Chapter Text
Jackie Taylor is about to spend three grueling months in Wiskayok, and she’s dreading every second of it.
After months of hinting, asking, then downright harassing, her mom had finally broken down her will enough to convince her to come home for break, for her last taste of a real summer before she finishes college and her life starts.
She hasn’t been home for longer than a weekend in three years - not since August of 1996, when she stacked the back of her Acura with boxes and drove the three hour stretch of highway to Rutgers where she promised herself she wouldn’t ever give more than two shits about anything - anyone - in that town again.
She’d given it everything - the best version of herself, cultivated and curated to be perfect for it; prom queen, captain of the varsity soccer team, a regular volunteer at the local food bank. Wiskayok’s sweetheart.
And all she’d gotten in return is the jagged scar where her heart used to be; when she’d ripped it out of her own chest, crying like a baby in a musty hotel room, thumbing through pages of a journal she shouldn’t have been reading in the first place.
So, yeah - she’s less than enthused about the idea of returning home to dodge ghosts, but it is what it is, and her parents pay her rent, so the least she can do is give a little to appease them.
Still, she can’t help but feel like she’s changed too much to ever really fit in there again. She’s weirdly comforted by that fact. That the guard rails are off, and there are no more safety nets. She has no choice but to forge ahead on her own.
Rutgers has been good for her in that way; has taught her a lot about who Jackie is, instead of forcing her into who she felt like she had to be. To be good, and right, and whole all on her own.
She has friends now - real friends, the kind that don’t just hang around because their proximity to her gives them some kind of status. She likes her roommates, Maeve and Emma, two quiet girls who cook her dinner sometimes and watch reruns of Friends with her. She works a decently easy job, waitressing at a pizza joint off campus where the drunk boys always give her good tips and her manager never gives her closing shifts.
She doesn’t play soccer anymore, and at first she’d been upset about it - had cried for days, thought losing her spot was just another way for God to punish her for something she didn’t even know she’d done wrong - but she’s found she actually doesn’t mind it.
She has time back in her days now.
And she has Sarah.
Her definitely-not-girlfriend - a blonde-haired, blue-eyed dream who she’s been hooking up with regularly for a few months, because another thing that Rutgers has taught her: she is undoubtedly, without question, a lesbian.
And it had explained a lot, when she finally realized it. Why kissing Jeff had always bored her more than watching paint dry, why she found herself rewatching the Silence of the Lambs alone in her room, even though it scared the shit out of her, just to see more of Jodie Foster, why she felt her heart beat a little faster, her breath quicken just a little, when Shauna looked at her sometimes. Why she always needed Shauna’s attention as much as she needed oxygen, why she acted a little desperate and crazy just to be regarded by Shauna at all.
In hindsight, she feels stupid for not realizing it sooner, but oh well.
She likes Rutgers, and she likes women, and she thinks she likes Sarah.
So, it’s fine - it’s not, like, complicated. Sarah gets her off, and it’s more than Jeff ever did, so it’s actually more than fine, really - it’s good, all things considered.
But Jackie can’t help that sometimes when Sarah’s hand is between her thighs, she closes her eyes tight and imagines it’s someone else’s fingers pressing eagerly inside her, imagines brown eyes and a soft smile that haunt her better than any ghost ever could. And when she comes, sometimes she bites her tongue to not say someone else’s name, too.
Shauna fucking Shipman. Still with her claws dug in deep after all this time.
She doesn’t have the energy to feel as pathetic about it as it probably is. She gave that up a long time ago. Back when she gave Shauna up, too.
Back when she read Shauna’s journal, the night before Nationals, Shauna asleep in their shared hotel bed, curled under Jackie’s favorite sweatshirt, back when -
I lost my virginity to Jeff Sadecki in the back of his parents’ car.
It can’t happen again.
Jackie doesn’t know, and she can never find out.
I won’t let him break up with her. He can’t do that to her.
We fucked again. So much for stopping.
Not an easy read.
So, really, she thinks she handled it all pretty well, because what is she supposed to do when she finds out her best friend slept with her boyfriend of four years for months behind her back?
She’s resolutely positive that any rational person would’ve gone postal about the whole thing, but she held it together, bit her tongue, maintained her composure - for the most part. Minus the whole ill-timed confrontation with Shauna on the field during the biggest game of their lives. The one where she shoved her to the turf and aired out all the things Shauna had written about her and Jeff doing together, feeling mean and rotten and vindictive.
The one that got her thrown off the pitch. The one that cost them their national championship.
She maintains that Shauna is at fault for that too, so she doesn’t know why her old teammates still blame her solely for the red card that had gotten her ejected, doesn’t understand why the only person from high school who will even speak to her these days is Natalie fucking Scatorccio.
But they had always chosen Shauna over her anyway. Everyone always did.
And, well -
It’s all fine.
Her grades are good, she’s on track to finish her degree a semester early, she has plenty of friends. Most importantly, she has a life in New Brunswick that doesn’t revolve around desperately pining for Shauna Shipman.
So fuck the team, and fuck Shauna, and fuck Wiskayok.
Three months at home can’t kill her when she’s riddled with nothing but indifference about it all.
She’s determined to not let this shit get to her, determined not to dirty her hands digging up the past, so she’ll spend her summer at home like her mom wants her to, and she’ll hang out with Natalie, and she’ll get a nice tan by the pool, and maybe she’ll invite Sarah to stay sometime so she can show her all of her new tan lines.
And she absolutely will not, under any circumstance, speak to Shauna Shipman.
///
She’d broken up with Jeff so long ago she could hardly remember anything about him.
Four years together, and she couldn’t definitively tell you the color of his eyes, his favorite movie, where he’d taken her on their first date. But one thing remained even now, burrowed under her skin no matter how much she dug and dug to get it out - all those things that had seemed so significant at the time gone, replaced with one singular thought.
Jeff with Shauna. Jeff fucking Shauna. Her Shauna.
