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There was a plenty long list of people that Jackie Taylor (once Sadecki, now Taylor, again) did not expect to see at the 25th Reunion of the Class of 1996. Natalie Scatorccio, for one, who never did care for school and who Jackie still wasn’t one hundred percent sure she got the correct form of communication for in the first place to notify her about the reunion at all. Lottie Matthews, who had some hoity-toity life that involved flying around the world and posting inspirational quotes over her travel pictures on Instagram. Shauna Shipman, because Jackie was the one who organized the reunion and obviously that was far too much control for Shauna to give Jackie over Shauna’s precious life. It may have been petty, Jackie not even doing so much as trying to look for Shauna on Facebook (Jackie had blocked Shauna back in 2006, when she first made her account) and sending the invitation to her mother’s house, but Jackie wasn’t interrogating that too hard.
Jackie would not, however, have put Melissa Miller on the list of people she did not expect to see, because it would have never crossed her mind to put Melissa Miller on the list at all. She was the Class of 1997, for one, and, honestly, until Jackie spotted her next to the punch bowl laughing with Van Palmer-Turner (who, as Van Palmer, would have been unexpected, but as Van Palmer-Turner, soon-to-be State Senator’s wife, was expected – RSVP’d and everything), Jackie had not thought about her since Nationals. Melissa wasn’t wearing the baseball cap that she donned all of high school, the one that earned her the creative nickname of Hat Girl, but Jackie still recognized her.
Melissa obviously looked different. She was older, they all were, but there was something else. She held herself differently: taller, almost, and relaxed. Comfortable. Jackie barely realized she was walking towards the women, until she was suddenly two steps away from them.
“Van!” Jackie plastered on her wide, Stay-at-Home Mom smile and cheer when she made eye-contact with Melissa over Van’s shoulder. Van turned around and smiled easily, accepted Jackie’s hug. As Jackie pulled away, “How are you? I haven’t seen you since…your wedding, I think! And that was…four years ago?”
“Six, actually. But doing pretty well,” Van nodded. “My wife won a previously thought impossible election, so really can’t complain there.”
“Congratulations!” Jackie beamed. “Her campaign was really inspiring.”
“Thanks,” Van smiled. She gestured at Melissa with the drink in her hand, “You remember Melissa, right?”
“I’m nearly offended you think I would forget one of our best defense players that helped us win Nationals!” Jackie exclaimed. “I’m so glad you could make it. Did you come with Van and Tai?”
One thing about Jackie: she knew social situations. Any social situation. She especially knew when she was missing something. And she was missing something, because as soon as she asked, Van’s mouth snapped shut and her eyes went wide as she glanced at Melissa. At the same time, Melissa was doing a perfect impression of a deer caught in headlights.
Of a semi-truck.
“Uh,” Melissa coughed. Chuckled, awkwardly. “I- Uh. Came with my wife.”
Jackie barely heard Van mutter, “Oh, my fucking God, you idiots,” into her punch cup. Jackie chose to pretend she heard nothing at all.
“Oh, really? Who?” Jackie asked, all smiles.
Except Melissa looked like Jackie asked her to drink bleach. Before, she could answer, a woman came up behind her. A woman with short dark hair, wearing a perfectly tailored blazer, walked up to Melissa, her arm going around Melissa’s waist as she pressed a kiss to Melissa’s cheek.
“You know, I thought you loved me, and then you abandoned me with Misty Quigley for twenty minutes. If you wanted a divorce, you could have just asked,” the woman said teasingly to Melissa, who looked beyond panicked now. The woman’s brow furrowed, “Are you-?”
Van cleared her throat. The woman looked to the side, just noticing Van and Jackie standing there. Her face dropped in slight shock.
As did Jackie. Because this was not just some woman with dark hair. This was Shauna.
Shauna Shipman. Married, apparently, to Melissa Miller. Which Jackie probably would have known, if she had unblocked Shauna on Facebook. Or any social media – Jackie was quite thorough when it came to ‘protecting her peace,’ as the kids said.
“Hi, Jackie,” Shauna said, her mouth stretched into a very fake polite smile. Her arm stayed around Melissa’s waist. If anything, it seemed to tighten.
“Oh! You two are married?” Jackie’s voice went a bit high in that way her teenage daughter told her made her seem bitchy.
“Yep,” Shauna said.
“Wow. You two really decided to just…what does Beck say? Hard-launch? Is this you hard-launching that?” Van asked.
“No. No, we’re trying to dissuade him from saying that, do not start learning it,” was Shauna’s immediate reaction while Melissa still looked mortified at her own existence. “Look, I get it, kids need to express themselves, cool, whatever – I can’t keep up and the kids are starting to make fun of me.”
