i like the way you curse my name

by Anonymous

Summary:

[Pre-crash / No crash AU]

They've been best friends since childhood, but Shauna has two massive secrets she keeps from Jackie: That she's desperately in love with her, and that she also deeply resents her.

With a few months left until their high school graduation and Nationals on the table, everything changes for Jackie and Shauna when Jackie breaks up with Jeff and one of their usual late-night makeouts crosses a line that can't be un-crossed. As their friendship turns sexual, Shauna tries to decode what it all means while she waits for an acceptance letter from Brown and hopes to leave Jackie—and the feelings she's always had for her—behind.

Notes:

It's this hilarious tweet but in serious fic form:

https://x.com/amygobrrr/status/1913245942217584962

So, basically, a dark and cynical Shauna has Jackie all wrong, and Jackie is oblivious to it all and just wants to be brave enough to love her.

(This will start off heavy on smut and calm down to moderate on smut.)

Chapter 1

There is a part of Shauna, deep down, that hates her best friend Jackie a little bit—that has spent at least some part of their longstanding friendship slowly pumping herself full of bitterness and resentment, letting those emotions chip away at the ones they conflict with: the admiration, the affection, the love.

She knows where it stems from, and why she feels it. She’s kept tabs on every little thing that’s gone unsaid on her end, counting slights over the years while Jackie lives her best life, either oblivious to Shauna’s plight or perfectly happy to pretend to be.

I don’t like soccer but I had to join because of Jackie. I wanted to join the Young Writers Club instead.

I hate being called Shipman.

I don’t want to wear this outfit. I don’t want to listen to this music. 

I don’t want to pretend to be someone I’m not.

Jackie might not know the truth—Shauna will give her that, at least: the credit of being so far up her own ass that she can’t be bothered to take a closer look at anyone else—but it’s not like she has any reason to try to figure it out. Why would Jackie want to change anything? 

Shauna has a purpose, and it is this: to be Lesser Jackie. Jackie But Worse. She is to like the things Jackie likes and want the things Jackie wants, and to stand next to Jackie while she does those things, because if she’s Worse Jackie than that makes Jackie Taylor the Better Jackie.

That’s it. That’s all.

She sees it in everything; it colors her entire world. 

Jackie is prettier and the boys in their class let her know it in the way they stare at Jackie and glance past Shauna to do it. Jackie gets the perfect Prom King boyfriend and tries to push Shauna toward Randy, his loser friend. Lesser Jeff.

Jackie is deemed the better soccer player even though Shauna’s faster than her; she is placed at striker, gets set up to score more goals and gets to be the captain and to be the hero. Shauna blends into the background at midfield. 

She even sees it in the way she picks up Jackie every morning for school even though Jackie can drive too. She exists to make Jackie’s life easier at her own expense.

But even Shauna has to admit that it isn’t all bad, that there is some part of Jackie that must genuinely enjoy her company, even if it’s only because Shauna’s the only person weak enough to always bend to Jackie’s will.

Because there’s another part to this; Shauna can admit it, can even hate herself a little bit for it too. The other part is that Shauna lives for the approval even as she resents the things she has to do to receive it. There is nothing like the feeling of Jackie’s eyes sweeping over her in an outfit Shauna didn’t want to wear and then declaring, “You look hot in that.” Not even the thrill of reading the acceptance letter she’s hoping to receive from Brown would match the adrenaline rush she gets from Jackie giving her a once-over and a nod of approval, seeing it paired with that knowing little smirk that appears on Jackie’s lips when she’s feeling confident and powerful. 

She could be crowned Prom Queen over Jackie in some insane upset and she thinks that even then she’d just get up on that stage, feel guilty about hurting Jackie’s feelings as the crown is placed on her head, and think that it doesn’t feel nearly as good as that one day last month, when she’d been waiting around for Jackie to finish getting ready for a party and Jackie had just declared, “I need to know if this lipstick will smear when I make out with Jeff tonight,” and then beckoned Shauna like a dog so that they could make out on Jackie’s bed like they have so many times before: always at Jackie’s request, with some excuse about practicing or needing some sort of information—because it couldn’t possibly just be for pleasure—and always with Shauna’s dutiful, immediate acquiescence. 

Yes, even a plastic crown that says she’s the most beloved girl in school would mean jack shit to her if she had to trade it for the memory of Jackie kissing her for the first time, pulling back with her breathing uneven, and then trying to mask her surprise as she’d whispered, “Oh, you’re good at that, Shipman.”

Scratch that: Shauna doesn’t hate herself a little bit; she hates herself a lot. 

-

There is an alternative universe somewhere out there, maybe, where Shauna takes back her power, takes her revenge on Jackie, even if she doesn’t think of it that way, or can’t even dig deep enough into her own psyche to understand why she does what she does.

Maybe she does win Prom Queen over Jackie, somehow. Maybe she earns the game-winning goal that sends them to Nationals, an honor that almost feels rightfully Jackie's. Maybe she steals Jackie’s boyfriend.

But that universe isn’t this one. In this one, it isn’t Jeff who goes to Shauna after his billionth breakup with Jackie, drunk and sad, and it doesn’t happen with him just because deep down Shauna gets off on the idea of having something that belongs to Jackie and this is the thing she’s been offered. 

She does, still—get off on it, that is—but maybe there is a God looking out for her, or some equally benevolent force that knows what she actually wants, the thing she’s fantasized about having offered to her, and lets the stars align perfectly tonight. 

Because Jeff and Jackie are broken up (definitely temporarily, again), and Jackie and Shauna are drunk at a party, and tonight the alcohol has Jackie flirty and looking for attention, and that same alcohol will inject Shauna with just the amount of courage she needs later on, when they’re kissing in Jackie’s bed again. 

“Fuck Jeff,” Jackie’s half-slurring, half-giggling into Shauna’s ear an hour before Shauna’s fingers press inside of her for the first time. Jackie has her last drink of the night in her hand and an arm around Shauna’s shoulders, and they’re both pretty drunk but Jackie’s worse, enough that it feels like Shauna’s helping hold her up more than the reverse. 

Nat’s within earshot, sitting on a chair next to them in Lottie’s crowded living room with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, but Shauna isn’t sure she can actually hear them until her head swivels around at what Jackie says, too loudly, next.

“He couldn’t even get me off; did you know that, Shauna?” 

Nat chokes on her drink and Shauna says, placating her, “You’ve mentioned it, yeah.”

All the time. Many times since the latest breakup, but plenty of times while they were together too.

“They should give me an Oscar,” Jackie goes on, wide-eyed, genuinely meaning it. “I am, like, the Meryl Streep of faking it at this point.”

“You should demonstrate for us, Jackie,” Nat chimes in, smirking, and Shauna gives her a silent look that tells her to stop shit-stirring.

Jackie’s not that drunk, at least, and just blushes and tips back her cup to finish the rest of her drink. “Can we go home now?” she asks Shauna out of nowhere. “I’m tired.”

“I can’t drive us yet,” Shauna says, and sets her drink down on the coffee table next to them, unfinished, so that she won’t be tempted to drink anything else to help get her through the rest of this night. She hates parties. They’re another thing she only does because Jackie tells her to.

“Let’s go outside and wait it out,” Jackie demands, arm slipping off of Shauna’s shoulders so that her fingers can thread through Shauna’s instead. One familiar tug later and they’re off to the front door together.

“See you at practice Monday!” Nat calls after them, almost mockingly. No one else notices them leave.

The chilly night air hits Shauna smack in the face as soon as they’re out on Lottie’s porch, and she shivers and grips her flannel with her free hand, pulling it tighter against her. Jackie’s in a sleeveless top and a skirt but doesn’t even seem to feel the cold herself.

They stumble out to the deserted front yard together, Jackie swinging Shauna around by her hand so that they’re face to face and then laughing at the way her teeth have started to chatter. “Jeez, Shipman. You’re the one with the long sleeves.”

“You get warm when you drink,” Shauna reminds her, trying not to get distracted by the way Jackie’s looking at her: like she’s examining her for some unknown thing, a smug look in her eyes like she already knows the answer to a question she hasn’t asked.

It’s sexy. It makes Shauna hate that she’s so weak and predictable.

“I’ll warm you up when we get home,” Jackie teases her. “I can be the big spoon.”

Shauna can play along despite her racing heart; she’s been doing it for too long now. She knows how to raise an eyebrow, how to look on the edge of a laugh as she challenges, “You’ve never big-spooned in your life, Jackie.”

“I’m a new woman,” Jackie decides, her smirk softening into a playful grin. “A single, strong, independent woman who knows how to big spoon.”

“Single, huh? You really think that’ll s-stick?” She clamps her jaw shut tight when her teeth chatter over the final word. The cold, at least, is certainly making her feel like she’s sobering up fast. 

“This time’s for real,” Jackie says, which is exactly what she’d said last time.

Shauna doesn’t call her out on it, just looks longingly to her car, parked down at the end of the driveway, and suggests, “Can we at least hole up in the back or something?”

Jackie laughs and pulls her away, fingers cold in Shauna’s now. They clamber into the backseat together, but it’s only marginally better, and Shauna can still see a hint of her breath in the air on an exhale. Jackie cuddles into her and rests her head on Shauna’s shoulder, which helps.

“Do you think we’ll make Nationals?” she asks Shauna out of nowhere. “Like, actually pull off Regionals and State and get to go to Seattle?”

“We’re undefeated,” Shauna reminds her. “I think we can do it.”

“If we go, we’ll miss Prom.” Jackie’s hand squeezes hers and she sounds quieter when she confesses, “I don’t think I’d mind missing it, though.”

“You’ll miss getting crowned onstage.” Shauna studies their tangled fingers and tries not to pay too much attention to the smell of Jackie’s perfume. 

Jackie’s head turns on her shoulder so that her mouth is almost pressed to Shauna’s neck. Shauna can feel her breath when she says, “I’m okay with that.”

Liar.

“I’d rather have the Nationals trophy,” Jackie goes on, while the word is still echoing in Shauna’s head. “At least that’s something I can win because of me, not just because of who I’m dating.”

She’s fishing, Shauna knows. For the right things to be said to her, for the things she knows Shauna will know to say. “You’re gonna win Prom Queen because of you too, Jackie. Everyone loves you.”

Jackie’s silent for a moment—probably soaking in the praise—but then sounds odd when she says, “Sure. I guess.”

Shauna suppresses an eye-roll and decides, even though she technically shouldn’t, “I can drive now.”

-

Jackie doesn’t take long to start things—really, it’s as soon as they’re changed into pajamas and tucked comfortably into her warm bed, like she’d been waiting for the opportunity.

This time the justification is, “I miss kissing; I don’t know how you can stand not doing it,” because it wouldn’t be Jackie if she didn’t make Shauna feel low even in the middle of making a move on her. As if Shauna needed the reminder that she’s a placeholder and that nobody worthwhile wants her. 

“Because Jeff was so good at it?” she teases lightly even though she wants to bite the words out, wants to slice into Jackie right back, and it works: Jackie giggles in easy, drunken commiseration. 

“Fair,” she says, and then slides her hand onto Shauna’s neck and moves her head to share Shauna’s pillow, and then closer, kissing her.

Shauna has little to compare it to—just a couple of slobbery middle-school kisses and a drunken makeout with one of the junior girls on the soccer team (Shauna had pictured Jackie during and then sworn, uh, Melinda? to secrecy afterward)—but she knows instinctively that it’ll always be best with Jackie. 

How could it not be? How, when every shaky breath she pulls from Jackie feels like a new honor bestowed upon her, when even earning a tiny noise that stays trapped in Jackie’s throat makes her feel like the most important person in the world? 

She’d brushed Jackie’s chest with her hand once, completely on accident, and earned her first and only visceral, unsuppressed moan then, and even as she’d delivered her mumbled apology she’d felt like she was going to explode with want. 

Something is different tonight. It doesn’t take Shauna long to notice it: Jackie’s kisses are familiarly sloppy from alcohol but there is an extra pressure behind them that’s hard to describe but easy to feel. There’s something edging on urgency in it, something like—

Shauna’s brain uses the word “desire” and she shuts it down immediately. She can’t let her own feelings make her delusional about this. That’s the one thing she’s done a very good job at throughout Jackie’s foray into same-sex experimentation: staying grounded, knowing what this is. 

But she can’t ignore the thought anymore when Jackie’s tongue probes hungrily into her mouth, so much so that it’s a little overwhelming, a little boy-like, when at the same time her body shifts forward into Shauna’s, chests and hips pressing, bare legs pushing into the spaces between Shauna’s and then tangling with them. 

Shauna feels devoured. She’s normally so good at keeping her head on straight for this, terrified of what she’ll reveal if she doesn’t, but she loses herself for a moment, overwhelmed, and a soft, needy whine sounds low in her throat. 

Jackie’s fingers tighten on her neck—almost as though in response to the noise, if Shauna were an optimist or delusional—and Shauna feels the sting of her nails. But her mouth pulls back, and Shauna watches Jackie stare at her in the dark and ask her, “What did that just now?”

The words clunk around in Shauna’s head, confusing her, not making sense. Her lips are tingling and she can still feel Jackie’s tongue, the way it had slid so eagerly past her own. “What?” she asks dumbly.

Jackie’s eyes are so bright, so curious. “I did something you really liked. Just then.”

It’s so un-Jackie, to ask about something Shauna likes. Shauna still can’t make sense of it at first. 

But then it clicks. Jackie’s ego. Jackie fishing for praise. Yes, of course. 

Shauna feeds her like kindle to a burning flame. It’s their thing; she knows they wouldn’t be best friends in the first place if her first inclination wasn’t to pump Jackie up, if she didn’t mean it as she did it, too. “All of it. You’re really good at it.”

Tell me I am, too. 

But Jackie doesn’t, of course. Shauna wouldn’t crave praise from her so much if it was ever given so easily. 

Jackie practically preens at the compliment. “You think so?”

Shauna could be no better than a horny teen boy, plying a hot girl with verbal affection so that she’ll keep giving him physical attention, but she is better because again, she really does mean it, even if she hates that she means it. “Yeah. You’re like, my favorite person to kiss.”

She hopes that this confession isn’t too much, that she’s said it casually enough, and the way Jackie’s whole face shifts into something soft and hungry instinctively tells her she’s done something right. She grasps at Shauna and kisses her hard, swallows a small gasp from Shauna and breathes, “Say it again. Tell me again.”

It feels like tonight may just finally be the night Shauna’s been dreaming about. She’s never had the guts on any of those other nights; things had never aligned just perfectly, the way they needed to. Jackie would pull away and end it while Shauna was still working up the courage to touch her anywhere other than the unspokenly-okayed spots at her waist or her neck or her cheeks. Neither of them had been drunk enough. Jeff had been there in the forefront or in the back of Jackie’s mind, keeping her tethered to him, leaving unspoken space between Jackie and Shauna. 

Jackie’s lips kiss across to her neck, sliding down, sucking hard, and that last part is new. It frees Shauna’s mouth to let out a soft groan and then follow orders. She doubles down harder, sensing it’s what Jackie wants tonight. “I like kissing you. I… Better than anyone else.”

“You don’t kiss anyone else,” Jackie mumbles against the hickey she’s just left, and it could almost be a question, but it hits Shauna’s chest like a jab. 

“I know, Jackie,” she huffs, on edge, her mind still stuck on the thought of that hickey, her pajama shorts damp with the knowledge that Jackie’s just marked her for the first time. She’s not equipped to handle being made fun of right now. “Do you want me to take it back?”

“No.” Jackie’s answer is quick, decisive. Her hips push harder into Shauna’s, almost like she’s testing something. Shauna keeps her thighs clamped together; she might actually die from embarrassment if she lets Jackie’s thigh part hers and feel what a little bit of kissing Jackie does to her. 

Jackie pulls away, and Shauna watches her follow her own fingers as they trace the mark on Shauna’s neck. Jackie’s eyes are so dark now. They flicker up to Shauna’s and hold there, and her fingers slide up Shauna’s neck, over her jaw, just dancing across the skin there. They settle at Shauna’s chin, thumb barely brushing up over her kiss-swollen lip. 

One corner of Jackie’s mouth curves upward: not quite her usual smirk. Something more reverent and unreadable and only the tiniest bit playful. 

“Kinda really feeling it tonight, Shipman,” she says, like Shauna’s supposed to have any idea what to do with that. She feels her own eyebrows rising, her eyes widening just slightly. Jackie’s knee slides up with just a hint of pressure, threatening to part her, but she’s so gentle about it that a little bit of resistance from Shauna clenching her thighs stops her. Jackie doesn’t seem deterred by it. Her eyes are still on Shauna’s, and she almost seems distracted as she looks at them, and has to blink herself back into focus. Shauna wonders if she went somewhere else, if she’s thinking of Jeff. But then Jackie whispers, “You should see the way you look at me.”

It feels like a knife’s been stuck right between her ribs, and Shauna slams her eyes shut on instinct, like a child trying to hide. She’s always wondered if Jackie could tell; it’s been her worst fear for so long now, not even because they’re both girls, but because of what it means if Jackie knows how Shauna feels and still acts the way she does anyway. It means she’s been toying with Shauna, mocking her all along. Using her, commanding her because she knows that Shauna will always fold, always let Jackie lord her feelings over her. She can’t bear the thought of it, the humiliation she’d feel.

“Shauna,” Jackie whispers, and Shauna feels Jackie’s hand leave her chin and slide between them, seeking out Shauna’s. She takes hold of it and guides it gently to her abdomen, letting it rest against the material of her oversized pajama shirt, muscles tense and tight underneath. Shauna still doesn’t look. Jackie’s lips graze hers, trap her bottom lip, press so gently. Then Shauna feels Jackie inhale deeply, and Shauna’s hand is sliding lower, guided again by Jackie’s.

Her heart leaps into her throat. Her fingers brush against the lacy waistband of the underwear Jackie’s paired with her shirt to sleep in tonight. Jackie ups the pressure, enough that Shauna’s fingers dip in instead of sliding over. She feels freshly-shaved skin. If her mind were working, it’d probably chime in with a dry comment about how of course Jackie keeps everything in tip-top shape, even with no boyfriend, no one around she’s expecting to touch her. 

Jackie’s tongue delves into her mouth, firmly but not as aggressively as before. Shauna doesn’t dare move her hand, waiting for Jackie’s hand to move it instead. Waiting for permission for something she’s pretty sure she’d literally kill to do. 

They’ve both been laying on their sides for this, and Jackie removes her hand from Shauna’s, leaving it in limbo half-in Jackie’s underwear, then grips the front of Shauna’s shirt to hold her close, to keep their mouths from separating as Jackie rolls onto her back and pulls Shauna even further into her side. Shauna’s fingers twitch and flex as Jackie’s legs fall open, her right thigh and knee resting over Shauna’s leg.

“Come on,” Jackie urges her, low and throaty as their lips finally part, and Shauna tucks her face into Jackie’s neck and tries to breathe. 

She needs to think about this, to process this and let her mind work through it, but her fingers are getting ahead of her, moving lower, her body too aware of how much she wants this. And just like that, they’re doing this. They’re fucking up a nearly lifelong friendship together, drunk on a Saturday night, crossing over a line that can never be un-crossed. 

Jackie is swollen and wet and Shauna hears her breath hitch at the first gentle pass over her clit. She passes over it again, and again, delicate and careful, and again, again, again.

Jackie’s breathing is already coming out in short gasps by Shauna’s ear. She’s wound tight, tense all over, legs shifting back and forth restlessly over the mattress. When Shauna gets like that on her own, her toes usually curl too, and she wonders if Jackie’s are. 

She knows every girl is different, but she has an advantage over someone like Jeff, has the knowledge of what she likes and therefore can at least start there and make adjustments. She’s probably too light right now, too teasing, which is why Jackie has started angling her hips up into Shauna’s touch.

And oh, there’s power in this. 

There’s a dark part of Shauna that likes that most of all, even more than the way Jackie’s clutching at her arm to anchor herself, or can’t stop taking in hitched breaths. Shauna has gone from puppet to puppet-master, and her fingers can pull any little string she wants. Jackie is at her mercy.

“Is this good?” she asks, and means it to sound normal—whatever normal even is right now, anyway—but when it comes out she sounds like she’s been chain-smoking for six decades and her voice is an octave too low.

Jackie nods swiftly against her, and it’s not enough. Shauna stills her fingers and Jackie’s resulting little whimper makes her throb so hard it hurts. She’s never heard her sound like that before. She sounds desperate and wounded. 

“Shauna,” Jackie whines, and Shauna feels Jackie’s jaw move, hears her licking her lips. Shauna’s fingers start again, slow, light circles, and Jackie’s body sags with relief. Jackie lifts a hand to her own face, presses it over her closed eyes, and just murmurs, “Fuck.”

Shauna will not let this end quickly. Not when it might be the only time she’s going to get to do this. Not when the alternative is to tease every minute she possibly can out of this experience, out of Jackie. 

She wants to hear every noise Jackie can make during sex. She wants to feel her writhe and jerk and she wants to listen to her plead, watch her say Shauna’s name over and over again. She wants to look at her in thirty goddamn years when Jackie’s married to some peaked-in-high-school loser like Jeff and make eye contact and know that they’re both thinking about the night Shauna unwound her better than anyone else ever has and ever will. If it never happens again, she wants Jackie to hate herself for not letting it happen as much as Shauna already hates herself for being this pathetic for it, for wanting it so badly. 

Jackie’s breathy little gasps are growing in volume the longer she draws those teasing circles, intermittently joined by soft, quiet cries. She’s so slippery between her thighs, and Shauna abandons her clit out of nowhere and traces down lower, wiping her fingers off on the inside of Jackie’s underwear. She’s wrist deep in the material now and coming out the other side, grazing Jackie’s inner thighs, feeling the slickness that’s escaped the bounds of her underwear, savoring the evidence as Jackie’s hips rise eagerly into the heel of her palm, clit bumping against it a few times before Shauna withdraws her hand completely.

“Don’t,” she whispers, placing her hand on Jackie’s abdomen, pressing down in a silent command to be still. “I’m doing it.”

“I know,” Jackie breathes, and she almost sounds… contrite? “I know, I know. I’m not usually—“ She cuts herself off, throat bobbing. Her hand is still covering her eyes. Shauna watches her give up on it and say instead, “This is different.”

Different than Jeff, Shauna knows she means. Jackie won’t gift her the word “better”, not yet, but Shauna can pull it out of her.

Her hand slips back into Jackie’s underwear and switches back to the slow passes, the slow strokes. She feels Jackie try to relax, try to let Shauna control this one thing between them. She winds Jackie back up carefully, letting her tremble, letting her cry out when Shauna presses a little harder for a few seconds, hyper-aware of the moment she starts to teeter too close to the brink. 

Jackie hangs there near the edge for a second, drops her hand to fist the sheets and starts to arch her back, and Shauna lifts her hand off, lets Jackie whimper and sink back down to the mattress, and waits for her grip to loosen and her body to relax. Jackie says nothing this time, just accepts that Shauna has prolonged this and does her best to catch her breath.

Shauna probes lower after that, swirling and pressing with her fingers without going inside, recalling her most intense masturbation experiences, the way she’d ache so badly when she’d tease herself here just right. How she’d slide her fingers in after so long and pretend they were Jackie’s, how it’d almost felt soothing to be filled, how good relieving the ache had felt.

She twists her body and shifts her hips, trapping Jackie’s outstretched thigh between her own, getting a delicious taste of friction against it and pushing herself up onto an elbow so she can look at Jackie for this. Jackie doesn’t shy away from her gaze, of course. She’s always loved being the center of attention.

But there is something too-sharp in Jackie’s eyes for how much they’ve had to drink, something too aware and too piercing, and she only breaks eye contact with Shauna when her eyes flutter shut and her lips part to emit a soft moan. Shauna feels completely undone when she realizes what’s caused it, that her fingers have stilled but her hips have been rocking slightly, unconsciously, pressing her slick shorts onto the bare skin of Jackie’s thigh. 

Feed her ego; always her ego.

“That’s yours,” she says, and it feels like it comes from someone else, from someone holed up deep in Shauna’s chest waiting to burst out of her and take possession of her. “You’re doing that to me, Jax.”

Jackie’s eyes are back open in a flash, surprise—no, shock—visible in her darkened irises. Her mouth drops open further and a groan pushes out of her at the same time that Shauna feels Jackie’s inner muscles fluttering at the tips of Shauna’s teasing fingers. 

She’d be mad at Jackie for being so clearly surprised that Shauna can be sexy if Shauna wasn’t also surprised at herself. She presses her attack while she’s still brave enough, demands in a whisper, “Ask me for it, okay?” Well, she means to demand it, anyway, but it definitely comes out sounding like a plea.

She expects this to be a little power struggle of its own, laden with heavy eye contact and probably involving Shauna slipping just the first half-inch of two fingers inside and then back out, torturously coaxing a surrender out of Jackie.

Jackie captures her lips so eagerly she practically kisses her tongue-first, cradles Shauna’s cheek in her hand and moans right into her mouth, “Please. In me.”

Shauna’s responding moan gets crushed between their mouths, and she’s in Jackie before she can make herself hold back, basking in the sound of Jackie’s muffled, strangled cry, fingers eagerly searching, finding what she’s found in herself so many times, recognizing it, curling. 

Jackie gives her lips one last parting love-bite before she sinks back down to the pillow and starts rocking her hips desperately, up into Shauna’s waiting palm and then back into her beckoning, rubbing fingers. She’s tighter in seconds, swelling, pressing on Shauna’s fingers from all sides, arms wrapped around Shauna and muffling her moans into Shauna’s neck. 

Shauna knows she can’t let this part go on, because Jackie isn’t going to make it much longer. So she decides to show off how much control she has of Jackie’s body again, falling back on the experience she has: touching herself, and hours of detailed fantasies about touching Jackie, imagining exactly how it might feel, what it might be like. She thinks she’ll know when to stop.

She asks, “Tell me when you’re there, okay?” and gets a rapid, trusting nod in response.

And then a minute later it’s, “I’m there,” high and strained and desperate in her ear, “I’m there, I’m there—“

Shauna pulls out just far enough to feel Jackie pulse weakly around nothing, and Jackie looks at her like she’s been slapped. She presses her palm against Jackie’s clit, hard, watches her eyes roll back and knows she hadn’t been too late in stopping, that it had just been another almost. Good.

With flushed cheeks and her eyes still closed, Jackie almost sounds wary now even through her breathy, “What are you doing, Shauna?”

Shauna’s honest. “Stretching it out so it feels better at the end.” She pumps her palm a few times and Jackie’s hips rock up and down to meet the movement, her thighs visibly trembling now. “It’s better, right? Than what you’re used to?”

Jackie’s too smart not to know what she’s asking, but she nods her answer anyway. The only hint that she’s even a little embarrassed by this admission is that she keeps her eyes closed, but Shauna knows her well enough to pick up on it. She loves it—knowing she’s coaxed something out of Jackie like this. 

Is there anything left now? She tries to remember. Tries to find things that don’t expose herself any further but will make her feel like she’s gotten something she wanted from Jackie. 

Jackie can do better than a nod, actually. Shauna shifts over further, onto her knees, pressing a hand to the mattress next to Jackie’s head. Jackie looks straight up at her and Shauna feels fully in control, finally. “Say it’s better.” She means to stop there, but that thing in her chest punches out of her without her permission. “Tell me how good I’m doing.”

The look on Jackie’s face is hard to read. There’s arousal behind her eyes, but Shauna’s request seems to have disarmed her a little, pulled her out of whatever heated fog Shauna’s hand has had her in and sharpened her focus. “Is that—?“ she breathes out, swallows, and then asks, “Are you, like, into that?”

Shauna freezes for half a second and suddenly feels out of her depth. “I don’t know,” she whispers, eyes dipping to look at Jackie’s mouth just because they can. “I’m a virgin, so.”

Time stops. Shauna blinks and Jackie blinks back. Then a slow, amused smile spreads across Jackie’s lips, and then, even despite her flushed cheeks, she’s giggling lightly up at Shauna. 

For a moment, they’re just best friends again, exchanging looks over a joke no one else has heard or doesn’t understand, and then Shauna’s laughing quietly too, unable to hold it in with Jackie shaking under her.  

“Jesus, Shipman,” Jackie marvels, still giggling. “At least you don’t use your hands like one.”

“Thanks,” Shauna huffs out through a final short laugh, glancing down to where her hand is still cupping Jackie. She keeps it there but doesn’t move it.

“Don’t talk like one, either.” Jackie shakes her head and fans herself, and Shauna almost worries she’s being made fun of until she remembers the way she’d made Jackie’s body react to her. Jackie’s making light of it, maybe, but she can’t not mean what she says. The evidence is sticky and wet against Shauna’s hand. 

“I really do,” Shauna ventures, more timidly than she’d like, but the mood’s different now and she doesn’t really know how to take it back to the way it’d been before, “want you to tell me.” She can’t remember the last time she really asked Jackie for something she wanted—at least not something this important. It makes her so nervous to do it now. 

“Okay,” Jackie agrees, just like that. She reaches up and tucks Shauna’s hair behind her ear. “You’re the best. No one else has been able to get me close, and you’ve almost made me come, like, three times. You’re making me feel insane, Shauna. My body is fully fucking fried and I keep thinking about how much I want your hand to move.” Jackie licks her lips, her pupils blown out. “Tell me what else you want me to say.” Shauna suppresses a shiver and almost wants to check if she’s dreaming. This version of Jackie is straight out of her wildest fantasies, and she can hardly process that she’s real, and here, and waiting for more from Shauna now. 

There are words on the tip of Shauna’s tongue, but they are too revealing. A raw ache left to worsen every time she tells Jackie she loves her—just casually, saying goodbye when one of them is dropped off somewhere, or before they hang up a phone call—and Jackie doesn’t say it back.

She can’t ask for that.

“Just keep telling me,” she rasps instead. “Tell me during.”

She dips her head and seals her mouth over Jackie’s, kissing her deep, languishing in the soft moans that vibrate on her tongue when her fingers slide up over Jackie’s clit and then back down and inside her again. 

Jackie likes it this way best; it’s obvious: Shauna in her and grinding her palm down in rhythm with Jackie’s hips. It’s too easy. It could be over in seconds again, the way Jackie’s already straining for it, the way her mouth is slipping away from Shauna’s and she’s breathing harshly, “Let me, please let me—”

Shauna pulls her fingers out and Jackie arches up and claws at her back, thankfully doing minimal damage through the material of Shauna’s shirt. 

Jackie remembers, then. “In, Shauna; it feels so fucking good—”

She plunges in, pumping hard and fast, and Jackie rocks against her, the bed creaking too loudly for how late at night it is and how close Jackie’s parents’ bedroom is. Shauna can’t find it in herself to care. Her body’s buzzing, maybe partly from the last remnants of the alcohol she’d downed earlier but mostly because Jackie’s moaning in her ear, low and hot, and trying her best to keep telling her, “You’re doing good, it’s perfect, just like that, Shauna.”

Jackie’s whole body is burning up beneath her, wriggling and writhing as she clutches Shauna hard, and Shauna’s arm aches with the effort of pressing forward against the resistance that mounts against her, born from Jackie’s walls closing in on her fingers. She gives up on driving them forward and curls them hard instead, grinds her palm in tight circles and then feels Jackie stiffen and her breath catch. 

Shauna claps a hand to Jackie’s mouth as soon as she cries out, because it’s way too loud, and discovers something new about Jackie when her response to that is to let out a strangled moan and squeeze down harder on Shauna’s fingers. It rolls through Jackie in waves for longer than Shauna’s ever managed to make her own orgasms last, her chest heaving and thighs trembling all the while, and then finally she goes limp beneath Shauna and Shauna knows it’s safe to move her hand away.

She slides her fingers out with reluctance and rolls off of Jackie without much fanfare, not wanting to look too keen on lingering, because now it’s really over, and she knows that means the analysis will start, and will continue for days to come. At least Jackie will be able to look back and know that Shauna had let sex be sex and had left her alone as soon as her orgasm hit. It’ll be a nice defense in the event that she ever has to pretend it hadn’t meant anything to her.

Shauna blinks up at the ceiling and lets it all wash over her, trying not to focus too hard on what Jackie’s doing, on the way Jackie’s likely already starting to panic. At best, probably, Jackie will roll over and pretend to forget it ever happened. At worst, it’s going to sink in and then they’re going to fight right here in the bed. The only certainty is that Jackie won’t ever touch Shauna back.

Because this is how they are. Shauna gives, Jackie takes. Jackie wants, Jackie gets. Shauna wants, Shauna shuts the fuck up and—

Jackie rolls toward her and Shauna’s barely turned her head before Jackie’s mouth is on hers, fiery and purposeful, her arm shifting under the blanket to dart to the hem of Shauna’s shorts.

Shauna makes a sharp, confused noise that sounds like “Mmm?” around Jackie’s tongue and then feels her shorts being tugged at, Jackie’s fingers curling into the waistband.

Jackie breaks their kiss and urges, “Lift your hips,” and Shauna does, reeling, her pulse throbbing in her neck and a rolling heat traveling through her abdomen. Jackie takes her shorts halfway down to her knees and then cups Shauna between her thighs, and the noise that comes out of Shauna is strangled and foreign.

Her mind is all wrong, all twisted, still screaming at her that this isn’t—that’s it’s a prank, maybe, or a misunderstanding, or something’s—

“You’re so wet,” Jackie’s moaning into her ear. Mocking her? Yes, teasing her for letting Jackie affect her like this. Making her feel pathetic and weak for being Jackie’s eager little lapdog. “Shauna.”

Jackie’s fingers are circling her, sliding off-course and then back on-course again: rapid, determined, erratic. 

Shauna’s breathing so loudly and quickly she thinks she might accidentally hyperventilate. She’s going to come too fast. Jackie’s touching her and her fingers are dipping low and inside and Jackie is fucking her in earnest, sloppy and unpracticed, whispering, “You’re so good, you’re so good,” into her ear as she does it, just like Shauna’d asked her to, and Shauna—

She snaps, too quickly, burying a cry into Jackie’s neck, and then crashes down hard, hips jerking back and forth against Jackie’s slowing hand to prolong it all as her head spins and her extremities tingle.

She knows how quick it was. Thirty seconds at most. She closes her eyes, feels her cheeks burn with an intense heat, and waits for the derisive laughter to start.

“Fuck,” Jackie murmurs into her ear, sounding out of breath and affected. Her lips drag along Shauna’s neck and her fingers stay firmly planted inside of her. “That was okay, right?”

Shauna’s eyes blink open and some of the heat leaves her cheeks. “Um. Yes?”

“I couldn’t slow down,” Jackie says, and she almost sounds like she’s the one embarrassed about it. Finally, her fingers withdraw, and Shauna misses them immediately. “I was gonna try to do what you did for me, but then.” She pauses, huffs out a nervous chuckle. “You made this noise.”

“Oh.” Shauna’s mind is so scrambled it feels like it’s in a sinkhole, unable to dig itself out of the world it’s crafted for itself. Unable to even discern if it needs to be dug out. Jackie isn’t acting like Jackie. Not the Jackie that Shauna knows.

Not the Jackie that Shauna hates, deep down, and only acknowledges hating in her journal and in the privacy of her own thoughts. 

This Jackie is asking her, “Are you sure it was okay for you? I can do it again. I can do it better.”

Finally, there’s something Shauna can make sense of. Jackie can’t let herself be bad at something. Jackie’s too insecure, has too much pride. 

(And the little voice in Shauna’s head that tells her making someone come in thirty seconds is actually a sign, maybe, of being too good at it, can shut the fuck up and fuck right off.)

“You did fine,” Shauna says, glancing over at her with a put-on air of disinterest. “You got me off.”

Jackie’s lips part and she stares at Shauna for a long moment, uncertain and unmistakably vulnerable. “I just—”

Shauna senses weakness and pounces on it to protect herself, cutting Jackie off. “Let’s just go to bed, okay? Don’t worry about it.”

She’s not cruel enough to roll over, so she tucks herself into Jackie’s side and pulls her shorts back up, then tosses an arm over Jackie’s stomach and closes her eyes.

She doesn’t get much sleep. She’s not sure if Jackie does, either.

 

Chapter 2

They part sometime in the night, and Shauna’s on her side with her back to Jackie by the time she wakes up in the morning. She can hear Jackie breathing evenly next to her as she re-processes last night, identifying the emotions it’s left swirling around inside of her one by one.

She’s anxious, above everything. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Jackie to wake up and fully process what they’ve done together after over a decade of friendship, and then to say a myriad of horrible things, ranging from accusing Shauna of having feelings for her to the best case scenario of laughing it all off and making it clear they’re never going to talk about it again. These few moments in Jackie’s bed are likely the last Shauna will ever have before everything changes forever.

She spends them with her eyes closed, trying to ignore the bad things ahead, reliving touching Jackie and being touched by her instead. She thinks of Jackie beneath her, flushed, writhing, moaning, squeezing hard on Shauna’s fingers. And then Jackie’s fingers on her and in her and how good they’d felt just because they belonged to Jackie, because they were paired with Jackie’s voice in her ear.

Her mind replays the way Jackie hadn’t really known what she was doing, the way that for all of her so-called experience getting fingered by Jeff, she’d still been generally worse at it than Shauna. A hypothetical witness to their night might’ve guessed it was Jackie’s first time, not Shauna’s, the way Shauna had puppeteered Jackie’s body so expertly after years of fantasizing about it and Jackie had rubbed at Shauna haphazardly afterward.

She pictures Jackie kissing her on the bed in the dark again, but this time Jackie looks up at her with wide-eyed uncertainty and says, cheeks flushed and lips plump and shiny, “You’re so much better at this than me, Shauna. Can you teach me how to touch you the way you touch me?” 

She’s been wet for an hour and aching for almost as long by the time she feels Jackie stir beside her. She hears her yawn, feels movement she thinks might be Jackie stretching, and then there’s nothing but silence and the distinct prickly feeling of being watched. She waits, eyes closed, heart racing, for what Jackie will do next. 

Jackie’s hand lands on her arm and Jackie starts, “Sh—” but that’s all she gets out because Shauna flinches under her touch, startled by it, and then Jackie’s letting out a quick laugh and saying, “Never mind, that answers that.”

“Sorry,” Shauna mumbles, forcing herself onto her back, looking over at Jackie.

She’s propped herself up on one elbow, the comforter pushed down to her waist and her shirt riding up, exposing the smooth skin of her abdomen. Shauna can see the lace waistband of her underwear peeking out from underneath the covers. Her eyes trace up to Jackie’s face and watch her wince and run a hand through her hair, which is so messy and unruly that it looks like she’d either slept horribly or gotten fucked or both. Jackie says, “God, I’m so hungover,” and that’s all Shauna needs to get the message.

It could be worse than this, than “oops, we were drunk, hehe, anyway!” So she’ll take it.

“Me too,” Shauna plays along, masking Jackie crushing her heart beneath her heel for the millionth time with a practiced indifference. “Wanna do breakfast downstairs or go out?”

“I’ll make us something,” Jackie decides, slipping out of bed. She takes a couple of steps to her dresser, winces again, then rubs at a spot on her lower back. “I’m so sore.” She glances over at Shauna, smiles, and then turns to rifle through her dresser. “Wonder why that might be, huh, Shipman?”

Just like that, Jackie’s scrambled Shauna’s brain again. “Uh,” her mouth says before she can even start to form a response, and then she doesn’t speak at all because Jackie’s taking her own underwear down to her ankles and stepping out of them. 

It’s not that they’ve never changed in front of each other before, but it isn’t really something they consciously, purposefully do like this when there are other options—even options like turning away, putting their backs to each other to do it. Jackie knows Shauna’s looking right at her, knows this means that she’s got an eyeful of Jackie’s bare ass now.

If Shauna’s mindless utterance bothers her, Jackie doesn’t show it. She pulls on a new pair of underwear and a denim skirt, picks up the old pair off of the floor and then makes a face, switches to holding them more daintily in her other hand and wipes the first hand on the nearest semi-appropriate thing she can find, which turns out to be the bedsheet. “Still wet,” she tells Shauna easily, like it’s nothing, and then tosses them into her hamper.

Jackie’s been replaced by a pod person, Invasion of the Body Snatchers style. There is no other explanation.

“What?” Shauna asks, sure she’s outright gawking at her now. 

Jackie blinks oddly at her, standing by the edge of the bed with a hand at the hem of her shirt, like she’d been about to take it off next. “From last night…?”

“Okay?” Shauna says shortly. She can feel herself blushing. “So, like, we’re talking about it?”

Jackie flinches so imperceptibly that anyone but Shauna would fail to notice it. Then she shrugs, back to looking aloof. “I— yeah? Did you not want to?”

“I don’t know,” Shauna says reflexively, protecting herself. But Jackie just looks at her and she feels like she has to search for a better answer. “Are you… okay?”

“Are you?” Jackie asks, and they’re so obviously getting nowhere that Shauna can’t help but feel some of the tension drain from the room.

She laughs and rests her forehead in one hand. “I mean… yeah?”

“Okay.” She hears material rustling, looks up and sees Jackie pulling her shirt off. She’s in a skirt and bra when she teases Shauna, “Did you wanna do a whole post-mortem on it over pancakes or something?”

Shauna throws a pillow at her, blushing harder. “Shut up.”

Jackie catches it with a giggle and tosses it back to the bed. “Seriously, though. Still trying to wrap my head around how hot you were last night. Would you pull that act out for Randy Walsh or am I special?”

Shauna tries to think quickly and dodge the question, to roll her eyes and huff out, “I wouldn’t fuck Randy Walsh,” but then she freezes for half a second, wondering if she’s thrown herself out of the frying pan and into the fire. It’s twofold: she’s admitting aloud that she would fuck Jackie—which, yes, she just had, so obviously she would, but saying it aloud to Jackie like it’s a conscious willingness feels risky anyway—and she’s also calling it “fucking”. Saying they’d fucked. Had sex. 

She knows that’s a mistake, because Jackie doesn’t count hand stuff. Jackie probably still considers herself a virgin, especially given that she’s already done this stuff and more with Jeff anyway, and Shauna’s going to spend the rest of her life having one-sidedly lost her virginity to her best friend who doesn’t even think of it as sex. As if she doesn’t feel pathetic enough already when it comes to Jackie.

Jackie has so much ammo and so many targets that she could fire just about anywhere she wants, taking them right into an awkward and potentially devastating conversation that will probably end with Shauna storming out in tears.

She doesn’t. She says—flirts, “I didn’t hear you deny that I’m special.”

Shauna pushes the comforter off of herself and rolls her eyes. “Especially annoying.”

She expects Jackie to laugh, but she doesn’t. Her eyes have dipped low, skated down past Shauna’s torso to where her legs are parted, one bent at the knee and the other extended out, exposing her between her thighs.

Shauna looks down. There’s an absolutely obscene dark spot on her shorts, impossible not to notice, impossible not to realize is recently formed. She yanks at the covers abruptly to cover herself back up and squeezes her eyes shut, pleading, “Can we just change and go eat?”

“If you want.” Jackie’s voice sounds odd, lower. “Um. Borrow anything, you know, like always. I’ll go get breakfast started.” 

Jackie pulls on a new shirt and then goes, and Shauna’s left to sit alone and think about that change in Jackie’s tone.

-

They eat the pancakes Jackie’s made largely in silence, sitting across from each other at the breakfast table, never quite seeming to catch each other’s eyes. It takes a while, but eventually Shauna notices they haven’t been interrupted. Then she remembers it’s a Sunday.

“Did they go to church today without you?” Shauna asks.

“Must have. They’ll probably be gone until the afternoon,” Jackie says.

“Mm.” Shauna drowns her next pancake in syrup just to be doing something. 

They fall silent again. Jackie’s legs shift under the table, accidentally bumping up against Shauna’s. “Sorry.”

Shauna searches for something to say, but her mind goes straight back to last night, to replaying images she hopes will stay with her forever. It’s too big, too present, to just talk about something else with Jackie over breakfast instead. They’ve addressed it without fighting about it, which is more than Shauna’d ever hoped for, but now it still feels like the elephant in the room.

“Do you…?” she starts carefully, hardly believing she’s saying anything without Jackie taking the lead on it. Then she realizes she has no idea where she’d been going with those words, and Jackie has paused with her fork in the air and is staring at her very intently. “Like. Have you…” Shauna pauses, trying not to wince at herself, to harness one last bit of courage. She manages it. “...You know. Thought about any of it?”

Jackie says, “It only just happened.”

Shauna sighs, recognizing a dodge when she sees it. “Yeah, but. There’s still this morning. And like, now.”

Jackie takes another bite, doing a poor job of hiding a smile. “I know you have.”

“Well,” Shauna says through a blush, trying to own it just a little, because it’s not like she can deny it, “sorry for liking it? At least I’m not fleeing from rooms over it.”

Jackie pauses, processing that, then sets her fork down calmly and arches an eyebrow at Shauna, amused. “Oh, is that what you think was happening there?”

“I don’t know.” She really doesn’t. “You tell me.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Jackie says, softening across from her. Shauna’s stomach flutters and she sets her fork down too, immediately certain that she won’t be able to put more food into herself anytime soon.

Shauna has too many questions. She’s desperate to ask them, but too terrified, still, of giving everything away, so she sticks with the simplest one: “You weren’t grossed out earlier?”

Jackie smiles and shakes her head, rolling her eyes. “The only person freaking out this morning is you.”

Is it, really? When Shauna thinks about it, she realizes Jackie might be right. Jackie has been relatively cool about this. Suspiciously cool, even; so much so that Shauna knows it must be because for Jackie this is just more experimental fun, and for Shauna it means something.

But she’d expected, when she’d awoken, that either their friendship would end this morning or they’d pretend they’d never crossed this line, and this is neither of these things. Maybe she’s better off copying Jackie, not overthinking this, just letting it sit and be.

“I’m only freaking out because I’m worried you’re gonna freak out,” she explains.

“I know.” Jackie licks her lips and Shauna watches her cheeks go a little pink, and then she says, “I left so that I wouldn’t get back in bed, okay?”

She’s so vague about it that it takes an extra three seconds for it to click. When it does, Shauna glances to the front door, as though to indeed confirm that Jackie’s parents aren’t about to walk back into the house on the spot, and then asks the bravest question she’s ever asked: “Do you wanna do it again?”

Jackie blinks rapidly at her. “Like… now?”

Shauna nods, swallowing hard. “Yeah.”

Jackie stares at her, eyes darting from Shauna’s eyes to her mouth as she visibly takes a second to think about it. Then she just says, “Yeah.”

“Okay.” Shauna looks at Jackie and Jackie looks at Shauna. “Cool.” Neither of them move.

Jackie asks, “Were you gonna…?”

“I don’t know,” Shauna says, and realizes she has no fucking clue who the leader here is, for lack of a better term, and then realizes that Jackie must think it’s her. It makes sense after last night, but Shauna’s so used to it being Jackie everywhere else. And Jackie had always kissed her first. No, wait, so it is Jackie, and what actually makes sense is for Shauna to expect Jackie to make a move. 

She doesn’t want it to be Jackie right now, though. Not yet. She wants Jackie to feel out of control and at Shauna’s mercy again. 

She’s nervous now, though, in the light of day and without the alcohol, unable to harness whatever had come over her last night. It strikes her that maybe they don’t work like this, when it isn’t some drunken, messy, almost unspoken thing, and that might be the most terrifying thought she’s had throughout all of this.

Jackie will go back to Jeff soon, like she inevitably always does, and there is only so much time for Shauna to leave her mark until then. If Jackie’s letting her do it, she needs to be able to pounce on the opportunity, to just touch and take. To channel her bitterness into something useful.

She stands and moves, takes Jackie’s hand and pulls her to her feet, and Jackie’s eyes flutter shut as Shauna moves in for the first kiss. It’s her first time ever initiating something like this, and she does it gently, in case this situation is as delicate as it feels, in case there’s some part of Jackie that’s ready to flee if it gets too hot and heavy too quickly.

But Jackie’s already grabbing her hips and tugging her backward, toward the path to Jackie’s bedroom, and Shauna resists it, shaking her head. There is a silent question in Jackie’s next kiss, an uncertainty to the way their tongues brush. Shauna breaks it and pulls Jackie toward the kitchen instead. It’s closer. 

“My parents,” Jackie warns when she realizes, but she’s turning redder by the second and Shauna can tell she likes the idea deep down.

“It’s like ten in the morning,” Shauna says. “We have at least a couple of hours.” She pushes Jackie up against the closest countertop and kisses her protests away. Jackie’s arms wind loosely around her neck and settle on her shoulders. She’s given in so quickly, and it reminds Shauna of everything from last night: the way Jackie had melted under her, molded so quickly to be what Shauna had asked of her, said everything she’d requested. Tightened on her when Shauna’d covered her mouth. 

Shauna isn’t experienced, but she isn’t stupid either. She can string a few obvious, neon-sign hints together. She thinks she’s got a general idea of what Jackie likes in bed. 

It helps that Shauna’s the same, that if Jackie really took over like she does their friendship, Shauna would be putty in her hands, practically whimpering at the thought of following Jackie’s every demand and being acknowledged for it.

Right now, she’s even more happy to be praised for this, though: for touching her just right, doing what Jeff has never been able to. She runs her hand up Jackie’s thigh and under her skirt, still kissing her, and touches her gently through her underwear. She’s damp. Getting there.

Shauna’s left hand rises to help out, venturing into uncharted territory, palming at Jackie’s chest, squeezing in time with strokes from her tongue and her fingers. Jackie breaks their kiss to moan, tipping her head back and exposing her neck, and Shauna thinks of the hickey on her own neck and decides it’s only fair. 

She latches on hard, unable to focus on too many things at once: her left hand stills but her right slides mindlessly back and forth, careful to keep the pressure light. She soothes Jackie’s mottled skin with her tongue, and Jackie doesn’t stop her during the next hickey, or the one after, just gets wetter against her fingers and starts gently rocking her hips.