They had shared something with each other that Jackie would never be a part of. Shauna had willingly given him something Jackie could never have. Then she had cut Jackie out - lied, and lied, and lied again.
It was the ultimate betrayal.
So maybe it was less about Jeff and more about Shauna. Because it was always about Shauna in some way for Jackie.
But that didn’t mean that she could stomach the thought of him, especially since the last thing she’d said to him was go fuck yourself before she slammed a door in his face.
And definitely not since she bumped into him at a party last spring at Rutgers when her tongue had been in some Phi Mu’s mouth, her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, and Jeff, like the idiot he is, had just sputtered out, “Jackie, woah, gay! I mean - hey,” and kept it moving.
Jeff - the same Jeff who had ripped Shauna clean from her hands, left her kicking and screaming like a toddler throwing a fit - knows about her proclivities for women. And it’s baffling, given their history, but Jackie doesn’t think he’s said anything to anyone about it because gossip travels like lightning back home and her mom hasn’t broken down in tears or scheduled an intervention with their pastor yet.
She assumes, for whatever reason (guilt, if she had to guess), he’s keeping her secret. But she doesn’t like that she feels like maybe she owes him kindness in exchange for his silence, doesn’t like the way her jealousy bleeds into possessiveness when she thinks about the fact that he has felt Shauna come around him and Jackie hasn’t so much as heard her voice in three years, so yeah - she doesn’t want to see him.
Wiskayok is big enough that she should be able to avoid him entirely if she tries hard enough.
Except, naturally, he’s the first person from the past who she runs into, in the produce aisle at Wegmans on her fifth morning in town.
“Shit,” she huffs, annoyed, backing up the cart from where she had just run it directly into him while rounding the corner. “Sorry.”
Jeff smiles that megawatt smile she knows is supposed to charm her, “no problem, Jackie.”
She nods, lips pulled together tightly in a polite smile, and that should be the end of their interaction, but Jeff doesn’t move.
She knows whatever words are about to come out of his mouth are going to piss her off, and -
“You look good,” he says. “Great, even.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Come on, Jeff. Let’s not do this.”
“Shit, I’m fucking this up.” He rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. “What I mean is it’s nice to see you. And- uh, I’m sorry again for all the shit that happened senior year. I didn’t mean to, like, ruin your whole deal with Shauna. And I still feel bad about it,”
She curls her hands tighter and tighter around the handle of the shopping cart until her knuckles are white. She envisions ramming the cart back into Jeff over and over again.
Instead, she takes a steadying breath and soothes that bitter part of her that wants to lash out. She’s an adult, and she’s more than capable of handling this like an adult.
“Well, I’m really glad you feel bad about it,” she says, still forcing that same overly-polite smile. “But it was forever ago, and I’ve been over it. So I hope that clears your conscience or whatever you were trying to do here.”
“Jackie,” Jeff tries again, pleading. “I’m sorry. We were together for four years, okay? I know it got under your skin. You wouldn’t have acted the way you did if it didn’t-”
“It didn’t get ‘under my skin’, Jeff.” She narrows her eyes, spitting his own words back at him. “My best friend fucked my boyfriend. Multiple times, on multiple occasions. You were there, so you should know the exact number, actually-”
“Jackie-”
“It didn’t get under my skin. It literally ruined my life, but you know what? Lives can be rebuilt, and mine is, so it’s fine. Seriously. You should do us both a favor and never mention it again,”
He’s still rubbing the back of his neck when she looks up at him, flashing her teeth like she’s totally indifferent, like her heart isn’t threatening to jump out of her throat at the mere thought of him and Shauna.
“Okay, yeah. Sure,” he says, nodding dumbly. Jackie waits for whatever is coming next. “Look - if you’re really over it, you should come to my party on Friday. Well, actually it’s Randy’s party, but I’m co-hosting and supplying the weed, and there will be plenty of booze,”
He lowers his voice then, looking like trouble personified, and Jackie once again prepares herself for him to say something that pisses her off.
He waggles his eyebrows, “and plenty of girls.”
Plenty of girls.
She can’t quite believe the words coming out of the mouth of the first boy who ever touched her boobs, so she stands there, mouth agape, having visions of the cart hitting him again, because he’s trying to set her up, and -
“It’ll be chill. No drama. And no Shauna, I promise,” he finishes, finally shutting up, and she has to admit that the ‘no Shauna’ of it all isn’t the only thing that’s selling her on it.
She feels like she’s going to suffocate if she stays in her house any longer and it hasn’t even been a week.
“Yeah, okay,” Jackie shrugs. “I’ll think about it.”
“Cool,” Jeff says, smiling. “I hope I see you then.”
She nods, grateful when he lets her maneuver around him, grateful that he doesn’t hold her up anymore as she walks down the aisle further until she’s almost at the end, taking deep, steadying breaths to calm the shaking of her hands.
“Jackie, one more thing,” he calls out from behind her, and when she turns to face him, she’s surprised by the sincerity in his eyes. “You know Shauna ended it after you found out. She told me she never wanted to see me again, and that if she had to choose between me and you, it would always be you.”
Her knees nearly buckle.
She suddenly feels like hyperventilating, and it’s so fucking typical of her - losing all her sense of self, all that carefully calculated composure the second that Shauna gets involved.
She figures it must be written all over her face, how this bit of information she never wanted to know cripples her, because in another moment of kindness, Jeff spares her from having to hear anything else about it.
“Just wanted you to know.” He offers her a smile, shrugs like it’s nothing. “See you Friday.”
She watches him walk away like he didn’t just pull the rug out from under her. Her chest heaves as she stands there dumbfounded, sorting through more of Shauna’s lies.
///
She spends nearly as much time in her room as she does by the pool for the next three days, smoking joints out of her open bedroom window like some edgy teenager, biding her time until Friday - until she has to make the choice between the Jackie she’s become, audacious and unashamed, and the Jackie that she used to be, performative and polished and bitter by the end of it.
She’s walking a fine line, teetering dangerously on the edge of slipping back into old habits, and she fucking knew it was a horrible idea to spend her summer here.
