largely undisturbed. Like a blank example ready to be shown on a tour. Never properly lived in. 

She’s always been a little bit ready to pack her things and go—go back—under the right circumstances. She’s only just now noticing it herself, too.

“You should go,” she tells him.

“Yeah,” he says shortly, heartbroken. “…Maybe you should, too.”

He leaves, just like that, after an entire year together. A year of his life she’s wasted. 

Shauna never sees him again.

-

She goes back to women immediately. Seeks out honey blonde hair and hazel eyes this time and loses herself in the same several bodies over and over again, feels herself disassociating for a lot of it. One of them tells her to go fuck herself when she finds out Shauna’s sleeping with other women. Another kicks her out after she moans Jackie’s name in bed.

Her work suffers. The few friends she’s managed to hang onto tell her she’s been a mess since her breakup, that maybe she should call Mark and tell him she’s not over him, tell him she made a mistake. She wishes someone understood her. She wishes she hadn’t created her own isolation by never being honest with anyone. But she doesn’t know how to share Jackie, not even verbally. It’s too precious. She feels as incapable of it as she had of physically sharing Mark.

She’s pulled herself up out of the hole by autumn, because things always start to pick up by then, when she can start counting the days to December. The weather gets colder and Shauna feels warmer. Snowfall comes and her heart feels lighter.

“Most people find Winter fucking depressing, you know,” a longtime coworker says to her one November morning, when she comes in humming a familiar tune it takes her a moment to actively register is nobody likes you when you’re twenty-three. (Now that she’s twenty-five, it’s not so bad, after all.)

She’s never forgotten Jackie’s birthday, but this year she walks to the small boutique shop near her office during her lunch break on the exact day itself, browses the kinds of cute tops Jackie had liked in high school, and gets all the way to the line for the register before she realizes she doesn’t know what the fuck Jackie even likes or wears now. She’s only seen her in dresses and one top-skirt combo no doubt pre-approved by her mother.

She feels stupid, and just buys a tube of vanilla-flavored lipgloss instead. She doesn’t really know if Jackie’s still wearing lipgloss at twenty-six either, though.

December hits and crawls by. She’s just waiting. Getting nervous. Doubting everything, realizing that Jackie could just change her mind, leave her hanging. 

But she goes to Wiskayok, and wears Jackie’s underwear, and studies herself in the mirror before the party for way too long, the way Jackie had used to in high school.

This year’s party has a different aura about it. There are quiet murmurs. Shauna’s mother’s been cagey since Shauna arrived back home, too. Everything is off. 

Nobody seems to be treating Shauna any differently, so she knows it’s not about her, but it takes a full hour before Shauna finds the usual hens gathered together by the buffet table and following Mrs. Taylor with their eyes. Shauna pretends to be loading up a plate of food for herself, and listens.

“I just know I wouldn't be so well-put together even all these months later if it were my daughter,” one of them says. 

“I’m astounded she’s still hosting,” another replies. “I offered, you know.”

“Well, good on her. I’d be a mess, too. Thankfully Allie’s met a nice boy this year at her school. From the water polo team, too.”

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow. Giving up—needing to know—she turns to them and breaks right into their conversation, asking, “Sorry, what’s going on?”

They seem amused at the sight of her. “Well, between you and me,” Allie’s mom says quietly, leaning in toward her, “you did right to distance yourself from that girl all those years ago. The whole town’s abuzz about it.”

If Shauna needed another reminder as to why she fucking hates Wiskayok, this is certainly it. “About what?”

“Jackie,” another one says in a hushed whisper, scandalized. “Left her mother in tears this past summer, saying she was dating some… well.” She goes even quieter. “A woman.”

“Had been,” Allie’s mom adds, more eager to gossip than actively disgusted, “for a while, apparently.”

“Oh.” Shauna tries her best to look surprised, to hide the sinking feeling in her stomach. “Wow.”

She wanders off and finds her mother, tugging her straight out of a conversation and ignoring her complaints. “Shauna, you can’t just—“

“Why didn’t you tell me about Jackie?” Shauna snaps, and knows the answer immediately. The logic of it does nothing to calm her down. 

Her mother sighs. “Shauna.”

“This is different,” Shauna insists, even though she’s not sure it is.

“You were furious with me and her mother after Jackie mentioned Mark’s proposal to you,” her mother reminds her. “You were very clear.”

“Okay.” Shauna steps back, thinking quickly. She can use this as a way out. Pretend she’s overwhelmed, no longer in the mood to be here. “Can I just go? I can call a cab. Go out. I’ll be home late.”

Her mother squeezes her arm sympathetically. “Just… be safe if you stay out.”

Freed, Shauna heads for the Motel 6. The cab drives on salted roads, and snow crunches under Shauna’s feet on the way up to the front office of the motel. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if this was all for nothing. Another year of waiting. Months of anticipation. She’s even started dreaming about it. 

“I’m looking for Jackie Taylor,” she tells the man behind the desk. “I’m Shauna Shipman.”

He barely looks at her, busy reading some car magazine, as he hands her a key. “Room 69.”

Shauna almost laughs. Warmth and relief bloom in her chest as she looks down at the key, running her thumb over the number on the tag. There’s no doubt in her mind that Jackie had picked it on purpose. 

She trudges back out, up slippery steps, and finds it on the third floor. She barely has to knock before the door flies open. 

Jackie’s hair only just reaches her shoulders now. She’s wearing something simple: a long white T-shirt that reaches all the way down to her mid thigh, baby blue pajama shorts peeking out just past the hem. She softens when she sees Shauna, smiling wide at her. “Wow. Look at you all dressed to impress, Shipman.”

There’s a small helix piercing in one of her ears that catches Shauna’s eye as she steps inside with an impatient, “Let me in; it’s cold,” feigning annoyance in response to Jackie’s teasing. Jackie’s also wearing a thumb ring.  

This must be who Jackie is now, or maybe who she’s been for years when she isn’t with her parents. Casual, relaxed, cooler. Gayer. 

Shauna sets the purse she’s brought on a stand just inside, feeling self-conscious as she curls a tendril of her hair behind her ear. She’s more done up than Jackie tonight, wearing a dress and heels under her jacket, and she’s not sure that’s ever been the case before. 

“Was it easy to find me?” Jackie asks, closing the door.

“Yeah.” Shauna has so many questions she’s too afraid to ask. Is Jackie into men at all? Where’s her girlfriend? Does she have permission from her to see Shauna? If she does, what does that mean? That she’s pitched it as some fling with an old friend? Would it even be a lie?

She feels so insecure, suddenly. Her hands fumble with her jacket.

“Here,” Jackie says, stepping behind her and sliding the jacket off of her shoulders. Something about it is newly… gentleman-like. It drops to the floor, and Jackie slips an arm around her midsection, pulling her back gently, no preamble, nothing further other than a light, “Let’s have fun,” whispered into her ear, and then there’s a mouth on her neck.

The vanilla lipgloss is still buried somewhere in Shauna’s purse, and Shauna doesn’t know Jackie anymore.

Isn’t this what she had wanted? To not know her? To not know anything? 

“Wait,” she breathes, because she has to know, has to just… see, even if she feels insane for stopping Jackie Taylor from kissing down her neck. “I, um.” She pulls away from Jackie, flushing, suspecting already that it’s dumb. “I got you something for your birthday. I know it’s late, and it’s, like…” She swallows hard, avoiding Jackie’s eyes, still watching her so softly, almost fondly now. That’s new. This is all so new. Or maybe it’s pity she’s being looked upon with. She can’t tell. “It’s not much, I was just thinking of you.”

That sounds pathetic. Shauna grimaces. 

She feels Jackie’s eyes on her, tracking her intently all the way to her purse, where she digs around for the gloss for a moment before she manages to find it. She lets it roll across her palm, offering her hand, fingers curled, to Jackie. She looks at her gift and not at Jackie. “This used to be your favorite flavor.”

Jackie laughs quietly, but not unkindly, as she takes it. “You used to kiss it off of me at sleepovers,” she recalls fondly. “Thank you.”

Shauna can feel her face growing hot. She feels like a geek asking a hot girl to Prom. It’s annoying that Jackie can still do this to her: still make her feel small and young and self-conscious. She knows she gets like this because Jackie matters. It’s easy with other people because they don’t. “You’re welcome.”

Jackie pops open the tube, and there’s no mirror around but she applies the gloss like the muscle memory of it had never worn off, then rubs her lips together. When she’s done, she sets the tube down gently and then steps in close to Shauna, winding her arms around Shauna’s shoulders. “Come here,” she whispers, pulling her in.

Shauna sinks into her mouth in a trance, and Jackie kisses her slowly, gloss smearing just like it had used to, tasting the same as it always has.

The memories come rushing back, and it’s easier, then, for Shauna to harden internally, to remember how Jackie had used to make her feel. Like a toy, a plaything, inferior to Jeff. Shauna hadn’t had to be aware of her feelings to know that she had hated being his stand-in. 

Shauna kisses her harder, and Jackie’s fingers tangle into her hair and tug her forward, crushing their mouths together. 

Shauna wraps her arms around Jackie, then slides her hands low, hands settling on her ass. She grabs at it, and then lifts, and Jackie groans and hooks her legs around Shauna’s waist.

They crash to the bed together seconds later, Shauna on top, and Jackie’s hands yank at the zipper of her dress as Shauna works Jackie’s shirt up past her abdomen. She’s so toned under Shauna’s fingertips that Shauna suspects she must do something athletic for work. Or else she’s really into the gym. She’d been athletic in high school, but not exactly a jock. Is that another thing that’s changed?

“Let me get this off of you,” Jackie puffs out, tugging at Shauna’s loosened dress. It falls to her waist and Jackie pushes at it weakly, looks past Shauna’s bra to the little hint of her underwear. Shauna hears her groan. “Is that mine?”

Shauna doesn’t hold back, mutters, “I wear them all the time,” and then dips her head to suck hard at Jackie’s neck. 

“What else do you do with them?” Jackie moans out, arching into her, nails already digging into Shauna’s shoulder blades. 

It would be far too embarrassing to answer that. “I can’t tell you.”

“I’ll go first,” Jackie says hotly into her ear, biting at the shell. “I fuck my girlfriend while she’s wearing yours and pretend she’s you.”

Shauna’s head spins so fast she almost blacks out for a second. Two seconds ago she would’ve thought she’d hate that. She’d nearly had a panic attack when Mark had touched Jackie’s underwear. 

But she can’t hide from the truth her body is telling her. And she can’t stop the whimper she buries into Jackie’s neck, or the way her hips roll against Jackie’s thigh, or the way she asks, “Does she know?” before she can stop herself.

“No. She doesn’t know anything.”

That’s a good answer. Shauna rewards her with a sharp bite to her neck and a hand down her abdomen, straight into her shorts. Jackie’s as soaked as Shauna is. 

“Tell me,” Jackie reminds her, breathless, and as Shauna slots two fingers inside of her she feels like she owes it to her.

“That night, a year ago,” she mumbles into Jackie’s neck, like she can hide it there, spare herself the shame of it. “I went home and put them in my mouth.” Jackie clamps down on her fingers instantaneously and traps a whine in her throat. Shauna thumbs over her clit and fucks her harder. “They don’t smell like you anymore, but sometimes I imagine they do.”

Jackie’s panting her responses out now. “Do you put them on anyone else?”

“No.” Shauna bites down on Jackie’s neck again, but not hard enough to break the skin. “Just me. They’re mine.” She finds a different spot, bites again, catches a glimpse of the mark she’s left behind from the last one. “You’re mine.”

“Fuck,” Jackie grits out, and then she stiffens under Shauna and hitches out a loud moan as she comes—no longer reserved, no longer forced to be quiet. 

They don’t have to stop this time. Shauna scrambles down her body, sucking and biting everywhere she can reach in a rush, and buries her tongue between Jackie’s thighs next. 

They don’t speak for a while—not until Shauna’s peeling off her bra on top of Jackie and rocking her hips on Jackie’s fingers, demanding, “You too,” because Jackie’s still got her own bra on. Jackie pulls out of her long enough to get it unhooked and off, and then she’s right back in Shauna and sitting up to press their bodies tight, and Shauna’s pulling Jackie’s head into her chest and trapping her there in her grip by the time she finally spills over the edge.

None of it is particularly loving or affectionate—more frantic, hurried touches—and by the time Shauna’s collapsing next to Jackie on the mattress, both of them naked, both of their chests heaving, she’s not sure she has the energy to leave.

She wonders briefly if she should offer to, but Jackie rolls into her and throws an arm and a leg over her, cuddling up against her, and Shauna’s decision is made for her. 

She’s still buzzing with endorphins and adrenaline when she admits, “You always know exactly how to touch me.”

Jackie hums like she’s unsurprised. “You too.” She pauses, and then adds, “I know you’ve done this a lot.” She must feel Shauna tense up, because she amends, “I mean, not— I don’t literally know. I don’t hear anything beyond what you’ve told me. But I can just tell you must have, before your boyfriend.” Her hand rubs back and forth over Shauna’s abdomen. “Besides, who would say no to you?”

“Anyone who likes their hookups mentally stable,” Shauna mutters. She means it to be a joke, but Jackie doesn’t laugh.

“Are you doing okay?” Jackie asks her gently. Shauna can hear in it that she genuinely cares. That after everything, Jackie really does want her to be alright.

“I’m fine.”

There’s a long silence, while Shauna searches the ceiling with something heavy in her gut. 

Jackie’s fingers curl around her hip and settle there, holding her. “Shauna?” She sounds so tentative.

“Yeah?”

“You’re still not wearing a ring.”

“I know.” Neither is Jackie. She’s the one who had always wanted one so badly. Maybe she wants to marry a woman someday. Her girlfriend, even. The new law’s going into effect in Massachusetts next year, Shauna’s heard. 

“Are you happy with him?” Jackie wonders quietly, like it’s the biggest question she’s ever asked.

Shauna turns her head and looks down at Jackie’s forehead, what little she can see of her face. “I broke up with him last February,” she says. “You didn’t hear?”

Jackie tenses up against her again. A long moment passes in silence. “…No.” Her next exhale is shaky. “I didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Shauna dismisses, uncomfortable with the tension she can feel filling the room. “It doesn’t affect this either way.”

Jackie doesn’t say anything to that, just turns and presses her face into Shauna’s neck. They soak in the silence for another minute. Shauna thinks she feels something wet on her collarbone, but she can’t be sure. Jackie’s voice sounds normal when she asks, “Do you ever wonder about me? What I’m up to?”

Shauna shouldn’t be honest, but she just is. She doesn’t think about her answer, just says the truth. “Yeah, I do.” Not the whole truth, though. Not I think about you every day, Jax.

“Then,” Jackie starts, and Shauna watches her slip away, putting space between them so that they can look at each other. “Maybe we should make a deal. I wanna know things about you, too.”

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow. “What kind of things?”

Jackie shrugs evasively. “I don’t know. Anything.” She searches Shauna’s eyes carefully. “What do you think? Three questions each?”

It’s dangerous. Shauna recognizes the danger in it, the way satisfying some of her curiosity might just spiral into having even more of it. It’s exactly what sleeping with Jackie once had done to her: made her crave more and more. 

“If you go first,” she decides, because Shauna telling her things is easier than the reverse, and so she can test this with the first question and then back out after if she needs to. 

“Okay.” Jackie bites her lip, eyes never leaving Shauna’s, and then she asks, “What do you do for work?”

Shauna can’t help but smile, the way Jackie’s already looking at her like she’s ready to hang on to every word. It distracts her, so she isn’t thinking when she starts, “I write for the Trenton Gaz—“ She stops herself, wincing, aware of what else she’s given away. “Shit. Sorry. Um, the local paper.”

But Jackie’s starting to smile wide at her, eyes bigger and so, so soft. “Shauna,” she says gently, and then her face is crumpling a little and her eyes are starting to water. “You write?”

Shauna’s startled by it, taken aback. “Yeah. I mean, it’s not like, what I always wanted to do, but it’s… it’s okay. I do interviews and write articles and… yeah, they put them up on the internet sometimes, too, and in print and everything.”

Jackie blinks out a couple more tears and then shakes herself out of it like she thinks she’s being ridiculous too. “Sorry,” she says, sniffling, wiping her face on her pillow. “You just… I know it’s not fiction, but you’re really doing it. You always wanted to write. I bet you’re so good at it.”

Shauna shakes her head, her stomach fluttering as she laughs it off. “No, I’m really just okay. They give me the boring stuff. Or like, easy things. Dog stories. Nothing’s front page.”

Jackie laughs, high and happy, beaming at her. “Oh my God. That’s amazing. I still think that’s amazing.” She sniffs again, and seems to gather herself. “I’m glad it worked out. I’m glad, like…” she thinks for a moment, then finds Shauna’s eyes and softens again. “It just. Things turned out okay, after us, and Brown. You turned out okay, you know?”

A lump swells in Shauna’s throat, heavy and achy. She can tell Jackie means it. After everything, even with the way they’d both poisoned the well of their friendship, she’d wanted good things for her. 

Shauna asks her first question before she can rethink it. “What about you? What do you do?”

When she thinks of Jackie’s life, it’s not even a vague shimmer of blurry shapes in her head. It’s all black. Nothing. She hasn’t wanted to try to paint the picture.

It slots into place in screaming color, all at once, when Jackie answers, “I’m a teacher.” Now there’s more than one image: Jackie walking into a school every morning, Jackie at the front of a classroom, Jackie’s students laughing at something she’s said, crushing on her, bringing her apples and gifts. Shauna knows right away that she must be great at it. Must be loved.

More questions spill out of her. “What subject? What grade?”

Jackie could tease her about only getting three, but she doesn’t, just says, “You’re never gonna believe me, but French.”

Shauna gapes at her. “What? There’s no way. You were terrible at French!”

Jackie cracks up. “Okay, you’re right, I’m lying. I don’t teach French.” Shauna leans forward to whack at her arm, and Jackie’s grinning as she dodges it. But then it fades, and she’s soft again for a reason Shauna can’t discern until she murmurs, “English. I teach tenth grade English.”

It’s Shauna’s favorite subject. It’s her college major. Jackie had to have switched her own away from Marketing less than a couple of years into college. 

“Do you like it?” Shauna rasps, because she isn’t sure what else to say. 

“A lot,” Jackie confirms. “But I honestly only looked into teaching in the first place because I wanted to coach high school soccer. And now I coach the girls’ team.”

Shauna grins. There’s the girl she remembers. “In between reading all the same books you used to make fun of me for enjoying in high school?”

“Well, now I get to assign the ones I like,” Jackie teases. “We’re doing Lord of the Flies first thing next semester. We did The Kite Runner just before the break. It came out this year.” She pauses, goes somewhere else for a moment. “You’d like it a lot. You should read it.”

Shauna’s heard of it, but doesn’t know anything about it. “I’ll get it,” she promises. “I’ll read it when I’m back home.”

They both fall silent, and it’s Jackie’s turn now. Shauna watches her think for a minute.

“What’s something,” she finally asks, slowly, carefully, like she isn’t quite sure what she wants yet, “that you never told me, that you hid from me, that you can tell me now?”

Shauna’s mind goes straight back to high school. But Jackie’s seen her resentment. Knows now that Shauna wants her like this: clothes off, mouths everywhere. Shauna could tell her she loves her, but certainly Jackie must know that too. It’s not a lack of knowledge that’s kept them frozen where they are, only meeting once a year; it’s that the love is all twisted up in the rest of their mess.

Something Jackie doesn’t know. Something Shauna hid. Something she can tell Jackie now.

It comes to her, and her immediate instinct is that she’ll never share that. She’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t. She’d never wanted to.

She looks away, already feeling the tremble in her lip. She should stop this game now. Only Jackie could ever pry her open like this. 

She rolls away from Jackie onto her back to make it easier to share, feeling tears start to blur her vision. “When I was eighteen,” she says quietly, “I got an abortion.”

She knows Jackie will fill in the blanks—and she does, right away, with a soft gasp and a breathy, “Shauna.”

She can tell that Jackie’s going to cry, and so she keeps going, too uncomfortable with just sitting with their shared emotions. “It was over the summer. You hated me, and I was scared to tell my mom, and for some reason I just wound up calling Taissa Turner. She drove me. She wanted to stay in touch afterward, but I just couldn’t. Every time I thought of her I was back in that lobby, crying and holding her hand, so fucking scared—”

“Shauna,” Jackie whispers, cupping her cheek, gently turning her head. “I’m so sorry.” Jackie wipes quickly at her own wet cheeks. “I wish I had known. I would’ve gone.”

Shauna shakes her head and feels her own tears starting to spill. “I really don’t think you would’ve, Jackie. You were done with me. If anything you’d have said I deserved it for—“

“No,” Jackie says firmly, leaning over her, pressing their foreheads together. “We both know how hurt I was, but I never would’ve wished that on you. I never wished anything bad on you, Shauna, okay? It just hurt. The way you couldn’t be around Tai was the same way I couldn’t be around you.” She presses a soft kiss to Shauna’s lips. “I promise I would’ve gone with you and held your hand. I promise.”

Shauna closes her eyes, tries to joke, “And then told me to fuck off afterward?”

“Maybe, yeah,” Jackie plays along. “When you were better, and okay. But not until then.”

Shauna bites her lip, considers confessing something else. Then just does it, while they’re here, while it feels like she can. “I don’t think I wanna be a mom. The thought of being pregnant again scares me.”

“I think you’d be a great mom if you wanted,” Jackie says. “But I also think you shouldn’t have to be one. God knows I know exactly what that kind of pressure feels like after twenty-six years of my mother.”

Shauna laughs quietly. “All of her friends were gossiping about you and her at her party.”

“Yeah,” Jackie sighs out, “I made her cry with my lifestyle choice.”

It’s enough of an answer for Shauna to a question she’d have never had the guts to ask. Instead, she asks, “Can I do my second one now?”

Jackie settles back on her pillow and jokes half-heartedly, “Is that your question?”

“No,” Shauna answers unnecessarily. She knows what she wants to ask. She’s known since her own slip-up about Trenton. Even if the knowledge might torture her. “Where do you live?”

Jackie studies her for a moment, and Shauna feels seen through. Completely known, just for that short little second or two.

Jackie takes her hand, threading their fingers together. “Are you sure?” she asks gently. 

Shauna pulls Jackie’s hand toward her, playing with her fingers with the hand that isn’t intertwined with Jackie’s. “I’m sure.”

Jackie hesitates only for a moment before she says, “I never left New Brunswick.”

All along, she’s been an hour away. Maybe less. In the same place as always ever since she’d left for Rutgers. It shouldn’t be shocking, but it is. Jackie had almost existed in some other unreachable plane, some alternative universe. But she’s been so accessible for years now.

“Okay,” Shauna replies, trying not to linger on it. “You go. Last question.”

Jackie takes a long time to think about it. Shauna lets her, just rolls toward Jackie and presses against her, chin on her shoulder. She’s still running her fingers over Jackie’s left hand absently, enjoying the temporary connection, the way they’ve managed to make it at least an hour now without things going sour between them. This is the longest conversation they’ve had in so long. And Shauna has missed just talking to Jackie so much more than she’d realized. 

Her thumb runs over a slight divot in Jackie’s skin. She looks down, sees she’s at Jackie’s ring finger. Jackie’s head shifts, and Shauna can feel that she’s being watched as she moves her thumb aside to stare at the faint outline pressed into Jackie’s finger. An outline of something that’s usually there and isn’t tonight.

She flinches. There’s a sudden ringing in her ears that drowns out Jackie’s worried, “Shauna.”

She lets go of Jackie’s hand, swallows, and then forces a smile onto her lips. She doesn’t know what she’s feeling. Jackie’s never actually been hers. So maybe she shouldn’t feel anything at all about it. “It’s fine. You could’ve just said. You didn’t have to hide it.”

“I wasn’t,” Jackie murmurs, but she sounds a little bit guilty. “I just… didn’t want you to walk in and that be the first thing we talked about.”

“Okay.” Shauna furrows her eyebrows, her eyes still rooted to Jackie’s finger. She can feel her heart squeezing tight, palpitating. “You said it wasn’t serious,” she remembers abruptly, and then wishes she hadn’t said anything, because it sounds more accusatory than she’d meant for it to.

“It wasn’t,” Jackie says softly. “And then it was.”

“Okay.”

They both fall silent. Shauna closes her eyes just to stop having to look at Jackie’s finger.

Jackie’s voice is still so quiet, and the sound of it makes Shauna’s chest ache with every syllable. “I still want a lot of the things I always wanted. To get married, to have kids. A family.” Shauna can feel her hesitation, hear the slight tremble in her next inhale. “Shauna,” she breathes out, “we’re getting older.”

Shauna’s throat closes up. She grits her teeth like it might ground her, keep her steady. “Mhmm,” she acknowledges. 

“I thought you might be wearing one,” Jackie goes on gently, “after what you said last year.”

“I know,” Shauna murmurs, and wishes desperately for this to be the end of it. She’d rather talk about anything else. Maybe she should just kiss Jackie again and not talk at all.

But Jackie keeps going, though she sounds like she’s not sure that she should be sharing more details. “The law in Massachusetts is supposed to officially change next May, so we’re gonna drive to Springfield at the end of the month and do it then. Just a quick thing at the courthouse. Three hours away.”

Shauna picks uncomfortably at the sheet covering the both of them, still not looking at her. “You always wanted a big wedding.”

“Yeah, but my family wouldn’t come even if I asked, and neither would hers. It’ll never be like I pictured.” Shauna feels Jackie’s eyes on her cheek. “There’s a lot about it that won’t be what I always wanted. I’ve just… been trying to make peace with it.” Shauna can hear the small breath she lets out. “Trying really hard to accept not having… not having my first choice with it all.”

Shauna can’t meet her eyes. She thinks she might vomit if Jackie keeps going, keeps making Shauna think in any detail about her marrying someone else. “I’m really sorry about your parents, Jackie. If you want someone there, I think my mom would come.”

Jackie’s still staring into her, but she doesn’t say anything for several seconds. And then it’s just, “Yeah. Maybe.”

Shauna steers the conversation away. “I’ve never told her about me, but I don’t think she’d mind.”

And Jackie, thankfully, lets it happen. “Why haven’t you?”

Shauna shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe because I don’t want it to be a big deal, and I guess I think she might make it one. It doesn’t really affect my life day-to-day like it does for you, with having a girlfriend and everything.”

“You’ve never had a girlfriend?”

“Once, secretly, for a couple of months in college,” Shauna recalls. “She was actually the first person I ever dated.” Finally, her eyes meet Jackie’s and she makes her tone lighter to ask, “You had a third question, by the way; not a hall pass to give me the third degree.”

Jackie rolls her eyes. “Okay, fine, but those don’t count. Let me actually think of one.”

“Alright.”

Shauna closes her eyes and waits. She can feel herself getting tired, after Jackie wearing her out in bed and now draining her emotionally. It’s dark outside now, but she’d guess it’s not even midnight yet. A part of her doesn’t want to sleep at all. They’d be wasted hours. 

Jackie’s third question comes slowly, like her second had. “Can you tell me something… nice? About your life? Something you like about it? Or even just a funny story?”

Shauna nods and thinks it over. Jackie already knows about her job, so she pulls from there. “About six months ago, I was doing this story about a new coffee place.” She pauses. “Wait, let me back up. So, first you need to know that a couple of my coworkers, James and Quinn, gave me this stupid nickname a while back that caught on because they think I’m like…” She tries to decide how to explain it, and then gives up. 

“Anyway, it’s dumb; they call me Shaunabot sometimes, and when I did the coffee story, Quinn was there to do an interview portion, and they accidentally mic’d me up instead of her, and while I was trying to take it off someone ran into me and spilled coffee on me and the mic, and I like… got shocked.” She almost laughs now, remembering the way Quinn had erupted into hysterics. “Like, for several seconds; it hurt like hell and Quinn said it looked like I was literally malfunctioning. So now anytime anyone gets near me with coffee around the office everyone starts cracking the same stupid jokes about not frying my hardware or whatever.”

Jackie lets out a short laugh. “They sound fun.”

“Yeah, they’re alright. I like it there.” She pauses. “Sometimes I wish I was doing something… more, though. I wanna write something that touches people.”

“Maybe if you told them that, they’d ditch the nickname,” Jackie half-jokes, cuddling into her again. “I know you feel things. You just keep it all deep down inside. Pent up.”

Shauna doesn’t argue it. It’s uncomfortable to be known, but there’s something about hearing that Jackie still understands her better than anyone else that sits in her just right. She wants it to stay that way forever. 

“I don’t know what to ask,” she confesses. “For my third question.”

Jackie hums like she’s thinking about it too. “You could always save it for next year.”

Shauna’s heart rate picks up. “You’ll be married this time next year,” she reminds Jackie, because she feels obligated to, even though Jackie’s cheated on her fiancée twice now.

Jackie’s lips brush her ear. “Well, maybe you should use it to ask me what I’d choose if I had to.”

Shauna swallows thickly and then clarifies, “Between a marriage with her or one night a year with me? If you had to give one up?” She feels Jackie’s nod.

“Just ask.” Jackie’s exhale almost sounds sad. “I know you know the answer. But let me say it.”

But until two seconds ago, until the request, Shauna hadn’t known the answer. Her body doesn’t know how to process it. Like the knowledge contains some chemical or compound she can’t synthesize. She wants so badly to hear Jackie say it, too. She’s stunned Jackie wants to say it, that she doesn’t feel ashamed of it.

“Tell me,” she rasps.

“I’d choose you,” Jackie whispers. “I’d choose this. Over anything. Over anyone. In case that ever wasn’t clear. I want you next year and the year after, no matter what. We can meet here and have one night. Okay?”

Shauna nods quickly, her face hot, her hands itching to reach out to Jackie. “I’ll be here,” she promises, and means it. She’ll be fifty and still asking for the 69 key at the Wiskayok Motel 6, and spend the rest of her year waiting to do it again. If this is all they can make work, the only  way they can make them work, she’ll take it. It’s maybe better than reattaching at the hip anyway, sinking back into the hatred and resentment and reliving the jealousy and condescension and her own betrayal. When Jackie is reduced to one night a year, Shauna can forget about how complicated things are with her.

She shifts over, pressing a knee into the mattress to help push herself up, and then leans over Jackie and claims her mouth wordlessly. The weariness has evaporated from her. She wants to press herself into Jackie until she’s not sure which body belongs to whom. 

Jackie’s hands wind into her hair and hold her close. Her legs spread on either side of Shauna’s knee, and Shauna moves her thigh up to meet the wetness that’s collected there—some of it fresh, some lingering from last time. Her hand skates down Jackie’s body.

“Slowly,” Jackie breathes. “Make it take a little while.”

Shauna presses into her gently, and drops soft kisses to her lips and jaw and neck, and whispers, “There you go, baby,” right before Jackie comes, and makes love to her over and over again, taking her time, mapping Jackie with her mouth, memorizing every sound. Stocking up on it all, gorging herself so that she can make it through the next twelve months still feeling sated. 

Jackie wants to touch her back again after, but Shauna grips her wrists and pins them above her head and comes against Jackie’s thigh with Jackie’s body straining into her, no match for Shauna’s strength or her determination to keep control of it all.

They fall asleep for a while, until Shauna wakes up around three in the morning to a hand squeezing her waist, and then, when she’s let out a soft, confused hum of acknowledgment, a mouth on her stomach, her hipbone, her thigh. She hears the rustle of sheets on Jackie’s way down her body, and then nothing but the sound of her own quickening breaths, and Jackie licks at her like she's trying to drag it out, like she knows how to do it but wants to prolong it.

Shauna comes against her tongue with a low moan, and then drifts off after with Jackie back in her arms again. They don’t say a word to each other. 

The next time her eyes flutter open, it’s just past five and Jackie is beautifully dead to the world beside her, hair fanned out over her pillow, lips parted, sheet tucked under her armpits.

Shauna extricates herself carefully and then brushes her lips against Jackie’s forehead. She dresses silently and slips out without saying goodbye. It’s easier that way.

Chapter Text

2004

The Trenton Gazette hires an intern in January for the semester, until late May; a college senior named Zoey who gets Shauna and the others coffee every morning and whose hazel eyes burn into Shauna when she thinks Shauna’s not looking.

Shauna’s well-aware of how she reads to anyone looking for it, never having quite let go of the flannels she’d loved in high school, so often pairing them with polo shirts and looser-fitting jeans. (James had once told her, “Honestly, I thought you were a full lez until that finance guy started bringing you lunch.”) At first she’s caught in a familiar space of uncertainty, not sure if the feelings she’s inspiring are discomfort or desire, if the stares are a good thing or a bad thing. 

But one week into the internship she tries to be nice, because Zoey’s a Journalism major and probably dreams of working for somewhere like the Gazette someday, so Shauna calls her over to her desk and asks, “Which do you think works better tonally for this piece?” pointing out three different example paragraphs she’s typed out on her work computer. “It’s heavier. She’s starting the charity fund because she lost her daughter.” 

And Zoey asks, blushing, “You want my opinion?” and can’t even look her in the eyes, and much like a younger Jackie there isn’t really anything about the way Zoey talks or dresses that gives her away, but Shauna just knows in her gut what this is.

She’s twenty to Shauna’s nearly twenty-six, and Shauna isn’t her boss—that’s Charles, who’s everyone’s boss—but she certainly has some sort of authority over her, so it’s all a pretty bad idea.