They’re talking less this time. Shauna’s first words are, “Can you take your underwear off?” because even though she could do it herself, it’s so much hotter to see Jackie reach down with shaky arms and do it for her. It hits the floor and Shauna buries her fingers in slick warmth, stroking over Jackie’s clit with more pressure than last night. She wants to know how quickly she can get Jackie off when she’s trying for it. “Just tell me what you want, okay? Whatever feels good.” 

She probably sounds too caring, less sexy than she had last night in the dark, but she’s more herself this way, more the Shauna that looks at Jackie all doe-eyed like she’s hung the moon and the stars. Now that they’re here again, and Jackie’s panting all prettily into her ear, she feels like she’s fucking the best friend she loves rather than winning an invisible competition with Jeff Sadecki or with Jackie herself.

“You did something inside,” Jackie reminds her breathily. “Last night. That.”

Shauna knows what it is. She enters Jackie gently this time and has to take a second to get the motion right: stroking in, curling, brushing Jackie’s clit with her palm on the outstroke, over and over again. 

“Yeah,” Jackie confirms it for her, breath hitching. “That’s—that’s good.” She almost sounds nervous—and Shauna gets it; this isn’t last night, the moment’s not the same—when she says again, “That’s good. You’re… you’re doing good.”

“It’s working,” Shauna groans to her, reassuring her, knowing Jackie will understand what she means.

Jackie shifts eagerly into her, pants out, “Fuck,” and then her hips are moving faster, more desperately. “I—I’m kinda close.” She shifts, bringing a leg up, tucking it behind Shauna and opening herself up wider.

Shauna knows she is because she can feel it, and wonders if Jackie would want to know, if she’d be curious. She thinks she would. She thinks Jackie loves hearing about herself anyway so she’d probably really love to hear about how intimately Shauna pays attention to her during this, all of the little things she picks up on.

She kisses up to Jackie’s ear and then decides to share. “I can tell. You get… it’s different. It changes. You wouldn’t be able to fake it with me.” Jackie’s hands grasp her tighter and she flutters on Shauna’s fingers, and she reads it as encouragement. “You feel rougher. You start to squeeze. It’s… it’s harder for me, here.” She curls the two fingers inside of Jackie again, feels the extra resistance, hears Jackie’s strangled whine. “I kinda know it all from myself, but I notice everything way more when it’s you. I pay more attention.” She kisses Jackie’s ear, closes her eyes. “I always pay the most attention to you, Jax.”

Jackie comes hard, moaning low and long this time, hands crushing Shauna to her, trapping Shauna’s arm tightly between them. She grinds on her palm as she shudders through it, using it for friction. Shauna couldn’t move it even if she wanted to, and there’s something about that…

Shauna knows herself. She does like controlling Jackie for once. Likes it a lot. And wants to like it best, if only she could.

But she thinks of Jackie in her bedroom, so many times, throwing her a cocky smile and waving her over, saying, “Come here, help me test something,” and Shauna going to her, following orders, kissing her, feeling lower than dirt until she earns a small noise or some other sign of approval. She thinks of Jackie doing it tomorrow, or the next day, but instead it’s, “Come here, I wanna come,” and instead of Jackie pulling her into a kiss it’s Jackie shoving Shauna’s hand up her skirt and being soaked for her underneath. Or better, Jackie spreading her legs and pushing down on Shauna’s head, making her sink to her knees to be used like that instead. She wants those fantasies brought to life more than she’s ever wanted anything.

Shauna fucking hates herself, Jesus. 

“Can I…?” Jackie whispers into Shauna’s ear, hips still moving, still using Shauna’s hand, and Shauna realizes she isn’t done.

Heat rolls through her and she rasps, “Don’t ask. Just take it.” She pulls back, kissing open-mouthed down Jackie’s neck, feeling her hips rock harder, more determined. “From now on, just take what you want. Like you always do.”

“What?” Jackie gasps out, and she almost sounds offended, but it’s hard to tell through the airy quality of her voice. 

“It’s okay,” Shauna reassures her, even though a lot of the time it actually isn’t. “I like it,” even though she writes in her journal about how much she resents it. “It’s hot.”

“Okay,” Jackie pants, head tipping back, neck so completely covered in hickeys that Shauna has a brief thought about what on earth she’s going to do about them tomorrow. “If you’re sure? I just—“

“What?” Shauna presses as much as she can with her palm, which isn’t much, but it pulls a soft sound from Jackie’s throat anyway.

“Just want what you want,” Jackie says, lies; Jackie wants what Jackie wants and doesn’t bother to ask if it’s what Shauna wants too.

Shauna lets her get away with it. “I know. Don’t forget, okay?” Maybe it’ll last a week or so before Jackie’s back with Jeff, and they can at least fool around until then. Make some memories to take turns silently holding over each other’s heads. “Just go for it. Tell me you want me and tell me how.” She’s probably giving herself away again, so she adds, “It’ll be fun.”

It’s done. She’s handed the reins over. She’ll probably stew over it later and blame Jackie for conditioning her, but right now she’s too turned on by the thought of the highs it’ll bring to worry about the lows she’ll feel when it’s over. 

Jackie gasps out another quicker, smaller release into her ear and then slumps against her, trusting Shauna to keep her legs from giving out. Shauna likes that, too: being relied upon to hold her up after being the one to make her fall apart in the first place. It makes her feel needed. 

Jackie’s hands slide down her back after a moment, caressing her, and Shauna closes her eyes and focuses on the intense throbbing between her legs. She can sense Jackie is thinking, trying to figure out what to say, what comes next now. 

Shauna will do what Jackie decides, but some options are more right than others. This is Jackie’s first test; the first indicator of whether or not she really gets it, really knows what Shauna had been trying to introduce between them. They’re best friends, and yet it’s always felt like Jackie’s never truly known her, understood her. She’s molded Shauna into this, though, so the least she can do is double down for her now.

Shauna hears her swallow. Feels Jackie’s lips graze the shell of her ear. “I think,” Jackie says, and she sounds so much more nervous than she does when she’s ordering Shauna to kiss her, “you should take care of yourself now.”

A sharp burst of air hisses out from between Shauna’s teeth and she feels her knees go weak. Yes yes yes—

She can’t hold back a soft moan as she pictures it, pictures Jackie watching her, but then she pulls back and looks at Jackie with widened, hopeful eyes, takes in Jackie’s flushed face and darkened irises—she’s out of her depth, more uncertain here than Shauna—and protests, “It feels better when you do it.” Her hand is still pressed between Jackie’s thighs, so she feels the way the compliment makes Jackie throb. 

This is test number two.

Jackie searches Shauna’s eyes, asking a silent question Shauna refuses to answer, and then swallows hard. “Just…” she starts gently, moving back, creating space between their bodies to remove Shauna’s hand from under Jackie’s skirt. She presses it to the waistband of the sweats Shauna’s borrowed from Jackie instead. “Just let me watch.”

It’s too soft, too caring, but Jackie’s got the idea, and that’s more than enough for now to have her passing with flying colors. 

Shauna reverses their positions, presses herself back into the counter and shyly slips her hand into her pants and then her underwear while Jackie looks down between their bodies, eyes glued to the movements she can see through the material. 

Shauna’s nervous for this part, genuinely, but that’s part of the appeal. That Jackie can tell her to do something and unsettle her with it, push her into it and derive pleasure from it. All she needs is the approval and she’ll start to sink into that familiar high. She desperately hopes that Jackie remembers to give it.

She’s soaked between her thighs all over again, and only teases herself for a moment before she dips inside. Jackie holds her at her hips and surprises Shauna by leaning in and kissing her, and Shauna’s first moan is lost somewhere in Jackie’s throat. She fucks herself harder, faster, gasping for breath against Jackie’s lips. It’s going to be quick again.

“Watch,” she gasps, and Jackie’s hand tangles in her hair, gently tugs her head back to show off her neck, then she leans in and sucks another hickey into it to join the one from last night. But she’s not watching. Shauna’s chest burns. “Jackie.”

“Slow down,” Jackie tells her, forming the words against her neck, and Shauna does, still burning, feeling scolded as she sets a new pace she hopes Jackie will like. “That’s better.”

A jolt of electricity zips down to her clit. “Yeah?” she moans out. 

Jackie pauses against her, obviously thinking, and then Shauna feels her inhale quickly, just once, with something like realization. “Jeez, Shipman. Okay, I’m getting it.”

“It’s taken you this long?” Shauna wants to ask but doesn’t, and she knows Jackie can’t possibly have figured out how deep it goes, and that it’s only about Jackie giving her orders, not anyone else, but she definitely finally understands the part that matters most.

“Is there anything else?” Jackie asks her carefully, and Shauna blushes and decides to risk it this time.

“I’d like…” It’s so much; she needs to frame it properly, and while she’s touching herself her brain isn’t exactly at its most thoughtful. She tries anyway. “You’re my best friend. You love me, right?” She doesn’t wait for Jackie to answer; she doesn’t want her to say it yet. “So tell me. But… But I wanna earn it.”

Jackie’s silent for too long, and Shauna knows then that it’d been too much, that she’d fucked up, she’d—

Her hand stills and she breathes hard and fast, anxiety coursing through her.

“Shauna,” Jackie asks her, leaning back to look at her, hands sliding to hold Shauna at her forearms. “Are you, like… Are you okay?”

Shauna could cry. “No. I don’t know.”

“I do love you. You know that, right?”

“You don’t say it,” Shauna blurts, and then regrets it immediately. But it’s too late to take it back. “I say it and you don’t say it back.”

Jackie blinks at her, lips parted in surprise and confusion. “…I don’t?”

God, it’s worse somehow, that Jackie doesn’t even realize it. That Jackie really is just off in her own little narcissistic world, not malicious. It makes it harder to hate her, and it’s hard enough already, hating her and loving her at the same time. 

Shauna shakes her head and takes her hand out of her pants, and Jackie grabs her wrist. “Wait. Do you want…? I mean, I—I want us to do it like you said. Okay? I’m sorry.” She leans back in, gives Shauna a kiss that feels soft and repentant. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She guides Shauna’s hand back in by her wrist and leaves it there, then cups her cheeks and kisses her deeper, but it’s slow and still so soft. Tentatively, Shauna starts to circle her clit again. 

“I’ll watch,” Jackie promises her, lips ghosting finely over Shauna’s. “Just wanna kiss you for a second. You have really nice lips.”

It doesn’t matter that Jackie’s definitely only saying this now because she feels bad; the compliment washes over Shauna, sending tingles throughout her body, all the way to her extremities.

“I notice them,” Jackie tells her next, her voice low and quiet. “Sometimes when you’re talking I just look at them. Then afterward I wonder if you caught me. Have you ever caught me?”

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow and an involuntary moan passes through her lips before Jackie leans in and smothers it. Her tongue slides over Shauna’s like she’s trying to collect the remnants of it, languid and light. 

Jackie’s making it all up, and that’s fine; she’s climbing quickly and that’s all that matters now.

Jackie’s hands slide up her body next, over her chest, squeezing her breasts almost greedily, head dipping to watch it all. Shauna groans, touches herself faster as Jackie’s thumbs rub over her hardening nipples. “These too,” Jackie says, something rough and new in her voice. “When we make out I’ve thought about touching them like this.”

“Fuck,” Shauna moans, the stimulation shooting straight to her clit, aiding her fingers. She has to press them back inside of herself again to make herself last. 

Jackie watches, and likely feels the change in her movements too. “Take your time,” she agrees, hands still all over Shauna’s chest, driving her crazy. “You’re doing perfect.”

Shauna throbs hard and has to still her fingers not to come, and she knows from the whimper she lets out and the way she stiffens briefly that she’s given away how close she’d been.

“Don’t,” Jackie says quickly, breathily. “Don’t yet. Let me see more of you first.”

It sinks in for Shauna then that Jackie is gone, head empty, as into this as Shauna is. She sounds like she’s two seconds away from sticking her own hand between her legs too, and her face is so red, her eyelids heavy.

Arousal boils low and hot in Shauna’s abdomen and she pushes the sweatpants down and kicks them off so that Jackie can see her hand in her underwear: a pair she’s borrowed from Jackie after ruining her own last night and this morning. 

“This too,” Jackie says, pulling up her shirt, and Shauna lets it happen, takes her hand away from herself long enough to get the shirt up and over her head and discarded onto the floor. They work quickly, and in seconds Jackie’s hands are all over the cups of her bra—a plain one, but it’s older and a size too small so Shauna’s spilling out of it a little, at least—fingers digging into the exposed skin at the tops of her breasts. 

Jackie must know now that Shauna means it all, that something like I will give you whatever you want from me wouldn’t be an exaggeration, and it must turn her on, too, the way she’s acting, the way she’s making requests, taking. Shauna could almost come from that thought alone, especially with Jackie’s hands on her, so she’s careful when she touches herself again, barely brushing over her clit on her way back inside of herself.

It feels scarily strong, when it creeps up again, when she’s hitting herself just right inside, listening to Jackie’s breathing, feeling Jackie kneading her, rubbing over her nipples again and again. “Oh, God,” she whines, her head tipping back, eyes squeezing shut. “Jax, tell me.”

“Go on,” Jackie urges her right away, voice low and eager. “Take it. You’ve been good. You look… fuck, Shauna, you’re so pretty. You have no idea. No idea.”

A flush crawls up Shauna’s neck and she can feel it rising with every word, and she’s so self-conscious knowing Jackie’s watching her, so achy and hot from being told she’s pretty; Jackie looks so pretty to her when she comes, so maybe there’s a chance Jackie might think Shauna is—

She trembles, arches off of the counter into Jackie’s hands, and knows she’s moaning loudly with every stroke of her fingers but can’t do anything to stop herself. 

She’s there, finally, a second away, and Jackie times it perfectly, reads the hitch in her breath just right and groans, “I love you,” into her ear just as Shauna’s thrown over the edge. 

She comes with a desperate moan that sounds more like she’s crying out, crushes her fingers and presses her palm into her pulsing clit to earn several more rapid waves of pleasure, and doesn’t realize Jackie’s hands have darted down to her hips to help hold her up until several seconds later, when her head’s still spinning but her vision’s clearing and her consciousness has started to come back to her again.

She sags back against the counter, breathing hard, and as the pleasure filters out her stomach gives a lurch and the embarrassment starts to filter in. 

She doesn’t look at Jackie as she catches her breath, just stares down her exposed body, at her bra and underwear, at the hand she removes that’s covered in shiny slick. 

They’re in Jackie’s parents’ kitchen, Jackie’s fully clothed, and Shauna’s nearly naked and has just begged Jackie to tell her she loves her during the sex Jackie’s going to consider not-sex.

It doesn’t matter that Jackie’d played along and enjoyed it, that she’d come up with a few nice things to say on the spot. Shauna feels both physically and emotionally overexposed. 

She forces herself to look up, finally, and sees Jackie watching her carefully, as though she’s waiting for Shauna to process this too, and is maybe wary of what she’ll say next. 

Shauna opens her mouth and has no idea what’s supposed to come out of it. “I—“ she starts, and then swallows hard. “I think I should probably get home?”

Jackie’s hands leave her so quickly it’s like she’d burned them. “Oh,” she says, blinking rapidly, moving backward. 

“I have, um,” Shauna dips to pick up the shirt, the sweatpants, wiping her hand off on the latter, trying to think. “I have homework. This was fun, though.”

“Yeah.” Jackie sounds odd again. Shauna can’t decipher it. “Me too.”

Shauna can’t let it go, though; not completely. She straightens up and pulls the clothes back on, looks at her evenly and tries to sound casual. “Let me know if you wanna do it again? Like we talked about.”

Jackie swallows and nods, but seems lost for a moment. “Okay.”

Should they kiss goodbye instead of hugging? Shauna isn’t sure, so she steps in for a hug. They wrap their arms around each other and it feels awkward, incomplete. “See you at school tomorrow?”

“See you at school,” Jackie echoes, nodding again.

Shauna leaves quickly, collecting her car keys on her way out. She slips into the driver’s seat and slams the door shut, then just sits in silence for a moment, staring at her hands on the steering wheel. She feels separated from her own body, floating, looking down at her hands like that one was in Jackie Taylor. 

It doesn’t feel real. Maybe tomorrow it’ll feel even less real. If Jackie never brings it up again, Shauna never will either.

It’s in Jackie’s hands now.

Just like everything has always been.

Chapter 3

Notes:

Trying to keep these updates fairly frequent! Especially with getting this one out because we're finally diving into more of the actual story. I appreciate the positive feedback :)

In this chapter: Jackie continues to try Her Best.

 

Also, shoutout to this bookmark and its creator, who completely understands this fic (thank you, I feel seen):

*jackie looking at shauna*
shauna: god she must be thinking about how much better than me she is, how much she likes controlling me to feel powerful i hate her so much
jackie: 👁️👄👁️ shauna🫦🫦🫦🫦🫦🥰🥰😍😍😍😋😋💞💞🥺🤏😍😍😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰🥰😩😫😫🫦🫦🫦

When Shauna gets home, she holes up in her room and takes out her journal.

I’m going to write about something I’ve never written about before now.

Her hand trembles on the pen as it hovers next to the period at the end of her first sentence. Finally, she continues.

I don’t know why it’s so easy to write about hating her but so scary to write about this. 

It doesn’t make sense. Jackie’s her best friend, so loving her and hating her should maybe be equally shameful. Both are carefully guarded secrets. But only one of them had felt so sacred that she’s never put it to paper before.

I know it might not make sense because I’ve filled pages of this journal complaining about her. Resenting her, judging her, accusing her of controlling my whole life. But I’m in love with Jackie. I have been for as long as I can remember. I love her so much that I can’t stop her from having that control over me. I can’t say no to her. That’s why I have to try to go to Brown. Being away from her is the only way I can release this hold she has on me. 

We had sex this weekend. I know why I did it. I wanted her to be mine for just a little while. I want her to remember how it felt with me forever. Even though it didn’t mean anything to her, it was good. Even though she doesn’t love me, I know she liked it better with me than she did with him.

I know why Jackie did it, too. Jackie craves attention and validation and admiration. She knows she can get it from me. She gets so much of it all from me when we’re touching each other. It turns me on to give it to her then. And I think she gets off on figuring out how to affect me in all the ways that she does.

We’re the same, in one way: I love Jackie and Jackie also loves Jackie. I think it might be the only genuine thing we have in common. 

I need to get into Brown. And then when I’m gone, Jackie won’t miss me, because she doesn’t actually know me. But she’ll miss having a sidekick. Maybe she’ll realize what she’s lost then. Maybe she’s at home now thinking about what we can do in our dorm room at Rutgers together. Behind Jeff’s back, obviously—they’ll be back together soon and I’ll have to pretend to be happy about it. I give it another week before I’m stuck listening to her talk about blowing him again. The worst part is that if she knew it made me sick with jealousy she’d be happy about it. Happy she can make me feel that.

Sometimes I wish I’d never met her.

She closes her journal and returns it to its hiding place, then lies back on her bed and lets her eyes flutter shut. Her hand drifts down to her abdomen, fingers toying with the waistband of Jackie’s borrowed sweatpants. She slides it lower, lets out a soft breath and touches herself, thinking of Jackie telling her you’re so pretty and I love you on a loop until she comes.

-

She’s antsy as she pulls up to Jackie’s house on Monday morning, blasting Weezer’s debut album on tape to try to distract herself from her own anxiety. This feels like another reset, just like Sunday morning, and there’s a part of her that’s still waiting for it to really hit Jackie, and then for their friendship to finally get blown to smithereens.

Jackie exits her house with her hair shiny and perfectly pampered, her lips extra red from the gloss she’s picked out today, a face full of makeup there to complement it. Shauna’s used to the disparity between them: she’d rolled out of bed and pulled on her favorite flannel, brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair a couple of times, slapped some concealer on her neck and called it a morning.

The curved smile Jackie sends Shauna’s way as she slides into the passenger’s seat is maybe twenty percent less confident than usual, but she’s otherwise the same, just greets her, “Morning, Shipman,” and then eyes the radio judgmentally. “Weezer?”

“They have a new album coming out this year, in the Fall,” Shauna says, just to make conversation. “I wanna go see them live.”

“Just don’t come home too late and wake me up after,” Jackie laughs out, turning the music off. “We’ll be roomies at Rutgers by then.”

Shauna blinks at the road and starts driving, annoyed under the surface as Jackie switches to the radio and some pop song starts to play. But she contains it well. “Right.” She can feel Jackie looking at her and feels pressured to find something to say. “Do anything else yesterday?”

Jackie’s head turns the other way, looking out the window. “Jeff stopped by.”

Shauna’s stomach drops. “Oh. That was fast.”

Jackie laughs shortly, but it’s dry, flat. “What does that mean?”

“It’s just… not surprising.” Shauna feels claustrophobic, trapped in here with Jackie for the next few minutes. She rolls her window down, hot and uncomfortable. “Are you actually offended? Like, am I supposed to pretend to be shocked?”

Jackie falls silent, crossing her arms, and Shauna feels the air between them turn icy. She lets it happen, refusing to apologize this time, to apologize to Jackie for a correct assumption that’s breaking her own heart and not Jackie’s. She has nothing to apologize for. In fact, fuck Jackie for not even giving her the one week she’d dared to hope for.

“Whatever,” she mumbles, relief filling her as their school parking lot comes into sight ahead. 

“You could, like, ask me what happened,” Jackie pushes when it’s clear Shauna’s not going to, and Shauna sighs and rolls her eyes. They turn into the lot and she searches for a parking space.

“Okay, Jackie. What happened with Jeff?” The question drips with sarcasm.

Jackie glares at her as they come to a stop and Shauna parks. She reaches for her seatbelt too quickly, unbuckling it like she’s eager to get out, and says, “He saw my neck.” Then she’s gone before Shauna can squeak out a response, slamming the door shut behind her. 

Shauna freezes for two seconds and then fumbles for her own buckle, wrestling with it for a moment and then sliding out of her car in a rush. It starts beeping, and she realizes she’s left the keys in the ignition. “Fuck.” She ducks back inside to grab them, lifts her head too quickly on her way out and bangs it, curses again, then snatches her backpack up and slams the door.

When she looks up, Jackie’s already at the front entrance and pushing inside with more force than necessary, visibly angry.

“Fuck,” Shauna says again, hastily shouldering her backpack and hurrying after her. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She catches up to Jackie at her locker, out of breath and flustered, glances down to her neck and sees that she’s got everything covered up now today, same as Shauna. Jackie doesn’t look at her, just trades books in and out of her locker aggressively with her lips pressed into a tight line. 

“Does he know?” Shauna asks furtively, looking around them both and keeping her voice low.

“Not that it was you,” Jackie says shortly, still not looking at her. “I said it was a guy he’d never met.”

Shauna bites her lip, her stomach churning, and then checks, “So you didn’t get back together?”

That, finally, pulls Jackie’s attention to her, but only so she can look at her like she has three heads. “No, Shauna, what the fuck? We had a screaming match and my parents got home in the middle of it. I had to make up a story about meeting a guy at the party Saturday night, which meant telling my parents I went to a party, and now I’m fucking grounded for a week. It would’ve been more but I reminded them we have Regionals this Friday. They completely freaked out. I hadn’t even told them Jeff and I broke up and my mom made me feel like a total whore. It was awful.”

Shauna stares at her, speechless, and watches Jackie slam her locker shut. “Oh.” She can feel the guilt invading her chest, settling low and heavy. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to get back with Jeff,” Jackie says abruptly, glancing at Shauna, something flickering behind her eyes that looks like hurt, mixing with a second thing foreign to Shauna, unidentifiable with how quick it comes and goes. “I told you that.”

“I know,” Shauna mutters. “You guys just do this a lot, Jax. You’ve said all of this before.”

“Yeah, Shauna, sure,” Jackie snips back, poorly masking the pain behind her frustrated tone now. “This is just like the other times. I can’t imagine how it’s any different. You’re right.”

She leaves, not quite storming off but clearly not wanting to be followed, and Shauna closes her mouth and blinks at her back, confused, feeling like her head’s spinning with the effort of keeping up with everything this morning.

The bell rings and she shakes herself out of it, trying to make herself focus on the day ahead.

Jackie is cool to her throughout the day: not quite as icy as in the morning, but noticeably off with her. They eat lunch outside in the quad with a few other yellowjackets and Shauna can feel that they’ve formed a silent pact then to be normal for the other girls, but things go back to being off in their next class, and Shauna spends the day filled with worry, wondering what sort of conversation they’re meant to have to fix this. 

She isn’t fully sure why Jackie’s upset beyond the fact that Shauna’d assumed she hadn’t been serious about her breakup with Jeff, which had only seemed to mildly annoy her when Shauna’d said it on Saturday night. She still doesn’t fully buy that it’s over, after so many years of temporary breakups, but she knows expressing that to Jackie now would go over like a lead balloon. She feels gaslit. Jackie has cried wolf about ending things with Jeff for good so many times; Shauna doesn’t deserve her anger for doubting her this time, too. 

What she doesn’t expect is for Jeff to corner her at her locker at the end of the day, just before soccer practice, all tense and amped up as he asks her, “Who is he?”

Shauna glances at him as she shelves her last unnecessary textbook. “Um, hello.”

“I know you know. You’re her best friend.”

Shauna shrugs. She’s had all day to think about this. If Jeff’s determined enough, he’ll start asking about the party, find out it was at Lottie’s, and then ask around about who was there. He’ll find out that it was mostly the soccer team and their closest acquaintances, and that there’d been very few guys. He’ll practically have a hit list to run through at that point. She has to give him a solution now so that he won’t hunt one down himself. “I don’t know. She went off with some guy from another school. I didn’t ask.”

Jeff gapes at her. “And you let her? Jackie and I have been together for four years! I gave you rides so many fucking times, Shauna.”

Shauna closes her locker door and glares at him. “Okay? I’m not her fucking keeper.” 

Jeff changes tactics. “So they only made out?”

“I don’t even think she got his name,” Shauna says. “You know how Jackie is. She was drunk. She probably just wanted to have fun. Like you haven’t ever fooled around with anyone else when you’ve been on a break?”

Jeff turns red and says, “I haven’t.” She isn’t sure if he’s lying, but starts to think maybe he’s actually telling the truth when he falls silent, thinking, and then ponders aloud, “Should I be?”

Shauna feels her pulse jump with excitement, immediately seeing the opportunity and seizing it. “I think that’s a good idea, Jeff. She did it first. You’re allowed.” 

Jackie would never forgive him.

“Right.” Jeff sounds uncertain, though. He looks at her with furrowed eyebrows. “You really think so? I just don’t want to fuck things up with her. It’s always been us. I don’t get it. She just… flew off the handle over nothing and dumped me. It was the tiniest little argument.”

Shauna takes that in, processing it. She’d known Jackie had initiated the break up, had cited being generally done with Jeff as her vague reasoning, but these details from Jeff now are the most she’s gotten. 

“She hasn’t told me much, okay? But you’re an attractive guy. You and Jackie will work things out eventually like you always do. And in the meantime, you’ll never know what you’re missing out on if you never keep an eye out for it.” She smiles at him, hoping it looks sincere and not like she’s trying to completely destroy him. “Just look around a little.” She reaches out, makes herself give him a quick, awkward hug, and then slips past him to head to the locker room. 

-

She finds Jackie by the mirrors, already in her practice uniform, pulling her hair up into a tight ponytail as the other girls linger nearby in various states of undress. 

“Melissa, you left this in Chem,” one of the junior girls says to another, tossing her a pink hat, and Shauna files that away determinedly. Melissa. She really needs to do a better job of remembering that. 

“Hey, Shauna,” Melissa greets her shyly, pressing the cap onto her head backwards. Shauna waves and sits on a bench next to Van, pulling her shoes off, and Van chuckles next to her as the junior girls all file out together. 

“She’s got a little crush on you, Shauna,” Van mutters to her, and Shauna forces a laugh. She’s never really thought about Melissa hard enough to wonder if it’s true, and she doesn’t bother to wonder about it now either.

“Okay.”

“Just saying. It’s no wonder Jackie’s always riding her harder than the other benchwarmers.”

Shauna gives her an odd look, but Van pulls on her gloves and stands up to leave before she can be questioned. 

Jackie takes her place a minute later. “You’re late.” The rest of the locker room is starting to empty; Shauna had indeed been the last to arrive.

“Your boyfriend caused a delay,” Shauna says, and then remembers to correct, “Ex-boyfriend.”

Jackie inhales sharply, spinning around on the bench so that her legs are facing opposite from Shauna’s. They’re hip to hip and Jackie’s watching her lift up for a second to pull on her soccer shorts and then get started on her shin guards, socks, and cleats when she whispers, “What did you tell him?”

“I said it was some guy at the party that you didn’t know, from another school. And that you just made out.”

Jackie sighs with relief. “Okay. Good. That fits with what I told him yesterday.”

“Perfect.” Shauna has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. “This is fun. Why the fuck did you answer the door without putting makeup on first?”

“I forgot.”

“Great.” Now she rolls her eyes. “Glad it was so forgettable.”

Jackie’s eyes narrow, and Shauna sees her glance past them at their remaining teammates, all distracted talking and laughing together near the locker room entrance. She keeps her voice low as she says, “I didn’t say that.”

“Whatever.” Shauna knows she’s being a dick now, but she’s too frustrated to care. 

Louder, to the other girls, Jackie puts on the voice she reserves for when she’s in captain mode and tells them, “Practice starts in three minutes, ladies. Don’t be late.”

Mari rolls her eyes and teases, “Rules for thee, Cap?” but leads the charge out anyway. 

And then they’re alone. Shauna bends over, lacing her cleats up, and then stands to finish changing. She shrugs off her flannel and stuffs it into her duffel bag, grabs her practice shirt and drops it onto the bench next to Jackie, who’s watching her in silence now as she tugs off her top.

Shauna pauses, shirtless, sensing Jackie has something to say, and Jackie tells her sharply, “Don’t be an asshole.”

Shauna’s been in a bad mood all day, stressed and a little emotionally exhausted, which is why she just huffs and says, “Fine. I won’t be. Is that it?” She gives the exit a leading look, silently suggesting Jackie can go now. “Are you done?”

“You’re being such a fucking brat,” Jackie snaps back, standing up, but she sounds more annoyed than angry. 

Shauna pulls her jersey on. “Me? You’ve been pissed with me all day because I had the audacity to think that breakup number twenty was gonna go the same way as breakups one through nineteen. My bad. I know it’s killing you that I think you’re predictable, Jackie, but if the shoe f—“

“Predictable?” Jackie interjects, her voice leaping an octave higher. “You think this weekend was predictable?”

Shauna falls silent, flushing. Jackie has her there, though she’s not sure what this weekend has to do with Jeff. “Not all of it, I guess.”

Jackie looks fed up with her, and Shauna shrinks back instinctively when she steps over the bench and encroaches on her personal space with flared nostrils. “You’re pissing me off,” Jackie says, and then presses her into the lockers and kisses her. 

Shauna leans into it, making a soft sound in her throat, fingers curling around Jackie’s neck to hold her close. Jackie’s lip gloss is mostly gone now but Shauna can taste a hint of it, feel it barely there, sticky against her own lips. Jackie’s tongue swipes over her bottom lip and clears it, then sucks Shauna’s lip into her mouth gently, pulling a groan out of her.

She feels Jackie step closer, pushing against her and pinning her, chest against chest, stomach to stomach, arms sliding around to hold her at the arch of her back. Shauna tilts her head, helping Jackie deepen the kiss, turning it into something heavy and hungry. Her other hand settles on Jackie’s hip and helps keep her pressed to Shauna there. 

She’s burning up from it, heat crawling up her neck and into her cheeks, starting to breathe heavily through her nose, her pulse racing, core tightening with anticipation. She opens her mouth, greedy, sucking on Jackie’s tongue the next time it slides against hers.

Jackie moans and tightens her hold on Shauna, then pulls away out of nowhere, so quickly that Shauna chases her mouth blindly for several inches before coming to her senses and realizing they’re stopping. Her eyes snap open.

“We’re late,” Jackie puffs out like she’s just realizing it, already reaching up to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand. “What are you doing; your hair isn’t even up yet.”

Shauna stares at her, slack-jawed, as Jackie turns away and retrieves Shauna’s discarded shirt, stuffing it into her duffel bag. “What the fuck, Jackie?”

They don’t do this here. They don’t even do this at parties—Shauna had learned her lesson after almost getting caught the one time with Melissa. Only in the privacy of their bedrooms and once in Shauna’s car. Certainly not at school. 

Jackie digs through the bag and finds a hair tie instead, then turns and stuffs it forcefully into Shauna’s hand. Her cheeks are red and she doesn’t make eye contact. “Just hurry up,” she says, and then sweeps out of the room.

“You kissed me,” Shauna blurts, finally, as the door swings shut. She isn’t sure whether or not Jackie’d heard her.

-

She drives Jackie home after practice, feeling annoyed with herself for doing it after how Jackie’s been acting all day: being hot and cold with her, confusing her, arguing with her and then kissing her.

Jackie’s quiet, eyes on the road, one hand playing idly with her own ponytail, still in her practice uniform same as Shauna. Shauna sees Jackie glancing at her in her periphery every half a minute or so. 

She wonders if Jackie’s enjoying this: spinning her around, messing with her. Or if she doesn’t understand herself right now, either. Shauna certainly doesn’t understand her behavior, and she’s about at her limit with trying to.

“Do you wanna get ice cream?” Jackie asks out of nowhere, because sometimes after practice they do, and Shauna sighs and makes the next turn, heading toward the local Dairy Queen instead. 

They go through the drive-thru and park afterward, and Shauna licks at a vanilla cone a little standoffishly as Jackie bites down on a frozen Snickers bar. 

“Sorry,” Jackie says, finally. Shauna acknowledges it with a short sound. “C’mon, I’m serious. Don’t be mad.” Jackie shifts around in her seat, leaning toward her, smiling knowingly. “You know you can’t stay angry at me for long.”

Shauna rolls her eyes but makes herself soften, then bites at her ice cream just to get a reaction. 

Jackie gives it to her, cringing and shuddering, huffing, “God, I hate when you do that. Lick it normally.” Shauna hides a smile and swipes her tongue along the edge of the ice cream purposefully slowly, staring right at Jackie, and Jackie laughs and swats at her. “I said normally.”

“Give me a bite of that,” Shauna says, nodding at her Snickers bar, and Jackie pulls it closer to herself.

“No way, it’s mine.”

“I paid for it.”

“And I’m covering you next time.” 

“Whatever.” Shauna reaches out to turn the radio up and hears a song she doesn’t know by heart but recognizes as a Brandy song. Jackie’s a fan. Shauna’s not. She leaves it on. 

It’s starting to get dark out, and Jackie checks the time and says, “I’ve gotta be home in fifteen minutes. Grounded.”

“Right.” She flinches back, startled, when Jackie unbuckles her seatbelt and wriggles past Shauna into the back anyway, dripping ice cream onto the center console. “Jackie—“

“Come on, just for a minute.” Jackie settles, pops the last of the bar into her mouth and then jokingly offers her chocolatey thumb and first two fingers to Shauna. “You still want some?”

“Gross,” Shauna huffs, but unbuckles her seatbelt and collapses next to Jackie in the back. Jackie watches her finish her cone, and afterward Shauna’s too busy looking around for somewhere to discard the white strip of paper that’d been wrapped around it to notice Jackie scooting closer. 

“Hey,” Jackie says, finally, getting her attention, and Shauna turns and finds her way too close, Jackie’s eyes dark and her hand already rising to run her messy thumb over Shauna’s bottom lip. Shauna’s tongue darts out on instinct, sweeping up the chocolate left behind, brushing over Jackie’s thumb. She swallows hard, arousal dropping low and heavy in her abdomen. 

Jackie doesn’t look frazzled like she had all day today. She looks calculated, sure of herself. And Shauna’s sure that Jackie knows she can ask for anything right now and it’ll be granted to her. 

Jackie leans in and kisses her lightly, just a brush of her lips to part Shauna’s, and then she’s leaning back and replacing her mouth with her hand again, index and middle finger sticky with melted ice cream. 

Shauna opens her mouth obediently, leans forward, and closes her lips over Jackie’s fingertips. She slides her tongue along the pads of them and sucks on them, just once, then withdraws with burning cheeks, watching Jackie’s eyes stare into hers, dark as night. 

“Do it again,” Jackie rasps. Shauna does, closing her eyes, unable to keep looking at her like this. She waits for a compliment, for praise, and then aches when it doesn’t come, when Jackie’s fingers slip out of her mouth and Jackie says nothing. 

Headlights blast through the back window, momentarily blinding her as soon as her eyes open, and Shauna hears the sound of tires on gravel as another car pulls into the parking lot. It drives past them to the drive-thru and Jackie checks the clock again. Shauna does too. Eleven minutes. And Jackie’s house is another four away. 

But Jackie’s pulling her close, urging her, “Come here,” and Shauna’s swinging her trembling leg over Jackie to straddle her, wondering if this is calculated too, if Jackie had wanted to be touched but knows how much time they have and remembers that Shauna doesn’t last very long.

She should be ashamed of it, maybe, or resentful that it’s a source of yet another Jackie Taylor ego boost, but it’s hard to feel anything negative when Jackie’s eagerly stuffing her hand down the front of Shauna’s shorts. Shauna exhales harshly when two of Jackie’s fingers skate over her clit, find it, and then start to circle it quickly. It’s more practiced than last time, than Jackie drunk during that first night. 

She’s got seven minutes to come. She doubts she’ll last five.

Her hands grip the seat behind Jackie and she leans over her, panting into her ear, rocking her hips. She can feel her brain fogging up, replacing her thoughts with her desires, controlling her mouth and her ragged breathing. 

She wants Jackie inside of her; this is enough, but it isn’t enough, isn’t what she craves when she’s alone and touching herself. If she could think, she’d find a more indirect way to word it. She can’t think.

“Jackie,” she moans. “Just fuck me.”

Jackie’s breath hitches against her and her fingers slide lower, are practically sucked inside at the slightest push with how Shauna shifts her hips down eagerly to take them in. She rocks on them quickly, trying to manipulate them into pressing where she needs them, and Jackie crooks them to help her along. Her palm is pressing tightly into Shauna, just right, and Shauna grinds on her, back and forth as Jackie works in and out of her. It builds so swiftly. 

She tips her head back, digs her fingers into the seat, and shudders out her release with a soft cry, sinking down onto Jackie’s fingers slowly, and then up again, riding it out. When she slumps over, finally, she presses her face into Jackie’s neck and feels that she’s damp with sweat there. 

“Are you okay?” Jackie asks her gently.

Shauna nods, breathless, against her. “Yeah. Just… stay in me for a second.”

“Okay.” Jackie holds her by her hip, rubbing a thumb over her skin there, and waits. Shauna clenches down on her fingers and tries not to think about how good it feels. She notices that Jackie’s palm doesn’t feel overstimulating anymore where it’s still lightly pressed against her. She could go again. 

She makes herself reach for Jackie’s wrist and guide her out anyway. She sees Jackie watching her do it, and feels something shift between them when they look at Jackie’s shiny fingers together. Jackie’s eyes dart straight to hers again, a suggestion in them that Shauna isn’t sure she’d even meant to communicate, but Shauna receives it anyway. 

She does it better this time: brings Jackie’s fingers to her mouth and takes them deeper, sucking harder and longer on them, bathing them with sweeps of her tongue. Her eyes don’t leave Jackie’s at all, and she feels a touch of pride in herself when Jackie’s mouth falls open and goes slack. “Oh, wow,” Jackie exhales, blinking rapidly at her, and Shauna sees her throat bob. It sends her confidence through the roof.

“We’re out of time,” Shauna murmurs when she removes Jackie’s fingers, and then she slips off of her and climbs back into the front seat with shaky legs. 

Jackie takes several deep breaths and then joins her up front, red-faced, mumbling, “Sometimes I hate my parents,” as she grips the front of her shorts—and through them, her underwear—and pulls at them uncomfortably. 

Shauna laughs fondly at her. “Call me on your landline when you get home and I’ll talk you through it, Jax,” she jokes. 

“Yeah, let me just rub one out in the middle of my kitchen, like I’m you,” Jackie fires back, half-smiling, and Shauna laughs harder, switches the radio back to her Weezer tape and turns it up.

Jackie lets the music play, grinning over at her, rolling her eyes at the sight of Shauna still chuckling next to her, and Shauna thinks to herself that in moments like these, it’s impossible to remember that she’s ever held any resentment toward Jackie in the first place. 

She’ll be her experiment, her placeholder, her distraction, anything that Jackie wants her to be. It’s better, for now, than what she eventually plans to become: nothing to her at all.

They reach Jackie’s house in the nick of time and Shauna watches Jackie step out of the car, and it comes out of her mouth on instinct, like always: “Love you, Jax.”

Jackie turns back to her, rests a hand on her car and ducks down to look at her, her smile so soft, her eyes so warm. “Love you too,” she says, and for a moment Shauna lets herself imagine a story with a happy ending, a world where Jackie means it in the exact same way that Shauna does.

She blinks herself out of the fantasy as Jackie disappears inside, and then drives herself home in silence.

Chapter 4

Notes:

The mixtape chapter! To my knowledge, every song mentioned here existed by 1996 except for the Green Day one, which I made an exception for (it came out in 1997).

When Shauna picks Jackie up the next morning, Jackie taps on her legs (hilariously off-beat) to the Nirvana song Shauna’s stereo is playing and then says out of nowhere, “You should make me a mixtape.”

Shauna laughs. “You hate my music.”

“I might hate it less if you made me a mixtape,” Jackie says, grinning.

“I’d have to, like, find someone who owns a stereo with dual cassette decks and then lug all of my cassettes over to their place. Or borrow the stereo, I guess.”

“Yeah, and?” Jackie teases. “I’m pretty sure Van’s mentioned making them before, so you can ask her. And you have more free time this week now that I’m grounded.” She nudges Shauna encouragingly. “C’mon, it’ll be cute. No one’s ever made me one before.”

Shauna snorts. “What, Jeff never graced you with a dozen tracks from Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch? You poor thing.”

Jackie smacks her arm playfully. “Hey, I like ‘Good Vibrations’!” 

“You would.”

“Put things on there you like,” Jackie goes on, turning serious. “I promise I won’t make fun of them. I know it takes effort.”

“Fine, whatever. I’ll think about it.” She’s definitely going to do it; it’s a request from Jackie, after all. She’s going to get so into doing it that she’s going to overthink it. 

Jackie settles into her seat, satisfied, like she knows it too. “Okay.”

-

Shauna finds Van in the hall before second period starts and makes herself ask, “Are you doing anything after school today?”

Van looks at her warily. “Um, hanging out with Tai at my place?”

“Okay.” Shauna feels relieved; these are maybe plans she can join in on without it being too weird. “Can I come over too? I need to use your stereo to make a mixtape.”

Van looks confused. “Why?”

“Just… because I want to.” Friends make each other mixtapes all the time, but something about telling Van, specifically, that she’s doing it for Jackie, specifically, feels like it’s not going to go over without some degree of embarrassment. “C’mon, it’ll just take a couple hours.” 

Van raises an eyebrow and looks into her widened, pleading eyes with an expression that’s all-too-knowing. “Is it for Jackie?”

Shauna gives a start. “What? No. Shut up.”

“Mhmm.” Van smirks. “Admit it’s for Jackie and I’ll let you do it.”

“It’s for Jackie,” Shauna sighs out, and Van’s smirk widens into a genuine grin.

“Cute. Okay, come by whenever.”

-

Seven hours later, Shauna’s got a solid plan to drop Jackie off at home, swing by her own place to grab her music, and then head to Van’s.

Jackie delays her with a squeeze to her arm in the car and a quiet, “Wanna pull over for a few minutes?” and Shauna immediately steers them behind the first uncrowded commercial building she can find. 

It isn’t lost on her that they haven’t gone a day without this since they’ve started it. Jackie likes attention, but she must like this sort of attention from Shauna a particularly strong amount, and Shauna isn’t sure any amount of narcissism can straight-up transcend sexual orientation. 

She’s never tried to label her own sexuality in her head before, just knows that she loves Jackie and liked kissing Melissa and that boys are fine too, and had defaulted to “straight” for Jackie even despite all the kissing they’ve been doing. When she really thinks about it now, she’s not so sure about Jackie anymore. She’ll end up with a man, of course, so maybe it doesn’t matter in the long run whether she actually enjoys fooling around with girls. Or just Shauna, even.

Still, it’s getting increasingly hard to think of Jackie as exclusively heterosexual when they keep finding themselves touching and grinding on each other the second they get the opportunity. 

This time, it’s Jackie on top of Shauna, horizontal in the backseat and both fully clothed, and it’s technically past Jackie’s imposed curfew for the day because they don’t have practice and her parents had told her to come straight home. Her hands are halfway up under Shauna’s shirt and it’s a little rushed, a little frantic, with Shauna’s thigh between Jackie’s and Jackie rolling her hips between Shauna’s hands, hunched over Shauna and panting hard. 

“You got it?” Shauna checks in, glancing down inside Jackie’s shirt where it’s hanging off of her, wishing they had more time right now. There’s too much she wants to get permission to do if they wind up back in one of their bedrooms together anytime soon.

Jackie nods, groans, “Yeah,” eyes falling shut, hips chasing a swift release. 

Shauna cranes her neck up and peers down at Jackie’s bra again, staring now, watching Jackie work her abs back and forth. 

Jackie looks down and notices, huffs out a laugh, and sits up, reaching for the hem of her shirt and tugging it up and off. “Just ask, Shauna.”

“Sorry,” she says, and knows she sounds almost pained now, watching Jackie rock above her in nothing but her bra. Jackie’s hands have formed fists, gripping the fabric of Shauna’s shirt tight. “You’re just…”

“What?” Jackie urges, staring down at her darkly, voice strained and high. Her hips are moving more erratically now and Shauna can tell she’s close. 

Hot, beautiful, gorgeous, so, so, fucking hot—

“Still wearing too much.”

A blush blooms in Jackie’s cheeks. She’s told Shauna to ask, and Shauna’s roundabout just done that, so there’s not much she can do but either acquiesce or take it back.

“Fix it?” she breathes, making her choice, and Shauna sits up, shifting Jackie backwards a little, blushing herself as she slides her hands up Jackie’s back and fumbles for her bra clasp.

“This okay?” she whispers, just in case, and Jackie swallows hard and nods. Her hips have stilled now and it’s almost too silent in the car as Shauna unhooks her bra, reaches around, and slides the straps down Jackie’s arms. She peels it away and drops it over the side of the seat, then leans in and presses a long kiss into the center of Jackie’s collarbone, trying not to let her gaze linger on her breasts on the way, too nervous to stare. She tells her the truth now. “You’re beautiful.” Jackie’s arms wind around her and tighten, and Shauna can feel her trembling. “I’m nervous too,” she admits, hoping it’ll help.

They’ve done more than this, but this feels different, more exposing. Shauna gets it. Letting Jackie touch her is easier in the dark, with a hand down her underwear. She remembers how she’d felt in the light of day, in the kitchen, how she’d wanted Jackie to watch but how vulnerable being looked at had made her feel.

She’d thought Jackie would welcome this more. That she’d practically preen with Shauna’s eyes admiring her. This feels more… human of her. It’s nice.

Jackie slides a gentle hand into her hair, cupping the back of her head, and whispers, “Here.” A suggestion, guided by light pressure from her hand, and Shauna follows it willingly, dragging her mouth down and over, letting her tongue snake out, pressing a wet kiss to the swell of Jackie’s breast. The way Jackie arches into her is subtle, but Shauna can hear her breathing pick up. 

Shauna kisses lower, finds her nipple, runs over it with her tongue and closes her mouth around it. Jackie gasps, pushing harder on her head, and Shauna tastes her, sucks on her, presses her face against Jackie’s skin and feels like she’s consuming her. 

“Don’t stop,” Jackie breathes, and Shauna feels her shifting, hears the button of Jackie’s pants being undone and knows she’s reaching down to touch herself. The soft sound of relief that leaves Jackie’s lips a moment later confirms it. 

Shauna switches breasts, moves her mouth over and replaces it with her hand, squeezing gently. Jackie’s smaller than her but still so perfect against her palm. She remembers, vividly, the way Jackie had touched her through her bra, how she’d used her thumbs and how good it’d felt, and tries her best to replicate it. 

Her tongue flicks and swirls and she can feel Jackie’s arm moving rapidly between them, flexing over and over again. Jackie’s chest starts to heave beneath Shauna’s lips, breaths coming in gasps, and Shauna’s other hand curves along her ribcage, holding her there, mouth taking her in greedily over and over again. She scrapes gently with her teeth just to try it, and Jackie lets out a soft cry, hips jerking, so she does it again, then soothes it with her tongue. Her busier hand, left to its own devices, starts to grasp harder, knead more aggressively.

She wonders if she’s better than Jeff at this, too. She wonders if Jackie’s tried to touch herself with him during, if she ever made herself come. If he helped her along but never quite got credit, like Shauna is now. 

Jealousy flares in her chest and she drags her lips up, finds the swell of Jackie’s breast again and seals her mouth over a patch of pale skin there, sucking hard, leaving a dark purple mark behind where it’ll be hidden this time. Jackie moans, rocks into her own hand. Shauna’s mouth searches blindly, harshly, sucking and biting, and she feels Jackie wind tighter and tighter and then let go with a loud moan, her heart thudding hard against Shauna’s palm as she trembles in her lap, working herself through the aftershocks with sharp, stilted breaths. 

Shauna pulls away, stares darkly at the canvas of red and purple she’s left all over one side of Jackie’s chest, from her breast to her collarbone, and licks her lips with a self-satisfied smirk. 