“Kids?” Jackie asked.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, we have three.” Shauna said, because apparently in two seconds she had managed to completely forget Jackie’s existence. And now looked overly polite once again. “Beck, who’s eleven, Penny’s six, and Ellie, our youngest, is three.”
“Wow.” Jackie blinked. “Lot of kids.”
Jackie thought Shauna didn’t want kids. Shauna used to hem and haw about it, back in high school, while Jackie drew up their life plans. Shauna always fought against more than one.
“You can’t even make fun of them by asking if they know how that happens,” Van griped, though her smile was wide as Shauna rolled her eyes. “Although I am deeply concerned about your finances.”
“Eh. After the third book deal, I stopped worrying about that,” Melissa finally spoke.
“Yeah. She gives no shit when it’s my money,” Shauna teased, even as Melissa elbowed her in the side. She turned to Jackie, polite smile on her face once again. “Do you have children?”
“…Yes,” Jackie nodded. “I have a daughter, Callie. She is seventeen.”
“That’s nice,” Shauna said and it sounded genuine. “I remember you always wanted a daughter.”
“Yep,” Jackie’s smile hurt to maintain. “She’s just- light of my life!”
“Oof. I cannot believe that you have a seventeen year old daughter, that makes me feel old as balls,” Van said.
Jackie had been spending the better part of the past two years telling herself that early forties was actually not that old and that she had plenty of life ahead of her. But thank you, Van.
“But, speaking of spouses, is Jeff here?” Shauna asked, looking around. “I saw Walsh – which was…interesting. But not him.”
“For fuck’s sake, Shauna,” Jackie fully heard Van’s groan that time.
“We’re divorced,” Jackie said. Shauna winced slightly. “Two years, now. Don’t apologize. You didn’t know, it’s fine. But he did not want to come. The whole Homecoming royalty dance portion of this did not appeal.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that would be awkward,” Shauna nodded. Not nearly as awkward as this entire conversation.
“But when did you two get married?” Jackie asked, desperate to move past this. “When did you reconnect after school?”
Van snorted loudly next to Jackie, clapping a hand to her mouth as Melissa fixed her with a death glare. “I’m gonna go.”
“Do that,” Melissa smiled tightly at Van, who quickly took her leave.
“We actually started dating in high school,” Shauna said.
Jackie blinked. Her grip tightened on her cup. “Oh. When?”
“The beginning of summer, right before senior year,” Shauna shrugged. “We kept it pretty quiet. Did the long-distance thing in college, but she went to NYU, so it wasn’t that difficult or anything.”
“Yeah, the train’s only three hours,” Melissa said.
Jackie knew that. Jackie remembered Shauna saying that, when she sat Jackie down to tell her that she would be going to Brown in the fall instead of Rutgers. Jackie remembered not listening, not caring, telling Shauna to go have fun with her fancy new life and to never talk to her again.
Jackie had not taken the announcement well, to say the least.
“Cute,” Jackie managed to say through her smile.
Shauna nodded. Then, a small, rueful smirk, “You really want to cuss me out right now, don’t you?”
“I- Why- No-” Words were not coming easily to Jackie in that moment.
“I think Jackie and I are gonna go have a conversation,” Shauna said, pressing a kiss to Melissa’s forehead as she dropped the arm around her wife’s waist.
“Absolutely, go have fun with that,” Melissa said. “I’m just going to…be anywhere but here. Or there.”
Melissa all but ran away from them while Jackie still could not figure out any appropriate response to communicate that of course, she had no feelings, whatsoever, about Shauna’s secret high school girlfriend. Why would she care? What did it matter to Jackie, at all, that she and her best friend had been getting into fight after fight about Shauna not wanting to spend time with her their last year of high school? What did it matter that Jackie had spent so many Saturday night group dates with Jeff and his friends from the baseball team, wondering what Shauna had to do that was so much better than joining them? Sure, Shauna didn’t have a boyfriend, but not all the boys on the team had girlfriends! It would have been fine! What did it matter that Shauna must have been sneaking around with the awkward blonde girl with the stupid, ratty baseball cap that Jackie barely remembered?
“Come on,” Shauna sighed, resigned, tilting her head towards the door that led out of the gymnasium. “Let’s get some air.”
In a stroke of ridiculous irony, Jackie found herself following Shauna to the soccer pitch. Shauna sat on one of the first rows of bleachers and Jackie hesitated for only a second to sit down next to her.
“Van knew,” were the first words out of Jackie’s mouth, because that had been one of the things that stuck. Van knew they were married, knew Melissa, knew their kid, but…“You weren’t at their wedding. Van and Tai’s.”