But something in Shauna is drawn to the forbidden messiness of it.

It doesn’t take much—just an invite extended to Zoey when they all go out for drinks after work, and when the others tease Zoey for having to get something virgin Shauna tells them lightly to leave her alone, and later asks for her number so that Zoey can text her that she’s gotten home safe after. 

By the third week of January, Zoey’s beneath her on Shauna’s mattress, whining into her neck about how she’s going to come too quickly if Shauna doesn’t stop, and at work they’re pretending that they barely know each other. 

Shauna’s painfully aware that Jackie’s wedding is getting closer and closer. She’s been turning over the new things she knows about Jackie in her head for weeks. 

When she finally cracks, it’s to search up “Jackie Taylor New Brunswick” on her desktop, and what comes up is a web page for a high school. She clicks into it like an addict, eyes sweeping hungrily over her screen. She scrolls and finds an adorable picture of Jackie standing at the end of a group of teen girls kneeling in their soccer uniforms. She finds a faculty page with a list of employees. Their work emails are there, too.

What she does next is reckless at best and outright wrong at worst, she knows. But it’s one in the morning, Zoey is asleep in her bed, she’s had two drinks, and she misses Jackie so much. 

‘Sorry’ she titles the email, and then she begins.

Please let me know if this is overstepping. I just wanted to say hi, I guess. I hope the wedding-planning, if there is much, is going well. I’d bet anything you want to wear a dress to the courthouse, so just know I’m there in spirit when you’re trying them on and making your final decision, like we always said we would be. (With my taste, maybe it’s better I’m absent?)

I miss you.

Shauna

PS: I read The Kite Runner the first week I got home. It made me cry. You know I’ve always liked tragedies.

PPS: Is this the part where we both accuse each other of being Amir? I can’t think of much worse than having something I needed to say to someone I’ve wronged and finding out that they’ve died before I ever got the chance. 

She sends it. Then she panics and searches up if there’s a way to un-send it. There isn’t. 

Jackie’s reply comes two days later, from a different email address.

‘Don’t Be Sorry’

…but let’s stick to our personal emails from now on ;)

You could show up in the middle of my English class and it wouldn’t be overstepping. Even if I’m still a little pissed at you for the empty hotel room I woke up to. I do understand. It wouldn’t have been easy. 

I have a dress already. If we were normal friends you’d probably help with Future Wife’s pantsuit, though. (Don’t ask me how I’m certain you were shocked to read ‘pantsuit’ just now, but just know that I know! I don’t really have a type beyond liking brunettes.)

If you’d like more book recommendations, let me know. And don’t scoff and roll your eyes at that sentence like the pretentious Brown grad you are—I’m pretty sure it’s in my job contract somewhere that I have to stay on top of my reading, so I’m officially well-educated on literature! I don’t mind it so much. Sometimes I’ll curl up in a chair with a hot drink and a book and I’ll remember all the times I saw you do the same thing, and it feels nice, I guess. 

Now that we’re emailing, send me an article you wrote. I’ll respect what I assume are your creative wishes and not look you up myself. You pick. 

Of course I miss you too.

Jackie

PS: Maybe we’re both Amir. And both still alive, by the way. 

Shauna sits on that email for a week. Mostly out of a deep-seated anxiety at the fact that they’re actually doing this. Talking. It already feels so easy from a distance. When they have time to choose their words, to not get heated. 

But some of her hesitation stems from the post-script. It’s a shift on Jackie’s part, from you fucked up to we fucked up. Shauna’s not sure she can compromise. She wishes she could. But every time she thinks about the parts of Jackie she hates, she feels like she’s reopening an old stab wound with the same knife that had created it. 

Maybe someday Jackie will take full responsibility for their fallout. Shauna isn’t sure what they’d become, then. Maybe it’d be too late to restart their friendship properly, given that it’s taken eight years just for this, for Jackie trying to compromise, but she thinks it’d heal her if Jackie could ever say it and mean it.

When she does write back, finally, she finds she doesn’t know what to say.

Okay, send me a book rec. I’m sending you a dog article. I still can’t believe the city gave him a medal.

The pantsuit did surprise me. For some reason I just assumed you were with someone you could share makeup and gloss and shoes with. Dating to expand your wardrobe feels very you. But I don’t mind being wrong.

I appreciate you trying to make everything right, Jackie. I just don’t think I’m where you want me to be and I’m not sure I ever will be.

Shauna

PS: I can never resist hazel eyes.

Jackie’s response is quick, just hours later, and stabs straight into Shauna’s chest.

I’ll read the article later.

You filled a journal with page after page of things you hated about me, fucked my boyfriend behind my back over and over again, and made plans to ditch me for Brown and make me look like an idiot and bragged about THAT in your journal too. I don’t know what to say to you anymore, Shauna. You’re so fucking frustrating. You’re so fucking stubborn. I think emailing was a mistake. I’ll see you in December.

Jackie

Shauna bawls her eyes out, and then deletes all traces of their emails and doesn’t reply.

For Valentines Day, she has Zoey come over to distract herself, attempts to cook for her, and tries not to think about the implications of having plans with her at all, because nothing about them is supposed to be serious, and she’s not blind to the way Zoey looks at her all wide-eyed and admiring sometimes—thankfully exclusively outside of the office.

Jackie’s email is still sitting heavy in her chest, and she nods and “mhmm”s her way through dinner conversation, vaguely understanding that there’s some sorority drama going on that has Zoey annoyed, and that it has to do with boys, or maybe one boy. It makes her feel ancient. 

“Anyway, I don’t know why she’s so pissed at me, because I told him I was taken anyway,” Zoey finishes with a roll of her eyes, and God, Shauna can so easily see Jackie in her: a college version of Jackie, the Jackie Shauna had missed out on.

Her calling herself taken is an issue. Shauna will have to deal with that eventually. 

For now, she tugs her to the bedroom and enjoys the way she’s met with no resistance, just weak knees and a pliant body, and Shauna knows that when she asks, “Can you try something for me?” she’ll get an eager nod even before it comes.

She’ll never share this moment with anyone—not even the one friend who’d gotten out of her that she’s fucking a coworker, and especially not Jackie, even though Jackie of all people would be the one to understand it. 

She goes to her dresser, opens her underwear drawer, and tosses Jackie’s lace panties to Zoey where she stands by the bed. “Put these on. You’ll look hot in them.”

Zoey doesn’t argue, just unsnaps her skirt and pushes it down along with her underwear and follows orders. 

Shauna gets the appeal of it, later, when her eyes are staring down the plane of a toned body at her own hand in Jackie’s underwear and there are soft moans at her ear she can almost imagine are Jackie’s. 

“Faster,” Zoey breathes, and her voice doesn’t sound like Jackie’s at all. Shauna doesn’t oblige her.

“Be quiet,” she says instead, gently. “I don’t want you to talk.”

The cravings for Jackie have started up again, and if she doesn’t think about it too hard, this almost helps her get her fill.

-

Her mother convinces her to come home for Easter this year. Shauna stays in her old bedroom for the weekend, and helps her hide eggs for an outdoor egg hunt they’re doing for the neighborhood kids.

She eats dinner with her on Sunday night, after thinking it all through over the weekend, and finally says out of nowhere, “Mom, you know I like women, right?”

She’s twenty-six. She figures it’s about time she just got this over with.

Her mother, much to her surprise, lets out a short laugh and says, “Of course I do. Wasn’t that why it didn’t work out with Mark?”

Shauna snorts, relieved. “No, I like men too; I just didn’t like him. You thought I was a lesbian? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Well, I assumed you’d tell me when you were ready.”

Fair enough. Shauna leaves it be, leaves some things unsaid and is sure her mother does too, the way she’d always tried to push Shauna and Jackie back together, the way she hadn’t seemed surprised at all. 

April turns to May. Zoey bores her by now. She’s like Mark; too passive and subservient and too head over heels for Shauna. Shauna starts to wonder if there’s something to being willing to give up control after all, so she goes out one night, finds a girl that looks like she’d wear a pantsuit at her wedding, takes her home, and lets her pin Shauna down and bite at her neck like Shauna had done to Jackie, like Jackie’s future wife probably does to Jackie.

She gets off shockingly quick from it, but thinks it’s mostly because she’d pictured herself as Jackie the whole time, and she’s apparently never fully gotten over wanting to be Jackie just like she’ll never get over wanting to be with her.

She should probably try therapy. She won’t, though. Instead, she ends things with Zoey over a phone call, pretends she doesn’t know why she’s all teary-eyed at work on Monday, and then her mind is occupied with nothing but Jackie soon after that, because gay marriage is legalized in Massachusetts.

The same week it happens, there are protests all over the nation. Trenton has its first one on a Monday, and James covers it, and Shauna’s sitting at her desk on Monday afternoon when she overhears him with Charles in Charles’ office.

“I don’t love it,” Charles is saying. “It’s too… objective. Too factual. It’s not saying anything.”

“I wasn’t aware you wanted an opinion piece, sir.” James sounds bitter. 

“I wasn’t, either,” Charles admits. He looks up from the paper in his hand, suddenly, right at Shauna, and catches her staring. Shauna flushes and looks away, but he calls out to her, “Shauna! Get in here for a second.”

Worried she’s in trouble for something somehow, she makes her way inside reluctantly and closes the door when he motions for it. When she reaches his desk, Charles offers her James’ piece. “Read this. Tell me what you think.”

She does. It’s… fine. Has the basics about the new law, the ruling in 2003, the implementation this week. That the protestors largely self-identify as being from various Christian groups, that they believe marriage is a religious institution and homosexuality is a sin. It’s all stuff she’s heard before. 

“It covers the facts well,” she says diplomatically, because she’s always gotten along with James and he’s standing right there. “It’s neutral.”

“Yes. I’m not sure I want neutral.” He looks at her carefully. “If I asked you to try to do better by tomorrow morning, do you think you could?” Shauna’s lips part with surprise. “James can send you his notes. I want bias. I want pathos. An opinion piece from someone close to the issue. We’re a progressive paper.”

She can feel her cheeks going hot. “I—“ she starts, but James cuts her off with slight annoyance.

“You want Shauna to inject emotion into an article? We call her Shaunabot for a reason.”

Charles ignores him, and ignores the sour look Shauna shoots him. “It’s page two in the Gazette if you nail it. And on the main page of our website. Just have it on my desk tomorrow morning. If I like it better than James’, the spot’s yours. Bring me a piece that makes me feel something.”

He dismisses her, and James grumbles something unintelligible at her back.

-

She goes home and reads through the notes James has reluctantly emailed to her, then sits and stares at a blank Word document, already struggling with a title.

New Marriage Equality Law Sparks Nationwide Backlash

Too neutral. Charles had wanted bias.

Homophobic Protestors In Trenton React to New Marriage Equality Law

I Support Massachusetts’ New Marriage Equality Law, and You Should Too

Opinion: Opponents of Marriage Equality Should Trying Minding Their Own Business

All too juvenile.

Opinion: Why the New Marriage Equality Law Matters to Me

Seriously, is she in fucking Kindergarten?

She sighs, pressing the backspace button, and stares some more. She’s starting to wonder if James had been right. How is she meant to write something emotional? Most of the time she feels dead inside to everything that isn’t Jackie.

She bites her lip. Maybe that’s something. Maybe this shouldn’t be about the protests, or even about the law. It should be about the people it impacts. Jackie. Shauna. 

She tries it out just to see how she likes the look of it:

My Best Friend Is Getting Married In Two Weeks—And She Should Be Allowed To

She doesn’t hate it. It’s eye-catching. Immediately personal. 

She decides she’ll leave it as a working title, because it’s getting late and she needs to actually write the thing.

Last November, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued a groundbreaking ruling declaring the state’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. This week, this ruling has finally gone into effect, making Massachusetts the first US state to legalize gay marriage. As couples line up at courthouses to tie the knot, so do protestors right here in Trenton and beyond, citing their religious beliefs as justification for denying equality to same-sex couples.

She gets stuck there for a while. 

As a bisexual woman

Nope.

As a same-sex attracted woman

Worse.

As a lover of women

She should probably just tell Charles to run James’ piece tomorrow before she humiliates herself any further.

As someone with deep ties to the community, I am empathetic to the fight for marriage equality. 

Nope.

My best friend is a lesbian, I’m in love with her, and every time I think about what this ruling means for her a part of me just wants to fucking kill myself.

“Fuck,” she huffs, and stares at the line for a moment rather than deleting it right away. It’s honest, at least. It’s not rehearsed.

She backspaces and goes back to the title. Hesitates, and then tries something out, just to see how it looks:

The Love of My Life Is Marrying Another Woman In Two Weeks—And She Should Be Allowed To

She almost deletes it right away. It feels like something out of a tabloid. It’s not news. It’s her personal life on display. This almost certainly isn’t what Charles had wanted when he’d mentioned pathos and an opinion piece. 

She wipes it all. Spends another half-hour drafting painfully neutral opening paragraphs about the law and the protests. Then groans and starts over again, and winds up with the same title about Jackie marrying someone else typed out. 

She has all night to come up with something better. If it doesn’t seem like it’s working, she can just start again. She tries it out.

The first time I married my best friend, we were seven years old. I think I was already in love with her by then. 

She bites her lip, reading and rereading the lines, and doesn’t know if she’s out of her mind or onto something. But the rest is coming quickly to her this time, even if it feels like she’s tearing her heart out of her chest to write it, pulling things out of herself she’d always promised she’d keep locked inside forever. It’s all spilling out faster than she can stop it, like the dam has finally burst, like she has to let it out somehow.

We of course could not conceive of two women getting married at the time, so I was declared the husband, and she stole the jacket of her dad’s best tux out of his closet and rolled the sleeves up my arms and put on one of her white church dresses. With a dozen of her stuffed animals dutifully bearing witness, we exchanged vows about always sharing our lunches and slid matching cherry ring pops onto each other’s fingers. We promised we’d never love anyone else more than we loved each other. We did this again at eight years old, and again at ten, always at her insistence, always with a giddy excitement at the thought of being together forever. The same vows, the same witnesses, the same flavored rings.

Nearly twenty years later, she’ll be marrying someone else at the end of this month. 

As same-sex couples like my best friend and her future wife line up at courthouses to tie the knot, so do protestors right here in Trenton and beyond, citing their religious beliefs as justification for denying equal rights to same-sex couples. When I look at them, I don’t just see a difference in opinion. I see my best friend telling me that the big wedding she always wanted will never be hers because her own parents refuse to attend. In those protestors, I see the same people who made it impossible in high school for either of us to imagine we could ever be attracted to women, let alone in love with each other. I see twenty years of missed opportunities in a world that wasn’t yet ready for the progress we’re fortunate enough to be witnessing in Massachusetts now.

Today, eight years on from our falling out, moments with her are few and far between, but she is always in my thoughts. I wish that she could have the wedding she used to describe to me when we were younger: in a garden full of poppies and not a courthouse, surrounded by friends and a loving family. I think she deserves the world regardless of whomever is lucky enough to have the opportunity to give it to her.

I share my story now not in hopes of swaying the beliefs of those protesting—whether here in Trenton or across the nation—but to appeal to those otherwise undecided on the matter. If my love for her is any different from a man’s, it is only because there is a unique intimacy to female friendship, not because my feelings are lesser or sinful. I can’t make her happy not because I’m a woman, but because I’m not the right woman. 

There was a time when we couldn’t imagine a life without each other, and I hate that we were forced by circumstance to go our separate ways. I miss her every day. There is an everlasting emptiness in me without her. I will love her forever. And yet I am so incredibly happy for her to have found someone else to share the rest of her life with, even if it means I will spend mine without her. Marriage equality in Massachusetts means that the love of my life is marrying someone else—and if I can support her in that, certainly those with no stake in the matter should be able to live and let live, too.

She reads it, and rereads it, and rereads it. She saves it with murmured curses and insults aimed at herself, and then immediately tries again with a fresh document. She sticks to the facts. She tries to slip in that she dates women herself. She mentions being for the new law. All of it feels empty in comparison.

“You’re fucking insane,” she mutters to herself the following morning as she heads into the office with the printed piece about Jackie tucked into a folder in her hands. She has a second draft as well, but it’s essentially James’ piece with two sentences of her own opinion inserted, and she knows it isn’t great. She’s pretty sure both drafts are terrible, and she tells Charles so as she offers the folder to him. “I gave it a couple of tries, but I think you’ll hate both options,” she says honestly. “You should run James’ piece.” She’s accepted that she’s stuck baring her soul to him, essentially, and that it’ll be incredibly humiliating, but at least no one else will ever lay eyes on it. 

He reads the more impersonal piece first. She can tell he’s disappointed. Then he sets it aside and starts in on the second. She watches his eyebrows raise. Sees his face change. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters.

“Yeah,” Shauna says quickly, starting to turn red, “I’m sorry; I was struggling with how to approach the piece and I really didn’t—”

He holds up a finger, silencing her. He’s still reading. “Is this real?” he asks her.

Shauna tries not to fidget. His office door is closed, but when she glances out through the glass she can see James and a couple of others eyeing them with interest. Zoey is here today too, but she’s placed herself about as far from Shauna as she can get and isn’t looking in her direction. “Most of it. I maybe tried to seem happier for her than I actually am. But the story’s true.”

“Honestly…” he says, and lets the word hang in the air for a moment. Shauna waits with a churning stomach. “...I really like it. It’s attention-grabbing and interesting. I’d almost say it’s too short, but I think you’ve left just enough to the imagination that as a reader I’m desperate to know more about what happened between you and this woman. I want to publish it.”

“Oh.” Shauna’s head spins. “You… really?”

“Yes.” He hesitates. “But not on page two of the Gazette. It’s not traditional news. You’ve hardly covered the protests.” He sets the paper down and fixes his gaze to her, and Shauna’s surprised to see a hint of pride in his eyes. “I think it could do numbers online, though, especially with the title you’ve given it. And I think it’ll benefit from having a comments section. We can give it first billing on the front page under our op-eds in the entertainment section. It’ll go up tomorrow.”

He says it like it’s a done deal, like that’s that. Shauna hadn’t even conceived of this. She’d been certain he’d reject it. She can feel a nervous fluttering growing in her stomach. “And then people will read it,” she realizes. Charles, understandably, shoots her a strange, amused look. She blurts, “It’s just that—Can it be anonymous?”

It doesn’t matter that Jackie will never read it. A portion of Trenton’s population will. Her friends might. Her mother reads everything she writes, and even though she’d of course keep it to herself if asked, the fact that she’d know is embarrassing enough. It won’t drop a nuke on Shauna’s life, but it’ll certainly create an inconvenient and humiliating ripple.

Charles’ expression turns knowing. “Shauna. I know it’s personal, but it’s a good piece of writing. You’ll want your name attached to it. Be proud of it.” He gives a vague wave of his hand. “Pride is the point, isn’t it? They’ve named the parades after it.”

Shauna pinches the bridge of her nose and doesn’t dignify that with a response. She feels like it’s all happening too quickly. She’ll have to call her mother today. 

“We’ve all had our hearts broken,” he adds kindly. “We all have our ‘one that got away’. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. The fact that it’s universal is what will make people connect with the piece.”

“Okay,” she relents, and hopes she won’t regret it. “I have to make a phone call.”

-

She calls her mother during her lunch and tells her, “There’s something I wrote that’s being published tomorrow. I just wanted to give you a heads up before you read it.”

Her mother sounds curious. “I don’t usually get a heads up.”

“It’s personal. I wanted you to hear it from me. Or… I guess I thought you should?” She hesitates. “It’s about Jackie. Me and Jackie.”

Her mother gives a soft, knowing hum, and after a pause seems to realize that Shauna’s waiting for more. “Shauna, I’ve always known about you and Jackie.”

Shauna had suspected so ever since coming out to her, but having it said so plainly knocks the breath out of her. “She’s getting married soon,” she manages to say, in case her mother hasn’t heard it through the grapevine already. 

“I know. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Shauna lies. “Anyway, I guess that about covers it. I talk about her and the new law in the piece. That’s all. I just wanted you to not be blindsided. And to know not to share it with her mother or anyone else.”

“I won’t,” her mother promises. The silence stretches, neither of them left with anything else to say. Shauna’s always been fine with her mother, but they’ve never been particularly close. At least not since the divorce.

“What did it feel like to lose Dad?” she asks abruptly, hoping she hasn’t overstepped. They don’t talk like this. Don’t talk about this. But she’s hoping for some sort of guidance. Some solution to the ever-growing ache inside of her. A way to cope with it when one night a year with Jackie isn’t enough.

“You know I don’t like to talk about your father,” her mother says. 

Shauna feels silly for having asked. “Sorry. I’m on my lunch break, so I have to go.”

They say their goodbyes, hang up. Shauna spends the rest of her break smoking to ease her anxiety and then finishes out her day with the Gazette.

And reenters the office the next day to find herself under a microscope.

Coworkers have crowded at computers, reading over each other’s shoulders. Eyes follow her to her desk. Even those of them who’ve heard the office gossip about Shauna’s proclivities seem astounded by the details.

James comes to her first, all traces of bitterness gone now that his own article is safely published on the Gazette’s second page. “Holy shit, Shauna,” he laughs out. “No wonder you’re dead inside.”

“Thanks,” Shauna responds dryly. 

Quinn makes a joke about how she should chase Jackie down and burst through the doors of the courthouse to shout her objections like something out of a cliche movie. Zoey follows her into the bathroom to call her a bitch for “stringing her along”, and Shauna turns on the charm as best as she can, widens her eyes like she knows had used to help get her way with Zoey and apologizes profusely just so that Zoey won’t leak their fling to anyone out of anger. Charles has another assignment for her by the end of the day, which is her cue that it’s time to move on to the next new thing. 

And Shauna thinks that’s the end of it, the extent of it, but when she gets home she checks the article herself out of curiosity, scrolls down to the comments section, and sees that it’s already amassed three-hundred. Most articles struggle to reach twenty. 

She reads through them nervously, and there’s a little bit of everything. People posting Bible verses, calling her slurs that the site has automatically censored. Calling her pathetic—which hurts worse than the slurs. And also people—women—who seem to relate to the intensity of her feelings. People who empathize, people who say things like that she should “go get her girl”, or want a follow-up piece. 

She goes to sleep, and wakes up the next morning to several missed calls and texts from her friends, all about her article, and a nasty voicemail from Jackie’s mother accusing her of being the reason Jackie had “lost her way”.

Shaken, she checks the article again. It has over seven-hundred comments. 

“Fuck,” she whispers, rooted to her seat, her breathing shallow. Her hand’s trembling on her mouse as she scrolls through them all. 

I’m in love with my best friend too

This girl needs therapy like move on rofl

I’m 17 and I did the practice marriage thing with my best friend too, it doesn’t have to mean ur a lez

You guys think they’re both hot?

This is so tragic and beautiful…

Buried in the middle of the comments section, someone has asked, Anyone know anything more about these two? I’m hooked lol, and a user named Pittgirl78 has replied beneath the comment, I went to school with them and they fell out because she talked **** about “the love of her life” in her journal and ****** her bf too lmao.

Below that comment are a couple more: an lol and a no way hahahahaha.

The anxiety vanishes, replaced immediately by a burning humiliation that mingles with an even hotter rage. Before she can think, her fingers are at her keyboard and she’s typing out, You don’t know anything about it you fucking asshole, but she reins herself in, thankfully, before she can post it. She deletes it, takes a breath, and replies instead, anonymously, You made this up lol.

She’s late for work. Charles pulls her into his office right away to warn her, “Your story’s spreading beyond Trenton. I have a couple of contacts in NYC who’ve reached out to me about it. Just thought I’d give you a heads up.” She must look like she might be about to faint, because he offers, “Why don’t you take the day? I’ll pass your new assignment along to someone else.”

She goes home and stares at her computer screen. One-thousand comments. Twelve-hundred by the time the sun’s setting. A part of her recognizes that this article is going to reach Jackie one way or another, if it hasn’t already. It’s not anything Jackie doesn’t already know, but Shauna just hopes her fiancée doesn’t flip out. Shauna hadn’t mentioned anything incriminating about Jackie, at least, only that they’d used to have feelings for each other and that Shauna still does. 

She’s turned her phone off for most of the day and spent it trying to process what might happen if this doesn’t blow over quickly. It reminds her of her blowup with Jackie back in Wiskayok. The way that within days she’d become that girl known for that thing. She’d had to leave Wiskayok for years to shake it. And it hadn’t been spread all over the internet back then.

Is she going to be stared at in public again? Are people going to whisper about how she’s that pathetic girl who’d never gotten over her first love? Is she going to spend the rest of her life being defined by her connection to Jackie just like she had as a teenager? From “Jackie’s best friend” to “the slut who slept with Jackie’s boyfriend” to “the woman who never stopped loving Jackie”. She’ll never escape her. She wishes she still wanted to. 

She turns her phone back on close to midnight. There are more missed texts and calls and voicemails. She hones in on the two-second voicemail left by an unfamiliar number with a New Brunswick area code.

“Shauna, it’s Jackie. Call me.”

Her heart pounds. She closes her eyes and replays the voicemail: once, and then again, and again. Jackie sounds matter of fact, straight to the point. She could be mad. She could be ready to talk through how to deal with this. Shauna really can’t read her.

It’s been three hours since she’d called, but the phone only rings once when Shauna calls back before Jackie picks up, like she’d been waiting around for it. “Fuck you, Shauna,” she snaps in Shauna’s ear as soon as it connects. “How dare you. How fucking dare you.”

Shauna’s speechless, her clammy hand holding the phone tight to her ear as she fumbles to sit down on her living room couch. Anxiety swirls in her stomach. Jackie hasn’t spoken to her like this since that night eight years ago. “Jackie—“

“No, you’ve said enough,” Jackie cuts her off. “My turn. Fuck you for writing that article. Did you think I wouldn’t see it? My mother—who I haven’t spoken to in months, by the way—left me a voicemail that I woke up to this morning melting down over our fucking high school sleepovers. Do you know how many of my friends sent what you wrote to me? It’s everywhere. I have people reaching out to me I haven’t heard from in years, asking me if you ever actually had sex with Jeff and a bunch of other questions I shouldn’t have to answer.”

“I’m sorry,” Shauna blurts, feeling herself starting to tear up. “I didn’t know, Jackie, I didn’t think anyone would—“

Jackie’s crying, too, when she interrupts again, “I hate you so much sometimes. Fuck you for saying circumstances ruined us instead of taking an ounce of accountability for once in your life. And fuck you for saying all of those things in an article when I gave you every opportunity to say them to me in that motel room.”

Shauna swallows past the lump in her throat, confused. “You knew them all already. It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

Jackie’s laugh is watery and disbelieving and astounded. “I’m not a mind-reader. I told you I’d choose you and you didn’t say anything.”

The line goes quiet. Shauna tries to make sense of what she’s hearing. “You said you’d choose me for a night and I said I’d keep coming back,” she reminds her. That had been a confession of her own. She’d given herself right back to Jackie too with it. She’d thought they understood each other. 

“Right,” Jackie says shortly. Shauna hears her sniff. “I said I’d pick scraps with you over a marriage with someone else. I told you that and now you’re fucking holding me to it. You ruined everything.”

Shauna’s only more confused now. “I’m not holding you to anything. I just wrote the truth.”

But Jackie goes on like she hadn’t heard her. Her voice is warbly, thick with tears. “I loved her. Not like I love you, but I think I could’ve been happy. I just wanted to find a way to be happy.” She lets out a shaky breath. “I never was in high school, you know? I was miserable around everyone who wasn’t you. I always felt like I was pretending but I didn’t know who the real me was. And now that I do know, I think I hate myself. I hate that I can find someone who loves me and is good for me and… and I can’t let myself marry her because the girl who broke my heart in high school wrote in an article that she misses me every day.”

Shauna clutches the phone tighter and squeezes her eyes shut. “You left your fiancée?”

“What else was I supposed to do, Shauna? I read what you wrote. How was I supposed to marry someone else?” 

Shauna’s fingers tremble. She doesn’t know what to make of this. She doesn’t know what to think. What to feel. “I didn’t mean to mess it up,” she says meekly. “I swear I didn’t mean to.”

“I don’t believe you,” Jackie says, and Shauna can hear in her tone that she means it. “You called me the love of your life when you knew I was getting married in two weeks. You’ll always ruin it and I’ll always let you. I want an apology.”

“I,” Shauna starts, licking her dry lips. This feels like it’s moving too quickly. There’s too much to process. “I already gave you one.”

“I don’t mean for the article.” Shauna tenses, but then Jackie says, “Not for high school, either. For showing up at that party four years ago and fucking up my life when you could’ve just stayed away.”

Shauna clenches her jaw, grounding herself. Finally, she feels like she has somewhere firm to land. Because Jackie is wrong to ask for this, at least. She’d started it. “You kissed me,” she reminds her.

“Why did you come there?” Jackie presses. “You didn’t have to show up. You never did before. Stop being stubborn for once in your life and be honest, Shauna.”

“My mom asked,” Shauna says. “I told you that.”

She can feel Jackie’s frustration through the line. It’s all setting in for Shauna, finally. Jackie had read the article and then called off her wedding. Had gotten Shauna’s number somehow and called. Confessed that she can’t free herself from Shauna same as Shauna can’t free herself from Jackie. So where does that leave them now?

“I’m hanging up,” Jackie decides, and Shauna panics.

“Wait.” She takes a breath. Thinks back to that night four years ago, to the truth of it she’s happily ignored ever since. They share the blame. “I told myself that it was because I’d never have to hear about you again if I went, but I wanted to see you. Or I didn’t and I did. Maybe I wanted your attention but I didn’t want to want it. I wanted to know things about you and I also didn’t. I just… went. I couldn’t not. I’m sorry.”

Silence. And then Jackie asks, “Was that so hard?”

Shauna’s cheeks grow hot at the condescension, but she’s not sure if she’s angry or embarrassed. “You still kissed me. It’s still your fault, too.”

“But you apologized for your part in it anyway,” Jackie points out. She’s trying to draw a comparison, Shauna knows. 

“It’s different. High school’s different.”

“It’s not.” Jackie sounds certain of it.

“If it’s not different, do what I just did. If we were both wrong in high school, apologize for your part.” 

She waits. Jackie takes so long to say something. “You told me once to let it go.”

Shauna is painfully aware that that’s not an apology. 

“Were you lying to me in that email?” she asks. “I don’t want you to tell me you think you did something wrong if it’s a lie.” She wants Jackie to believe it when she confesses to bringing Shauna’s retaliation on herself. Not to say it out of exhaustion, just to try to finally start to smooth things over between them. 

“I don’t know.” Jackie sighs. There’s another pause, a slight release of tension. She doesn’t sound angry anymore. “I just never wanted to hurt you.”

“I never wanted to hurt you, either.” Jackie scoffs like she doesn’t believe her, and Shauna bites her lip. She’s had years to think about this, and she knows she’s telling the truth. “I think I wanted to be more powerful than you. I just didn’t know how else to take it from you. The control. Sometimes I think—“ Her voice feels thicker, suddenly. She’s nearing a confession she’s not sure she should make.  “I mean, I do think… if I’d known then… if we’d both known then…”

She hesitates. “Say it,” Jackie pushes. “I wanna know.”

“If you’d dumped Jeff,” Shauna goes on, and she knows it never could’ve gone this way, that Jackie never could’ve gotten there so early on even if somehow Shauna had, that it’s nothing but a wild fantasy, “if you had let me…” She falters. 

“If I’d let you what?” Jackie murmurs intently, and Shauna can tell she’s hanging onto every sound, every word. There’s a sudden newer kind of tension between them that Shauna doesn’t know what to do with. 

“Get back at you in a different way,” Shauna makes herself say, her pulse thundering in her chest. “I think it would’ve fixed things. If I’d… if you’d…” She's so aware that Jackie is glued to the phone, is listening to her, finally. She gives in to herself, committing to spilling it, being vulnerable just for a moment. “If you’d have let me do whatever I wanted to you. Leave marks all over you. Boss you around. Tell you what to wear like you did to me.” Jackie isn’t saying anything. Shauna wonders if she should stop. “Jackie?”

“I’m here.” Jackie’s so hard to read in just those two syllables. But then she asks, “Do you still want that? Would it help?”

Heat flares between Shauna’s thighs. She’s taken the lead with Jackie, mostly, in their limited time together, but this is so much more. Complete control. “In December?”

“Do you want to wait that long for it?” Jackie asks her. Her voice sounds lower, a little raspy like it’d used to get after a cigarette. “I’m only an hour away.” 

It sinks in for Shauna, finally. Hits her over the head, really, and completely stuns her. They’re both single. They haven’t both been single in so long; one of them has always been trying to make it work with someone else, and now they’ve both given up on that, and—And she doesn’t know what this is, but it’s something; it could help, it could—Being with other people just isn’t fulfilling, and this is—

“No,” she breathes, and it almost sounds like a moan. “I want you so badly. I miss you so much.”

“Okay.” Jackie’s voice is intoxicating. “I’m free for the summer. Just tell me when.” Shauna opens her mouth to suggest tonight, against all logic and rationality, but Jackie spares her the embarrassment of that by beating her to speaking. “Goodnight, Shauna.”

The call goes dead. A breath escapes Shauna and she splays herself out on her back on the couch, blinking wide up at the ceiling.