The only thing she can seem to do is wonder about Shauna.
Everything in this godforsaken town reminds Jackie of her, fills her with questions she hasn’t let herself think about in years. Like how has Shauna been? Is she back in Jersey for break too? Does she like it at Brown? Is it everything she ever dreamed of?
Did Shauna fill the hole in her life that Jackie once occupied - the way Jackie herself hasn’t quite been able to?
Does Shauna miss her the way Jackie misses her sometimes, like a phantom limb that still aches long after it’s gone?
So much for indifference.
Every time she goes out, she feels the need to be hyper-vigilant, on guard, like at any moment, Shauna could jump out at her like the boogeyman and drag her by her ankles back down the rabbit hole.
Her paranoia is starting to make her feel a little crazy. Which means that going to Randy and Jeff’s party is probably a recipe for disaster.
She still isn’t fully convinced she’s brave enough to face any of it, but Natalie is going, and she says Lottie will be there, and maybe even Tai and Van, too; swears that no one is mad at her anymore, that everyone has moved on, that it will be good for her to go and clear the air.
Start over.
And if there’s one thing she has grown to love, it’s a clean slate.
She’s torn down the middle all the way until Friday morning, when she’s exhausted from dodging her parents questions, when her mom starts asking over breakfast if she plans on seeing Jeff while she’s home, if she’s met any new boys at school, and worst of all, if she’s talked to Shauna yet.
The mention of her name has Jackie slamming her fork down onto the table so hard she’s sure there will be an indentation in the fine wood under the placemat.
She doesn’t need any help thinking about Shauna at this point. Especially not from her mother who will never understand just how badly the whole thing hurt her. Because Jackie will never be able to tell her - will never be able to say out loud to her that none of it was ever about some stupid boy.
Her mother will never know just how many nights she spent heartbroken for all the wrong reasons. How she spent months untangling the knots Shauna had twisted her up in.
So getting out of her house, getting drunk on cheap liquor, and forgetting for a while actually sounds like the cure-all for her problems. She can make-believe for a while that things are normal.
She decides that she’ll go to the party after all, and she’ll play nice with her ex-teammates, and she’ll walk herself back home when she’s inevitably too drunk to drive.
No Shauna. There will be no Shauna.
What’s the worst that could happen?
///
She parks down the street from Randy’s house, locking her car door behind her in the event that she actually does end up walking home, and she’s surprised by the number of cars lining the block.
She had forgotten too easily in the sea of thirty thousand at school that Wiskayok is one of those everyone-knows-everyone kind of towns.
Half-drunken bodies litter the front yard when she approaches, and she’s relieved to find that she doesn’t recognize many of them; even more relieved when no one turns to stare, stops in their tracks like deer in headlights, when she steps over the threshold of the front door and into the living room.
Music pulses from speakers somewhere near her, and she scans the room, noting a keg by the couch, solo cups stacked upside down on its tap, a cloud of smoke puffing from the two boys who stand next to it passing a joint between them.
Natalie is here somewhere; probably, she thinks, wherever the harder stuff is. Natalie has always been a magnet like that - for the things that can easily go too far.
She’s on her way into the kitchen, pushing through a group of underclassmen she vaguely remembers, trying to recall their names, when -
“Jacqueline Taylor, as I live and breathe.”
At the sound of the too-familiar voice, she turns quickly on her heels to stare right into the face of Lottie Matthews.
She hasn’t changed at all in the years it’s been since Jackie has seen her, and Jackie notes the way her eyes still crinkle at the corners when she grins at her.
“Oh,” Jackie forces a smile, feeling out of place and a little awkward. “Hi.”
“Back from the dead, I see.” Lottie says, still grinning. “You look good for a ghost,”
She knows it isn’t an insult, but she feels starkly underdressed compared to Lottie, sporting a floral sundress and looking like she walked in straight off the runway. It makes her feel weirdly insecure for the first time in a long time.
Jackie looks down at herself, at her denim shorts, her cropped butterfly t-shirt, at the flannel that hangs from her hips, tied in a knot at her waist. The soles of her shoes stick to the floor when she shifts nervously.
“Come on,” Lottie loops an arm around hers, says simply, “we’re in the kitchen doing shots. Everyone’s excited to see you.”
She barely has time to wonder who ‘everyone’ is before she’s being dragged further into the house, through smoke and sweat, and into the dimly lit kitchen.
She’s greeted first by a loud chorus of hellos, then by a shot glass filled to its brim with some unidentified liquor being shoved into her open hands.
It’s overwhelming. Too much too quickly.
She blinks rapidly, getting her bearings, taking it all in.
Natalie, Van, Jeff - is that Travis Martinez, too? - and a slender girl Jackie is sure she’s never seen before all stand in a circle around the kitchen island - Jeff with a bottle of tequila in his hand pouring down a line of empty glasses, and Tai is in front of her, the one who handed off the shot, giving one to Lottie who still hasn’t let go of her arm.
It feels familiar. Exactly like high school, and she tries harder than she should not to think about the one thing that’s missing.
“Jackie,” Tai says simply, and her hair has grown longer, bangs held out of her face by a headband, and the pendant on her necklace matches the charm on the bracelet on Van’s wrist, and oh -
So, that’s still a thing. Good for them.
Jackie tries not to notice the way her chest tightens with envy.
Taissa smiles at her then, and she’s relieved when she detects no malice - smiles back, finding it easier now, faking it less.
“Hey, Tai,” she holds up the shot between them. “Thanks.”
“Jackie,” Natalie says from behind Tai, hip cocked back against the counter, waving like a maniac. “Come over here, you little bitch.”
She turns to Lottie who remains at her side. Still holding up the shot, still grinning, she asks, “shall we?”
Lottie glances at Tai, sharing some knowing look between them - a secret that Jackie isn’t in on - before she clinks her glass against the one in Jackie’s hand, liquor splashing over the rim.
“Cheers, cap.”