Shauna winced at that, rubbing at the back of the neck. “Yeah. We were supposed to be. Tai’s going to chew my ass out about that later, because, technically, I was supposed to tell you before the wedding.”
Jackie’s brow furrowed. “Why weren’t you there?”
Why didn’t you tell me?
“My daughter, Penny? The six year old? Melissa went into labor the day before Van and Tai were supposed to get married,” Shauna said. She laughed, “Actually, that’s a bit of a funny story, because Van and Tai were trying to ask us to be a part of the wedding the same day we were telling them that Melissa was pregnant, again. They’d already rented a venue and Penny’s due date was too close for comfort, so we scrapped that idea, but we still thought we’d be able to make the ceremony. Lo and behold, Penny had other plans.”
Shauna spoke with a confidence Jackie never expected. An ease. A comfort with herself, with her skin…It looked so alien from the girl that Jackie used to help get dressed for parties, encourage to talk to boys-
Oh.
“But, yeah,” Shauna rested her elbows on her knees, hands folded as she looked out at the field in front of them. “Doesn’t really explain the not telling you thing.”
“I have you blocked on all social media.” The words tumbled out of Jackie without her meaning them to.
“…Yeah, I know,” Shauna snorted. “It’s kind of obvious.”
Jackie’s cheeks felt flaming hot.
“I was going to call you or something, I don’t know,” Shauna ran a hand through her hair, messing it up a bit. “I just knew that I promised Van and Tai that I would tell you, so that you didn’t find out about me and Mel at their wedding. It didn’t seem fair.”
“So you thought it was fair to spring this on me at an event that I’m in charge of?” Jackie did not snap, at Shauna. She just spoke maybe a tad tersely.
Shauna rubbed at her face. Groaned into her palms. “I really, really thought you would just want to avoid me. You blocked me on everything! I had an Instagram for, like, two minutes before you blocked me there – do you live on social media?”
Maybe, but that was none of Shauna’s business. “Aren’t you some big-shot writer? Shouldn’t you be on social media for promotion or something?”
“Oh, don’t even- Beck gives me enough shit about that as is, but I got my first book deal back in the 00s. I’m well-set enough, my agent can handle marketing,” Shauna said, hands clasped in front of her once again.
“I didn’t have Melissa blocked.” Jackie didn’t know she should have Melissa blocked. Regardless, Shauna could have…Melissa could have told her, through her own account.
Shauna snorted, again, as if the idea was ridiculous. “Mel doesn’t have social media.”
Of course she doesn’t.
“But, no, I didn’t really try to tell you,” Shauna admitted. “I thought you would avoid me and it wouldn’t matter. Or maybe I thought you already knew. Hell, you know I’m an author, you must have heard that from somewhere. There isn’t a single interview post-2010 that doesn’t talk about my wife and kids.”
Jackie may have seen a headline once or twice. Jackie may have avoided them like the fucking plague. “And that makes it better? That I would have heard from some third party source?”
“Jesus Christ, Jackie, it’s not like you wanted anything to do with me after high school,” Shauna said. “You were the one who never answered my letters. Or my phone calls. And have blocked me on every social media known to mankind.”
“You were the one who left!” Jackie snapped.
At that, Shauna sat straighter. Eyebrows raised. A low whistle. “Damn. Holy shit, is this really all about Brown?”
“It’s not about- Of course, I was happy for you, but you never gave me the space to be happy for you!” Jackie exclaimed. And how were they having the same argument twenty-five years later? “You never even told me you applied! You let me believe for months that we were going to go to Rutgers together!”
“I never told you I applied to Rutgers either.”
“It was assumed!”
“Yeah, you always assumed,” Shauna said. “You never once asked. You never asked what I wanted and, yeah, I was too much of a coward to tell you. I had a lot going on.”
“And I didn’t?!”
“You did,” Shauna agreed. That caught Jackie off-guard. “We were seniors. Our entire lives were about to start. We had a lot going on. You were starting to get really serious with Jeff, I started dating Mel, which was a whole new level of terrifying. I applied to Brown with zero expectation that I would get in and then I got a full scholarship. A lot happened, so fast, and, before I knew it, we were already at the end of the school year and I realized that I had massively fucked up. But you didn’t even let me apologize.”
Jackie stared at Shauna for a moment. “Did you want to?”
“For fuck’s- Yes, Jackie!” Shauna’s laugh was slightly hysterical. “I wanted to talk to you about everything- about Brown. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry I was ruining our plans, but that I could fix them. I spent hours researching train schedules and school break dates and all of that.”