If Jackie goes back to Jeff now, he’ll find them. Fresher, recent. He’ll know she let herself belong to someone else, at least for a little while. 

Jackie’s eyes are on the hickeys now too, fingers reaching up to skate over them gingerly. Her eyes lift from them to find Shauna’s. 

“You can leave more if you want,” she says, and Shauna shivers, opens her mouth, and leans in.

-

She’s offered herself up to be roasted by Tai and Van for several hours straight, as it turns out.

“Here, this one’s perfect,” Van tells her for the fifth time, and Shauna barely gives her a glance at this point: just enough to glimpse the label of Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love To You” on the tape in Van’s hand. It’s probably one of Tai’s.

“Fuck off.”

She thinks they’re just teasing, that they don’t actually know anything, so she’s doing her best to let it roll right off her back. 

Tai’s less actively annoying her; she’s just sprawled out on Van’s bed with a little too much familiarity and adding an occasional verbal suggestion, as opposed to Van, who’s been shoving tapes in her face. “So, what inspired this, anyway?” Tai asks Shauna. “Give me the heterosexual explanation for this; I’m genuinely waiting with bated breath to hear it.”

“She asked me to,” Shauna mumbles, surveying her own collection of cassettes strewn all over Van’s floor. She picks out Bikini Kill.

“Oh, of course,” Tai says with faux understanding. “She asked you to. That’s not gay at all. You’re in the clear.”

“‘Rebel Girl’ for Jackie?” Van chimes in, dubious. “Really?”

Shauna sets the tape down with a huff. “Can’t you two go eat each other out or something and let me do this on my own?”

She means to just pick at them the same way they’ve been picking at her, but Tai gets an odd look on her face and says, “What? We don’t do that.”

“Yeah,” Van adds unnecessarily.

Shauna barely looks at them, laser-focused on the many important decisions that lay ahead. She only has two tracks done so far: “Supernova” by Liz Phair (Tai and Van had had a field day with that one) and “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer. “Whatever, just shut up.”

“I’m so glad you let her come over,” Tai says under her breath, just out of Shauna’s earshot. “This is exactly what I wanted to be doing this afternoon.”

“C’mon, she needs help,” Van mouths back silently. Tai rolls her eyes.

Shauna runs through her favorite Nirvana songs in her head next, thinking about which Jackie might like best—or at least dislike least. She settles on “Lithium”, because it has a line about being horny that Jackie will probably at least giggle at. 

She moves away from grunge next, and finally Van and Tai get out of her way a little, ask more polite questions that probe her to think about what Jackie might like best from Shauna’s and Van’s massive collections and Tai’s few contributions. 

She decides Joan Jett is a must, cracks a wry smile at the idea of adding “I Hate Myself For Loving You” but chooses “Bad Reputation” instead. Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” makes the cut and Tai and Van don’t make fun of her this time. She starts adding “Linger” by The Cranberries with a blush and a quick, “She’ll like how it sounds,” and that’s right around when she realizes she’s approached this with too much sincerity to escape the afternoon without some level of suspicion. 

They listen in silence to the song, staring around awkwardly at each other as it records onto the blank tape Van’s let her have, and it feels like it drags on for years, each line more painfully obvious than the next:

If you could get by
Trying not to lie
Things wouldn’t be so confused
And I wouldn’t feel so used
But you always really knew
I just wanna be with you
And I’m in so deep
You know I’m such a fool for you
You got me wrapped around your finger

Yeah, she’s fucked. They know. 

“Jesus, Shauna,” Tai sighs quietly, shaking her head.

In a flash, it makes her reevaluate things about herself, makes her ask if she cares that they know. She hadn’t cared about getting caught kissing Melissa; she had cared about getting caught and Jackie finding out that she kissed Melissa. 

She doesn’t care if people know that she loves Jackie; she cares if they know that she loves Jackie and that Jackie doesn’t love her back. 

She cares about what Jackie’s parents would say if they knew, and she cares about the fact that Jackie would suffer immensely if they ever found out about what Shauna and Jackie have been doing behind closed doors. It wouldn’t be good for Jackie. Not even a little. It’d be so not okay that Shauna’s wondered more than once why Jackie had ever even bothered to start kissing her for fun in the first place, and her best answer has been that Jackie at least has the defense of it not meaning anything, and maybe given that she’s been with Jeff forever anyway Jackie just thinks that’s good enough. 

But for herself, for her life, for her own relationship with her own mother? Shauna would be okay. 

It’s the pathetic humiliation of her desperate, unrequited love that she wants hidden away forever. Not that that love is for a girl. 

So she lets her shoulders fall, looks at Van and Tai, and lies, “It’s just a crush, okay? It’s not a big deal. Nothing’s, like, happened. Please don’t tell anyone.”

Tai does a double-take, clearly not having expected that confession to come so quickly and easily. But Van can barely contain her smile. She turns to Tai and they have some sort of quick, intense conversation held through exchanged looks alone. Shauna can’t tell if they believe her fully, but if they don’t, they don’t say so. 

Instead, Van says, “I’ve made a few tapes for Tai,” and Shauna understands right away when she sees the flicker of anxiety on Tai’s face. 

“Oh,” she says. She hadn’t really suspected, because she doesn’t notice much of anything outside of Jackie if she’s honest with herself. But it doesn’t blow her mind, either.

“C’mon, we’ll help you for real.” Van rejoins Shauna as she finishes up with “Linger”, and Shauna doesn’t know why her hand’s shaking as she stops the tape and removes it. “C’mon,” Van says again, pulling her gently to the floor by her arm.

“Fuck,” Shauna mutters, already regretting her confession, wiping her sweaty hands off on her knees.

“We won’t tell and neither will you,” Tai says, and it’s the kindest threat Shauna’s ever received. “Mutually assured destruction.”

“Right.”

“I’m sure we’re not the only ones, either,” Tai adds sardonically. “It’s a fucking girls’ soccer team.” Shauna thinks of Melissa and the way she’d so eagerly attacked Shauna’s mouth with her own the one time, but says nothing.

“What’s your concept?” Van asks her, steering her back on track. “You’re all over the place. Is this thing a confession or what?”

“Just trying to find songs she’d like,” Shauna mumbles. “I don’t know. Maybe a little of everything. Not a confession.”

“Maybe not on purpose,” Tai says dryly.

Shauna feels light-headed, but Van’s hand on her wrist grounds her again. “That’s fine. Just do songs she’ll like, then. No big deal.”

They let her work in silence, after, sitting quietly together and listening to the songs Shauna picks out.

“Two Princes” by The Spin Doctors. “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure. She adds a song by The Smashing Pumpkins, by Garbage, by No Doubt. Throws in a few more obscure artists so Jackie can’t teasingly accuse her of being too mainstream.

She finishes it with “Good Riddance” by Green Day. Jackie won’t get it at first, but if all goes as planned with Brown, she’ll get it eventually. As she plays it for Van and Tai, Van shoots her a curious look but doesn’t say anything.

When it’s all done, she tucks the tape away in her bag and feels exhausted. She says to Van and Tai, “It must be nice,” before she goes.

“It is, aside from all the fucking pretending,” Tai says. 

“Why don’t you just not?” Shauna asks them, not because she doesn’t have common sense, but because Van and Tai both seem like the type to not give a fuck anyway.

Van’s expression flickers with unease and sadness, and she looks to Tai for an answer. “Would you?” Tai challenges Shauna, crossing her arms.

Shauna thinks about it. Pictures some crazy alternative universe where Jackie not only loved her back but wanted to forsake everything else—including her own parents’ approval, her Prom Queen crown, and also definitely her future sorority aspirations, among plenty of other things—to hold Shauna’s hand in public, kiss her by the lockers, shoot twin glares at anyone who dared to give them shit for it. Wrap her arms around Shauna in front of their classmates and let Shauna do the same, show everyone that Shauna is hers and she is Shauna’s.

It’s just a silly fucking fantasy, and it hurts to think about it, to feel delusional for even letting herself imagine it all so vividly in the first place. Shauna’s answer is so easy, so simple. “Yeah. I’d want everyone to know.” She’d crave it—need the world to see her value in the eyes of the person whose opinion matters the most. Need to not feel stashed away like something shameful and easily discarded.

But she knows Jackie would never, even if she did love her. She’d take it to the grave. They’d grow old as next door neighbors with husbands, maybe, and play pretend forever, and Shauna would be pathetic enough to let it happen. 

She doesn’t say anything else, and Tai’s eyes narrow. “Dyke,” she bites out, like it’s a test, and it feels like a sudden lance across Shauna’s chest. It cuts her next inhale in half, lopping it off at the knees. 

“Tai,” Van says sharply, giving a short shake of her head, but Tai’s eyes are still heated on Shauna’s.

Shauna gets it, then. It stings like a cut, but she’d bear it over and over again and die by a thousand of them for an impossible version of Jackie who asked her to. “I’m not a lesbian,” she says calmly, not defensively, because she just isn’t and she has nothing else to say.

“Then don’t act like you fucking know what it’s like,” Tai snaps, and Van moves in between them, unsurprised enough by this turn of events that Shauna can tell it’s a sore subject for them. 

“Drive safe, Shauna, okay?” Van says shortly.

Shauna takes the hint and leaves to head to Jackie’s. 

She’s decided to give the tape to Jackie tonight because she thinks maybe she won’t ever give it to her if she lets herself sleep on it. She shouldn’t be indulging Jackie here. It’s playing right into everything Shauna hates about their relationship.

Jackie had asked her to jump, and Shauna had effectively nodded and asked how high. Like always. Jackie wants music, and Shauna’s handing several love songs to her not twelve hours later, saying, “Here’s my best attempt. Here’s my whole heart woven into this to be judged. Take it and play it, then do what you want with me.”

If she had any control of herself, or any sort of self-respect, for that matter, she’d have told Jackie to make her own damn mixtape and that would’ve been the end of it. 

But they wouldn’t be as close as they are if that was how things were between them, of course. 

So, what she’s going to have to do instead is get high on the smile Jackie will give her for this, and then go home and feel like crap, knowing Jackie’s probably metaphorically getting off on her own power trip. Or maybe even literally getting off on it; who knows, with the way things have become so warped and confused between them these past few days. Maybe she’ll touch herself listening to The Sundays’ cover of “Wild Horses”, thinking about the fact that no matter how fucked up she’s had Shauna lately Shauna’s still going to be there waiting at her beck and call.

A few hours ago Shauna had listened to Jackie ask her to leave more hickeys on her breasts. Now Shauna’s handing her a tape with a Liz Phair song about fucking like a volcano. Nothing makes any fucking sense anymore. 

She knocks on the door and Jackie’s mom answers with a knowing look already plastered onto her face. “Frankly, Shauna, you’re lucky I don’t call your mother,” is her greeting. “A party, really? With boys?”

“I’m really sorry, Mrs. Taylor,” Shauna says, head low. “I just wanted to bring Jackie some school assignments? She left them in my car on accident.” She slips inside before she can be denied and adds, “I’ll be out in five minutes, I promise.”

Mrs. Taylor heaves a sigh, but ultimately lets her go.

Jackie’s on her bed when Shauna enters her room, lying on her stomach in her pajamas and reading some teen magazine with Alicia Silverstone on the cover. She brightens immediately. “Shauna?”

Shauna feels almost robotic as she closes the door and goes to Jackie, retrieving the tape from her bag and offering it up. “Here. I finished it.”

Jackie seems taken aback. She maneuvers herself around and stands up in front of Shauna, accepting the cassette from her with pleasant surprise. “Really? Already?”

“Yeah, it was no big deal. It was easy.”

“I just asked you this morning.”

“And you’re grounded,” Shauna says, rolling her eyes, “so like you said, I didn’t have anything better to do.”

Jackie turns it over in her hands, eyes bright, then smiles warmly at her. “Wanna listen to it now?”

Hell no she doesn’t. “I can’t stay, actually. I told your mom five minutes. And between the party and getting you home late today, I really don’t wanna be on her bad side any more than I already am.”

“Yeah,” Jackie’s smile turns sly, “but getting home late was so worth it.”

Shauna huffs, cheeks reddening, and shoves Jackie lightly. “Stop flirting. I really have to go. Just… It was just songs I thought you wouldn’t hate, okay? That’s all.”

Jackie’s smile falters slightly, but she nods gratefully nonetheless. “Thank you, Shauna. I love it already.”

“Don’t make fun of me for it when I see you tomorrow,” Shauna warns. “And no more telling me I have shitty music taste.”

Jackie bounces on her heels earnestly, all pent up with excited energy now. “Promise. What’s on here? Just tell me a couple.”

“No,” Shauna says, pulling a face, and Jackie huffs at her.

“Seriously? Please?” The dangerous lilt to her smile is back now. Her arms rise to rest on Shauna’s shoulders and pull her closer. “I’ll make you a deal.”

“You’re gonna hear it in, like, five minutes,” Shauna says dismissively, trying to shrug her off. She senses this is more about the game Jackie’s enjoying playing now rather than an actual desire to have the surprise ruined. “I’m gonna go.”

“Stay,” Jackie requests, and Shauna sighs and stays. “Let me say goodbye first.”

“Okay, goodb—“

Jackie brushes their mouths together, and Shauna can feel her smiling as Jackie’s tongue flicks playfully over her top lip. Then she bites at her bottom lip, pulling back with her teeth and letting it snap into place, and leans in further to kiss her fully, ardently. Shauna melts into it in spite of herself with a soft moan.

“I’ll listen to it tonight,” Jackie whispers to her when they part. “Then you can come over tomorrow night after practice. And we can play it again.”

There’s an edge to her tone, low and suggestive, and Shauna blinks at her and breathes out, “You wanna fuck to my mixtape?” Poor word choice; it’s not sex. “I mean—“

Jackie laughs and kisses her again, nodding. “Yeah, I wanna fuck to your mixtape, Shipman.”

The heat that surges through Shauna feels white-hot and intense. She gulps and says, “It’s pretty eclectic.” Then she thinks about it some more and adds, “And you’re grounded.”

“I have a lot of homework,” Jackie says innocently, “and with tomorrow being our last practice before Regionals, I’ve been so focused on soccer. So I’m really behind on school stuff. And I need your big brain to help me.” She pecks her on the lips. “Also, I don’t know what eclectic means. So I’ll just have to be surprised.” 

“It just means—“

Jackie covers her mouth with her hand, giving her a warning look. “Nope. You wanted me to be surprised.”

Shauna rolls her eyes, smiling when Jackie’s hand drops from her mouth. “Anything else?” Jackie’s very clearly feeling extra flirty tonight. Shauna wonders if it was the orgasm earlier, or just generally that Jackie’s gotten more than one thing she wants today and is a little drunk with confidence because of it.

“Mm. I love you.” Jackie pecks her again, and doesn’t seem to notice that Shauna had been too stunned to kiss back. Jackie’s never said it first unprompted like this. “Thank you for my mixtape.” Another quick kiss, and this time Jackie’s pulling away with a twinkle in her eye. “And for my hickeys. Today was awesome.”

Shauna blinks herself into the present, trying to focus, her chest tight. “Yeah,” she says shortly. “I… I love you, too.”

Jackie kisses her one last time, lingering, a hand on her cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” Shauna nods, dizzy. “Yeah, okay.”

Jackie clings to her for an extra second, as though savoring one last moment of Shauna’s presence, then sighs and lets her go. Shauna closes the door behind herself when she leaves, and catches a final glimpse of Jackie collapsing onto her bed on her back, mixtape raised above her in both hands, beaming up at it like it’s something precious to her. Shauna wonders if it’s a gift or a trophy.

She leaves quickly, half-hearted goodbyes offered to Jackie’s parents, and walks swiftly across Jackie’s front lawn with her heart pounding wildly in her throat. 

She clambers into the front seat of her car and immediately expels a harsh breath once she’s safely inside. She grips the steering wheel and leans over, pressing her forehead into it, chest squeezing tighter and tighter, anxiety coursing through her. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes and she hates herself so much for feeling this now, for letting herself crack open and let it in after so long of being certain. 

It’s the one and only feeling that could ever scare her worse than her love for Jackie already has:

Hope.

Chapter 5

Notes:

This one's a little shorter, but I have ten chapters written and more to come, so I'll try to get quick updates out as much as I can. Thank you for your feedback and kind words, it genuinely helps me out a lot!

Shauna doesn’t sleep well. She tosses and turns all night and thinks of Jackie a few minutes’ drive away, definitely sleeping, definitely having fallen asleep with the knowledge of what Shauna’s mixtape sounds like.

It’s a dangerous game she’d played with it: weaving in a few revealing songs here and there to hide among the ones that hadn’t meant anything at all, or had made her think of Jackie but not like that. She hadn’t even done it that consciously. It had felt out of her control, like she could see herself doing it right in front of Van and Tai’s eyes and hadn’t been able to stop herself.

She has plausible deniability in the event that Jackie decides to interrogate her about the songs that matter, because she can dismiss them and point to the ones that don’t as her supporting evidence.

But every time she thinks about Jackie lying in her bed listening to a song like “Linger” with Shauna on her mind, knowing Shauna had taken the time to pick it out for her, she feels like she’s going to vomit. 

She doesn’t want to pick Jackie up when morning comes. Her anxiety’s almost worse than the Monday morning after they’d slept together, because at least then she’d had evidence from Sunday that maybe things were going to be okay. This morning she’s going in blind.

She bites at her thumbnail in her front seat as she waits outside of Jackie’s house, drumming her other hand on her steering wheel just to be doing something while she watches the clock. 

Jackie’s two minutes late. It happens sometimes, but this morning is a terrible morning for it to happen, because every extra second is doing damage to Shauna’s fragile psyche. 

The front door swings open, finally, and then Shauna’s watching Jackie step outside. She looks cute today, with lighter makeup on, almost dressed down in a pair of jeans and with her letterman jacket thrown over a butterfly shirt Shauna’d used to borrow from her sometimes back when they’d been the same size. Her hair is down, left in its natural waves. 

Jackie shoulders her bag with one hand as she closes the door with her other, then reaches up and plays with her necklace—a nervous habit, Shauna knows—as she shifts her attention to Shauna’s car. Shauna waves shortly right away, playing it cool, and Jackie rolls up onto her toes and then settles back on her heels, offers her a smile Shauna can tell is contained—but like it’s in a good way, like she’s self-conscious about trying not to smile wider. Shauna’s heart flutters.

“Hey,” Jackie says when she slides into the passenger’s seat seconds later, more breath than voice, like she’s just sat down after running a marathon. She turns her head, eyes finding Shauna’s, her body settling into the seat like it’s a second home. 

But there’s a familiar nervous air between them. Shauna can’t place where she’s felt it before at first, and then she remembers her first kiss with Jackie, the anticipation of knowing something was about to happen, something unspokenly not-platonic despite Jackie’s excuses, and then the uncertainty of how it’d go.

It’s not quite the same, but Shauna makes the connection and it clicks into place. This feels like how she thinks it might feel to pick up a crush for a first date. A fun, sort of bubbling nervousness, tension pulled tight between them and waiting to snap.

“Hi,” Shauna says. “Got everything?”

Something flickers behind Jackie’s eyes—something like surprise, and then a playful understanding—and then her lips curve up and she looks away too quickly, facing the road ahead. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Shauna drives. It takes maybe ten seconds of silence before Jackie flips open her bag and grabs something inside, and Shauna glances over. Her heart rate doubles when she sees it’s a cassette tape. “Jackie,” she warns.

Jackie doesn’t listen to her, just ejects the cassette in Shauna’s car and replaces it. “I rewound it to my favorite part,” Jackie tells her, and now she’s smiling to herself and Shauna doesn’t like this at all. 

She’s going to hold it over Shauna’s head. She’s going to play the evidence of her feelings right in her face and then sit there, smug, silently daring her to deny it, letting Shauna know that she knows without having to say another word. It’s not a gift or a trophy, it’s a weapon Shauna’d handed right over to her, and she’d been deluded enough afterward to think that maybe, because of one “I love you”...

The opening notes of “Linger” start and Shauna feels like she’s going to throw up. She’s finally found a boundary, a line she won’t let Jackie cross.

She practically smashes the eject button and then thrusts the tape back into Jackie’s lap. Her car drifts halfway into the wrong lane in the process and gets honked at by an oncoming vehicle, and Shauna has to swerve back into place, sending her pulse skyrocketing again. 

Jackie stiffens in her seat, reflexively gasping out, “Shauna!” at the near miss.

Shauna grips the steering wheel tight with both hands. “I told you, they’re just songs I thought you’d like.”

“Okay,” Jackie snips back at her, tape in her hand now, “and I was trying to show you one I liked! Jesus!”

“I don’t wanna fucking listen to the tape!” Shauna fires back. “Okay?”

“Well, maybe I do!”

Shauna pulls over without warning and slams on the brakes, yanking the gear shift into park. “Then buy a fucking Walkman and get the fuck out, Jackie. Or drive yourself to school and use your own player in your own car that you never fucking drive.”

Jackie gapes at her, a mixture of shock, anger, and confusion written all over her face. “Shauna, what—?”

“Go on.” Shauna nods at the door, glancing at the handle by Jackie’s elbow. “Get out.” 

Jackie blinks at her strangely, taken aback and so upset, and says, “No. I’m not doing that.”

Hitting a wall there, Shauna snatches the tape out of her hands instead, and Jackie goes wide-eyed and lunges for it. Shauna holds it out of reach, twists her body away and starts to roll down her window. Cars are blowing past on the road just feet away.

“Shauna, no!” Jackie barks out like an order, unbuckling her seatbelt and launching herself over to grasp at Shauna’s wrist, stopping her arm, scrambling halfway into her lap. “Don’t!” she pleads as Shauna struggles and huffs beneath her, the tape waving this way and that in her hand, dangerously close to the open window. “Shauna, please don’t, just give it back—“

“It’s mine,” Shauna puffs out, trying to push Jackie off of her, pressing her into the wheel and making the horn beep. Jackie’s grip is ironclad on her wrist and she’s worming her way fully into Shauna’s lap now, straddling her.

“No, it’s not,” she says through gritted teeth. “You gave it to me.”

“Then I’m taking it back.” She’s stronger than Jackie, but Jackie’s managed to get two hands on Shauna’s wrist now, holding it in place while Shauna uses her free arm to try to pry Jackie off of her. The horn beeps again, again, again, and Shauna feels embarrassment creeping into her consciousness. “Stop making a fucking scene! Why do you have to be so overdramatic—“

“You’re the one trying to throw a mixtape into traffic!” Jackie flattens against her, blocking her vision and crushing Shauna’s face with her torso.

“Ow! Jackie!” Shauna feels the tape being snatched from her hand, and then Jackie’s setting her face free. She relaxes with a frustrated grunt, accepting defeat, then watches Jackie lean over and tuck the tape safely into her bag. Exhausted, they sit there together for a moment, Jackie still in Shauna’s lap while they both catch their breath. 

“That was so stupid,” Shauna sighs out, finally.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jackie huffs, and then cups Shauna’s cheeks in her hands and kisses her.

Shauna freezes, closes her eyes, and then her hands drop to Jackie’s waist on instinct and pull her closer and she opens her mouth to Jackie’s tongue. Jackie grips her face so tight it hurts and dominates the kiss completely, bruising her lips, biting and pulling, and then, when Shauna’s practically panting under her all over again, she leans back and hisses, “You never just listen to me, you idiot. You gave it to me. You can’t just take it away.”

“All I do is listen to you, and I’m not an idiot,” Shauna breathes out, more confused than ever. “And I let you have it back, okay?” Jackie pushes at her shoulders with another frustrated huff, shoving Shauna harshly into the back of her seat, then dismounts her and collapses into the passenger’s seat without another word, arms crossed, staring grumpily out the passenger window.

Shauna blinks herself back into reality and licks her lips, glaring long and hard at her steering wheel. She swallows her pride. “I’m sorry I tried to chuck the mixtape.”

Jackie grunts, glances down to pick at some chipped polish on one of her fingernails, and asks, “What’s the song called?”

“‘Linger’. It’s by The Cranberries.” Shauna shifts the car into drive and pulls back onto the road. “The whole album’s really good. I can lend it to you.”

Jackie still doesn’t look at her, just says quietly, “I really liked that one.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that.”

“Well, I’m mentioning it again, in case you didn’t get it the first time.”

“Okay, Jackie.”

They don’t say anything more. Shauna turns on the radio to fill the silence.

-

Jeff shows up at Shauna’s locker again before she heads to practice, and she wonders if this is going to become a pattern.

“Is this gonna be a thing?” she asks him as soon as he plants himself up against the locker two down from hers. “Do you think if you pretend to like talking to me I’ll put in a good word and Jackie will take you back?”

He laughs, surprisingly good-naturedly, and just says, “I’m trying to find out if you guys are actually throwing that kegger on Saturday I’m hearing rumors about.”

“That’s a question for Van or Nat.” Shauna shrugs. “But if we win on Friday, then probably.” There’s no use in lying to him; he can find out elsewhere fairly easily. 

“Are you and Jackie gonna go?” he asks.

“Probably,” Shauna says again. “She’s not gonna wanna talk to you though, Jeff.” She doesn’t know this for sure, but if she can make Jeff believe it, maybe she can manage to keep them away from each other for the night. Jackie’s grounding ends that day, and no Jeff-and-Jackie means she’ll get to go home to Jackie’s bed with her again. “I’m sure there’ll be other girls there who will, though.”

Jeff smiles at her, but Shauna doesn’t really see it, busy twisting away from him to head to the locker room. “Got any names for me?”

“I’m sure you’ll work it out,” Shauna says dismissively, offering him a short wave and jogging away down the hall.

-

Practice is a scrimmage game: first-stringers versus the benchwarmers and JV girls, and Shauna gets posted up opposite Melissa. Things have been strange with Jackie since this morning—enough that Shauna’s slightly on edge and happy to distract herself from both Jackie bossing everyone around and from the way Van and Tai are shooting more glances her way than usual after yesterday.

She jogs over to Melissa to guard her on a throw-in, glances at her sweating under her hat and jokes, “That thing can’t be regulation.”

Melissa looks surprised to have been spoken to, and then processes the comment and lets out a nervous laugh. “Oh. Uh, yeah, probably not.”

The ball’s tossed in and immediately kicked back out. A whistle sounds and they all wait around while Mari jogs to go collect it.

“Seriously,” Shauna laughs out, because Melissa really does look like she’s drenched, “you sure you won’t pass out under there?” She pokes at the hat, dodges an attempt from a laughing Melissa to bat her arm away, then takes it off of her head and fans her with it. 

“Shauna, give it back,” Melissa giggles, but she throws a nervous glance at something past Shauna and her smile isn’t quite as wide as it could be. 

Shauna holds it just out of range teasingly for a moment, then sees Mari’s almost back with the ball and stops messing around, casually tossing it over. Melissa catches it and slaps it back on. 

Twenty minutes later, Melissa’s just got control of the ball down near her team’s box and is dribbling up toward midfield, her head down, when Jackie comes flying in to challenge her and body-checks her to the ground. 

Coach Ben blows his whistle and shouts, “Hey!”

Shauna squints at them from a distance, having dropped back to play defense, and sees Jackie say something to Melissa while she’s on the ground and then jog away without helping her up. 

Closer to Shauna, over in the goal, Van barks out a laugh and just shakes her head at it all, then offers Shauna a knowing look. Shauna shoots her a confused one in response. 

“She’s okay!” Gen calls out a moment later.

“Cool it, Jackie!” Ben adds. “We can’t afford any injuries today!”

“Sorry!” Shauna hears Jackie call out faintly.

Then the ball’s being booted her way, and she’s rushing forward to get under it, the moment already forgotten.

-

“My parents said you can stay the night,” Jackie says to her while Shauna’s driving her home. “I forgot to tell you earlier.”

Shauna glances over at her, trying to be cool about it and immediately failing. “Oh? How? I mean, how’d you—?“

“I said it was a lot of homework and that we’d be exhausted after practice, and we’d both have to shower, and then you’d have to drive home tired in the dark…” Jackie trails off, but motions as though there’d been more, and Shauna nods. “They said grounding me was more about keeping me in, anyway. You can call your mom and let her know when we get home.”

She doesn’t ask if Shauna’s on board, doesn’t check that she still wants to stay over after their… fight? Shauna can’t find it in herself to feel slighted by it when she definitely is still on board, though. 

Instead, she pulls at her practice shirt and fans herself. “I do need a shower.”

“We could shower together,” Jackie offers, and Shauna chokes on an inhale, then forces a laugh. 

“Funny,” she says, and Jackie just stares at her for a long moment, furrows her eyebrows, and looks away.

“You can just say so if you don’t want to.” She sounds stiff, distant. 

Shauna does a double-take, trying her best to keep her focus on the road. “What?” An image implants itself straight into her brain: her and Jackie naked under the water together, pressed close, kissing hungrily. Heat drops straight between her thighs. “You were serious?”

Jackie sighs and doesn’t look at her. “I’m always serious.”

Shauna feels like she’s done something wrong now. She’s been feeling like that off and on all day, ever since the mixtape. She wishes she’d never made it. “Jax. Just tell me what to do.”

Jackie rounds on her abruptly, mouth pressed into a thin line. She looks annoyed. “No. You tell me what you want.”

What Shauna wants tonight, she can share with her. She just isn’t sure that that’s all Jackie had been asking for. “I wanna shower together.”

“Fine.” Jackie swallows hard, and Shauna watches her throat bob and knows it means some part of her is nervous about this. They’re both on edge. 

She tries to relax, to sound gentler. “Okay. It’ll be fun.”

“A total blast,” Jackie agrees, rolling her eyes as she turns away again. 

Shauna sucks in a breath and realizes this is one of those times where she just can’t do anything right with Jackie. She’s learned it’s best to play dead then, so she just hums a noncommittal agreement and says nothing else.

-

They eat quickly during dinner with the Taylors with the excuse of needing to get their showers done and get straight to work, and once they’re in Jackie’s room with the door locked, Shauna sits down on the bed and starts pulling off her socks and shin guards.

Jackie, however, just pulls her shirt up and off and then immediately follows it with her bra. Shauna pauses, staring at her, watching her remove her soccer gear and then slide her shorts down. She steps out of them, just in her underwear now, and reaches up to pull her ponytail free, shaking her hair out. 

Shauna swallows and closes her mouth before she can start drooling. Jackie notices she’s being watched, and it seems to brighten her mood right away. She tilts her head and stares back with an eyebrow raised, glancing suggestively down to Shauna’s very clothed body. 

Shauna kicks off her socks and stands up, pulling her top off and then pushing down her shorts, but she stops at her bra, hesitating. Jackie hasn’t seen her topless before—at least not since she’d hit high school and her body had started changing. No one has.

Jackie softens and steps closer, tucking a strand of Shauna’s hair behind her ear. “You really don’t have to,” she says, and it’s never been more obvious that this is her best friend than it is now. Jackie knows every little self-conscious thought Shauna’s had about her own body: her breasts, her hips, her stomach. About how none of them are as petite as Jackie’s. About how no one notices her or her body like they notice Jackie’s. 

She knows that Jackie’s always secretly reveled in having a body that draws more eyes than Shauna’s, and there is something so painful about having to rely on her for reassurance now. She can tell Shauna she’s beautiful one-hundred times, and every time Shauna will hear, “But thankfully not as beautiful as me.” 

What Jackie says to her now is, “You can even shower in the bra, if you’d like. Or is this one of those times where I should, like, demand you take your clothes off?” She offers her a slight smile and skims a hand down Shauna’s side, over her hip, fingers sliding across her lower abdomen near the band of her underwear.

Shauna shudders but warns her, “I don’t look like you,” like Jackie doesn’t already know. 

Jackie drags her eyes down Shauna’s body with so much open want that it makes Shauna’s core tighten. “Yeah, that’s… that’s kind of the point. I like how you look.”

Competition aside, comparisons aside, and where Jackie’s desire may stem from aside—possession, control, power—Shauna knows the desire itself is real. She’s felt it against her fingertips, heard it come out of Jackie’s mouth nonverbally too. She feels it in the way Jackie touches her. Maybe, if she just doesn’t let herself think any more deeply about any of it for now, that can be enough.

Today has been too long, and too complicated, and Shauna’s mind is tired. “Just…” she forces herself to start, because if she can just get this out it’s maybe the last time she’ll have to make her brain work for the next several hours, “I don’t want to think tonight, Jackie. Just show me what to do.”

Jackie’s hand falters on her hip bone and her eyes rise from the contact to meet Shauna’s. She offers her a nervous, wavering smile. “Might be a little difficult if I want something I’ve never done before.”

The air thickens around them and Shauna’s tongue feels heavier in her mouth. Her mind flips through sex acts like it’s turning pages in a magazine, and it doesn’t take long to reach a logical conclusion. 

“I need to shower first,” Jackie reiterates, a hint of something self-conscious in her tone. “To clean up.”

Shauna feels like a heathen, the way her first thought is no, now, like this with Jackie all sweaty from practice and the rest of the day itself still all over her. But she steels herself, deferring to Jackie, and says instead, “Jeff’s such an asshole.”

Jackie laughs faintly. “He wanted to. It was me.” She doesn’t elaborate, and Shauna doesn’t ask her to, even though she’s bursting with questions.

She can guess the answers, though. She isn’t immune to it either: the thoughts of feeling gross, insecure. The worrying. Thinking that it’s uncomfortably intimate, or that she should feel guilty for wanting it. 

She knows without even having to consider it that she will devour Jackie so completely, so thoroughly, that she’ll never doubt herself or her body in this way ever again.

But now Jackie is pulling her back into the present, touching her fingers to Shauna’s and asking quietly, “Do… Do you want–?”

Shauna has zero decorum about this. She’s surprised she hasn’t started trembling like an over-excited Chihuahua already. “I want it, Jackie.”

Jackie’s fingers slide through hers, tangle, pull. Something dark and heavy is in her eyes as she grasps Shauna’s neck and tugs her in for the first kiss, harsh and wanting. Shauna slides her hands eagerly up Jackie’s bare back, feeling every smooth inch of her beneath her palms. 

And there, with the two of them pressed together in the center of Jackie’s bedroom, a night that will end with the both of them in tears begins.

Chapter 6

Notes:

comments section I see you calling out Shauna for the constant fumbling... she will continue to outdo herself, she has not even begun to hit peak fumble

Shauna feels too warm in her own skin, and Jackie is even warmer everywhere their bare bodies are touching.

They’ve never had so little clothing between them. Shauna’s never felt the press of Jackie so acutely and so fully, and as they stumble toward Jackie’s bathroom together, still kissing, Shauna reaches around and swipes at her own bra clasp. “Fuck,” she mumbles against Jackie’s lips when she can’t quite get it while they’re moving, and Jackie stops them in the doorway and leans up against the doorframe, tongue licking into Shauna’s mouth, giving her the second she needs to undo the clasp. Shauna separates their torsos just long enough to pull the bra away and let it fall, then fits herself against Jackie with a muffled moan, letting their upper halves align and press tight. 

Jackie’s hands waste no time skimming up and brushing over the sides of her breasts, and then she’s the one separating their bodies, creating enough space to slide her hands inward and grasp Shauna fully. She pushes forward and Shauna hits the opposite side of the doorframe with a harsh exhale, the brief pain in her back forgotten with Jackie palming her greedily and slotting a thigh between Shauna’s. 

“The bathroom echoes,” Jackie reminds her between heated kisses. “Be quiet.” She presses up with her thigh and Shauna starts to work her hips against it, arms wrapped around Jackie, jaw clamping shut to help her follow orders. Jackie moves down to her neck, leaving behind a series of kisses there that teeter on the edge of pain and pleasure, making Shauna aware that she’s being marked all over again. 

They haven’t taken any time to let this breathe, to take it all in, and Shauna is perfectly content without it, not particularly interested in the moment where Jackie looks her bare body over and feels compelled to make some comment about it all. There’s just underwear left between them, a thin layer that’s doing very little to dull the friction Shauna’s getting from Jackie’s thigh. Shauna isn’t thinking anymore, is just letting her body take over and seek out what it needs, and things with Jackie feel so easy, so natural this way.

She thinks she’s not far off from an orgasm when Jackie finally releases her neck and breathes, “I need to go turn the shower on.”

Shauna strains forward into her, already preemptively missing her touch, but then nods her assent. Jackie peels off of her and Shauna tips her head back, eyes fluttering shut, to catch her breath. She hears the water start to run, and then there are a few seconds of nothing at all, and then Jackie is back against her in earnest, one hand on her breast and the other at the back of her neck, guiding Shauna into a kiss that is unexpectedly fierce. Jackie whimpers into it, and heat flares in Shauna’s abdomen when she realizes that this is Jackie’s reaction to seeing her body. 

Jackie’s hand leaves her neck and burns a path across her skin and down to her underwear, taking some of the fabric into her fist, pulling it taut in a silent, desperate request. Shauna helps her push it down until it crumples to the floor. Jackie’s underwear follows.

“Come here,” Jackie says, her voice strained, grasping for Shauna’s wrist and then for her hip, turning her, kissing her hard even as she urges Shauna backward to the shower. Shauna feels the outer curtain brush up against her back right as Jackie stops her. They fumble over the lip of the tub together, Jackie letting out a soft laugh when Shauna’s a little unsteady on her legs. 

They see each other fully then, but nothing is said. Their kisses under the spray are eager and wetter, the shower masking the messy sensation of having too much saliva in the mix. Shauna feels more alive than she ever has, every nerve ending in her body lit up and buzzing when Jackie’s body molds to hers again. She curls her fingers around the back of Jackie’s neck and pulls, water running down their bodies as their mouths come together again and again.

Washing the day off of them is an afterthought, taken care of half-heartedly with nothing but the water. Jackie’s fingers grip Shauna’s thigh, slide inward and up, press inside of her without preamble. Shauna’s back hits the wall with a dull thud and she winds her arms around Jackie’s midsection, burying the moans she can’t manage to suppress into Jackie’s neck. Jackie fucks her steady and deep, like she’s done it a hundred times before, like fucking girls is a thing Jackie Taylor just does—unraveling her quickly, murmuring low things near Shauna’s ear that they both know the water will drown out. 

Shauna quakes and burns and drags her nails harshly down Jackie’s back and then comes as quietly as she can with sparks dancing behind her eyelids. It’s the strongest it’s ever been for her, and it takes everything she has not to let her knees give out and send her to the floor of the tub. Jackie’s one-handed grip isn’t enough on its own to keep her upright, and Shauna knocks over two different bottles of something trying to find another hold to grab onto, then winds up seizing the rod holding the shower curtain up and nearly yanking it down with an unpleasant scraping sound: groaning metal against painted drywall. The first sudden inch of movement from the rod startles Shauna right out of the tail end of her orgasm and she gives a sharp, fearful shout, and then Jackie takes one look at her bulging eyes and stunned expression and completely cracks, dissolving into absolute hysterics in front of her.

Shauna’s face flushes a deeper shade of red and she whines, “Jackie…” embarrassed, gingerly loosening her grip on the rod after sliding it back into its rightful—and apparently very precarious—position.

A distant voice calls out, “Girls!? Is everything alright in there!?” and Jackie’s smile vanishes.

“Fuck,” she whispers, and then pulls her fingers out of Shauna quickly enough to make her wince and clambers hastily out of the shower, tracking water all the way back to her bedroom. Shauna hears her call back, “Shauna’s good, Mom! Just knocked some stuff over in the shower, apparently!” There are additional words exchanged more quietly afterward that Shauna does not fully hear. She waits, tensed, in the shower, the curtain still pulled wide open how Jackie’s left it.

A moment later, she sees Jackie peek around the corner and into the bathroom, only her head and neck visible, another smile on her lips that reveals she’s back on the verge of laughter. Shauna lifts a middle finger with a roll of her eyes and Jackie breaks out into giggles again.

“Don’t make fun of me!” Shauna groans as quietly as she can over the water, only half-meaning it.

“Death by a shower curtain rod to the head with a girl’s fingers inside of you,” Jackie marvels, grinning. “What a way that would’ve been for you to go.” 

“Get back in here,” Shauna says, already plotting revenge, but Jackie shakes her head.

“Come out when you and your weak knees are ready, Shipman.”

Jackie’s gone before Shauna can give her the finger again, and Shauna sighs and yanks the curtain closed, then decides to take the time to at least shampoo herself while she’s still in here. She’s always liked having her hair smell like Jackie’s anyway.

When she gets out, she wraps a towel around herself and then uses another to dry off her hair as best as she can. She looks at herself in the mirror by the doorway after, studying her messy, damp curls, the fresh marks on her neck, the flush to her skin and finally her plump, kissed lips. 

She looks… good. She almost feels attractive, even.

She opens her mouth, sticks her tongue out flat and looks at it, thinks about how it’ll hopefully be between Jackie’s thighs very soon.

Then she hears Jackie ask her, amused, “What are you doing?” and remembers Jackie’s bed has a clear line of sight to her in here with the door open.

She whirls around, flushing. “Nothing.”

Jackie’s cross-legged on her bed now, in a shirt so big on her that it drapes over her lap and under her butt and almost reaches her knees, obscuring Shauna’s view of most of her body. She’s reading the same magazine from the other night and appears to have towel-dried her hair already. Shauna watches her sit back and prop herself up on an arm. “I picked out some clothes for you.” She nods to her dresser, just inside the bedroom and maybe three feet away from Shauna, and Shauna sees a T-shirt and loose pajama pants. 

“Comfortable.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to feel objectified,” Jackie quips, but her expression softens after. “I felt weird setting out, like, a bra you left over here and some lace panties or something.” Her eyes dip to her magazine and Shauna can see her trying to sound casual as she adds, “I think you look good in anything, anyway.”

Shauna hugs the towel to herself, leaning up against the doorframe, studying Jackie intently in a way she'd promised herself she wouldn’t tonight. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jackie says, staring at her magazine but obviously not really reading it, like she’s shy about it, like she can’t look Shauna in the eyes for it. This is the same girl that’d made her see stars not ten minutes ago, and the same girl that’s been making Shauna’s heart race for over a decade now.

Brown accepting her is her only hope at this point. Shauna’s pretty sure that if she isn’t surgically removed from Jackie by an outside force with the prospective strength of an Ivy League future she’ll simply worship at the altar of Jackie Taylor until it destroys her.

She collects Jackie’s outfit of choice and turns away from her before she drops her towel. She pulls the bottoms on first and then the shirt and wonders if Jackie’d watched her do it.

When she turns, Jackie’s eyes flicker from Shauna back down to her magazine. Shauna takes a breath, goes to her, carefully takes the magazine away and gently tosses it somewhere that doesn’t matter. She stands at the edge of Jackie’s bed and curves her hands around Jackie’s calves, pulling them out toward herself so that Jackie’s legs are extended, letting them hang off of the bed from the knees down. She watches her own hands slide northward as if of their own volition, slipping under Jackie’s thighs next, tugging her forward a few needed inches so that her hips are at the edge of the mattress.

Jackie’s already breathing unevenly. Shauna licks her lips. Her hands sweep down low to Jackie’s knees, resting on them. “Spread your legs, Jax,” she whispers. Jackie stares up at her dazedly, eyes darkened with want, and for a moment Shauna feels like the one being prayed to.

The hem of Jackie’s shirt has been pushed up to her mid-thigh by Shauna’s repositioning of her, and Shauna watches as Jackie’s thighs begin to tentatively part, forcing the hem higher, revealing centimeter after centimeter of pale skin. Shauna waits for more fabric to materialize, but it doesn’t. There’s just skin, and Jackie parting and parting and parting, flushing and spreading wide for her.

Shauna sinks to her knees on the floor and kisses the inside of Jackie’s thigh, eyes set on Jackie’s face as she slowly makes her way inward. Jackie’s breathing is open-mouthed and full-bodied, and her thighs quiver as Shauna paints one of them with her lips and tongue. Jackie’s shirt hangs low, still in the way, and Shauna takes it into her fist, pulling it up further, out from under Jackie. Jackie’s shaky hands take over and tie off a small knot that holds it up and aside. She’s wet and Shauna can see it. Shauna can see everything. 

She focuses on sucking a dark hickey into Jackie’s thigh so that she doesn’t start to lose her composure, making herself go slow, wanting to drag it out. But there is something wild and hungry in her, something that grasps for one of Jackie’s hands and seizes it, guiding it to her head, pressing it there. Jackie weaves her fingers into Shauna’s damp hair but doesn’t put pressure on her. 

So Shauna turns away from her thigh and dives in impatiently, open-mouthed, and eats. 

Jackie’s breath hitches wetly, a soft cry spills from her lips, and her back arches, the fingers of her free hand digging into the comforter beneath her and clenching. Shauna pulls Jackie's strings with languid, broad strokes of her tongue, telling herself slow, slow like it’s a mantra keeping herself caged, listening to Jackie lose control of herself above her. 

“Shauna,” Jackie whimpers quietly, fingers tightening in Shauna’s hair and then remembering themselves, relaxing again. “Shauna, Shauna…”

Something protective and possessive rears its head in Shauna’s chest, and she seals her mouth over Jackie’s clit, laying her tongue flat over it and gently sucking on it, so careful not to overstimulate her. Jackie’s hips thrust up into her mouth and her hand pushes hard on Shauna’s head. A moan tears from her throat and Shauna buries one of her own between Jackie’s thighs. She knows right away that she could make her come like this. She wants to, but she’s quickly running out of air.

She pulls away, presses a messy kiss between her thighs while she takes a few breaths, and murmurs, “You’re perfect,” as she leans back in and resumes, pressing harder with her tongue, certain Jackie can take it.

Jackie rolls her hips into Shauna’s mouth, panting now, eyes shut tight and hand still holding Shauna to her. “You’re perfect,” she gasps out, and Shauna squeezes her own thighs together unconsciously, then groans at the short-lived friction it grants her. “I–I need,” Jackie goes on, and Shauna listens intently, mouth still working over her, waiting to hear the rest of her request and grant it, “to do this to you, God, Shauna—”

Heat winds through Shauna, sharp and biting, and she shoves a hand down her pants. Her moaning makes Jackie move more wildly, more desperately—whether it’s the sound alone or the vibration, too, Shauna doesn’t know—and then she’s pulling at Shauna’s hair hard, painfully, rocking into Shauna’s tongue and the seal of her mouth with a succession of whines she keeps trapped in her throat.

Shauna’s scalp throbs beneath another sharp tug from Jackie and Shauna comes against the palm of her hand with a muffled moan, hips jogging forward a few times and then settling, not entirely sated but calmed momentarily. Jackie’s arm gives out and she lets herself collapse onto her back, hand rising to press to her mouth instead as her noises climb in volume.

Shauna parts from her again to breathe for just a moment and then sticks to what she knows is working, sucking harder, faster, and then Jackie’s writhing on the bed, hips rising, Shauna’s muffled name falling from her lips again. Shauna withdraws her hand from her pants and brings her fingers to Jackie instead, pushing two inside of her, curling them. Jackie flutters fast and hard around them and comes, hips twisting away from Shauna’s face even as the hand in her hair yanks her closer. Her cry is smothered by her fingers and then she twitches through the aftershocks as they roll through her. Shauna feels it when Jackie’s body starts to loosen up and relax, and then the room is silent and still.

Shauna withdraws her fingers carefully after a moment, then dips her tongue lower, teasing at Jackie’s entrance by flicking over it, then lapping gently at it.

Jackie comes to life beneath her slowly, and then she’s breathing faster again. Shauna lets her get used to the stimulation, then presses her tongue in as far as she can push it.

Jackie spreads her legs wider with a pitiful, wanting sound and whispers, “Is your tongue inside me?”

Shauna pulls back slowly, turning her head and kissing her slick inner thigh. “It was.”

Jackie’s thigh muscle gives an involuntary twitch and she says, “I don’t think I can go again.”

Shauna brushes her mouth over Jackie’s clit anyway. Jackie’s hips jerk. “I don’t wanna stop.” She licks at nothing, avoiding anywhere sensitive. Her jaw aches faintly but it doesn’t bother her. “Try?”

“I am.” Shauna presses her tongue in deep again and Jackie’s breath catches. “Oh.”

Shauna withdraws, mumbles, “Let me do this for you, Jax. C’mon.” She swipes her tongue all the way up, soft, gentle, and Jackie presses into her this time.

“Yeah,” Jackie says, breathless. “That’s—Okay. I can.”

Shauna pushes her thighs as far apart as Jackie can go and then descends on her with a pleased hum.

She guides Jackie over the edge more quickly than she thought she would, and then a third time: mostly with her fingers, pounding into her hard with just some gentle suction on her clit.

Jackie nearly rips a chunk of her hair out trying to prevent Shauna from going for a fourth, and finally Shauna crawls up Jackie’s shuddering body, looking down at her red face and parched lips, taking in the way Jackie’s still panting and staring up at Shauna all wide-eyed, like she’s made of magic.

Shauna feels drunk with arousal and power and love. “Talk, Jackie,” she pleads in a low murmur. 

Jackie quivers beneath her and pulls her close, mouth finding Shauna’s, tasting. “I’ve never felt anything like that before,” she murmurs, her voice laced with something low and hot. “I’m not gonna be able to stop thinking about it.”

Shauna moans against Jackie’s tongue. She pictures it: Jackie alone in her bed at Rutgers, missing her touch, hating her for leaving the way Shauna knows she will, but remembering the nights like tonight, working her hips desperately under her own hand to memories of how it’d felt and trying to push down the humiliation, knowing they’re hours away from each other and she can’t have Shauna at her fingertips anymore.

She’s yanked from the fantasy by Jackie rolling them over, straddling Shauna and kissing her hard, hands squeezing her shoulders. Jackie wants to take over and Shauna goes pliant and lets her, eager to be good for her in this way, too. 

Jackie pulls back, hovering over her, and tells her carefully, “I wanna go get the tape.” 