She has Jackie’s number now, and it feels like everything has changed. Their established rules are unraveling.

She should wait until everything blows over, probably. Should try not to be pathetic and desperate, especially with Jackie virtually having just broken off an engagement.

But Jackie isn’t getting married. Jackie isn’t getting married, and she wants Shauna to—

“Fuck,” Shauna whispers, and then goes to take a cold shower, and is surprised at herself when tears of relief stream down her cheeks under the spray. 

-

She’s occupied by work for a few days, and the first text she winds up sending to Jackie is long enough that she gets frustrated by all the button-mashing. She's not a big texter by nature, and not for the first time she wishes she’d splurged on a sidekick with a full keyboard at some point.

It’s not flirtatious; she has news to share. “Hey. I don’t know how you’ll feel about this but someone from New York Magazine read my article and they want me for freelance work.”

Charles had been the one to break the news to her, and had offered her a deal: moving to part-time for the Gazette, with her Fridays spent in NYC. She’s still considering it. It’s a big deal, but they want her for “culture” features, which she’s pretty sure is just code for them wanting to strike while the iron is hot and bring her on to cover gay-adjacent content in their bi-weekly publishings. She doesn’t mind it in theory, mostly; it’s just that she isn’t really up to date on those sorts of things and she doesn’t particularly want to keep writing about her personal life either, so she’s not sure what to make of it all. And they can drop her anytime if they don’t like what she’s putting out, which is stressful.

It’s the strangest thing, getting a phone call from Jackie that begins with a casual, “Hey, Shauna.” Like nothing’s changed between them. Like a week ago Jackie wasn’t marrying someone else. Like they talk all the time. 

Like high school. She can remember it like it was yesterday: leaning against the kitchen countertop with a phone cord tangled around her finger, giggling with Jackie late into the night until one of their mothers would sleepily appear to request they hang up.

Now, their phones are cordless and mobile, and Shauna’s in her own kitchen watching meat and shells simmer in a pan as she replies, “Hey. I didn’t think you’d call.” She’s happy she had, though, especially with how much easier it is. And it’s just nice to hear Jackie’s voice.

“What’s that sound?” Jackie asks.

“Sorry, I’m cooking.”

“You can cook?” Jackie sounds amused.

Shauna huffs. “Fuck off. I’m twenty-six.” Jackie hums suspiciously, and Shauna can’t help but start to smile. She forces it off of her face even though Jackie can’t see it. “Okay, fine, it’s Hamburger Helper. It still counts.”

Jackie’s giggle makes her smile return. “I knew you couldn’t cook. Just a gut feeling.”

“Like you’re any better?”

“I have a few recipes in my repertoire,” Jackie brags. “I’ll show you sometime.” Before Shauna can properly process that, let alone respond, Jackie goes on, “I think you should take the job.”

“Really?” Shauna lifts the lid off of the pan and flinches away from the steam. “But I only got it because of my article. And you hated that article.”

“I didn’t hate it,” Jackie says carefully. 

“Sure. You just called me to tear me a new asshole and tell me to go fuck myself about seven different times for writing it.”

“That doesn’t mean I hated it.” Jackie only waits a beat before she adds, “New York Magazine is huge, Shauna.”

“I’m a fad,” Shauna responds. She just feels like she has to say it so that Jackie knows she realizes it. The text messages and the calls are finally slowing after a week of chaos. She’s blocked so many numbers she’s lost track of them all, and she suspects Jackie has too. 

“You’re more like a one-hit wonder,” Jackie says. “For now. This is an opportunity to show everyone you aren’t.”

“Are you saying that dog story wasn’t Pulitzer-worthy? That kid really was gonna drown.”

Jackie ignores her dark attempt at a joke. “Do you know what they want you to write about?”

“Probably something gay I don’t know anything about,” Shauna huffs, awkwardly pinning her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder as she drains the pan. “Like lesbian hair and fashion trends or op-eds about the politics of The L Word or whatever.”

Jackie gasps. “Wait, does that mean you don’t watch The L Word?”

“I watch The Sopranos and NCIS.”

Jackie laughs. “C’mon, it’s fun. It’s just a bunch of LA lesbian drama.”

“It sounds like the gay version of Sex and the City, in which case I’d literally rather off myself than sit through it.” She fixes herself a bowl as the realization hits her: “I totally missed an incredibly annoying phase of yours, didn’t I? I bet you and your sorority sisters were glued to those straight harpies every week.”

“I dropped my sorority my sophomore year. And you’re so above it all, naturally.” Jackie sighs overdramatically. “God, you’re such a Jenny.”

“Why did you say her name like it’s a slur?”

“If you watched The L Word, you’d understand.” 

Shauna spoons a bite into her mouth and leans up against her counter, staring down at the pan on the stove. “I have too much of this for one person,” she muses, and then realizes what it must’ve sounded like she’d been implying. She clears her throat awkwardly. “So. Uh. Our last call was—“

“Yeah.” Jackie sounds more serious now. “Have you been thinking about it?”

Every night as she falls asleep. When she showers. When she isn’t thinking about work, basically. “A little. I’ve been busy.”

“I’m sure.” Shauna can hear the smile in Jackie’s tone. “You wanted to call the shots.”

“Yeah,” Shauna breathes. She collects herself, sets her bowl aside, and asks, “You really have no summer plans?”

“I had a honeymoon,” Jackie says shortly. “Now I don’t.”

“Right.” Shauna feels guilty for not feeling guilty about that. “Are you… doing okay?”

“I’ll live. Do I seem like I’m falling apart on the inside?”

“I don’t know. I’ve realized after the other night that you were probably always good at hiding when you were.”

“Did I say that?”

“Not exactly, but I listened.”

Jackie’s silent on the other end of the line for a moment. “…I like this,” she says, finally.

“Me too,” Shauna admits.

“Okay.” Jackie sounds thoughtful. “Okay. Good.”

“Yeah,” Shauna says, and doesn’t hang up until she’s eaten her entire dinner with Jackie on the line.

-

She stays busy well into June: juggling jobs for the Gazette and her new weekly shift in NYC, where she meets too many new people and has to cope with her imposter syndrome and with the fact that her new bosses have dug into her life, found out who Jackie is, and know that her engagement’s fallen through. 

But they don’t make her write about any of that, at least. One of her bosses there, Samuel, is gay, but from an older generation, and he takes an interest in the portion of her article about not realizing her feelings for Jackie in high school. A few discussions later, she winds up with an assignment to talk about her “path to discovering her sexuality as a Gen-Xer from a small-town suburb” and how she thinks it differs from the experiences of Baby Boomers, which is definitely about her personal life, but she’ll take the tradeoff of not having to publicly divulge any further information about Jackie. 

She works on it painstakingly for two straight weeks, writing about her time in Wiskayok and the adjustment of attending Brown and meeting people who’d opened her eyes to who she’d always been. What that had felt like back in the late 90s, any pushback she’d encountered, what it all says about the broader experience of being “queer” (a word she’s still uncomfortable with) in this day and age. Day in and day out she’s constantly emailing drafts and revisions and getting feedback until they’ve finally deemed it up to snuff. It’s an exhausting process, but she feels so accomplished at the end of it all. She’s going to have an article in New York Magazine, and it’s not the subject she’d wanted, and it’s more personal than she’d wanted, but it exists. 

And it means she won’t just be the girl from the Trenton Gazette who loves her best friend. She’ll get to actually make a name for herself as a writer—not how she thought she would back in high school, but maybe there’s a path she can take from here that has a destination she’ll be satisfied with. The magazine has a literary review section she hopes to contribute to someday. And longer-term, she thinks maybe she wants to work her way into writing about politics. With any luck, there will be more positive legislation like the ruling in Massachusetts on the horizon, and someone will need to cover it all. Give people hope; do serious work that matters.

Jackie’s among the many people who reach out to congratulate her when the new issue is published. She asks Shauna’s permission to read her article, and then genuinely sounds impressed when she calls her to tell her that it’s fantastic, that it had felt real and genuine and she’d really related to it herself, especially the part about Shauna not knowing about her attraction to women until another girl had made a move on her in college and then feeling stupid and embarrassed for never having realized it before then. She says Shauna’s no longer a one-hit wonder, and Shauna laughs and tells her to fuck off.

Shauna’s still getting used to talking to Jackie. Sometimes she thinks she might panic if she thinks too hard about it: that after eight years Jackie is actually in her life, even if they’ve gotten started off with just a text every now and then and a few short chats over the phone.

They really don’t talk much initially, with how busy Shauna’s been, but sometimes Jackie sends her things to let Shauna know she’s thinking of her:

A picture of herself in sunglasses on a New Jersey beach somewhere with a margarita in hand. 

A text that says, “reminds me of u, both so broody <3” and a picture of a dark-haired woman writing on a laptop on Jackie’s TV screen. 

A picture of The Da Vinci Code on her lap and a text that says, “ok so im several months late but I rec this one. Dont understand it at all but think u will, nerd :)”. (Shauna thanks her and doesn’t tell her she’s already read it.) 

Their promise of intimacy with each other has started to feel like the elephant in the room, after a month of not making good on it. And Shauna really does plan to, it’s just that she’s got a lot going on, and now that she’s had some time to think about it—to not be so impulsive about it—she’s not sure what throwing sex with Jackie into the mix will do to her. Especially non-December sex. Non-December sex that will presumably involve sharing an address that can’t be unshared.

It’s a step, and Shauna’s not sure what direction it’s in, if it’s meant to be an exploration or a pursuit of something Shauna’s not sure they could ever truly make work but is tempted to indulge anyway, or if maybe they’re just both on metaphorical treadmills heading nowhere. But she knows Jackie expects her to initiate everything. It’s what Shauna had wanted, after all. 

Which is probably why it takes so long for Jackie to give in and lose her patience, but it happens on a Friday night, while Shauna’s up late working on an article for Charles. Her phone vibrates on her desk, and she opens it to a text from Jackie that just says, “Shauna, come over. It’s been five weeks. What r u doing?” As Shauna watches, another text comes in. “Do u still want me?”

Shauna calls her immediately, flushed terribly red and so glad that Jackie can’t see it.

“Hello?” Jackie answers, and Shauna had already suspected she’d been drinking but the way she says that one word confirms it.

“Are you drunk?”

“That’s not the reason I’m asking,” Jackie insists right away. She sounds defensive, vulnerable. Her guard’s down. 

Shauna knows she shouldn’t take advantage of it, but there’s something comforting and confidence-inducing about having Jackie like this, having her crack and reach out first. “Have you been waiting on me?” she asks. 

She can hear Jackie’s uneven breathing on the other end of the line. She’s not wasted—not drunk enough that her wheels aren’t still turning. “Have you been making me wait on purpose?” she asks, finally. 

“No, I really am busy.”

“I thought so.”

“I’m actually working on something now that’s due Monday.”

She hears Jackie shift around, sheets rustling. “What’s it about?”

“It’s boring,” Shauna says quickly, even though it’s not; she just has more important things to talk about. “Are you in bed?”

There’s another pause, and then Jackie almost sounds smug when she says, “Yeah. I was thinking about you.”

“Do you do that in your bed a lot?” It sounds sexy in Shauna’s head, but it comes out high and overly casual. She’s so much better at this when it isn’t Jackie. When there are no stakes.

Jackie laughs at her, but it’s fond; not the derisive one she’d used to use sometimes in high school. “Of course.”

Shauna takes a guilty peek at her computer screen. It’s a big assignment. Charles has been entrusting her with increasingly difficult ones lately. She really does need to dedicate her weekend to it. “I don’t think I can come see you tonight, Jax. Or tomorrow.”

“I could come to you.”

Shauna almost laughs. “Yeah, I’d get literally nothing done.”

“I can think of one thing you’d get done,” Jackie purrs, and this time Shauna does laugh.

“God,” she says fondly, “you really would’ve had me wrapped around your finger in high school. This so would’ve worked on me.” There’s a memory in her head now from back then: one night of many with Jackie on the edge of Shauna’s bed, palms braced against the mattress behind herself, long, bare legs crossed beneath a tight dress, sharp eyes on Shauna, watching her change, ready to get under her skin with her nitpicking and critiquing and running commentary. 

Shauna’s core tightens. She’d fucked Jeff for the final time that night to punish her. She can’t help but imagine what might’ve happened instead if she’d known enough about herself to be able to cross that bedroom in the middle of Jackie’s ranting about Randy Walsh and shut her up properly. And if Jackie had known enough about herself to let it escalate past their usual kissing. 

“Before you got old and wise?” Jackie teases, snapping her out of it. “Now you just interrupt your work at the first sign of a text from me to instantly call me instead.”

“I mean, you were asking if I still wanted you. It seemed like an emergency.”

“I just wanted to hear it.”

“I know. I do. I want you.” She says it like it’s simple, obvious. This isn’t the first time it’s struck her how easy it feels with Jackie. At least like this, when other things can be safely tucked away, go unaddressed.

“Have you ever had phone sex?” Jackie blurts, and Shauna almost chokes on her own spit.

“Jesus, Jackie—Not tonight.”

Jackie’s laughing now. “That’s not an answer!”

“Yes, I’ve had phone sex,” Shauna sighs out. “Next weekend, okay? I’ll come next weekend. Text me your address.”

She can practically hear Jackie’s smile as she says, “Okay. I’ll cook.”

“I’ll… eat,” Shauna says lamely, and then rests her forehead in her palm with a wince. 

It earns a giggle from Jackie, at least. “Looking forward to it.”

Shauna heaves a sigh. “We’re so lame.”

“Speak for yourself.” Jackie gives her phone a drunken, squeaky kiss. “Nite, Shauna.”

“Goodnight, Jackie.”

-

She goes to Jackie’s the following Friday night, because it’s almost directly in the middle of her commute from Trenton to NYC, so it seems more convenient to just drive the forty-five minutes from work to Jackie’s and call it a night. That morning, she packs a couple of sets of pajamas and two days’ worth of casual wear, just in case, though she anticipates leaving sometime around midday Saturday. 

She doesn’t really know what the plan is, what they’re supposed to be doing beyond that Jackie wants to cook and wants her to stay the night. They’ve obviously never done this before. Slipping out in the morning like she had in the motel room feels sleazy, but the idea of spending a weekend with Jackie is as intimidating as it is butterfly-inducing. She decides to go in with low expectations. They’re having fun. Just a couple of ex-best-friends in love with each other who are as likely to get into an argument about their history as they are to fuck each other’s brains out. No big deal. 

Jackie lives in an apartment complex not far from the Rutgers campus, and it’s right around dinnertime when Shauna pulls in and sees a playground and a pool near the front. There are families there, children swimming. It’s a nice area—not nice enough that she wonders how Jackie can afford it on her own, but it feels safe and family-friendly.

She drives to Jackie’s building at the back of the complex and climbs to the second floor, finds the apartment number, knocks on the door with a deep breath. She’s still in her work clothes, a little nicer than what she wears to the Gazette: a button-up, hair in a bun, a pencil skirt like she’s someone’s secretary. Her Gazette coworkers—or James and Quinn, at least—would snicker at her if they saw her in this, and her actual friends would do even worse. 

But Jackie just pulls the door open, already in sweats and a tube top for the evening, and looks pleasantly surprised for half a second before a smile stretches across her face. “Oh,” she says coyly, and Shauna sighs and rolls her eyes, hiding a smile of her own. Something’s wafting from inside that’s making her mouth water. 

Jackie lets her in, and the first thing she notices about Jackie’s apartment is the homey atmosphere of it. It’s small, with just a main living area and a single bed and bath, but it’s well-decorated, color-coordinated. It’s all very Jackie in a way that’s comforting, because Shauna knows they’ve both changed but she hasn’t wanted Jackie to feel like a complete stranger to her for a while now.

“You’re still amazing at interior design,” Shauna half-jokes, taking it all in. She remembers Jackie’s eager plans for a pink and green dorm room like it had happened yesterday. She’s gone for more of a lavender and cream here. 

“Thanks,” Jackie says easily, her smile softening. “I’m almost done cooking, if you wanna change? My bedroom’s the door on the right over there. Bathroom’s on the left.”

Shauna takes her bag and debates internally for only a moment before she slips inside Jackie’s bedroom. She has a queen bed that’s almost too big for her room—Shauna suspects her parents had helped purchase it years ago—and at some point in the past couple of years she’d stolen her old vanity from home. There’s a desk that’s surprisingly lacking in clutter, save for a folder full of papers and a mug with a cute little rainbow flag in it. A couple of small pieces of artwork hang in frames from her walls. 

Shauna sits down on the edge of her bed, trying not to think about what they’ll do on it later, and kicks off her shoes, lets her hair down, pulls off her top. She digs out a tank top of her own—not strapless like Jackie’s, but she’s trying to match her energy tonight as best as she can, outfit included. She figures some well-fitting pajama shorts work well enough with it. 

She feels nervous when she re-emerges; almost more nervous than when she’d known what the plan was these past two years: show up, fuck, leave. Everything feels muddled. Gray. She just doesn’t know how to talk about it, and isn’t sure what she’d want to hear if they ever did. 

She pushes past the feeling, tries to be casual as she joins Jackie in the kitchen, where she’s keeping watch over something in a pan. “That smells really good,” she says. “What is it?”

“Tuscan chicken,” Jackie says, glancing fondly over her shoulder at Shauna before she refocuses on their meal. “And before you make any comments about it just being meat and sauce in a pan, I’ll have you know I’ve got spinach, tomatoes, and onions in here too.”

Shauna watches her for a moment, aware that she’s staring. Jackie’s grown her hair out a little in the past six months, but physically she’s otherwise the same as she’d been in December. She still has that same calm, laid back aura, not so different on the surface from the Jackie who’d effortlessly drawn attention at parties from classmates too uncool to exist in her space—Shauna had even felt herself being counted among them, sometimes—but Shauna can sense a change there, and can sense what that change is, too.

In high school, Jackie had wanted to be that girl. Pretty, popular, adored, put on a pedestal. On some level, Shauna had been aware of the performance of it all, had been endlessly irked by Jackie’s subtle desperation and insecurity, the way she’d cared too much about everyone else’s opinion and not at all about Shauna’s beyond that it always matched Jackie’s.

This Jackie isn’t trying to be any of those things; she just is cool, is so effortlessly attractive and comfortable in her own skin. Shauna can’t stop staring at her exposed lower back and the little ring at the cartilage near the top of her ear. Jackie prods at the meat in the pan with the confidence of someone who’s done it several dozen times, and Shauna’s all-too-aware that this is the first time in eight years that she’s seen Jackie in her day-to-day life. Not performing for her parents, or upset at a party, or between Shauna’s thighs. 

She hums while she cooks, which is a new thing Shauna learns about her and files away. The tune sounds so familiar, and it only takes Shauna a moment to place it. “Is that Liz Phair?”

Jackie laughs. “Oh. Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Seriously? You spent so much time making fun of my music taste and then once we stop talking you become a Liz Phair fan?” She keeps her tone light, but she’s maybe ten percent genuinely upset about this. 

“It wasn’t once we stopped talking; it was last year when she made it onto the radio,” Jackie corrects casually. “It’s a good song.” She turns away from the stove briefly to gesture toward the living room. “My CD collection’s under the TV if you wanna put something on. I have her self-titled album in a case by the stereo, though; I thought you might pick it anyway if we wanted music, so I set it out.”

“I could hate Liz Phair now,” Shauna says just to say it, and Jackie laughs. 

“Sure. And I don’t listen to Britney Spears.”

“Oh, God, that’s right,” Shauna sighs out as she goes to the stereo. “I missed that phase, too.”

“Not completely; it’s still ongoing.”

Shauna pries the Liz Phair CD out of its case and places it into the stereo. “Do you have a favorite song?”

“Okay, you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but it might actually be Everytime.”

Shauna furrows her eyebrows and checks the back of the CD case. “Is that on a different CD?”

Jackie glances back at her and snorts. “Oh, I thought you meant Britney. My favorite Liz Phair song is the one I was humming.”

“So the commercialized radio hit where she sold out,” Shauna says. “Very you.”

“Yeah, I’m so mainstream and unoriginal, and you, Shauna Shipman, are so indie and deep and unique.”

Shauna hides a smile. “Thanks.” She skips to Jackie’s favorite track and presses play, lets the opening notes fill the air, and then: Get a load of me, get a load of you, walkin’ down the street and I hardly know you; it’s just like we were meant to be. 

She returns to the kitchen with a quipped, “This song sounds happy, but it’s about having an affair.”

“I know what it’s about,” Jackie says a touch too gently, and then turns off the stove and adds, “Dinner’s ready,” before Shauna can dwell on her tone. 

Jackie makes her sit at the table and wait to be served, and the album keeps playing, and Shauna has a brief thought about her college self, how her head would’ve probably exploded if she’d known she’d be having dinner with Jackie Taylor in her apartment in 2004 with Liz Phair on the stereo and Jackie cooking for the both of them and a night in Jackie’s bed planned for later. She’s not sure if she would’ve been over the moon or if she’d have sought out the nearest cliff given the knowledge that so much of her life would still revolve around Jackie all these years later. 

The chicken’s good. Very good. Jackie watches her with a smug certainty as Shauna chews and swallows. “Okay, fine, you can cook,” Shauna sighs out, but then she softens and adds sincerely, “It’s great.”

Jackie softens too. “Thanks.”

They play a game for a bit, born from the music talk, naming off new acts that had sprung up during their time apart, predicting each other’s tastes until someone gets it wrong.

“Avril Lavigne,” Jackie guesses for Shauna right away, grinning. Shauna nods easily. She’d pre-ordered her second album earlier this year.

“Christina Aguilera.”

Jackie gives a middling shrug. “Okay, fine, I’ll give it to you, but I only really like Genie in a Bottle.” She pauses, thinking. “I would bet my life you’re a Michelle Branch fan. Like, there’s no way you haven’t been to a concert.”

Shauna bites back a smile, body shaking with silent laughter. “I have a shirt I bought at one.” 

Jackie pumps a fist. “Ha! The Shipman music taste has not changed at all. Michelle Branch is actually good, though.”

“You listen to Destiny’s Child,” Shauna counters like it’s an accusation; it’s her next guess, and Jackie huffs at her.

“Okay, you’re literally just picking female pop acts.”

“You’re picking women with guitars.”

“Fine. Lifehouse.”

Shauna recoils and lies, “Ew, what? No, I don’t listen to Lifehouse.”

“Shut up; yes you do. You definitely cry in your car to Lifehouse,” Jackie says easily. “It’s okay, though, we can both pretend that you don’t.”

Shauna rolls her eyes but doesn’t keep arguing it. “John Mayer.”

Jackie hides a smile and doesn’t argue that. “No Doubt.”

“I love No Doubt. Eminem?”

“Yes, and I can hear you judging me. Goo Goo Dolls?”

“Nope,” Shauna says proudly. “Sorry, Jax.”

“Hmm. Well, you should. Iris is one of my favorite songs. I always thought it’d be perfect for a wedding dan—“ She stops herself suddenly, and Shauna feels the mood shift. Jackie’s expression morphs into one of guilty discomfort.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Shauna asks, because it feels like the right thing to say.

“Not really,” Jackie replies, avoiding her eyes. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. I don’t know.”

So Shauna gives a wordless shake of her head, a nonverbal don’t worry about it; it’s fine; let’s move on. She takes her last bite and then stands, picking up her plate. “Here, I’ll clean up.”

“No, you don’t have to—“ Jackie starts, but Shauna insists.

“You cooked. I’m sure I can rinse off a couple plates and stick them in a dishwasher.”

Jackie lets her, but uncorks a bottle of wine while Shauna’s taking care of their dishes and pours two glasses. They sit on Jackie’s couch together in front of the TV, and the music on the stereo has died by now so there’s nothing to distract Shauna from the way their knees are touching as they face each other, or from how Jackie’s lips look when they’re stained red with wine. 

“We’ve missed so much of each other’s lives,” she says, and Shauna can hear the hint of an ache in her tone, a longing to claw those years back somehow. 

Shauna doesn’t think they could’ve gone any other way—those first four years, at least. It’d been so difficult, but she’d needed them. Needed the time to form a sense of self that didn’t constantly take Jackie into account. Maybe now it’s less like they’re two entities messily melted together and more like they’re puzzle pieces that fit together at a couple of their edges, but not quite all of them. 

“We can catch up,” Shauna offers, and so they do.

Jackie tells her about her sorority: the same one she’d always talked up in high school and been so excited about, and how she’d had to keep molding herself into something that hadn’t quite felt right, just like high school, to fit in with them. She tells Shauna that she’d tried boys for three semesters and they’d felt no different than the lackluster experiences she’d had before college. (She doesn’t say Jeff’s name.) And then she’d made friends with a gay boy in one of her classes she’d just thought would be fun to go shopping with—“I know; it was bad,” she sighs out—but then instead he’d dragged her to a gay bar with fake IDs in hand, and then she’d gotten drunk and kissed a girl who wasn’t Shauna for the first time, and just sort of kept going back. 

“I knew,” she says evasively, like she doesn’t want to go into detail about it. “Like, right away. Deep down. Then it started turning into sex, and I just… fucking burned everything down. Quit my sorority, made new friends. Kept it a secret at home, obviously.” Her eyes stay trained on Shauna’s. “Figured out what I wanted to do with my life and changed my major. Started playing intramural soccer. Realized some things about you.” She offers a wry half-smile. “Hated that. As you can probably imagine. But I finally started to feel like me.”

Shauna catches Jackie up on her time at Brown. The women, the men, her studies. She doesn’t mention how much she’d missed her and wondered about her. 

But Jackie asks questions; more than Shauna had asked Jackie. Things like, “What was your favorite class?” and “Do you stay in touch with any of them?” and “Did you love him?” about the boy she’d dated for a year.

“No,” Shauna says easily to the latter.

“And the other one?” Jackie asks carefully. “The one who proposed?”

“No,” Shauna says again. “I only ever loved you.”

She can see it; just a flicker of it: the way Jackie starts to melt, or maybe wants to but stops herself, keeps her composure. It makes Shauna’s heart flutter. It makes her so completely aware of how nervous she is, how nervous she’s been from the moment she’d entered Jackie’s apartment. Like whatever this is, it’s too big to risk fucking up by saying or doing the wrong thing. 

They’ve finished their wine glasses by now, set them aside. Jackie’s hand reaches out for her knee, thumb stroking over it, leaving goosebumps in its wake. “I think I want to believe I loved her because it means it was all real and sincere,” she confesses. “So I’ll keep saying I did, but—“

“It’s okay,” Shauna says. “You don’t owe me, like, sole ownership of the word.” She adds the next part not to guilt her, but to justify her own feelings about it. “You were… you know, with me while you were with her. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

Jackie runs a hand through her hair and exhales heavily. “It should’ve felt like I was cheating on her once a year, and instead it felt like I was cheating on you three-hundred times a year.” She bites her lip and then confesses, quietly, “I only agreed to marry her because I thought you were marrying him. I thought we’d both show up to that motel room engaged.”

Shauna’s heart skips a beat and then thuds hard in her chest. “I’m not gonna be with anyone else while we do this,” she says, because it’s just the truth. Even if she has no clue what this is. “I don’t care about having sex with someone else if I’m having it with you.”

Jackie shakes her head hastily. “Don’t. I won’t either.”

“Okay.” That’s something, at least. A simple new rule to follow. They can start there. Dip their toes into something that feels less like a swimming pool and more like an ocean full of whirlpools and riptides.

The clock on Jackie’s kitchen reads just after ten, and they’ve barely finished college in their recaps of their lives. 

“Do you want to keep going?” Jackie asks, noticing Shauna eyeing the time.

They could stop. They could go to bed. Shauna could take Jackie to bed. 

But instead she says, “Yeah,” and rests her hand on Jackie’s, interlocking their fingers, content with that contact for now. She’s missed Jackie—as in she’s missed her, in the literal sense, missed so much of her life, and she’s quickly growing addicted to relearning her. “I wanna know everything about you.”

-

They talk until three in the morning, about everything and nothing: Jackie’s students and the soccer team, Shauna’s friends—Jackie’s closest friend is Nat now, ever since they’d reconnected in 1999, which is kind of crazy given some of the stuff Jackie had used to say about Nat in high school—and the things Jackie doesn’t know about Shauna’s work already.

They exchange stories. Mistakes. Jackie tells Shauna about how she’d fucked a rival team’s coach a half-dozen times after games back before she’d met her ex-fiancée, and Shauna offers up Zoey to be judged for in return. 

Jackie talks about how things have been nearly radio silent with her mom since her coming out and not much better with her dad, and Shauna shares that things aren’t any more or less strained with her father than usual, but that they just never talk about it, and he only asks her about men. 

They cover lighter things: movie taste, favorite places to go out to eat, some of their fondest memories over the years.

Eventually, their voices and bodies give out before their spirits do, and Jackie cleans their wine glasses while Shauna drags herself to the bathroom to brush her teeth. 

They slip into Jackie’s bed together, say goodnight with raspy voices and sore throats. They’re too exhausted for anything more. Shauna falls asleep on her back with Jackie cuddled into her, an arm over her stomach and her breath tickling Shauna’s neck. It’s all so warm and soft and familiar, after years of sleeping pressed close like this as kids and then teens, and it feels like a piece of Shauna that’s been lost since high school has finally clicked back into place. She feels whole again. 

Whatever this is, please don’t ruin it, she says in her head to the darker, bitter, and temporarily dormant part of herself before she passes out, and then she promises back on its behalf, I won’t.

-

She wakes up all wrapped up in Jackie. Bear-hugging her, arms around her and hands tucked under her against the warm skin of her lower back, cheek on Jackie’s collarbone. She can feel the even rise and fall of Jackie’s body against her own where Shauna’s resting partially on top of her. 

It would almost be funny how completely entangled they are if she weren’t so enamored with the fact that their unconscious bodies had almost seemed to fuse together overnight, drawn to each other even in sleep. Jackie has both arms around Shauna, too. 

Shauna keeps her eyes shut and savors it while she can. The comfort of the contact, the softness of it, the way everywhere their skin touches Shauna buzzes with warmth. 

She shifts, barely, and after a moment Jackie does too. The rhythm of Jackie’s breathing changes as she slips into consciousness, and then her arm slides up Shauna’s back, fingers tangling in her hair, scratching gently against her scalp. 

It feels nice. Shauna sighs as she’s massaged there, a pleasant heat flickering to life in her abdomen. Her own fingers flex against Jackie’s back, slip an inch lower toward the waistband of her pajama bottoms. She uses her arms to tug greedily at Jackie’s body, pulling her an inch closer at most—but it’s more than enough to convey a desire to eliminate the little existing space between them. 

Jackie’s thigh moves under Shauna’s. Just a twitch at first, and then more, spreading herself wider just enough so that Shauna’s knee could slip between her legs so easily if Shauna wanted. The hand in Shauna’s hair slides to cup the back of her neck instead, giving it a quick, gentle squeeze. Shauna can feel a muted throb starting up between her thighs in time with the quick pounding of her heart. 

She doesn’t speak, just slips a hand around the curve of Jackie’s waist to her front, skin on skin, thumb rubbing over her hipbone as her palm settles over Jackie’s abdomen. Her fingertips brush the waistband and she hears Jackie’s breath catch. 

They both move at once; Jackie pulls at her neck and yanks her higher, turns her own head and captures Shauna’s lips, and Shauna’s knee pushes between Jackie’s thighs and up, pressing into the warmth of her. She moves her hand back to Jackie’s waist, gripping her tight as Jackie clutches at her back and gasps into her mouth. 

Shauna kisses her again, greedy and deep after not having her like this in so long, after foregoing it last night, and slides over so that she’s more fully overtop of Jackie, unwedging her other hand out from beneath Jackie’s body so she can use it to get leverage against the mattress. She grinds her thigh forward, drags her lips over Jackie’s when the friction makes Jackie break the kiss to expel a harsh breath, and slides the hand on Jackie’s waist back over the taut skin of her lower abdomen. “Do you want me to—?”

“Yeah,” Jackie breathes, and Shauna feels the motion of her swift nod. 

She kisses down to Jackie’s neck, still so aware of what they’d talked about on that call over a month ago, and takes Jackie’s skin between her lips, sucking hard, feeling Jackie squirm and wriggle beneath her to try to get more friction against her thigh. Her grip tightens against the back of Shauna’s neck for a moment and then her hand’s back in Shauna’s hair, clutching desperately at it. “Shauna,” she whispers, like she’s saying it just to say it, like she’s grounding herself with it, reiterating to herself who’s here on top of her, touching her. 

Shauna’s hand slips into the loose-fitting sweats Jackie had worn to bed and strokes between her legs, and Shauna groans at the sound of Jackie’s whimper and then finds a new spot on her neck with her mouth. 

She wants to mark her everywhere, leave little purple bruises behind for anyone and everyone to see. For Shauna to look at too and know that Jackie had let her put them there. For Jackie to trace over in her own bathroom mirror long after Shauna’s gone back to Trenton.

Her fingers find a firm rhythm, drawing steady circles that have Jackie kicking determinedly at the comforter to get it off of them and then wrapping her legs eagerly around Shauna’s hips. And something about that position, about the way Jackie sounds so needy and breathy underneath her—

Shauna finishes a second hickey and scrapes her teeth against Jackie’s jaw, mumbles, “I can fuck you with my hips, if you have something.”