When she throws the shot back, she revels in the way it burns going down.
///
Later, when she’s straddling the line between tipsy and outright drunk, her body buzzing warmly, she finds herself back in the living room, dancing to some Top 40 that she doesn’t recognize, her arms wound around the waist of the slender girl from the kitchen whose name she can’t remember.
All she knows is that she came in with Tai and Van for the weekend from NYU - meaning she has no connection to anyone else here, doesn’t know about her meltdown in the championship game, or her cheating boyfriend, or Shauna Shipman.
And that’s enough for her.
“You’re so pretty,” the girl mumbles, and when Jackie looks into her eyes, they remind her so much of -
She feels nauseous, and it isn’t because of the liquor.
“So are you,” she says finally, and she means it - she’s a looker: dark hair, dark eyes, delicate features, and damn near drooling over her.
So, she should be into this.
In theory, she is.
But there’s something in the air in Wiskayok, and being surrounded by all of her old friends is making her acutely aware of the one who’s missing, and she just -
Can’t do this.
“I need to get some air,” she blurts, stepping back. “I’ll be back.”
She doesn’t chance a glance behind her when she bolts for the front door, barreling down the empty hallway, and she’s almost outside, lungs gasping for air, when she collides directly into a body in front of her, stopping her dead in her tracks.
She stumbles backwards, but a hand wraps around her forearm, steadying her. And it’s like her body recognizes it before her brain does, because her arms raise with gooseflesh under the touch, and her breathing is growing increasingly uneven.
She stops breathing all together as she looks up from the floor and into the eyes of Shauna Shipman, drop-dead gorgeous in a denim skirt and a low-cut, black blouse, eyes wide like she’s seen a ghost.
Shauna lets go of her immediately, flexing her palm down at her side like touching Jackie burned her somehow.
“Shipman,” Jackie breathes out, blood rushing in her ears, whooshing steadily over the sound of the music.
No Shauna.
They had all promised her no Shauna tonight.
So, why the fuck is Shauna standing in front of her, looking over Jackie’s head like she’s scanning for a posse?
“Shipman,” she says again, louder this time, not sure what she’s even looking for, what she’s planning to say after.
And when Shauna cuts her eyes back to her, she thinks she may die right there.
If looks could fucking kill.
“No one here following you around like a puppy?” Shauna asks, voice dripping with hostility. “Three years, and you haven’t found anyone else to lead around on your leash?”
It’s the first thing Shauna has said to her in years, and it’s mean.
It sets her off like a rocket.
She’s back on the turf in Seattle in her mind.
“Oh, fuck you, Shauna,” Jackie grits. “You should thank me. You wouldn’t have even had a personality if you didn’t have me to give it to you.”
“Is that what you think?” Shauna scoffs, bitter, arms crossed. “That I wanted to… be like you? You’re a fucking husk, Jackie. A half-person, the last time I checked.”
Her head spins with all the things she could say, but she just ends up sputtering pathetically, “you wanted to be like me badly enough to fuck my boyfriend.”
It’s weak, but it lands all the same. Shauna recoils a bit, inhaling sharply, but she doesn’t back down. After all these years, it seems she’s grown a spine.
“I didn’t fuck him to fulfill some fantasy of being like perfect little Jackie Taylor,” Shauna bites back. “But it’s nice to know you’re at least consistent with your narcissism.”
Her stomach flips at the insult, and she crosses her arms over her chest to mirror Shauna’s standoffish position across from her, feels something hanging heavy and thick in the space that separates them.
And there it is, rearing its ugly head: that thing she has never had with anyone else.
It shouldn’t surprise her, how easily they’re able to slip back into it.
It has always been like this with them - the scratching, the biting, the desperate clawing at each other fanning the flames of whatever it is that simmers between them. Then the tenderness of years of friendship, the delicacy of so much unspoken snuffing it out.
It’s a game, like it always is, and Jackie is fucking exhilarated to play.
Suddenly, she’s seventeen again. Except now, it’s different, because Jackie knows who she is - knows what she wants. And she isn’t afraid to say it, to show it.
Not anymore.
She’s eradicated the cowardice from her bones like a sickness.
She’d vowed to purge it, the same way she’d purged Shauna from her system the summer before she left Wiskayok - with vodka, and by losing her virginity to Chris from the baseball team, clumsy and unfulfilling, by burning all the pictures of her and Shauna she’d stuffed into a shoebox under the furthest corner of her bed.
And it had worked. At least, a little bit.
Because here she stands in front of Shauna, and for the first time in her life, she doesn’t have the urge to drop to her knees, doesn’t need to drag her heart across miles of broken glass so Shauna knows she bleeds only for her.
She cocks her head to the side, a challenge when she asks, “so why did you fuck him then? Really, I’d love to know.”
Shauna is silent and completely still, like she’s being held in place by the weight of her question. The weight of the answer that Jackie knows Shauna will never give her. The weight of all the things that have come to pass between them.
She can see her calculating, weighing out which words will hurt her the most, deciding which punches to throw and how hard to throw them.
Her body is nearly buzzing with anticipation.
Shauna drops her arms, balling her fists up at her sides, and Jackie wonders if she hallucinates the way she looks at her mouth.
“Because I wanted to.” Shauna says, the easy answer. Like it should be obvious to Jackie.
But it’s a lie, and Jackie knows it; can tell by the way Shauna won’t quite look her in the eyes when she says it.
For some reason, it pisses her off more, her anger like a knife through whatever is left of the softness that will always have a home inside her heart for Shauna. The sting of her continued dishonesty seeps under Jackie’s skin, ripping open old wounds.
“Okay,” her voice shakes. “Let me know when you’re ready to be honest, Shauna.”
She shoves past her, half-stomping, bumping hard into her shoulder, and she hates that she’s disappointed when she pushes open the front door and Shauna makes no moves to stop her.
///
She’s definitely tipsy enough that she shouldn’t be driving, but she’s also immensely regretting walking the three mile stretch home in Converse at two in the morning; so, she guesses, she’ll live and learn from this one.