It’s still on the other side of the room, buried in Jackie’s bag where it rests on the floor. Shauna knows this is her penance, her price to pay for getting what she’d wanted between Jackie’s thighs. It will be punishing. 

She nods, and the next time she swallows it feels heavy, like she’s choking on it.

Jackie turns the stereo volume down low before she puts the tape in, and then she’s sliding her bare thighs over Shauna’s clothed ones, grasping her shirt, making Shauna sit up so she can pull it off of her. 

“Linger” is playing and then Jackie is kissing her and palming her chest. “Just let me tell you why I like it,” she whispers, and doesn’t wait for Shauna’s permission this time. “She knows it’s messed up and confusing.” Her hand squeezes, her hips rocking mindlessly against Shauna’s. “She doesn’t even know what’s real or how he feels about her. He could leave her at any second and she feels pathetic. But she knows she’ll keep coming back to it. She can’t help it.”

Just like you, Shauna hears Jackie finish in her mind, and it slices right through her, makes her whimper pitifully as Jackie pushes her down and slides her hand low, pressing into her, fucking her to The Cranberries like she isn’t mocking her with it.

She wants to shove her hand away, to tell her to go fuck herself, but it’s Jackie, and worse, it’s Jackie doing everything just right, setting a tempo she’s learned now will make Shauna come quickly. 

“Do you get it?” Jackie asks her, something desperate and open straining beneath her words. It’s exactly how I make you feel, Shauna.

Shauna hates her in this moment. “Please shut up, Jackie,” she moans out, grabbing a fistful of Jackie’s hair, forcibly silencing her with her lips. “Please.” 

Jackie whimpers into her mouth and nods her acquiescence, and Shauna tries to stop thinking, to just focus on how perfect Jackie’s touch is. It works, but her orgasm feels weak and bittersweet. 

As soon as it’s over, she wants Jackie off of her. “I need to turn it off,” she says, using the stereo as an excuse, and Jackie rolls out of the way without argument. It isn’t until Shauna’s stood and cut the music that she looks back at the bed and sees Jackie’s pulled the comforter up to her stomach and is laying with her back to Shauna. It’s a telltale sign that she’s upset with her.

Shauna winds a hand behind her neck and rubs at it, closing her eyes, feeling the urge she always gets with Jackie to just swallow down her resentment and fix things. It’s not fair. Jackie wants everything from her, to completely possess her and to coax Shauna into a verbal confession about how pathetically weak she is for her, and now she’s pouting because she’s not getting it. 

Jackie’s always been a bad friend to her, but she’s never been this cruel.

She sits at the edge of the bed and pulls her shirt back on, runs a hand through her hair and tells herself to just leave. She knows she should. She should leave and punish Jackie right back and actually have some self-respect for once. 

She shifts her legs around and settles into the bed behind Jackie, spooning her tense body, sliding an arm over her stomach and pulling her close. She tucks her face into the back of Jackie’s neck and breathes her in. 

“I can’t give you everything you want, Jackie,” she tells her, and it’s a confession in its own right. The only one she will let Jackie pull from her before she draws a boundary forever. “This is it.” She sweeps her hand lower for emphasis, brushing suggestively over Jackie’s abdomen. “I’ll let you know how much I like it, I promise. You can have that until you decide you want Jeff or whoever else instead. Okay? Please don’t be mad at me.”

Jackie curls up further, away from her, and Shauna feels her shudder and take in a shaky breath. She knows what Jackie sounds like when she’s starting to cry. 

Shauna doesn’t understand at all anymore, just knows that this isn’t making sense and that seeing Jackie hurting because of her feels so incredibly wrong. She’s lost now, aching in her chest, starting to spiral. “I’m—Jax, I don’t know what to do.” She won’t throw herself at Jackie’s feet, flay herself open, and beg for her love and affection. Not when no amount of Jackie indulging her would ever be enough, because Shauna wants everything and Jackie won’t give her that. And she won’t facilitate her own suffering any more than she already is. She’s at her limit with it. 

Jackie rolls over and presses her wet face into Shauna’s neck, tugging her close, and Shauna returns the affection immediately, stroking slowly and softly at her back as Jackie’s hands grip the front of her shirt. “Do you hate me?” Jackie sobs quietly, and Shauna realizes she must finally be starting to feel guilty. She regrets trying to pry Shauna’s heart from her and expose the intricacies of it. She is empathizing with her. For once, Jackie is empathizing with her.

The rush of relief that fills Shauna is almost euphoric. “No,” is her immediate response, even though she’d felt it tonight, has page after page of it carved angrily into her journal. She will never hate Jackie enough to outweigh how much she loves her. “I love you so much, Jax.”

“I love you, too,” Jackie breathes into her neck. “I’m sorry. I won’t bring it up again.”

Shauna exhales heavily, letting the reality of Jackie’s repentance wash over her and calm her. But she doesn’t submit to the feeling completely, doesn’t trust Jackie enough to truly let it go no matter what she says, even if she’s hopeful. Jackie has admitted to knowing, to some ambiguous extent now, how she feels. That can’t be undone. And it is so humiliating, even just having it danced around like this.

She buries her face into her pillow and closes her eyes, letting the pillowcase absorb her own silent tears as Jackie trembles against her. And it is so like them, Shauna thinks: that even as they seek comfort from each other, Jackie sheds her tears openly and Shauna keeps hers hidden away.

-

She wakes up tangled up with Jackie when Jackie’s alarm goes off, and they stir together, eyes finding each other too quickly to not be intentional. Shauna wants things to be okay, and normal—at least their new normal, anyway—so she wriggles into position to go in for a soft, closed-mouthed kiss, wary of her own morning breath. Jackie cups her cheek and gives it an affectionate caress, kissing her back.

It tastes bittersweet, but they’re okay.

Shauna pulls back, suppresses a sigh of relief and whispers, “I’m gonna go home and change and get ready. I’ll pick you up in half an hour?”

Jackie nods and looks at her mouth like she’s considering something, then kisses her again: so gently, lingering.

Shauna drives home and tries to put the bad parts of last night behind her, tries to not be a chronic overthinker for once in her life. She and Jackie have a clearer understanding now, and Jackie seems accepting of the terms: Shauna will have fun with her until Jackie moves on to someone else as long she doesn’t try to pry into Shauna’s feelings. Jackie won’t ask and Shauna won’t tell, and they will carry on as usual. Which means that Shauna should just keep her expectations nonexistent and let herself enjoy it for a little while. 

She’d hoped for a week from the beginning. She’s almost gotten that. 

She’d never expected Jackie to really want her; she’d just hoped she’d want her in some way for a little while. They’ve done more together than she ever could’ve imagined. 

These are good things. They will never be enough, but they are good.

She gets home and her mom is drinking coffee at the kitchen table. “Good morning, sweetie,” Ms. Shipman greets her fondly, and then gestures to a letter she’s placed on the table at Shauna’s usual chair. “Something came in the mail for you yesterday.”

Shauna takes it up to her room and tears into it with trembling fingers, eyes hungrily scanning over the “Brown University” at the top of the letter and then darting lower.

Congratulations! You have been accepted into

She clutches it tight and presses it to her chest as though she’ll somehow absorb the words into her skin. She feels overwhelmed. She feels relieved. She feels heartbroken. She feels…

Free. 

Chapter 7

When she pictures Brown, she thinks first of an intensive English program and hours of poring over material too heavy to understand on the first pass. 

But she thinks there will be funny moments, too, new friends and moments of levity with them. She pictures being introduced to someone, being asked, “Who are you?” and getting to joke, “So the thing is, I actually have no fucking clue,” getting to make light of the way Jackie has stolen her sense of identity by being so willing to let it revolve around herself. 

It feels emboldening, and it’s so sad now that Jackie and Shauna have an expiration date, but Shauna knows that it’s for the best, and she’ll also know that it’s for the best on the day when Jackie finds out and tears her apart for it. Even when Shauna sobs and begs for her forgiveness there will be a part of her that’s relieved when she doesn’t receive it, and all of her will still know, even then, that it’s for the best. 

So she’s okay. She will be devastated later, but if it weren’t so hard to let go of Jackie she wouldn’t have such a valid reason to do it in the first place.

She can feel a subtle shift in herself, too, that seems to come with the knowledge of an expiration date. Jackie asks her if they can go get lunch off-campus together today—a little shyly, because Jackie is a little shyer in general today. So they go, and eat subs tucked into a corner booth in a nearby diner, and everything actually kind of feels okay between them. Jackie is just quieter than usual while they eat. A little bit in her own head. Shauna lets her be, hoping that it’s the right decision. She isn’t sure how to navigate any of this new phase of not asking and not telling.

But when Shauna accidentally bumps her drink and nearly knocks it over, and Jackie shakes herself out of her thoughts to say, “Whoa, Shipman, careful,” the first shift happens.

Shauna blinks at her, swallows the bite of food in her mouth, and says, “I’ve never really liked being called that.”

Jackie tilts her head, confused. “What? Shipman?”

“Yeah.” Shauna’s eyes dart away, avoiding Jackie’s.

“But I always call you that.”

“Yeah. I don’t really like it.”

Jackie looks taken aback. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know.” Shauna shrugs, not really having an answer at first. She should have. “I guess because you liked it.”

“Well,” Jackie decides, like it’s that simple, “we’ll just have to find a new nickname we both like.” She gives Shauna a sly smile and Shauna preemptively rolls her eyes, but she’s relieved to see it. Relieved that she and Jackie can still joke around together after the heaviness of last night. She misses feeling like friends, in a way.

“Oh, God.”

“Shauna Shipman, Slayer of Curtain Rods,” Jackie proposes. Shauna raises her middle finger. “What, no full title?” 

“I actually can’t stand you.”

“Weak-Knees Shauna.” Jackie bites back a smile, having way too much fun with this. “Captain of the Shipman. Wait, no, that fits me better. Thirty-Second Shauna.” That last one earns her two middle fingers.

“You think that I don’t realize this is you bullying me into accepting Shipman, but I do,” Shauna warns her, only half-kidding.

Jackie laughs. “Okay, fine, I’ll be nice.” She thinks it over, still grinning. “The Hot One.”

Shauna pretends to have interest in it for the sake of getting another laugh out of Jackie. “Okay, it’s not your worst work.”

“Smart, Sexy Shauna. Triple S.” Jackie’s making fun of her a little, maybe; she can never really tell, but she’s not going to let that assumption ruin the mood between them. “Holy Shit-man.” Shauna chokes on her sip of soda and it nearly comes out of her nose. Jackie’s smile is so wide and fond. “Jackie’s Best Friend.”

“Oh, everyone already calls me that,” Shauna huffs, rolling her eyes half-heartedly. “And it’s too much of a mouthful. I need something shorter.”

“Sweetheart,” Jackie teases next. “Baby.”

Shauna swallows hard and hides her real reaction to that with the strength of a Greek God. She curls her lip in disgust. “Am I starring in Dirty Dancing? Or a porno?”

Jackie winks at her. “Got it: Jackie’s Girlfriend. Or That One With The Eyes. Brown-Eyed Girl! Brown Eyes?”

“You’re manic,” Shauna decides, butterflies going wild in her stomach, making it impossible to finish her last few bites. She hates that Jackie can make her feel like this with just a stupid joke. Jackie probably knows it, too. She’d definitely done it on purpose.

“I’m kidding,” Jackie says unnecessarily, settling back in her seat, her smile wavering. “Shauna?” Shauna makes herself look at her, and Jackie reaches out for her hand and squeezes it. “Thanks for… just being normal today. Being my friend. I’m having fun.”

Shauna accepts the comment with a nod, embarrassed, eager to move on. They both stand to shuffle out of the booth, their food as good as finished. “So, does that make Jackie’s Best Friend the official verdict?” Shauna asks as they leave together. “Because I don’t hate the sentiment, but it’s not my favorite.”

“What was your favorite?” Jackie asks, as though she doesn’t know perfectly well.

“I don’t know,” Shauna teases, shelving an impossible confession for a lighter one, keeping her voice down even though the diner’s almost entirely empty, “I didn’t completely hate it when you called me baby.”

“Oh?” Jackie says, a flicker of confusion passing across her face as she clears her throat.

Shauna blushes, regretting the joke. “Or Triple S,” she adds, trying to fix the mood. “In case I ever wanna be a professional wrestler.”

“Well, I actually decided on Thirty-Second Shauna, like, the instant I came up with it,” Jackie says. Shauna bumps her hip playfully and Jackie giggles and loops their arms together. “You can just go by Shauna for short.” 

-

This is the first day since Saturday that Jackie doesn’t try to touch her. 

They talk plenty; it’s nice, shockingly normal. It’s the kind of day that would’ve left Shauna on cloud nine two weeks ago, because Jackie’s been flirty and light and playful with her, and as physically affectionate on a platonic level as ever. They’d even kissed in the morning. It feels like they’re repairing some damage.

But Jackie lets Shauna drive her home with no interruptions, which means that Shauna spends that drive with her trepidation building as they get closer and closer to their destination. By the time her car crawls reluctantly onto Jackie’s street, she feels anxious about it. 

“We have Regionals tomorrow,” Jackie says as Shauna parks in her driveway, exhaling heavily. “I’m so nervous.”

Shauna isn’t. She’s never cared about soccer like Jackie does. She’s competitive, though, and there’s certainly an internal drive to win tomorrow bolstering her.

They’ll be taking a bus to a town an hour and a half away from Wiskayok, where their game starts at seven o’clock in the evening. Their coaches had rallied them all for a fundraiser a couple of months back to help pay for motel rooms in case they made State, and they’d had enough funds leftover that they’d been rewarded with rooms for Regionals, too, even though they could’ve been back in Wiskayok by eleven. 

It’s two to a room, and of course Jackie and Shauna had paired up immediately. Shauna’s pretty sure there’s a secret plan among all the girls to crowd into one together at some point tonight, though—provided they win and are in the mood—for some late-night antics involving alcohol and weed. 

It’ll be a long day. They’d also had a long night last night, too. And taking a day to reset, be cool, and not do too much after the chaos of the last few makes sense. Shauna tries to relax.

Jackie’s parents are inside, and had maybe heard Shauna pull in, so they can’t stay out in the driveway for long. But some brief kissing might not be off the table.

Shauna grips the gear shift tighter and makes herself stay in place, not brave enough to initiate it. “We’ll win, Jax,” she reassures her. “We always win.”

“Okay.” Jackie looks at her like she’s searching for something, and Shauna blinks back at her, uncertain. Whatever it is, Jackie must not find it, because her eyes drop to her seatbelt and she unbuckles herself with a short, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ship— Shauna.”

Now that Jackie’s getting rid of it, Shauna actually kind of misses the nickname, if only because it’s a thing that’s just theirs. “You can maybe… use it sometimes,” she says slowly, feeling dumb. “Like, sparingly.”

Jackie sighs. “You can be really inconsistent sometimes, Shauna,” she says, and then leans in and kisses her on the cheek before she goes.

Shauna drives home, lies awake in bed and thinks of Brown.

-

By the time Shauna loads herself onto the bus to Regionals, fully changed into her uniform, most of her teammates are already inside. 

Jackie is there, sitting by a window near the back and laughing at something her seat partner, Mari, is saying to her. 

Shauna swings her body around into an empty seat near the front and pulls a book out of the backpack she’s taking with her. 

Nat moves up from wherever she’d been seated to slide in next to her a moment later, eyeing Shauna’s backpack with an almost predatory look. “Hey, you have room in there?”

“Yeah,” Shauna says, skeptical. Nat digs a massive bag of weed out of her own backpack and presses it into Shauna’s lap, ignoring her look of horror.

“Stash that. Coach won’t search you.”

“What the fuck?” Shauna huffs, but does it for her anyway. 

“Is Jackie mad at you?” Nat asks her, but like she’s just making conversation, not genuinely invested.

“We’re fine,” Shauna says. They are. They’ve been fine all day today, just like yesterday. “We don’t have to be attached at the hip 24/7.” 

Nat answers that with a dubious look. “Okay. Thanks.” Then she’s gone, sliding into a seat next to Lottie.

Shauna goes back to her book as the bus loads up. The next person to sink into the seat beside her is Melissa. “Hey,” she says nervously. “Sorry. It’s filling up in here.”

Shauna looks around. It’s crowded, but not that full. Even the seats directly behind and in front of them are empty. 

Shauna’s eyes drop back to Melissa. She squints at her. “Can I ask you something?”

Melissa straightens up a little, visibly caught off-guard. “Oh. I guess. Sure.”

“Are you into me?”

Melissa stiffens, wide-eyed, and fumbles over a series of sounds that never form complete words, because Shauna takes pity on her fairly quickly. She feels like her question’s been answered.

“It’s okay if you are. Like, it’d make sense.” She smiles and hopes it looks friendly, not placating. She’s not interested in Melissa but she doesn’t want to give her a panic attack. And her crush is cute, in a sort of sad puppy way. Shauna’s a little flattered. “I mean, not because I have a massive ego or anything. But just… you know, because we made out.”

“I, uh, shouldn’t be here,” Melissa decides promptly, blushing, and that part gets overheard by Jackie as she appears out of nowhere in the aisle behind her.

“Glad we agree. You’re in my seat, benchwarmer.”

Shauna hears a short bout of snickering and cranes her neck to find the source. Of course it’s Van and Tai, two seats down, watching the proceedings with severe interest.

“Sorry, Jackie,” Melissa rushes out, and then she’s gone in an instant. Jackie plops down in her place and tightens her ponytail, then pulls out a compact mirror to check the face paint on her cheek.

Shauna watches her. “I thought you were sitting with Mari.”

“I thought you’d come tell her to move.”

“Why would I do that?”

Jackie closes the mirror, frowning, leveling her with an expectant look. “Because I wanted you to?”

Shauna recognizes her with icy familiarity. Pre-Saturday Jackie. The one who’d spent too much time making Shauna feel like she was being looked through instead of looked at. The one Shauna had expected to wake up next to Sunday morning and then just hadn’t. 

It’s hot on Jackie, at least, in a fucked up sort of way. And definitely another sign of a return to normalcy.

“I’ll say something next time,” Shauna vows. “If anyone sits next to you for State.”

Jackie smiles and it reaches her eyes. “Good. Anyway, I need to do your face paint when we get there. You need some color on your cheeks.”

-

The game goes well. They win 2-0, actually, courtesy of one goal from Jackie and one from Tai, which by soccer standards isn’t very close, and even Shauna can’t deny she feels a rush when the final whistle blows and they all sprint to meet each other at the center of the field, screaming and jumping and grasping each other tight. 

They’re still buzzing on the bus back to the motel, where the message gets passed around like a game of telephone: meetup in Nat and Lottie’s room at ten, after the coaches are asleep. Shauna gets the extra tip to make sure she brings the weed. 

The sleeping situation is one queen bed per room, and Shauna sits on the edge of hers and Jackie’s and tugs her soccer gear off with a sense of deja-vu, but Jackie shuts herself up in the bathroom right away without a word to Shauna and Shauna hears the water come on not long after. 

She sighs, collapsing back onto the bed and closing her eyes. She’s getting tired of this now. She feels the bitterness bubble up in her throat like bile and has to swallow it back down. 

Jackie emerges, fully clothed in her pajamas and wearing a towel on her head. “Your turn,” she says without looking at her.

Shauna showers and scrubs at her body, then has to reapply concealer to her neck afterward. Jackie’s left a tube behind for her on the bathroom counter. 

When she’s dressed and back in the main room, she sets the tube on Jackie’s nightstand and accepts the hairbrush Jackie offers her in return. 

“Are you, like, punishing me?” she makes herself ask.

Jackie looks taken aback, and then defensive. “What? Why would–? No.”

It doesn’t feel like a lie, but it feels deceptive in some way Shauna can’t quite pinpoint. “It kind of feels like you are.”

“No,” Jackie says again, reaching out for her hand, pulling Shauna to sit on the bed beside her. Jackie’s eyes stare down at her lap. “I’m really not. I’m just… trying to be normal, I guess. And don’t really know what that looks like.”

“Me either.” Shauna hesitates. “I miss kissing you.”

Jackie’s head rises swiftly, turning to look at her, and then her eyes flicker to Shauna’s lips. “Me too.”

“Okay,” Shauna sighs out, relieved. She hovers inches from Jackie, just looking back at her like they’re in some silly game of chicken, and then gives in and reaches for her cheek, grounding herself with the touch, guiding herself in to meet Jackie’s lips.

It’s gentle. Slow. Like they’re re-learning each other, almost, even though it’s only been a day and a half. Jackie’s hand falls to her thigh, warm where it rests there. Shauna lets it go on for a few more seconds, then senses it’s on the verge of speeding up and getting heated when Jackie’s mouth opens a little wider against hers, presses a little harder. She has to force herself to pull away.

“Okay,” she says again, breathless. “Did that, um, help clear things up?”

“I think so,” Jackie replies, but then pauses like she’s reconsidering, and smiles mischievously. “Actually, not at all. Maybe if we did it again?” Shauna scoffs and pushes her away by her shoulder, and Jackie watches her stand up. “Fine. I think it’s almost ten anyway.” Shauna goes to her backpack and pulls out the bag of weed, and Jackie’s eyes go wide. “Shit.”

“Natalie,” Shauna explains, tossing it to her. “You carry it. I don’t wanna get, like, a contact high or whatever.”

Jackie giggles. “That’s not what a contact high is, Shauna.”

“Oh.” Shauna wrinkles her nose. “Whatever. Are we going?”

“Yeah, I wanna get drunk,” Jackie says, and then stands and pulls Shauna toward the door.

-

“Never have I ever…” Lottie’s slurring an hour later, while Shauna’s comfortably buzzed and leaning into Jackie where they’re seated together on the floor. She thinks she knows what a contact high is now, because she might just have one from the way Nat and a few others are effectively hotboxing the motel room. “...Given a blowjob.”

“You haven’t?” Nat asks, gaping at her and then taking a drink herself. Shauna turns her head and watches Jackie do the same, and Jackie meets her eyes for just a moment and there’s something faraway and a little sad in them. Shauna wonders if it’s because she’s missing Jeff. She rests her head on Jackie’s shoulder and holds her hand, too intoxicated to feel anything but a little sad herself about it. 

“It’s pretty gross,” Jackie tells Lottie, which makes Shauna’s eyebrows furrow.

Nat scoffs. “It’s not that gross.”

“My turn!” Laura Lee cuts in happily, standing up, probably just wanting to get them onto a new subject. “Never have I ever lied to the Lord.”

“Fuck off, Laura Lee,” Nat jeers.

“What does that even mean?” someone else asks, and the entire room of a dozen plus girls takes a confused swig in unison. Laura Lee’s smile falls and she humbly sits back down.

“Never have I ever,” Tai says next, all eyes on her, “had bad sex.”

Nat drinks again with a scowl. A couple of others move to join her, and Shauna’s drunk and probably high, and leans in too close to Jackie’s ear, her lips brushing it as she says teasingly, pointedly, “Nope.” She forgets that it isn’t supposed to be sex. Maybe Jackie does too, the way her head turns and she studies Shauna, and then looks down at her lips. Shauna wants to ask her about it. They’ve described it as “fucking” before, but… 

But here isn’t the time or the place.

“Never have I ever,” Mari says with a smirk, drawing Shauna’s attention, “kissed another girl.”

Lottie drinks right away and immediately gets whistled at and teased for it and pelted with questions. Tai and Van have the presence of mind to not. Shauna moves unthinkingly, lifting the drink to her mouth, and Mari spots the cup nearing her lips and cackles. “Oh my God, Shauna!”

Melissa hesitates, sees Shauna about to drink, and then drinks too, earning an excited gasp from Gen. Jackie’s gone completely stiff at Shauna’s side. She stands quickly, detangling herself, and Shauna watches her move across the room to snag a wayward bottle of vodka and start refilling her drink. Her hands tremble.

“–so then we just pecked, and I never saw her again. No big deal,” Lottie’s finishing, but Mari’s talking over her now.

“Shauna was gonna drink!”

“Melissa too,” Gen adds swiftly, and when the group takes a quick look around they all seem to decide that everyone is accounted for now. 

Van and Tai wince at Shauna like they’re aware they’re watching a car wreck in slow motion as Mari presses, teasing her, “Shauna, who’d you kiss?”

Shauna’s inebriated, but she’s not fucking braindead. There’s really only one answer she can give now that she’s gone and put herself in this position. Especially given that Jackie looks like she’s about to start chugging the bottle in her hand. Or maybe like she’s considering bashing herself over the head with it. She’s trying to hide it, but Shauna can tell she’s terrified. “Uh, Melissa,” Shauna says, turning to look at Melissa instead.

“It was nothing,” Melissa adds rapidly as a dozen pairs of eyes ping-pong back and forth between them. 

“No way,” Nat drawls, a little awestruck, a lot amused. “How was it?”

Shauna shrugs aloofly. “I don’t know. Fine. We were drinking. It was just for fun.” Melissa nods quickly, earnestly, backing her up. “I barely remember it.”

“Me either.” Melissa takes several extra gulps from her cup then, eyes darting past her legion of onlookers to look at someone or something else.

Shauna’s head turns to follow her eyeline and she realizes Melissa is looking at Jackie. And Jackie is looking at Shauna. 

Maybe it’s not obvious to the others, but Shauna recognizes the tightness in her jaw, her tense shoulders, the hint of a scrunch to her nose. She’s upset. She’s pissed. 

A little thrill shoots through Shauna and sparks something beneath her navel. Even drunk, she knows what this is. Jackie is possessive—always has been, always lorded over Shauna’s love life even before their lips ever touched, always only ever accepted the idea of Shauna with someone if Jackie hand-picked him for her—and someone else went and encroached on her territory, and she went all this time without ever even knowing about it. Shauna had been so afraid of Jackie finding out when it’d first happened, worried about what she’d think, what she’d say. Now, though, she’s starting to welcome this development more and more by the second.

She refocuses on the game to find that the others have moved on and Nat is going next. “Never have I ever been in love,” she says sweetly, mockingly.

Shauna’s learned her lesson and doesn’t drink this time, but Jackie does it almost forlornly, not looking at anyone in particular, seemingly lost in her own thoughts now. Nobody really pays her any mind, though, because a couple of other girls with more interesting stories are drinking too. Shauna notices Van and Tai don’t drink again, and thinks to herself that it’s so incredibly sad that all three of them are lying here.

Laura Lee smiles sympathetically at Jackie and says, “It’s so sad that you and Jeff didn’t work out. If you still love him, maybe you should just try talking to him.”

“Yeah,” Jackie says distantly. “Maybe.”

Shauna sets her cup down, her face impassive while her heart takes an invisible punch, and listens to Misty talk about Coach Ben.

Chapter 8

Jackie has deescalated from Pissed to solidly Grumpy by the time they plod back into their room together, worn down by the late hour, the alcohol, and lingering exhaustion from their soccer game. 

Shauna collapses onto the bed right away, almost wishing she weren’t as sobered up as she is for this, and mumbles, “Do I smell like weed?”

“If you do, I do,” Jackie says tiredly, and then curls up on top of the comforter with her back to Shauna, saying nothing more.

“Jax,” Shauna sighs, reaching out to stroke her fingers through Jackie’s hair. “Are you mad?” Secretly, she hopes she is, even if she doesn’t particularly want to fight with Jackie about it. But she wants it to bother her, even though she won’t be bothered for the reason Shauna wishes she was.

“When?” Jackie asks shortly. Her tone gives away that she’s still at least a little upset. Shauna’s heart gives a tiny leap.

“Like, a few months ago.”

Jackie rolls over and the look on her face says that’s not a good answer. “Before us?”

“Yeah,” Shauna confirms, and Jackie’s expression darkens further.

“Then I wasn’t your first kiss with a girl. You let me think I was.”

“I know. But you’re my first everything else with anyone, though.”

Jackie seems to consider that. It’s like Shauna’s offering her a deal, showing off Door Number Two and trying to convince her it’s not all that bad compared to what she’s just lost behind Door Number One. “But why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“I don’t know,” Shauna lies. “It didn’t mean anything.”

Jackie’s next question is asked so quietly. “...Did you like it?” 

Shauna blinks, nods. “Yeah.”

Jackie’s face flickers, like she’d spent a half-second being dealt a blow she hadn’t expected. “Better than me?”

“No.” Shauna licks her lips. “Don’t be stupid. You’re my favorite.”

Jackie rolls onto her back, lips twitching uncertainly, then settling into a frown. “She’s so obvious about liking you. I told her off for it weeks ago.”

Shauna props herself up on an elbow, her eyebrows furrowing. “What?”

Jackie glances over at her guiltily, then seems to dismiss her own emotion with a roll of her eyes. She folds her arms over her stomach petulantly and explains, “I was trying to do you a favor. So I just… told her to stay the fuck away from you. I’m sorry, but—”

“Don’t apologize,” Shauna breathes. She squeezes her thighs together. “You said that?”

Jackie studies her, and then her eyes drop to Shauna’s neck. Shauna wonders if Jackie can see her pulse quickening there. “I said to stay the fuck away from you, because… because you weren’t like that.”

Some of the heat recedes from Shauna’s face and she can’t look at Jackie, suddenly. “Oh.”

“It was to try to make her go away,” Jackie finishes, quieter again. “That’s all.”

A memory lights up in the back of Shauna’s mind, suddenly, and a fond scoff slips out of her. “Jackie. Last practice?” Jackie shrugs, looking away. “What did you say to her?”

“Nothing.” Jackie rolls her eyes again. “I just told her she was fine and to get up.”

“You fucking flattened her because we were messing around with her hat for two seconds?” Shauna checks, gaping at her with amusement. “Really, Jackie?”

“It looked flirty,” Jackie huffs dismissively, and Shauna knows she’s ending the conversation about it then when she finishes, “Anyway. Screw you for hiding her from me.”

Shauna sighs, stretching out and resting her head on her pillow. Jackie mirrors her. “I thought about you,” she admits before she can talk herself out of it, too eager to earn a reaction from Jackie with it. She knows it’ll be a good one, and now that the Melissa secret’s out she might as well finish the job with it, tell it all.

Jackie’s eyebrows furrow with confusion. She’s not tracking back to where she needs to be. “Hmm?”

Shauna steels herself for only a moment. “With Melissa. I thought about you while I kissed her.”

Jackie freezes, blinking rapidly, and Shauna can practically see her wheels turning. Her mouth opens, pauses, and then closes. For a moment Shauna thinks she’s caused Jackie to malfunction entirely. It brings a small smile to her lips. 

Jackie’s lips part again. Her cheeks go pink. “Why?” she asks.

Shauna scoffs, surprised, and then annoyed. Idly, she says, “Well, you know. Just because I like to think of you while I’m doing stuff. My laundry, using the bathroom…” She drops the act and huffs, “Why do you think, Jackie? Because I was making out with her and I wanted it to be you. Stop making me spell things out for you when you obviously already get it. It’s annoying.” Something inscrutable flashes behind Jackie’s eyes but she doesn’t argue it. Shauna exhales harshly and softens, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Sorry.”

“Okay,” Jackie says carefully. “So you thought about me.”

“Yeah.” Shauna closes her eyes and tries to clear her head before her thoughts get too entangled, and there’s something still clunking around inside, she finds, bothering her. “What you said to Melissa isn’t true,” she blurts. “I… I am. I am like that.” She opens her eyes, worried, looking into Jackie’s. “A little bit, at least.”

Jackie softens too, cracks the smallest of smiles. “I know, Shauna. You went down on me.”

Shauna huffs out a laugh and checks, “So that’s okay?” anyway.

Jackie reaches out and takes Shauna’s hand. “Of course it’s okay.”

Shauna knows Jackie is too. She thinks Jackie’s the same as her, likes both on some level. But she doesn’t dare vocalize it, and Jackie doesn’t say a word either. It frustrates Shauna that she won’t say it, that she won’t just give this one thing back to Shauna and make it even.

Shauna thinks of Jackie drinking from her cup again, loving Jeff. She wonders if Jackie will still be calling this an experiment in thirty years, even if it’s the best sex she ever has. She wonders if Jackie will be comfortable revealing it all by then, if she’ll tell stories about it to her husband to turn him on. She wonders if it’ll be Jeff. Wonders how detailed she’ll get, if she’ll tell him about the way Shauna’d looked at her as she’d worshipped her with her mouth.

Her stomach churns and she asks, “Can I turn the light out?”

“Okay,” Jackie agrees softly, though she seems to sense that something’s off between them now.

Shauna stands to click the lamp off, then pulls back the comforter and feels Jackie slipping under it too. They lay together in total darkness, in silence, and Shauna has never felt less like touching Jackie while sharing a bed with her. She rolls onto her side and puts her back to her. 

She can feel the resentment building again. Jackie taking and taking, always, pulling things out of her—like Shauna thinking of Jackie with Melissa, Shauna liking girls—without even having to try, without giving anything back, and then pushing for even more than the massive helping of truth Shauna’s already given her. She thinks of Wednesday night in Jackie’s bed, the way Jackie’d expected Shauna to dig the knife deeper into herself then, butcher herself like an animal, carve her own chest open and hand her heart over. 

And for what? So Jackie could gorge herself on it and then use it as she likes. Offering Shauna table scraps like her fucked up possessiveness in the interim so she doesn’t starve entirely and leave Jackie without a devoted plaything. Shauna’s not just a lap dog, she’s a lap dog trained to survive on toxicity. She knows it, and yet she’d still squirmed with pleasure at the thought of Jackie being angry she’d kissed someone else. There’s no healing her with Jackie around. She doesn’t know how to stop it, no matter how many times they try to be normal, try to fix it together. She’s just broken.

She feels movement on the mattress and swallows thickly, feeling sick. Jackie presses into her from behind, spooning her, hot breaths tickling the back of Shauna’s neck. Her arm slides over Shauna’s stomach and holds her tight. Her palm presses flat right over Shauna’s navel. 

Shauna is as stiff as a board. She knows Jackie can feel it, and her brain screams silently at Jackie to take the hint, to move away. But her skin feels hot and itchy and prickly and her pulse is rising by the second. Her body knows Jackie is close and is reacting accordingly regardless of what Shauna’s brain thinks about it.

Jackie nuzzles her face into Shauna’s hair and inhales, and Shauna squeezes her eyes shut tight. She feels like prey, held in place like this with her willpower being drained from her. Like an insect caught in a web, doomed to be consumed for sustenance by something greater, better than itself. The thought makes her boil. Jackie’s hand is making her boil. She’s so angry and she knows Jackie has no idea.

Fuck you, she wants to say to her, fucking tell me you like girls too, but Jackie’s thumb swipes back and forth over her shirt in the smallest of caresses, dragging the scratchy material over Shauna’s abdomen, and Shauna expels a shaky breath she knows Jackie hears. She’s boiling and it’s not an angry kind of heat, suddenly. Fuck me. Please fuck me. 

Give me something. Give me anything.

Her body loosens on the outside but tightens internally, more heat coiling under Jackie’s hand and then winding lower, pooling. She squirms, just like she’d squirmed earlier, her hips shifting back into Jackie’s.

Jackie breathes against her, fingers twitching, and then presses her hips forward subtly. Shauna throbs. They both go still, and Shauna’s eyes flutter open, staring at nothing in the dark. 

Jackie’s waiting for her. Shauna shifts again, feels the way Jackie’s body is solid against her. A sudden exhale tickles Shauna’s neck. Jackie’s hand flattens on her stomach, holding her tighter, keeping her in place. Shauna feels the pressure of Jackie’s hips pushing against her.

It continues like this again and again in complete silence, save for their heavy breathing: Jackie’s hand sliding up to her hip, pulling her back in a slow rhythm, moving with her. Shauna feels like she’s burning up but she isn’t technically getting any helpful friction from this, which means that this is just for Jackie, just Jackie taking care of herself by using Shauna’s body.

When she has that thought, she turns and moans into her pillow, then calls herself several horrible names in her head for having that kind of reaction to it. But then she pictures Jackie saying those horrible words instead, and pictures her murmuring, “I knew you’d be pathetic enough to let me use you,” as she grinds against her, and the guilt of conjuring that up in the first place almost shocks herself out of the arousal it’s caused to spike in her. 

Ashamed, she squeezes her eyes shut again and tries to block it all out, to just listen to the quiet noises catching in Jackie’s throat. It works too well; Jackie’s getting there, starting to tremble and whine. Shauna reaches back, tangles her fingers in Jackie’s hair and urges her head closer. Jackie’s mouth pushes through the curtain of Shauna’s hair and kisses the exposed skin where her neck meets her shoulder. 

“Do you want me to touch you?” Jackie asks. She sounds pleading, desperate, with how close she is to her own release. 

Shauna nods, unable to bring herself to say it. What she does say instead pushes out of her on impulse. “Do I feel good?”

“Yeah.” Shauna feels a fresh wave of arousal roll through her abdomen. “You feel good.” Jackie’s lips drag along her neck and Shauna hears her swallow thickly. She says it again on an exhale, whispered so quietly: “You feel good, baby.”

It hits her oddly: another massive flash of heat that pulls a moan from her this time, but then a strange realization that this is Jackie just like the girl in the diner had been Jackie, that they’d talked about this and then Jackie had remembered it and then thought to use it now. 

She can’t stop thinking about Jackie laughing in that booth, suddenly. Looking at her so fondly. Thanking her for being her friend. How things had felt then. How she’d had butterflies in her stomach and it’d felt so… light. Easy. Even in spite of the heaviness from the night before. They’d managed it together.

The anger and shame drain out of her.

She separates from Jackie, pulling out of her hold so easily, flipping around to face her. She can’t see her well in the dark and she wishes she could. She presses her mouth to Jackie’s gently, almost shyly, and when Jackie follows her lead and kisses her back in the same way, it reminds her of their first kiss. 

She cuddles into her and fits her hand into Jackie’s shorts, touching her slowly. They’re on their sides now, face to face, Jackie’s hips twisted a little to give her hand more space between her thighs. “Like this,” she offers, and Jackie nods and holds her, her breathing loud but steadier. 

This is simpler. Just Shauna trying to focus on the good parts for a little while, to remember that Jackie is flawed but she is Jackie, and Shauna loves Jackie so much, and they can enjoy this experiment now for what it is, not make it this toxic thing that feels ugly to her. She doesn’t want those negative emotions. She wants to be distracted from them before they make her spiral any further. She will deal with them when this is all over between them.

She’d made a promise to Jackie last time to tell her how much she likes touching her. She knows it’s yet another instance of her offering more of herself up for Jackie to consume. She tries not to think about it. “Jackie?” She dips her fingertips inside and they slip in so easily. Jackie’s shaky exhale almost feels like one of relief, and it’s followed by a soft, distracted sound that seems to serve as an acknowledgement of Shauna. 

She knows just what to say tonight. She knows Jackie too well, knows exactly what itch to scratch here. “You’re the only girl I wanna touch like this. And you’re the only girl I want touching me back.” She pushes into her then, thumbing over her clit, and Jackie’s next breath catches in her throat. “I want you to hate her. It turns me on.” She knows Jackie knows who she means. 

There’s more. She hesitates, and then buries the confession right into Jackie’s ear in a whisper. “When you got angry about it tonight it made me so wet.” She hears Jackie’s soft moan, feels the way her hips stutter through a roll into Shauna’s steady strokes. And thinks to herself that there’s definitely a little part of Jackie that’s broken and toxic, too.

“I was jealous,” Jackie whispers into her hair, something almost shy about the way she won’t press the words directly into Shauna’s waiting ear. “Why wasn’t it me?”

“You were with Jeff that night,” Shauna recalls, moving harder, faster. “I made out with her in a bathroom. We stopped when someone knocked.” Her fingers withdraw, swirl around her clit several times, and then push back inside of her. Jackie takes them with a low whine. “With you? I wouldn’t have stopped unless you made me.” Shauna can feel a familiar fog taking over her brain, giving her a singular focus. Touch Jackie. Then get Jackie to touch her back. “I would’ve touched you however you asked me to, Jax. I would’ve begged you to let me. Any way you wanted.”

Jackie rocks into her with a soft cry, hips starting to move more desperately. “Please don’t stop talking.”

“I’ll do anything you want now.” Shauna takes the shell of Jackie’s ear between her teeth and bites down lightly, then runs her tongue along it. “Just tell me what to do. Order me around. C’mon.”

Jackie whines again, low in her throat, and just says, “Keep touching me.” She arches into Shauna pleadingly, then digs her fingernails into Shauna’s back when Shauna fucks her harder. She rubs faster, her strokes shortening, and then Jackie’s body is straining into her and she’s gasping and stiffening and pulsing hard beneath Shauna’s palm.

Shauna slows, pushing into her languidly a few more times as she comes down, and then stops completely with her fingers curved right where Jackie likes them. Jackie deflates against her, her grip on Shauna weakening to a light hold.  

“That felt fast,” Shauna can’t resist noticing as Jackie catches her breath. 

Jackie laughs, airy and breathless. “You’re one to talk.”

“Jackie,” Shauna sighs, perfectly aware that she’d walked right into it. She pulls out of Jackie and feels Jackie smiling into her hair. They sit with the moment for a few seconds, just processing it all together, and Shauna wonders if Jackie’s mulling it all over now, reviewing Shauna’s confession about Melissa, about how truly little she’d meant.

But Jackie’s arms wrap around her and pull her into an affectionate hug and Jackie just says, “I think it’s cute that you’re quick. I’m not great at dragging it out anyway. I like making you happy.”

Shauna cringes against her. “God, you did not just call it making me happy.”

Jackie rolls them over so she’s pressed on top of Shauna, then straddles her and leans off of the bed toward the nightstand, clicking the lamp there back on to give them some dim light. Shauna blinks up at her, taking in her smirk and the flush in her cheeks.

“Do I not make you happy?” Jackie teases.

“You’re making me dry,” Shauna retorts sourly.

Jackie chuckles. “We both know you’re not even close to dry, Shauna.”

“You haven’t checked.” Shauna lifts an eyebrow. “You should check.”

Jackie leans down, laughing into their kiss, tongue sweeping over Shauna’s. Her hands search for Shauna’s, find them, grasp her wrists, and then move them up, pressing them into the mattress on either side of her head. “You want an order? Take your clothes off first.”

“You’re holding my wrists, Jax.”

“Oops.” Jackie bites Shauna’s bottom lip. “Guess you’ll have to wait.”

Shauna can’t stop herself from arching eagerly into Jackie at that. “Okay.”

Another chuckle is pressed into her mouth, but then Jackie’s smile fades and the kiss slows, and Shauna’s eyebrows furrow at the change. It reminds her of the kiss earlier, before they’d left to be with the team. Careful, gentle. Jackie pulls back, and Shauna feels Jackie’s breath on her lips. Then she’s brushing over her, pressing another soft kiss to her, barely there. 

Shauna didn’t know it was possible to ache for a kiss, but when Jackie leaves her again, she parts her lips and waits with a dull pain in them that seems to throb in time with her heart. 

She thinks it’s a game Jackie’s still playing, that she’s teasing on purpose and not really planning on drawing this out, until she feels her sit up and her hands slide away from Shauna’s wrists. 

Shauna opens her eyes and finds Jackie just staring down at her, taking her in. She gives Jackie a quizzical look, and Jackie reaches out to her face with both hands, stroking some of her hair out of the way affectionately, tucking a few strands behind her ears, fingers sliding along her jawline after and then tracing up over her cheeks. “Just wait, okay?” Jackie whispers, and Shauna gives a short nod.

Jackie seems intensely concentrated on her own movements. Her left hand moves up, weaving into Shauna’s hair near her ear, and her right travels to Shauna’s open mouth, her thumb sweeping over her bottom lip. Shauna watches Jackie’s eyes, lets her tongue come out to flick over Jackie’s thumb. She sees the way hazel darkens to brown. Shauna leans up and takes Jackie’s thumb into her mouth, licking at the pad, then kissing it there. 

Jackie’s eyelashes flutter and then she visibly blinks her thoughts back into her own head and takes her thumb away too quickly. Shauna watches her try to lighten the mood, watches her clear her throat and tell Shauna with suspicion, “You’re not a virgin.”

It’s a joke about how Shauna’s too good at this to not have done it before Jackie. Shauna understands. She ignores its intent and just answers it with a simple, “I know I’m not.”

The air shifts between them, growing thicker. Jackie’s hand curves around her jaw again, more unsteady this time. Her fingers trace down her neck, skating over older and newer marks revealed beneath smudged concealer. Her eyes follow her fingers and then jump back up to Shauna’s, searching her guardedly. And Shauna can see, so clearly in Jackie’s eyes, that she genuinely hasn’t thought about this yet. Or maybe had been actively avoiding thinking about it until now.

Shauna needs a verdict from her. She just needs to know either way, finally, if it counts for her. If she will give Shauna that, at least. “Just say, Jax. You get to decide.”

Jackie blinks rapidly, and Shauna’s surprised when one of Jackie’s hands suddenly rises to her face, wiping at one eye and then the other. “Fuck,” Jackie whispers, her voice thick with the tears she’s holding back. One escapes, sliding down her cheek. “I think I’m not.”

Shauna doesn’t ask who she thinks she lost it to. She doesn’t have to. Jackie had always referred to herself as a virgin with Jeff.

She knows this has always been bigger for Jackie than for Shauna, that it’s this defining moment for her that divides her life into a before and an after. To slip into the after in a mess of gray probably isn’t what she’d wanted for herself. 

Shauna cracks a smile. “Wanna ask Coach if we can stop by a sex shop on the way home? I can poke something more phallic up there real quick just to seal the deal.”

Jackie dissolves into a fit of tear-filled laughter, wiping at her eyes again. “You’re ruining this,” she complains half-heartedly through it. “Stop being funny.”

Shauna laughs too. “You’re crying because you decided you lost your virginity to me and I’m the one ruining this?”

“That’s not why I’m crying,” Jackie huffs, and she’s smiling now as she wipes the last of her tears away. “It’s just a big deal. I want it to be you.” She caresses Shauna’s face, hand settling on her cheek. “So, I guess now it is. And we’re connected forever.”

She understands why Jackie would prefer it this way. By her own admission, she’d loved Jeff. But he’s a bad memory right now, and Shauna is a good one. Shauna is someone Jackie loves too, and someone she thinks she can trust. Someone Jackie knows loves her. She’ll probably change her mind about it all down the line, after Brown, but for now Shauna will take this gift from her, aware of how sincere it is, how special it is. Aware that it is Jackie giving something back to her tonight after all.

“Okay.” Shauna traces every inch of Jackie’s face with her eyes in the silence that follows between them, wanting to memorize her in this moment. She knows in her gut that it’s going to be a core memory, that she’ll be eighty and still remembering Jackie Taylor in the motel room and the decision they’d made together before it all went to hell. “I’m okay with that.”

Jackie sinks down onto her and wraps her arms around her, resting her head on Shauna’s chest, and asks, “Is it okay if we stop? I just… want to do this instead. Can you hold me?”

Shauna’s underwear is soaked and she’s been aching for what feels like forever. She’s dying for Jackie to touch her.

“Yeah,” she says, wrapping her arms around Jackie and closing her eyes. She hopes they fall asleep like this. She’s certain that waking up with Jackie on top of her and in her arms will feel more euphoric than any orgasm ever could. “I’ll hold you, Jax.”

She drifts off to sleep with Jackie’s comforting weight pressing down on her and the scent of Jackie in her nostrils.

And for a moment—one fleeting, temporary moment—Shauna feels a little bit healed.

Notes:

...progress? (for now?)

Chapter 9

Their bus is due to take them back to Wiskayok at eight in the morning, so Shauna has an alarm set for seven forty-five. She wakes sometime earlier, before the sun has fully risen, sensing only a dim light from behind her fluttering eyelids. 

She registers a weight on her, more toward her right side, and then a tickling breath against her ear. Jackie. Her arm is numb, trapped under Jackie’s body, and before she can process anything further she’s distracted by the feeling of something soft brushing her earlobe. 

She swallows, licks her lips. Makes the faintest meaningless sound, still half-asleep.

Something puffs against her ear, an amused sound behind it. A breath. And then a sharp but gentle pressure on the shell. Dampness. The distinct wet sound of a mouth. Another breath.

Shauna’s body wakes up. She becomes aware of more things: the cold, half-dried evidence of arousal in the shorts she’d worn to bed. The comforter down at her waist, the strip of skin she can feel is exposed to the air. Her shirt must have ridden up a little in her sleep. There’s an arm over her midsection. Jackie. Cuddled into her, half on top of her. Shauna’s ear under her tongue.

A faded ache is starting to return to her between her thighs too easily after going unsated last night. She shifts her legs, restless. Her brain is full of fog, sleep mixing with sudden arousal. Her lips part and expel a breath when Jackie’s teeth tug at her ear. Shauna makes a confused sound in her throat, eyes still shut.

“Shhhh,” is Jackie’s sweet instruction, and Shauna clenches between her thighs as Jackie’s breath tickles her ear again.

The arm strewn across her is moving, pulling in toward Jackie, her elbow bending to allow her hand to rest over Shauna’s ribs instead. It doesn’t stay there long, moving low to the hem of her shirt, bunching the material and starting to work it upward. Shauna arches her back, trying to help. It reaches her bare breasts and rests over them. Jackie takes one into her hand and shifts her face lower, burying a sound in Shauna’s neck as Shauna’s breathing picks up. Jackie’s lips and tongue start to lick and nip and suck. Her fingernails scratch over Shauna’s nipple and Shauna arches again, this time into the sensation. She feels everything so acutely with her eyes closed.

“Jackie?” she rasps, her voice rough and thick with sleep.

Jackie shushes her again, long and gentle, so confident in it, and Shauna’s thighs quiver. Her trust levels with Jackie have been a little bit of a rollercoaster lately, but God does she trust her with this right now. She can tell Jackie’s feeling herself. She can sense how this is going to go in the same way she’d sensed it in their desperate kisses on the first night they’d had sex. Jackie has a plan. She’s the version of herself that sweeps her eyes over Shauna in an outfit she’d talked Shauna into and makes her feel hunted in the best kind of way.