Jackie arches into her, and again it’s a swift nod, a breathy, “Uh huh, later,” and then Shauna’s moaning into a new patch of skin she’s determined to ruin. But Jackie adds unevenly, breath hitching, “I was gonna replace it after—after she and I—if you—“

“It’s fine,” Shauna interjects, understanding. “I don’t mind.” She kisses up to Jackie’s ear, bites softly at the lobe. “I’ll fuck you better with it.”

She feels the way Jackie throbs against her hand in time with her moan, nails stinging at Shauna’s back and scalp. Her hips rock impatiently, and her breathing grows louder and shorter. Shauna can tell Jackie wants her inside. 

She keeps circling her firmly instead, keeps sucking on her neck over and over again until Jackie’s quivering beneath her, and Shauna can almost sense the words lodged in her throat, the request she desperately wants to make and isn’t. She’s still remembering. Shauna has control. 

“Just a little longer,” she murmurs, and then there’s a sudden loud pounding in the distance at Jackie’s front door.

Jackie tenses up beneath her immediately, and Shauna’s fingers freeze. She lifts her head, confused, looking behind herself at the bedroom door. 

“Shit,” Jackie hisses, like she’s suddenly realized something, and then she’s wriggling beneath Shauna like she wants to free herself. “Fuck, I forgot—“

Shauna’s hand slips out of Jackie’s bottoms as she’s nudged rather aggressively off of her, and then there’s more pounding at the door. Jackie scrambles off of the bed and to her feet, grabbing her phone up off of her nightstand and flipping it open. She must see something on the screen she doesn’t like, because she grimaces right away and then tells Shauna, “Stay right here, okay? Just… just stay here.”

Then she’s hurrying from her bedroom, closing the door behind herself, and Shauna’s left alone and confused and turned on, sprawled out across Jackie’s mattress with two wet fingers. 

She checks the clock on Jackie’s nightstand. They’d slept until just after noon. 

There’s the distant sound of the front door opening and closing, and then Jackie’s muffled voice comes through clearly, “I’m so sorry, I passed out late last night and totally forgot we changed it to this weekend.”

Shauna hears a low laugh of disbelief. “Jesus Christ, Jackie.” She knows this voice; it takes only a couple of seconds to place it given the new knowledge she has about Jackie’s life. It’s Nat—voice matured and a little lower, but without a doubt hers. “I can see your neck, you know.”

There’s a pause, and then Nat again, sounding disappointed and frustrated: “Please tell me you came to your senses and those are from Anna.”

Shauna sits up. Her face pinches angrily. She has enough common sense to realize who Anna must be.

Jackie sighs out, “Look, I’m sorry I forgot about lunch—“

“Jackie…” Nat says warningly, like she knows Jackie’s trying to dodge the topic, and Jackie falls silent. Shauna can sense the tension all the way through the wall. And then: “You can’t be fucking serious. Is she still here?”

This feels like the right time to make an entrance, and Shauna’s stewing enough to not particularly care about Jackie’s request to stay in the bedroom. She resents it, actually. It feels like Jackie had wanted to hide her.

She moves to the door and pushes it open, slips outside in full view of Jackie and Nat over near the kitchen, and closes the door calmly behind herself. Then she leans up against the wall framing the entrance to the living room, crossing her arms. “Hey, Nat. It’s good to see you, too.”

Nat’s changed very little in the last eight years. Still wears too much eye makeup, has the same judgmental aura about her as she’d worn from the sidelines at their high school parties. She’s ditched the bottle blonde look, is all, but evidently not the leather jackets and black boots. 

Nat looks transparently displeased as she takes in an eight-years-older Shauna. “Well,” she says, finally, “at least you got hot. Jackie ruining her whole fucking life for you finally makes a little bit of sense to me.”

“Don’t,” Jackie says warningly to her, and Nat raises her hands hopelessly and then steps back toward the door.

“I’m gonna go.” She rolls her eyes. “You know, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say…’ or however it goes.”

“You never had trouble opening your mouth back in high school,” Shauna quips. “Not according to what I heard, anyway.”

Nat lets out a dry laugh. “Oh, cool, and she’s still an asshole, too!” She says it to Jackie more than to Shauna, as though to further prove a point she’s clearly made a dozen times before. Jackie grimaces and looks incredibly uncomfortable. “Shauna, I think you’re at the wrong apartment; Anna lives over on Broadwell. Or does it not really do it for you anymore when Jackie’s already dumped them?”

Shauna gives her the finger, hating that she can feel her face getting hot. 

“Okay, stop, both of you,” Jackie cuts in. “Can you just—Why don’t we—?“ She pauses, thinks about it, and then blurts, “How about we just start over and you both say something nice about each other?”

Shauna and Nat both snort in unison, and then both look sour about having reacted in the same manner. “This isn’t senior year and we aren’t Yellowjackets anymore, Jackie,” Nat says. Her eyes flicker angrily to Shauna, and then right in front of her she tells Jackie, “She’s gonna hurt you again. That’s what she does. That’s actually all she fucking does.”

Never has something so short and simple cut Shauna so deeply, straight to the bone, and out of nowhere she feels like she’s being flayed alive. She’s burning up everywhere, hurting and stinging and aching, and it’s so much easier to pretend the heat is anger and not pain. “What the fuck did you just say?”

“Nat,” Jackie says quickly, glancing at Shauna with concern before facing Nat entirely instead, “just go. I’ll call you later, okay? We can reschedule.”

“I’m just trying to be a good friend,” Nat says with resignation. “Whatever. It’s your life.”

She leaves, and Jackie closes the door softly behind her and then lets out a heavy sigh.

Shauna doesn’t let the silence last long. “So you were trying to hide me.”

“Shauna,” Jackie warns sharply, “please don’t.”

“If you don’t want anyone to know—“

“I didn’t want Nat to know because she hates your guts,” Jackie interrupts with frustration, rounding on her. “I wanted to get to explain what’s going on to her on my own time, not for her to burst in on us in my apartment, okay?”

Shauna closes her mouth, that stinging, aching pain still sitting low in her chest. “Did she read the article?” she asks, and immediately feels dumber for having had it come out of her mouth. 

It softens Jackie up, at least, who seems to realize why she’s asking. “Yeah. She doesn’t think you don’t love me, Shauna. It’s just… all more complicated than that.”

Shauna’s eyes drop to her own hands, where she picks anxiously at a fingernail. “Yeah. Okay.” She doesn’t really know what to say now. Or what to do, either. Nat’s put a blatant damper on their morning. “What now?”

Jackie seems lost as well. “I don’t know.” She glances toward the kitchen. “I could make us a late breakfast if… Will you stay?”

She had half-expected not to, but there’s no question that she’ll stay if it’s what Jackie wants. “Yeah,” she says, and then admits, “I’d like to.”

Jackie nods and gets started in the kitchen, but the mood’s still off, the air’s still sour with Nat’s parting words, and Shauna can’t help but wonder if Jackie’s mulling them over, if they’ve left an impact on her. It seems clear that she’s heard them all before, or at least something like them. 

Shauna needs a reset, an excuse to leave and come back when it’s not so tense, so she asks, “Do you mind if I shower? I didn’t bring shampoo or—“

“Use mine,” Jackie offers gently. “Use anything you like.”

So Shauna digs a change of clothes out of her bag, lost in her own thoughts, going through the motions almost absently as she closes Jackie’s bathroom door and sets her clothes aside and turns the water on and steps under the spray. 

That’s actually all she fucking does. 

She’s spent a lot of her adult life wondering if Jackie’s doing fine without her. She recognizes the way she’d coped with her own inferiority complex at eighteen: telling herself that no one saw the truth of their dynamic, that Jackie was the one holding her back and that she’d spread her wings without her, finally become the person that Jackie had stifled throughout their adolescence. All to mask the worry that prettier, more likeable Jackie would be the one to lose her tagalong and soar, no longer inhibited by the weight of Shauna’s presence. 

The idea of being irrelevant to Jackie is painful enough. The idea of being actively harmful—dragging her down—is unbearable. Is that who she is? A barbed anchor? A time bomb doomed to explode and hurt those nearest to her? A burden? Sometimes she believes her father thinks so, the way he’d left so easily, the way he hasn’t taken a real interest in her life since. She’d used to feel it from her peers in high school, too: how much of an afterthought she always was, like she could disappear from her permanent spot at Jackie’s side and nothing would be missed. Even Jackie had so often made her feel that way. But she’d never treated Shauna like a net negative until the night she’d read her journal. And then the night with the article: 

I want an apology.

For showing up at that party four years ago and fucking up my life when you could’ve just stayed away.

It hits her all at once, after weeks of not letting herself feel it: Jackie had built a life for herself in Shauna’s absence. A degree, a job, a relationship she’d wanted to make work, make last. And Shauna had taken a wrecking ball to all of it and felt none of it. Turned her own empty life into Jackie’s problem too, unleashed her feelings and wrenched Jackie from her own happiness in exchange for—what? She doesn’t even know. She doesn’t think Jackie knows either. It’s not like they’re in any position to promise each other anything real, because it’s so new, so fragile, so ready to turn sour and rot and collapse as quickly as it had over email a few months ago. And then Jackie will have left her ex for nothing.

It feels unfair, suddenly. Shauna hadn’t asked her to make that choice. She hadn’t expected her to. This isn’t her fault. Jackie had done this to herself, and it’s unfair of her to expect—whatever she expects from Shauna. 

She doesn’t realize how long she’s been standing under the water, not washing herself at all, until there’s a gentle knock on the door and then a muffled, “Shauna?”

Shauna swallows past the lump in her throat and opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Jackie waits for a few seconds and then pushes the door open, audibly worried. 

“Shauna? You’ve been in here for a long time. Are you alright?”

Shauna makes the words come out this time. “I’m fine.” It’s awful. She sounds awful. Raspy and choked up worse than she’d realized she’d be.

“Shauna.” Jackie says her name again gently, and the door shuts behind her. “Please don’t listen to her; she’s just—“

“She’s right,” Shauna cuts in, and feels her face crumple. Through the curtain she sees the shadow of Jackie moving, hears clothes hitting the floor, and then Jackie’s stepping inside to join her and reaching out for her as though to comfort her. 

“Shauna—“

“You shouldn’t have left your ex,” Shauna says, shaking her head, her vision blurring, her eyes wet. “You shouldn’t have done that; I’m not—“

“I don’t care,” Jackie cuts her off in a quiet murmur, cupping her cheeks, moving in close. The water’s starting to plaster her hair to her head and run down her face as her eyes stare carefully into Shauna’s. “Listen to me. I don’t care what you’re not. I’ll take whatever you are. It was my choice to make. It’s always been both of us choosing this over and over again.”

“You hate yourself for it,” Shauna reminds her. She’d all but said so. “We’re not good for each other, Jackie.” The scariest part is that she’s not sure they ever were. 

“That’s up to us now,” Jackie says, resting their foreheads together. “That’s what I want. To try to find a way to be good for each other. Can we start there?” She tips her chin up, brushing her lips against Shauna’s, thumbs sweeping back and forth across her cheeks. “Can you just touch me?” Shauna’s next inhale comes harsher, air suddenly more difficult to pull into her lungs. Jackie captures her parted lips so softly, her voice barely audible beneath the water when she whispers into Shauna’s mouth, “Can you be good for me?” 

Shauna’s hands fall to her waist, gripping her tight, and she’s pressing Jackie into the opposite wall before she can think about it, groaning into their kiss when their bodies press flush. One of Jackie’s hands leaves her cheek to scramble for purchase against her back, and Shauna slots their mouths together harshly, fingers sliding to curl under her thigh and lift it, opening Jackie up, urging her to wrap her leg around Shauna. Once it’s there, Jackie rocks her hips forward, searching for friction and not finding enough of it as Shauna breaks their kiss to return to the mottled red splotches on her neck. 

Her hands still Jackie’s desperate hips and push them against the wall again, creating just enough space for Shauna’s hand to slip between their bodies, and this time she doesn’t tease, just rubs at Jackie for only a moment to check that she’s ready and then slides two fingers lower, filling her slowly, mouth still working against her skin. Jackie lets out a soft groan as Shauna buries herself to the last knuckle and cups Jackie in her palm. 

This is the shortest amount of time Shauna’s ever waited to be inside of Jackie again—not even seven months compared to her usual year—but it’s the most she’s ever savored it. The most she’s so acutely felt it. Things are different now. This is different now. 

The hand that had been at Shauna’s cheek has slid around to the back of her head, and as Jackie grips her there to anchor herself Shauna can feel Jackie’s lifted thigh quivering against her hip. 

“Can you stand?” Shauna asks, sliding an arm around her lower back to offer her support. “We don’t have to do this here.”

“We definitely do,” Jackie puffs out. “Please don’t take your fingers out of me; I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” Later, Shauna wants to do this more roughly, fast and harsh and commanding, but for this first time she just focuses on moving slow and firm in Jackie, letting it build, letting Jackie whimper and clutch at her as Shauna’s palm brushes just right on every instroke. “Do you like that?” she coaxes, when Jackie’s panting and quivering against her, clearly close, and Jackie nods frantically against her. “There’s a lot more I wanna do. Stuff I like.”

She figures now is as good a time as any to confess it. They’ll be doing this more regularly now, and it feels easier to talk about it like this than it would to bring it up in casual conversation. 

“Me too,” Jackie pants out, and Shauna knows she doesn’t get it. It’s not the same. She’d bet everything Jackie would be intimidated if she knew about it all. “Let’s… today, let’s—“

Then again, she is the same woman who’d put Shauna’s underwear on her ex-fiancée, so maybe Shauna has her wrong. Heat rolls through her at the thought, and she nips again at Jackie’s ruined neck. “Try some of it?” she finishes Jackie’s thought for her. “Figure each other out?”

It had been so difficult before, on so little time, with only four scattered opportunities. This is a new part of Jackie she gets to catch up on, to learn, and she’s buzzing with excitement at the thought of it. 

At Jackie’s nod, Shauna fucks her a little harder, a little faster and deeper, and the sharp cry she earns boosts her confidence, fuels her bravery. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to keep up,” she warns, and means it. She’ll have to tiptoe to figure out when she’s about to hit a boundary. Talk around things. Jackie isn’t Mark—and Shauna doesn’t particularly want to do everything to Jackie that she’d done to Mark.  So maybe it’s best to keep some of the darker parts of her sexual history hidden away from her.

“Try me,” Jackie breathes, and then she’s clinging to Shauna’s fingers, gasping, and Shauna knows she’s climbing higher, almost there. “Fuck—Do whatever you want to me.”

Shauna moans, hips jerking forward to grind against her own arm, and Jackie comes with her nails digging into Shauna’s skin, stinging, her calf stiff against the back of Shauna’s thighs. Shauna holds her tight to help her keep her balance; she can feel the weakness and the dead weight of Jackie’s body, and then feel her strength slowly come back to her, too. 

Jackie’s leg slips back to the shower floor, and when she finally finishes catching her breath she pulls back to give Shauna a soft kiss. Shauna raises an eyebrow at her when they part. “Whatever I want, huh?”

Jackie blushes, says, “Don’t make me take it back,” and then reaches past her for the shampoo.

They wash their hair together, and the hot tension between them fades a little, until Jackie’s just giggly and handsy with her, tugging at Shauna’s neck to pull her into smiley kisses, urging Shauna’s mouth back to her throat to leave more marks on her and Shauna’s hands to grip her ass and squeeze possessively at it.

Shauna wonders, at one point during it all, if this is Jackie at her fullest self, if this is how she is when she’s happy and not pretending and with someone she loves, and if it feels as new a side to her for herself as it does for Shauna. She wants to ask her if it had been like this with other women, but doesn’t in case the answer is yes, and also doesn’t in case the answer is no.

They towel off their hair and bodies after, and Shauna stares at Jackie’s body in the mirror until Jackie catches her at it and grinningly pulls her out of the bathroom and across the hall to her bedroom. 

“What happened to breakfast?” Shauna remembers at the last second, right as Jackie’s pulling her on top of her in her bed.

Jackie laughs and teases, “I’ll give you something to eat, Shipman.” Shauna groans but lets Jackie smother the sound with an eager kiss anyway.

“That was so bad,” she says with a roll of her eyes as soon as her mouth is freed. “Just tell me where you keep the strap on.”

-

Jackie is adventurous, as it turns out. Not as much as Shauna—she can sense it’s the case, mostly—but more than Shauna had guessed. Enough that she moans when Shauna whispers, “Flip over and get on your knees,” into her ear after the first couple of rounds, and enough that she gasps out, “Pull my hair,” when Shauna’s thrusting into her from behind, even though a couple of years ago she’d refused to pull Shauna’s. And enough that when Shauna finally fumbles out of the harness and hurriedly climbs up Jackie’s body, making her intentions clear, Jackie just grasps eagerly at her thighs and even lifts her head up to meet Shauna with her tongue before she can properly get situated. 

It scratches the freaky little itch inside of Shauna more than well enough for now, given how new to each other they are, and the slew of curses and other filthy things she lets escape her mouth before she comes all seem to be plenty enough to let Jackie know how much she enjoys it. 

After Shauna slides off of her, boneless and temporarily sated, and flops down onto the mattress at Jackie’s side, Jackie takes in a few heavy breaths with wide, dark eyes like she’s a little stunned—understandably; Shauna had just been bucking wildly against her face and gritting out something about wanting to come on her tongue—and then just says, “Wow. You, uh, keep all of that hidden away deep down in there, huh?”

Shauna licks her dry lips and reminds her that she’s not the only one: “You asked me to pull your hair.” 

“That wasn’t for me,” Jackie confesses. “I thought you might like it.”

“Oh.” She had. She’d ruined the inside of the harness at the request alone, and only gotten worse while she’d actually had Jackie’s honey blonde locks in her fist. She can’t decide if knowing it’d been for her and not for Jackie makes it better or worse. “Did you like it?”

Jackie rolls onto her side to face Shauna and just says, “I like it with you.”

Shauna mulls it over some more. She can read between the lines. Jackie’s doing things she isn’t particularly into because she thinks they’d turn Shauna on. Then she’d moaned at every tug of her hair and come with Shauna thrusting into her. Even Shauna, in all of her cynicism, can’t spin all of that into anything other than a good thing. 

She presses her thighs together, too aware of a fresh heat starting to build between them, and then rolls toward Jackie and kisses her hungrily, tasting herself on Jackie’s lips and tongue. Jackie’s face is a mess, shiny and covered in Shauna from cheeks to chin, and Shauna licks along her bottom lip and then below it, and then along her jaw, cleaning her up. 

She can hear Jackie’s breathing getting uneven. Like she’s turned on, not uncomfortable with any of this, with Shauna licking a stripe up her cheek. Shauna pushes her a little more, reaching for the discarded harness near the edge of the bed and mumbling into Jackie’s ear, “Put this on; I wanna ride you.”

Jackie grabs for it so quickly that her fingernails scratch Shauna’s hand without meaning to, and Shauna watches Jackie wriggle it up her legs and thinks to herself, Okay, yeah, maybe we can actually make this work. 

At least in this particular area. At least for a little while. 

-

For the rest of the summer, a lot of it is sex. 

It’s not that they don’t talk—they very much do, and Shauna likes talking to Jackie—but they’re surface-level conversations, like Jackie and Shauna are both just trying to keep things easy, keep the peace, avoid anything that could ruin it all, and their talks are so obviously always a precursor to the main event. Their phone calls, if they don’t start with Shauna’s cell ringing late at night and Jackie on the other end all breathy and coy and asking Shauna if she’ll give her permission to come, usually wind up there by the end. 

Jackie sends her texts, too: pictures of herself in different bikinis, or lingeries, along with something like “pick 4 me ;)”. Sometimes Shauna gets them at work and winds up snapping her phone shut with such startled flusteredness that she attracts odd looks from her coworkers.

None of them know anything. No one does, aside from her mother, who hears about Jackie’s engagement and has it figured out anyway by the time Shauna resigns herself to confessing the bare minimum: they’re talking, she tells her, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

They do their “talking” exclusively at Jackie’s place, at first because of the centralized location, but at some point Shauna acknowledges to herself that she likes it just fine that way, that she doesn’t need Jackie to see her place, to invade something that’s just Shauna’s. Jackie doesn’t complain. (Not initially, anyway.)

There’s not much to complain about, if anything at all, during this new thing they’re doing, just having fun and learning and exploring and—at least on Shauna’s end—trying not to overthink it. Shauna finds Jackie’s first boundary a few weeks in, when Jackie’s on her period one night and Shauna offers to eat her out anyway and Jackie laughs like Shauna had been joking and then casually changes the subject. She makes a mental note—too freaky, got it—and doesn’t dwell on it. 

She can tell Jackie’s learning what Shauna likes, too. The control is obvious. A little aggression, usually, always from Shauna toward Jackie. Jackie can sometimes get Shauna laying on her side if she plays her cards right, but she never gets to be on top; instead she watches Shauna grind on her thigh or rock her hips on Jackie’s fingers or on a toy. Shauna can tell Jackie wants it differently sometimes, but Jackie doesn’t push it. (Not yet.)

There are things that Shauna wonders about too, things that go beyond the sex. Things she buries deep down, questions she starts to ponder and then snuffs out because the answers are too terrifying to seek out:

What are we? What does this mean? Are you finally mine? Is this permanent? Should we talk about it? Should we try to talk about high school? Should we try to fix everything? What if I don’t think we can? What happens if we can’t? How am I supposed to ever go back to not having you like this? 

She decides that she won’t ask any of them, but one night—a Friday, just a couple of weeks after Jackie’s new school year has started up again—she pushes for something else instead. A sex thing, because that’s easier, safer. It’s something she’s been thinking about for weeks, even went as far as to pack for in the small bag she leaves at Jackie’s place now along with some spare toiletries. 

She calls Jackie as she drives away from New York Magazine, waits for a greeting and then says calmly, “Hey, I’m leaving work now. I should be there in forty-five minutes or so.”

“Great,” Jackie says cheerfully. “I’ll start dinner in ten. Do you want—?”

“Can that wait?” Shauna cuts her off, driving with one hand as she navigates the usual NYC traffic. “I’ll help you cook later.”

“You want another lesson?” Jackie sounds pleased. It’s one of her favorite things to do, Shauna knows: flirting with Shauna in the kitchen as she flaunts one of the few things she can do better than her, taste-testing pots of things together after Shauna adds ingredients and follows instructions. Even Shauna has to admit it’s cute on Jackie: being a teacher in the dumb “kiss the cook” apron she owns. 

“Mmm,” Shauna replies noncommittally, “I was thinking I could teach you a lesson this time.”

There’s silence on the line for a beat, and then a coy, playful, “Oh?”

Shauna doesn’t smile. “Only if you want to. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

Jackie hums, sounding unbothered. “I guess you’ll have to just ask and find out.”

“Okay,” Shauna says, and goes for it. “The lingerie I really like? The blue?” She waits for a sound of acknowledgement from Jackie, a signal that she understands. When she gets it, she continues, “Put that on for me.”

It’s practically a milquetoast request given what they’ve gotten up to in the past couple of months, and Jackie knows it. “What else?”

“You still keep your spare key under the mat?” Shauna asks. “It’s there?”

“I’m like, ninety percent sure it’s there.”

“Check.”

Jackie laughs shortly, but then Shauna hears the distant sound of a door swinging open. A moment passes. “It’s there.”

“Okay. The bag I keep at your house has a blindfold in it. Once you’re changed, take that with you to the bed.”

Jackie sounds significantly more into this when she replies, her voice lower, “Should I wait for you there?”

“Yeah,” Shauna swallows thickly. “Yeah, the whole time. As long as it takes for me to get there.”

“Can I have fun while I wait?” Jackie asks, tone just on the edge of teasing. 

“Not too much.” Shauna squeezes her thighs together. “Just enough to get ready for me. And you should be laying there blindfolded on your back when I walk in.”

“Is that it?” Jackie rasps. 

“No. No, that’s not… there’s still the biggest part. But if it’s too much—“

“Just tell me,” Jackie presses, a little gentler. “I’ll say if it is.”

“Okay.” Shauna’s pulling out onto the highway now. She can be there in forty minutes. “There are handcuffs in the bag, too. At the very bottom, with a key.” She hears Jackie’s breath catch in a way that’s—she’s not sure if it’s displeased surprise or if it’s—“What are you doing?”

“Starting,” Jackie puffs out. “Fuck. Okay. To the headboard?”

“Yeah. Both hands. After you’ve changed and you’re done with yourself—maybe in half an hour—lay down and put the blindfold on and handcuff yourself to the headboard, and wait for me. That’s what I want.”

“When will you be here? Forty-five minutes?”

“Forty now.” She thinks it over. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll stop somewhere and you’ll have to wait longer.”

“I don’t think so.” Jackie’s breath catches again and then she lets out a soft moan. “I think you’ll want to get here as quickly as I need you to.”

The line goes dead, and Shauna blushes, flustered and pleasantly surprised. 

She pulls into the leftmost lane and steps on the gas.

-

By the time she reaches Jackie’s place, there’s anxiety brewing in her chest and anticipation bubbling in her abdomen. She can’t help but consider the possibility that Jackie has changed her mind, gotten too embarrassed or decided it had all been too silly or too much. She might be waiting inside on the couch, already judging Shauna for requesting it. 

She fishes the key out from under the mat and unlocks the front door to find an empty living area. There’s nothing cooking in the kitchen, no TV on in the living room.

Shauna places her purse on the counter and shrugs off the thin jacket she’s worn to work, hanging it by the door, her eyes watching Jackie’s closed bedroom door all the while. Jackie must be in there, if she’s not out here, and if she’s in there that must mean…

She’d had to have heard the front door slam. She knows Shauna’s here. She can probably hear everything, especially with the blindfold on, sharpening her other senses. If it’s on. Shauna thinks it must be.

Her anxiety lifts. A small smile plays at her lips. She goes to the cabinet where Jackie keeps her glasses, takes one out, and turns the faucet on, filling it loudly. Then she leans up against the counter and drinks the water slowly, breathing through the way her body’s starting to warm and thrum and throb. She closes her eyes, pictures it: Jackie wriggling around on the bed impatiently, alone, flustered and completely at the mercy of Shauna’s every whim. 

Shauna sets the empty glass down in the sink and goes to the bathroom next, eyes the shower for a moment before she decides that’d be too cruel, and just takes a moment to pull her hair out of its updo and fix it with her fingers.

When she’s done, she finally crosses to Jackie’s bedroom, pauses by the closed door, and raps gently on it with her knuckles. “Jackie?” 

Jackie’s voice is faint and whiny on the other side: “You’re such an asshole.” Shauna laughs, genuine mirth bubbling out of her as she hears Jackie give a dramatic huff. “This is so embarrassing.”

Shauna steels herself for a moment, not sure she’s ready for it, and then pushes the door open and takes in the sight before her.

Jackie’s splayed out on her back over the comforter, clad in nothing but the thin blue lace set Shauna loves on her, miles of skin marked all over with faded hickeys from Shauna on display. Her arms are stretched back over her head, handcuffs around her wrists and wound through the bars of her headboard, she’s wearing a blindfold, and she’s squirming a little like she can feel Shauna’s eyes on her. Her legs are spread just enough, knees bent just so, and Shauna can see a dark, damp spot where she’s seeped into the fabric between her thighs. 

“It’s not,” Shauna murmurs, eyes darting everywhere, taking in too much and not enough all at once. “It’s not embarrassing at all. Fuck.”

Jackie’s cheeks are flushed a deep red as she arches impatiently, licking her lips. The chain of the cuffs clangs against the bar it’s wrapped around and Shauna feels the sound between her thighs. 

“Maybe not for you,” Jackie insists, but her voice is breathier now. “I feel like a sexy hostage.”

“You are a sexy hostage,” Shauna half-jokes, still eagerly taking her in. “You look…” She doesn’t know how to finish it. This might be the best Jackie’s ever looked. 

She reaches down to unbutton the slacks she’d worn to work today, and knows Jackie must be able to hear her because immediately she asks, “What are you doing?”

“It’s a surprise,” Shauna says just to be coy, and Jackie groans with frustration. 

“Just warn me if you’re planning on putting on some massive strap you bought without telling me, or...” Jackie falters, clearly running out of ideas.

“Would you like that?” Shauna wonders, stepping out of her pants. 

“…I don’t know,” Jackie decides after a moment, but her legs spread just a touch wider, like it’d been subconscious.

“I’m just taking my clothes off,” Shauna reassures her, pulling her top off next. She lets it drop heavily to the floor for Jackie to hear, and then steps up to the edge of the bed and sinks a knee down onto the mattress, and sees the way Jackie’s breathing changes when she feels it, the way her abdomen seems to tighten with anticipation. Shauna’s gaze drops to stare at the toned, tight muscles there for a moment, and then skates all the way up Jackie’s body to her pink cheeks and parted lips. “Do you trust me?” Shauna asks, her voice lower and raspier than she’d expected it to be. Jackie nods immediately. “Tell me.”

“I trust you.” It sounds airy and a little impatient, but Shauna can hear the sincerity behind it.

Shauna crawls over top of her, hovering over her on her hands and knees, and reaches out to gently cup Jackie’s cheek. “You really do look so good,” she breathes out, swiping a thumb across Jackie’s lips, biting back a moan when Jackie’s mouth opens wider and her head turns into the motion, like she’s trying to take Shauna’s finger between her lips. “If you ever want me to stop, just say and I will. I want you to like this.”

Jackie nods restlessly. “I know.”

Satisfied, Shauna trails a hand down her neck, watching Jackie’s head shift to elongate it, and then traces her fingers over the dip above her collarbone and lower, skimming the top of her breast, plucking teasingly at the fabric there. Shauna’s eyes flick back up to her face, watching Jackie’s rapid breathing, the way her teeth sink into her bottom lip. Shauna palms her breast fully, giving it a firm squeeze that has Jackie arching into her with a gasp.

“You’re sensitive like this,” Shauna notes, and then tugs the fabric down and leans over to take Jackie’s nipple into her mouth, swirling her tongue on it, adding suction. The handcuffs clang, and Shauna’s underwear is starting to cling to her. 

She works her way across to Jackie’s other breast, listening to Jackie’s panting as she scrapes her teeth gently along the sensitive flesh there, and then Shauna’s gone entirely, sinking back on her calves to look again: at Jackie with her lace top in disarray, breasts out and shiny with Shauna’s spit, chest heaving. Jackie lifts her legs to try to get them around Shauna’s waist, and Shauna says, “Don’t do that; lay them flat,” and almost whimpers right alongside Jackie when her order is reluctantly followed.

She knows she’s getting off on the power and control just as much as she is on getting to see and touch Jackie like this. She’s sure Jackie knows it too. She’d have to have forgotten their entire history and everything they’ve been doing in bed since the summer to not know. 

She drops her gaze to the apex of Jackie’s thighs next, to the damp spot in her underwear that’s only grown since Shauna had entered her bedroom. “Did you do everything I asked you to?” She scoots back to place herself between Jackie’s calves, then slides her hands up her inner thighs. She leans forward and ghosts her lips over Jackie’s navel, feels her twitch beneath the contact, and slides her hands higher, over her own head and back to Jackie’s breasts, kneading them as she starts to place open-mouthed kisses all over her abdomen. “Did you touch yourself?”

“Uh huh.” Jackie sounds dazed and needy. “Shauna.”

“Did you come?” Shauna murmurs into her skin, nipping at a spot near her hipbone.

“No,” Jackie breathes, but then she lifts her hips impatiently and adds, “Does that earn me anything? Cause I’m starting to think I should have.”

Shauna hides a smile and just says, “Don’t be a brat,” then moves lower and drags her nails over Jackie’s nipples at the same time that she mouths aggressively at the fabric between her thighs, exhaling warm breath there, pulling at it with her teeth. 

The harsh sound of metal on metal almost startles her, and Jackie lets out a low moan, hips rising aggressively into Shauna’s face to try to get more from her. Shauna makes a short sound of disapproval and moves away, dropping all contact between them and sitting up, and doesn’t hide her smug smile as Jackie babbles, “Okay, okay, yeah, what should—? Just tell me what you want and I’ll—-“

“I don’t want anything,” Shauna tells her calmly. “Just relax.”

Jackie bites down on her lip hard, like she’s trying to keep herself from saying something. Shauna watches her adjust her hands, which draws her eyes to the handcuffs, the way the chain is pulled taut by Jackie’s arms. Her smile fades, and as Jackie sighs, “You know what I meant,” Shauna moves up her body and takes hold of one of her wrists gently. “What’re you—?”

“Seriously, Jax,” Shauna tells her softly. “Relax. You’re gonna hurt yourself.” The cuffs are softer than real ones, but they’ve still been visibly digging into Jackie’s wrists. 

“Sorry.” Jackie genuinely sounds guilty. “I’m just excited.”

Shauna laughs. “You’re way too used to getting it right away.” She releases Jackie’s arms and leans down, brushes her nose over Jackie’s to warn her before carefully slotting their mouths together. Jackie lifts her head, increasing the pressure, opening her mouth wider to accept the teasing slide of Shauna’s tongue.

Shauna withdraws, moving out of range when Jackie tries to follow, and Jackie sinks back to the mattress with a small whine. “Well, you like giving it to me right away,” she reminds Shauna, which is very true. While it’s still been so new, Shauna’s been more than happy to grasp for Jackie hungrily and get to it as quickly as possible. Even over the phone she doesn’t usually make Jackie wait long to get herself off. Even now a part of her is fighting off her own arousal, her desire to feel Jackie come apart beneath her. 