She keeps replaying her argument with Shauna over and over again in her head. The stunned look on her face when she realized it was Jackie she’d run head first into. The way her skirt clung to her hips just right, narrower now than they’d been the last time she’d seen her. The lightened streaks in her hair, no doubt bleached from hours spent in the sun, the same way it got every summer for as long as Jackie could remember.
The way she’d stood unwavering, giving it back to Jackie just as good as she was getting it.
She’d changed so much, became someone Jackie didn’t even know while she was still stuck mourning the person Shauna had once been.
The girl who used to braid her hair on the locker room floor before soccer games, who made mixtapes with songs she knew Jackie would like, even if Shauna didn’t like them herself, just to keep in her car.
The girl who used to fall asleep breathing in time with Jackie’s own inhales and exhales.
The girl who held her better than any boy ever could, got her pulse quickening and her head spinning with as little as a look.
The girl who had completely eroded Jackie’s nuclear idea of what her life would someday look like, who had twisted and pulled and rearranged until the only thing she was sure of was Shauna.
Like the time they’d snuck a rental for Friday the 13th on her parents account at Blockbuster, and Jackie could only half-watch it while clinging to Shauna’s arm, her face buried in her shoulder, and Shauna had turned her head just in time to catch Jackie’s lips between her own, kissing her clumsily before she pulled away, acting like it never happened.
Like it didn’t change everything for Jackie, for better or worse.
But that girl was the same one who had pulled apart her life piece by piece like meat from a bone, and it was the same one who stood in front of her in Randy’s hallway a half an hour ago, telling her she wanted Jeff.
She’s finding it very difficult to reconcile with that fact.
It doesn’t help that her anger has fizzled into something entirely different the further she gets from Randy’s.
Something that feels a lot like longing.
She misses her. Underneath all the other feelings - under the anger and the grief and the heartache - the thing that remains true, even after all this time, is that she truly, deeply, wholeheartedly misses her best friend.
She’s not sure if that makes her deranged or pitiful.
The toes of her shoes scuff against the concrete sidewalk with each step, taking her further away, closer to home, when all she wants to do is turn back around and have it out with her again.
It’s really fucking confusing, and honestly way too complicated to try to pick apart while she’s still under the influence of the tequila shots Natalie kept shoving into her hands, when she still feels the racing of her pulse when she thinks about the way Shauna’s eyes had dropped to her mouth.
Fuck, she had looked so good - like she’d walked straight out of Jackie’s dreams.
She feels proud of herself for walking away.
Because Shauna could’ve swallowed her whole right there and it wouldn’t have been enough.
Headlights cut up the street, and it should make her nervous, someone driving behind her so late, but the small part of her that has always been a little unhinged thinks that if she disappears, then Shauna will be the one who has to live her life haunted.
Karmic retribution.
But the rational part of her brain, the same part that must have convinced her to leave Shauna standing in that hallway, screams at her to walk faster when the car rolls slowly to a stop beside her, when she hears a window being rolled down.
“What the fuck are you doing? It’s two in the morning.”
Of course it’s Shauna and not some maniacal kidnapper.
Who else would it be?
She doesn’t even bother looking over at her, just continues trudging down the sidewalk, doing her best to seem unfazed.
“I’m walking home.”
Shauna scoffs in disbelief.
Jackie cuts her eyes over to her then, narrowing them, and Shauna has put her hair up into a bun on the top of her head, exposing the delicious expanse of her neck, and -
“No, you’re not,” she says, shaking her head. “You’re gonna end up on a milk carton. Get in,”
As soon as the words leave Shauna’s mouth, Jackie has to replay it in her mind to make sure she heard it correctly.
Get in. Shauna’s car.
Shauna wants her to get in her car.
“Um,” she hums. “Yeah. No, thanks.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jackie. It’s two a.m., and you’re a beautiful girl walking alone at night. I know you’ve seen Dateline,” Shauna leans across the console and throws open the passenger door. “So get in the fucking car.”
Her brain short circuits. Beautiful girl. Shauna wants her to get in her car because she’s a beautiful girl.
Jackie is starting to think that she may have fallen at some point on her walk and hit her head - ended up in some alternate version of reality, or maybe she’s unconscious in the back of an ambulance right now because there’s no way this is actually happening.
Shauna is looking at her expectantly, eyes wide like a doe’s, and Jackie looks between Shauna’s open car door and the stretch of road ahead of her.
“Please, Jax,” Shauna frowns, eyebrows worried together the way she does when she’s anxious.
It occurs to her then that some part of Shauna must actually care, which excites her more than it should, makes her feel a little silly and juvenile; because they were friends for nearly their whole lives, so obviously Shauna cares for her physical wellbeing.
But maybe it’s more than that too.
Jackie thinks back to the days after Nationals when Shauna had called, and called, and called, when she’d shown up on her doorstep with eyes bloodshot and swollen from crying and her parents had turned her away.
She thinks about what Jeff told her in the grocery store, that Shauna would always choose her.
She can’t help but wonder what would’ve become of them if she would’ve pushed her pride aside and answered the goddamn phone. If she had told her the truth - that she couldn’t care less about Jeff, that it was her - that she’d been having these feelings for a while that she doesn’t know how to name.
Would they still be strangers now? Would she still start every day feeling bitter, with a rotten taste in her mouth?
She isn’t looking for reconciliation, but she’s also not really sure what she’s doing when she slides into Shauna’s passenger seat and closes the door.
She looks over at her, and Shauna is already looking back at her, eyeing her carefully, and it’s the first time they’ve been truly alone in years.
The thought gives her chills even though it’s seventy degrees outside.
So, yeah - maybe it isn’t reconciliation that she’s looking for, but it is something. Retribution, maybe - or a connection, or something that makes her feel half the way Shauna used to.
“Thanks,” she says, a little breathless.
Shauna nods, still watching her in that careful way, like if she says the wrong thing, Jackie may very well fling herself out of the moving vehicle.