“Be good,” Jackie whispers, and Shauna whimpers. Jackie’s mouth slides down her neck, kissing over her collarbone. She shifts overtop of Shauna, pushing Shauna’s shirt up further to fully expose her chest, settling her weight on Shauna’s thigh. Shauna feels Jackie’s damp shorts press against her skin. She bites her lip to keep quiet, feeling eyes on her, imagining seeing what Jackie’s seeing: her bare torso, shirt bunched up, breasts out, Shauna’s eyebrows furrowed and eyes shut tight, cheeks flushed, teeth sunk into her bottom lip.

Jackie exhales unsteadily and then Shauna feels her moving, leaning, and then for the first time a mouth is on her breast. She lets out a strangled moan, trying to get used to the strange tingling sensation of having a tongue flick back and forth over her nipple. She can feel herself fluttering between her thighs, clenching on nothing, thrown back into where she’d been at the end of last night and only building from there. Jackie sucks on her and she whimpers again, raising a hesitant hand and brushing it over Jackie’s head. “If you’re gentle,” Jackie grants her in a murmur, and Shauna lets it rest there.

Jackie switches breasts and starts to test her boundaries with more pressure, more suction, teeth, and Shauna likes it all so much; she can feel herself throbbing in time with every pull of Jackie’s lips. She can’t take it; she has to say something. “I need you so—”

“I know,” Jackie interrupts her swiftly. “Be quiet.”

Jackie sounds mad now. Shauna squeezes her eyes shut tighter and squirms, her breathing getting faster, louder. She caresses Jackie’s hair in what she hopes seems like an apology. She knows it’s just a game, but she’s so into this one that it’s almost scaring her. 

Jackie’s hand moves, slides under the covers and over her shorts, searching, cupping her between her thighs through the fabric. Shauna gasps, pressing into her touch. Jackie’s voice is fond this time when she asks, “You think I don’t know?”

“Jackie,” Shauna groans, pleading, and she hears Jackie huff, and then laugh, breaking character.

“Jesus, Shauna, did you wanna do this or not?”

Shauna blushes and bites her lip again. “Sorry. I wanna do it.”

“Stop acting so fucking desperate, then,” Jackie says shortly, more curtly. Back to playing. Shauna’s skin buzzes with excitement. “Keep your mouth shut and your eyes closed.” Jackie’s hand leaves her and Shauna stifles a reaction. She feels both of her wrists being taken and guided above her, just like last night. “These go here. Okay?”

“Okay.” Shauna winces. “Fuck. Sorry. You’re really hot like this.” 

Jackie shuts her up with a kiss, but Shauna can feel her smiling into it, on the edge of a laugh. “Just nod. I’ll look.”

Shauna nods against her, and Jackie grabs her chin, guiding her through a series of faster, heavier kisses, and then breaking away from her mouth to suck another hickey into a spot just beneath her jaw. Then, finally, she shifts back and down and Shauna feels fingers curling into her shorts.

She lifts her hips immediately, then flinches when the bottoms are tugged down and the cool air hits her. Jackie pushes her thighs apart and Shauna can feel the heat in her own cheeks; she hasn’t been exposed like this for her before. 

“You’re pretty,” Jackie whispers as she settles suspiciously low, breath ghosting over Shauna’s navel, and heat roars through Shauna at the compliment. Then the location of Jackie’s breath and general vicinity clicks and Shauna gives a sudden start, and then Jackie’s tongue is on her.

Her mouth drops open and her moan is pained and a little panicked, and then she’s babbling, “Wait, Jackie, I have to talk for this, I have to look at you, I can’t—”

“Okay,” Jackie agrees swiftly, kissing her open-mouthed right between her legs, hands sliding over Shauna’s thighs. 

“Oh my God,” Shauna marvels, awestruck by the feel of it, but also by Jackie’s audacity. “Why the fuck would you plan to go down on me during this?” she half-moans. 

Jackie maybe isn’t listening to her; she’s licking into Shauna so slowly with a flat tongue and has her eyes closed like she’s savoring it. Shauna looks at her when she goes to put an encouraging hand on Jackie’s head and almost passes out at the sight. Almost dies. She could die now and be totally fine with it as long as her headstone listed her crowning achievement: “Here lies Shauna Shipman. Jackie Taylor ate her out. (Also, she got into Brown.)”

Jackie pauses to take a breath and tells her, “I thought you’d like it,” looking up to meet Shauna’s gaze. Jackie must see something she likes there, because excitement flickers behind her eyes. Shauna just breathes, mouth wide open, staring: Jackie’s lips are shiny and wet and her cheeks are flushed a deep, pretty red. Her hair is all fucked up beneath Shauna’s hand. She looks so good, better than anything Shauna’s ever seen.

“I might come right now,” Shauna breathes, only half-kidding. 

Jackie smirks. “That wouldn’t be very fun for me.”

Shauna stifles a whine. “Does that mean you like it?”

Jackie’s tongue pokes out, traces over her own bottom lip, tasting. “Yeah,” she says, her smile softening. Something softens in Shauna too, blooming tentatively in her chest. 

The moment passes, and Jackie lowers her head and lets her eyes flutter shut, tongue sliding right over Shauna’s clit. Pleasure zips through Shauna from the point of contact and she cries out, slamming her eyes shut and watching sparks dance behind her eyelids. Jackie keeps going and it’s stroke after stroke after stroke–It feels like lightning between her thighs. “Jackie I’m actually gonna come,” she rushes out, fingers tightening warningly in Jackie’s hair.

Jackie’s mouth shifts, easing off of her, lower, sliding over a few less-sensitive spots as Shauna’s chest heaves and she teeters near the brink. She feels Jackie’s tongue sharpen to a point and press at her entrance, then slip inside just a hair. Her nose bumps Shauna’s clit from the angle and Shauna clamps her mouth shut and groans through gritted teeth, clenching down on Jackie’s tongue. 

Jackie withdraws from her and kisses her thigh, then laughs quietly. “I can’t do what I want to.”

Shauna turns and hides her face in her pillow, heat blazing in her cheeks. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Jackie mumbles. Her mouth brushes over Shauna’s clit and Shauna tries to stay still, to not react. “Just… more.”

Shauna thinks she understands. She remembers being between Jackie’s thighs and wanting to completely consume her. “I’ll try,” she offers, quivering. “I’ll think about something else.”

Jackie laughs and looks up at her fondly. “No, think about me. I’m just gonna get you off, okay? Then you can go again like I did.” Her lips brush against Shauna’s clit, then seal over it and suck—tentatively it first, like Jackie’s getting used to it, and then harder. Shauna’s hips jerk into her and she remembers doing this to Jackie, realizes Jackie had liked it so much that she’s replicating it, showing Shauna how good it’d felt. 

Shauna’s core pulses, harder and hotter, and she feels a flush starting to crawl up her neck and into her cheeks. She slams her eyes shut and ignores Jackie’s request, forces an image of Jeff and Jackie making out into her head even as she asks, “I shouldn’t try to last?”

“Mm-mm,” Jackie says, and the vibration makes her gasp. Jeff and Jackie works too well, though, so she lets the image dissipate. Jackie’s mouth releases the suction and her tongue gets sloppier, more eager. The pressure builds. Shauna can hear her own climb in the way she’s struggling to pull her breath into her lungs, the way there’s a hint of a moan on each of her exhales. 

Jackie’s doing this so messily now. Like she doesn’t care what her mouth is doing as long as it’s on Shauna. Two of her fingers push into Shauna out of nowhere and Shauna’s mouth drops open, an embarrassing, high-pitched groan forced out of her. She comes with Jackie moaning around her clit, flying over the edge with a cry she muffles into her pillow. 

Jackie’s fingers withdraw and her mouth works her through it, going lower again, and when Shauna finally relaxes her whole body feels like lead. She has no idea how Jackie had powered through three rounds of this. Jackie’s tongue is half-inside of her now and it just feels kind of nice, but it’s not revving her up again. 

Jackie seems to notice she’s not getting much of a reaction, lets out a sad little hum and then crawls back up Shauna’s body on her hands and knees and looks down at her. Shauna prepares her defense, ready to be teased, but Jackie just murmurs, “Your noises drive me insane,” and leans down to kiss her hard. It’s not the first time Shauna’s tasted herself, but it’s the first time she’s tasted herself on Jackie’s lips. Jackie’s tongue brushes hers and then withdraws. “So does how fast you are.”

She doesn’t say it like it’s a bad thing. Shauna whimpers into her mouth. “Yeah?”

“I think about it a lot,” Jackie whispers to her. “Places we could do it quickly and not get caught. How I could just take care of you.”

The physical stimulation hadn’t helped her get going again, but this… is definitely working. “Please do that,” she groans. “I’d let you.”

She pictures it all. Jackie pulling her into a room at a party. Waiting for the locker room to clear out and then doing it frantically there, Shauna up against a locker. Under the bleachers after practice, Jackie on her knees. 

She knows Jackie would care, but Shauna wouldn’t give a fuck about getting caught. 

The alarm on the nightstand goes off out of nowhere, and Jackie’s head drops, a heavy sigh escaping her. Shauna grimaces and feels the tension between them ebb away. She reaches out and shuts off the alarm. 

Jackie sits up, trailing her fingers over Shauna’s stomach until her hand settles at the center of her chest. “So, before you get up,” she starts, “I have a question.” Shauna nods, watches Jackie bite her lip and then ask, too casually, “Do you think Melissa would do any better? Or are you just this fast with me?”

It’s so out of left field that it’s startling. Shauna’s head tilts with surprise and she pulls a face and almost laughs. “What? How should I know?”

“Well, you said she was a good kisser.”

Shauna’s jaw drops with amusement and she laughs out, “Oh my God, no I didn’t. Stop being possessive. I said I liked it, and then I said about a dozen other things about it that you’re apparently choosing to ignore right now. I’m sorry you can’t have everything?”

Jackie looks away for a moment, not angry, but more solemn than Shauna by a mile. She presses her lips together and then decides, almost petulantly, “Well, I want everything.”

Shauna’s smile falters. “Well, Jackie McFly, if you ever invent a time machine you are more than welcome to use it to go back and steal my first kiss with a girl, then have sex with me in some stranger’s bathroom.” She pats Jackie’s thigh in mock-support. “Until then, you’re out of luck. And I really don’t know why you’re even bringing it up again.”

“Because,” Jackie sighs, and then scowls. “She’s not staying away from you. And you told everyone you kissed her, and you know she’s gonna take that as like, encouragement, right?”

“Well, I lifted my cup when I shouldn’t have because I wasn’t thinking,” Shauna says flatly. “What was I supposed to do? Say you?”

Jackie stills above her, tensing up. Her jaw goes tight and her eyes dart around uncomfortably. She doesn’t answer.

Shauna takes her hands off of Jackie and rubs her temples, trying to ignore the way her heart sinks. “That’s what I thought.”

Jackie slides off of her and settles on the bed next to Shauna with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. Shauna pulls her shirt down to cover herself and then tugs her shorts back on. 

She almost doesn’t say it, but last night is still fresh in her mind and she’s still a little hurt, even though it’d ended so well. “You could at least tell me. Your best friend. Who you’ve been, like, fucking for the past week, so.” She stands up, searching for a pair of pants to pull on. “Like, obviously I know, but it’d be nice to hear you say it to me.”

Jackie looks so small and vulnerable where she watches Shauna from the bed. “You got all mad at me for that last night,” she accuses, but there’s no venom behind it. “For making you spell things out. You called me annoying.”

Shauna flinches as she sticks her foot into a pant leg. “At least I also told you what you wanted to know.”

“Maybe I don’t wanna say it,” Jackie blurts, rushing out the words so quickly that Shauna almost doesn’t parse them all. “And I shouldn’t have to. You can’t make me.”

Shauna rolls her eyes. “Really, Jackie?”

“You already know,” Jackie finishes, ignoring her interjection. Then quieter, still without malice, she finishes, “So fuck off.”

“Great.” Shauna buttons her pants, fully dressed now. “Real cool, Jackie. It’s not a fucking death sentence.”

“Maybe it is for me,” Jackie snaps, her eyes blazing suddenly, and Shauna feels herself submitting, backing down. She’d known this was how Jackie would be about it, anyway. It’s not surprising. She’s already spent some time preemptively resenting her for it.

“Okay.” She pulls her socks and shoes on, grabs her things. “Got it. I’m gonna go wait outside.”

She leaves, and Jackie doesn’t stop her.

-

By the time the bus leaves for Wiskayok, they’re sitting next to each other and pretending none of this morning happened. That they hadn’t argued, and also that if anyone were to kiss Jackie right now they wouldn’t taste traces of Shauna on her lips and tongue.

Shauna has taken the window seat so that Jackie can socialize, and she goes back and forth between zoning out and tuning into the other girls’ conversations. They talk a lot in hushed murmurs—mindful of their coaches—about the victory kegger planned for tonight, out at a spot near the woods where students usually go to get drunk if no one’s house is available.

Shauna knows she’ll be expected to be there. Even if she weren’t a yellowjacket, she’d still have to go because Jackie is going. She knows Jeff will be there, too, and even thinking about that makes her feel ill. He’ll want to talk to Jackie tonight. Jackie, who knows she’s into girls but obviously has no plans to do anything about it beyond fooling around with Shauna for a little while. The expiration date on their friendship is Shauna’s decision, and she’s hoping to put it off at least until summer, but the expiration date on their benefits is Jackie’s decision, and Shauna senses it’s quickly approaching.

Today marks one week. Shauna’s still just mostly in shock that Jackie’d actually put her mouth on her. “I know,” she’d said when Shauna’d told her she liked girls, “you went down on me.” And then less than twelve hours later she’d gone down on Shauna and refused to say it back.

Shauna knows Jackie’s parents are bigots. But Jackie isn’t one. Shauna isn’t one. How hard could it be? “I’m bisexual.” Shauna thinks she could say it if she needed to, now that she’s given it some thought and realized that’s what she is. It isn’t going to fuck up Jackie’s life plan to be bisexual. Like, at all. She can just do what Shauna knows she will do: ignore that part of herself eventually and live out her perfect princess life. Happily so, with a man she genuinely loves. It’ll probably be Jeff.

So the least she could do is give Shauna the satisfaction of hearing her say that she fucking likes women before she spends the rest of her life pretending that she doesn’t, before she tosses Shauna aside and acts like nothing ever happened between them—and Shauna goes to Brown, tossing her aside right back.

Jackie grabs her hand out of nowhere and Shauna turns to look at her. 

“For the party tonight,” Jackie tells her, grinning, “you should wear the boob dress. The red one? Bring it with you to my place later.”

“Oh,” Shauna says. “Yeah, sure.”

Jackie lets go of her hand and turns back around. Shauna stares blankly out her window.

-

Shauna comes over to Jackie’s house that evening under the guise of them having a sleepover. The real plan is to wait until Jackie’s parents go to bed to start to get ready, and then to sneak out and not stay for too long at the party. Just long enough for Jackie to get comfortably drunk and for Shauna to have one or two beers and then sober up to drive them back. With Jeff there, Shauna’s not optimistic that this is how it’ll actually play out in the end.

To pass the time, they watch Beaches on VHS in the living room after dinner, and then they head upstairs with excuses about being tired. Jackie locks her bedroom door and within seconds she’s straddling Shauna on her bed and working her mouth down Shauna’s neck.

They make out until Shauna’s lips almost feel like they’re starting to numb, and out of nowhere Jackie lifts up and turns toward the door abruptly, breathing out, “Did I lock that?”

“Yeah,” Shauna reassures her. Jackie angles her head to get a better look at the doorknob, checking, and then faces Shauna again and goes back to kissing her. Shauna indulges her for another minute before pulling back and asking carefully, “What do you think would happen if they caught us?”

Jackie scowls at her. “C’mon, Shauna, I don’t wanna think about that right now.” 

“I just wanna know.” Shauna reaches for Jackie’s hands, rubbing her thumbs over the backs of them. “Please?”

Jackie looks away, eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t know. Maybe it depends. Just kissing, I’d say I was helping you practice or something. Like how it was in the beginning. They’d still blow a gasket, but… They’d probably just make you sleep on the couch for a few months or something. And call your mom.” She almost seems amused by the idea. “Give me some church lecture and I’d apologize a bunch and… yeah.” She trails off. “Satisfied?”

“What if it wasn’t…?” Shauna presses. “Just kissing?”

Jackie stares down at her hard. “What do you wanna know, Shauna? I’m sure it’d be a fucking nightmare. I told you I don’t wanna think about it.”

“Then why risk it?” Shauna blurts on impulse, and then realizes it’s a really good question. It’s something she’s wondered before, but only fleetingly, because there had been so much else bouncing around in her head that had felt more pressing.

Maybe, deep down, she knows what the answer is. Maybe she’s just looking for her own little ego boost. Maybe she just wants to hear Jackie admit something again.

Jackie stiffens on top of her and doesn’t answer. Pushing her on the whole virginity thing had worked. Pushing her on her sexuality hadn’t.

Shauna goes for a tiebreaker, tries her best attempt at a smirk and a narrowing of her eyes that she hopes looks half as smug as when Jackie does it, and says, “Because you want it too much, right? You need me.”

Jackie needs to possess. Needs the control and the way Shauna’s eyes look at her when they’re doing this. Maybe she even needs the stress relief, after so many years of not getting it from Jeff. Most of all, she needs the attention and the validation, the compliments, to feel another person’s desire for her. It’s Jackie’s life force. 

This week she’s multiplied her supply tenfold. The idea of giving any of it up has to be unappealing in some respect, even if she’d be trading it in to get Jeff back. She’s probably figured she can at least get away with kissing Shauna, still, and a few wandering hands during sleepovers. The sad part is that she’s right.

Jackie stares down at her—not angrily, which is what Shauna would expect if this weren’t landing well, but with something unexpectedly wounded behind her eyes. Like Shauna’s just dug her fingers into a healing injury and torn it all open again. “Stop it,” Jackie whispers, flinching even as the words leave her mouth.

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow and her lip curls up, a perfect picture of perplexion and irritation. So this is yet another thing she’s not allowed to call Jackie out on, even though they both know it’s true. She doesn’t want to back down. “Oh, is this part not fun for you, Jackie? The part where you actually have to open up to me? Admit a few uncomfortable things about yourself?”

Jackie exhales a short, bitter breath and climbs off of her. “That is so unfair, Shauna, and you know it. You’re the one who made me that—” Jackie stops herself, like she’s aware that she’s approaching something sensitive. “You’re the one who didn’t want to talk about things,” she says vaguely, instead.

Shauna knows she’d been about to mention the mixtape. Jackie’s trying to turn this around on her, make this about her feelings. She’s right about one thing: Shauna doesn’t want to talk about that at all. 

She twists her body toward Jackie’s, both of them sitting up on the bed and looking at each other now. She tries to compromise. “We don’t have to talk about anything. Just tell me you need me.”

Jackie scoffs. “Of course I fucking need you, Shauna. You’re my best friend.”

“Not like that,” Shauna bites out, frustrated. “You know I don’t mean it like that.” She shifts forward with an angry huff, pushing Jackie back and pressing her into the mattress. Jackie’s eyes go from widened with surprise to half-lidded and dark when Shauna presses a hand against the damp fabric between her thighs. “I can make you say it,” Shauna warns her lowly. “I can touch you and you’ll say it.”

Jackie wriggles against her, a strange combination of angry and aroused, and then abruptly pushes Shauna away by her shoulder, sitting up. “You’re being a dick,” she tries to snap, but it comes out a little breathy. And then she’s gone completely, heading over to her closet with her back stiff, not looking at Shauna. “We need to start getting ready. Come put on your dress.”

Shauna glares at her from the bed, her jaw tight, and feels like she’s lost another battle in a war neither of them are going to win.

Notes:

Ch 10 is a BIG one; it'll be out sometime this weekend! Thanks again for all the feedback!

Chapter 10

Notes:

This one's explosive! It'll be the only one I post for this weekend. I spent a lot of time trying to get it just right, so I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts (and frustrations lol).

The party seems unremarkable on arrival. Shauna has been to parties here before. The first steps are always the same: parking in the grass among a sea of vehicles. Making their way over to the edge of the woods, to the firepit and its surrounding seats, to the scattered kegs and the classmates hovering near them to get another refill of cheap beer. 

There are coolers filled with cans and bottles, too, and Jackie leads Shauna there first, all smiles on the way, greeting everyone she can, playing the part of a team captain who’d just led her girls to State last night. 

Every Yellowjacket is here, as far as Shauna can tell, but plenty of other seniors and juniors are too, happy to use any excuse to get out on a Saturday night and drink alcohol.

The air smells like three different types of smoke: from the fire, the cigarettes, and the weed. She overhears something about Nat having shrooms and makes a note to stay away from her tonight. A boy from her Physics class is already drunkenly pissing into somebody else’s truck bed. 

Shauna wants to turn around and go back to Jackie’s. Take the tension from today and fuck it out with Jackie’s nails down her back and Jackie’s tongue in her mouth. She tries, ten minutes in: grabs Jackie lightly by the elbow and leans in close to ask her, “Can we just go home?”

Jackie isn’t stupid, and definitely knows what Shauna wants to do when they get there, but she just gives her a look of gentle disapproval and says, “Shauna, we won Regionals. Have some fun for once,” and Shauna can’t help but think of Jeff and wonder if Jackie’s just trying to make sure she gets to see him tonight. 

Then Jackie gets pulled into watching some jock shotgun a beer, and Shauna really doesn’t care about that, so she wanders away to pout by the fire instead.

She sees Jeff not long after she loses track of Jackie. He’s with Randy by one of the kegs. They’re laughing together and just talking, but the sight of them makes her sick anyway. 

Van distracts her, settling beside her with a beer of her own. “Shauna without Jackie,” she notes. “A rare sight.”

“Van without Tai,” Shauna mocks, then takes a sip of her beer. She winces, takes another sip.

Van chuckles. “You know, it’s actually nice having someone else know. Like, that actually felt nice.”

Shauna mulls that over for a moment, then looks around them both to make sure no one else is within earshot or paying attention to them. “Mutually assured destruction, right?” she reminds her. “You promise?”

“Tai doesn’t want anyone to know,” Van says. “I’d never do anything to risk that.” She pauses. “I’m also just… not an asshole, so.”

“Debatable,” Shauna half-jokes. Van bumps her affectionately. Shauna studies her beer, chewing on her bottom lip, and then says, “I lied before. Jackie and I have been hooking up.”

Van snorts. “Yeah, I’m not shocked. I saw her face when you admitted you’d kissed a girl.”

“It’s not just kissing,” Shauna clarifies, and then takes several more gulps of her drink. She feels like she needs the alcohol now. “It’s everything.”

“No, I gathered,” Van says, but Shauna feels the need to keep going; the words just keep tumbling out.

“We’ve been, like—Only this week, but all fucking week. I just need to tell someone about it. She’s driving me crazy and I’ve barely been able to think about anything else. I don’t know what we’re doing.”

“There’s a reason she can’t stand Melissa, Shauna,” Van says with a laugh. “C’mon. Things are never really that complicated with this stuff.”

“It is with Jackie,” Shauna insists. “Jackie wants me to be hers. But she’s never gonna be mine back.”

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? It’d taken her half a beer and a simple conversation to boil it all down into just a few words. That’s how it’s always been, even: Shauna is Jackie’s, but Jackie isn’t Shauna’s.

She’s so fucking tired of it.

Van turns to Shauna and opens her mouth to reply, but then freezes, looking past Shauna at something that makes her mouth close and her face soften into a mildly pained expression. Shauna starts to turn around, and Van grabs her arm worriedly to stop her. “Shauna—” That just makes her pull away and turn even more swiftly.

She sees it right away, across the grass near one of the kegs. Jeff and Jackie. Just talking, but standing too closely to do it, Jackie’s hand resting on Jeff’s forearm over his letterman jacket. Her eyes are bright. Shauna can see the way Jackie’s strawberry lip gloss shines as she curves her lips into a small smile. Jeff laughs at something she says, and then Jackie laughs too—not quite as big as Jeff, but a laugh nonetheless.

Van’s hand squeezes her arm in a show of sympathy that makes Shauna feel pitiful. She hates it. She wrenches her arm out of Van’s grip. “I’m fine,” she snaps. “I knew it was coming.”

She watches on, anyway, refusing to acknowledge to herself why she’s doing it, that she’s still clinging to one last microbe of hope that she’s wrong. But then Jeff reaches for Jackie’s wrist and nods toward the woods, where it’s more secluded, and starts to pull. 

Jackie searches their surroundings immediately as she takes the first step with him, and she finds Shauna so quickly, so easily, that it catches Shauna off guard, especially when she hadn’t been expected to be looked for in the first place. She puts on a mask of indifference, and thinks she gets her face fixed in time because Jackie smiles when their eyes connect and then raises her index finger in a nonverbal message that Shauna receives. Just one minute. Be right back. 

Shauna smiles, pretends to believe it, and waves goodbye. Jeff and Jackie go to the woods together with Jackie’s wrist in Jeff’s hand. And that’s that. Shauna’s one week is done.

Her heart rips itself apart and leaves a gaping, searing hole in its place, desperate to be filled. She storms off to find a cooler. “Shauna,” Van calls after her, but doesn’t follow. Shauna’s grateful that she doesn’t.

She drains the rest of her beer and tosses it in a garbage bag by the nearest cooler, then digs a bottle out of the ice and chugs that, too. When she’s done, she looks around, notes her vision is starting to get a little blurry, and nods to herself with satisfaction. She starts in on another bottle and the pain feels less sharp.

She wanders, finishing the bottle and dumping it at some point, and doesn’t particularly know where she’s going or what she’s doing until she sees a few of the junior girls from the team talking and laughing near the fire. She sees Melissa and an idea clicks into place.

“Hey,” she cuts in, surprised by how even her voice sounds. She doesn’t sound drunk, doesn’t sound like someone whose heart is bleeding out in her chest. She looks right at Melissa and says, “Can we go talk for a minute?”

Gen and the others “ooh” suggestively at them, but Shauna just rolls her eyes and takes hold of Melissa’s wrist just like Jeff had taken Jackie’s. Melissa goes willingly, asking her, “Is everything alright?” as Shauna leads her toward the lines of parked vehicles, where they’ll be obscured from view.

It should warm her over a little bit, maybe, to know that Melissa pays attention like that, that she can see through the mask now even when Jackie hadn’t been able to, but it does nothing for her. There is an ache in her that she needs to be filled, to be distracted from, and that’s all she can think about right now. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Melissa presses, almost nervously, as they reach the first car. Shauna aims for the truck next to it. It’s taller. “Because I saw you—”

They reach it. Shauna pulls her around and pushes her hard up against the back of the truck, then crushes their mouths together. 

Melissa whimpers against her and kisses her back way too tentatively and doesn’t put her hands on her. It’s nothing like Jackie. Shauna’s hands are all over Melissa, grabbing at her hips, tangling into her hair. She’s trying to devour her, but Melissa is stiff and inexperienced against her, and only lets it go on for a few seconds before she’s gingerly pushing Shauna away.

Shauna’s eyes narrow at her. “What are you doing?” she pants out.

“I-I just,” Melissa says, eyes wide. “I don’t know if we should be doing this.”

Shauna goes slack-jawed, eyebrows furrowing. “Are you serious?”

Melissa flinches at her tone and then her eyes drop, settling somewhere around Shauna’s stomach. “I saw you earlier, before you came over. I saw Jackie and her boyfriend.”

Shauna’s heart thuds, still burning, still achy and raw. “So?”

Melissa’s voice is so quiet, almost like she’s afraid of Shauna’s reaction to what she’ll say next. “I like you. But I just don’t know if I wanna kiss you when it’s about someone else.”

Shauna isn’t sure if it’s the accusation or the rejection that gets her. It’s probably both. But a fiery anger springs forth in her gut and winds through her, all the way up her throat and out of her mouth. Her words come out with sparks behind them. “You know what’s so sad about you, Melissa? You have something you want right in front of you and you’re too fucking pathetic to just take it.”

Melissa flinches again, then shakes her head. “I guess so,” she says, accepting it. Shauna wants a fight now, and not getting one just pisses her off even more. Melissa slips out from between Shauna and the truck and walks away.

“Pussy!” Shauna shouts after her. Melissa’s shoulders slouch but she doesn’t turn back. She’s gone before Shauna can even think about trying to catch up to her, change her approach, coax her into at least making out. Jackie’s definitely off making out with Jeff somewhere. His fingers might even be inside of her right now. Maybe his dick is.

Her stomach turns at the thought, at the visual of Jeff and Jackie up against some tree. She leans over and vomits, holding her own hair back. It does nothing to clear the dizzying fog of the alcohol.

This is worse than she’d imagined. She’d thought she could handle it. She’s always been able to handle it, but it’s breaking her this time. Jackie with Jeff before Jackie with Shauna had been so painful, but she’d always felt like Jackie would never be hers anyway. There had been no loss to feel. She’d tried to feel that way this week, too, tried to keep herself grounded and not let herself have hope. She’d done great with it, she’d thought.

But something deep inside of her must’ve held out without her permission anyway, because this feels like a breakup. This feels like being cheated on, being tossed aside, left behind. She doesn’t know how to go back to before with Jackie after this. She can’t just slot back into the role of her best friend and wait to be given attention. The thought of Jackie fucking Jeff and then rolling on top of Shauna during a sleepover hours later and touching her is unbearable. Even more unbearable is the knowledge that Shauna would let her. Shauna would moan and tremble and come and then cry into her journal about it after, like the spineless little lapdog Jackie’s turned her into over the years.

Brown is her only salvation. Thank God she has this secret in her arsenal. She can end it all tonight. She can make Jackie hate her forever. She will. 

She leaves the truck and returns to the others in a haze, her mind fuzzy, the alcohol seeping further into her bloodstream and helping numb her. She’s too hot to get near the fire, so she finds another bottle and sits down by herself not far from the makeshift parking lot, on a large rock just big enough for her to fit herself on. 

She drinks until she spots Jackie. She’s with Nat now, her back to Shauna, and Nat’s definitely high on shrooms, spinning around out of control with her face tilted up to the night sky while Jackie seems to be trying to stop her. Shauna catches a glimpse of the side of her face, sees a smile stretched wide on her lips. She’s laughing at Nat. She looks happy. 

Isn’t that fucking nice, Shauna thinks, and finishes her beer. She’ll go to her soon. Tell her everything about Brown. Give Jackie the ammo to set her free for good. Then regret it, probably, and cry and beg Jackie to forgive her, and then tell herself that it’s for the best when Jackie doesn’t. That had been the plan ever since she’d applied.

“Hey,” a new voice says to her; it’s familiar, male. Shauna turns her head and he comes into focus slowly: it’s Jeff, of all people, looking down at her. “Having a good time?” he asks, grinning.

“Not as good as you,” she says, giving him a sarcastic smile that he doesn’t seem to know what to do with.

“Right.” He clears his throat, glancing around them, and then very conspicuously right in the direction of Jackie, who’s still distracted with Nat. “So, uh, we should talk.” He throws his next glance toward the cars. “I’m parked pretty close by.”

Shauna’s head bows and she stares at her own lap, trying to mask her resentment. She knows Jackie’s sent him. So she hadn’t even had the guts to deliver the news herself. She’d actually sent her fucking boyfriend to fill Shauna in and let her know, too much of a coward to face her herself. Shauna knows how it’ll go; the next time Jackie sees her, she’ll just talk about it like everything’s normal, like it’s old news that Jeff is her boyfriend again, and that’ll be that. No acknowledgement of how it’ll change things between them. No acknowledgement that Shauna was right, again. 

“Whatever,” she says, and follows him on shaky legs. 

Jeff unlocks his car and Shauna goes to the passenger’s side door feeling like a medieval prisoner awaiting her turn at the rope. She just can’t believe her execution is going to happen at the hands of Jeff Sadecki. 

She climbs in, focusing on keeping her face blank. Running through lines: congratulations, I knew it wouldn’t last long, you two are meant for each other and whatever other bullshit she’s had to say to Jackie a hundred times when they’ve gotten back together. She slams the door shut behind herself a little harshly, then tries to blink her vision into focus as Jeff does the same to his door.

And then they’re sitting together alone. Shauna turns her head toward him. Jeff leans in and kisses her hard, the same way she’d kissed Melissa, his mouth firm, his tongue on hers.

She stiffens, her reaction sluggish, her thoughts even slower. Her eyes close and alarm bells go off in her head. She isn’t kissing him back. He’d just been kissing Jackie. He’s cheating on her. 

He’d just been kissing Jackie? Had he?

She opens her mouth wider before she can think about it, trying to see if she can taste a hint of strawberry gloss. She doesn’t. Her tongue has wound up in his mouth somehow and it doesn’t taste like Jackie, just cheap beer. He’s a good kisser. Jackie had lied when she’d said he wasn’t.

She jerks herself back out of the kiss. “What are you doing?”

Jeff looks at her with heavy eyelids. He’s panting like they’d just done something, like they’d kissed for real and not done whatever this thing was just now, this thing that feels like it shouldn’t count as a kiss. “You’re so fucking hot, Shauna,” he says, and then leans in again.

For a fraction of a second, his words go straight to the wound in Shauna’s chest, healing it, and she hesitates and almost lets him kiss her. Then her hand finds his shoulder, stopping him. “You’re with Jackie,” she says. “You love Jackie.”

And so do I.

He shakes his head. “Jackie and I had a good talk,” he says. “She’s…” And then he sighs. “I care about her a lot. And Jackie’s a cute girl. But.” And then his eyes sweep down her torso, leering at her body in the dress Jackie had told her to wear. “She doesn’t look like you.”

Shauna feels like she’s being pranked. Like Jackie’s testing her loyalty. Using Jeff to set her up, see what she says. “Jackie’s prettier than me,” she breathes out, meaning it. But she knows Jackie would never let Jeff kiss her. So it’s not a test. “Every guy at school knows it. Even Randy. No one notices me.”

Jeff huffs, shakes his head. “No, Shauna. Guys just don’t wanna hit on Jackie’s sidekick and have to deal with her, too. The only one she’d let near you is Randy because he’s my best friend and he’ll do whatever she says.” He leans in while she’s still processing this, his mouth dipping down to her neck. She closes her eyes, feels him using his tongue and thinks about how he’s probably tasting concealer, uncovering Jackie’s hickeys without realizing it. “It’s like she fucking owns you,” he murmurs.

Shauna’s jaw clenches. Her mind is so foggy and her chest is still aching and she doesn’t know why she’s so angry, suddenly. Her breathing has gone uneven without her noticing, and Jeff isn’t actually bad at this, either, like Jackie’d described so many times to her. Had that just been another way to keep Shauna contained? Had Jackie downplayed boys all these years to make Shauna less eager to do things with them, less likely to catch up to Jackie in experience—or worse, surpass her?

“She doesn’t fucking own me,” she says, too drunk to make her voice as sharp as she wants. She tips her head back, reaching up and running her fingers through his hair. She pulls on it, yanks him back to her mouth, kisses him for real this time. His hand falls to her thigh, warm, too big. She wishes it was Jackie’s. She hates Jackie and she still wants to be kissing her instead.

Something slams down on the hood of Jeff’s car, startling them apart, and Shauna turns her head sharply, wiping her mouth, her heart pounding out of her chest. She sees Nat first, palm on the hood, the disappointment and disgust in her eyes making her look much more sober than she probably actually is.

Then she sees Jackie just feet away from Nat, staring straight at them with her lips parted and tears already sliding down her cheeks. 

Shauna can’t breathe.

“Fuck,” Jeff curses, fumbling toward his door. “Jackie,” he says when he gets it open, and Jackie turns and fast-walks away, visibly sobbing, her back hunched and trembling. Shauna watches him hurry after her.

Her hands shake on her own door handle and she feels it click open. She barely manages to get herself on her feet in her panicked state, stumbling once she’s upright, then turning and pushing the door shut. It doesn’t close all the way, but it feels impossible for her to pull it back open and shut it again right now.

Nat’s next to her, helping hold her up before she can process how she got there. “Whoa,” she says, her tone different from what Shauna’d expected after the look she’d gotten through the windshield. “Are you drunk?”

Shauna shakes her head; she can’t bring herself to use it. “Not like you think.”

Then the tone she’d expected is there. “Oh. So this is just you, huh?”

Shauna blinks and tears roll down her cheeks. “I guess so.” She wipes them away almost frantically. She doesn’t want Jackie to see her crying. 

“Poor Jackie,” Nat says gruffly, and then dumps Shauna against the side of the car and walks away.

Jeff and Jackie haven’t gone far. They’re off on their own, Shauna the only person remotely within earshot of them. She watches them argue passionately with each other, sees Jackie’s face and Jeff’s back, sees him gesturing wildly and sees tears still streaming down Jackie’s cheeks. She watches Jackie pound on his chest with a fist. She watches her sob, “My best friend.” 

She’s never been more aware of her place now: the other woman, the homewrecker getting in between the couple that was always meant to be. The traitorous best friend. The villain in Jeff and Jackie’s love story. She knows, now, how insignificant and secondary Jackie-and-Shauna had been in comparison. She feels so foolish, sitting on the sidelines and bearing witness to the destruction of the relationship that had actually mattered while she’s busy shattering over one that had only ever existed for Shauna.

Then Jeff’s voice, louder, defensive, reaches her ears: “I swear Jackie, she came onto me!”

Shauna’s head snaps up. 

She may be secondary. She may be the villain. Shauna is a lot of things.

But Jeff Sadecki’s scapegoat is not one of them.

“Hey!” she shouts, attempting to get her legs to take her to them. She’s still off-balance, but she makes it work. “What the fuck are you saying to her?!”

Jackie’s watching her now. Watching her uncoordinated movements. “You’re drunk.” Her face softens, and then her eyes dart to Jeff and her expression is hard again. “Jeff, she’s drunk.”

Shauna shakes her head, refusing the out again. “No,” she confesses, even though the words feel like bile, “I wanted to kiss him back. But he kissed me.”

Jackie’s eyes are back, piercing her, still filled with tears. “You wanted—” she starts, distraught, but Jeff cuts her off.

“Jackie, this whole week—”

“Shut up!” Jackie snaps at him, making him flinch and fall silent, and the anger in her words hasn’t dissipated at all when she redirects her attention to Shauna again and echoes her. “You wanted to kiss him back? Why?”

Shauna draws herself up to her full height, flexing her jaw, trying to make herself look bigger. She will not be prey anymore. She’s a predator sizing up her equal now. “Maybe I’m into him,” she says.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Jeff tries again, words rushing from his mouth like they can’t wait to escape it. “She was saying all of this stuff to me this week, Jackie. Hinting that she wanted me to—”

Jackie laughs, short and cruel, cutting him off again. “I promise you, Jeff,” she says, “this is not about you. She doesn’t like you.”

Shauna’s lips twitch. She’s always hated the way Jackie can see right through her when she truly bothers to look. “I got tired of belonging to you,” she says. She doesn’t add anything else; not in front of Jeff. But she can tell that Jackie knows.

Jackie wipes a tear from her eye and just says, brokenly, “Fuck you, Shauna.”

“Fuck you,” Shauna counters. She can see Jeff looking back and forth between them like he’s watching a tennis match now. “You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing all these years? He told me. And I know it’s true. You monopolized me because you can’t stand the idea of anyone else giving me attention, Jackie, because God forbid it might take some away from you, you fucking insecure little narcissist.”

The insults come too easily, leaping straight off of the pages of her journal. Shauna can tell that they bite into Jackie, that they prick her like little needles and make her flinch with each impact. 

Jeff lets out a heavy breath. “Whew,” he says. “Alright, ladies, let’s just—”

Jackie turns to him sharply. “You need to leave.” She says it like he’s a child she’s trying to protect from witnessing an absolute bloodbath.

“Yeah,” Shauna agrees. “You should go.”

He looks between them, then deflates. “C’mon.”

Jackie takes a step toward him, and Shauna’s never seen her be scarier in her life than she is when she demands, “Get the fuck out of here, Jeff, right now, if you ever wanna have any chance of getting back together with me again.”

That does it. “Okay,” he says quietly, and slinks off back to the party.

Jackie turns to Shauna, sees the subtle tension in her jaw that hadn’t been there five seconds ago. “What, did you actually think he liked you?”

“Whatever. I knew it,” Shauna says darkly. “I knew you’d give him another chance tonight. Congrats on not literally fucking him in the woods, but it still doesn’t make you any less predictable.”

Jackie’s nostrils flare. “Oh, is that how you justified this to yourself? Because, you know, if I’m dating him again, that somehow makes it more okay for you to kiss him too? That makes no sense, Shauna.”

Shauna clenches her jaw. Her fists clench with it.

Jackie spits her next words out like venom, “He tried to get back with me. I said no, so he went and found you. Apparently gave you some speech about how horrible I am. And you ate it right up. Poor little sidekick. Always the backup.”

For a moment, Shauna wants to hit her. Jackie almost looks like she wants Shauna to try to hit her. 

But then the rest of it processes. Shauna’s hands relax. Her eyebrows furrow. And there is something about Jackie, now, that makes no sense, too. “Why did you say no?”

Jackie blanches. A flicker of panic flashes behind her eyes. Shauna knows her too well not to see it. She is stepping into something that Jackie doesn’t want to talk about again. “This isn’t about Jeff,” Jackie deflects. “This is about you trying to punish me because no one else is giving you the attention you want. You’re jealous of me.”

“I’m not fucking jealous of you, Jackie,” Shauna scoffs out. “So you dated the quarterback and you’re gonna be Prom Queen. Congratulations. You’re literally the poster child for peaking in high school and you’re going to Rutgers for fucking Communications. Now why did you say no to Jeff?”

More needles, digging deep into Jackie’s skin. Shauna watches those strike her, too. They leave Jackie trembling, toothless, losing this fight. “You’re going to Rutgers, too,” she bites out, weak, more tears on her cheeks. They’re still avoiding the real conversation here.

Shauna laughs. She’s set it up, and Jackie’s stepped right into it. “No, Jackie,” she says. “I’m going to Brown. I got accepted this week.”

She sees the moment it lands, like a knockout punch. Jackie’s face crumples. “What?” she asks, taking a step back, blinking rapidly like she’s hoping she’ll open her eyes to a new reality if she tries hard enough. Her voice gets smaller, more vulnerable. “...You’re leaving me?”

Shauna crosses her arms, tilts her head condescendingly. This is addicting. Hating Jackie is addicting, almost as addicting as loving her. There is something alien and unpleasant squirming in her burning chest as though trying to tell her that this is wrong, that it’s all wrong and backwards, but the rush of adrenaline she’s getting each time she reveals a new truth is making it too easy to ignore. “No, Jackie, you’re going to one place and I’m going to another place. No one is leaving anyone.” She rolls her eyes. “But look at you, proving my point. Your best friend just told you she got into an Ivy League school and you’re so self-centered that you’re making it all about yourself.”

Jackie stares at her, more silent tears streaking down her cheeks, her breathing loud and unsteady, and Shauna can see her searching for anything to say now. 

“Why did you say no to Jeff?” Shauna tries again, evenly, firm. It’s the only question she needs an answer to. It is the only piece of the human puzzle that is Jackie Taylor that she can’t manage to find a place for. She’d been so sure Jackie would take him back.

Jackie ignores it to accuse her, wounded, “You lied to me.”

“I never said I was going to Rutgers,” Shauna says. “You assumed. Just like you assume everything about me.”

“I don’t mean about Rutgers,” Jackie gasps out, midway through another sob. Something stirs in Shauna’s chest again, but she shoves it down, makes herself stay cold and angry. “You told me you didn’t hate me.”

Another twist in her chest, an uncomfortable coil. Shauna tries to ignore it. She keeps herself steady, like somehow if Jackie keeps breaking and Shauna stays solid, it means she wins this. It means there is a winner. “I don’t hate you, Jackie,” she says, and it’s both a lie and the truth. “You’re just not a good friend. You never asked me what I wanted. What I liked. Ever. We just did whatever the fuck you wanted. I never even got to pick out what we watch on TV. Do you realize how insane that is? How fucking smothering? I want to be my own person. I deserve that.”

Jackie looks devastated. “This is about the fucking remote control? Are you serious?”

Shauna feels that like a counterpunch, feels Jackie trying to make her seem small. She won’t let her this time. “Yeah, Jackie, it is. And the music. And the nickname. And… And—”

“And I fixed those things, Shauna!” Jackie bites out. She’s regaining strength now. She’s still crying, but her words are coming out confident, barbed. “You never said anything!”

“I shouldn’t have had to!” Shauna fires back. “We should’ve just had a normal fucking friendship! You can’t fucking… absorb me like a parasite and then get pissed at me for feeling like one!”

“I didn’t do that,” Jackie insists, shaking her head. “I didn’t force you to do anything. You let me think you were happy.”

Shauna feels something inside of her crack in half. “For fuck’s sake, Jackie, why did you say no to Jeff?!”

And Jackie cracks too. “Shut up!” she screeches, high and hysterical, and then she bursts into a litany of sobs that wrack her entire body. Shauna’s never seen her like this before. Half of her wants to take a step toward her and make sure she’s okay, and the other half is terrified and wants to take a step away. “Like you don’t fucking know, Shauna! Like you don’t fucking know! Like you haven’t apparently spent the past week using it to humiliate me like a complete fucking psychopath because I’m just such a terrible friend for wanting you all to myself.” Jackie breathes hard, trembling, eyes swollen and so red now. “I can’t believe I thought you were… you were confused, or—” She whimpers. “I can’t believe I thought you loved me.”

Shauna stiffens and looks her up and down warily, not sure she’s heard her right. No, there must be something she’s misunderstanding here. Something else that has Jackie sobbing like she can barely breathe. Because Jackie knows that Shauna loves her. Jackie has been holding it over her head all week. Jackie is so upset tonight because she’s losing her hold on that love, because Shauna has tugged free of her leash and sabotaged Jackie and Jeff in the process, too.

“You know I do,” she snaps, and that’s how Jackie gets it out of her after so many years of holding it back and refusing to say it. It comes out bitter, resigned.

Jackie shakes her head and forces her next words out like they’re painful coming up her throat and out of her mouth, like it burns to speak them aloud, “It’s different, Shauna, and you know it. It’s not like how I love you.” Shauna has less than a second—the time it takes Jackie to move from one sentence to the next—to process what she’s just said, to prepare for what she’s going to say next. It’s not enough time. “I’m in love with you.”

And just like that, Shauna’s entire world shatters. 

“No,” she says immediately, because… that isn’t how it is. That’s not reality. That’s not Shauna’s reality, and it certainly isn’t the reality. That’s a different reality, one that warps everything between them, even down to what Jeff had told her tonight about Jackie keeping possession of her. It warps that from something controlling and attention-seeking into something done because she’d just wanted Shauna for herself and hadn’t known how else to deal with it. 

Jackie’s watching Shauna have a silent internal meltdown with a soft tremble in her lip and bubbling rage behind her eyes. “What do you mean, no?”

Shauna reaches for one hand with the other, rubbing anxiously at it, eyes darting around wildly, deep in thought. To an outsider, it might look like she’s not mentally well. Maybe she isn’t. “No,” she decides again, finally, and looks at Jackie. “You’re lying. You’re not in love with me.”

“Fuck you,” Jackie says for the second time tonight, eyes blazing now. 

“I’m in love with you,” Shauna corrects, almost absently. “I have been for, like… ever.”

Jackie’s eyes widen uncertainly. Some of the anger drains from her. “...What?”

But Shauna goes on like she’d never spoken. “And you’re making fun of me. That’s what you’re doing. Just like the tape.”

“The tape like your mixtape?” Jackie asks, still wide-eyed. “I didn’t make fun of your mixtape, Shauna.”

“You did,” Shauna insists. “You put on The Cranberries—”

“What?” Jackie interjects. She’s looking at Shauna like she thinks she might be crazy now. “Oh my God. You thought I was making fun of you?” She gasps, and Shauna can see her getting angry all over again, hardening, folding her arms across her chest. “Are you insane? Who the fuck do you think I am, Shauna? What kind of person do you think I am that I would do that?”

“You said,” Shauna says, and now she’s starting to feel insane. She can feel the world warping around her, and she’s not sure that any amount of her double vision is from the alcohol anymore. “That night, you played it and I had to tell you to stop talking—”

Jackie’s eyes practically bug out. “You mean when I was trying to tell you I loved you? When you stopped me and told me I couldn’t have you like I wanted?”

Shauna recoils from her and slams her eyes shut. She feels like she’s going to throw up again. “I thought you were talking about me,” she says quietly. “I thought you were—”

“Making fun of you,” Jackie finishes shortly. “Because you think I could do that. You think I’m that terrible. That I could find out you loved me and I’d hold it over your head instead of loving you back. So you kissed my ex-boyfriend and said all of those horrible things to me.” She takes in a sharp breath and Shauna opens her eyes to see Jackie looking absolutely broken, so deeply wounded in a way Shauna’s never seen her before. “What did you think I was thinking this week, Shauna?” she asks, devastated, bitter. “What about this morning? Or last night? Did I tell you I wanted you to be my first last night and then fucking go down on you this morning because it was a fun little prank to make you think I liked you? Is that what you thought?”

It sounds crazy coming out of Jackie’s mouth. It sounds absolutely insane. It makes Shauna feel more pathetic and smaller than she ever has. “No,” she says feebly. “I thought you just liked the attention.” And now it sounds crazy coming out of Shauna’s mouth, too.

Jackie looks so incredibly disappointed. It’s worse than her anger. It digs into Shauna like a stab wound. “I liked your attention,” Jackie tells her quietly, her voice so soft it’s nearly a whisper. 