That’s an idea, Shauna realizes—sating herself to take the edge off—and so she scrambles around on the bed to get her own underwear off, then straddles Jackie at her waist, where Jackie can feel Shauna’s bare thighs against her skin. 

“Fuck,” Jackie whispers, figuring her out. “Where do you want to—?”

“I’m deciding,” Shauna says shortly, eyes skimming Jackie’s body, hovering over her mouth. She could put herself there. But not yet. 

She scoots forward instead, up to Jackie’s abdomen, to taut flesh and tight muscles, and sinks down, dragging herself along Jackie’s skin, testing it out. Jackie tenses there on instinct, firming up under her, and Shauna sways forward and catches herself on the headboard, surprised at how good it feels. 

“Yeah,” she mutters, eyebrows furrowed, mind focused on the contact now. “Here.” 

Jackie trembles beneath her but doesn’t yank on the handcuffs this time, and Shauna starts to roll her hips, smearing herself on Jackie’s abs, grinding against them slowly, and then faster, a hot coil tightening in her lower abdomen. She lets her head drop, hair brushing over Jackie’s face, and starts to moan quietly with every firm slide of her clit against Jackie’s hard body. 

Jackie to her credit, has hopped completely on board, is encouraging her with soft whines and, “Good, use me—use… use anywhere, you can have my hands if—“

“Nice try,” Shauna grunts, hips grinding harder, faster, and Jackie whimpers, her thighs trembling. She must be so wet. Shauna would be if their roles were reversed—That is, if she were in Jackie’s body, because there’s no way she’d ever let Jackie do this to her. Even the thought of it—of Jackie having full control of her again like she had all those years ago—is making her arousal fade a little. She shakes the thought off, replaces it with, “Say that again. That I can use you.”

Jackie wets her lips eagerly, and she must know what this is, that Shauna’s getting off on restraining her, having her at her mercy, that it’s about more than just sex, that it always has been, but she gives in to her anyway. “You can use me,” she echoes, breathless. “You know I’ll do what you want. I have been.”

“Yeah,” Shauna agrees, because she does know. She’s noticed.

“Let you pick my clothes,” Jackie breathes. “Called you up and let you tell me when I can come. Let you fuck me however you want.” A whine slips out of Shauna’s mouth and she slows her hips just a little, worried she’ll come too quickly otherwise. Jackie lets out an airy laugh. “God, I… I fucking cuffed and blindfolded myself and laid here waiting for you just because you asked me to. I’m so…” 

“What?” Shauna urges. She wants to stop, to clamber up Jackie’s body and ride her face instead, but she needs her to keep talking right now. 

“So… so yours it’s pathetic,” Jackie finishes, like she isn’t sure if she loves it or hates it. And she knows Shauna too well now, knows what she likes, because she feels Shauna quivering and begs, “Just come up here, Shauna, just come finish on my—“

Shauna moves quickly, still grasping at the headboard, settling down onto Jackie’s mouth and rolling her hips desperately, already feeling the climb start at the first hungry slide of Jackie’s tongue and the vibration from her moan. 

She knows Jackie sometimes has trouble breathing like this, but Shauna’s hurtling toward the edge so quickly that she doesn’t pay any mind to it, aware she’ll be done before it’s a concern. “Fuck,” she pants, eyes shut tight, her mouth operating faster than her brain as pleasure starts to swell between her thighs. “Fuck, that’s right, take it. You’re mine. You’re mine.”

Jackie buries another eager moan between her legs and it’s enough; Shauna clamps down right as Jackie’s tongue slides inside of her and then comes, struggling to keep herself upright, to not rest too much of her weight on Jackie. She feels her body twitch and jerk through the waves of it until it’s finally over, and then she slips off of Jackie, the mess between her thighs almost as bad as the mess she’s made of Jackie. 

“Give me a second,” is the first thing she says, hoarse and weak, and then she watches Jackie’s legs move restlessly over the mattress, sees Jackie’s thighs press together to try to relieve a little bit of her own need. 

Shauna finds the strength to place herself back between them and pointedly spread them apart, and Jackie’s chest heaves as she sucks in a heavy, frustrated breath, the message received. She’s soaked her underwear by now, and Shauna can practically see her throbbing through it. 

She hadn’t decided what she’d wanted ahead of time, but she thinks she knows now. Jackie had brought it up herself. And there’s something about being on top of Jackie, moving her hips with Jackie’s legs around her, that makes her feel the most in control she ever does. It’s the easiest way to get rough with her, too, between her mouth and her hands and her hips. 

She hops off of the bed, addresses Jackie’s immediate sound of concern with a quick, “I’m coming back; just give me a minute.” She goes to her bag, digs out the harness inside, the newer, larger strap they’d purchased together last month. Bigger than any guy Shauna’s ever been with, but Jackie’s taken it just fine before, so she’s not going to hurt her with it.

Jackie groans in eager anticipation when she hears the first of the clips being fastened. “Is it a new one?”

Shauna can hear the hint of worry in her tone. “No, it’ll be fine.”

“Which one?” Jackie presses, and Shauna lets out a short laugh. 

“You’ll see.”

“Are you—?”

“Jesus, Jax,” Shauna cuts her off, laughing again. She kneels between Jackie’s legs and steals a pillow that isn’t being used. Jackie lifts her hips automatically to let Shauna slide it under her. “Gonna have to bring a gag next time.”

Jackie pouts at her beneath the blindfold, but it’s lost some of its effect with Shauna’s shiny, drying slick still all over her. “I don’t think you’d actually want that.”

Shauna tugs Jackie’s underwear down and gets distracted staring for a moment. When she reaches out to barely touch her, just enough to collect enough wetness to lube up the strap, Jackie’s hips give an eager roll and Jackie bites back a desperate moan. 

“Depends on if you’re gonna call yourself pathetic for me and beg me to sit on your face every time.”

Jackie blushes but says, “Might be more likely than you think.”

Shauna grins fondly at her as she lines the strap up. “Fuck, I love you.”

Jackie gasps, and it takes Shauna a moment to realize that it might not be from her hips starting to push forward. Then she knows it isn’t, because Jackie’s framing Shauna’s body between her thighs like she just needs the contact and responding so gently, “I love you too.”

Have they said it before like this? Shauna searches her memories frantically. Not during sex. She’d written it in her article, which had been plenty enough of a confession on its own, and even talked about feeling it in casual conversation with Jackie. Still, something about saying it here—particularly about the way Jackie had said it, all soft and fond—feels so much more vulnerable. 

She waits until her hips are flush with Jackie’s to lean over her, pressing a soft kiss to her damp jaw. Jackie turns her head and connects their mouths, but their kiss doesn’t hold for long once Shauna starts pumping her hips, driving into her with short, firm strokes.

She could run from it all. She could fuck Jackie harder, grunt filthy things into her ear, and probably make her come just fine with all of it. It’s practically all they’ve been doing from the beginning of this new arrangement—just a longer version of December, a chat here, an easy activity like cooking together there. But Jackie’s right: she’s in a blindfold and fucking handcuffs all because Shauna had asked, even though nothing about what Shauna’s learned so far about her had indicated that Jackie would ever be particularly interested in wearing either of those things, and she’s never pushed or complained about anything in the time they’ve been doing this together, has virtually always let Shauna get her way about it all, and maybe—

Maybe it could work. Maybe it could really work. Beyond this. Maybe it’s okay to want something more, something that could actually make her feel complete forever. To aim for the life with Jackie she’d used to push out of her mind before scenes of it could ever fully form. Is she foolish for thinking so? She isn’t sure. She isn’t sure about anything.

“Jackie,” she whispers, mouth by her ear, hips slowing just enough to be gentle, “Can you tell me again?”

Jackie’s breath catches like she thinks she knows what this might be, like she knows that this is as different as it’s starting to feel now. “Yeah,” she murmurs, and starts to lift her hips to meet Shauna’s now that they’ve found a rhythm she can keep up with. “I love you.” The handcuffs scrape against metal, and Jackie sighs almost wistfully. “I wish I could see you. I… I wanna—“

“Yeah.” Shauna thinks she knows what the rest of that sentence is, how intimate this is getting. She hesitates for only a moment, and then surrenders to it, lets it envelop her. “Hold on.”

She lifts up and slips the blindfold off of Jackie’s eyes, tossing it aside, and watches Jackie take a second to adjust to the light, and then to the sight of Shauna on top of her, moving in her. Shauna watches her pupils blow out and then her dark eyes soften. Her head lifts to press a lingering kiss to Shauna’s mouth, and she mumbles, “You’re so beautiful,” as they part. 

The last of Shauna’s resolve shatters. She wants all of Jackie. She wants everything. She’s wanted it for so long that it feels like her desire is just a permanent fixture of her, something as innate as her blood and her organs. 

“Wrap your legs around me,” she whispers, and reaches out for the nightstand to grab the key Jackie’s left there. “And hold onto me.” She unlocks the cuffs, and Jackie’s hands grasp for her immediately, embracing her, pulling her close. 

“It’s okay,” Jackie breathes into her ear, punctuating it with a quiet little moan that makes Shauna shiver. Jackie knows what this is too. “Can you… This feels good, but your fingers—“

Shauna reacts immediately, shifting her hips back, carefully pulling out and reaching down with one hand instead. She pushes into Jackie with three fingers, stroking in and out and curling them just right, and Jackie’s grip on her tightens. She kisses Shauna gratefully, moaning into her mouth, and it’s happened so fast: just like that, Shauna’s taking orders, doing what Jackie wants without even thinking about it. 

She’ll hate herself for it later. She’ll question it all too. And then, eventually, she’ll tell herself she never should’ve taken Jackie’s cuffs off and set her free. 

But now, lost in the feel of her, she presses her forehead to Jackie’s and whispers into her panting mouth, “Be my girlfriend?” Forever, is what she’s really asking. Be my forever. 

And Jackie kisses her again, over and over, and whispers, “Yes, yes, I already was, baby,” and then comes with tears of relief pricking at the corners of her eyes, and for a little while Shauna lets herself hope that they can start repairing every broken thing between them from here, that the love and commitment will be enough.

Chapter Text

2004, cont.

Things change with the label. Jackie wraps herself around Shauna in the most deliciously, blissfully possessive cocoon—wanting more of her, more than before, and even more openly, even though she’s been getting the bulk of Shauna’s spare time for months now. The darker side of Shauna loves the desperation of it, the way Jackie seems to crave her in a way that’s just as pathetic as she’d called herself in those handcuffs. It makes Shauna feel less pathetic for feeling the same.

Shauna buys a laptop so that she can work at Jackie’s, and starts coming over on Thursdays after work, bringing Friday’s outfit and clothes for the weekend with her, staying until Sunday evening. Monday through Wednesday, she calls Jackie every night before bed and they talk about their days—mostly Jackie talks about hers in detail and then Shauna keeps things shorter when it’s her turn, because that’s how they’d used to split time in conversations back in high school. It’s one of many old habits they pick back up together. When Shauna gets an invite somewhere from her friends, who still don’t know about Jackie and tell Shauna they’ve missed her lately, the first thing she does is consider whether spending time with them will interfere with her time with Jackie, and if it doesn’t, then she considers if she’ll be home in time to call Jackie. 

Within weeks, they’re fully stitched together like it’s 1996 again, and Shauna falls back into the clutches of this form of them so willingly, like no time has passed at all. Jackie’s always been an addiction, something unhealthy Shauna can’t help but keep coming back to, and this is the most potent form of her:

The way she’ll call Shauna baby, usually when she wants something; come here, baby or harder, baby or stay one more night, baby and get her way with it every time. How she’ll crawl into Shauna’s lap on the couch in the middle of some TV show or movie Jackie’s picked out and fall asleep there with her face in Shauna’s neck, completely relaxed, completely at peace with Shauna’s arms around her. Or put on music and pull her to her feet, giggling, coaxing Shauna to twirl her around the living room like they’re drunk teenagers again, pressing smiley kisses to her lips until she has Shauna laughing too. 

Jackie has always been good at bending Shauna to her will, and Shauna recognizes that this is the most pliable she’s ever been. She’s too lost in what feels like a permanent honeymoon phase, high on being a new, upgraded, non-platonic version of high-school-best-friends-Jackie-and-Shauna to care. Jackie cycles through her new arsenal with ease to get what she wants—baby, sex, this cute little wide-eyed pout she does, please with her fingers carding gently through Shauna’s hair. Even just letting Shauna exist with the knowledge that Jackie’s her girlfriend now and it’d make her happy to be acquiesced to is almost always enough.

So Jackie asks for things, and Shauna says yes no matter how she feels about them. That’s who they are; them stripped down to their barest forms. Shauna gives, and Jackie takes with a smile—or a kiss now, or an I love you, or with some part of her body beneath Shauna’s trembling thighs. And for a while, Shauna is more than happy to let her.

But then comes the first major offense. Jackie cuddles up to Shauna one Saturday night on Jackie’s couch after they’ve finished a dinner they’d cooked together and tells her, “You really are such a good writer, you know. I loved yesterday’s New York Mag article.”

Shauna tries incredibly hard to ignore the uncomfortable twinge in her chest. “You read my article?”

Jackie’s not supposed to do that. She’s always asked for permission. And maybe it’s not the biggest deal—is it? She’s Shauna’s girlfriend now; she’s Jackie, her person, someone she should probably be comfortable sharing with, especially given that it’s all literally published work anyway, but. But they hadn’t talked about this. Jackie has bypassed a longstanding agreement between them and hadn’t discussed it with her first. Bulldozed right over a boundary without even flinching.

“I’ve read all your articles, baby,” Jackie tells her fondly, snuggling further into her, resting her head on Shauna’s shoulder, and there’s that word again, the one that reminds her of what they are now, the one that makes her melt so easily. But it isn’t working this time, even as much as Shauna wishes it would. “It’s been nice catching up on them all. Seeing you get better at it. Just… seeing everything you’ve been up to, the people you’ve spoken to over the years.”

There’s a searing pain in her chest now, like Jackie’s sliced it open and left a deep gash exposed to the air. Those weren’t yours, she wants to say. That time wasn’t yours, you said you wouldn’t without permission, what happened to—

She stops herself. Swallows it all down and then asks, “What did you love about yesterday’s?” in hopes that the answer will stitch her up somehow.

“I didn’t even know places like that existed,” Jackie says, squeezing her hand. “Maybe they didn’t when we were that age. You said it opened in 2000, right?” Shauna nods. “It’s nice. It makes me feel like the world’s changing for the better.” She pauses, sounds more vulnerable when she adds, “I wouldn’t have needed it as a teenager, if I’d ever—but only because I had your place to fall back on.” She pauses again. “You wrote that they’re looking for volunteers. Maybe I’ll do that sometime.”

“You should,” Shauna says, winding her arms around her, pulling her close, trying not to stew any longer. The feeling lingers anyway.

More explicit demands start coming quickly. Shauna needs to start trying to get along with Nat, who still has open distaste for her, and needs to meet Jackie’s other friends: Lacey and Tom and the other names Shauna’s heard over the past few months. Jackie wants to meet Shauna’s friends and has no idea that they don’t know anything about Jackie beyond what they’d read in Shauna’s article—not even her name, let alone that Shauna’s dating her now. Jackie wants to see Shauna’s apartment, to stay over, and Shauna agrees in the moment but finds excuses to avoid it afterward; it feels like her last line of defense, the last thing that’s hers alone, like if she lets Jackie invade it she might lose herself completely to her like she had back in high school.

On their first date as an official couple, Jackie chooses where they go. It’s lovely: a four-star restaurant by the river that serves the best lobster Shauna’s ever tasted followed by a night walk through Rutgers Gardens, and Shauna spends the whole evening soaked in sappy, lovestruck warmth, but it’s all still Jackie’s choice even down to way she interrupts Shauna and the waiter at the restaurant to eagerly declare, “She’ll have the lobster; Shauna, you’ll love it,” and Shauna can’t help but notice that she hadn’t even gotten asked if she’d wanted to have a say in any of it, even though it’s such a big moment for them. 

They rent The L Word’s season one box set and she catches up on it all with Jackie even though Jackie knows it’s not her kind of show—(she grows to like it, deep down, ultimately)—but they never watch even one episode of The Sopranos; Shauna waits for Jackie to offer and Jackie just never does. 

“You’re so fucking selfish,” she growls in Jackie’s ear during sex on the night they finish the last episode, it all on her mind, and Jackie’s on her way to her third orgasm to Shauna’s zero so she knows she can get away with making it about that instead, sneak in a comment about a real grievance just to get it out of herself and pretend it’s just dirty talk, release some internal pressure without having to actually confront Jackie about it.

Jackie bites at her earlobe around a moan, hips rocking faster into Shauna’s thrusting fingers, and breathes, “I don’t have to be.”

Then something new and startling is happening: Jackie’s shoving at her, rolling them over for the first time, and before Shauna can decide whether to put a stop to it Jackie’s on top of her and Shauna’s fingers have slipped out of her and Jackie’s grabbing for Shauna’s wrists and pinning them above her head. 

Shauna’s jaw tightens on instinct, and her body gets confused: there’s a coiling arousal still there in her abdomen but a flutter of anxiety in her chest, and Jackie’s looking down at her—her face, and then her nude body—with the kind of hunger that probably would’ve made Shauna’s high school self have some important realizations during their little practice kissing sessions, and maybe it’s that old side of her that comes out now, makes her go limp and just wait to find out what happens next.

“I’ve wanted to do this to you so badly,” Jackie whispers, sensing she’s not resisting, gathering her wrists into one hand and keeping them pinned so that her other hand is free to travel down Shauna’s body. “I think about that first time up against my bedroom door all the time.”

Shauna always tries not to think about that time; the one time she had let Jackie have everything, the humiliation she’d felt. She’s never truly given control over to her again. The closest had been Jackie going down on her in the motel room, Shauna half-asleep with a hand on Jackie’s head; she knows Jackie had taken what she’d wanted then, but it hadn’t felt the same. Isn’t the same as now, either, with Jackie’s eyes pinning her in place and her fingers parting Shauna between her thighs, the kind of energy radiating off of her that’s always been reserved for Shauna alone to put out.

It feels so good. Shauna bites down on her bottom lip to try to stifle herself but her needy whimper slips out anyway, and she watches Jackie’s pupils blow out in response to the sound, watches Jackie’s lips part with surprise, watches Jackie whisper an aroused, “Oh,” like she’s learned something about herself in this moment, too. Something Shauna isn’t going to like, that’s at odds with her.

Shauna’s not sure she’s ever won an argument with Jackie; either Shauna loses or they both do, and so her choice is always either to give in or to make them both miserable. 

She loves Jackie, so she gives in: tips her head back and turns her brain off and lets Jackie fuck her like this, and when Jackie leans in close and pants into her ear, “My turn now, baby,” like she’s promising more than just tonight, Shauna comes so quickly that even Jackie seems surprised by it.

Three rounds and so many hickeys and commands and good girls from Jackie later, Shauna escapes to Jackie’s shower with a rushed-out excuse like she’s fleeing the scene of a crime and scrubs harshly at her skin like it’ll somehow get rid of the evidence of her submission, then stops out of nowhere, trying to rein in her chaotic emotions, taking deep breaths under the water, squeezing her eyes shut.

She tries to clear her mind, but she starts reliving it all instead: Jackie’s tight grip, squeezing so hard on her wrists, her teeth at the swell of Shauna’s breast, her praise, there you go, Shipman; you can take it, curling her fingers so deep, so perfectly. 

She can feel her breathing getting uneven for a different reason now. Her mind tries to fight it, because this can’t be how it is, how she’s naturally wired. She’s experimented over the years, but only really fully enjoyed this role once before, when she was imagining she was Jackie, so it really isn’t supposed to go this way. Not with anyone, but especially not with Jackie. She’s even gotten turned off before by the idea of it.

Her hand slides down her body and between her thighs anyway, and her fingers press in where Jackie’s left her sated and a little achy and sore. 

Are you coming for me again? Already? God, Shipman, you really are.

Shauna curls her fingers and grinds gracelessly into her palm, her other hand pressed to the wall to prop her up.

Yeah. There it is. That’s it. 

Her mouth falls open, and she’s panting hard, trying to keep her moans quiet, eyes still shut tight, ears ringing as the pressure builds.

Has anyone ever tied you up? …Then I wanna be the first. Soon.

Her hips give one final jerk and she comes hard enough to almost lose her balance, giving up her chance to savor it when she has to pull her hand away early to help stabilize herself against the wall. She sags against it as the pleasure fades, cheeks blazing with humiliation.

She’s not sure who she hates more for it all: Jackie or herself.

-

Her first lunch with Nat is awkward. Jackie tries her best to mediate, but Nat doesn’t even try to hide her disgust with the whole situation, and Shauna’s vacillating between annoyance, anger, and a deep discomfort with the knowledge that she’s stuck spending time with someone else who had been there in high school for her fallout with Jackie.

When it’s just her and Jackie, it’s an even playing field. They still don’t talk about it, but it’s one against one, and they seem to have a silent but precarious understanding that they’re not likely to ever see eye to eye on it all. Nat being a third party comes with the illusion of impartiality—she’s Jackie’s friend, so of course she’ll side with Jackie, Shauna tells herself, but it doesn’t help make her feel any less ganged up on, like the validity of her perspective is being challenged. When she’s around Nat, her defenses go up, and she wants to dig her heels in about it all even deeper. 

“So,” Shauna starts as their drinks arrive, “how’s the bartending going? Still doing that? Know any fun little bottle tricks?”

Nat scowls at her, and then at Jackie like she blames her for this. Jackie elbows Shauna with a huff. 

“Be nice, Shauna.”

“I am! I’m asking about her work.”

“We can’t all be pretentious assholes with Ivy League degrees,” Nat says. “How’s your next article going? The lesbians of New York are clamoring to know which butt plug’s permanently jammed up your asshole.”

“Nat!”

“Can I go?” Shauna asks through gritted teeth, because Jackie’s blocking her way out of the booth and she might legitimately deck Nat in the face if she stays. 

“No.” Jackie heaves a sigh as though to collect herself and then faces them both. “Look. Nat, you’re my best friend.” She doesn’t miss the way Shauna blanches. “Shauna, you’re… my other best friend, and my girlfriend.” Shauna can feel herself steaming. She hadn’t considered that she and Nat might share the label now. She hates it. “And you two are both really important to me. You need to get along. Move past… the past.” She shoots Nat a meaningful look. “I’m happy. Okay?”

Nat gives a noncommittal shrug that does nothing to reassure Jackie. Shauna doesn’t say or do anything at all, just sips her drink to distract herself from her own heated emotions. 

The appetizers arrive. Jackie sighs and gets to her feet. “You know what? I have to use the bathroom, and when I come back, you two are gonna be civil, and we’re all gonna have a nice, peaceful lunch together. Even if it means I have to break out the old team-building exercises.”

Shauna slides down in her seat a fraction, grumpy. Nat rolls her eyes. Jackie gives them both an expectant, lingering look that Shauna senses she’s perfected after a few years of using it on unruly students, and then slips away in the direction of the restaurant bathrooms.

Nat snaps up a mozzarella stick as soon as she’s gone, and Shauna straightens up and crosses her arms, watching Nat bite it in half. When Nat seems content to just eat and ignore her, Shauna can’t stop herself from saying, “That stuff’s between Jackie and me. She doesn’t need you to be, like, her guard dog.”

Nat laughs sarcastically at her. “God, Shauna, you have no idea.” Shauna stares at her angrily, frozen, burying her uncertainty to hide it. “You weren’t the one who had to be around her for it. Watch her pull herself out of your fucking quicksand year after year, actually meet someone who was good for her and finally commit to it. Then cheat on her with you anyway. And eventually fuck it all up two weeks before her wedding. It was painful to watch.”

She’s wrong. Jackie’s the quicksand. Shauna’s the one who can’t escape. Or maybe they both are, but even then, that makes this only half Shauna’s fault. 

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she says, hating that she feels defensive. “Jackie can make her own decisions.”

Nat finishes her food and then drops both arms to the table. “Tell you what,” she says, leaning in closer. “We’ll put on a nice show for Jackie. I won’t give her shit for this thing with you anymore. We can be civil.” Shauna waits for the rest. Natalie gives it to her with narrowed eyes. “But when you fuck it up, stay away this time. Let her heal for good. No pulling her back in with emails or articles or whatever the fuck else. I’m done watching my friend obsess over an asshole who fucked her over in high school and should’ve been left there. Deal?” Shauna glares at her, opens her mouth instinctively to protest, but Nat interrupts, glancing away, “She’s coming back. Deal?”

“I didn’t—“ Shauna tries, and then gives up with a scowl when she spots Jackie rounding a booth just a few away. “Alright, whatever, fine. In your fictional fucking breakup scenario I’ll stay away.” She doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t indulge the idea enough to take it seriously. She has to make this work with Jackie; the alternative would be too unbearable now that she has her.

“Good.” Nat studies her for a moment, looking her up and down, and in a sudden moment of pitying sincerity tells her, “I wouldn’t mind if Jackie married you and you lived happily ever after, you know. I just know you’ll ruin it on your own before then and hurt her again. I remember who you are, Shauna. That’s why I don’t like you.” Before Shauna can question or argue with any of that, Nat shifts her expression to something lighter, feigned, raising her voice. “Yeah, you were the one person who actually had decent music taste back in high school. Jackie’s told me you were into Nirvana.”

Jackie settles back into the booth next to Shauna, pleased as punch, beaming as she looks from Shauna to Nat. “Nat finally forced me to listen to all of Nevermind senior year of college. It was… okay.”

“Okay?” Nat sounds flabbergasted. “C’mon, Jackie; you were ready to go to a concert until I told you the bad news.”

Shauna raises her eyebrows at Jackie. “Wait, how did you not remember what happened to Kurt Cobain? I was devastated in tenth grade.”

“Great, already ganging up on me. I’m gonna regret reuniting you two.” Jackie looks visibly relieved, though, before she spots their waiter and leans out of the booth to flag him down, distracting her from Nat and Shauna. Nat’s pacifying expression immediately drops and Shauna reaches for a mozzarella stick to occupy her mouth.

The whole ordeal’s almost worth it for the way Jackie treats her later that evening: cooking Shauna’s favorite meal for dinner—the Tuscan chicken, because it’s good but also because it reminds her of their unofficial first date—and afterward she puts Counting Crows on the stereo and slow-dances with Shauna in the living room, arms around her, faces so close that Shauna can see every individual speck of brown and green in Jackie’s warm eyes.

“I didn’t let myself think about having nights like this with you for the longest time,” Jackie confesses as they move together, Shauna always a little out of rhythm even after nearly a decade without Jackie around to laugh at her for it. “But I always wanted it. Since that first time with you in my bedroom.” She pauses, like she’s thinking back. “2001 was a hard year. Having you like that and then not.”

“It didn’t show,” Shauna muses. She’s thinking back now too: to seeing Jackie laughing at the next party a year later like nothing had changed.

“I’m good at that,” Jackie says simply. “Not showing.” Her fingers play with a strand of Shauna’s hair and then skate through her locks affectionately. “What did you expect to see?”

“I don’t know.” She almost smiles, remembers what she’d thought then. “You wearing a Christmas sweater that says ‘I Fucked Shauna Shipman’?”

Jackie’s giggle makes her heart leap. “Can you imagine? My poor mother.” Then she muses fondly, “Would’ve been quite the commitment after a year of not talking.”

“I think I’d have proposed on the spot,” Shauna jokes. “Okay, not really, but I’d definitely have at least offered to take you on a date.”

Jackie grins at her. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever want you to ask me out.”

“Little late for that. You’re dating me.” 

“Mhmm,” Jackie’s smile widens. “And I won’t get tired of hearing it, either. You’re my girlfriend.” She tugs Shauna close, grasps possessively at her jaw, but her kiss is slow and seductive and loving. Shauna tries to deepen it, her grip tightening on Jackie’s waist, but Jackie pulls back with a teasing smile and murmurs, “In a little bit.”

Shauna settles, and thinks about the rest of that night in 2001: the second time they’d hooked up in Jackie’s bedroom, the last time Jackie had denied her. Her wanting to keep doing it, that maybe from Jackie. The look she’d given Shauna, so easy to read in hindsight: Maybe, if you can admit that what you did to me was wrong. 

How quickly that had gone out the window. Here they are, nothing resolved, having touched each other dozens of times by now. 

To get her mind off of it, she confesses, “That year was a hard one for me, too.”

Jackie doesn’t smother the slight upturn of the corners of her lips quickly enough. It doesn’t surprise Shauna that she’s happy to hear it had been mutual. “Did you think about me a lot?”

“I barely thought about anything else.”

Jackie’s fingers twist in her hair, holding her there, and something hungry and dark seeps into her gaze. For a moment Shauna thinks she might kiss her again. “Really?”

Shauna nods, forces a laugh as she recalls the worst of it. “God. I called my mom on September 11th to make sure you hadn’t moved to NYC.”

Jackie freezes. The aroused look in her eyes vanishes, replaced so quickly with amused disbelief. “Wait, what?” Then she snorts. 

Shauna feels her cheeks pinking. “I know.”

“You called your mom to make sure I hadn’t died on 9/11?” Jackie laughs out. “Oh my God.”

“It’s not that funny,” Shauna complains, tightening her hold on Jackie possessively. “I didn’t know anything about where you were.”

“And you thought I might be in the World Trade Center?!” Jackie’s body shakes with mirth against her. “That’s so dark. Your brain. Jesus.”

“I was just checking,” Shauna huffs. It’s a little funny. She can’t decide if she regrets sharing it. “Like you were so normal all these years?”

She’s fishing, and Jackie gives her what she wants. “Well, I wasn’t worried about you dying in a terrorist attack, but I got wasted one night last year and tried to call your mom to ask for your number. Nat stopped me. I don’t think she’d have given it to me anyway. She almost didn’t even after the article.”

“When was this?” Shauna wonders, still taking this new information in, trying to decide how it makes her feel. “The first try, I mean.”

Jackie hesitates. Then seems to decide she should give her this, that it’s better than backtracking. “September. Right after I’d accidentally found a ring. In Anna’s nightstand, one night while I was staying over. I went out to the bar Nat works at the next night and…”

She doesn’t have to explain further. Shauna understands. “So, months after Mark and I—“

“Yeah.” Jackie looks her over delicately. “You were single, and I didn’t know. What would you have said?”

Shauna wants to give her the good answer, the reassuring answer. She almost does. It’s so in her nature. But she can tell from the way Jackie’s eyes are searching hers sadly that she probably already knows the truth. “I think I’d have told you to do what you wanted. That it’s your life. And then after we hung up I’d… I’d have been really sad.”

“You weren’t happy for me,” Jackie notes carefully. “You lied in your article.”

“Yeah.”

“Was that the only lie?”

Shauna thinks back, nods. “At the time. Now I don’t agree with everything I wrote then.”

“Like what?” Jackie’s straightened up a little, like she’s expected this to turn even more serious, for some big truths to come out. Shauna knows what she’s thinking about. Her own belief that Shauna should’ve taken the blame for the end of their friendship. It all comes back to their same old issues. 

But that isn’t the part she’d meant. “I said I wasn’t the right woman for you,” she reminds Jackie. “But now I think maybe I could be.”

Let this be enough, she thinks fearfully. They’re normally so good at staying away from this. She doesn’t know why Jackie’s steering them toward it tonight. Let’s not fight. Let it go. 

And Jackie closes her eyes, exhales, and then does. Softens, cups Shauna’s cheek, and offers, “Let me run you a bath,” and kisses her gently. “I’ll light some candles and get in with you.” Shauna watches her pad toward the bathroom a moment later, not sure what to think of tonight, or today, or anything at all, really.

An hour later, Jackie snuggles up to her in bed and tells her, “I’d like to meet someone from your life next. You pick. And I really wanna see your place soon. I wanna visit and stay over like you do here.”

“I know,” Shauna says easily, pretending there’s nothing deeper to it, that something in her gut isn’t still telling her to put it off. “Yours is just so much easier. With the location. With New York.”

“Yeah,” Jackie replies quietly. “But it’s not really about any of that. I just… you’ve lived there for years. I wanna see where you’ve spent your life.”

“I know,” Shauna says again. 

Jackie rolls toward her, holding her, resting her mouth against Shauna’s neck. In a whisper, she asks, “Shauna?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you happy?”

The question surprises her. “How do you mean? With you?” Jackie nods against her, and Shauna tells her the truth. “Yeah. I think I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.” It’s not perfect, by any means, but it’s Jackie. Nothing else will ever come close. “I can’t really describe it, but it’s like… my body doesn’t know what to do with it all sometimes? I don’t know if it’s hormonal, or chemical, or what to call it, but sometimes I remember I’m with you and I can’t… I don’t know. Regulate it all. Anything. Eating, sleeping. I get wired.” She pauses, adds, “Sometimes I think about the fact that you’re mine and I won’t even be turned on but I’ll get wet, and it’s like I’m just excited to be existing with you.” She blinks up at the ceiling with flushed cheeks, worried she’s said too much. “Is that weird?”

She feels Jackie shake her head, hears her murmur, “No. No, me too.”