“Put on your seatbelt.” Shauna directs, and Jackie listens as the car begins to coast down the empty street.
The tape deck plays some angsty No Doubt song that Jackie knows well enough to hum along to, and it almost makes her laugh, how normal this could feel if she closed her eyes and pretended.
She must be smiling, because Shauna asks, “what’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “Just getting deja-vu.”
Shauna giggles at that, makes Jackie giggle, too; and it feels so good, the lightness in her chest. To feel anything other than resentment for the girl driving her home.
“So…” Shauna drawls. “Who was the girl? The one you were dancing with.”
Jackie startles at the question.
“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “She goes to school with Tai and Van.”
Shauna hums in acknowledgement, fingers tapping against the steering wheel.
“Is that, like, what you’re into now? Something you’re trying out because the attention dried up?”
She chooses to ignore the dig, and she knows exactly what Shauna means when she asks, but she wants to hear her say it anyway. “Is what what I’m into?”
“Girls.” Shauna quips back.
“Oh,” Jackie is nonchalant, playing coy. “Yeah. It’s sort of all I’m into.”
Shauna pales next to her.
“Right. Okay.”
She blames the heat in her cheeks on the alcohol. “I don’t need your judgement, Shauna.”
“I’m not judging you, Jackie.”
She rolls her eyes. “Fine.”
“Fine.” Shauna huffs.
The silence that follows stretches on endlessly, and Jackie feels like she might lose her mind, might actually open the door and throw herself out of the car, until Shauna clears her throat.
“So how long have you known?” She taps those long, perfectly manicured fingers on the wheel again. “That you’re into girls?”
“I don’t know,” Jackie sighs. “A while, I guess.”
“A while?” Shauna’s voice raises in disbelief. “Like, since high school?”
Jackie is getting increasingly annoyed, hating the attention on her, so different from how she used to be - when all she wanted was a little more of it, to push it a little farther, to see how much Shauna was willing to dig.
“I guess so, Shipman,” she says finally. “What’s with the third degree?”
“But, Jeff-”
“There’s only one of us in this car who’s fucked Jeff, and we both know it isn’t me.”
With an eye roll and sinking shoulders, Shauna mumbles like she’s suddenly embarrassed, “I’m just wondering why you never told me.”
“Kind of hypocritical, don’t you think?” Jackie quirks an eyebrow, angling her body to face Shauna over the console. “We both kept things from each other. So, I don’t know, everyone has secrets. And I guess I wasn’t really sure, not until-”
She cuts herself off, shifting uncomfortably. Not until you is what she wants to say.
Shauna presses. “Until what?”
“Until college,” she recovers. “When I actually started… experimenting.”
She isn’t sure why they’re even talking about it, why they’re masquerading as normal, or why Shauna even cares.
“Right. Okay.” Shauna says again.
It’s quiet for so long after that Jackie starts to wonder if she really is trapped in some fever dream, if this is purgatory and she’s doomed to sit in such close proximity to Shauna, a little tipsy, a little out of her mind, for eternity.
It isn’t until they pull into Jackie’s neighborhood that Shauna speaks again.
“I never got the chance to-”
“Stop.” Jackie snaps, a knee-jerk reaction. “Whatever you’re about to say to ruin this temporary truce is not worth it, I promise.”
“Jackie,” Shauna tries.
“Just stop.” She cuts her off, desperate, a single thread the only thing holding her together. “We both know it doesn’t change anything, so please. Stop.”
For a second, she thinks Shauna may actually listen.
She should know better.
She’s completely caught off guard when Shauna huffs, frustration etched in those beautiful features, and swerves abruptly over to the curb to throw the car in park, sending Jackie lurching forward and straining against the seatbelt.
“What-”
“No,” Shauna turns the car off. “No, you’ve done plenty of talking. It’s my turn.”
“I don’t care-”
“Just shut the fuck up!” Shauna groans, half-yelling. “Holy shit, just shut up for one second. Not everything gets to be on your terms.”
She sits back, pursing her lips together tightly. If Shauna wants her quiet, fine - it makes no difference to her. Jackie can tune her out just as well as she can talk over her.
Except the second Shauna starts talking, that all goes out the window.
“I’m sorry, okay? About Jeff and the way I acted after, doubling down. You were-” Shauna pauses momentarily to choose her words carefully. “You were a good friend more than you were a bad one, and I know I fucked you over.”
She stares out the window, blinking back tears.
She has thought of this so many times - about all the things she would say to Shauna to really let her have it, about what Shauna would say to her, how she could get the upper hand, get her to grovel and beg.
None of those scenarios ever included the situation they seem to have found themselves in now.
They’re parked under the sole part of her street that isn’t lit up by streetlights, and Jackie can hardly make out the shapes of the trees hanging over them, but she continues to stare like it’s the most interesting sight she’s ever seen.
Because she can’t look at Shauna. Not right now. Not when she’s this raw and open for her, not when Shauna is laying herself bare like this.
Maybe she’s more of a coward than she thought. Maybe she’s doomed to be this way forever.
“From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry about it. I wanted to tell you that back then, but I didn’t want to have to think too hard about why it even happened in the first place.”
At that, Jackie chuckles, but it sounds empty even to her own ears.
She turns to face her then, and Shauna’s face is being lit up just barely by one of the dashboard lights. Jackie takes in the sight of her, committing it to memory for when this blows up in her face.
“Because you wanted him, right? That’s why it happened?” Her voice shakes, as unsteady as she feels. “That’s what you said an hour ago.”
Shauna, who apparently had so much to say, is suddenly quiet again, and Jackie thinks she’s going to come back with something harsh, something to hurt her.
She watches stunned as Shauna just shakes her head.
“No?” Jackie asks, pushing.
Shauna gives her head another shake.
“Then what the fuck was worth imploding thirteen years of friendship for, Shauna? I mean, maybe I could understand if you were in love with him, maybe then it would make sense to me.” She’s rambling now, unable to stop the words from flowing out of her mouth like a runaway train. “But you weren’t in love with him, were you?”