Shauna opens her mouth, but whatever she’d been about to say gets lodged in her throat, the words lost. She hadn’t known what they were going to be anyway. 

Something settles in Jackie’s features now. She looks so sad and so tired and so… done. “I’m glad we cleared things up, Shauna,” she says, and her tone sounds so final.

She turns away, and panic wells up in Shauna’s chest so quickly and strongly that it dizzies her. “No, Jackie,” she gasps out, trying to follow her, because Jackie is leaving now, walking away from her. Her legs tremble, refusing to move the way she wants them to. She stumbles forward and almost falls over. “Jackie,” she says again, finally catching her, grabbing her arm. 

Jackie whirls around and yanks it out of her grip, and where Shauna expects anger she just sees more devastation. “I don’t know who you are,” Jackie says, blinking tears out of her eyes. “Who are you?”

Shauna opens her mouth and nothing comes out. She doesn’t know. She has no clue. “I’m your best friend,” she says, finally, because it’s all she has. “I love you.”

Jackie flinches like the words have stung her. She shakes her head. “So you love an insecure narcissist who peaked in high school,” she says, throwing Shauna’s words back in her face. “Someone who could screw you all week just for the attention and not mean any of it. You think all of that about me and I’m supposed to believe you love me?”

“You were there this week, Jackie,” Shauna presses. She has to try. “I wanted you too. You know I did. You could tell how I felt.”

“But I can fake it, right?” Jackie bites out.

Shauna closes her eyes, feels tears leaking out and dripping from her chin. “I’m sorry,” she whimpers. “I was confused.”

“Yeah? Me too, Shauna. But I didn’t assume you were a monster until you acted like one tonight.” 

“Don’t say that,” Shauna tries pitifully. “Jackie. Please.” 

Jackie pauses, and Shauna opens her eyes to see her steeling herself like she’s trying not to start crying. “Look, I’m sure you’ll do great at Brown. You were always really…” And just like that, Shauna watches the dam break. Jackie weeps openly, speaking thickly, shakily through it. “Always really smart.” She’s crying so hard now. “So, you’ll do great, okay. But I’ll miss you. The you from before tonight. However much of her was…” She gives a vague wave of her hand. “You know. Real. Have a nice life.”

“Jackie.” Shauna’s vision blurs, and she watches Jackie walk away in a haze of indistinct color. She feels any remaining hope drain from her completely. She doesn’t follow. 

It’s for the best, she remembers she’s supposed to think now.

So she does think it. She closes her eyes and thinks it like a mantra, like if she thinks it enough her whole body will stop feeling like it’s in agony, like it’ll somehow just be true.

But this mantra is from before, from when Jackie was the worst thing that had ever happened to her instead of the best. Shauna knows that it isn’t true at all.

And now she has ruined everything.

Chapter 11

Notes:

A couple of things!

1) Updates will probably slow down a little because I have less of this story written ahead at the moment.

2) As I was writing this I could not justify this version of Jackie and Shauna not being 100% obsessed with each other to the point of being unable to stay apart for long. The fact that their love for each other is kind of toxically codependent is a plot point. So no slow-burn, Jackie living her best gay life at Rutgers is happening here despite Shauna's ridiculousness. I hope this medium-burn of a reconnection is narratively satisfying! Thanks for reading <3

On Sunday, Shauna lies in bed and doesn’t eat and cries on and off while her mother fawns worriedly over her. 

“I had a fight with Jackie,” is all she tells her. “She found out I’m going to Brown and now we’re not friends anymore.”

She thinks about saying more. Wonders if it’ll feel better somehow to just tell her mom all of it: I like girls, I love Jackie, and I fucked it all up.

But she just doesn’t have the energy to say it all. She has nothing left.

She sleeps, mostly, when she isn’t crying. 

She also reprograms herself, bit by little bit. She starts somewhere around middle school, with memories of Jackie soaking up attention from boys, perfectly happy to let Shauna go unnoticed. 

She can see it now: Jackie’s unhealthy, codependent form of love for Shauna. Jackie’s possessiveness being an expression of it. She remembers Jackie stiffening when Shauna had confided in her about her first slobbery kiss with a boy, done on a dare. Jackie probably hadn’t even known back then why she’d done those things, reacted that way. Hated the idea of Shauna with boys. 

And then freshman year there had been Jeff. Jackie had broken up with him constantly and complained about him just as often. She’d only really ever praised the way being with him bolstered everyone else’s opinion of her, as though he was some sort of thing for her to own and show off. They’d never quite been the picture-perfect couple they’d pretended to be. Shauna had never thought they actually fit together—but she’d also assumed she’d been biased, maybe only felt that way out of jealousy. 

And then the kissing with Shauna these past couple of months. Jackie had initiated it with excuses about Shauna needing the practice. Utter bullshit that Shauna had gone along with because she’d wanted to kiss Jackie. Maybe, from the very beginning, Jackie had just wanted to kiss her too. She’d certainly initiated it constantly. She’d been confident about initiating it. Had she known, then, how she felt? Had she reveled in getting to kiss Shauna, thinking to herself I am kissing the girl I love? Or had the realization come even more recently? Shauna had told Jackie she’d been in love with her for a long time, but Jackie hadn’t said the same.

And this past week. Jackie looking at her in the dark. Jackie spreading her legs for Shauna’s mouth and calling her perfect. Crying in Jackie’s bed and then thanking her for being normal, for being her friend the next day. Shauna had thought it was her way of thanking Shauna for putting her own feelings aside. But now she sees it was Jackie thanking her for not letting Jackie’s feelings affect their friendship. 

She still can’t wrap her head around it fully: Jackie loving Shauna. Jackie loving Shauna back. Shauna being the center of Jackie’s world the way Jackie is the center of Shauna’s. The whole point of Shauna is that she’s the center of no one’s world. She’s spent so many years resenting being on the periphery that she’s not sure her brain even knows how to be important to someone the way she knows she’s important to Jackie. It had tied itself into knots last week rather than accept the change. 

She thinks of every time she touched Jackie and thinks about Jackie being in love with her for it, wanting it as desperately as Shauna had wanted it. Both of them entirely sincere and thinking the other one was only half-in, enjoying the affection and the sex but not wanting anything more. She cries about it. Once, she tries to touch herself to the memories just to feel something other than this unending sadness, and that just brings about even more guilt. That’s the emotion she feels the most about all of it: a painful, overwhelming guilt that threatens to eat her alive from the inside. She thinks of Jackie calling her a monster and she feels like it’s true. She hates the feeling of not being able to trust her own mind anymore. Her brain had been the one part of herself she’d always been proud of. 

She takes her journal out at one point and reads through every entry about Jackie with fresh eyes. There are a lot of things she’s written that are still true. Jackie had smothered her. She’d delivered a laundry list of self-centered, backhanded, insensitive, or downright tone deaf comments straight to Shauna’s face over the years. She had taken over their friendship and consumed Shauna to the point of nearly making her disappear. But it is one thing to think she’d been consumed out of an oblivious narcissism and another to know that Jackie had simply folded herself around Shauna and enveloped her out of a deep-seated need to have all of her, always. There had been no malice, just a well-meaning but ultimately overly intense kind of love. 

The scariest part is that Shauna can feel herself wanting to be consumed now. She wants to go to Jackie’s and apologize and beg her for it. She wants to promise her she’ll go to Rutgers instead, and they’ll room together, and Jackie can do what she wants with her there. Ignore her and just let Shauna earnestly, devotedly exist in her presence. Love her, make love to her. Hate her, sling insults at her and then use her in their beds at night however she wants. Shauna would take any of it if it just meant being near Jackie again.

She’d been pathetic for Jackie when she’d thought her feelings were one-sided. She’s even worse now. She can think of nothing but Jackie—what she’d felt, what they’d done, what she might be feeling about Shauna now. If she’s okay, if she’s gotten out of bed today. If she’s eating or if her mother is happily letting her skip meals. 

She thinks maybe she shouldn’t try to see her. Not even for the sake of space—fuck space; they’ve never had it before and Shauna’s wanted it in the past, but she has no desire for it right now. She doubts Jackie would want it either if she didn’t hate Shauna now, because Jackie’s always felt practically entitled to Shauna’s undivided time and attention. 

No, what Shauna does have is a life she’s got the first building block placed for—a good life, an Ivy League life—and the logical part of her knows she shouldn’t throw it away, shouldn’t go beg to be Jackie Taylor’s thrall even though she wants to. She’s a walking contradiction: all she wants is to throw herself at Jackie and hope they can salvage something, anything, but she also knows she’ll lose herself entirely to Jackie if she gets what she wants.

She stays home from school on Monday and on Tuesday while she tries to sort it all out, partly out of genuine illness and partly putting off seeing Jackie, and gets her mom to agree to Wednesday by promising she’ll go on Thursday. She thinks about calling Jackie every morning and every evening, pictures just hearing her breath on the other end of the line and feeling whole again. She makes herself not. She spends most of her days crying until she has a headache, sleeping it off, and then doing it again.

She’s in her room, home alone on Wednesday afternoon and trying to formulate a plan to get out of school on Thursday, when she hears a distant pounding on the front door. Then the bell rings several times in succession. 

It’s too rude to be Jackie. Shauna forces herself out of bed and goes to answer it. Nat is on the other side.

“Oh,” Shauna says, frowning.

“I drew the short straw,” Nat says with a scowl. “And you look like shit. Jesus. Move.” Shauna hesitates and then steps aside, resisting the urge to roll her puffy eyes as Nat pushes past her into her living room. She gets straight to the point. “Our game is the Saturday after next and you’ve missed two practices. The team needs you.”

Shauna almost laughs. She’s falling apart; her whole life feels upended, and yet, “This is about soccer?”

“Yeah, it’s about soccer,” Nat says dryly. “What, did you think I was here because I feel sorry for you?”

Shauna just barely manages to bite her tongue. Then tries a joke. “I don’t know. Maybe you thought you owed me. Everyone’s finally too distracted with me to be calling you a slut these past few days.”

Nat laughs at that, at least. “Is that why you’re at home bawling your eyes out? Heard how bad the backlash is?”

She hadn’t heard anything; it’d been an educated guess. “Yeah, Nat. I’ve been crying for four days straight because of a few assholes calling me names.” Shauna crosses her arms, following Nat into the living room and sitting down on the couch. “How is Jackie?”

Nat plops down next to her, relaxing into the cushions and raising an eyebrow at her. “Aren’t you going to ask how everyone knows about you and Jeff?”

“I don’t care,” Shauna says. “Is she okay?”

Nat studies her, almost like she’s trying to decide if Shauna’s worthy of the information. “Jackie hasn’t been at school, either. She’s fucked up worse than you, you know. At least you answered your door yourself.” Nat frowns. “I told everyone, by the way. But to be fair, it was while I was still at the party and super high.”

“I said I don’t care. Have you talked to her?”

Nat rolls her eyes. “Don’t pretend like you care about her now, Shauna. Jackie cared. All she could talk about Saturday night was how she was gonna spend the rest of her night with you as soon as she made sure I was okay. She told me Jeff wanted to get back together and she turned him down. She was so happy about it too. She said being single meant she had more time to spend with her friends. We both know she just meant you.”

Shauna stares down at her lap, her face screwed up to prevent her from starting to cry again. “You don’t have to lecture me. I know. And I don’t have to sit here and prove anything to you. You’re not even friends with Jackie.”

Nat’s eyes narrow at her, hostile now. “Was it worth it, Shauna? Did you accomplish whatever fucked up goal you had in mind?”

“Why the fuck are you so invested?” Shauna snaps, clenching her fists. “It’s none of your business.”

“Because I saw her fucking face that night, Shauna, and I’m a good person.” Nat shakes her head. “Do you even feel bad?”

Shauna’s lips tremble. She will not cry in front of Nat Scatorccio. “Why the fuck do you think I’ve missed three days of school? For fun?”

“No. But you didn’t know Jackie wasn’t there. So maybe you were doing it to avoid her, too.”

Shauna exhales a bitter breath. She hates being seen through, but being seen through by Nat might be her most embarrassing achievement. “Not because I don’t care, okay? Have you really not seen her?”

“No one’s seen her,” Nat says. “Most of us have been over there at least once already. She has her mom answering the door and sending us away.”

Shauna’s chest pangs. “Even Van? Tai?” She knows they aren't particularly close with Jackie, but Van knows the full truth and Tai probably does too by now, so if she had to pick anyone to comfort Jackie in her stead, it’d be them.

“They tried. No luck,” Nat tells her. “Van was actually the one who suggested we check on you too, eventually. Then we drew straws.”

“Oh.” Shauna bites her lip, not sure where to go from here. If Nat has nothing more to tell her about Jackie, she doesn’t see the point of having this conversation anymore. “So, now what?”

“You come back to school and go to practice on Friday,” Nat says. “Jackie’s mom told us she was quitting the team, so.” She huffs. “Stuck-up old bitch seemed happy about it, too.”

Shauna frowns at her. “What? Jackie loves soccer. She wouldn’t quit.”

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out, Shauna. You’re on the team and she doesn’t wanna be around you.”

“Then I’ll quit,” Shauna decides. “Tell her I’m quitting and she can play.”

Nat stands and rolls her eyes again. “Get the message to her yourself. We’re all already tired of being in the middle of it, and it’s your mess. Clean it up.”

With that, she leaves. Shauna watches the door slam and thinks it over.

Even if Jackie would let Shauna see her, Shauna’s not sure how she’ll survive a conversation with her without folding on every level. She doesn’t trust herself. She hasn’t trusted herself for days.

But Jackie has been holed up just like Shauna. Jackie is devastated too—enough to give up on soccer, even. She’s heartbroken just like Shauna, probably not eating, probably spending most of her days crying in bed. All just like Shauna.

She can’t ignore it now that she knows. There is too much guilt. Too much love for Jackie. 

It’s just that has to step back into Jackie’s gravitational pull if she’s going to try to repair the damage she’d caused. And there is no escaping it if she does this. Jackie will have the power to decide their fates, their futures, and the terms of their relationship, because Shauna will give that power to her. And then resent both Jackie and herself for it later. Like always. Nothing will change. They’ve fought and fucked and fallen in love with each other and nothing has changed

Shauna stands up, resigned to it, and goes to find her car keys.

-

Jackie’s mom answers the door with daggers in her eyes and says, “Shauna, I’m gonna tell you this right now because I’ve always been upfront with you. You’ve been like a second daughter to me.”

Shauna keeps her eyes low, swallowing the lump in her throat. 

“Jackie’s told me that the only person I’m to let into this house to see her is you.” Shauna’s head rises swiftly. Her heart races. She doesn’t know what to do with this information. “But she’s showing you a lot more grace than I would if I were in her shoes.”

“I can see her?” Shauna checks. “She wants to see me?”

“I’ll be right here downstairs,” she’s warned. “If I hear any raised voices, if you upset Jackie at all and I hear it—“

“I won’t,” Shauna interjects earnestly. She feels like new life’s been breathed into her. Jackie wants to see her. She’s been waiting for her to come visit. But maybe it’s just to lay into her one last time.

Shauna shakes the thought off. It feels wrong. Like something she’d have thought prior to last Saturday. She tries to imagine their roles were reversed. She’d take a conversation with Jackie in a heartbeat—she’d just feel pathetic doing it.

She doesn’t think of Jackie as pathetic. She’s just grateful she’s been allowed to make it this far. 

She takes the stairs carefully, her brain too scrambled to prepare things for her to say. She’s been asked to convince Jackie not to give up on the team. She grounds herself with that and knocks on the door.

She wonders if Jackie knows it’s her. She’d probably heard the doorbell ring. Knows what terms she’d given her mom. And now someone is knocking on her door.

She hears Jackie on the other side, sees her shadow. “Hello?” Jackie asks carefully. She sounds so quiet and small. But just hearing her voice at all is enough to make something in Shauna settle back into its rightful place. 

She closes her eyes and leans in, resting her forehead on the door, just wanting to be closer. “It’s me,” she breathes. “Can we talk?”

The silence on the other side lasts a lifetime. Shauna feels like she’s on her knees, waiting for a prayer to be answered, for some sign of absolution. Jackie could say anything here. Jackie could destroy Shauna worse than Shauna had already destroyed them both on Saturday night. And Shauna would certainly deserve it. But something in Shauna knows she won’t. 

“Took you long enough,” Jackie whispers. Of course she’d expected her to come eventually. Of course she’d known, deep down, that Shauna wouldn’t be able to resist, that Shauna can’t be okay if Jackie isn’t okay. Because whether Shauna hates her or loves her or anything in between, Shauna is Jackie’s, and always has been, and always will be.

But now, finally, Shauna knows that Jackie has been hers right back, at least for some time now. So much so that she can’t deny her this reunion even after everything that Shauna has said and done. So much so that she’d welcomed it on some level, even given her mother orders to let it happen.

“I wanted to make sure that you were okay,” she says quietly, mindful of Jackie’s mom just downstairs. “If you don’t want me to come in…” She hesitates, pressing her forehead harder into the thin piece of wood keeping them apart. “I just. I’d get it. If you need space. If there’s a part of you that hates me.”

She feels the door shift against her. Jackie is pressing some part of herself against it, too. Her voice drifts through softly, unsure. “I don’t know how to hate you, Shauna. Even when I wish I could.”

Shauna sighs with relief. “Do you wish you could?”

Jackie’s response takes a moment. “Yes,” she says, finally, “because you hate me.”

“No.” Shauna shakes her head even though Jackie won’t see it. “No, Jackie. I’m sorry I ever thought I did. I’m sorry I acted like I did and treated you like I did. I… I’m not okay. I’ve been trying to figure my own mind out for days now. To untwist everything.” She pauses and waits for a response, praying for Jackie to believe her. When one doesn’t come, she tries to joke, “So we don’t hate each other. That’s a start.”

Jackie doesn’t laugh. Shauna sighs again. “I haven’t been back to school. I’m completely fucked up without you, Jax. I know you don’t have any reason to trust me or believe me, but I promise if you open this door and look at me you’ll be able to tell.” She forces a laugh. “I’m all puffy and gross.”

“Me too,” Jackie whispers, and Shauna almost asks which part, but Jackie’s on the same page and beats her to it. “All of it.”

She can’t say everything she wants to say with Mrs. Taylor potentially within earshot. But she doesn’t want to push Jackie to let her in, either. “Do you want me to stay?” she asks. “I can just stay here outside for a little while. Whatever you want. I thought about calling. Seeing if we could just sit on the line together. We could do something like that now.” She looks down and an idea comes to her. Her pulse races and she moves before she can second-guess herself. “Here. I’m sitting down. I’ll just—” She does, sideways, leaning up against the door. She jams her hand through the space beneath it, palm-up, until the wood scrapes painfully against the base of her fingers. She’s just barely gotten them all through. Her palm doesn’t fit. “There. If… If you want.”

It takes a moment, but then she hears Jackie shuffling around on the other side. She sees her shadow moving, and then hears her breathing as she settles lower. Onto the floor. Shauna closes her eyes hopefully, spreading her jammed, stinging fingers. She senses Jackie’s hesitation, but then Jackie grips Shauna’s fingers as best as she can, curling her hand around the tips of them. Her touch calms Shauna’s racing heart. This tiny connection between them feels precious, and Shauna squeezes tighter, trying to make sure she won’t lose it.  

“Why didn’t you?” Jackie asks, finally. She’s still so quiet. “Call?”

“Because,” Shauna breathes out, “I know I’d do anything you wanted if it meant making things better between us. And that was scary. So I stayed away. It still is scary.”

Jackie takes a moment to process that. “Then why are you here now?”

“Nat stopped by and told me you were falling apart too. I had to come.” She hesitates. “Do you want me to go?”

She hears Jackie sniff. “No.”

“Okay.” Shauna keeps her eyes closed. “I’m right here.”

For a moment, the silence feels natural. Shauna breathes through it and knows instinctively that Jackie’s doing the same on the other side.

Finally, Jackie murmurs, “You were supposed to be the only person who knew the real me. Who loved me for me.”

Shauna presses her eyes shut tighter, biting down hard on her bottom lip. She squeezes Jackie’s fingers with her own again. “I do.”

“How can you say that after Saturday?” Jackie’s louder now, audibly upset, and Shauna throws a worried glance toward the stairs. 

“Because.” Shauna thinks carefully. She wants to word this just right. “I didn’t like how it felt to be compared to you. To always be second. It was easier to tell myself that you wanted to be better than me. That you loved that everyone thought you were. That you made me live in your shadow and it was all this big, calculated thing. I blamed you and resented you because that was easier than hating everyone else for not seeing me. And then I convinced myself that you didn’t see me either, because that was easier than admitting I’d villainized the only person who did.”

She exhales a shaky breath and continues. “I know you. Somewhere deep down I knew the things I thought weren’t true. It’s why I could never stop being your best friend. It’s why sometimes when you look at me a certain way or compliment me it makes me feel on top of the world to have your approval. Because I know you and I care about what you think of me more than anyone else.” She lowers her voice for this part. “I love you. You’ve seen how I look at you, Jackie. I just… completely melt. Even when I don’t want to, I do.”

She takes a moment, marinating in the shame of her confession. letting Jackie absorb it. There is so much more she wants to say, because it’s all so much more complex than even this. But too much of it can’t be said while she’s out in this hallway.

Jackie huffs on the other side of the door, and Shauna hears the wetness in it. She’s crying. “You’re such an idiot. I do too. Do you know what’s going on in my head right now?” She pauses, breathing heavily. “‘What if she doesn’t mean it? Remember everything she said before? Are you really going to fall for this right now?’”

“Okay,” Shauna says, swallowing a lump in her throat. She reaches around with her free hand to grip the doorframe just to have something else to hold onto. “What do you need? What can I give you? Just tell me what to do. Should I come back another time?”

“Stop asking that,” Jackie whispers. “Stop asking to leave.”

“I don’t mean to. I’ll stay.” Shauna would sleep out here if she needed to, if she thought Jackie’s parents would let her. “As long as you want.”

They fall silent again. Shauna focuses on the tiny thread of contact between them. Jackie’s fingers warm against her own. Her hand’s starting to hurt worse the longer she keeps it squeezed tightly under the door, but she ignores the pain. She thinks to herself that Jackie could ask her for anything now and she’d grant it to her. She’s almost anticipating it: Jackie taking, Shauna giving, like they have so many times before.

Instead, Jackie starts to cry. Not like the sniffling from before—really crying: shuddering, quiet sobs that Shauna can hear as easily as if she were in the room with her. Closer to how she’d cried on Saturday, but without the preceding venom and shouting and confusion.

Everything is clearer to Shauna now, and Jackie is weeping, and it is utter torture to not be allowed to comfort her properly. 

“Jackie,” she whispers, wiping at her own eyes. All she can think about now is that this is what she’s reduced them to. Linking fingers under a door, crying together, and not knowing where to start to fix any of it.

She can hear Mrs. Taylor at the bottom of the stairs, and then climbing them. She appears at the top and Shauna watches her take in the sight before her: Shauna curled up against the door, tears in her eyes, with her hand pinched underneath it.

Her tight face softens just a fraction, but she says, “I think that’s enough for today, Shauna.”

Shauna doesn’t argue it because she knows Jackie won’t. “Okay.” She sniffs, gives Jackie’s hand one last squeeze, and then feels Jackie slipping through her fingers. Shauna takes her hand back, red and raw, ignoring the dull throbbing in it. She gets to her feet unsteadily and asks Jackie, “Will you come to school tomorrow?”

Jackie takes a moment to respond. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

“Then I’ll call,” Shauna promises. “Or I can come over again if you want, okay?”

“A call would be best, I think,” Mrs. Taylor interjects. Shauna clenches the fist of her good hand and then relaxes it quickly. She knows she shouldn’t be mad. All Mrs. Taylor knows, she assumes, is that her daughter’s best friend kissed her ex-boyfriend and ditched her for Brown and left her distraught. Shauna’d hate her for it too.

When Jackie doesn’t speak up, Shauna gives a half-hearted nod and checks again, “Then I’ll call, Jackie?”

Jackie’s answer is so soft it’s almost inaudible. “Okay.”

For now, it’ll have to be enough. Shauna leaves. 

She goes home and showers in preparation to return to school again, finally, and the water stings on her scraped palm. When she lies in bed later that night, she closes her eyes and cups the fingertips of one hand in the other, reliving Jackie’s touch, that little bit of contact she’d ceded to her. That one tiny offering of hope.

For the first time in days, she doesn’t cry herself to sleep.

Chapter 12

Shauna wakes up ten minutes early on Thursday morning just to have time to go downstairs to the phone before she starts getting ready. She dials Jackie’s number and listens to it ring and ring and ring, until finally a voice she recognizes picks up on the other end with an out-of-breath, “Hello?”

It’s Jackie’s dad. It’s obvious he’d had to rush to get to the phone in time. 

Shauna deflates a little. She’d hoped, by some miracle, that Jackie would be around to answer. “Hey, Mr. Taylor. It’s Shauna.”

“Shauna. Good morning.” He sounds surprised, and then more measured and inscrutable. 

“I just, um,” Shauna starts shyly. “I told Jackie I’d call, and I meant later, like after school, but I thought in case she’d changed her mind about coming… I just wanted her to know I could give her a ride this morning if she wanted.”

“Well, I’m just on my way out now, but I do believe Jackie’s still asleep,” he says. “Her mother mentioned she might take the whole week off.”

“Tomorrow too?” Shauna worries.

“Tomorrow too,” he says evenly. She doesn’t quite hear the animosity in his voice that she’d heard in Mrs. Taylor’s, but he sounds flat and resigned enough with her that she knows he’s been filled in. 

“Oh.” She withholds her sigh. “Will you tell her I’ll call tonight when you do see her? And tell her I called this morning?”

“Alright.” A pause. “Well, I’m running a little late as it is—”

“Okay,” Shauna says quickly. “Thanks, Mr. Taylor.”

“Bye, Shauna,” he says, and hangs up.

Shauna slinks back upstairs with her heart in her stomach to find a change of clothes.

-

She gets to school early, both due to her earlier alarm and the fact that she hadn’t adjusted for not having to pick up Jackie. The halls haven’t even begun to crowd yet and Shauna still gets a few lingering glances from the students she passes by on the way to her locker. No smirks, no laughter, no whispering, just long looks that make her feel overly scrutinized. Nat had been truthful—it’s obvious that word has spread to the entire senior class at a minimum. Probably the juniors, too, but it’s less likely that many of them would know who she, Jackie, and Jeff are, let alone care.

Tai is near Shauna’s locker when she gets there, much to her surprise. She’s got a cloth and a spray bottle in her hand and is wiping at a locker in the vicinity of Shauna’s, and the closer Shauna gets, the more she starts to realize it is Shauna’s locker. 

Tai sees her coming and doesn’t try to hide anything, just sighs and keeps wiping until Shauna’s settled beside her. She pulls the cloth away with a cynical look at her to let Shauna see the faded all-caps “WHORE” written on Shauna’s locker in what appears to be black Sharpie.

Shauna grimaces. “Jesus.” Jackie’s pretty beloved, but she’d put money on the culprit being one of the several underclassmen crushing on Jeff.

“It’s been there every morning,” Tai says. “I’m team captain until Jackie comes back, so. Gotta look out for my girls.”

“Wouldn’t want me to think you actually care about me,” Shauna fills in for her.

Tai shrugs and says, “Anyway, I think it’s Randy. He’s pretty pissed you went for Jeff instead of him, apparently.”

“Can’t be Randy,” Shauna dismisses. “It’s spelled correctly.”

Tai looks thoughtful. “That’s actually such a valid point.” She offers the cleaning supplies to Shauna and says, “You should probably just store them in your locker when you’re done. Save time.”

“Thanks, Tai,” Shauna says sincerely, staring at her locker. It’s not destroying her internally—she honestly feels pretty numb to anything that isn’t Jackie after the past several days—but it stings faintly. “Does everyone on the team hate me?”

“Well, they don’t fucking think well of you,” Tai says flatly, forcing a laugh. “Even Van and I are a little baffled, if you want me to be honest.” Tai looks around, making sure no one’s within earshot, before she asks, “What, did she break things off or something and you decided to be vindictive about it?”

Shauna hates the phrasing: break things off. It simplifies it all too much. Like Van and Tai had been able to see so clearly from the outside that they’d been a thing for Jackie to end. 

It makes her feel stupid when she says, “I didn’t know how she felt. I thought it didn’t mean anything to her. Then I got mad.”

She expects Tai to laugh at her—even good-naturedly, like Van by the fire trying to make her see that she’d overcomplicated things. But Tai just surveys their surroundings again, sees more and more of their peers starting to appear in the hall, and says, “Come with me.”

She takes hold of Shauna’s wrist and pulls her away before Shauna can protest, and Shauna goes with her, cloth and spray still in hand. Tai leads her down the hall and into the girls’ locker room and then does a thorough check of the stalls and showers as Shauna half-heartedly places her supplies down on the nearest bench.

When Tai returns to her, she says, “I’m gonna tell you something, okay?”

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow. “Okay?”

Tai glances at the door as though wary someone might enter, and when no one does, she says, “Van and I barely ever spoke until last Fall. Then, when Jackie and I were competing for the captaincy, Van wanted someone to start staying late to practice PKs with her. I thought it’d make me look good to Coach, so I agreed to do it.”

Shauna realizes what this is now. She nods and lets Tai keep going.

“We started hanging out,” Tai explains, looking at her a little too intently, and something about the way she’s speaking too quickly, trying too hard to seem unaffected by the things she’s saying, gives Shauna the sense that she’s never told anyone any of this before. “We were friends. But… I had this feeling. And I remember how terrifying it was. To feel something… and to not know if she was feeling it too. Right?”

She looks at Shauna like she expects her to understand, and Shauna does. She chews on her lip and nods again.

“Van was braver than me. I wouldn’t have ever done anything about it. And even after it started, we didn’t really… talk about it. And then Van was braver about that part, too, eventually. So,” Tai sighs, “what I’m trying to say is that I get it. It’s confusing and scary. It drives you crazy. And I’m sure it’s even worse when it’s your best friend.” And then she huffs and shakes her head. “But Shauna, you’re both so fucking obvious that it’s embarrassing.”

Shauna blanches, her stomach flipping and then dropping. “That’s not true.”

“Maybe not to everyone,” Tai backtracks, “but that’s because we live in fucking Wiskayok where no one even acknowledges that gay people exist. But Van and I have been making fun of you guys for months—no offense. You literally look at Jackie like she’s your whole fucking world.”

Shauna swallows down her bitterness and says, “Thanks, Tai.”

“It’s Jackie, too,” Tai goes on. “She’s…” She pauses, like she’s searching for the words, and Shauna’s heart rate picks up while she waits for them. She wants to know what Tai sees in Jackie that Shauna had missed. “Maybe I just see it so clearly because she’s like me. She tries really hard to hide it like I do. I think she does a better job. She’s kind of a cliche, honestly.”

There’s something about that that Shauna doesn’t like. Maybe it’s the idea that Jackie isn’t special. “She’s not a cliche.”

Tai raises an eyebrow. “Really? Future Prom Queen dating the quarterback, perfect fucking life, has everything she could ever want. Everyone loves her. But nobody knows that she’s miserable on the inside, because she’s gay and what she really wants is her best friend.”

Shauna’s lips part in protest. She’s halfway to saying it, to telling Tai that Jackie likes boys too, that Jackie hadn’t been miserable until Shauna went and made her feel that way over the weekend, but the words die in her throat. The memories invade her mind out of nowhere, like they’d just been waiting for the right opportunity.

Jeff can’t get me off. He’s not a good kisser. Blowjobs are gross. 

There are more. Simple ones. Lining up with the Yellowjackets and just locking eyes with Jackie, sharing a smile, Jackie’s eyes practically gleaming as soon as they’d met hers. She’d never looked at Jeff that way. Or leaping into each other’s arms during games, beaming and laughing with the rest of the team fading into the background. Riding in Shauna’s car, Jackie in the passenger’s seat, twirling her hair around her finger and just looking at Shauna while she drives. 

I just want your attention.

This ruins Jackie’s life, actually. This destroys it. Because it eliminates the gray completely. Jackie will either have to be herself or be doomed to a life of faking it entirely. And Shauna has practically pushed her into the latter—eliminated the one source of happiness that could’ve maybe given her some courage and motivation.

“Oh,” Shauna says, lifting a hand to wipe at one eye and then the other. She can feel them welling up.

Tai looks taken aback for a moment, and then softens. “You didn’t know?”

Shauna shakes her head. “She was right. I don’t know her.”

Tai rolls her eyes. “Oh, stop. You know, maybe if you had ever quit feeling sorry for yourself for longer than two seconds you’d have the self-esteem you needed to realize how much Jackie loves you. And you wouldn’t be in this fucked up situation in the first place.” She crosses her arms. “Jeff, really?”

Shauna ignores her, still wiping at her eyes. “I shouldn’t fucking be here.”

She leaves the locker room without another word. Tai sighs and reaches for the cloth and the spray. 

-

“Shauna, go to school,” Mrs. Taylor says flatly when she answers the door. “You and Jackie can talk on the phone tonight.”

Shauna had expected this. She’s ready to argue it. “Can you just let her know that I’m here? I brought her breakfast.” She holds up a bag in her hand and Mrs. Taylor visibly grimaces at the fast-food logo on it. 

She can tell she’s about to be rebuffed again, but Jackie’s mom never gets the opportunity. Behind her, Shauna sees Jackie slowly descending the stairs, watching them. Their eyes meet.

Jackie looks awful. Red and swollen around her eyes, hair a tangled, greasy mess. She’s hollowed out in a subtle way few would notice, but Shauna does notice: she hasn’t been eating. She’s wearing a tank top and shorts and looks too small beneath them. Like a shell of herself.

Shauna knows immediately why her mother has been so cautious. She has watched her daughter wither away over the course of five days. Even Jackie’s eyes look emptier. 

“I can talk to her again, Mom,” Jackie says quietly. “It’s okay.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea after how things ended yesterday,” Mrs. Taylor says like Shauna isn’t right there, listening in.

“Just give us ten minutes.”

Shauna wants to protest that, too. She wants to take care of Jackie as much as she’s allowed to today. She wants to smother her the way Jackie has so often smothered Shauna. It feels unfair that she isn’t allowed when the roles are finally reversed, now that Shauna’s the one who doesn’t want any space between them. 

But Mrs. Taylor is hesitating and then moving aside, and Jackie is motioning for Shauna to follow her, so Shauna doesn’t say a word. They climb the stairs together and Shauna enters Jackie’s bedroom. 

As Jackie shuts the door, she surveys Jackie’s bed and sees tissue boxes and little crumpled balls of them strewn everywhere. A bowl’s been left out overnight on Jackie’s nightstand and she can see it’s almost entirely full of soup.

“You’re not eating,” Shauna confirms quietly. 

Jackie comes nearer, takes the bag from Shauna and sets it on the dresser, then wordlessly moves in and wraps her arms around her, squeezing her tight, pressing their cheeks together. 

Shauna’s whole body relaxes, her eyes fall shut, and she hugs Jackie back gently, like she’s fragile. Nothing is okay between them, but for a moment she willfully fools herself that it is, that because she’s in Jackie’s arms everything has worked itself out.

They both just need this, is what it actually is: to be able to set it aside and just pretend for a moment, to have a reprieve from the grief. Shauna breathes Jackie in and runs her hands up and down her back and feels her own elevated heart rate begin to slow. 

She starts their talk, finally, breaking the spell with a mumbled, “At first I thought you’d never wanna speak to me again. Saturday felt so… final.”

“It did for me, too,” Jackie breathes in her ear, and even in those few words Shauna can hear her breath hitch wetly. “But I can’t stop crying.” Jackie pulls away and Shauna watches her sit on the edge of the bed. “I look fucking awful.”

“I did until yesterday,” Shauna says. “And I think I ate maybe two meals in four days. I had one slice of toast this morning and I feel so full it hurts.”

Jackie runs a hand through her hair and just whispers, “So why did you do this to us?”

Shauna takes a careful seat next to her, keeping several inches of space between them. “I was so angry that night.” She digs her fingernails into her thigh, watching them, feeling the sting and distracting herself from the ache in her chest with it. “And hurt, and scared. And I was wrong about so many things. I just—It built up for so long. I know I blamed you for everything. I still do blame you for some things. But I don’t think you’re a horrible person, Jackie. I don’t think you did anything on purpose anymore.”

“You did think it, though. Everything we did—" Jackie pauses, lips trembling. “I just loved you. And you twisted it. I think back on it all and I just feel sick. I can’t stop thinking about what you must’ve been thinking while I was kissing you, and…” She trails off, paling. 

“I know.” Shauna wants to reach out to her, to just take hold of her and squeeze her tight, but she doesn’t think that degree of affection would be welcome again. Guilt winds through her chest and settles low and heavy in her stomach. Shauna bows her head, ashamed. “I did think so many horrible things. But more than anything else I was thinking that I wished you were feeling the same things that I was. And I was thinking that I wanted to be perfect for you. So that even if you tried to forget about it later you couldn’t. You’d always have it with you. I just wanted you to see me and love me back. I just didn’t think you could.”

She waits for Jackie to look at her, and thinks about reaching out again when she does. She curls her fingers around the comforter to ground herself instead. Jackie looks so confused. “Why not?” she asks, and Shauna inhales deeply, bracing herself for a confession.

“Because I fucking worship you, Jackie. And I hate myself for it, and I hated you for making me feel it even though it wasn’t your fault. I don’t know who I am without you. But you had Jeff, and everyone loves you. You could have anyone you wanted. And I was just… there. I’m nothing. Just this forgotten extension of you. Jackie’s loser best friend who stands there while Jackie soaks up all the attention. I would’ve never thought you could love me. That out of everyone you’d choose me. This… nobody. I couldn’t let myself hope you ever would. It was just easier to create this fucked up version of you in my head. Especially because I’d started doing it before to cope with the other stuff I resented and blamed you for. I just spiraled. But… please don’t think I still mean the things I said about last week.”

Jackie frowns at her. “You’re not a loser. Or a nobody. And you’re not just my best friend.” She swallows hard like she’s gearing up for a speech of her own. “Yes, it feels good to be noticed. But if some stupid guy doesn’t notice me it’s not the end of the world. If I don’t have your attention? It feels like I can’t function. I do things I shouldn’t just to get it back. I can’t believe you think you’re nothing, Shauna. You were everything.” Jackie scoots back, picks her legs up, buries her face in her knees and takes in a shaky breath. “I really don’t think I can handle losing you. I wanted to hate you. And I don’t know how to trust you anymore. But my body feels like it’s shutting down.”

It’s too much all at once. That word: everything. The swirling, aching guilt. The knowledge about Jackie she’s come here armed with now. She can feel her mouth opening without her consent, can feel the words leaving her lips even as her brain screams at her not to say them. Handing her life back over to Jackie so incredibly easily, just like she’d known she would. “You don’t have to lose me. Let’s just… forget about all of this. Forget about Saturday. I… I fucking take it all back, okay? I can go to Rutgers, Jackie. We can—"

Jackie raises her head to give her a strange look and cuts her off. “What? No, Shauna. You’re going to Brown.”

Shauna falters, lips parted, baffled. “Is that what you want? For me to leave you?”

“No,” Jackie says, and her throat bobs like she’s swallowing down something sickening. “But… yes,” she adds quietly. “It’s Brown. You’ll go there and become some rich best-selling author or an Ivy League English professor or some other amazing thing. You can’t go to fucking Rutgers, Shauna.”

Jackie looks at her like she’s absolutely batshit for even suggesting it, and Shauna feels her lower lip trembling. She bursts into tears before she can stop herself. 

This—this—is all she has ever wanted. Jackie is loosening her hold, finally. Pushing Shauna out of the nest and giving her permission to spread her wings and shine in her own right. Healing Shauna’s bitter open wound just that little bit.

“Okay,” she sobs, nodding, and Jackie watches her with wide, confused eyes as Shauna wipes her tears away. “Okay. But we’ll be apart.” No more sleepovers. No shared car rides back from classes. No coming home to their dorm rooms to see each other. No pink and green room decor. No meeting up for lunch and coffee on campus. 

No them—at least not the way Shauna’s sure Jackie had envisioned it at one point: sharing one of their dorm beds and touching each other late into the night.

Jackie’s dreams for them go up in smoke in an instant all over again. Shauna doesn’t revel in it like she had the first time around. It doesn’t feel like freedom; it just feels like a separation.

She asks the question she’s scared to. “What’ll happen to us? Say we fix everything somehow. And then we just go off to different schools anyway?”

Jackie shakes her head and looks away. “We can write to each other. And call. It’ll be fine.”

“That’s not what I mean, Jackie. I’m asking if… if we could ever…”

She knows Jackie knows. She knows that after that last answer, she’s not going to like the next one. 

“I never had a plan,” Jackie confesses quietly. “I’m… not like you.” Her eyebrows furrow. “I mean, I can’t… I’m not that strong. You know how my parents are. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop lying.”

Shauna closes her eyes and tries to keep her breathing steady. “Then what was last week?”

“It all happened so fast. Jeff and I had a fight and I thought… I thought I would just finally break up and go for it, or try it, to see if you wanted to like I did, because you and I had been making out a lot. And then I just wanted to be with you however I could. Forget about everything else for a little while. The furthest I got was that maybe we’d go to Rutgers together, and if you wanted… we could just keep going like we were and not tell anyone, but we’d know.” There’s a long silence, and then Jackie says quietly, “I wish being myself wouldn’t destroy everything else.”

Never has something Shauna’d already anticipated hit her so hard and so painfully before. She can feel her chest caving in on itself. “You haven’t considered just doing it anyway? Not even a little?”

Jackie opens her mouth right away but then closes it, like she’s second-guessing answering. She doesn’t look at Shauna. “Maybe,” she says, finally. “But only with you. Only when I thought… when things were different. And only once, just for a second.”

Shauna can read between the lines. What Jackie means is that it’s not happening now; that maybe she’d considered it fleetingly at their peak, high on the false simplicity of it all—that they both just loved each other deeply and intensely and that was that—but that after their fight that chance has come and gone. And if she won’t out herself with Shauna, she certainly isn’t ever doing it with anyone else.

“And anyway,” Jackie murmurs, “you should… I mean, you should be. Like, who you are. If you started telling people you’d get attention, you know?” Jackie still won’t look her in the eyes. “I mean the good kind. The bad kind, too, obviously, but… What I’m trying to say is that this shouldn’t be another thing you feel like I’m keeping you from doing. I’m just holding you back. All I do is hold you back.” Her tone turns bitter. “You made that clear.” 

“Stop, Jackie,” Shauna hisses. “Stop talking about my life like you won’t be a part of it. And I won’t watch you mess yours up pretending, either.”

“You won’t have to,” Jackie says quietly. “I’ll be at Rutgers and you’ll be at Brown.”

“Then I’ll go to Rutgers,” Shauna threatens immediately, and she’s taken aback when Jackie forces a breathy laugh. 

“What, and make me date girls? Date you?”

Shauna sits back on her hands, scowling, trying to think it through. “I don’t know.”

“Do you even want that now?” Jackie asks her, her eyes searching Shauna’s. “Me?”

She knows how it’d all go if Jackie were to ever want her back again, if Jackie were to hold firm to her word about pretending. Shauna would be a secret.

She can’t not offer herself up as an outlet anyway. Can’t not offer to provide Jackie and herself with little moments of truth and happiness where they can find them. So she’d resent Jackie for it in two, five, ten, twenty years. She’d still love her, too. She’s gotten used to doing both. She’s gotten used to pretending not to have hope. She’d do it all again, and maybe, eventually, Jackie would surprise her again. 

“I would be your secret forever, Jackie, if you asked,” she admits, finally. 

Inevitably, they’re here again. With Shauna telling her, “Here, Jackie, have my heart. Have all the power.”

But Jackie had given her Brown. And she’d tried to give her freedom from this thing between them, too. Shauna can see the greater meaning, the bigger picture. Things are changing between them, for better or for worse. Jackie has been doing some processing of her own.

“Would you ever want me again?” she asks, and waits for the answer with her heart hammering in her chest.

“I don’t want to love anyone,” Jackie says quietly, which doesn’t feel like an answer at all. “I don’t want to feel like this ever again.” Shauna watches tears pool in her eyes.

She turns to Jackie and wraps an arm around her again, finally giving in to the urge to be affectionate with her, wiping her tears away. She’s so relieved when Jackie lets her. It feels like the door between them has been opened a crack. “Even if I’m just your friend,” she says, “I won’t hurt you like this ever again. I promise. I swear. I’ll earn your trust back. I’ll do whatever I need to do to earn it all back.” 

She rests her cheek against Jackie’s. She presses so close to her that she can feel Jackie’s heart beating steadily, rapidly against her. She searches for more things to say, more words of reassurance. Anything. She whispers them against Jackie’s ear. “I didn’t mean any of it, Jax. I’m sorry. I wish I could say all of the right things and un-say all of the wrong things. I promise I’ll be better.”

Jackie’s arms rise slowly, finally, and hug her in return. Shauna feels more wetness spill down Jackie’s cheek and turns and brushes a tear away with her lips. She knows it’s an overstep. There’s already a familiar tug in her chest urging her to Jackie’s mouth, telling her to soothe her there instead, touch and take and heal her that way instead of picking their friendship up slowly, carefully, piece by piece. She knows it wouldn’t be welcome; that at best Jackie would kiss her back but would be upset at her for it afterward. They’re nowhere near doing that now. Maybe they never will be again. But Shauna will do her best to work toward fixing what she can. 

“The girls need you back,” she says next. “State’s next Saturday. You have to come back tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Jackie says, exhaling shakily, her bleary eyes wide and sad on Shauna’s. “I didn’t want to quit. I just didn’t want to see you. Not until we really talked.”

“Well, I’m here.” Shauna leans forward, resting their foreheads together, and just breathes Jackie in. “I’m here now.”

They stay that way for a minute longer, until Jackie’s mom knocks on the door and kicks Shauna out again.

As she leaves, she sees Jackie rising to go to the bag of food she’d left behind. 

-

She calls Jackie again that night, ready for Mrs. Taylor to answer with audible annoyance, but it’s Jackie who picks up instead. It’s quickly enough that Shauna can tell she’d already been downstairs, out of her bedroom. The realization fills her with relief. Jackie’s getting better. 

“Hey, it’s me,” Jackie greets her, like she already knows who it is. She sounds… grounded. Almost neutral. Civil. Like she’d gone over their last conversation in her head all day and processed it all, and doesn’t want to get emotional about it again.

“Hey.” Shauna hops up onto her own kitchen counter nearby and twirls the phone cord anxiously around her finger. “I’m picking you up tomorrow, okay? In case it wasn’t obvious.”

“Okay.”

“Did you finish all the food earlier?”

“Just a couple of hashbrowns,” Jackie admits. “But I had half the biscuit for dinner.”

“We’re both gonna suck at practice tomorrow,” Shauna jokes. She’s hoping to keep this light, to establish some sort of normalcy before school tests them tomorrow.

She knows it won’t be easy. She’d humiliated Jackie in the eyes of their classmates by kissing Jeff. She’ll happily take the brunt of the consequences, but Jackie will suffer the looks and whispers, too.

“Probably,” Jackie says. There’s an uncomfortable silence, and Shauna knows Jackie’s had a similar train of thought when she asks, her tone more solemn now, “So I have to ask: Why Jeff?”

“He was just there,” Shauna says. “It could have been anyone. I didn’t even want to kiss him at first. But it really didn’t matter who it was. I just wanted to be with someone who wasn’t you. For the same stupid, fucked up reasons that I did every other dumb thing I did.”

“I guess I’m supposed to be relieved that you weren’t specifically trying to fuck my ex-boyfriend. Somehow I’m not.”

Shauna recoils from the phone and then insists, “God, Jackie. No. I wouldn’t have had sex with him. I swear. Not with Jeff.”

Jackie’s silent on the other end for a moment. Then she asks, probing, as though something in Shauna’s wording or tone had led her to the question, “Did you want to with someone else that night?”

Now it’s Shauna’s turn to be silent. She doesn’t know what to say. Things are strained and sensitive between them right now. But it feels wrong to promise to earn Jackie’s trust back and then lie to her hours later. 

“You were with Jeff in the woods,” she starts, and immediately hears Jackie’s sharp intake of breath. Instinctively, Shauna knows she’s angry. It fits with Jackie’s demeanor tonight. The hurt has scabbed over today, and now new emotions are jockeying to replace it. “I thought you were back with him. I kissed Melissa and then she turned me down because she knew it was about you. I was so messed up, Jackie. I kept thinking about what you and Jeff were doing. I was so fucked up I puked. Then I didn’t try again with anyone else and Jeff found me eventually. That’s everything.” She hesitates when Jackie doesn’t speak. “And I mean everything. I’m not hiding anything else from you anymore. That’s it.”

She closes her eyes and waits. She can hear Jackie breathing on the line. 

“Well,” Jackie says darkly, finally, “that’s what I mean. I’m holding you back. Clearly you’re perfectly happy to—”

“Jackie, I don’t want to be with fucking Melissa.” Shauna shakes her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t make me say what I want again.” When Jackie doesn’t say anything more, just lets the expectant silence linger between them, Shauna swallows her pride and says, “You. I want you. And I’d do anything. I think you know I would.” 

They’ve played a lot of games with each other over the years—usually against Shauna’s will. This time, with something as simple as that pressing silence, she knows Jackie’s fallen back on old tactics, aware of exactly how to pull Shauna’s strings to get what she wants out of her. Shauna has held plenty of undue resentment toward Jackie over the years, but the resentment of her for moments like these feels justified.