“Okay.” Relief and joy and warmth flood her system, and Shauna reaches out for her, tugging her closer, burying her smile in Jackie’s hair. 

“Can I tell you something?” Jackie asks next. Shauna nods, and then waits. The silence stretches, and she senses Jackie’s gearing herself up for it. “I think you already know. But I wanna tell you anyway.” She lifts her head, and it’s almost cute, the way she whispers it into Shauna’s ear like it’s a secret, like they’re kids again. “I wanna marry you someday.”

Another slow smile stretches across Shauna’s lips, her heart fluttering.

Jackie doesn’t stop there. “I want everything. A house. Pets. I wanna get pregnant so you don’t have to. Have a family.” She brushes her lips over Shauna’s ear in a light kiss. “I just need you to know. Okay?”

Shauna turns her head, looks intently at her. And it’s hard, but she stands her ground for once, even as every molecule in her tells her to make Jackie happy. “I don’t know if I want kids, Jax.”

There’s a flicker of something in Jackie’s eyes for a moment. Uncertainty. Fear. “I thought you just didn’t want to get pregnant.”

“Yes,” Shauna confirms. “I don’t. But… I guess I never thought beyond that, really. I just figured that was—“ She feels odd saying that she’d always subconsciously assumed she’d wind up married to a man. But it’s ultimately the truth. “I just didn’t think about how else it could go.”

“Now you have me,” Jackie points out gently, prodding while clearly trying hard not to push too much. But Shauna can sense that this is important to her.

“Is it a deal-breaker?” she asks, and feels sick with dread, suddenly. It’s happened so quickly, them stumbling into this, and it could all be over in a second. “Don’t answer that,” she blurts abruptly.

Jackie leans in and kisses her softly, and Shauna can feel the slight hesitance behind it. They stay pressed together for an uncertain moment, and then Jackie pulls away and asks, “Is it for you?” 

Shauna gives the most honest answer she can. “Right now, and if it were a man, yes. With you… I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, either.” Jackie clutches at her like she’s afraid to let go. “I think if it were anyone else, yes.”

“Okay,” Shauna murmurs, and doesn’t know what else to say, and so they both lay there together in silence with the knowledge of it. It’s another thing they won’t talk about, probably. Another thing to add to the pile.

-

Shauna dodges letting Jackie bleed into the rest of her life for another month even as she bleeds further into Jackie’s: meets her other friends, plays nice with Nat a second time, even drops Jackie off at work sometimes on Friday mornings and then picks her up in the afternoons just because Jackie likes when Shauna drives her the way she’d used to. 

She’s naturally inclined to please Jackie, to give in to her, and so it’s probably the guilt of holding out on the invasion of her own life that has her becoming everything else Jackie wants: dutiful, obedient, increasingly more and more malleable. She takes requests on instinct and tries not to think of them as orders. In bed, Jackie does whatever Jackie wants and Shauna gets off on it all so easily, and then lets herself feel the humiliation of submitting to her—squirming and whining and begging beneath her—sometime later, when she’s alone again.

They have their first fight in October. Jackie takes a day off without telling her one Wednesday, and Shauna’s just thinking about taking her lunch break when she gets tapped on the shoulder at her desk and spins around in her seat to see Jackie standing right in the middle of the Gazette’s main room, where she’s in plain sight of so many of Shauna’s coworkers—including a very curious James and Quinn, who are already making their way over—with two bags of takeout in her hands.

“Surprise!” Jackie teases, visibly proud of herself. “I brought you lunch.”

Shauna’s stomach grumbles right on cue, which only widens Jackie’s smile. “Oh.” She swallows thickly, trying to be subtle in glancing around, seeing who might be watching. “Thanks.”

Jackie bounces on the balls of her feet a little impatiently and then urges her, “Wanna show me around? It’s so much bigger on the inside here than it looks on the outside.”

“People don’t really just—“ Shauna starts, trying to keep her emotions in check, but she’s got so much anxiety filling her stomach now that it’s killing her appetite. Jackie shouldn’t be here. Not without asking, and definitely not after the article Shauna had written. This is going to expose her personal life for everyone to see and gossip about, just like her article had. Only this time it won’t have been Shauna’s choice. 

James and Quinn interrupt her with their arrival; matching smirks on their faces. “Well, what do we have here?” James asks her, wiggling his eyebrows. “Been a while since anyone’s brought you lunch.”

“She must be special,” Quinn adds, thankfully more sincere than teasing. Shauna scowls at them both anyway.

She can practically see Jackie turning on the charm as she swivels around to them and happily greets them, “Hi there. I’m Jackie.” She says it like they should know who she is right away, and Shauna feels dumb for not understanding more quickly what’s going to happen now, what’s definitely coming. She’s in trouble. Jackie’s going to be pissed. 

She stands, tries to head it off. “Jackie, why don’t we take these out—“

“Jackie,” James echoes, and seems to think this is funny, having picked up on it too—that Jackie’s expecting them to recognize her in some capacity. “Haven’t heard that name yet, but you know how Shauna is. So private. When she isn’t writing heartfelt articles about—“

Quinn elbows him, cutting him off before he can talk about who she must think is another girl Shauna loves in front of a different girl who probably wouldn’t be happy to hear about it. Because they have no clue that this is the same girl. Because Shauna hasn’t told them a thing about her.

Jackie’s smile has already faltered. She turns, looks at Shauna with suspicion and confusion.

Shauna tries in vain to dig herself out of this, looking to James and Quinn and telling them hastily, “This is my best friend Jackie. From—“ Quinn’s eyes widen, and then James’ expression shifts, too. “Yeah. Um.” Shauna clears her throat. “Jackie, this is Quinn and James. I’ve told you a little bit about them.”

“Shame they can’t say the same,” Jackie says curtly, eyes narrowed at her now. Shauna grimaces and reaches for the takeout bags to carry them for her, but Jackie only lets her have her own. As Shauna’s half-heartedly setting it down on her desk, Jackie goes on, “Anyway, enjoy your lunch. It was nice to meet you two.”

She turns on her heel, and Shauna groans out, “Jackie,” flushing hard, aware that at least three other additional people are glancing over curiously at the whole display, clearly having overheard it all. 

James shakes his head at her with disbelief, and Quinn shoots her a pained look of sympathy as Shauna hurries after Jackie, hissing her name to try not to draw any further attention to them.

Jackie lets her catch up at the front door, but doesn’t say anything until they’re outside on the sidewalk, where she whirls around to face her, expression filled with hurt, eyes blazing. “That was humiliating. You never even told them my name?”

“You—“ Shauna sputters, mind racing, and she can feel herself already getting defensive, falling back on what she knows to be true. “You didn’t even ask me; you just showed up at my work. I didn’t even know you were—“

“That’s not really the issue right now, Shauna,” Jackie snaps at her. “Why don’t they know who I am?”

“Because they’re my fucking coworkers, Jax, they’re not—“

“You wrote a whole article about me! Don’t act like it isn’t crazy for you to not share that we started dating.”

“It’s none of their business,” Shauna insists. “They’re just coworkers.”

“So do your friends know?”

The question freezes Shauna. Her eyes dart away from Jackie, and that’s all it takes. 

Jackie’s lips tremble and then she breathes out, “Oh my God.” She turns, drops her food into a trash can at the edge of the sidewalk and then starts to walk away.

“Jackie,” Shauna calls after her, following automatically. Her heart feels like it’s pounding in her stomach. She might throw up. “Jax, I—“

She catches Jackie’s arm, and Jackie rounds on her again, furious, tears in her eyes. “I feel like such an idiot. I actually thought we were doing this.”

“We are,” Shauna insists. “I want to. I fucking love you.”

“Oh, do you?” Jackie gives a sarcastic laugh. “Because I talk about you so much with my friends that they’re sick of it. I showed you off to them like I was proud of you. I want to see your work, and your place, and meet the people in your life. And… and I can’t believe I didn’t see it.” She swallows hard, looking sick. “You were never gonna let me come over. Or meet anyone.”

“That’s not true.” It really isn’t. Mostly. If Jackie had really pushed, insisted hard enough instead of just making suggestions, Shauna would’ve had to have acquiesced fairly quickly.

Jackie knows it too. “What, so you’d have given in if I’d pestered you enough? That doesn’t count, Shauna.”

“It isn’t what you think it is,” Shauna presses, exhaling heavily. “I don’t have one fucking foot out the door, Jackie.”

“You could’ve fooled me.” Jackie yanks her arm out of Shauna’s grip and starts to walk away again, and something in Shauna swells inside of her and cracks her open. 

“You’re the one walking away!” she calls after her, infuriated, and when Jackie doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn around, it only makes her angrier. She goes on before she can stop herself: “You know, Jackie, you’re fucking entitled enough on your own; I don’t exactly need everyone else in my life feeling like they get to know whatever they want about me too!”

She regrets the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth. Not because she doesn’t mean them, but because they were supposed to stay inside of her head. Because Jackie pauses and looks over her shoulder and Shauna can see the tears on her cheeks, her expression tight with anger and hurt. 

Shauna tries to tell herself to open her mouth and apologize, but her jaw doesn’t move, just stays clenched and tense, her stormy eyes narrowed. 

Jackie breaks their eye contact and goes, and on the inside, Shauna’s heart plummets.

She tells Charles she’s leaving work early for the day, ignores the eyes and gossip that follow her from his office to the exit. Tomorrow will be unbearable after what Jackie’s done. They’ll all know she’s dating Article Girl. They’ll all talk about it, feel entitled to know things that were supposed to belong only to Shauna. Jackie’s gotten what she’d wanted in that way, she supposes. Maybe that counts as her winning their fight, because Shauna’s certainly lost it, at the very least.

She wants Jackie to reach out first, apologize; something she’d never done in high school. Especially because she’d never done it in high school. It’d mean that she’s grown, changed. That things are different now. That everything between them is different now. 

That’s not really the issue right now, Shauna, she’d said. So immediately dismissive of yet another violation of Shauna’s boundaries. But it had mattered to Shauna: Jackie showing up without asking, without regard for how Shauna might feel about it, how it might impact her. Just taking, and taking, and taking, ever since they’d agreed to label this. Doesn’t that count for something? Shouldn’t it?

Jackie doesn’t call Wednesday night, after Shauna’s spent her evening feeling too upset to eat, tried to read a book to pass the time and hadn’t been able to focus, resorted to flicking through television channels aimlessly, fantasizing about an imaginary phone call.

I’m sorry, Shauna. I know you’re just a private person, a perfect version of Jackie could say. I know you so well, and I get that maybe you’re afraid of me taking over everything like I used to, like I still do. Or that your friends might like me more than they like you. And that if you let me into your apartment it won’t be yours anymore. I shouldn’t have shown up at your work without asking first. I need to ask you what you want more often. I need to be less self-centered. You’re right about everything. 

She doesn’t call Jackie, either, and falls asleep on her couch with wet eyes by ten o’clock. She wakes up at two in the morning to no missed calls or texts, moves to her bed, and tosses and turns all night. When she showers in the morning, she feels nauseous and dizzy beneath the spray. 

Work is as bad as she’d expected. People she hardly knows feeling entitled to conversation-starters like, “Hey, I heard the news!” which leaves Shauna with the choice to let them probe into her personal life or to be cold or rude or dismissive in an effort to make them leave her alone. And then there are the ones who’d witnessed or heard how the day before had actually gone, who watch her with cautious reproach like they’re not sure what to make of it all.

There’s Quinn, who’s at least tolerable most days but wants to get lunch suddenly and chat, like they’re friends, like she wants to be friends, like it isn’t transparently about pulling a story out of Shauna like one of their interviewees. And James, who approaches her at her desk while she’s trying to write and marvels,“I can’t believe you never told us you got the girl.”

“Because it’s none of your business,” Shauna replies curtly, at least comfortable enough with him to not-so-subtly tell him to fuck off. 

“Wow, I can feel the happiness radiating off of you,” he quips sarcastically. “Same old Shaunabot. Guess true love can’t fix everything.”

She freezes up as he leaves, then goes to the bathroom and locks herself in a stall and tries not to cry. 

After lunch, which she eats alone, avoiding Quinn, Charles asks her into his office—which doesn’t go unnoticed—and broaches it lightly: “I couldn’t help but overhear.”

Shauna feels twitchy, like there are eyes boring into the back of her head, or maybe a gun pointed at her. Charles has always been kind, but it’s hard not to be slightly intimidated by him given the level of power he has. She’s been getting better assignments since the article, and there’s very obviously a benefit to being on his good side, given his connections. 

She doesn’t say anything, and he smiles placatingly at her and then offers, “Your piece was a big hit earlier this year. There were quite a few calls for a follow up at the time. I do think it’s worth taking a look into.”

She doesn’t want to do it. Even New York Magazine hadn’t asked for it. Samuel had sensed the boundary there, let her draw a line. But she supposes they’re big enough to not be so desperate for clicks as to violate the privacy of their own unwilling employees, and the Gazette evidently can’t say the same. It’s the new thing, lately: clicks, hits, views, web traffic. Eye-catching headlines that’ll bump the numbers up. It might take a while, but eventually print will be a dying industry, and they can all sense it. 

“I’ll think about it,” she says, just to get out of there, and by the time she gets home and still has no calls from Jackie she feels like she had that day with Mark in her apartment, like she’s spinning out and can’t calm down. 

Jackie hadn’t asked for permission. Hadn’t foreseen any of this like Shauna had. Just had an impulse, a want, and followed it. She’s so selfish. She’s always been so selfish. And she fucking still hasn’t called, and Shauna finds herself sitting on her kitchen floor with tears in her eyes and a glass of water in her hand, and she feels so wronged but she also can’t bear to be fighting with Jackie anymore.

She stands up on shaky legs, pulling herself together. It’s a Thursday night, which is usually when she heads to Jackie’s, and it’d be an even bigger break in their routine if she didn’t show up. Bigger than not catching up over the phone last night. It would make their fight even realer, even scarier.

She goes to her bedroom and starts to pack for the weekend, feeling the most pathetic she has in months, the most bitter and angry at herself for giving in. 

She’s usually at Jackie’s by seven, but she’s been delayed by her wallowing and then she also stops at the store on her way to New Brunswick. Her phone buzzes around seven-fifteen, while she’s in the checkout line.

“R u still coming over?” Jackie has texted. 

Shauna hadn’t realized how psychologically  torturous the invention of text messages had the potential to be until she reads this one and doesn’t know how to interpret the tone of it. Blasé? Desperate? Impatient? Demanding? Curious? Insecure? 

She’s back to an old option with Jackie. Leave her hanging for a little while. Make her wait, take some power back. Win. 

She makes the same decision she always has. “I’m on my way there. Twenty mins, ok?”

Her phone buzzes again, while she’s trying to figure out how to carefully place the bouquet of flowers she’d purchased into her cart now that they’ve been scanned by the cashier. 

“Ok, baby.”

Her chest feels so much lighter. Her self-loathing intensifies in response. She tries to ignore it. 

Jackie answers her door in short shorts and a tank top that barely covers any of her abdomen, and Shauna knows it’s on purpose, more manipulation, and tries not to stare as she offers Jackie the flowers, looks at her soft, hurt eyes and says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept you a secret. I’ll tell my friends about us, and… maybe you can come visit my place next weekend, for your birthday?”

“I’d like that,” Jackie says gently, gratefully, touched, burying her nose in the bouquet for a moment before pulling Shauna into a tight one-armed hug. “Let’s not fight again, okay?”

“Okay,” Shauna agrees, and watches Jackie put the flowers in a vase and then move back to Shauna and kiss her tenderly, and drag her to her bedroom, and climb on top of her and take control and take and take and take. 

Shauna never gets an apology, just gets Jackie breathing, “Say please,” into her ear with gentle fingers between her thighs, and Shauna begs for it and feels her chest clench unpleasantly tight even as hot arousal winds through her, and she thinks, finally, that she might be starting to hate Jackie for what they’re turning into more than she hates herself. 

-

The following week—the first week of November—is, in hindsight, the beginning of the swift end of them. 

(Because that is what all of this turns out to have been in the end: not some epic love after they’d finally found their way to each other. Not the start of a forever. Just a quick flash in the pan, burning hot and then burning out, June to December of the same year. A few seconds of fireworks before the sky goes dark again.)

Shauna begins to dread work at the Gazette, and it starts with that Monday, with the awareness of her coworkers’ knowledge, with James’ stupid remarks and Charles’ expectant comments—think about it and just keep an open mind and remember that good things happened for you last time. Shauna wants to tell him to go fuck himself, to say that Jackie isn’t his or anyone else’s, just Shauna’s. She feels crazy for ever having liked any of these people she’s stuck surrounding herself with. 

It all puts her in a horrible mood, and she can tell Jackie senses it Tuesday night over the phone, because Shauna’s shorter with her, snippier, and they end their call sooner than usual. Shauna takes that Thursday off just for a reprieve from work and comes over to Jackie’s place a day early, on Wednesday night, and together they turn on the news and cuddle and Shauna watches with slowly rising dread as the presidential election results start to roll in. Jackie doesn’t make it to the moment it’s called, having fallen asleep in Shauna’s arms a couple of hours in, but she awakens to Shauna trying to wriggle away from her and get to her feet, and it only takes one drowsy look at Shauna’s furious expression for her to fill in the blanks.

“I’m sorry, babe,” she says, like it isn’t her loss too, and Shauna rises from the couch with her jaw tight.

“Great. Another four years of this fucking clown.”

Jackie watches her sadly. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

Which is the wrong thing to say, and Jackie winces like she knows it when Shauna zeros in on her with a glare. “He’s a fucking warmonger, Jackie. People are gonna keep getting sent overseas to die for nothing. And he wants to add a constitutional amendment to—”

“I know,” Jackie says gently. She’s heard this before. “But Kerry wasn’t for gay marriage either.”

“He was for civil unions,” Shauna fires back. “And he didn’t want to amend the fucking constitution to prevent us from getting married. If it goes through it overrides the Massachusetts law. You should know this; you’re a teacher.” Her nostrils flare. “Maybe if you taught your students about things that matter—”

“Okay,” Jackie sighs out, getting to her feet tiredly. “You clearly just want someone to be mean to because you’re upset, and I have work in the morning. Teaching your college major. So I’m going to bed.” She gathers up the blanket she’d dragged out to the living room and then adds, “And if I tried to teach a lesson about the FMA to my students, I’d risk being fired, by the way. We aren’t all lucky enough to be able to be out at work.” She gives Shauna a half-hearted kiss on the cheek and then leaves, closing the bedroom door behind herself.

Shauna sinks back down onto the couch, rests her head in her hands, and sighs, feeling like an asshole. 

She tries to make it up to Jackie by texting her friends—there are three that matter enough for her to bother, though it often feels like they hardly matter at all, given how little she still tells them after all these years. They all get the same message: “Hey, just filling you in that I’ve been dating someone. My old friend Jackie, the one I wrote that article about. Sorry I haven’t been around.”

She resents having to deal with their reactions, their comments, their questions, even if they’re all shocked and excited for her. She fields them as best as she can, but her life has gone so gray lately and it’s utterly terrifying that when she tells them it’s going well, that she’s happy, it feels like she’s hiding something from them. She doesn’t want to think about the implications of any of it. She’s just under a lot of stress right now, and it’s been hard to forget that so much of it is Jackie’s fault. 

She’s managed to convince Jackie to not meet her friends in person until December, given all of the sudden strides Shauna’s taken and her agreement to celebrate Jackie’s birthday at her apartment, and so the next step is doing just that: driving Jackie to her place on Friday evening, showing Jackie exactly where she lives, doing what can’t be undone.

Jackie’s practically beaming the whole way up to the third floor, and it eases some of Shauna’s dread, makes her start to think that maybe this will be worth it, maybe seeing Jackie happy like this will be a fair tradeoff for giving up her last bastion of independence. Jackie will know everything soon: what her bedroom looks like, what she keeps in her fridge, which corner of the welcome mat she hides her spare key under. There will be nothing safe from her possession after this but the recesses of Shauna’s mind, and she has no doubt that Jackie would happily claim that space too if only she could.

When did I start thinking about you like this? Shauna wonders to herself as she reaches her front door and watches Jackie try to get her excitement under control. When did I start to resent you this much again? It occurs to her that maybe, deep down, she’d never stopped, just buried it until the inevitable moment it would come time for it to resurface. 

Jackie’s still beautiful. Shauna still loves her. It’s the work stuff. The pressure of two jobs and Charles and the article she doesn’t want to write. Her friends knowing too much, digging too much over text. Politics, the state of the country. All of it. She’s not sleeping well, and that’s probably part of it, too. She’s just moody, and just taking it out on Jackie like she had two nights ago. Because she’s here—the only one here, the only person making Shauna a priority every day because she just loves Shauna back that much. It’ll blow over. Shauna will be better.

She promises herself so, anyway, and then unlocks the front door and lets Jackie in first with a nervous, “Home sweet home.”

She’d lit a candle and let it burn out before she’d gone to Jackie’s—pumpkin spice scented, because it’s one of Jackie’s favorites—and she can still catch a faint whiff of it now as she follows Jackie inside and shuts the door. 

“Oh,” Jackie says with slight surprise as she takes in the living room, and Shauna can hear the falseness in her tone right away. “It’s… it’s cute, but it’s so bare.”

She hadn’t been able to resist the negative comment, of course. Shauna rolls her eyes with a sigh at Jackie’s guilty, apologetic look and replies, “Well, we can’t all be expert interior designers who missed out on their true calling to read books with children instead.”

“Fair.” Jackie pulls her in affectionately, clearly trying to move past the moment, and Shauna’s nerves settle. “Show me your bedroom?”

“It’s also bare,” Shauna warns her.

“As long as it has a bed.”

That gets a genuine laugh out of Shauna, and finally she relaxes fully, her dark, bitter thoughts vanquished for now. “We just got here. You’re ridiculous.”

“No, I just think you’re hot,” Jackie flirts, draping herself all over Shauna, grinning as her teeth find Shauna’s neck. “And it’s my birthday weekend. My wish is your command.” She pauses abruptly, then pulls back, confused. “Wait, did I say that right?”

“That’s not how it usually goes, but I think it’s what you meant.”

“Yes. Perfect.” She kisses Shauna promptly, then mumbles into her mouth, “First wish: Fuck me in your painfully boring bedroom.”

Shauna perks up at her wording. “How?”

“Mmm.” Jackie thinks about it between slow, drawn-out kisses, her hips starting to roll against Shauna’s. “Remember in the motel room, when I told you to go slow and you got me off so many times that—”

“Uh huh. Like that?” She presses Jackie back against the counter and slips a hand between her thighs, teasing her through the thin fabric of her pants. “Like this?”

Jackie pushes her hand away with a shiver, but only so that she can grab Shauna’s wrist and lead the way.

-

When they finally drag themselves out of bed that night, Shauna shows Jackie around in more detail: the little mini office space she’s carved out in one corner of her living room to write at, the bathroom shower with the translucent door and the tiled walls, the couch she’d inherited from her mother—old now, and practically falling apart, but it’s the same one Jackie and Shauna had grown up watching cartoons on together, so secretly Shauna loves it more than anything else in her apartment.

“I’m saving your presents for your actual birthday,” Shauna tells her after they’ve curled up on it to watch Jackie’s favorite movie together, Natasha Lyonne and Clea Duvall and shades of pink and blue everywhere onscreen. “Your cake, too. And do you wanna pick somewhere to go for lunch?” 

Jackie’s turning twenty-seven on a Sunday, so Shauna had figured a fancy dinner the evening before they’re due back at work in the early morning would be out of the question, but Jackie turns down the lunch too with a short, “That’s okay. We can order in. I just wanna spend all of it here with you.” She settles more firmly between Shauna’s legs with a warm look over her shoulder at her. “You didn’t have to get me anything else. I just wanna be here. And I don’t care how bare it is; I like your room. It smells just like you.”

Guilt swirls in Shauna’s stomach even as her heart melts. How could she have ever thought this would be a terrible idea? How could she have denied Jackie this for so long? It feels like a dream to have her here now, to have gotten to press her down into Shauna’s mattress, back in control again, and make love to her in Shauna’s home. Jackie feels like she belongs here. Less like an invader and more like an inhabitant, already slotting in so seamlessly with the rest of the things that Shauna owns.

“I’ll clear out a drawer for you,” Shauna offers quietly, holding Jackie in her arms. “Get you set up here like I am at yours. We can trade weekends or something.”

“We can start trading next year,” Jackie replies. “Until I get busy with soccer in February. Let’s just come here for a little while.”

“Okay,” Shauna agrees, because it feels fair, and for now it feels right. “I forgot about soccer. How’s that gonna work? We had games almost every weekend back in high school. And practices every other day.”

“It works like me getting very busy and missing you,” Jackie says, watching the way Shauna’s hand is caressing her stomach, unconsciously drifting lower to her abdomen. “You could always come watch some of the games, you know.”

“I will,” Shauna promises, eyes on the TV screen but mind on the idea of watching Jackie on the sidelines of a soccer field. She’d never loved playing it, but she thinks she could love seeing Jackie coach it. 

Jackie lets out a hitched breath, suddenly, and laughs out, “Watch your hand, babe.”

Shauna pauses, looks down over Jackie’s shoulder and down the front of her body to see her own fingertips skating back and forth at the waistline of the pajama bottoms Jackie had thrown on after their time in her bed. Then she smiles, nuzzling her face into Jackie’s neck. “I don’t mind if you wanna go again.” She uses her other hand to reach out for the remote on the couch cushion beside them, then points it at the VCR and pauses the tape inside. 

“I actually wanted…” Jackie starts faintly, but her head tips back and she loses her breath—and her train of thought, evidently—when Shauna’s hand slides into her pants. Her hips roll forward into Shauna’s touch, working slowly against her fingertips.

“Actually wanted what?” Shauna teases, enjoying watching her struggle, but she regrets asking the question when Jackie manages to get her answer out.

“After this—Um.” Jackie’s hand falls to Shauna’s thigh, gripping it tight. “W-We… Can we talk?”

Shauna doesn’t like the way she says it: the nerves and uncertainty plain to hear beneath the arousal. Jackie wants to talk about something serious. Something that matters. With them, that’s almost never good. There’s a chance it could do permanent damage, even, if it’s about what Shauna suspects it could be: something Jackie’s tried to broach before; the things they never talk about.

“We don’t need to do that,” she murmurs with a soft bite to Jackie’s neck, pushing back with confidence. “Let’s enjoy our weekend.” Jackie had been more than happy to let her have control earlier, and she’s trying to keep the reins for just a little while longer. Until this sudden whim of Jackie’s has safely passed.

“Shauna,” Jackie breathes out, half-pleading, half-disappointed. “We do.”

Shut up, Shauna thinks, and slides two fingers into her, giving Jackie her palm to grind against. “I didn’t even come earlier,” she reminds Jackie, changing tactics, because that will certainly distract her, even if it means Shauna has to reluctantly trade her submission for an avoided conversation. 

“I had plans for that,” Jackie moans out, and Shauna knows she has her now.

“Show me,” she mumbles, and touches Jackie until she falls apart, and then lets herself be dragged to the bedroom all over again.

-

She’s known it was coming, on some level, for a while now: ever since Jackie’s whispered comment about wanting to be the first to tie her up. So it doesn’t surprise her that Jackie chooses a weekend where she knows Shauna won’t say no and a moment where Shauna would do just about anything to delay a conversation that’s been years in the making. As inevitable as that conversation feels sometimes, Shauna will always do her best to deny it, to savor a little bit more of the facade that is their blissful domesticity—like if maybe they push it back that hundredth time it’ll finally just fade away entirely, forever unaddressed—even if it means caving everywhere else.

(It’s because she knows, deep down, that the talk Jackie wants is likely to be the thing that finally fucks everything up. That Jackie thinks she’ll make this more real, more stable, once they pass through the eye of the storm together, and has no idea she’s driving them straight into their own destruction. That there is no way through.)

So, when Jackie brings out the handcuffs, Shauna lets it happen. Winds up laid out prone and nude beneath Jackie with her arms over her head, trapped and at Jackie’s mercy. It’s worth it because they’re not talking about things now, but even without that incentive it still feels worth it in the moment for the way Jackie crawls over her, eyes almost black with hunger. Shauna feels more pet than prey, and knows she’ll crash from the high of Jackie’s touch later, but it doesn’t stop her from arching toward her now, helpless and impatient and needy. 

“Wowza,” Jackie says, grinning as she surveys her from above on her hands and knees. “Happy birthday to me.”

Shauna knows it’s supposed to make her laugh, but all she manages is a puff of air and an affectionate, “Dork.”

“I don’t even know what to do to you,” Jackie goes on like she hasn’t heard her, eyes sliding everywhere. “Too many choices.” She leans down and brushes her nose over Shauna’s with a smile. “Too much sexy packed into one girlfriend.” Then she pulls back before Shauna can huff again at her cheesiness and tilts her head as she asks, too innocently, “Any suggestions?”

Shauna squirms beneath her, blushing, trying to work her way through multiple levels of reverse psychology about this. When Jackie’s in this sort of mood Shauna usually doesn’t get what she asks for. Her best bet is just offering herself up. “Whatever you want, Jax. Anything you want.”

This is how it always works: she’ll say things like this now, turn Jackie on with it, get turned on herself, and then resent them both for it later. But in the moment, God, it’s good: Jackie’s face changing, turning knowing, a smirk forming on her lips, her leaning down to whisper into Shauna’s ear, “Right answer.”

Jackie takes her time with it all anyway. She gets everything she wants, so easily wrings Shauna dry with her fingers and her tongue and her coaxing and praising until there’s nothing more for Shauna to say, no new way to beg, nothing more Jackie desires that she hasn’t already taken. 

She could take even more, if she wanted. Do things Shauna’s rarely done with anyone, taste and touch the few places unexplored by Jackie remaining on her body, and Shauna would let her. The knowledge that she’d give Jackie things Jackie doesn’t even want only serves to embarrass her further. 

Her wrists are sore and red beneath the cuffs when Jackie takes them off, and Shauna hisses at the sting of them now that she’s not distracted and can really feel it.

“Shauna,” Jackie murmurs with concern, cradling the worse of the two in her hands, examining it closely. “I’m so sorry; I thought you’d…”

“I know,” Shauna says quietly. “I didn’t notice.”

“Let me get you some Neosporin or something. What do you have?”

“Everything’s in the bathroom cabinet,” Shauna tells her. Jackie nods and rises from the bed, naked now, and Shauna catches a glimpse of the same shine on her inner thighs that she knows must be painted all over her own chin. (Shauna had begged the hardest for that part, in the end: to get to take an active role in Jackie’s pleasure, to get to make her fall apart again.)

Jackie comes back with the entire first aid kit Shauna keeps in the bathroom, opens it up and combs through it all with an excessive amount of focus, and this time Shauna doesn’t wince through the sting of Jackie rubbing ointment into her wrists, prepared for it. Jackie wraps them both with bandages and lifts one of her arms gingerly when she’s done, presses a kiss into Shauna’s palm, then nuzzles her cheek against it. 

Shauna closes her eyes and lets her body relax, finally, but like always, there are the intrusive thoughts and feelings that come too quickly afterward: the shame, the resentment, she’s turning you into her pet; it’s just like before—

Shut up, she tells her own brain this time, concentrating on the feel of Jackie’s lips under her thumb. She made me come four times. Let me have something nice for two fucking minutes. 

It feels good to make her head go quiet. Peaceful. 

Jackie sinks down onto the mattress beside her, pulling the rumpled sheets up and over the both of them, and snuggles into Shauna. Neither of them has cleaned up yet, and Shauna knows they’ll have to force themselves up and out of bed for showers—or, in Shauna’s case, at least a face wash—but she’s barely gotten to enjoy the afterglow before Jackie asks quietly, “Can we talk now?”

Something in Shauna’s chest turns rotten. All of that, and she’d bought only as much time as it’d taken them to finish? Really?

So Jackie’s not going to let this go, then.

“About what?” Shauna asks curtly.

Even in the face of her clear frustration, Jackie doesn’t back down. “Us. Senior year.”

Shauna clenches her jaw, grits her teeth, “Why now?” 

“Because we won’t let it ruin my birthday weekend,” Jackie says simply, honestly. “It seemed like the right time.”

There is no right time, but Shauna understands what she means. She also understands how calculated this is. How long has Jackie been waiting for this?

“It’s a bad idea, Jackie.”

Jackie moves back and props herself up on one elbow, watching Shauna stare up at her own bedroom ceiling. “You say things like that,” she says, matter of fact, almost confrontational, like she’s getting bolder, “but you get upset with me for thinking you might have one foot out the door.”

Shauna pulls a face. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Yes it does.” Jackie reaches out with her spare hand, running her fingers up and down Shauna’s bare arm soothingly as though she knows her own confidence will feel like an attack. Shauna flinches at her touch, a storm brewing in her chest. “You know it does. We can’t…” She pauses like she’s choosing her words carefully. “It can’t go on forever like this.”

“You’re happy,” Shauna says it like it’s an accusation, still not looking at her. She doesn’t know why this is starting to feel like a betrayal, but it does. “So am I.”

“Shauna.” Now Jackie sounds like she pities her. “Bab—“

“Don’t call me baby,” Shauna cuts her off, sitting up suddenly. “I’m gonna go shower before you fuck everything up.”