Shauna looks down at her hands in her lap like she’s ashamed, and all it does is fuel Jackie - pushes her harder, farther across that line that she loves to leap across then tiptoe back to.
“No, Shauna, you weren’t in love with him,” she answers for her, spitting out each word like they’re venomous. “Wanna know how I know? Because I read about it in your fucking journal.”
She reaches for the handle of the car door. “Thanks for the ride. I can walk from here.”
By the time she finishes her sentence, Shauna has already grabbed firmly onto Jackie’s wrist, pulling, holding the door closed, grabbing her to the point where her nails bite into the underside of Jackie’s palm.
They’re so close that she can smell Shauna’s perfume, something warm and vanilla - so close that even in the dark, she can see the freckles dusting Shauna’s nose, the fluttering of her eyelashes as her gaze drops down to Jackie’s mouth again.
She makes no move to retreat from Jackie’s proximity. “Don’t.”
She wonders if there’s such a thing as late onset drunkenness, because her head is suddenly spinning, heart hammering wildly in her chest, and her palms itch with how badly she wants to reach out and touch her.
She is steadily losing control of this entire situation, if she ever had any control to begin with. That’s their thing - Jackie disillusions herself into believing she has any say in anything that has to do with Shauna, all while Shauna holds a knife behind her back and coaxes her closer and closer, ready for the kill.
It’s delicious.
“Let me out of the car,” she whispers, weakly pushing against Shauna’s hand, licking her lips.
She knows where this could go if they let it - where all this tension and unbridled emotion can take them - but this is Shauna, so it’s likely that Jackie is the only one feeling this heat settling low in her belly, the only one measuring the space between their mouths in her head, the only one aware of the way Shauna’s chest is brushing against her own with every inhale.
“No.”
“Then what are you gonna do, Shipman?” She challenges. She’s nearly aching with how badly she wants something - anything - to happen.
“Don’t fucking push me, Jackie,” Shauna warns, squeezing her wrist harder. The sting of it has Jackie rubbing her thighs together.
“You’re too chickenshit, just like you always were-”
Her sentence is cut short when Shauna presses their mouths together in a bruising kiss, and whatever control Jackie had been desperately clinging to is already long gone.
In an instant, her free hand is wrapping around the back of Shauna’s neck, holding her in place as she pushes her tongue into her open mouth.
It’s so much better than she imagined.
She’s kissing Shauna Shipman, hot and messy, and it’s simultaneously the best and worst thing she’s ever done.
Because she’ll never be able to get over this now.
Shauna’s teeth pull at her bottom lip, her tongue darting out to soothe the bite, and she nearly moans when she tastes something metallic on Shauna’s tongue, realizing it’s her own blood.
She still isn’t quite sure if this is really happening, and she barely has time to register what’s happening before Shauna is climbing over the cupholders, throwing a leg over Jackie’s hips to straddle her in the seat.
“I don’t care about Jeff,” Shauna whispers against her mouth, her voice nearly gone. “He doesn’t matter.”
She pulls Shauna’s hair loose from its bun, fingers weaving into the waves as they cascade down her shoulders. She gives a harsh tug, tilting Shauna’s head back so she can get her mouth on her neck, and she’s so wet already that she can feel the press of damp satin on her bare thighs from where Shauna’s skirt is riding up.
“Just shut up,” she trails wet kisses down the expanse of Shauna’s delicate neck, stopping momentarily to ghost her lips just over her pulse point - to feel it hammering there, to remind herself that this is real, and this happening, and Shauna had been the one to kick it all of.
Shauna wants this, too.
“Oh, my god,” Shauna whimpers, leaning back to watch as Jackie pulls down the low neckline of her blouse to expose her bare breasts, licking a path between the valley of them, sucking hard on the flesh next to her nipple until she’s certain it will leave a bruise. “Fuck, Jax.”
She hums lowly, sliding one arm around Shauna’s waist as she takes a nipple between her lips, her tongue wet and hot, and she feels damn near delirious when Shauna pushes her chest further into her mouth.
“Jackie,” Shauna’s voice, dripping in arousal, is unlike anything Jackie has ever heard. And the sight of her above her, head thrown back, nails dragging through Jackie’s hair while she sucks, and licks, and nips at her breasts, hips starting up a steady rocking rhythm against her lap -
She doesn’t have words to describe how it makes her feel.
All she knows is that life does come full circle, one way or another - because she’s pretty sure she’s about to fuck Shauna Shipman right here in her car.
She really doesn’t blame Jeff.
“Jackie,” Shauna says, but this time, she cups Jackie’s face in her palms and pulls her up to kiss her again, demanding and sloppy and so fucking hot.
She can feel her own wetness now, slick between her thighs, sliding against her.
She moans directly into Shauna’s mouth.
This is a different kind of hunger - one like she’s never experienced before. And it’s fitting, considering it’s Shauna. This has been years in the making, the culmination of all of Jackie’s pining, and wishing, and hoping that somehow, someday, they will end up here. Years spent playing their game - the back and forth, give and take.
She wants to devour her, debauch her, ruin her, possess her. She wants to hold all of her in the palm of her hands, choose whether to crush her or caress her.
“I want you to fuck me,” Shauna is breathless, and Jackie is so far gone, she would do anything Shauna asked.
She drops her hands down, fingers pushing Shauna’s skirt all the way up over her hips before they curl in the waistband of her underwear and tug down, until there’s enough space for her hand to slide between them.
She feels completely and totally out of her mind.
She revels in the heady sense of power she gets from having Shauna so desperate and needy above her. “Is this what you want?”
Her fingertips ghost over Shauna’s clit, giving her slow, tight circles - the way Jackie likes to touch herself when she wants to drag it out, make it last.
Shauna makes the breathiest noise.
“Please,” she begs, arms wrapped around Jackie’s shoulders, rutting against the fingers that are slipping against her. “Please, fuck me.”