She supposes in a twisted way it’s relieving to know that Jackie’s recovered enough to show some teeth again. But Shauna knows it means Jackie’s probably done being selfless, now that she knows where Shauna stands. Now she’ll start taking whatever she feels she’s owed in return for what Shauna had done to her.

Jackie has given her Brown. She’s given her multiple opportunities to bow out of this thing between them, and Shauna’s rejected them at every turn. So Shauna has no one to blame but herself for what comes next. Jackie will use it, too, if Shauna ever tries to fight her on it. You said you wanted me will be Jackie’s go-to line. You said you’d do anything. 

“You know what?” Jackie says shortly, still audibly upset, and even with all of the misunderstandings and miscommunications between them, there is still a part of Shauna that really does know Jackie so well: “Maybe try proving it.” The call ends with a sudden click.

Shauna blinks at the dial tone and then flushes, the familiar bittersweet feeling of being trapped under Jackie’s thumb seeping into her every pore without warning.

She hadn’t been able to handle this toxic brand of Jackie when she’d been "straight" and dating Jeff. But if it’s a choice between this with a version of Jackie she knows is in love with her, or nothing from Jackie at all, it’s the easiest decision she’s ever made.

This, at least, she has experience with. This is familiar ground. She knows how to navigate it. This time she’ll navigate it knowing that Jackie is watching her every reaction with bated breath, no matter how many other irrelevant pairs of eyes are on Jackie, no matter how much Jackie pretends to be ambivalent toward her. She will have Jackie’s attention just as much as Jackie has hers. When she yields to Jackie’s wishes or words or even just her stare, it will be with the knowledge that she’s at the center of Jackie’s universe, not the periphery.

“Fine,” she says to no one, and feels the most alive she has since Saturday night.

Notes:

The girls are in their toxic era <3 (they never left it)

Chapter 13

Notes:

Jackie this chapter:

hope you all enjoy, as always thanks SO much for the feedback

Shauna wakes up early again on Friday—this time it’s to give herself an extra half-hour in the kitchen with a bowl of batter and a Tupperware container. 

“What’s this?” her mother asks her amusedly when she finds her there, just finished with getting ready for work herself.

“I’m making breakfast for Jackie,” Shauna says distractedly, dumping some of the batter out into a pan and watching it sizzle. She raises the spatula in her hand and stares intently at the pan, ready and waiting. 

She’s concentrating too hard to see her mom’s soft smile. “Just don’t be late for school. You’ve missed enough already.”

“We’ll be there on time,” Shauna promises.

“Okay.” Ms. Shipman kisses her on the head. “I’m glad you’re working things out. I know how important Jackie is to you.”

Shauna watches her go and thinks I really don’t think you do, then smells something burning. Her eyes dart back to the stove. “Shit!”

Another twenty minutes later, she pulls up to Jackie’s house with a warm container in her lap, three pancakes loaded up with syrup sealed inside. 

She’d thought about trying something different with her appearance today, too. Stared at herself in the mirror and thought maybe she’d surprise Jackie by putting in some effort. Wearing the flavored lip balm Jackie’s complimented before and the blush Jackie says brings out the color in her lips and the top Jackie thinks makes her boobs look great. Jackie would know that it’s all for her.

But then Shauna had thought about school: she and Jackie finally coming back after Saturday, and Shauna showing up looking all done up like Jackie usually is. To everyone else, it’d look like a competition. A declaration of war against Jackie, an effort to be seen as more desirable—possibly even as more desirable to Jeff, specifically. So she’d picked out Jackie’s favorite flannel and only opted for the lip balm.

She’s certain it’d been the right decision when she sees Jackie. She looks unrecognizable compared to yesterday: her hair is meticulously styled, curled into perfect waves that fall just right to frame her face. She’s wearing red lipstick that matches her blush and her top, which is sleeveless and clingy and just low-cut enough for Jackie to get away with stepping out in it without her mother asking her to go change. She’s paired it with a denim skirt that stops a few inches above her knees. 

Jackie has a statement to make; something like: I don’t give a fuck about what my ex-boyfriend and my best friend have been doing. I’m over it. And I’m hotter than them anyway. 

“Shipman,” she greets Shauna shortly, dumping her backpack onto the floor and then sliding into the passenger’s seat. She offers Shauna a hint of a smile, though, and it takes the edge off of the slight animosity emanating from her.

It’s enough that Shauna feels comfortable joking, “Do I have to earn my way back out of the nickname, too?”

“Maybe.” Jackie starts digging something out of her backpack while Shauna reaches for the Tupperware.

“I made you breakfast. You should eat. It’s still warm.”

Jackie straightens up with an all-too-familiar tape in her hand, and internally Shauna’s stomach turns. She tries not to react to it, extending the container toward Jackie instead, and something in Jackie’s face softens almost imperceptibly. But then she looks confused. “Did you bring a fork?”

Shauna deflates, flinching. “Dammit.”

“Let me get one from inside,” Jackie decides, and then hands her the tape. “Put this in.” Shauna must not hide her reluctance fully—though she certainly tries—because Jackie just says lightly, “Don’t worry. I have a new favorite song. Don’t play it until I get back.”

She leaves, and Shauna takes a deep breath, watching her go. She should probably be worried about which song is about to be inflicted on her, but she’s so distracted by the fact that Jackie looks really good. She knows it’s a shot at her and Jeff, in a way, but she’s also been made well aware of how desperate for her attention Jackie is. At least some of this is for her. It’s killing two birds with one stone: it’s a way for Jackie to assert her status over Shauna and to draw Shauna’s eyes to her body in the process. I own you now, she’s saying, and meaning it in two different ways.

“Don’t be a fucking freak,” Shauna whispers to herself, glaring down at her warming lower abdomen. “This is fucked up. You’re not into this.”

She really is, though.

Jackie reappears at her front door and Shauna snaps to attention, hastily putting the tape in and pressing pause before it can play.

“I think I’ll eat this at school,” Jackie decides when she’s back, tucking the fork into a pocket of her backpack and placing the container on the floor. “Let’s listen to some music.” Then she leans over and plays the tape.

The opening guitar begins and Shauna winces as she starts to drive. It’s “Good Riddance”. The song she’d tacked on at the very end, a goodbye to Jackie only made clear upon her reveal about Brown. She white-knuckles her steering wheel with both hands and doesn’t look at Jackie.

But Jackie looks at her, quite pointedly, and enthuses, “Love this song. So good, right?”

Shauna lets her have her moment, just sighs and drives and takes it. She’s gotten the message: Jackie has definitely moved on from being upset and gone straight into antagonizing her, testing her. It’s Shauna’s job to just let her buttons be pushed. 

“I actually listened to it so much over the weekend,” Jackie tells her brightly. “When I first heard it, I didn’t really get it, but now I do. It really grew on me.”

Shauna’s eyes flicker to the stereo and she prays the song will end soon. It can’t be that long. Certainly not the billion years it’s felt like it’s been playing for. She feels like she’s definitely heard Billy Armstrong sing about hoping Jackie has the time of her life at Rutgers at least a couple of times already.

Jackie’s getting impatient with her non-response. Or just doesn’t feel entertained enough. “Green Day, right? We should go to a concert together next Fall! Oh, wait…” Jackie faux-pouts at her. “I forgot. We can’t, because you applied to a different school and instead of just telling me about it like a normal person you hid it and then used it to hurt me.”

“It’s a four-hour drive, Jax,” Shauna tells her, giving in with a sigh. “I’ll come down anytime you want.”

“What if I wanted you there every weekend?” Jackie challenges.

Shauna bites her lip and then shrugs. “Then I guess I’d be there every weekend.”

Jackie studies her critically for a moment, then says, “I don’t believe you.”

Shauna has genuinely thought about it though, after their talk yesterday. “It wouldn’t be that difficult for me to do it twice a month, you know. And then if you ever wanted to come up too. Like, once a month? Three weekends total a month, one weekend off. Something like that.” Jackie doesn’t say anything, seemingly just processes the idea in silence, and the song ends. Shauna gestures toward the floor in front of Jackie. “It’ll get cold if you wait.”

Jackie picks up the container, says, “Fine, but don’t brake too hard or anything,” and pops it open. Shauna bites down on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from smiling.

-

The graffiti is back on Shauna’s locker this morning. Tai’s midway through wiping it off again when Shauna spots her, and this time Jackie’s at her side to ask, “What’s Tai doing?”

“You’ll probably enjoy this,” Shauna says, rolling her eyes to herself as they weave through a few clusters of students. She can feel eyes all over the both of them, especially with them walking together like they are. She’d probably be staring too, if she were their classmates: Shauna made out with Jeff, she and Jackie both disappeared for nearly a week, and now they’ve reappeared together and seem to be talking civilly with each other. It almost certainly reads as odd.

She leads Jackie straight to Tai and her locker, and Tai catches sight of them and seems surprised, and then curious. “You’re back,” she says to Jackie, and then stops wiping at Shauna’s locker. “Guess I’m officially relieved from duty. Assuming you are rejoining the team…?”

The leading question hangs in the air, and Jackie’s too busy staring at Shauna’s locker with furrowed eyebrows to answer it. The slur is almost fully faded now, thanks to Tai, but it’s legible. 

Shauna expects Jackie to laugh, or at least to maybe shoot her a smirk or a smug look. Instead, she frowns and asks Tai, “So what does Jeff get for kissing his ex’s best friend?”

“Uh, probably high-fives and pats on the back,” Tai says. “You know how it is.”

Jackie folds her arms across her chest, taps her foot like she’s annoyed—maybe even angry—and then says to the both of them, “I’ll fix that today.” She points to the locker. “And this. Just give me a few hours.” And then she’s off, just like that, hiking her purse over her shoulder and sweeping down the hallway with her chin in the air.

Shauna stares at her until she’s gone and then tells Tai, “Huh. I thought she’d laugh. She pretty much bullied me the whole car ride here.”

“I imagine it’s different when someone else does it,” Tai points out, and then offers Shauna the cloth and the spray in her hands.

Shauna takes them with a thoughtful smile. “Yeah. I guess so.”

-

An hour later, Shauna accidentally bumps into Jeff in the hallway on the way to her second period. “Shit,” he mumbles, spinning back toward her and regaining his balance. Shauna glances at him, wincing as she rubs at her shoulder, and realizes he hasn’t noticed it’s her. Then they make eye contact. Jeff frowns. “Oh. Shauna. You’re back.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Jackie is, too.” She turns away. “Anyway, sorry.”

“Me too,” she hears him say stiffly.

They go their separate ways. Shauna ignores the snickers from a few onlookers, how one of them leans in and whispers, “Slut,” too loudly to another. 

-

At noon, Shauna heads out to the quad, where the seniors eat lunch every day, and spots Jackie’s purse at their usual table, resting next to an abandoned meal that must belong to Jackie. Mari’s sitting one seat over from Jackie’s spot, with Nat across from Jackie and then Lottie and Laura Lee in the next seats over.

It takes her a moment to find Jackie herself, maybe fifty feet away and engaged in what looks to be a lively conversation with a few senior girls Jackie talks to but Shauna’s never had anything in common with. 

She’s a little intimidated at the prospect of approaching the girls from the team, especially without Van or Tai around, and winds up hovering somewhere halfway between Jackie and the table, trying to make a decision.

She overhears Jackie, then: “—completely unfair how much of a double standard it is. And when he was the one who took her to his car and kissed her first! Anyway, I’m so fucking over him.” Jackie tosses her hair and rolls her eyes. “Like, sorry I bruised your ego when I dumped you, but obviously I made the right decision if less than two weeks later you’re trying to make a move on my best friend who you know doesn’t know any better. She was really drunk and she felt horrible about it.”

One of the girls pouts and says, “Poor Shauna.”

“I saw her locker Monday morning,” another says sadly. “I can’t believe the stuff people are saying about her. Hasn’t she, like, never even been on a date?”

Jackie nods. “Totally naive. And then suddenly she’s a few drinks deep and Wiskayok’s star quarterback is sweet-talking her and trying to hook up with her. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he made her think I wouldn’t mind.”

“Jeez. What an asshole.”

“Did he even try to apologize to you?”

“Like, barely.” Jackie huffs overdramatically. “He came over the day after but I had my mom tell him to fuck off. It’s so gross that he’s pretty much guaranteed to win Prom King just because he can throw a ball.”

“I’m not voting for him, Jackie.”

“Yeah, I’ll still vote for you, but screw Jeff.”

Shauna shakes her head knowingly to herself and then turns away to finally head to their table. She gathers herself on the way, taking a breath, and then offers them all a short wave as she stops at the end between Nat and Jackie’s seat. “Hey.”

Nat squints up at her with interest. “Hey, I see you showered.”

“I see you didn’t,” Shauna quips, and Nat grins.

“I hear you got Jackie to come back. We might not be fucked at State now.”

“Thank God,” Laura Lee mutters, exhaling heavily.

Mari pipes up, smirking, “So is Jeff Sadecki a good kisser?”

“No,” Jackie says from behind Shauna, drawing five pairs of eyes to her. They all watch her slip past Shauna and retake her seat. “He isn’t.”

“Bummer,” Mari says quietly, a little humbled, like she hadn’t expected Jackie to overhear her question.

There’s one seat left at the table on Mari’s other side. Shauna studies it for a moment as the other girls resume eating, and then her eyes fall to Jackie, who hasn’t gone back to her food yet. Instead, she’s looking up at Shauna, head tilted slightly, like she’s waiting for something. Waiting to see what Shauna will do next.

Shauna licks her lips, clears her throat, and then says, “Mari, scoot down.” She moves to stand behind Mari and Jackie, then nudges her leadingly. Gently, for now.

Mari glances at Jackie and then scoffs. “What? No. I was here first.”

“What are we, twelve? Who gives a shit. Move.” When Mari just glares back and doesn’t budge, Shauna reaches for her shirt and grips the fabric at her back, pulling it sideways.

“Jesus, Shauna, fine,” Mari huffs, slapping her arm away. She scoots down with the help of Shauna’s hand pushing on her shoulder, grumbling something under her breath, and Shauna drops down into the spot between Mari and Jackie.

When she looks across the table, Laura Lee’s eyebrows are at the top of her forehead, Lottie’s got a small smile on her lips, and Nat looks incredibly entertained.

Jackie’s all she cares about, though, and Jackie’s reaction is to shift toward her slightly and then spread her legs a little so that their thighs are touching. Shauna feels goosebumps rise on her skin there, both from the contact and the knowledge that it’s Jackie’s secret way of showing her approval. “So what did we miss at practice on Monday and Wednesday?” Jackie asks the table, and Nat responds with a laugh.

“Okay, so are you two just like, pretending you didn’t have a massive fight this week?” she asks. “I had to look Shauna’s mom up in the fucking white pages to find her address and then make her go talk to you.”

Shauna’s stomach turns. She knows Jackie won’t like the way that’s been worded. “You didn’t make me, Nat. I wanted to.” Much to her relief, Jackie doesn’t stiffen at her side. 

“Either way, I’m kind of impressed,” Lottie says. “Good on you guys for deciding your friendship’s more important than a dumb guy.”

“Forgiveness is a virtue,” Laura Lee adds.

“So Christian and feminist of you,” Mari chimes in, huffing it under her breath. Shauna’s probably the only one who’d heard her, and she happily ignores the comment. 

“We’re okay,” Jackie says for the both of them. “And most importantly: we both wanna go to motherfucking Nationals, so can we please focus on what actually matters now?”

Lottie beams at them and says, “Hell yeah,” and Jackie expertly steers their conversation toward their upcoming game from there.

After, as they’re walking back inside just the two of them, Shauna can’t resist telling her, “I saw you with those girls earlier. Saying I was, like, a naive idiot and blaming Jeff.”

“I was sticking up for my best friend,” Jackie says curtly, not looking at her. “I told you I’d take care of it.”

-

By the time they’re all filing into the locker room before practice, it’s circulated throughout the team that Jackie’s discovered the identity of the student they’d all dubbed “The Sharpie Vandal”. It’d taken her just a few hours of asking around and digging, and Shauna’s guess had been spot-on: it’s some freshman who’d been crushing on Jeff and trying to cozy up to him ever since his breakup with Jackie. 

“I heard Jackie made her cry,” Akilah says to a few of the other girls with a knowing smirk. Jackie hasn’t arrived yet, but Shauna’s shown up early and is gearing up on one of the benches next to Van, who’d sat down next to her upon her own arrival and offered her a friendly smile and a short pat on the back. 

“I heard she threatened to find out where she lives and tell her mom she saw her dropping acid at a party,” Crystal adds. 

“Really?” Gen asks. “Someone told me she threatened to tell everyone she has chlamydia.”

Melissa’s hovering nearby, not participating in the conversation, tying her cleats with her foot propped up on a different bench from Shauna’s. Shauna’s very much not making eye contact with her, and Melissa seems to be eager to do the same.

“I heard,” adds Robin, “that she told her if she caught her at Shauna’s locker again she’d fuck her reputation up so badly she’d have to leave Wiskayok to find someone willing to be seen in the same room with her.”

Mari practically cackles at that. “Jesus.”

Shauna takes in a shaky breath and shifts awkwardly in her seat, silently cursing herself for being such a fucking freak again. The idea of Jackie completely tearing into some girl on her behalf is turning her on so much.

The conversation dies too abruptly and Shauna turns to see Jackie’s pushed her way inside the locker room. Several of the other girls follow her with their eyes for a moment, but then slowly they start to separate from each other and get ready. 

“Nobody leaves until I say,” Jackie calls out, very obviously in captain mode as she starts to change not far from Shauna and Van. She hasn’t looked at Shauna yet, and Shauna tries for a subtle glimpse at her bare back as Jackie swaps out her shirt, then gets caught by an amused Van. “We’re having a team meeting as soon as everyone’s dressed.”

Shauna instinctively knows this probably won’t be great for her. They’ve been out for the week, rumors have been flying, and Jackie’s quit and then un-quit the team. The odds of this not being about any of that feel lower than zero.

Eventually, the girls crowd in near the benches with Jackie at their helm, looking out at them all, and Shauna watches her fold her arms across her chest. Jackie’s hair has been pulled up into a ponytail, but she’s still got her makeup on from this morning and it only serves to make her look more intimidating. “So,” she starts bluntly, “obviously this week has been fucking insane. Nationals is on the line in eight days and Shauna and I were both gone this week. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come back.”

The silence is tense and uncomfortable. Shauna wants to fade away into nothing and disappear.

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry,” Jackie says next, and the energy shifts. Some of the girls seem confused—others, relieved. “I’m your captain. It was fucked up for me to bail on you guys just because of Shauna’s mistake.”

The name-drop hits Shauna out of nowhere, like a mallet to the face. She blanches and then feels the warm rush of embarrassment stinging her cheeks. Nobody looks at her. The tension is back, and it’s so much worse.

But Jackie relaxes, like she’s giving the rest of them permission to do the same, and says, “We’ve talked it all out, and Shauna wants to apologize to all of you too, for interfering with team cohesion. Especially so close to the end of our season.” Her eyes snap to Shauna’s without warning and Shauna feels her entire body heating unpleasantly. “Go ahead, Shauna.”

Surely they all know what this is: revenge, humiliation. Jackie reasserting her control over Shauna in front of an audience. A few of them don’t even turn to look at Shauna, and most of the ones that do don’t look her in the eyes. She does catch Nat looking milliseconds from bursting into laughter, though, clearly loving the drama of this. Mari’s wearing a satisfied smirk, probably still pissed at Shauna for lunch.

Shauna swallows hard and opens her mouth. “I’m—"

“Up here,” Jackie corrects, gesturing next to herself. “So everyone can see you, Ship.”

Shauna rises on stiff legs and goes to her, then lets Jackie take her firmly by the arm and turn her around to face their teammates. Shauna clears her throat, face flaming, and tries not to focus on any one person in particular—Van’s grimacing like she’s watching a car crash in slow motion, though, and Tai is doing a perfect combination of both Van and Nat’s reactions somehow. “I’m sorry for interfering with team cohesion so close to the end of our season.”

“Good,” Jackie says brightly. “That’s it; meeting over. I’m sure the coaches are wondering where we all are, so hurry up.” The girls start to disperse, but then Jackie swiftly adds, “Oh, Melissa? You stay back, actually.”

Shauna might legitimately want to die in this moment.

At Melissa’s wide-eyed look—and a few medium-sized reactions from a couple of the other juniors—Jackie softens and says, “Don’t worry; it’s just some feedback about the minutes you played during Regionals. I would’ve talked to you at Monday’s practice, but… well.”

“Oh.” Melissa hovers anxiously as everyone else files out. Shauna half-heartedly tries to follow, but the instant she lifts her foot to take a step Jackie subtly seizes the back of her shirt and holds her there.

If any of the girls notice that Shauna’s staying behind too, they don’t comment on it. But Melissa’s anxiety quickly turns to skepticism and then grows knowing. When they’re alone, her eyes dart between Jackie and Shauna and then narrow, and she asks, “This isn’t about Regionals, is it?”

Jackie gives Shauna a light push, enough to rock her forward a little but not enough to put her off-balance, and says, “Apologize to Melissa, too.”

Melissa immediately turns as red as Shauna. Shauna grits her teeth and looks to Jackie, almost ready to protest, but Jackie’s face is calm and even, quietly immovable, and she’s crossed her arms again. Expectantly this time.

Shauna turns to Melissa swiftly and blurts, “I’m sorry.”

Melissa just seems relieved to have it over with. “It’s—"

“For?” Jackie cuts in, nudging Shauna. “You were horrible to her. Don’t you feel bad?” Jackie’s face is a perfect picture of innocent sincerity. “Make it thorough.”

Shauna takes a breath and looks at Melissa again, reluctantly embraces the way her entire body feels hot and uncomfortable, and just gives in. “I’m sorry for kissing you Saturday night. I’m sorry that I used you and I’m sorry that I said you were pathetic and called you a pussy.”

She hears a small snicker at her side and glances at Jackie to see her biting her lip, making an incredibly poor attempt at concealing her amusement. “Sorry, you called her a what?”

Something about the look on Jackie’s face, the absurdity of the whole situation—

Shauna breaks a little, letting the tiniest smile slip through before she suppresses it. 

Melissa looks back and forth between them both, taking in their shared amusement with disbelief, and then disgust. She scoffs and says, “You know what? You two deserve each other,” and Shauna watches as Melissa leaves the locker room with a scowl and a shake of her head. 

When the door closes, she finally feels the heat starting to leave her. She exhales heavily, tries to shake it off, then just looks at Jackie and says, “Well, I think she might know, Jax.”

“I think she already knew,” Jackie replies. “And she won’t tell. I made it clear weeks ago that I know about her, remember?”

It’s the same deal that Shauna has with Tai and Van. She’d been worried it’d freak Jackie out if she ever looped her in on it, and this, at least, gives her hope that maybe she can share it after all. Soon. Maybe with Tai and Van’s permission.

For now, she asks, “Did you really tell that girl she’d have to leave Wiskayok after you were done with her?”

Jackie laughs. “No. I told her she’d have to leave New Jersey.” Her eyes trail down Shauna’s body and settle near her waist, almost like she can sense the way Shauna’s full-body flush is migrating to concentrate in one place now. If Shauna’s honest with herself, she’d started to throb faintly between her legs right around the time Jackie’d called her out in front of the whole team, and it’s only gotten worse since then. “Why? Did you want me to be nicer to her?”

Shauna’s face reddens all over again. “No.”

“What about you?” Jackie asks evenly. “Am I being too mean to you?”

Shauna knows there’s only one right answer. She’s fortunate that she’s fucked up enough to be able to give it and mean it. “I don’t hate it. I actually like the idea of earning you.” She’d introduced this idea to Jackie once before, in the beginning. In Jackie’s kitchen, in the thick of it, blurting that she wanted to earn Jackie’s “I love you”. It’d been an embarrassing thing to admit then, and it’s embarrassing to admit it again now.

But for the first time today, she’s disarmed Jackie. Shauna watches her lips part and her eyes blink too quickly. She can see Jackie’s wheels turning, Jackie trying to keep her composure. When she finds it, she swallows and just says, a little unevenly, “Well, good.” And it’s so clear, suddenly, that the version of her best friend who’d looked at her wide-eyed in the dark and trembled at her touch is still very much in there deep down, beneath the armor and the confident bravado.

Before she can linger on that thought, the locker room door bursts open and both Jackie and Shauna jump in surprise.

It’s Jeff, of all people, looking frustrated as he greets them, “I’ve been waiting out there forever. Jesus.”

“Jeff,” Jackie snaps, “this is a girl’s locker room.”

“You weren’t coming out,” he protests. “Jackie, I need to talk to you. Can you please just—"

Jackie huffs and grabs Shauna by the arm, leading her past Jeff and out into the hallway while Shauna’s heart’s still calming down. “I made it pretty clear that I don’t wanna talk to you.”

They stop in the hallway, rounding on him, and Jackie lets Shauna go as Jeff complains, “Seriously? You’re forgiving Shauna but you won’t forgive me?”

“Shauna’s my best friend,” Jackie says, “and I know you went after her.”

Jeff laughs. “Is that what she said? Did she tell you what she said to me last week?”

Shauna looks back and forth between them, genuinely confused. He’d mentioned this Saturday, too, and she hadn’t known what he’d meant then either. “I didn’t say anything.”

Jeff gives her a tired look. “Really? At your locker? You told me to go after other girls. You encouraged me!”

Shauna recoils. “I didn’t mean me.”

“Even if that’s true, you still tried to get your best friend’s boyfriend to hook up with other girls,” Jeff insists. “You knew we could get back together again and you wanted to stop it, didn’t you?”

Shauna glances over at Jackie to find her looking deep in thought, eyebrows furrowed, one hand on her hip and the other reaching up to play with her necklace. 

Jeff takes a step closer, lowering his voice, trying to sound gentler. “She was trying to sabotage us, Jackie. I’ve been trying to make you see it, but you won’t even hear me out.”

Jackie softens, but not for Jeff. She turns to Shauna and asks searchingly, like she’s waiting with bated breath for the answer, “Were you?”

Shauna swallows thickly and just says, “Yeah.”

Jeff lights up and points accusingly at her, as though he’s a detective finally unmasking a killer he’d been desperate to catch. As though he’s finally won. “See! She admitted—"

“We have soccer practice, and we’re late,” Jackie interrupts him dismissively, grabbing Shauna’s wrist again. “We’re not getting back together, Jeff. Leave me alone.”

Then she drags Shauna away, giving her wrist a tight squeeze of approval and a look to match it that makes Shauna’s heart skip a beat, and together they leave Jeff confused and sputtering behind them in the hallway. 

-

Shauna’s major takeaway from their practice is that Jackie needs to eat.

Shauna does too, after a rough few days this week, but Jackie had only gotten down one of her pancakes for breakfast and then barely half of her lunch, and she’s sluggish at practice. She’s several steps behind on her runs, her passes aren’t as sharp, and even the second-stringers are beating her to balls in the air. 

It’s kind of a disaster. Coach Martinez pulls Jackie aside at the end of practice to talk to her alone, and Shauna lingers nearby and looks on, waiting to take Jackie home. 

Van joins her eventually, eyeing her for a moment and then deciding, “You look nervous.”

Shauna’s not thinking about Nationals at all, though. She’s not even thinking about soccer. She’s thinking about Jackie eating. Jackie eating with Shauna somewhere, maybe. She’s pretty sure neither of them has anything to do tomorrow. But would it be too soon? Then again, she has basically been asked to earn Jackie’s favor back. This seems like an ideal way to put a dent in it.

She looks at Van. “Have you ever taken Tai out on a date?”

Van cocks her head, lips parting uncertainly like that’s the last thing she’d been expecting to hear come out of Shauna’s mouth. “Uh, kind of? I mean, we had to pretend to just be friends. But yeah.”

Shauna sets her jaw, and with it, sets her mind to this, too. “Good. I need you to tell me everything you know.”

Chapter 14

Notes:

I know that I said updates would be slower, but I wrote this today and was too eager to share it. So think of it as an advance chapter in exchange for the next one likely taking longer :)

Jackie is more solemn during their drive after practice, and Shauna initially attributes it to her talk with Coach Martinez. He hadn’t seemed angry from afar, but there’s no chance he hadn’t been concerned about Jackie’s ability to play at her peak for State. Shauna isn’t even sure what they’d do if she isn’t able to get back to form in the next week. Sub in one of the juniors?

Jackie isn’t the best player in their starting lineup, but she’s good enough that without her, they’d definitely be fucked.

“I don’t wanna go home tonight,” Jackie says out of nowhere, letting out a short huff. “I’ll stay at your place.”

Shauna thinks of her tiny bed, of how many nights she’s spent pressed against Jackie under the covers, trying and failing to fall asleep with her heart racing. She’s not sure how she feels about this today. She’s not sure she even wants something to happen between them right now. Before they’ve gotten a chance to really fix things together. But then of course she can’t actually say she wouldn’t welcome it if something did happen. It’s Jackie. 

She’s not going to say no to Jackie regardless, so she just says, “Maybe my mom can make us dinner,” and doesn’t take the turn to go to Jackie’s house. 

She doesn’t ask why Jackie doesn’t want to go home, but eventually Jackie tells her. “I’m sick of dealing with my mom. She’s driving me up a wall. She hates Jeff now, which is great, but she keeps giving me these lectures about being careful with you. It’s like she’s disappointed I forgave you—even though I technically haven’t, by the way. Plus she didn’t want me to go back to soccer; you know she’s always hated it.”

Shauna does know. She remembers Jackie’s mom trying to push her into beauty pageants instead. Soccer and sports in general had been “for boys”.

“I’ll just call her when I’m already at your place,” Jackie decides aloud. Shauna looks over at her to see her biting at her thumbnail nervously. “You don’t think she knows, do you?”

“No,” Shauna says reflexively, though she supposes she can’t actually be certain. She tells Jackie what she does know: “Your mom thinks we’re best friends who had a big fight over a boy and me going to a different school. Which we are and we did. She just doesn’t want us hanging out because she’s worried I’m a catty backstabbing bitch who can’t be trusted not to hurt you again, not because she thinks we’re gonna go from fighting over Jeff to tonguing each other, Jax. Your mom probably doesn’t even consider that anyone she knows might secretly be gay, let alone that her own daughter’s a—”

“Don’t,” Jackie interjects sharply, “finish that.”

Shauna gives her a careful look. “I wasn’t gonna say anything bad.” The nervous energy radiating off of Jackie now is so strong it’s almost pushing its way into Shauna’s body too. “It’s not… bad. Jackie.”

“I know,” Jackie says too quickly. “It’s just… too loaded. For now. I’m just me.” 

“Okay.” Shauna adjusts her grip on the steering wheel and then shares, “I didn’t think about it for the longest time, too. Even though I knew I was in love with you for like, ever. It was only until last week that I was just like, oh, right, there’s a word for it. Guess I’m that.”

Jeff debacle aside, she’s actually not completely certain that Jackie understands she likes boys too, but she doesn’t wind up clarifying because that isn’t what Jackie asks about. “How long is ‘ever’?” she asks instead. 

Shauna mulls it over for a moment. “I don’t really know,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s like… there are things that are just true about me, right? Things that always have been true, even if I’m not sure when always technically began. I just knew it at some point like anything else. Like…” She shrugs, feeling Jackie staring intently at her. “I have brown eyes. My last name’s Shipman. I love Jackie. That’s it. That’s me.”

Jackie’s head whips away, staring out her window instead. Shauna glances at her and sees her lifting a hand and wiping at something on her face.

“You make it so hard to stay mad at you,” Jackie says quietly.

They finish the drive in silence.

-

Ms. Shipman cooks for them, and they all eat dinner together—vaguely uncomfortably, because Jackie seems to feel awkward existing around Shauna’s mom given their week-long fight. Ms. Shipman acts like nothing’s changed, and asks them both simple questions about how things are back at school, if soccer practice went well today. They both omit details or lie entirely for the sake of sharing good news.

After, they go to the living room, just the two of them, and Jackie grabs the remote to turn the television on. They sit on the couch a respectable distance from each other, and Jackie clicks through a few channels and then freezes suddenly, staring down at the remote like it’s an alien invention she’s never seen before. Shauna watches her blink twice at it and then abruptly hold it out to Shauna. “You pick.”

“Oh.” It catches Shauna completely off guard, especially given how controlling and domineering Jackie’s been all day. Maybe this is a reward. Shauna accepts it like it’s something precious. “Thanks, Jax.” She flips through three channels, and then ten more, and then starts to notice them repeating eventually. Jackie watches her with an eyebrow raised, until finally Shauna says, “I, uh… don’t actually know what to watch.”

Jackie gives her a look of disbelief and then lets out a deep sigh. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, Shipman.” Then she starts to giggle, and then Shauna does too.

“It’s called decision paralysis, and it’s a real psychological thing!” Shauna insists, letting Jackie snatch the remote back from her. Jackie lights up when she finds a channel that’s about twenty minutes into an airing of Beaches, but not long after she settles on it, she sends Shauna a suspicious look.

“Do you even like this movie?” she asks. “Or do you just watch it because I like it?”

Shauna laughs again. “Shut up; I love Beaches.”

Jackie doesn’t let up, though. “What about soccer?”

Shauna winces and then tells the truth. “No, not really.”

Jackie deflates. “Never?”

“Winning feels nice,” Shauna admits, “but like, I could win a race too and it wouldn’t mean I enjoyed it.”

Jackie’s really studying her now, and Shauna can’t tell if she’s upset or hurt or concerned or some other unknown fourth thing. “The boob dress?”

“Hate it. I like my flannels.”

“You look so good in it,” Jackie replies, almost sadly. “But I think I hate it now too.” Shauna’d been wearing it last Saturday. “What about picking me up for school?”

“Mmm…” Shauna ponders it. “Why did you start asking me to do it?”

“Because I liked seeing you right away every morning,” Jackie answers. “I get to spend an extra few minutes alone with my favorite person to start my day.”

“Oh.” Shauna smiles fondly to herself. “Then I love it.”

“Before you got an explanation?” Jackie presses.

“I don’t know. It was alright. Just kinda one of those things. Another thing I do for you because that’s how things are. I do like doing things for you, but only when I know you recognize that I’m doing them.”

Jackie looks away, thinking deeply. Then glances back to the kitchen, checking that Shauna’s mom has gone to bed, before she asks a question that feels overdue tonight. “...Boys?”

Shauna bites her lip. She hopes it’s okay. She hopes Jackie still feels like they’re completely in this together. “Yeah.”

Jackie’s trying to hide it, but Shauna can tell it’s not good. “So you can be normal.”

“I don’t wanna be normal.”

Jackie’s eyes drop to her lap. “...I do.”

Shauna doesn’t know what to say to that, so she tries to lighten the mood. “Then I guess I’m lucky you can’t be. I kind of like not having any real competition.”

The joke plants a new thought in her head, though: Jackie alone at Rutgers. The two of them not fixing things fully somehow, maybe, and barely seeing each other. Jackie going out on dates with boys, keeping up appearances because Shauna hadn’t been able to convince her to not. But then being brave enough after a couple of drinks to explore the night life around Rutgers, the right bars with the right kinds of people, the right kinds of girls—

She pictures Jackie’s fingers tangled in long hair, pulling. Jackie moaning into a kiss, Jackie liking it with someone who isn’t Shauna. 

There aren’t words for how much she hates it. She hates it worse than Jackie with Jeff—and worse than Jackie with no one at all, even though she knows she’s not supposed to feel that way, that it’s not right to wish that on her over this alternative that makes Shauna’s blood boil.

She wonders if Jackie feels this way about her, given her penchant for possessing, for controlling. She wonders if Melissa and Jeff had made Jackie’s blood boil even worse than this hypothetical girl does Shauna’s. Had she tortured Jackie unknowingly with the Melissa reveal during their party game and then enjoyed it, not realizing the true intensity of Jackie’s jealousy? She feels almost certain that the answer is yes. She thinks back on today, on Jackie’s quiet, passive-aggressive anger in the locker room with Melissa and her borderline slanderous revenge tour against Jeff, and she’s even more certain of it.

She picks up where she’d left off, while Jackie’s eyes rise to her own. “I actually don’t think I could handle you being anyone else’s again. And I don’t mean boys.” She swallows thickly. “I mean, boys would be horrible, and I’d be devastated in a different way, but I’d know how you really felt. I’d know that it isn’t real. If you fucked another girl I’d ruin her life.”

Something bright sparks behind Jackie’s dark eyes. “What would you do?” she asks quietly. A warm heat unravels at Shauna’s navel and then rolls through her abdomen, lower and lower.

Shauna’s never really hurt another person before, aside from a couple of elementary school fights that had started with someone picking on Jackie. She’s not a violent person. But the images in her head now are bloody and grotesque—so much so that it shocks her a little. It feels primal, pulled from somewhere deep inside of herself that she hopes will never be properly accessed. 

“I don’t know,” she says, but Jackie looks undeterred, knowing.

“Yes you do.” Jackie’s eyes drop to her mouth. “I think about it too.”

Jackie’d hit Melissa so hard on the soccer field that she could’ve broken something. And that had been over some light flirting that Shauna hadn’t even done intentionally, before Jackie’d ever known about their kiss. What would she have done if Melissa hadn’t pushed Shauna away last Saturday? How much angrier would she be tonight? Would she be desperate to paint over Melissa’s touch with her own hands and mouth?

Shauna exhales shakily and squeezes her thighs together. She’s absolutely pounding between her legs. Surely, by now, her mom would be asleep in her upstairs bedroom, all the way across the house. She wouldn’t overhear if… if maybe they just—

But they shouldn’t. Not yet.

Jackie stands up out of nowhere and says, “I should shower. Can I borrow a change of clothes tonight?”

Shauna’s head spins as she blinks herself out of a hazy fog of arousal. “There’s some stuff you’ve left over here in the top drawer. I washed it.”

“Thanks.” Jackie gives her one last look before she heads upstairs—one that makes it abundantly clear Shauna doesn’t have a good poker face—and Shauna heads to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. She’s parched, suddenly.

By the time she’s back up in her room, one of her towels is missing and Jackie’s practice shirt and shorts are in a pile on the floor next to Shauna’s bed. Shauna’s bathroom isn’t en suite like Jackie’s, but it’s right next door off the hallway and Shauna can hear that the shower isn’t running yet. 

She closes her bedroom door and collapses on her bed silently, cheeks flushed, still aching and throbbing, her core still tight. She feels almost feverish. She wants to touch herself. She can’t stop the swimming visions of Jackie’s mouth angry on hers, Jackie pinning her down, Jackie taking what’s hers.

She knows it’s not what she’s supposed to be thinking about. She’s in love. It should be soft, maybe. Gentle. And she wants that, too. It’s just not what she’s thinking about tonight.

She sits up and decides to let some of it out in the most appropriate way available to her. She digs out her journal and a pen, flips to a fresh page when she sees the latest one’s filled, and writes with flushed cheeks, almost frenzied, dazed.

Fuck everything else I’ve ever written about her. It’s never been about not being possessed by Jackie. If I can belong to her like this I want it forever. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since the first time I touched her. Even the thoughts that aren’t about her still are, because I’m using them to distract myself from thinking about her. Everything is about Jackie. Everything I do is because of Jackie. I want her so badly right now. I haven’t gotten off in a week because I’ve been so destroyed without her and all I can think about is the way she’s been looking at me and treating me today. I’ve been wet since I saw her this morning. Something’s wrong with me. I’d let her do anything. I’d do anything she wanted me to do to her.  

She drops the pen as soon as she gets those last two sentences out, rereading her stupid rambling horny mess of an entry with blown pupils and a dry mouth. It hasn’t helped to write it out. She snatches up the journal and plants it face down on her nightstand, still open to the page, just so that she won’t be tempted to write anymore or look at it again. 

The shower still isn’t running. Jackie hasn’t even gotten in yet. She’s probably taking off her makeup first. Shauna has time.

She lays flat on her mattress and shoves her hand down her soccer shorts and into her underwear, turning her head sideways as the first tendrils of pleasure start to emanate from where her hand is stroking herself. She breathes hard, her eyes drifting aimlessly to her vanity, to the collage of pictures surrounding it. All Jackie and Shauna. She stares at the most recent one: the two of them in their soccer uniforms last semester, arms wrapped around each other, smiling so widely. Jackie’s so pretty in it. Shauna’s come staring at this photo dozens of times.

She’s getting closer. Her fingers dip inside, pumping slowly. Her gaze drops to the bedroom floor. She sees Jackie’s soccer clothes in that little pile.

She doesn’t think, doesn’t give herself time to feel shame. She fumbles over the edge of the bed and snatches up Jackie’s shirt. Then she flops back down and presses it over her nose and mouth and neck and inhales.

It’s Jackie. Sweat and her natural scent mixing with the perfume she likes to wear. A trace of her body wash, too. Shauna’s eyes slam shut and she pushes down the insults her brain screams at her—freak is the most common, again—and lets her hand pump harder in her shorts. She loses herself in it, pants, “Jackie, Jackie, Jackie,” into the shirt and feels her own hot breaths ghosting along her cheeks. Her hips rise into her hand and she imagines it’s Jackie’s hand, Jackie on top of her, smelling like she does when Shauna pounces on her on the soccer field after Jackie scores a goal.

“Jackie,” she moans, higher, desperate. She can’t stop saying her name. She’s so close.

A floorboard creaks near her door. Shauna’s eyes snap open and her head turns. She gets a brief glimpse of Jackie in the half-open doorway, red-faced and wide-eyed with a towel wrapped around herself, before the door’s very abruptly yanked shut and Shauna’s left alone with her hand frozen in her shorts.

She sits up and drops the shirt like it’s burned her as she pulls her fingers out of herself. She blinks at the slick on her hand like it’s a foreign substance, still trying to process what’s just happened. Jackie saw her. Jackie came back to her room for some reason and saw Shauna sniffing Jackie’s dirty soccer shirt and fucking herself.

She’d have taken about ten apologies to Melissa in the locker room rather than suffer through one iteration of this. She can feel herself panicking. She is a fucking freak. Jackie’s going to know now. Jackie’s going to think so too. And what can Shauna say? Yeah, sorry, you treating me like shit all day and then us talking about wanting to hurt other people for touching each other was basically foreplay for me, and yes, I did enjoy smelling your dirty clothes while I got myself off. At least it wasn’t your shorts?

She’s actually fucked. She’s lucky Jackie hadn’t laughed in her face for it. She’s probably freaking out in the shower. Shauna can hear it running now.

She gets up before she can think about it, wiping her wet hand off on her shorts and unsteadily making her way to her bedroom door. She cracks it open and pads down the hallway toward the bathroom. She isn’t sure what she’s doing. She doesn’t have a plan. Maybe to just knock and see if Jackie answers, and then hope her brain comes up with something on the spot to save herself.

I was just trying to be quiet. I was using your shirt to help. 

Yeah, that’s maybe believable. She has pillows, she has her other hand… but sure. And if she can explain the shirt away, it’s actually fine. She’s allowed to get turned on by Jackie and masturbate to her. Jackie doesn’t have to know the specifics of what’d gotten her going. And Jackie’s got jealousy issues too, clearly, so maybe if Shauna just says talking about being jealous turned her on, she’s home free from there.

Phew. 

She steadies herself by the bathroom door. Raises her hand to knock.

A soft little moan echoes from inside, and Shauna freezes. For a second, she thinks she’s imagined it. Then she’s sure she has.

Until she hears a faint gasp, and then a second moan that’s louder, breathier, and very much not in her head. 

Shauna swallows a lump in her throat and spends about two seconds resisting the urge to press her ear to the door. She loses the fight and turns her head, listening against the wood. 

Jackie isn’t loud at all; it’s just that the bathroom’s small and amplifies sound and Shauna’s right there, probably less than ten feet away if not for the wall. 

She knows she’s being a freak again. She should leave. She definitely shouldn’t touch herself to this. This is Jackie’s private moment, and yes, it’s happening right after she’d seen Shauna acting like an absolute heathen on her bed, but there’s technically no proof that Jackie’s doing this because of—

“Shauna,” Jackie moans faintly, and Shauna’s hand is back in her shorts so quickly she almost pulls her bicep. She leans away from the door because it feels just a little less weird when she isn’t outright listening in with her fucking ear pressed against it, and stares at her mom’s closed bedroom door at the other end of the hallway, hyper-vigilant given that she’s just touching herself openly in the middle of the hallway. She bites down on her lip, racing right back up to the edge again, and determinedly avoids making any sounds as she hovers there, teasing herself, not quite ready yet.

Jackie doesn’t share her auditory inhibitions—likely because she’s under the reasonable impression that no one’s outside of the bathroom door listening to her like a creep. She lets out a pitched whine that Shauna’s heard from her a few times before, when she’s close, and then she’s moaning loudly again—a little too loudly, actually; that one could’ve maybe reached Shauna back on the bed if her bedroom door had been open. “Shauna,” she gasps, her voice breaking on the last vowel, and Shauna knows that’s it. 

She comes alongside Jackie, pressing her forehead to the wall and gripping the doorframe to stay on her feet, rocking her hips into her hand and letting her mouth open to unleash several heavy breaths. She thinks she was quiet. She’s certain of it, actually.

It takes a moment for the dizzying pleasure to fade, and Shauna wipes her hand off again afterward and then wobbles her way back to her room. She grabs a random book from her shelf to pretend to read on her bed, and that’s how Jackie finds her ten minutes later. 

“Hey,” Shauna greets her casually, eyes flicking up but not really meeting Jackie’s. Jackie doesn’t try for direct eye contact either.

“Hey,” Jackie says, just as casually. She’s content to pretend, too. Shauna knows what that means, and it thrills her: they both feel like they’ve done something they don’t want to risk being confronted about. Shauna on the bed, then Jackie getting off on it, apparently, in the shower. “Top drawer, right?”

“Yeah.” Shauna closes her book and gets up quickly. “I’m gonna shower now.”

“Okay.” 

-

When she gets back, she retrieves her pajamas and leaves to change in the bathroom, just in case this is another line they’re not supposed to cross right now. It’s not until she settles onto the bed with Jackie—who’s apparently passed the time alone messing around with Shauna’s Tamagotchi—and they both just sit there together, cross-legged with a foot of space between them, that she notices there’s a marked difference in Jackie.

And not like after Jackie had come back from her shower. A bigger difference, like something else has happened. Jackie almost seems flustered. Shauna asks her, “Do you wanna go to sleep?” and Jackie’s answer is too quick.

“Do you?”

It catches Shauna off guard. “I don’t know. I’m a little tired. But I could stay up and talk if you want.” She flinches. “Just, I mean… about the fight. And the stuff I said. If there’s anything else you need to know.” She wants to make it clear that she doesn’t mean they should talk about what Jackie’d walked in on, is all.

Jackie seems to choose her words carefully. “Is there anything you need from me?”

The question sounds like it has a double-meaning, but Shauna’s probably just reading it that way because it’s coming out of Jackie’s mouth. Or because she knows Jackie saw her on the bed and not outside of the bathroom. Is she offering to… help Shauna finish? She wouldn’t. Not this soon. Shauna’s overthinking it.

“What I mean is,” Jackie adds before Shauna can keep spiraling—and oh, Jackie’s definitely a little pink in the cheeks, actually, “you can tell me what you’re thinking. It’s different now. No secrets, right?” Her eyes finally meet Shauna’s, lingering, curious. “You can share anything you want with me.”

The Tamagotchi is still in Jackie’s hand. Where had she gotten it, anyway? The last place Shauna remembers leaving it is… on her nightstand.

Her eyes dart over. Her journal is still there, but it’s closed now. It’s been disturbed. 

Jackie follows her eyeline and then blushes, full and deep and red. And Shauna can just tell: Jackie hadn’t pried as much as she could’ve. Hadn’t tortured herself by diving into what she’d no doubt known were pages full of outdated anger and resentment. She’d probably just picked the book up, saw her name in the only entry on the page, and read Shauna’s little paragraph about how desperately wet she’s been for Jackie all day and how she’d let Jackie do whatever she wants to her. No big deal.

And now she’s sitting here probing Shauna for details about exactly what things she wants done to her. That’s what this is. Also no big deal.

Shauna opens her mouth and then just says, “I think I should sleep on the couch.”

Jackie grabs her hand to stop her from leaving, letting out a small, self-conscious laugh. “You don’t have to. I didn’t mean to see it.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” Shauna clarifies. She can tell Jackie likes what she’d read. Which is precisely what’s making the situation worse. “This bed’s tiny. I don’t want to wind up begging you to touch me two days after I promised to make things up to you.” At Jackie’s unintentionally heavy look, she swallows and says, “And yes, I know you’d like that, Jackie.”

Jackie looks caught out. “I don’t wanna do anything either,” she admits. “I was just… curious.”

“I feel like the, uh… the journal about covered it,” Shauna says, clearing her throat. But she can’t resist redirecting her eyes to the ceiling to avoid Jackie’s and then letting out a heavy breath—and with it, a quick, “You were so hot today.”

It breaks the tension, surprisingly; Jackie laughs and then dives at her, tackling her onto her back and then smirking down at her playfully. “I kinda think you were too.”

Shauna can’t help but grin like an idiot at her. “God, of course. Jackie Taylor likes me best when I’m doing whatever she tells me to? I’m shocked.”

“I didn’t say it was the best,” Jackie corrects, grinning back. “But I think we maybe had… similar days.”

Shauna raises her eyebrows. “Are you trying to tell me what I think you are?”

“Use that big Ivy League brain and figure it out yourself,” Jackie teases, and they both laugh again—soft, giggly, fading quickly. The energy shifts between them and Shauna watches as Jackie lifts one of her hands and uses it to tuck Shauna’s hair behind her ear. Jackie watches her own movements until it’s done, then returns her gaze to Shauna’s eyes after, serious now, and tells her, “I didn’t know until last semester. Something just… clicked.” She looks over at the vanity briefly, tilting her head in that direction. “There’s a picture over there where I knew. The soccer one. We won our game that day, then went out to get milkshakes after. I kept having to tell myself not to stare at your lips.”