She shoves the sheets off of herself and storms out of the room, and Jackie doesn’t stop her.

When she’s done, she makes her way out to the living room naked, gets a drink and then curls up on the couch and tries to stop thinking. She falls asleep there eventually, wiping tears from her eyes until she falls unconscious, and Jackie doesn’t stop that, either. But Shauna stirs at some point, awakens in the darkness to the feel of the cushion depressing, Jackie swinging her legs up to join Shauna’s, scooting back into her and pulling Shauna’s arm around her as they share a tiny throw pillow together. Shauna buries her face in the back of Jackie’s neck and lets out a shaky exhale. 

They lay in silence for so long that either of them could have fallen asleep, but Shauna hasn’t, and isn’t sure if Jackie has. She tries to make her breathing go even. Tries to calm her shaken body and her racing mind. 

And then: “It’s lonelier than I thought it would be, sometimes,” Jackie whispers so quietly, so guiltily into the darkness, almost under her breath, like it’s something Shauna isn’t meant to hear, like it’s just something she needs to finally confess aloud. “Being with you.”

Shauna doesn’t dare move. Doesn’t dare speak even as her heart plummets into her stomach and pain burns hot in her chest. 

It’s me, she realizes, her breakup with Mark replaying in her head, how she’d compared herself to a husk, how she’d never been able to give all of herself to him. Jackie is still and silent now beneath her arm. It’s not me without Jackie. It’s just me.

In a lifetime of self-loathing thoughts and realizations, this one might be the worst she’s ever had.

-

They fuck for most of Saturday. Frantic, desperate, everywhere. 

Shauna recognizes it so clearly for what it is, what it’s always been: a way to satisfy their cravings without having to resolve anything, a way to connect without having to talk about it all, everything from before, everything that lives itchy beneath their skin and won’t go away. 

She recognizes that Jackie knows it too, that she’s always known it and indulged it anyway because she needs the connection as much as Shauna does. If they stop fucking, they have to talk. If they have to talk, Shauna will walk away, because losing Jackie without another blowup like the one in 1996 is better than reopening their old, festered wounds and it all inevitably ending in their breakup anyway. 

Why Jackie wants to relive it all and try to find a resolution, she understands, but what she doesn’t understand is how Jackie could possibly believe they’d survive it. Shauna’s imagined it a hundred times in her head by now, and each time it’s devolved into screaming and tears when both of them refuse to apologize. Jackie could apologize, but Shauna can tell after months of dating her that there hasn’t been enough soul-searching done on Jackie’s end. She hasn’t even changed much since high school—not with Shauna, anyway. She wouldn’t mean it the way Shauna needs her to mean it. Shauna wouldn’t mean it either. So they’re still at the same impasse as always.

Jackie doesn’t push it either, just acts like last night had never happened and hands herself back over to Shauna again like she’s scared to lose her—which prompts another realization: that Jackie very much wants to dominate her in bed just like she does outside of it, that it’s her natural inclination and preference, and that she only gives up control when she needs to pacify Shauna somehow. 

It makes her angry. It makes her feel stupid and small. How the fuck is she in control if the second they leave the bed she’s at Jackie’s beck and call again? Jackie’s probably been laughing at her in her head. Silly Shauna, thinking they’re even now just because Jackie had let her climb on top of her for a few months and still gives her scraps of power every now and then, like today, like their first time in Shauna’s apartment yesterday.

She showers again on Saturday night, alone, Jackie exhausted and half-dozing in her bed. She dries her hair off after, looks at herself in the mirror, face hard and angry and bitter, and for a moment she sees her eighteen-year-old self staring back at her. She remembers so vividly what it had been like to hate Jackie so much and to love Jackie so much. She’d thought it was all platonic back then, but aside from that one change, this isn’t so different. Everything about it is coming back to her now, just like the first night at that first Christmas party, when four years had felt like four seconds.

It’s still so complicated, ultimately, because there is that one difference: now she can return to her bedroom in her apartment and stand in the doorway and see Jackie tangled up in her sheets like she belongs there, beautiful, peaceful, covered in the evidence of the love between them, only now it’s all also evidence of the things that they’re—that Shauna’s avoiding. 

She doesn’t want to blow it up; when Jackie had found her journal and confronted her, it had almost felt cathartic to finally let it out. But now she has something so precious that she’s desperate to preserve in whatever form of it can exist. It’s good. The perfection Jackie’s striving for is a pipe dream. Shauna just has to make her see it. Make her stop before they have more nights like last night and more days they spend touching each other to forget. 

She slips into bed, and Jackie stirs, hums something Shauna can’t parse but that sounds affectionate and shifts closer to grab at her, pull her close, cuddle into her, all without opening her eyes. She smells like sex. Shauna reaches out and strokes Jackie’s cheek with her thumb, and Jackie gives a fond, sleepy hum.

Shauna’s chest twinges at the softness of it all, and she leans in and presses her mouth to Jackie’s forehead, then murmurs against her skin, “I don’t want you to feel lonely. I’ll do better.”

When she pulls away, Jackie’s eyes flutter open, the drowsiness replaced by a sharp, guilty awareness. Her voice comes out raspy. “I didn't mean for you to—“

“I know, but I did.” Shauna wraps her up in her arms but avoids her eyes for her next confession. “You’re not the first person I’ve made feel that way. But you’re the first person I’ve cared that I did.” She hopes that’s enough. 

“Okay.” Jackie relaxes into her, nuzzling her face into Shauna’s neck with a soft sigh. “I do think that means something.”

“Me too.” Shauna pets her head, sneaking a peek at the alarm clock on her nightstand. It’s just after midnight. “Happy birthday, Jackie.”

-

Jackie loves her birthday gifts: a soft new pajama set from Victoria’s Secret; two tickets to the Backstreet Boys’ Never Gone Tour; a vintage Rutgers hoodie Shauna’s been hiding from her and wearing to sleep in secret to get her own smell all over for nearly a month now (it feels like something she might’ve done for her if they’d ever actually gotten to date in high school); a framed recent photo of the two of them for Jackie’s apartment and an extra empty frame that comes with a request for Jackie to return the favor and provide a photo for Shauna’s apartment; and, most importantly, Shauna’s spare key, plucked from beneath her welcome mat and wrapped at the last minute, which is something Jackie hasn’t even offered to Shauna yet. 

Shauna’s nervous about giving the key to her, but Jackie lights up and practically throws herself into Shauna’s arms when she opens it, kissing her all over her face as Shauna chuckles at her, and when the moment passes and Jackie’s quiet in her arms, Shauna pulls her in closer so that they’re cheek to cheek and mumbles, “Is that good?” leaving off the word enough because she knows she doesn’t need to say it for Jackie to understand.

“It’s good,” Jackie says back, clutching her tight. “I love you.”

See? Shauna wants to say. It’s enough. We don’t need anything else. 

And over the course of the next three weeks, Shauna gets better.

She welcomes Jackie staying over. She plans an upcoming lunch for them on the second week of December with the friends that know about Jackie. She takes great care of Jackie in bed, and then lets Jackie roll them over and do the same to her. She has something to prove now. Convincing to do. They can leave it all behind, high school and the pain their teen selves had caused each other. Put it from their minds and finally move on forever. 

There are more things Shauna puts from her mind, even now. An awareness she tries not to have about how little choices she gets to make, how few requests she asks Jackie to fill compared to the reverse. How they still haven’t watched an episode of The Sopranos. How Jackie wants to come to Shauna’s place always now, so that’s what happens. How Jackie brings Shauna lunch at work and Charles starts up again about another article with Shauna every time and James teases and Quinn pries and everyone else watches. She tells herself it’s a compromise. She puts up with Jackie… being Jackie, and in exchange Jackie doesn’t make them talk about it. 

They’re happy. Shauna tells Jackie she is and means it. Hugs her tight every night they spend together, listens to Jackie vent about her day, bumps her hip playfully while they cook together in Shauna’s kitchen now instead of Jackie’s. She thinks Jackie feels less lonely, hopefully, and more secure, because she smiles more, talks about the future more, about Christmas with Shauna’s mom and how she’s definitely dragging Shauna to The Backstreet Boys next summer. She hasn’t placed a picture in Shauna’s empty frame yet, but she promises all coyly that she has the perfect one and just needs to dig it up from her old college things, like she’s planning something she knows Shauna will love.

And it’s like everything else with them: good when Shauna doesn't think too hard about it. It’s good when Jackie’s leaning over Shauna’s balcony and taking in Trenton one night and tells her, “It’s so pretty here. I could live here someday,” with a glance at her and a smile that says she knows what she’s implying. It’s good when Shauna walks by a jewelry store in NYC and thinks about how Jackie’s twenty-seven and still getting older and they’ve only been doing this since June, but fuck, it’s them, so does the short time frame even matter? It’s good even though Jackie makes her boil under the surface sometimes in the worst sort of way, even though she has to actively shove it down just like eight years ago, because at least this time she can drag Jackie to bed and take it out on her in the best way she’s learned how to. At least this time Jackie is hers, even if she feels like she’s had to give every part of herself over to Jackie to make it so.

It’s good, of course, until it isn’t. 

-

The first Thursday of December, Jackie comes over to Shauna’s; she’s taken the day off on Friday and won’t tell Shauna why, but insists she go into work in NYC in the morning anyway. Shauna’s pretty sure she has something planned—a special date night in Shauna’s apartment, maybe. She’s not sure what the occasion would be, beyond that it’s December and it could be a nod to their yearly thing.

She asks about it—about their little tradition—that night, while she’s half-sitting up in bed with The Remains of the Day and Jackie cuddled up next to her, sometimes reading along with her because she’d recommended it in the first place, sometimes half-dozing with her eyes closed. 

“Should we go to the Motel 6 this year?”

She lowers her book and slides a bookmark into it as she asks, expecting this to turn into an extended conversation. Jackie lifts her head from Shauna’s abdomen and laughs lightly as she looks at her. 

“Really?”

Shauna feels self-conscious, suddenly. She gives a half-hearted shrug. “I guess? I don’t know. We said we would last year.”

“A few things have changed since then.” Jackie’s teasing her, and something in Shauna doesn’t find it funny. She doesn’t know why. 

She tries to figure it out. “Maybe I just… like the commitment of it.”

“There are better ways to commit to each other,” Jackie says, raising a brow at her. Shauna thinks of the jewelry store again. And then of Jackie’s sudden covert plan Shauna needs to be out of the apartment for tomorrow. Would you do that? she wonders, head spinning. Would that be crazy? 

When Shauna doesn’t respond, Jackie goes on, smirking, “But hey, if you want us to go hook up in a dingy motel room again, I won’t say no.”

It feels silly, worded like that, and Shauna doesn’t like that it does. That Jackie’s making it sound small and insignificant after that night a year ago. 

She can’t think about tomorrow right now, so she puts it aside. “It’s more than that.”

She must sound sharp enough to give her displeasure away, because Jackie softens at the edges, at the sense that Shauna’s bristling. “I know.” She leans in and kisses Shauna’s cheek. “It’s sweet that you’re sentimental about it.” Then she wraps her arms around her fondly and adds, “I’m happy to indulge you, babe.”

Shauna doesn’t like that last part either. She wants Jackie to want it too. “It doesn’t mean anything to you,” she points out, because it’s just obviously true.

“The promise does.” Jackie sounds too gentle. It’s her patronizing Shauna’s being Shauna again and I don’t want to upset her voice; Shauna’s long-past recognizing it by now. “Just not the place.”

“Well, I want to do it,” Shauna decides, meaning to end the conversation there. “We can find out when the Christmas party is and plan from there.”

Jackie can’t hold back her laugh, though she audibly tries. Shauna’s fingers tense around the book in her hands. “On the same day of the party, too?”

“It’s tradition.” Shauna knows she sounds defensive now, but she can’t help it. Jackie’s making her feel stupid. And small. She wants to explain, For a while it was all I had of you. It gave me something from you to hold onto, and I think it would help me to keep doing it. And she would, if Jackie weren’t being so blasé and dismissive of it all. But now she’s making that level of vulnerability feel impossible.

“Okay.” Jackie’s still smiling at her, eyes too bright, all you’re so cute when Shauna wants to be taken seriously. “So, every year? Forever?”

“Yeah.” Shauna opens her book, done talking about it.

But Jackie isn’t. “For old times’ sake?” Something about it—Shauna wants so badly to snap at her, to tell her to stop, but she tries to focus on the words blurring across the pages in front of her instead. 

Jackie leans in close, nuzzling her way under Shauna’s jaw, lips brushing against her neck. “Could be fun, actually. We could pretend we really haven’t seen each other in a year. I did take Drama for a semester in college.”

Shauna scoffs, using her shoulder to nudge Jackie off of her. “Stop making fun of me.”

Jackie looks confused. “I wasn’t.”

“Well, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.” Shauna’s eyes narrow at her book. “Didn’t assume you’d actually wanna roleplay being my yearly fuckbuddy while we wasted our twenties.”

Jackie tenses, finally, and there’s something relieving about it. Maybe it’s just that they’re on the same page about the tone of this. Jackie’s taking her seriously, at last, even if it means she’s upset now. 

“Who was it that wasted our twenties?” Jackie checks, gaze boring holes into Shauna’s cheek, and oh, this is actually really bad. Shauna’s stumbled into it. They’d taken so long to be together because of their refusal to let the past go—and only gotten here in the end because of their ability to ignore it all. Of course Jackie blames Shauna for it taking so long; the fault lies with the person who should’ve given in first and apologized. For Jackie, that’s Shauna. For Shauna, it’s Jackie.

“Actually,” Shauna lies evenly, trying to find her way out of a corner she resents being backed into, “maybe they weren’t wasted. I had fun with other people.”

Jackie’s been tense, but now it’s radiating off of her, and Shauna can feel it without looking at her, eyes still tracing letters on a page but not absorbing them at all. She can feel Jackie thinking through a response, too. Different from their big fight when they were younger, when she’d blurted out the first insults she could think of and wound up quoting Beaches. She’s more calculated now.

The tension ebbs, suddenly. Jackie’s body relaxes. “Me too,” she says curtly. “With Anna. Not just in bed, either.”

Shauna snaps her book shut, her eyes already starting to moisten, her heart panging and pulsing. She sets her book down on the nightstand, clicks her lamp off, and settles under the covers with her back to Jackie, who hasn’t moved a muscle during it all.

Jackie sounds weak and embarrassed and tired when she finally murmurs, “You were trying to hurt me, too.”

Shauna glares at the wall and says nothing. 

“You were,” Jackie insists. “You never want to just talk about things.”

Shauna rolls over and directs her glare to Jackie instead, who seems surprised to have gotten any reaction out of her at all. “Yeah, okay, Jackie; let’s talk about how your ex was so amazing and how I’m a horrible fucking slut for what I did in high school. I’m all ears.”

“I didn’t—“ Jackie starts, sounding frustrated and a little confused, “I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t need to. I know you think it.” It’s hard to see Jackie well in the dark, to read her, but it’s telling, Shauna thinks, that she doesn’t immediately deny it. That she gives Shauna the space to add, “I know you hate me. Even if you try not to. You can’t help it.” She’s probably giving too much away, saying all of the things she feels in herself, but she’s sure she’s right, that Jackie feels it too. It’s always been there between them, unspoken, untouched. “You’re just good at not showing it, right?”

“Stop,” Jackie says harshly, her voice cutting through the darkness like a sawblade. “You just assume things. You just jump to the worst conclusion—“

“You wanted to have this conversation.”

“Not like this.” 

“You still haven’t denied it,” Shauna points out. 

“Stop,” Jackie says again. “I love you.”

Shauna sits up abruptly so that they’re face to face, a foot apart. “That’s not a denial. Say you don’t hate me. That I don’t make you fucking boil and you don’t hide it from me just like you used to hide how much you couldn’t stand Jeff.” Her vision’s getting better; she can almost see the details in Jackie’s face now: her narrowed eyes, her parted lips. The way Shauna poking and prodding is doing something and Shauna just isn’t sure what it is yet. She should probably stop, but it’s spilling out now. “I bet you still think about me and him. How many times it happened. How it started. Do you wanna know? It was—“

Jackie claps a hand over her mouth and shoves her hard, sending Shauna back to the mattress, Jackie on her hands and knees over her. “Fuck you, Shauna,” she hisses, and Shauna feels something wet drip onto her cheek. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? You really will ruin everything just to be right. Just to punish me for wanting to have a conversation. You’re supposed to love me more than anyone.”

Except Shauna doesn’t even know what Shauna’s doing. She’s just an angry ball of impulsivity, reacting to Jackie pushing her in this direction, resentful of being made to think about this and feel like this and of having another night that should’ve been nice ruined because Jackie won’t just let things be. She pushes Jackie’s hand away, snaps, “I do love you,” with Jackie’s tears on her cheeks. “I put up with so much and I let things go because I love you.”

She surges upward, finding Jackie’s mouth harshly in the dark, but Jackie pulls out of the kiss with a soft, frustrated, “Shauna, just talk to me.”

Shauna seizes her by the back of her neck and kisses her again anyway, and Jackie’s straddling Shauna’s lap now, her hands on Shauna’s cheeks, and she’s kissing back but only half-heartedly. Shauna pulls away this time, murmurs, “Not tonight, okay? We’re both upset. Later.” She’s lying, buying time. Saving Jackie from herself. “Let me fix tonight,” she whispers, and reaches for the hem of Jackie’s shirt. “Make you feel better.”

Jackie’s breathing is shaky, and Shauna can tell that she has Shauna figured out by now, that she’s fighting to believe she isn’t being lied to, torn between what she wants and what she must know is the truth. “Say it again,” Jackie requests quietly, like it’s a consolation prize. “Tell me you love me.”

Shauna suspects Jeff had gone to Jackie after their affair had come out—how could he not have—and revealed some details, tried to win her back, maybe even told her that Shauna had kissed him first. But certainly he wouldn’t have mentioned that last night in his car, Shauna’s request. The same one Jackie’s making now. The role reversal could make her feel good. Powerful. Satisfied that Jackie’s having to ask to be loved the way Shauna had used to, with her father gone, her mother completely checked out at the time, and her only real friend unwilling to say the words back to her. But it just makes her feel incredibly guilty. 

It’s Jackie’s parents who are gone now, along with an ex who’d loved and supported her and made her happy. Jackie whose best friend has seen less and less of her lately, probably in large part because she’d told Jackie that her girlfriend isn’t good for her. Whose girlfriend hates her almost as much as she loves her and lets it seep through so often. It’s no wonder she’s lonely. She must be so lonely. 

If Jackie hears the quiver in her voice when Shauna says, “I love you. I really do. I promise I do,” she doesn’t react to it. Certainly she feels it in her trembling hands as they grip Jackie tight and roll her onto her back, Shauna on top of her. She kisses Jackie and tastes salt and tears and wants to just make it all go away however she can. To go back to being better again. 

Jackie sweeps Shauna’s hair out of her face and holds her cheeks, her breathing loud and shallow and shaky from crying, her touch so gentle. “I just miss you,” she sobs, and pulls Shauna close, until Shauna’s pressed to every inch of her and Jackie’s mouth is by her ear. “I miss my best friend. I miss driving to school together in the mornings and playing soccer with you in the evenings and thinking that you loved everything about me and that I knew everything about you. I just wish it was how it used to be. Before everything. I wish we could go back in time and start over and do it right.”

Shauna’s throat starts to ache. She closes her eyes and tries to hold herself together, but she can feel herself losing the battle. “What is that?” she asks, afraid of the answer. “What does it look like?”

“We could’ve had our pink and green room at Rutgers and done everything together. Probably messed around with stupid boys and hooked up in secret and pretended like it didn’t mean anything for a little while,” Jackie says. Shauna can tell she’s imagined it a thousand times. “And then gotten engaged before we ever even graduated, even if we’d had to wait to get married. Maybe you’d have wanted kids if…” She doesn’t finish that, probably a reaction to feeling the slight tension that fills Shauna’s body. “It just… would’ve been better. Wouldn’t it?”

Shauna’s heart sinks like a stone. “Yeah, I think so.” She’s lying again. Rutgers, watching Jackie flirt with boys during the day and pull Shauna into her bed at night for a few torturous semesters, figuring themselves out between joint extracurriculars of Jackie's choosing, an early engagement at Jackie’s behest, Shauna trailing after Jackie for the bulk of their early twenties. All things Shauna would have never wanted. 

The version of Jackie she wants—a version that wishes for a past that places Shauna at Brown and Jackie at Rutgers, calling regularly, Jackie listening to Shauna talk about her exciting new experiences without feeling jealous or competitive or talking over her, Jackie being a supporting character in Shauna’s life instead of the starring role, and then them both figuring their feelings out, eventually being ready to talk about what’s always existed between them—the version of Jackie that longs for that alternative universe doesn’t exist, and never will. It’s about time Shauna gave up on it. Learned to accept the version she has, because at least it’s a version that wants her at all. 

“I miss parts of high school too, sometimes,” she confesses, and though it’s like trying to squeeze blood from a stone, she pulls a few good things from those years in hopes that they’ll be enough. “Like, how it felt to jump on you first after you’d score a goal. Holding each other at sleepovers. When you’d shout things out of the window of my car and make me laugh. How you’d look at me or smile at me sometimes and I’d feel...” 

She pushes herself up to look down at Jackie’s face, furrowing her eyebrows, studying her. Jackie’s stopped crying, is just looking up at her in the dark like she’s waiting with baited breath for more. And it’s not even a realization, because she’s known for a while, but it’s like she’s finally truly registering it, thinking about the good parts of Jackie without the bad back then, remembering how those moments had felt. “I was so in love with you.” Her eyes drop to Jackie’s mouth. “All it would’ve taken was you kissing me like you actually meant it. I would’ve known, and been yours.”

It’s scary, thinking about it now, thinking about what she would’ve been willing to give up. Shauna never would have left her. Never would’ve become her own person.

Jackie’s fingers skate along her jaw. “I almost did once, even if I convinced myself after that I hadn’t. Sophomore year. Do you remember? We were drunk. I straddled you.”

A shiver runs through Shauna, and she nods. She recalls it right away. It’s the time she thinks of, every now and then, as their biggest almost: Jackie bolder than usual, planting herself in Shauna’s lap in a T-shirt and pajama shorts, all giggly and saying something about Jeff would die if he saw us like this and Do you think my boobs are too small? Feel them. 

And Shauna had rolled her eyes, ignored the arrhythmic thump of her heart and planted her hands on Jackie’s chest unceremoniously, feeling embarrassed and used, said, No, they’re fine, which of course hadn’t been good enough, so Jackie had insisted she pretend to be Jeff making out with Jackie and feeling her up at the same time—for context, Shipman—and give it all one big joint review. 

So they’d made out, Jackie a little less giggly, Shauna mostly annoyed about it all until Jackie had surprised her by trying to use her tongue, and then Shauna had flexed all ten fingers in a full-on drunken grope and Jackie’s breath had caught and Shauna had sworn she’d felt Jackie’s hips move—but only maybe, and then just as quickly they’d lifted off of her entirely and Jackie had been back up on her feet rambling about Actually, Jeff’s never complained and he seems to like looking at them in a bra, so it’s probably fine. Shauna’s brain had convinced her for years that she’d imagined Jackie starting to grind on her and then stopping herself, because how ridiculous would that have been? 

I’m glad you didn’t keep going, or I would’ve lost myself forever to you, she thinks to herself. To Jackie, she says, “I wish you hadn’t stopped.”

She’s told so many lies tonight that she’s starting to lose track. Jackie sits up and kisses her for this one, says, “I’m here now. Sometimes it feels like you forget that.”

“I don’t.” Shauna shakes her head. “Trust me, Jackie. I know.”

“That’s not really what I mean.” Jackie cups her jaw and brushes their noses together. Shauna hears her shaky inhale, knows right away that Jackie’s about to say something she’s scared to express. “I know you say you are, but I just… thought you’d be happier.” Her other hand tightens its grip where it’s fallen to rest on Shauna’s thigh. “After years of us wanting this. I thought I’d make you happier.” And then comes the worst of it: “And that you’d make me happier.” Shauna’s breath catches, and Jackie sniffs but then adds quickly, “It’s still best with you; it’s still—I don’t want to stop, but I just thought it’d be easier than it is.”

There is so much Shauna never says. So many fights she doesn’t start. Moments that don’t even register to Jackie like they do for Shauna. None of that is lost on her. 

“Maybe it’s just always going to be hard for us,” she offers. “I can… try to start talking more.” It'll be the beginning of the end of them, she thinks deep down. But just like her friends, her apartment, she can only deny Jackie so much for so long. Their years apart have built up her resistance, made her stronger in the face of Jackie wanting something from her, but she’ll always fold for her eventually in the end, with enough pressure or pleading or tears. And she’ll always be mad at Jackie and upset with herself for it. She’ll always bend and bend and pray she doesn’t finally break.

Jackie nods eagerly against her, says, “Okay,” with audible relief. And she’s gotten what she wants, so Shauna takes what she wants in return, kisses up and down Jackie’s body and just listens to her uneven breathing and focuses on the grip of Jackie’s hands and the taste of her skin and the pretty arch of her back when Shauna presses inside of her. It’s slow, and intimate, and it’s them having sex in lieu of working things out completely, but this time it feels more like making love than it ever has before.

(And Shauna will be grateful for it, in the end—that if it was all going to blow up so soon, at least they took the opportunity to make this last good memory together before it did.)

-

The following morning, Jackie rises early with her and cooks her breakfast while Shauna gets ready for work.

Things still feel a little odd after last night, but Shauna desperately wants them to be okay again, so she ambushes Jackie in the kitchen once she’s dressed and distracts her from the stove by pulling her backward and leaning forward to kiss sloppily down her neck until it pulls a soft laugh from Jackie. 

“I know you have something up your sleeve today,” Shauna teases. “Should I be scared?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jackie says, playful but slightly more muted than usual, which is how Shauna knows that last night hasn’t quite worn off of her either. “All I have planned is a date with some nail polish, a couple of books, and that half-bottle of wine in your fridge today.”

“A date, huh?” Shauna spins her around. “Is that a hint?”

“Your breakfast is gonna burn, Shipman,” Jackie dodges, slipping from her arms and returning to the stove. Shauna watches her flip over a sizzling egg. “I should wake up this early to cook for you more often, though. I’m starting to think I’d make a killer housewife.”

“You look nice doing it,” Shauna says. Jackie’s got her hair up in a messy bun and had pulled on her oversized pajama shirt again sometime in the night or the morning. Shauna’s eyes settle on the extra piercing in her ear. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you that I really like your helix piercing. It’s really hot on you.” She pauses, thoughtful, then adds, “And makes you seem gayer, somehow. It just… suits you. You now, anyway.”

Jackie twists around to beam at her, and Shauna can feel the change, just like that—everything is okay again. They’re back to normal, at least for now. Until the next thing, whenever it comes. “Okay, if this is you speaking your mind more, I’m gonna need access to literally every thought you ever have.”

“Because what you’ve always desperately needed is another ego boost,” Shauna laments with a shake of her head.

“Only from you.” Jackie finishes plating two eggs, a few slices of bacon, and a slice of buttered toast for her, and presents it all with a dramatic flourish, drawling lowly, “Your feast, my darling.”

“It’s a little 1950s with the accent, but—“ Jackie stabs at an egg with the fork and shuts her up by prodding at her lips with it. Shauna smiles around the bite, chews and swallows, and decides, “Fine, you can quit your job and be my housewife, but who will teach the children literary analysis?”

“The children are starting to realize that they can look up the answers on a computer, so they may not need me for much longer, actually.” Jackie sighs. “Millennials.”

“You’re gonna start sounding like our parents if you aren’t careful,” Shauna jokes as she sits down to eat. “Or my New York Mag boss.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” Jackie leans down and kisses Shauna on the cheek. “I don’t think I mind getting older. Not anymore, anyway. Now that it doesn’t feel like wasted time.” Shauna pauses mid-bite to just look at her, and Jackie tucks a strand of Shauna’s hair behind her ear and runs a thumb along her cheekbone. “I’m gonna go shower. See you when you get home?”

Shauna nods and stares, watches her go until she’s almost out of sight and then blurts, “Even if it were,” and that gets Jackie’s attention, makes her stop and turn and look back. “I’d rather fuck my life up with you than do it right with anyone else, Jackie.”

Jackie leans against the bathroom doorframe, smiling almost bittersweetly at her. “Me too. I think that’s why we’re both still here.”

She disappears inside. Shauna reaches across the table to tear off a paper towel from the roll she keeps there, and then uses it to dab at her wet eyes.

-

Samuel calls Shauna into his office just after her lunch break. It’s an off-Friday—a week where the magazine hasn't published a new issue—so it’s rare that she isn’t left to her own devices for the day. It immediately makes her nervous. She’s still a freelancer, even though she’s spending one day a week in the office with them, and she’s still constantly wondering if she’s good enough, if one day they’ll realize they’d messed up taking her onboard and will decide to finally cut her.

Samuel closes his office door, which is another thing he only does when the conversation he’s about to have is particularly private or especially serious. Shauna’s heart’s pounding by the time she’s taken a seat across from his desk and is watching him settle into his chair.

“You’ve been freelancing for us for about six months now,” he says, smiling kindly at her. It doesn’t alleviate her worries. “How are you liking it here?”

It’s an odd question to ask before letting her go. Shauna tries to relax a little. She’s honest. “It’s great. I feel like I’m learning a lot. I’d love to cover a broader range of topics, but aside from that I love working here.”

“Okay.” He sits back in his seat, thoughtful. “I know you were interested in doing literary reviews. What else?”

Shauna blinks at him, stunned, and then quickly tries to mask it. “Beyond that? Really, anything.” She corrects herself quickly. “Anything serious. Politics, maybe. Law. Crime. Just—yeah, more… hard-hitting stuff.”

“I thought as much.” He takes a breath, seems to just decide to come out with it, dump everything on her, and tells her, “I like your work, Shauna, and I’ve been putting in a good word for you up the line for a while now. The magazine wants to bring you on full-time—“ At Shauna’s reaction, he lifts a hand, “but. But. It’s a lot of work. We’d keep you busy. Your usual culture feature, a literary review, and a big story, all every two weeks. And when I say big, I mean multiple interviews, a lot of research on topics you haven’t covered before. We’d have you shadow a more senior writer for at least a few months. I want you to think about it. I know you commute in from Trenton, as well.”

Shauna’s mind’s already racing. She’d definitely have to move, and she isn’t ready to give up her apartment. But maybe she could stay at Jackie’s a little more often, cut the drive in half some days. Hold onto her own place until the lease is up at the end of February and then move to NYC. She has enough savings to afford it on her own for a little while, and her new job would give her a pay bump, but eventually she’d have to get a roommate.

She’d also be buried in work. But Jackie will be getting busier with soccer soon, so she may as well do the same. She’d love the assignments, too. Literary reviews? She can’t say no.

“Take a week to think about it,” Samuel says. “We can talk next Friday. We wouldn’t bring you on fully until after the holidays, anyway, so you have time.” He gives her a knowing smile. “Gives you more than a couple of weeks to warn Charles, too.”

“Thank you,” Shauna blurts, unable to keep it in. 

“It’s well-earned,” he reassures her. “I’ll email over the paperwork so you can take a look at it, but we’ll go over it together in a week, alright?”

“Okay.” She rises, nodding at him. “Thanks. I really—just, thank you.”

She hurries out of his office before she can make any more of a fool of herself.

The rest of the day is a blur. Shauna spends it aching to call Jackie but not wanting to get caught by Samuel slipping away to do it. She stays professional, sticks to the desk they let her have on Fridays because its usual owner only works a four-day week, and practically pops out of her seat at five on the dot to head to her car.

Jackie answers on the second ring as Shauna’s pulling out onto the highway. “Hey, baby, what’s up?”

“I have to tell you something,” Shauna blurts excitedly. “I’m gonna wait until I get home, but…”

Jackie sounds amused. “So you called me to tell me you have something to tell me?”

“I guess,” Shauna realizes. “Yes.” It’s easy to draw a comparison to her first promotion at the Gazette, the way she’d immediately wanted to tell Jackie and had settled unenthusiastically for Mark instead. And then when she’d gotten the offer from New York Magazine to freelance, the first thing she’d done had been to text Jackie. This is the first time she’s actually been able to go to her and fully celebrate with her. “It’s good news,” she clarifies, though she’s sure it’s obvious. “We need, like… We just need stuff. I’ll stop by the store—“

“I’ll go,” Jackie offers right away. “That way it’ll be here by the time you get home. What do you need?”

Wine, Shauna almost says, and thinks that maybe they should have some kind of celebratory dinner, maybe even go out. But then she realizes that Jackie definitely already has something planned. “Wait, will it interfere with your thing?”

Jackie laughs. “Okay, so I do obviously have a surprise for you, but I can definitely still go to the store. Just… if you happen to just beat me back to your apartment, don’t go in until I get there.” 

“I thought maybe you were planning a dinner or something,” Shauna clarifies. 

“I can,” Jackie offers. “Do you wanna go out?” Then she sounds coy. “I was thinking you might wanna stay in and enjoy your apartment, though.”

Now Shauna’s just confused. “Did you go to a sex shop without me? Is that the surprise?”

Jackie bursts into fond laughter. “No, Shauna. Just come home. You’ll see. I’ll take you out to dinner, too. To celebrate your mysterious good news that definitely has nothing to do with your shift at New York Magazine or the fact that you’re an incredibly talented writer.”