Which didn’t make sense, because, at some point, Shauna simply started listing all the things she hated about Jackie. That Jackie was controlling and only saw Shauna has some extra in her life. That Jackie didn’t actually care about her. That Jackie was going nowhere in life fast, that she would end up a stay-at-home mom in a boring-ass marriage in a boring-ass town just like her mom.
And somehow that wasn’t the thing Jackie cared about int hat moment, it was the way Shauna caught herself on the word everything. The pivot from everything to Brown.
“But not everything,” Jackie said, because that was what her brain fixated on: not everything. Not Melissa.
“No, I wasn’t planning on telling you about Melissa, but,” Shauna rushed at what must have been some sour face Jackie began to pull. “That had nothing to do with you. Melissa wasn’t graduated yet. We didn’t know how her parents would react, that sort of news could get her pulled from soccer, I couldn’t risk that. Not when I wasn’t sure what your reaction would be.”
“My reaction?” What did that mean?
“It was the 90s,” Shauna said. “I mean, God, ‘gaywad’ was Mari’s favorite insult.”
“Mari’s an idiot.” The response was instinctive.
That got a slight laugh from Shauna. “True, but still-”
“I’m gay,” Jackie shoved the words out of her mouth.
She watched Shauna’s brain stop. Her eyes widen as she turned to Jackie. “What?”
“I’m gay,” Jackie took a deep breath. It was important to say the words, her therapist said. It was important to commit. “I- Uh. I told Jeff, two years ago. That’s why we got divorced.”
Shauna rubbed at her mouth, staring at Jackie. “Holy shit. Hooooly shit.”
“So. Yeah. Not saying that it- uh- it would have gone over well,” Jackie laughed, an unhappy, near cruel sound. “Actually, it probably would have gone over way worse. Good call, not telling me back then.”
“Oh, my God,” Shauna was clearly still processing. “Oh, my God, you have a kid!”
“I’m sorry, did you think I just didn’t have sex with my husband of twenty years?”
“Sorry! No, obviously, you would have- You aren’t bi?” Shauna cocked her head at Jackie. “You really don’t like men? I really thought you were bi-”
“I’m sorry, you thought I was bi?!” Jackie did not screech. “You knew I liked girls?!”
“…Jackie. Do you not remember the slumber party make-out sessions?”
“Those were to practice!” Jackie really wished she had something to throw at Shauna right then.
“Right. Practice,” Shauna nodded. “Totally normal teenage girl behavi- Stop hitting me!”
Oh, look, Jackie’s purse. Useful.
Jackie stopped swinging her purse at Shauna’s arm. “Stop being annoying!”
“All right, all right, I’ll stop,” Shauna was really laughing now and…somehow, so was Jackie, a little. “Wow. Who else knows?”
“Jeff,” Jackie said. “My therapist. My daughter, Callie. That’s it.”
“Wow,” was Shauna’s carefully neutral answer.
“I’m still…working on some things,” Jackie looked down at her lap, where she folded her hands and tried to keep them from shaking. “Things didn’t- This wasn’t how I planned things.”
Shauna didn’t say anything. She just kept staring.
“Are you going to say anything?” Jackie asked, laughing near hysterically.
“It’s nice to talk to you, again.” That wasn’t what Jackie expected at all.
What was she supposed to do with that? It made Jackie feel prickly, made her want to lash out. “Yeah. Sure it makes you feel real great. You were right, after all, huh? My life did peak in high school. You called it.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Shauna winced. Hard. “Fuck, I did say that, didn’t I?”
“You said a lot,” Jackie’s jaw felt wired shut as she glared out at the soccer pitch, trying to recall all that anger from that last fight. That anger felt better, felt stronger than the horrible vulnerability that admitting that stupid fucking secret to Shauna did.
Her parents still didn’t understand the divorce. Still didn’t know the why, they could never know the why. Callie wanted Jackie to tell them just so Callie would stop being forced to go to brunches with them and see them on holidays and birthdays.
“I was an asshole,” Shauna sighed.
“You were.” Jackie agreed.
It didn’t seem to cut Shauna the way she wanted it to. “You know. Forty-three really isn’t that old.”
At Jackie’s confused glance, Shauna continued, “Plenty of people don’t come out when their teenagers or in their twenties. Or, I don’t know, half-come out? Whatever the hell you call what Tai and Van and I and Melissa all did. Plenty of people have- have expected marriages and expected lives, before they realize or feel safe enough to be themselves.”
“You sound like my therapist.”
“You got a good one then,” Shauna said. Jackie agreed. Dr. Jenson was the best.
Dr. Jenson was going to have a field day unpacking this conversation.
“I’m sorry this is the way it went for us,” Shauna’s words were soft. Her voice softer as she said them.
“Yeah,” Jackie sighed. Staring out on that dark soccer pitch. “Me, too.”