She uses her free hand to tug on the soft fabric of Shauna’s shirt, and she must get the hint because she pulls it up over her head and tosses it into the backseat carelessly.
In even her most depraved fantasies, she never expected Shauna to be so shameless; so bold.
She doesn’t let herself think about any other lovers who got her to this point, molded her into the girl in her lap oozing sex and confidence.
Shauna’s palm presses to the fogged up window glass, hips lifting eagerly.
Anyone could see them if they got close enough to the car - could see Shauna, nearly naked in her lap with Jackie’s hand between her legs, still playing at her clit, working her up for real now.
The thought of it makes her feel even hotter, wild with it, and she lets out a low moan at the sight of her fingers coming away wet from between Shauna’s parted thighs.
She flattens her palm against Shauna’s bare stomach, scratching her nails over the hard plane of her abdomen as she pushes her back a bit, really drinking her in, giving special attention to the way her breasts bob with each breath, the way her mouth is kissed swollen and red.
The way she looks down at her with heavy lidded eyes, watches as Jackie squeezes her own thighs together, desperate for any kind of friction; watches as she pulls slick fingers into her mouth and sucks the taste of Shauna clean off them, moaning around the digits.
She will never get the taste of Shauna out of her head.
Shauna gasps above her, hips bucking, and Jackie works her tongue around her own fingers once more before pushing them back between Shauna’s legs, slipping two inside of her.
Shauna is so tight and hot around her fingers, Jackie thinks she could come just from fucking her like this.
Shauna leans forward again until her hands are on the headrest on either side of Jackie’s head, moans oh, my god.
She watches wide-eyed as Shauna’s hips begin to roll against her fingers; the two fucking up into her, curling, pressing deeper, and -
“So good,” they both say at the same time, and then they’re smiling at each other, and Jackie feels like she might pass out.
Shauna Shipman, ex-best-friend and boyfriend-stealer-extraordinaire, is riding her fingers, her breath hot against Jackie’s ear, a whimpering mess, repeating like a mantra so good, feels so good, Jax - fuck, fuck fuck - over and over.
“Gonna come,” Shauna gasps out, grinding her hips harder against Jackie’s palm until Jackie gets her thumb on her clit, fingers still pressing inside her. Then Shauna is kissing her, nothing but teeth and tongue, and she’s coming against her hand, Jackie’s name on her lips.
It’s the most incredible thing Jackie has ever seen, like Saint Peter has opened the gates of Heaven for her and invited her in.
And when Shauna slips a hand between them, all urgency and ferality, flicks open the button of her denim shorts, slides her hand into her soaked underwear and presses her fingers against her, she comes almost immediately.
Afterwards, they kiss lazily, and Jackie isn’t sure how long it lasts, but the languid strokes of Shauna’s mouth nearly have her in a trance by the time she’s finished.
She nearly melts at the way Shauna is looking at her when she pulls away, with her cheeks flushed the prettiest shade of pink and the smallest, softest smile on her lips.
It’s all too much.
She’s riding a high that she’s starting to come down from, and she feels herself plummeting back towards the earth at record speed.
“That was-”
“I should go.” Jackie blurts out, cutting Shauna off abruptly.
She just had the hottest sex of her life, with Shauna of all people, who she’s spent so much time pining for, so she should be happy - elated, even - but instead, she’s starting to panic.
She feels too hot, too sensitive, like whatever armor she’s spent the last three years building around herself has deteriorated right in front of her eyes. Like Shauna has cracked open her ribcage and pulled out her heart with nothing but her teeth.
She’s set herself up perfectly for the killshot.
Shauna bites her lip from where she still sits in her lap.
“Yeah,” she says half-heartedly, nodding. “Sure. It’s late, I can drop you at your driveway.”
“No, it’s okay.” Jackie shakes her head, running a hand through her hair as Shauna scrambles back into the driver’s seat, reaching blindly behind her until she finds Shauna’s shirt and hands it over to her to cover her exposed chest. “I can walk. It’s a beautiful night.”
It’s a beautiful night? What the fuck is she even saying?
Shauna sighs. “Don’t you think we should talk about this?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Jackie says, aware she’s overcompensating when she continues, “we’re good, Shipman. It’s out of our system now, so we can move on.”
She doesn’t know if she’s trying to convince Shauna or herself.
Either way, it doesn’t feel like it’s out of her system. If anything, it’s significantly worse - the wanting.
Shauna looks like a wounded animal, so small, shrinking back into her seat, and she wants nothing more than to lean over and kiss her again, to tell her how much this actually means to her, that it has the potential to be everything, but -
She can’t.
She won’t.
Jackie burns for her, and she’s too afraid to say it.
Because she won’t let herself go there, refuses to open herself up to being decimated by Shauna ever again.
Especially not when she’s finally starting to feel like things are good. Stable.
No more chaos, no more claws, no more vying for Shauna’s attention, no more desperate attempts to be her entire world.
They’ve just -
Outgrown this. Outgrown each other.
She thinks about how easy things are with Sarah.
“Okay,” Shauna says, and she tries not to notice how sad she sounds. “I guess I’ll see you around, then?”
“Yeah,” she forces a smile, reaching to open the car door, and this time Shauna doesn’t stop her. “I'll see you around.”
She doesn’t look back at Shauna when she leaves, and she hates the way her heart feels like it’s been split in half, hollowed out and empty in the places where Shauna should be.
Three years without her, three years convincing herself she’ll never so much as see Shauna again, that she has gotten past ever needing to.
And now -
She still feels Shauna sticky on her fingers, can still taste her on her tongue, sports a split in her bottom lip where Shauna had bitten her.
Her head is thoroughly fucked.
When she gets to her room, she doesn’t shower, doesn’t want to wash off the scent of Shauna’s vanilla perfume. She crawls into bed and strips down to her skin, to the rotten part of her she keeps hidden, the same way Shauna had done to her in the car without ever really undressing her.
She cries herself to sleep and dreams of Shauna’s hands on her.