“Let me say it when I get home,” Shauna whines anyway, suppressing a smile at Jackie’s giggle. “I’ll see you in, like… eighty minutes.” 

“Text me when you get here,” Jackie says. “Don’t come in.”

“Okay. Love you, bye.”

“Love you!”

Shauna hangs up and blows out a breath, grinning, and turns up her radio to help her finish out her long drive home.

-

When she gets there, she texts Jackie from outside her own front door, and it only takes her seconds to open it a crack and peer out at Shauna, a wide smile on her lips.

Shauna raises her eyebrows. “Hello? May I enter my apartment now?”

“Okay.” Jackie glances over her own shoulder. “Just… yeah, one second. I mean, wait like, five seconds, and then come in.”

She closes the door, and Shauna stares at it with bewilderment. She’s still of the mind that Jackie might be misleading her, that she’s about to open the door to a nice tablecloth draped over her table, candles, a nice dinner with wine. They could make it about Shauna’s new job offer. Forget about last night, lose themselves in each other. Approach it all like a fresh start. 

What she opens her door to find instead is… a nightmare.

Jackie’s in the center of her living room, beaming, arms outstretched, showing it all off, so fucking proud of herself. “Ta-da!”

The first thing Shauna notices, for whatever reason, is the curtains on the two living room windows behind Jackie. They’d been shorter before, and white, and in their place are two sets of long, flowing navy replacements. 

Then there are the walls: bare before, covered in framed pictures or paintings now—she can’t really tell from far away—and there’s a collage of pictures pinned to a corkboard hung up on the kitchen wall: of Shauna and the friends she hasn’t let Jackie meet yet, of her parents, of her childhood dog. All dug up out of her closet, she recognizes. Jackie had combed through her things without her permission.

The TV stand has a small houseplant on it. Two more are in the corners of her living room. There’s another framed photo on the side table next to the couch, and—Her favorite couch is missing. Jackie’s bought a new one: navy to match the curtains. 

Her apartment is gone. Jackie’s redecorated. 

“What do you think?” Jackie asks her, still beaming. Shauna feels a lump forming in her throat and tears starting to pool in her eyes, and when Jackie sees them too, she laughs and starts to come to her. “Aw, baby, you’re—“

“I hate it,” Shauna says quietly. Her fists clench, and then she tries to unclench them, but her fingers just curl in toward her palm again until her nails are digging into skin. 

Jackie pauses, her smile fading. 

Something in Shauna breaks.

She’s moving before she can think about it, marching past Jackie, looking around at it all with her stomach churning and her heart on fire and her jaw clenched and tears starting to pour down her cheeks. “What the fuck, Jackie?” she snaps, but she can’t bear to look at her. “This is—It’s my apartment! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

It would be harder to escalate this if Jackie’s voice sounded small and hurt, but it doesn’t. She’s taken aback, and still hurt, but defensive more than anything. “I—You said you liked my place and that I’m good at this. I was trying to help.”

It makes it easier for Shauna to finally look at her, eyes blazing, and bite out, “I didn’t ask for your help.” It makes it possible for her to laugh out dryly, angrily, “God, of course you’d fucking do this. Of course.”

Her legs start moving again, and then her arms, and she’s prying off one wall decoration, and then another, undoing it all, trying to make her place hers again. 

“Shauna, don’t—What are you doing?” Jackie calls to her, and there’s the fully-formed hurt, finally, but it’s too late. Shauna can already feel her mind making connections, working faster than her mouth, leading it to say things it shouldn’t if she doesn’t want to doom them. 

She tears down decoration after decoration, tossing it all onto the floor in the center of the living room, going on, “I spent so long keeping this place to myself, Jackie, and you knew it. I give you a key and it takes weeks. Fucking weeks for you to do whatever you want with it. You threw out my couch! My favorite thing in my whole apartment.”

“You never told me it was your favorite,” Jackie rushes out accusingly. She still sounds so defensive beneath the pain in her voice. “I didn't know. It was old and tattered and—“

“You didn’t ask!” Shauna shouts, whirling around to face her. “That’s the point, Jackie! You never ask! You didn’t ask me what I wanted, you didn’t ask if this would help, or, I don’t know, consider for a fucking second that this is mine, not yours! You just do whatever you want!” She throws her hands up helplessly. “Just like you always have. What’s yours is yours and what’s mine is fucking yours, too.”

“This is about more than the apartment,” Jackie declares, folding her arms across her chest, and Shauna wants to scream at her: the knowing way she says it, like she’s making some wise, hard-to-reach observation instead of stating the fucking obvious.

“Yes, Jackie, it is. I’m glad you’ve finally caught up. It only took you a decade.” Shauna spares the curtains a hateful look as she snatches up a trinket Jackie’s placed on the windowsill and tosses it into the small pile she’s forming on the floor. Jackie flinches when it lands, but her jaw is tight now like she’s upset with Shauna right back. “You wanna talk so badly? Let’s talk. Here it is: You haven’t changed at all since high school. You don’t want me to be your girlfriend; you want the same pathetic little sidekick lapdog you got to lead around on a leash ten years ago. You just wanna fuck me now too.”

Jackie’s eyes narrow at her. Her slim frame is locked up, stiff. “That’s not true, Shauna.”

Shauna forces a laugh. “It is. You gave me a few months of power and acted like that was all it would take. Like that would just make it all better and make it all up to me and we could call it even. And then you got the label you wanted and it was just back to stomping all over me.”

Jackie doesn’t argue this time, but Shauna can tell by the way her face twists that she doesn’t agree, that she wants to fight back. 

Still, it’s Shauna who gets to keep talking. “Don’t make me start listing examples, Jackie. How about you showing up at my work without asking and making my job miserable for me, then making me apologize to you afterward? That’s classic high school Jackie. I was never allowed to have boundaries.” 

Jackie’s mouth tightens, lips pressing together like she’s still holding herself back from interrupting. Shauna doesn’t stop herself long enough to acknowledge it consciously: that she’s tossed things onto the floor and is full-on ranting at her and that even so, Jackie’s just taking it, for the most part. Listening. 

“And when’s the last time I made a decision? Picked a restaurant? Anything? You fucking ordered my food for me on our first date, by the way. That was fun.”

Jackie’s jaw flexes angrily, but Shauna can see the doubt trickling into her expression. “You said you loved our first date.”

Because she had. That’s the worst part. She had, and yet— “And maybe I would’ve loved it more if I’d gotten a say. Or maybe I’d have hated my own choice but at least I’d have gotten to make it.” She gestures wildly to their surroundings. “But this… this is really your magnum opus, Jackie, because something this fucking tone deaf can only come from a version of you that’s learned absolutely nothing. Now I know you hate me.”

Jackie still doesn’t argue, just stands there and weathers it with tear-filled eyes as Shauna lets loose on her. “You read my journal. You read everything I wrote about you. Every complaint. Everything you’ve been doing was in it: how you don’t take me into account, how you just choose for the both of us and expect me to like it. How you just walk all over me like I’m not a whole person. Everything that’s still fucked up about you and about us was in there. And you gave me the summer and then forgot about it like it wasn’t important. And do you know why you forgot? Because I know.” 

She steps closer, advancing on her, and feels a burst of confidence when Jackie steps back with a weak little wobble of her foot. Shauna’s right. She’s right about all of it, and it’s about time Jackie heard it. “Because you thought it was bullshit. You always have. Just bullshit from your boyfriend-stealing best friend who was wrong and evil and couldn’t possibly have had a point. You never actually believed I could’ve been right about you. You never took any of it seriously. You barely tried to fix it and then forgot I ever brought it up. Like our first fight never happened.” 

She laughs. Keeps going, right up in Jackie’s tensed face, a foot apart. “And then you act like you wanna talk about it? You don’t want a talk; you want an apology. Bringing up fucking Rutgers last night? That was ridiculous. I went to Brown to get away from you, Jackie. And you’re fantasizing about us going to Rutgers together like what I wanted and why I might’ve wanted it never even registered. I mean, I’m surprised you didn’t decorate my apartment in pink and green because you fucking might as well have. You’re still stuck in high school. I bet that’s why you teach, too; any way to relive the years you had all of that power over me, right?”

Jackie’s eyes flash, and Shauna’s chest gives a lurch a half-second before she realizes that she’s massively overstepped, that Jackie’s done just taking it. “Yeah, Shauna, you got me. The lesbian jumped at the chance to relive her closeted high school years. What the fuck is wrong with you?” Shauna backs off, feeling her cheeks heating, and storms off to go back to undoing Jackie’s decorating. But Jackie isn’t done, emboldened by Shauna peeling away from her, snapping at the back of her, “I’m stuck in high school? Look at you. Maybe I did blame you back then, and maybe I still do, and—and I know I fucked up a few times these past few months, clearly, but you could’ve spoken up anytime, Shauna. You could’ve checked me and I would’ve listened. Dating you is miserable when—“

“Yeah,” Shauna interjects hotly, yanking another painting off of the wall with her heart aching in her stomach. “Glad you finally admit it. I could tell.”

“Let me finish,” Jackie snaps. “When you won’t just communicate and tell me when—“

“It was in the journal!” Shauna fires back.

“That was eight years ago, Shauna; I didn’t exactly want to remember every little thing I did that was apparently so horrible it had you ripping me to shreds behind my back and ditching me for Brown—“

“Well, there was some useful stuff in there,” Shauna calls over her shoulder, voice dripping with sarcasm. She doesn’t miss Jackie’s dismissive tone, the way she’s still downplaying her role in their fallout. It’s enraging. “So maybe I’ll let you borrow it and you can take a second look.”

“—And even if I made some mistakes, that gave you the right to fuck Jeff?” Jackie blurts over her, not listening anymore, and Shauna’s insides give another lurch. It’s going to happen now. It’s already so bad, and it’s only going to get worse. They’re doing this. Digging deeper and deeper into their old wounds. She should stop it. She doesn’t. 

Instead, she whirls around again and says, “And you deserved every second of every time.” She narrows her eyes warningly as Jackie’s face pinches tight. She can tell Jackie’s trying not to cry. “Don’t go there, Jax. You won’t like it.”

Jackie’s lips tremble. She looks furious through her tears. “No, I think you won’t like it.”

“You can’t call me anything I haven’t already heard.” Shauna crosses her arms, rolls her eyes. On the inside, she’s burning. It’s different coming from Jackie. It’ll wound her worse than anyone else can. Still, she urges, “Do your worst.”

Jackie quivers, stiff and icy by the kitchen, eyes darting to the pile on the floor, and then blurts, “Sometimes I think you’re a monster. You’re right: sometimes I hate you. Sometimes I look at you and I—I can’t believe you’re the same person as the girl I grew up with.”

It lances across Shauna’s chest like a hot poker, but there’s a relief beneath the burn, because she’s finally saying it, finally admitting what Shauna’s always known. 

Jackie keeps going. “Sometimes you fall asleep before me and I look at you while you sleep and I—“ Her voice cracks. “And I get so angry about what you did to me, and angry that I still love you and that I had all of those years to stop and just couldn’t.”

Shauna’s gaze sharpens on her. “Maybe you don’t love me.”

Jackie scoffs wetly. “Don’t be—“

“I’m serious. I told you eight years ago, you know: You never really knew me. Who you thought I was in high school never existed, Jackie. She wasn’t real. Neither is the person you’ve been dating now. Maybe you don’t actually want me.” It’s a painful realization. The worst of them all. But she knows in her heart that it’s true. “You want the version of me that will follow you forever. Agree with you always. Wish we’d both gone to Rutgers. Thank you for all of this.” She gestures to the pile on the floor, then steps toward a framed photo by the couch and picks it up.

Jackie looks like she’d been ready to protest, but at the sight of the picture in Shauna’s hands she blanches and says weakly, “Please don’t throw that away. That one’s special.”

Shauna takes a closer look, realizing this one’s in the frame she’d given to Jackie and asked her to fill. It’s the one thing Jackie had actually been given permission to place. It’s a photo of herself and Jackie from high school: senior year, pressed close at a party, grinning at the camera together, arms wrapped around each other. 

Jackie sounds quieter, so vulnerable, the anger drained from her as she confesses, “I saved it after we stopped talking. I used to look at it in college sometimes. When I missed you. It made me sad, but… it reminded me of the real you. The person I…” She falters, her face crumpling, and Shauna swallows down a lump in her throat. “We went to that party at Lottie’s place, and you… you were so clumsy that night.” 

She’s faraway now, eyes shimmering, lost in the fond memory like she almost hopes it might replace the unwanted reality in front of her. Like she would swap this younger, untainted Shauna out with her current form if she could. She doesn’t know what Shauna knows, what Shauna’s trying to make her understand: that she’s always been tainted. That they’ve always been tainted. And all they’ve been doing these past six months is just repeating high school again. Maybe it’s all they know how to do.

“You spilled your Malibu and milk all over yourself and we had to go home early so that you could shower. We stayed up all night after. Just… talking. And then you held me until I fell asleep.” Jackie takes in a shaky breath. “I miss her. She was real. So don’t try to say that she wasn’t.”

Shauna stares at the picture for another long moment. At their faces. Their smiles. She remembers straining to fix hers to her face as Mari Ibarra had held the camera up, guilt swirling in her stomach. “I remember this night, too,” she says slowly, returning to Jackie, offering her the photo. Jackie has it in her hands, is staring down at it almost longingly, face open and achy, when Shauna tells her the truth one last time. “This picture’s a lie, too, Jax. Jeff and I…” She can’t say it, so she just skips over it. Jackie’s entire body tenses. “Like… twenty minutes before this was taken. And then I needed to shower, so I—“

Shauna flinches back, abruptly, when Jackie drops the frame and the glass shatters between their feet, scattering all over the floor between them.

“Jackie—” is all Shauna gets out before Jackie’s shooting her a final stricken, agonized look and then whirling around and hurrying to the door. Glass crunches underfoot on Shauna’s first step forward, and in the split second she spends debating between running after Jackie and dealing with what’s now become a hazardous mess, Jackie is gone. 

-

Shauna doesn’t let herself think about it for a while, doesn’t look at it all too closely. Moves mechanically throughout her apartment instead, empty inside, sweeping up glass, stacking discarded decorations onto the table near the kitchen because she’s not sure what else to do with them. 

She picks up the picture of herself and Jackie, frameless now, and stares at it with a sick feeling in her stomach. Looks at her own smiling face and marvels at how convincing it’d looked. She hadn’t felt very convincing in the moment. But in her own way she’s always been good at hiding, too. 

She doesn’t want to throw it away, so she pins it to the corkboard. It’s nice, actually, the collage. If Jackie hadn’t invaded her things without permission to find the pictures, Shauna thinks she’d love it. Maybe she still can, eventually. She decides it’ll stay. 

(She comes back to it later to stare at the same picture again, then decides she hates how she looks in it. Folds it in half to hide herself, and then repins it: just Jackie showing now, with the exception of Shauna’s arms around her.)

She combs through the wall decorations on the table, really looking at them now, which is a mistake, because they’re nice. An oil painting of an idyllic scene in rural Italy, where Shauna had told Jackie she’d like to vacation someday. A sketch of a quill and inkwell. More and more art tied directly to Shauna, mostly to the present version of her, proving over and over again that Jackie had been listening to the little things as they’d reconnected even if she’d willingly overlooked the big ones.

It doesn’t take long before Shauna’s clutching one of the frames to her chest and sobbing hard, thinking about it in detail now: how long it might’ve taken Jackie to amass them all in secret, how much work had to have gone into her misguided project, even the fact that she’d probably had to hire someone to swap the couches out while Shauna had been gone for the day. 

Why couldn’t Shauna have just kept her mouth shut and pretended to love it? Learned to, even? Seen past the violation and actually looked at what she’d been tearing down to help soothe the ache of it being there without her consent? Why does it always feel like she’s stuck choosing between being honest with Jackie and keeping her?

She seeks out her phone, still sniffling a little, and finds it in her bedroom. She also finds the new things in there, too: more frames on the walls, a new navy bedspread and pillowcases, a note on her nightstand that just says, I wanted to make it feel more like a home here for you. Maybe it’ll be mine too, someday :) -Jax

Shauna wipes frantically at her swollen eyes, her throat on fire, nausea building in her stomach. Her fingers shake as she dials Jackie’s number. It doesn’t ring, just sends her straight to: This is Jackie! I can’t come to the phone right now, so just leave a message at the beep and I’ll call you back as soon as I can! 

Shauna tries to rein herself in, to not sound warbled, but she doesn’t think she manages. “Jackie? I know you’re so upset at me right now. I shouldn’t have freaked out. Please just… drive safe, and call me back, okay?” She hesitates, bleary eyes falling to the note again. “I want you here. So when you… when you can, when you want to… Come home?”

She hangs up and rests her face in her hands. Then something pangs in her stomach and she’s up in a flash, racing for the bathroom, barely making it in time to retch into her toilet. 

It’s her body knowing what this is with Jackie before her mind’s ready to acknowledge it, she’ll realize later. 

-

Jackie doesn’t call her back. Jackie doesn’t text her. Not Friday night, not Saturday, not Sunday. 

Shauna barely leaves her bed. Eats maybe a few handfuls of pretzels over the course of two days and thinks about how she has the sticks instead of the twists because Jackie likes them better. Shauna prefers the twists, so a few days ago it would’ve been a reason to have some dark thought about how even her own pretzels are tailored to Jackie instead of herself. 

But now that feels stupid. Now she just wants Jackie back in her bed, and she’d happily feed her all the stick pretzels she could ever want.

She could have said it all better, Friday. Could’ve written everything out if she’d known the moment was coming, then maybe tweaked it to land a little less angrily and heavy. Could’ve even had a draft just in case all along, so that when it’d finally come out she would’ve had a script to default to, maybe wouldn’t have been so heated and reactive. She’d just… been too busy hoping it’d never have to come out of her at all.

She’s still angry at Jackie, a little. The decorations have been packed away into her closet, and even though guilt is the dominant, achy feeling she gets when she sees them, there’s still resentment. Jackie could’ve shown them to her. Could’ve asked. Could’ve done so many things differently just like Shauna, all the way back to the night she’d read her journal. 

But mostly, Shauna just misses her.

She calls again Sunday night. It still doesn’t ring. Jackie’s voice tells her brightly to leave a message. She’s probably silent for too long before she says, “It’s Shauna.” She pauses, finds she has so much to say that it’s circled around to not knowing what to say at all. “Call me.” She goes to hang up, but knows it’s a horrible voicemail, that she hasn’t said enough, so she rushes out a lame, last-second, “I love you,” before her thumb hits the button to end the call. She feels pathetic. Jackie’s probably deleting her messages without even listening to them.

She drafts a text. Stares at it:

I would really like to talk if you’re willing.

She can picture Jackie reading it, huffing as she types out her response: Oh, NOW you’re ready? What about when I wanted to talk?

She deletes it. Hovers over her phone in the darkness of her bedroom and tries to think of what to say. Types and deletes so many different attempts over the course of at least an hour, overthinking it all:

How long do you think you’ll want space? I can stop reaching out until then, if that’s what you need. 

I can just wait until the motel room if you’d rather talk then. Just let me know if that’s what you want, so I don’t spend until then being tortured by you just ignoring me. Unless this is meant to punish me?

I miss you so much already. It feels like I can’t function. Please talk to me.

Jackie, I shouldn’t have blown up at you. Can we try that talk again?

Jax you don’t have to say anything else, but please just reassure me that you aren’t done with me. 

She doesn’t send any of them in the end. What she does send is:

Are you there?

Then she sets her alarm and slides under her new sheets and cries herself to sleep, her phone clutched tight in her hand and set to vibrate in case Jackie decides to text back, and hopes she can pick herself up enough to look presentable for work in the morning.

-

Work is easier than being stuck at home, in the end. The lack of response from Jackie can be pushed from her mind when she has interviews to conduct, articles to write, coworkers to deal with. A boss she needs to put her two-week notice in with in another seven days.  

Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night are hard. She thinks about going to New Brunswick, but has the sense to know that if Jackie wanted to talk to her, she would. She texts her friends instead, cancels the plans for them to meet Jackie and just says something’s come up.

She calls her mother from her couch on Thursday evening, after six days without hearing from Jackie, and tries to sound normal as she breaks the news that she’s got a meeting with Samuel tomorrow and that it looks like she’ll be starting with New York Magazine full-time next year. But the wind’s been taken out of her sails, and she can tell her mother notices.

“How are things with Jackie?” she gets asked.

“Fine,” she lies. “We were actually wondering when the Christmas party is this year. Are they still doing it on the third Saturday of the month?”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” her mother says with a sigh, “but I’ve made it clear I won’t be attending this year, obviously. Not that they’d have me, anyway.”

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow. “Why? Just because of me?”

Her mother laughs like it should be obvious. “Mrs. Taylor invited me over for tea after your article about Jackie and then called you… a negative influence on her daughter, I believe were her exact words. Asked me to talk some sense into you—like I was meant to convince you to go ‘fix’ Jackie and ruin her engagement, I suppose. So I told her where to shove it, and haven’t spoken to her since.”

Shauna sits with that for a moment, a new ache in her chest replacing the one that misses Jackie, just for a moment. This one’s less sharp, almost fond. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, at the time you had a lot going on. And I didn’t want your feelings to get hurt.”

“She left me a voicemail anyway,” Shauna tells her. “So I pretty much got the gist.”

“Well, she and all of her guests will be celebrating without my eggnog this year, so that’ll show her.”

A short laugh bubbles out of Shauna, unbidden. For the first time, like a veil has been lifted, she can hear the age in her mother’s voice. She’d turned fifty this year—one of those ages Shauna suspects sounds older than it really is, but it makes her too aware of the ever-creeping passage of time. 

“It’s crazy to think about how I was already born when you were my age,” Shauna muses. “Like, if I had a two-year-old right now.”

“It felt just as crazy then,” her mom jokes. “But you turned out okay, so I must’ve done alright.”

The line goes quiet. Shauna bites her lip, stares out at her dismantled living room and feels like she’s not very sure that she has turned out okay. Finally, she asks, “Is it alright if I don’t give you grandkids?”

Her mother hums nonchalantly. “You have cousins. I’ll make do as a great-aunt.” Shauna sinks back into her couch, wiping at a suddenly damp eye, relieved. But then comes, “Does Jackie not want kids either?” 

And this has all been nice, actually, and Shauna’s been so lonely this past week, and so she just opens up and says it: “She does. We’re fighting, actually. Not about that, but it’s really bad.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, her face crumples, like saying the words out loud has finally made it real. “I don’t even know if we’re still together, Mom. She won’t talk to me.”

There’s a sad, pitying sigh of empathy on the line that Shauna would hate from anyone else, but she feels like a child now, trying not to sob to her mother, and right now it just makes her feel less isolated from the rest of the world. “Well, I’m sure it’ll all work itself out soon, honey. Just give her time.”

“I’m trying,” Shauna whimpers. “I really miss her. I don’t want her out of my life again and I don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe…” She can hear her mother struggling. They don’t do this. Shauna will be so embarrassed tomorrow, she knows—probably avoid calling for a while, until it’s time to make plans for Christmas Day—but for now she just listens to her mother tell her, “Writing something might help. Even if it’s just to hold onto until she’s ready. Or just for yourself.”

Shauna thinks about it. She has a few journals stashed away she’d never gotten around to writing in, buried with the old ones she hasn’t cracked open since they’d cost her Jackie.

“Okay. I think I’ll try that. Thanks, Mom.” She sniffs, pauses. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Congratulations on your new job. I know you’ll do great; just don’t work too hard.”

Shauna says goodbye, hangs up. Thinks about how no matter how distant they get sometimes, her mother always reads everything she writes. She wonders if Jackie would be the same. Then feels sad that she’d ever felt like it had been a bad thing that Jackie hadn’t been able to help herself to them, had been so eager to devour them all. Her mother had never asked permission, so maybe it’s not crazy that Jackie hadn’t either. Maybe it’d been kind of her to ask in the beginning, actually, to send that email requesting an article of Shauna’s choice.

It’s worse when she thinks of things like this, Shauna finds: the missing her, the aching. It’s easier to try to hate her again.

-

Jackie, she starts on the first page of her new journal. I’ve spent ten minutes staring at a blank page and thinking about you ignoring me, and I can tell I want to be angry. I think I am. I think I could write an essay about how angry I feel that you walked away and won’t even text me back. I feel as insignificant to you and as disposable to you as I always used to feel. 

But then I realized I’d be sitting here scribbling into a journal about how I can’t stand you, and I don’t want to be eighteen again, so I think I might write the harder things now. Things I could never have dug out of myself back then even if they were true.

I love you. I wish we could have done better these past six months. It feels like we didn’t do it right, like we wasted it. I want to blame you but then I’m still redoing high school again. Is that okay if it really is your fault? Or maybe I was always still going to resent you even if you did everything right this time. I guess I have no way of knowing. 

I don’t even know what I’ll say when I see you again in nine days. I don’t know what I’ll do if you just touch me and then leave. I don’t want to go back to once a year again. But I just don’t know how to fix us yet and I think you don’t either. We’re too far gone to be fooled by either of us saying things we don’t mean, so there’s no point in lying to each other about who we blame for ruining us the first time around. I’m scared that eight years wasn’t enough time. I’m scared that we tried this too soon. I can still close my eyes and remember how you made me feel back then like it just happened yesterday. I’d bet anything you can close yours and remember how it must’ve felt to read my journal.

We both hurt each other so badly. I’m sorry I told you that you deserved every second I spent with Jeff. I don’t think that’s something you ever needed to hear. I wish I’d kept everything in so that I could keep you. 

Shauna

-

It’s snowing in Wiskayok when Shauna pulls up to the motel, not unlike last year, when she’d trudged through the slush and climbed the stairs to Jackie and handed her a tube of lip gloss and held her all night for the first time. 

The same man’s behind the front desk this year, reading a magazine with a truck on the cover instead of a car this time, and Shauna shivers in the cold lobby, the clock behind him reading nine-thirteen—she’d come at just after eight last year—as she greets him, “Hey, I’m Shauna. There should be a room booked under Jackie Taylor? Room 69?”

He gives her a funny look and a slight smile, probably at the number, and then checks the computer for a moment. “Uh… nope. No Taylors here, and the room’s free.”

“Oh.” Shauna chews on her lip, an icy anxiety sprouting in her chest. “Well… I’ll reserve it, then. With her name on it too. I’ll take her key.”

“Sure.”

She pays. He hands her two room keys and she makes her way up the stairs outside, shuddering, fumbling to get one key into the lock at the door. 

She imagines they all look the same, but it feels comforting to recognize every little familiar detail of the room anyway, like it’s special, like it’s theirs. She closes the door behind herself and shrugs her jacket off, checks her reflection in the bathroom mirror to make sure the cold and her walk hasn’t left her in too much disarray. Then she sits down on the edge of the bed and waits.

A minute in, she feels antsy and a little dumb. She should text Jackie, even if she won’t get a response. She has been, just to let her know about the date of the party, to confess that she misses her, to say that she hopes she’s doing okay. She hasn’t tried to call. 

I’m here, she sends. Room 69 again.

Five minutes turns into ten, fifteen. Shauna lays out on the bed, her stomach in knots, and turns on the television. Watches an episode of some sitcom she barely registers. Then another.

The clock reads ten-thirty when she clicks the television off and curls onto her side, and finally lets her eyes fill with tears.

You promised.

-

It’s easier to be angry than it is to let the devastation eat away at her, so she storms out of the motel room in a low-cut top she’d worn for Jackie beneath her jacket, seething, humiliated, fuck you fuck you fuck you on repeat in her head and tears drying on her cheeks. The motel room keys are still in her purse and she’s going to make use of the room even if Jackie won’t, because if Jackie doesn’t want her then at least she can prove that someone else will.

She goes to Wiskayok’s only decent bar and forgets until she walks through the door that the world is a certain way outside of her bubble, and it really has felt like it’s been so long. She’s used to gay bars or acquaintances of acquaintances or getting clocked in random social settings, used to seeking out women that look like Jackie ever since she’d dumped Mark over a year and a half ago now. 

She can still do it—be with men, that is—but she just hadn’t planned on it in the last few impulsive minutes of driving over. It takes a second for her mind to readjust. It’ll be even easier, then. Men are so easy.

She goes and sits at the bar, orders a drink, focuses on getting herself a little tipsy for this, because that’s another way to make it easier. She just needs someone passable. Someone to make her feel wanted. Someone she can throw in Jackie’s face later, say you could’ve had me that night and instead someone else did with. 

Would Jackie hate her even more for it? Does it matter, as much as she hates Jackie right now?

She orders another drink. Time feels like it’s moving faster. Someone muscled who smells like a cologne she recognizes slides onto the bar stool next to her and orders a beer, and Shauna glances at him out of her periphery, thinks sure, fine, and then looks at him properly as she flirts, “I think you must be wearing my ex-boyfriend’s col—“

She stops. Jeff Sadecki is blinking at her with wide eyes, just as stunned as she is. 

She falters, fumbling, and he lets out a shocked laugh. “Shauna?”

“Jeff,” she acknowledges, swallowing thickly, and her nose makes the connection now. He’s still wearing the same cologne he’d worn in high school. It doesn’t smell as good as it had when she’d buried her face in his neck and inhaled Jackie’s perfume alongside it. 

The memory makes her body hot, and she feels ashamed that it does. It’s a reminder of the part of her still lodged deep inside; the part that had enjoyed it all, taken pleasure simply in being where Jackie was meant to be, taking something that was meant to belong to Jackie. 

It’s not the same, looking at him all these years later; he does nothing at all for her, actually, now that he’s not Jackie’s boyfriend. 

“Wow,” he says, getting over the shock of it, eyes flicking down to her cleavage. “Um… it’s been a minute.” He pauses, looks confused. “What are you doing here tonight? Aren’t you, uh… a, uh. Well, with Jackie now?”

She doesn’t want to answer that. She hasn’t decided what she wants. “I don’t think so,” she says, trying not to let her voice quiver. “Not anymore.” She feels like she needs another drink. The bar’s quieter than what she’s used to. More fit for cozy conversations like this.

“Oh. I… Sorry to hear that.” It’s obvious that he has no clue what to say. “People talk, so I thought…” He clears his throat. “Well, um, you’re a writer now, right? I’m working at my dad’s furniture store. Getting prepped to take over for him once he retires.”

“That’s awesome,” Shauna offers shortly. He takes another peek at her chest before he distracts himself with another sip of his beer, and—

It doesn’t just cross her mind, what she could do; it sits there heavy and apparent. Practically goading her. 

“Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t even look very different at twenty-seven than he had at eighteen, that night in Holmdel, walking away from a party with her in the woods. She’d felt so hurt by Jackie that night. How she’d ditched her. Left her to fend for herself. Forgotten her. 

Fuck you, she thinks again. I could do it and it would crush you. 

“Are you sticking around until Christmas?” he asks conversationally, like it makes any sense for them at all to talk, like they’d ever had anything in common other than Jackie.

Shauna rolls her eyes and finishes off her own drink. “Are you single?” she asks him. 

He looks taken aback. “Yeah. My girlfriend actually just broke up with—”

Shauna cuts him off. “Do you wanna fuck me?”

Now he’s gaping at her.

“For old time’s sake,” she adds casually, and it reminds her of Jackie smiling at her in her bed, teasing her about the same motel room she’d gone on to fucking abandon her to. Her heart aches and throbs so incredibly painfully. It’s all she can feel; all she’s been able to feel since she’d left the motel room. “Yes or no?”

He sputters, “I thought you were a—“

“I’m not; our ex-girlfriend who faked it with you is,” Shauna cuts him off. “Just answer the question, Jeff.”

He’s blushing to the roots of his hair now. “Yeah. Okay.”

Shauna slides off of her stool, satisfied. “Thanks.” He starts to stand, too, as she gathers her coat and looks toward the door, and she’s still so angry at Jackie, but it’s been reduced from a boil to a simmer now. She has control of it this time. Enough, at least, that she can sneer at Jeff and snip, “I didn’t say I’d let you. Sit down.”

The wide-eyed look he gives her would send Jackie into hysterics in another life, Shauna thinks: if they were just friends, if it were Randy Walsh or some other moron instead of Jeff, if they were still in high school. They’d go back to Jackie’s place and laugh and laugh about how stupid and one-track-minded boys are, and it would be a fond memory to help drown out the awful ones. 

Shauna doesn’t laugh, just leaves the bar alone with her mind and heart full of Jackie and her vision bleary with fresh tears, and drives back to the motel room buzzed before the clock’s even hit eleven-thirty yet.

She changes into her pajamas so that she won’t be tempted to go back out again, and then buries herself under the covers to stare at the time. There’s a part of her, as she starts to sober up, that’s still telling her that it’s not that late, that something could’ve happened, that Jackie could’ve just been delayed and that at any moment there will be a knock on the door, and Jackie will join her and hold her and touch her and they’ll find a way to make things right somehow. 

But her phone is on, and Jackie isn’t texting. Jackie isn’t calling. Jackie isn’t coming. 

Midnight passes, and Shauna cries quietly into her pillow, until her head hurts and the fabric is soaked, until her nausea gives way to an empty exhaustion and she can’t keep her swollen eyes open anymore.

She falls asleep alone.