Shauna blinks up at her and just listens, sensing there’s more Jackie wants to divulge. 

“I wanted to kiss you for months. I knew I could get away with it. It just took some time to make myself be brave enough to start using all those stupid excuses.”

“I knew it,” Shauna breathes out, smiling faintly. “You were such a bitch about it.”

“Well, I had to project confidence,” Jackie explains with a soft smile of her own. “I couldn’t let you figure it out in case you didn’t feel the same way.”

“You fucked with my head instead,” Shauna huffs, meaning for it to sound light, but there’s too much truth in it and it lands uncomfortably.

Jackie’s eyes flicker with unspoken guilt and she presses her lips into a slight frown. “I held back,” she says, like maybe it helps somehow. “A lot. I remember this one night, early on… It was that one with the party where Mari puked on Laura Lee. We kissed a little before Jeff picked us up, and you made this sound when I bit your lip.” Her eyes search Shauna’s, darker now. “It wasn’t loud. You were trying to hide it. I remember exactly what I thought in my head then. I remember being afraid it was gonna come out of my mouth.” She looks away, and Shauna lets out a breath that’d been trapped in her lungs. “Then it didn’t, and we went, and Jeff asked me to blow him in his car at the end of the night after we dropped you off. And that was the night I knew for sure I just didn’t wanna do any of it anymore. I cried all night.” She blinks, eyebrows furrowing, and Shauna sees her eyes starting to shimmer. “So after that it was just about finding the right time and the right way to get away with ending it.”

For a moment, they just exist together in silence, Jackie still hovering over her on her hands and knees. Shauna tries to keep her breathing steady with the scent of Jackie drifting around her, the warmth of her body radiating inches from Shauna’s. “I didn’t think a lot about how you felt, around that time,” Jackie admits, finally. “I just cared about figuring out if you liked kissing me. I saw how you held back, too. I thought maybe you liked it. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“It’s okay,” Shauna says, and tries to let it rest, let it be true. “I can’t exactly hold things like that against you and expect you to forgive me at the same time. I was so much worse.”

Jackie rolls off of her without warning, landing on her back next to Shauna, and says, cracking a small smile, “Well, since you mention it: you know what fucked me up? That mixtape.”

The tension lifts immediately and Shauna groans against her, wincing, rolling toward her unthinkingly and pressing her face into Jackie’s neck to hide. “Please, Jackie, not the mixtape again.”

But Jackie’s on a roll, and there is a lighter air between them now; something that reminds Shauna of their lazy days just gossiping in bed together back when they’d genuinely just been friends. “That opening song is crazy, Shauna. And then you mixed in all of these other songs that obviously meant absolutely nothing. You put a sex song in there about making a girl scream and comparing her to heaven and it literally has the line ‘I’m in love with you’; I don’t even know what it’s called but it made me feel insane. And multiple songs about wanting someone to stay or not being able to let go because you’re so desperately in love.” She huffs. “I mean, I was hopeful, but I really didn’t know what to think at first.”

Shauna sighs and suggests, “You should just throw it away.”

“What? No. I’m gonna keep it forever. I’d play it again now if I thought you’d let me, minus that last song. It’s in my bag.”

Shauna groans. “Oh my God, Jackie; do you just take it everywhere with you?”

“Yeah, I do, actually. You made it for me. It has love songs on it.” Jackie sits up a little, eyeing her bag where she’d dropped it across the room. “Wanna put ‘Linger’ on?”

Shauna both stiffens and swats at her playfully, not sure if she’s serious. “Jackie, that song is two for two on starting fights, and the second time might be one of the most horrible memories of my entire life. I think it’s time to retire it.”

“We can make a new memory,” Jackie says. “A nice one. Just being here together.” But she lies back down and Shauna knows she’s giving up on the idea for now. “Just this.”

Shauna buries her face in Jackie’s neck again, then tentatively places a hand on her stomach. It’s about all the intimacy she’s confident she can manage right now without worrying about crossing a physical line—Lord knows they’ve done plenty tonight without actually touching each other—but it feels so incredible to get to have her hands on Jackie’s body like this again. “I’m gonna vote to take a rain check on a good ‘Linger’ memory.”

“You owe me, then,” Jackie decides. “Promise?”

“Promise.” She feels Jackie relax against her. Shauna looks up at her, only really able to see her neck and jawline from her current angle. “You can ask me more things, if you’d like. Like you did about Beaches and soccer. I’ll tell you anything.”

Jackie ponders it, and Shauna closes her eyes and enjoys the feel of Jackie’s arm curving around her and her hand starting to sweep up and down Shauna’s back. There’s a part of her still trying to process all of this. Waiting to wake up from it like it’s a dream. Waiting for Jackie to decide that she likes boys, that she doesn’t love Shauna after all, that she hates her now after everything she’d said and done. “You know how I said I didn’t want to kiss Jeff at first?” she asks before Jackie can come up with something. She thinks Jackie might want to know this. That it might be a salve on this particular open wound. “I thought he’d probably been kissing you. So I kissed him back to see if I could taste your lipgloss. So then I’d know.”

She has no prediction as to how Jackie will take this beyond that it’s probably a good thing, but what she doesn’t expect is for Jackie to gasp out a laugh and then press a hand to her mouth to stifle more of them. “Oh my God. Shauna, that’s insane.”

“It made sense to me at the time.”

“You were so drunk,” Jackie says. “I’m not saying you weren’t still awful, but… wow.” She gives another small giggle, and Shauna feels Jackie’s smile widen after a moment. “Okay, but. You do get now why I was always complaining about his kissing, right? Didn’t he suck?”

“Jackie,” Shauna groans, scrunching her nose up with distaste. “I don’t wanna do this.” This sounds like a sure-fire way to kill their peace and ruin their night.

Jackie pushes it anyway, laughing. “What? Isn’t he?”

And then comes the still silence, while Shauna figures out what to say without lying and Jackie realizes that Shauna is struggling with a response. Shauna feels Jackie stiffen. She runs a frustrated hand down her face, gives up, and says, “I promised I wouldn’t lie to you anymore. But you’re the only person I think about kissing, okay?”

Jackie doesn’t reply, and after a moment her hands rise to her cheeks, wiping. Shauna hears her sniff and immediately pulls back and props herself up on an elbow to look at her. Jackie’s cheeks are dry now but her eyes are still wet.

“I just didn’t know it was me that was the problem,” Jackie says quietly. “I guess I didn’t think about it. I’m just realizing that even that—Even the kissing was me, too. It’s scary. It’s so… final.”

Shauna reaches out and brushes her fingers over Jackie’s cheek, trying to soothe her. Her eyes meet Jackie’s—wider, searching, concerned—and she feels something tug sharply inside of her chest when Jackie softens beneath her touch. “I wish everything was easier, Jax.”

Jackie turns her head toward Shauna’s hand, lips brushing her palm, and closes her eyes. “I think we should try to sleep,” she says. “I forget how to think when you’re looking at me like that. I… I forget how to just be your friend.”

Shauna inhales sharply, glancing at Jackie’s mouth. She can feel herself aching for the validation. She wants to be shown. She wants Jackie touching and kissing her, hungry for it, desperate. She wants to feel the words mouthed into her skin, pressed inside of her on Jackie’s fingers. She wants them panted into her ear and painted between her thighs by Jackie’s tongue. She wants to be so completely wrapped up in them that she can’t feel anything else but Jackie and her love for her. 

She wants to be deserving of her first, though.

“We’re sharing the bed?” she checks. 

Jackie hums her approval. “I know you’ll struggle, but I think you can make it eight hours without begging me for anything.”

Shauna suppresses a laugh. “Shut up.”

They shift around together, Jackie wriggling under the covers as Shauna turns the lamp off and then settles down next to Jackie in the darkness. They lay pressed tightly against each other, their proximity forced by the size of the bed, but their hands don’t wander. 

“Shauna?” Jackie murmurs, when Shauna’s just starting to feel like she might drift off to sleep.

“Yeah?” she asks faintly, tilting her chin up, brushing her lips against Jackie’s neck in a ghost of a kiss.

“I love you,” Jackie breathes. Shauna smiles, letting the words sink into her chest. “...And just so you know, you can use my shirts anytime you need.”

Shauna full-body cringes and pinches Jackie’s hip hard, making Jackie jerk away from her with a self-satisfied giggle.

“And you can use my shower,” she fires back, grabbing her and pulling her close again.

The quip backfires when Jackie gasps softly and then asks, appalled, “Were you listening, Shipman?”

“No!” Shauna lies, blushing, thankful that Jackie can’t see it in the dark.

“You so were, you little perv.”

“I wasn’t!”

There’s a long stretch of silence as they settle back against each other, and Shauna rolls her eyes and then closes them, ready to try to fall asleep again.

Jackie’s voice is quiet and amused. “...Were.” Shauna kicks her. “Ow! Say it back.”

“I love you too,” Shauna murmurs. “I want to take you out on a date tomorrow.”

“Really?” She can feel Jackie softening at her side.

“Yeah. For dinner. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. I’d love to.” Jackie hums thoughtfully, then, and searches for Shauna’s hand to lace their fingers together. She rolls onto her side and uses Shauna’s arm to pull Shauna into her back so that she’s spooning her, her arm slung over Jackie’s waist. “You just better impress me, Shipman. You’ve got some stiff competition for best first date. Jeff bought me a corndog off of a street vendor outside of a Funcoland for a dollar, had me follow him around in the Funcoland for an hour while he looked for a copy of Doom—they were sold out, by the way—and then tried to finger me in the bathroom.”

Shauna’s heard this story before, but it makes her shake with laughter every time. “I’ll try to top that. But no promises.”

“Understandable,” Jackie mumbles sleepily. Shauna hears her yawn.

They drift off together, after, and the last thing Shauna registers before her eyes flutter shut is the way Jackie’s relaxing against her, breathing evenly, fingers still loosely threaded through Shauna’s.

She thinks to herself that it feels a lot like healing, and then finally falls asleep.

Chapter 15

Notes:

Hope this 10k word JackieShauna date chapter makes up for the longer wait!

Shauna keeps hearing something soft landing on her bedroom floor. 

It’s not too disturbing a sound, and it’s only every few seconds—not rhythmic, though, and just quiet enough that it’s almost possible for her to keep sleeping through.

But then she realizes Jackie’s not beside her in the bed. She grimaces and sweeps an arm out, coming up empty, and then reluctantly squints her eyes, half-open, in the direction of the sound just in time to hear it again.

One of her flannels lands in a pile next to her dresser, tossed from inside of her closet. Jackie is the source: standing at the entrance, digging through rows of Shauna’s clothes with an intensity it’s—Shauna checks her clock, sees 9:30am and confirms it—way too early for.

After some further investigation, Shauna spots one of her tops and a pair of shorts laid out near the end of her bed, and then a dress Jackie’d talked Shauna into buying laid out beside it. On Shauna’s floor, two additional outfits have been cobbled together amongst the piles of rejected clothing. 

“Jackie, what the fuck?” Shauna mumbles sleepily, and Jackie whirls around rapidly, a walking bundle of some type of pent-up energy Shauna’s too sleep-foggy to identify.

“You’re up,” Jackie says, smiling guiltily. “Hey. Um, where are we going tonight?” 

“Huh?” It takes Shauna a second to understand what she’s asking. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes. “Like, our date?” She has ideas, but she hasn’t settled on anything solid yet. “It’s a surprise.”

Jackie bites her lip and says, “Okay, but I have to figure out what to wear. And we have to coordinate.”

Shauna blinks at her. “But why are my clothes everywhere?”

“Because.” Jackie crosses her arms with a huff. “I was thinking I’d wear my dress with the flowers, but if it’s not a good fit for the place I can do a skirt, but we shouldn’t both wear too much denim, so then I started thinking—“

“Jackie,” Shauna cuts her off, squinting out at her bedroom with confusion, “can you chill out?”

“I’m chill,” Jackie blurts, visibly offended. At Shauna’s dubious look, she insists, “I am!”

A week ago, Shauna would attribute this to a complete inability to just let Shauna control something for once. She almost does it now, too, and almost lets it make her bitter, almost lets herself think she can’t even let me choose my own outfit for a date.

But then she really looks at Jackie, and she knows what this energy is. Jackie’s nervous. Jackie is so fucking nervous and she’s grasping for anything familiar to help ground herself. And if there’s one thing Jackie knows, it’s how to put together a cute outfit. 

Shauna softens. Jackie does too, and then just looks away and mumbles, “I’ve been up since eight.”

“You can pick my outfit,” Shauna tells her. “If it won’t work, I’ll veto it.”

Jackie brightens right away and moves toward the top and shorts combo on her bed. “Okay, so, if I go with the dress for me, this top has a floral pattern too, so we’d match, but we also have to factor in the weather, especially if you’re taking me anywhere outdoors. Also, it obviously matters whether it’s just dinner or if we’re doing some other activity too, because I can’t wear the dress and my favorite heels that go with it if we’re gonna be, like, running or—“

“I don’t have any extreme sports planned, Jackie,” Shauna interrupts her, propping herself up on her elbow and placing her cheek in her hand, watching Jackie fondly. “Wear the dress.”

Jackie pauses, opens her mouth like she might say something else, but then just settles and says, “Okay. So then, for you—“ She turns away. “Well, just let me keep looking so I make sure I don’t miss anything. You have so much stuff in here you’ve never worn, you know.”

“You hate most of my clothes,” Shauna points out, but she sits up fully and crawls to the end of the bed to pick up the top Jackie currently seems to have as her frontrunner. “I thought you didn’t like my button-ups.”

Jackie’s back in her closet now. “I like the lower-cut ones. And if I’m wearing my dress you should bring a flannel. In case we’re outside and I get cold.”

Shauna blinks at the shirt in her hands, soaking the words in, then sets it down and just flops onto her side on the mattress, curling in on herself and burying a goofy smile into her comforter. There are so many butterflies in her stomach suddenly that she feels like if she opens her mouth she’ll vomit them out. She’s never related more to the swooning, lovestruck teenage girls in all the cheesy romance movies she and Jackie had grown up watching together. 

Maybe it’s just the image of her taking a flannel off and holding it open for Jackie to slide her arms into that’s causing this now, or maybe it’s just finally all hitting her fully. She’s not sure. She’s seen Jackie in that dress and the matching heels before, all done up for parties or nights out with Jeff. She looks so pretty in it. 

“Oh God,” she says before she can keep the thought in her head, “I’m gonna look like a troll next to you.” 

“Don’t say that about yourself.” Jackie sounds annoyed. “It’s not a competition.”

Shauna sighs, “Easy for you to say when you’re always the winner.”

She regrets it immediately. Jackie reappears at the closet door and leans against the frame, crossing her arms again and meeting Shauna’s guilty look with sadness and disappointment. “Well,” she says, “I guess we can’t expect it all to just go away on its own.”

“I’m sorry.” Shauna tries to shrug the moment off, uncomfortable.

“I’d rather you say it,” Jackie tells her, “if it’s just gonna stay in your head and make you, like, resent me.” Shauna wants to protest that—though she’s not really sure how she would—but Jackie tilts her head and goes on, “You know, you punched a couple of boys in elementary school for calling me ‘bug eyes’. And I think yours are…” She almost sounds reverent. “I love your eyes. Sometimes you look at me a certain way and you don’t know you’re doing it, and I thank fucking God you can’t do it whenever you want. Because you could have anything you asked for if it came with that look.” 

Shauna’s hands feel clammy and the butterflies in her stomach have gotten even worse. She can feel a flush crawling up her neck. 

Jackie sighs and says, “And in my head I’ll be ‘bug eyes’ forever. And my boobs are too small, but yours are perfect. And my lips are less full than yours.” Then she smiles. “But instead of hating you for those, I just tried to get exclusive access.”

The comment’s so unexpected that it drains the heat from Shauna and pushes a laugh out of her. “It’s all yours, Jax,” she jokes, feeling lighter.

“The looks better be, too,” Jackie warns, but she’s still smiling as she turns and disappears into Shauna’s closet again. “Anyway, I’m not the enemy tonight. You’re gonna have bigger things to worry about than who looks hotter.”

“Your parents,” Shauna fills in knowingly. She’s already been worrying about how much of a fight they might put up when Jackie tries to leave the house with Shauna yet again tonight.

Jackie scoffs dismissively. “Not even. My mom’s been popping a Valium every evening this week and my dad won’t stop me.”

“Oh.” Shauna’s confused. “Then what am I worried about?”

“Temptation,” Jackie says idly, like that one word hasn’t just put about a dozen different dizzying images into Shauna’s head. “I’m still mad at you.”

“You are?” Shauna asks dumbly, because it sure hasn’t seemed like it.

“Mhmm.” Jackie doesn’t sound it, though, and Shauna immediately suspects this is just more of Jackie playing games. Then she knows it is, because Jackie adds, teasing, like she doesn’t really mean it at all, “So we probably shouldn’t do anything tonight.”

Shauna sidesteps it, not wanting to indulge her by getting flustered. She actually hopes they genuinely don’t cross many physical lines tonight. “I think I got a lot of it out of my system last night,” she laughs out. “I’ll be alright. I wasn’t expecting anything.”

Jackie feigns ignorance. “Oh, last night? What did you do last night?” Shauna blushes and doesn’t answer. “Do you wanna know how long I was standing there for, by the way?”

“I think I’d literally rather throw myself out of my bedroom window, actually.”

“Oh, you definitely would.”

Shauna huffs and changes the subject. “Okay, what am I wearing? Have you made a decision?”

Jackie emerges with a dark purple flannel in one hand and winks at her. “This will go well with my dress.”

-

She drops Jackie off at home by ten thirty with the promise to pick her up at five o’clock, and then spends the next six hours planning their date. First, she cobbles together enough ideas to fill the entire front and back of a page in her journal. She checks the local yellow pages in case she’s missed anything noteworthy in Wiskayok, and even drives around a little to see if anything catches her eye. She spends a few hours doing research at the local library, and also stops by the store on her way home, too.

It comes together slowly, and by four thirty she’s staring at herself in her bathroom mirror, running her fingers through her hair and studying her best attempt at doing her makeup. She’s in the button-up Jackie had picked out for her with the top button undone to show a little more cleavage, the purple flannel, and a stretch denim skirt that stops just above her knees, also eventually selected by Jackie. She’s been permitted her usual black chucks for footwear.

She exhales shortly, squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, and then blinks at herself again. “She’ll like it,” she says quietly, thinking again of her plans for the evening. She considers putting on lipstick and then tries a darker shade of it, then changes her mind and rubs it off. She stares some more and feels herself panicking. “Fuck.” What if Jackie doesn’t like it? What if it’s too much, or the things Shauna wants to bring up upset her, or—

“No, she’ll like it,” she says again, cutting off the negative thoughts. “There’s no way you’ll be worse than Jeff, at least.”

It doesn’t really help, but she shakes the nerves out and then checks the time in her room. 4:35. She pulls on her shoes and snags up the single rose she’s left lying on her bed, cut down earlier to just a few inches of stem so that it can be left in her car’s cup holder. She twirls it, smells it, and feels nervous all over again. She grabs a small bag containing her keys and wallet and then heads downstairs. 

Ms. Shipman hasn’t been around all day, and Shauna’s caught off guard when she finds her bustling around in the kitchen, impossible to avoid on the way to the front door. Shauna gets spotted right at the bottom of the stairs and freezes on instinct. There’s a pot of something boiling on the stove.

“Hey!” Ms. Shipman seems taken aback. “Well, look at you. Where on earth are you headed off to looking like that? I was just starting dinner for us.”

“Uh,” Shauna starts, glancing down at herself, wondering how on earth she’s supposed to get out of this. She never dresses like anything close to this unless Jackie makes her do it for a party. And she never goes to parties this early in the day. Also, she’s holding a rose.

Ms. Shipman smiles wide with the realization. “Who’s the flower for?” she teases. “Baby, are you going out on a date?”

She says it like she’s sure of it. Like Shauna’s definitely caught. Shauna lies—poorly—anyway. “No. I just… found this.”

Whatever was happening in the kitchen has been abandoned now, and her mom is coming to her instead, excited, curious. “Just so you know, normally he brings you flowers,” she teases. “Who is this boy? I haven’t heard you talking about anyone new lately.” Then something clicks, her face changes with cautious realization, and Shauna… doesn’t feel panicked like she thought she would. The topic’s come up before, here and there, just generally, and Shauna knows it’s okay. She knows she’ll be accepted. 

Her mother lowers her voice, though, like she’s about to suggest something shameful, and then asks, “It’s not… Jeff Sadeck—?”

“What?” Shauna scoffs, recoiling. “God, Mom, no. How did you even know—? Never mind.”

Ms. Shipman places a hand against her chest and sighs with relief. “Oh, thank God. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I got quite the phone call from Mrs. Taylor last Sunday while you were upset in your room.” Shauna pinches the bridge of her nose, wishing she could vanish into thin air, but her mother just settles down and says, “Well, Jesus, Shauna, I’m not exactly sure why you looked like a deer in the headlights just now, then.”

“Because,” Shauna says, squeezing her eyes shut. She should just do it. Get it over with. She’d thought she was about to have to anyway. “There’s…” She bites her lip, still not looking. It takes a second longer than she thought it would, but then she opens her eyes and finishes, “not a boy.” Her mom’s eyebrows furrow. Shauna’s not actually sure she gets it. “There’s someone, but not a boy,” she clarifies, and then it sinks in.

Ms. Shipman ponders it for a moment, like she’s been asked to taste-test something that’s mostly a little bland. “Oh,” she says easily. Then she freezes, raises both eyebrows, and looks at Shauna more meaningfully. “Oh.” And Shauna realizes, belatedly, that that second one is her mother realizing which girl. 

She probably should’ve foreseen that. Who else would it be? They’d just had a shared week-long meltdown over each other that her mother had been witness to. Not to mention the years and years of being obsessively inseparable. 

Shauna’s jaw closes with a clack and she swallows hard, then just asks, “Can we not talk about this? Like, ever? Until I’m forty?”

“I—” She may have actually struck her mother dumb. Shauna can see her trying to process it all. There’s over a decade of memories to rewrite in her head now, so it makes sense. “I don’t know.” Then she inhales suddenly with yet another realization and asks, scandalized, “Have you two been… at your sleepovers?”

“Mom,” Shauna complains, slipping past her in a rush. “I have to go.”

“That is not an answer, Shauna Shipman,” follows her down the hallway to the front door. “Don’t you dare stay over at the Taylors tonight! You come back here and we’ll talk in the morning!”

Shauna waves her off, blushing furiously, and hurries out the door.

-

Her face has cooled by the time she’s pulling into Jackie’s neighborhood, but she hasn’t really calmed. Just shifted her focus, slowly, over the course of the drive, from the nerves of her mother knowing now to the evening that lies ahead. She’s happy to shelve what’s waiting for her back at home for the next few hours to concentrate on impressing Jackie. 

They’d agreed ahead of time that she’d wait outside and Jackie’d keep an eye out as five o’clock approached, rather than Shauna coming to the door and potentially disturbing Jackie’s parents, so when she arrives at 4:48, a little early, she spends a couple of minutes doing some last-minute grooming in the mirror of her sun visor. 

She gets out of the car after and walks around to the passenger’s side, leaning her back up against it and resting the rose behind her on the top of the car. She looks down and picks at her fingernails while she waits, and tries not to let her nerves get any worse. She’s had butterflies all day, ever since they’d cropped up this morning, and she’d even skipped lunch after they’d robbed her of an appetite. She’d had to force breakfast down with Jackie. 

She hears the front door open and her head jerks up. Jackie’s quick and quiet enough about closing it and leaving her front porch that Shauna can guess she’d waited for an opportunity to slip out past her dad. 

She’s wearing the floral dress, half-running in a pair of strapless heels with a tiny brown purse hanging off of one shoulder, and Shauna finds herself giggling watching Jackie make a break for it down her driveway.

“Don’t laugh at me!” Jackie squeaks, reaching her and practically throwing herself into Shauna’s arms like she’s finally reached safety. Shauna catches her, still laughing, and holds her loosely. Jackie’s hands cup her neck and she takes a long, sweeping look at Shauna, filled with approval. “Yeah, okay. I kinda nailed it.”

Shauna presses her lips together to suppress a smile and then says, “You know me; I’m just a vessel for yet another Jackie Taylor accomplishment.”

“Shut up,” Jackie says breathily, still looking her up and down. “Fuck, you’re hot. I missed you today.”

Shauna chooses to ignore what that does to her lower body and hopes her blush is at least a little contained, even though it doesn’t feel like it is. “You look really pretty, too.”

Jackie grins at her, steps back and then takes Shauna’s hand and lifts it, giving a little spin in her dress. “You’ve seen me wear this before,” she says, though, downplaying it.

“Not for me,” Shauna points out, and Jackie’s grin turns coy.

“It was always a little bit for you.” She presses back in close, while Shauna’s trying to ignore what that comment does to her—And she’s starting to truly understand what Jackie’s teasing about temptation had been about this morning. Jackie’s not even acting all that differently; it’s just that they’re on a date and she’s flirting, and Shauna already wants to kiss her. They’re inches apart, Jackie’s arms over her shoulders, and she’s put so much effort into her hair and makeup. She looks stunning.

Shauna turns away slightly and grabs the flower, then faces Jackie again and offers it to her. “I thought a bouquet might be kind of hard to deal with for the whole night, but I wanted to get you something.”

Jackie takes it into both hands, handling it delicately, her smile smaller and contained now. “I’m just now realizing that I’ve never actually seen you be romantic,” she says. “Like, on purpose. Without me having to beg for a mixtape first.” She buries her nose in the flower and inhales, and Shauna’s eyes fall to Jackie’s purse.

“Did you bring it?”

“Yeah.” Jackie’d been shocked when Shauna had asked her to. And then incredibly excited, of course. “It’s in there. Do we need it now?”

“Not yet.” Shauna takes a deep breath. Jackie’s still a little distracted by the rose. “So, basically, I decided we’d do a few things tonight. A you thing, a me thing, and then something for both of us. In that order. Okay?”

Jackie bites back a grin. “You’re taking me on three dates?”

“There might be extra stops, too,” Shauna says. “But like, three major things, I guess. We have to hurry before some places start closing.”

Jackie steps back to give Shauna room to move away from the car, and Shauna reaches for the passenger door and pulls it open for her. The way Jackie looks at her, then, it’s like Shauna’s just asked her to marry her: she’s beaming, radiant, like she’s melting on the inside. Shauna looks back and forth between Jackie and the door she’s holding open for her with confusion. “Really, Jax? This?”

“Oh, don’t act like it’s surprising,” Jackie huffs, reining herself in a little, but she’s still beaming as she slips into the passenger’s seat. Shauna closes it for her and hurries around to the other side. 

Then they’re off, and there’s no music, so Jackie turns the radio on and then keeps glancing at Shauna every few seconds, like she can’t stand to look away for too long. Shauna’s cheeks have been burning so intensely for so long now that she’s starting to feel a little light-headed. 

This doesn’t feel like a date with someone she’s had sex with. It doesn’t even feel like a date with someone she’s kissed. It feels like starting over fresh: the butterflies, the nervous energy, the anticipation. She thinks if Jackie held her hand she’d probably just sweat profusely all over it. 

She reaches over and turns the cool air up to nearly full-blast, and Jackie laughs and rubs at her own bare arms. “Sorry,” Shauna mumbles, turning it down a couple of notches. She decides maybe it’s just better to put it all out there, and then blows out a breath and says, “Holy shit, I’m so nervous.”

Jackie laughs again. “I’ve peed, like, three times in the past twenty minutes.”

It helps—not with her physical nerves, but with her mental state, at least. “At least you didn’t have to plan it.”

“I’ll plan the next one,” Jackie decides, which makes Shauna’s stomach swoop. “Are you gonna tell me where we’re going?”

“To eat.”

Jackie rolls her eyes, smiling. “Fine, never mind. Are you staying over after?”

“I think your mom might have a brain aneurysm if she comes into your room tomorrow morning and finds me in there with you,” Shauna jokes. “She made me leave your place on Wednesday and Thursday, and then got a call from you on Friday telling her you were staying at my house, and if she wakes up later tonight she’s gonna find you missing—with me. I might have to give her a break tomorrow.”

“Oh, is that the reason?” Jackie teases. “Not because you’re scared to share a bed with me again?”

“I’m not scared,” Shauna insists, taking a turn onto the highway. 

Jackie looks out her window with interest, distracted. “Oh, we’re really going somewhere.” She takes a second, then lights up suddenly. “Wait, is it that place in Matawan I’ve been wanting to try? The fried rice place where they cook it in front of you?” When Shauna does a poor job of hiding her smile, Jackie gasps. “Shauna, that’s so expensive! My parents were gonna take me there after graduation!”

“It’s fine,” Shauna says. “I’ve saved up plenty. Don’t worry about it.” Jackie reaches over and takes her hand, and Shauna had been right about herself: she starts sweating almost immediately. “And this way we won’t be in Wiskayok. Like, we won’t know anyone.” She hopes Jackie understands what she’s implying, but leaves it at that. 

She’d thought a lot about it after talking to Van: having to spend her time with Jackie worrying about people wondering why they’re both all dressed up. This is the only part of their date where they won’t have some amount of privacy, so going somewhere without any risk of familiar faces had made sense to her. If Jackie’s still too shy there’s not much she can do about it, but she can at least make it easier for her.

“Did you have to make a reservation?” Jackie asks. “It’s a Saturday night.”

“I made it,” Shauna reassures her. “We’re good.”

“I’ll get something cheap,” Jackie decides.

Shauna glares at her. “No, get what you want. Just not dessert, cause I wanna do Dairy Queen later.”

“I’ll pay for that, then. I told you I’d get the next one anyway.”

Shauna hums her acquiescence, watching the road carefully now. She’d memorized the route at the library and it’s supposed to take about twenty minutes. They should be getting close. 

Jackie’s hand squeezes hers, and Shauna hears her take a deep breath. “I think I’m gonna get the chicken. You should get steak or shrimp and then we can split them so we each get to try both.”

“Okay,” Shauna says, and keeps driving, keeps holding Jackie’s hand.

-

Dinner is meant to be the simplest part of their date tonight, and it is: Shauna and Jackie cozy up to each other in a booth they share with a family of five, which initially makes Jackie way too self-conscious to outwardly act like they’re more than friends, but she rests her hand on Shauna’s thigh under the table enough times that it feels like a conscious attempt at an acknowledgement of what they really are. It makes Shauna nervous too, especially when Jackie’s hand lands a little too high to be anything but intentional. 

The chef is friendly and playful, and it takes a giggly and extremely entertained Jackie three tries to catch the broccoli he tosses at her mouth. Shauna gives him a sour look when it’s her turn and then barely tries once; after it smacks her on the chin, he takes the hint and moves on. Jackie looks at her fondly after and rubs at her chin with a thumb, telling her, “Don’t be grouchy.”

“The volcano was kind of cool,” Shauna admits, humoring her.

Jackie squeezes her thigh and leans in close to say quietly, right into her ear, “Every time I hear the word volcano, I think of that line from that first song you picked out for me.”

Shauna knows what she means—knows the line’s you fuck like a volcano—and coughs around the appetizer in her mouth, temporarily drawing the attention of the father sitting closest to them. “Oh.”

Jackie refocuses on the chef, watching happily as he tosses a spinning egg into the air with his spatula. When he’s done, she’s right back by Shauna’s ear with, “So after this is your thing, right? Can I have a hint?”

“No,” Shauna says, hiding a smile.

Jackie huffs. “Please? Is it outside or inside?” Jackie’s lips and body are still too close, and have been for too long now. Shauna wonders if she’s temporarily forgotten that they have an audience. The teenage boy sitting next to his mother is maybe two years younger than them and he’s been staring at Jackie off and on throughout dinner. She wonders if Jackie’s even noticed, as focused as she’s seemed on Shauna. She wonders if this is how it’s always been: Jackie not even registering the full extent of her own gravitational pull, too busy being sucked into Shauna’s instead.

Shauna steadies herself internally, her eyes on her own lap, and just says, “Okay, fine. It’s inside. But the last part is outside.”

Jackie’s hand is back on her thigh, sliding, stroking along the denim—not too high, but not very low, either. “Are you gonna give me your flannel?” she flirts.

“Yeah, if you want it,” Shauna breathes quietly.

“Excuse me?” The chef interrupts them, startling them both out of their conversation. He seems almost confused by them. “Sauce?”

“Just Teriyaki, for both of us,” Shauna blurts, recovering faster. “Thanks.”

The mother and father give them both lingering, uncertain looks, but ultimately go back to focusing on their own dinner. 

Jackie blushes, successfully spooked, and keeps a reasonable distance between them afterward. 

But when their meal is over and paid for, and they’re making their way across the parking lot together, no one around to scrutinize them, Jackie steps into her, invading her space, and then tangles their fingers together. It warms Shauna’s whole body, makes her skin feel like it’s alive and buzzing. Jackie kisses her cheek as they walk, then laughs quietly and licks her thumb, wiping off the lipstick print Shauna assumes she must’ve left behind.

Shauna blushingly opens the door for her again and Jackie gives her a long look as she brushes past her. It’s hard to read: one part fond, one part flattered, several other parts a myriad of things Shauna isn’t sure she even wants to decipher this early on in the night. She has to keep her composure, especially for this next part. It’s the scariest part of the night for her: she thinks there’s a chance Jackie might be uncomfortable with it. She just hopes she can convey what she wants to in a way that Jackie will instinctively get. 

Still, Jackie reacts exactly how she’d expected when they park at their next location. “Wait, are we at the library?”

“Don’t complain,” Shauna warns, opening her car door. 

“I wasn’t,” Jackie says quickly, following suit. “Actually, I should’ve guessed. We are doing your thing.”

“C’mon, they close in an hour,” Shauna tells her, offering her hand. 

Jackie looks around, sees they’re alone, and then takes it, asking her playfully as they head for the entrance, “Are you bringing me here just to make out in the back of the stacks?”

“You got me,” Shauna says. “It’s always been a fantasy of mine.”

“You’re acting like you’re being sarcastic, but I totally bet it’s true.”

“Fine. It’s a little bit true. But not what we’re here for.”

This is the part that had taken the most planning. She’d even had the books she’d needed held for her at the front desk as a favor—one she’s sure had only been granted to her because of her relative familiarity with some of the staff. 

She lets go of Jackie’s hand once they’re inside and beckons her toward the front, and Jackie’s eyes dart around warily; Shauna knows Jackie can probably count her lifelong trips to the library on two hands. 

It’s not as deserted this late in the evening as Shauna had hoped for. The tables near the front are all occupied. She reaches the front desk and smiles at the attendant. “Hey, just picking those books up.”

Soon enough, she has a stack of them in her arms and Jackie’s following her into the depths of the library, only looking more and more confused. “I know this is gonna be good, because it’s you,” she says, “but what the hell are we doing?”

“I’m giving you a history lesson,” Shauna explains, finally, finding a corner in the very back of the shelves and plopping down onto the floor. She sets the books down at her side and pats the ground next to her, and Jackie smooths down her dress and then daintily places herself beside Shauna. “Just listen. I want to show you these.”

“Okay,” Jackie says, amused. She leans over to look as Shauna props the first book up against her own thighs. The tabs Shauna had left behind earlier in the day, marking the pages she’d needed, all seem to still be there, thankfully. It had taken her hours to get them all done. 

“I knew some of these ahead of time,” Shauna goes on, mindful to keep her voice down. “I mean, I still had to find them, but I knew what I was looking for. Just from, like… over the years. It’s stuff that reminds me of you. Writing that makes me think of you, or that I think you’d like.” Jackie’s listening carefully now. She leans over and rests her head on Shauna’s shoulder. “I want to read it to you.”

“Okay,” Jackie repeats, but this time she’s quiet and solemn. 

This is nerve wracking. Shauna’s never thought of herself as particularly romantic, even though she has aspirations to be a writer, and she’s always had her journals. There’s always something about writing that’s always felt inherently romantic to her, though, even when it’s not about love. Just the act of turning thoughts into words, giving a voice to an internal emotion. She wishes she’d done better on Jackie’s behalf. She’d been so scared to write the things Jackie deserves to have written about her. She hopes maybe there’s still time.

She flips the book open to the first marked page. “You: an Achilles’ apple,” she starts.

Jackie closes her eyes as Shauna reads the rest of the poem, and asks, when she’s done, “What’s it about?”

“It’s Ancient Greek for ‘you’re out of everyone’s league’,” Shauna jokes.

Jackie laughs and requests, “Okay, do another.”

Grinning, relieved, Shauna says, “Okay, this one’s longer. It’s a love poem, but it’s bittersweet, kind of. It’s about love being painful. Wanting relief from it. But it’s good.” She flips to A Hymn to Venus and reads it in its entirety, and again Jackie listens with her eyes closed. 

“Who wrote these?” she asks afterward.

“Sappho,” Shauna says.

“Who’s that?” Jackie asks, and Shauna almost laughs.

“Just a poet.” She sets aside this book and picks up the next one before Jackie can press her for details. “Alright, we’re fastforwarding all the way to the 1800s with Emily Dickinson.”

Jackie lights up and says, “Okay, I definitely know that name! …I think.”

“Also a poet,” Shauna says, “and also writes about love sometimes. I have a collection of hers in my closet somewhere, but it was easier to just find the copy they have here.” She turns away to focus on the new book in her lap and knows she’s blushing. She almost wants to blow through these as quickly as possible, aware of how self-conscious they’re going to make her, but with Jackie’s eyes on her she forces herself to make an internal promise to let Jackie keep up.

She reads, and reads, as the minutes go on: Dickinson, and then Amy Lowell, Renee Vivian, Sophia Parnok. Her voice low—almost soothingly so, if the way Jackie just relaxes against her and listens is anything to go by. She explains each poem after, as best as she can—not line for line, but with short summaries that allow her to draw an easy-to-understand parallel to Jackie and herself.

But then she reaches one she can’t bring herself to read aloud, by Adrienne Rich, beyond the first line, which she murmurs to Jackie: “Whatever happens with us, your body will haunt mine.” And then she nudges Jackie and has them read the rest in silence together—your strong tongue and slender fingers, reaching where I had been waiting years for you—and Shauna hears when Jackie’s next swallow is thick and heavy, when her exhale is soft but shaky and audible. It’s relieving to know that this one turns Jackie on too. 

“They’re all women writing about other women,” Shauna murmurs when they’re done, even though she’s pretty sure Jackie’s figured it out at some point. “I’m not great at poetry, but I wanna find a way to write about you the way I always should’ve. Maybe after a couple of semesters at Brown I’ll be able to. Not poetry, still, but… but something. Because I got it so wrong before.” 

“I liked what I read last night,” Jackie says quietly, not looking at her. “I also figured I wouldn’t like what I read if I looked back any further.”

“Yes,” Shauna confirms. “When I read it all back recently, I could see it, though. I could see myself warping things. I could see the truth beneath it. If I had just focused on that… If I had been brave enough to… I wish I had been. I wish I could hand you a whole book that would just make you understand how I feel instead of having to figure out how to show you. I don’t know if I’m any good at showing you.” 

Jackie looks at her and reaches out, closing the book, pushing it off of Shauna’s lap. “You are,” she says. Her eyes are so sharp, so intense. 

Shauna tries not to let it freeze her, tries to keep telling her, “I just… wish I’d done a better job of capturing it. The good parts of what it was like to fall in love with you.” 

Jackie leans in and Shauna knows she’s going to kiss her. She cups Jackie’s cheek but then gently stops her. Jackie’s eyes flutter open: confused, worried. 

“Jax,” Shauna whispers, “I want to, but we might get caught.” There had been several people sitting at the tables near the entrance, and Jackie’s got lipstick on. The only place where they can clean their mouths up afterward is in a bathroom past those same tables.

Jackie’s eyes drop to Shauna’s lips. “I don’t care,” she rasps.

“You do,” Shauna says, stroking her cheek. “We have plenty of time.”

Jackie grabs her wrist, standing quickly, pulling Shauna up to her feet and tugging her back toward the library’s entrance, the books abandoned in a pile on the floor.

There are people out in the parking lot, too, making their way to their cars, and Shauna sees the moment Jackie registers them, and how she deflates a little as they reach Shauna’s car. Shauna takes her other hand, squeezes her fingers, and suggests, “Let me take you to get ice cream, and then if you still want to kiss me in half an hour, you can.”

Jackie forces a laugh. “Do you actually think there’s a chance of my mind changing? I’ll suddenly decide I don’t want to kiss you?”

“Maybe when I don’t let you play The Cranberries,” Shauna jokes. “But I don’t know. We want to go slow, right?”

“It’s a kiss,” Jackie says with a slight smile. “You really expected me to just hold your hand all night? You thought you’d take me here and read me romantic poems and tell me you want to write about me and I’d just thank you and go home?”

“I don’t know.” Shauna does feel a little silly when it’s put to her that way. “If that was what you wanted.”

Jackie sighs, amused, but maybe a little sad too. “Sometimes I feel like you still don’t understand how much I like you. Am I doing a bad job?”

“No,” Shauna confesses, “I’m just insecure.”

Jackie pulls Shauna over to the passenger’s side. “Well, stop being insecure and open my door for me, Romeo.”

Shauna does.

-

Jackie pays for Shauna’s vanilla cone and her own Snickers bar this time, and Shauna drives them to their last stop as they eat. She’s waiting, as she turns into the long stretch of road that leads to their final location, for the familiarity of it all to dawn on Jackie.

It happens slowly, with Jackie looking around and asking, “Have we been here before?”

“Yeah,” Shauna confirms. “A lot.”

“Just not at night?” Jackie guesses. The sun has set now, and the sky is beginning to blacken, much to Shauna’s pleasure. She’d hoped the timing would work out that way. No one will be here.

“Not in a long time,” Shauna corrects, making the final turn, and she glances at Jackie, sees it click.

“Oh my God, is this where it was?” Jackie asks. “We’re like, ten minutes from my house, tops. It always felt like such a longer drive!”

“Well, we were kids,” Shauna says. She pulls into the empty parking lot and stares out through her windshield. 

It’s a small playground at the center of an equally small park, tucked deep into a few winding turns, and they’d come here for playdates as kids because it’d been halfway between their houses. She can see that the main structure’s gotten a few upgrades over the years, but the swingset and the jungle gym haven’t changed at all.

She takes Jackie’s hand as soon as they’re out of the car, and Jackie laughs at her own wobbling as she tries to maneuver across the grass in her heels. Eventually, she lets go of Shauna’s hand to just take the heels off and carry them, then runs on her tiptoes across the mulch surrounding the swings. She still has her Snickers bar—Shauna had finished her cone on the way over—and she plops down on a swing and drops her heels, then takes the last couple bites of the bar and places the crumpled trash next to her shoes. As Shauna settles into the swing next to her, Jackie extends her messy fingers toward her and wiggles them playfully. 

Shauna raises her eyebrows. “I’m worried about kissing you and you think I might suck on your fingers?”

“A girl can dream,” Jackie sighs, and then does it herself instead. They both relax a little, pumping their legs slightly to get their swings going, and Shauna watches Jackie look around. “Our dads used to take us here. That’s so crazy to think about now.”

Jackie’s dad does maybe twenty percent of the parenting now. Shauna’s doesn’t do any; she gets a phone call from him maybe once a month, and that’s it.

“Remember we used to hide in the slides?” Shauna recalls with a laugh. “And make them guess which one we were in? And they’d pretend not to know even though, like, obviously there were massive shadows through the walls.”

“I fell off those monkey bars and fractured my wrist,” Jackie adds, pointing them out. “You made your dad let you come with us to the hospital, and held it in your hands the whole car ride there.” Shauna only remembers this vaguely. “You kissed it better in the lobby while we waited. I should’ve fallen for you then and there.” She smiles faintly. “Maybe I did.”

Shauna lets out a heavy breath, kicking out at the mulch nervously. She changes the subject. “So, does tonight top Funcoland?”

Jackie giggles. “Shauna, tonight topped Funcoland when you were the one waiting outside of my house for me.” 

Shauna blushes but says, “You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” Jackie says simply. “I don’t want it to end.” 

A gust of wind billows past them, whipping Jackie’s hair about, and then Shauna’s, and Shauna sees her give a slight shiver. She hides a smile when Jackie gives her an expectant look. “You want it?”

Jackie stands and comes to her, pulling Shauna up to her feet, wrapping her arms around her tightly. “Are we going anywhere else after this?” she checks. 

Shauna shakes her head. “Just home.”

“Okay,” Jackie says, and then presses a kiss to Shauna’s left cheek, and then her right, and then against her jaw, leaving thick red prints that almost match the color of Shauna’s heated face. “I’m cold,” she says pointedly as soon as she’s done.

Shauna laughs and shrugs her flannel off, then drapes it over Jackie’s shoulders. She’s immediately cold herself, instead, but she doesn’t complain. Jackie rubs at Shauna’s arms like she suspects she might be, then slides her own arms into the flannel and wraps her up tight in another hug, her chin resting on Shauna’s shoulder. Shauna lets herself be squeezed, warmed.

“I’ve been thinking about what it’ll be like now,” Jackie murmurs vaguely to her. “Now that we know. Like, if it’ll be different.”

Shauna takes her best guess. “Kissing?”

“More than that.”

“Oh.” Something flickers below Shauna’s navel. “I haven’t thought about that yet.” There’s still something holding her back. She knows what it is. She closes her eyes and sees Jackie at that party a week ago, disbelieving and then angry and then broken.

Jackie’s hands stroke up her back, rub over her shoulder blades, loosening her up there. “What did you think about on your bed last night?”

Shauna exhales heavily, trying to make the memory of Jackie screaming at her go away. “You don’t need to say stuff like that to try to make me want you more than I already do, Jackie. You don’t have to play games with me.”

Jackie huffs into her ear and whispers, “You’re still doing it. Still thinking I’m way more calculated than I actually am. I planned on flirting with you. I knew I’d want to kiss you. I didn’t know I’d be standing here thinking about asking you to touch me in your car.”

Shauna’s arms wind around her and she says, for herself just as much as for Jackie, “Not until you forgive me. I don’t want things to be messier than they already are.”

Jackie pulls back to search her eyes carefully, amusement reflected back in her own. “Shauna, I know I gave you a hard time yesterday, but do you really think I could be out here with you tonight if I hadn’t already started to forgive you?” Her face softens. “I’m hurt. I’m a little angry about it… off and on. But I’m working on it. I don’t hold onto things the way you do.” She offers her a small smile. “I think it’s gonna take you a lot longer to forgive yourself.”

“Maybe that’s what I’ll have to wait for, then,” Shauna decides quietly. 

Jackie looks at her closely. “Then just don’t make me wait forever, Shauna.” 

In moments like these, Shauna wonders how she could’ve ever thought Jackie doesn’t know her. Of course Shauna’s going to hate herself for it all. She’ll probably hate herself a little bit for it forever. The only question will be how deeply she can shove it down inside of herself and forget about it.

Jackie leaves her, then, to go retrieve her heels and the Snickers wrapper. She disposes of the latter in the nearest trash can and then asks Shauna, lifting her purse, “So what was the tape for?”

Shauna sets her shoulders and shrugs off her nerves. She’d gotten through the poetry; she can get through this. “The last part.”

She leads Jackie back to her car, letting Jackie hold onto her arm for balance while she slips one heel back on and then the other. Shauna takes the tape from Jackie’s purse after and motions for her to wait as Shauna slips into the driver’s seat of her car and turns the engine on. She puts the tape in and messes with it for a minute or two, trying to get it set at the right spot. Finally, she finds it: right at the beginning of “Wild Horses”. It’s five minutes long, slow, and romantic, and it’s not The Cranberries, so it’ll do.

She rolls the window down but then steps out of her car and closes the door, offering Jackie her hand. At Jackie’s confused look, Shauna clarifies, “Not that we could go together anyway, but when we win State we’ll have to miss Prom for Nationals.”

Jackie’s smile is tentative, almost shy. “Are you asking me to dance with you?”

“You’ve told me I’m a terrible dancer a billion times already. Don’t make fun of me tonight,” Shauna warns lightly, and immediately Jackie pulls her in tight, almost overenthusiastically, slinging both arms around Shauna’s neck. She presses their foreheads together, beaming, and Shauna’s hands fumble to find a spot on Jackie’s body.

“My waist,” Jackie tells her, giggling, and Shauna grips her firmly there. “Not literally, Shauna. Around.”

“Oh.” Shauna steps in closer, sliding her arms around Jackie’s waist and holding her at her lower back. “Like this?” She doesn’t even feel the cold now, between Jackie’s body heat and her own inner warmth. 

“Yeah.” Jackie leads them into the beginnings of a slow sway, the breeze tossing their hair again, forcing them closer to stay warm. Shauna closes her eyes and just moves where Jackie steers her, feeling herself starting to tremble. At first she thinks it’s from the cold, but then she realizes she’s just grown that nervous. She can feel Jackie’s every exhale against her lips. “I know something I want,” Jackie tells her quietly, and Shauna can almost hear the curve of her smile in the words. “That good memory for the song? I want it to be us dancing to it. It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

“Okay,” Shauna agrees, equally softly. 

“There’s just something about it. I don’t know,” Jackie goes on. “Maybe I always felt a little foolish, I guess. But that song makes it sound romantic. And knowing that you picked it… I hoped you felt embarrassed too. Like… as helpless about me as I did about you.” Her voices changes, then, something pained and breathy behind it. “You know about that part, right? Even though I never really told you? How hard I wanted to fight it at first? How fucking scared I was?”

Shauna keeps her eyes closed, strokes at Jackie’s back through the flannel and the dress, and just listens.

“I know this sounds bad,” Jackie whispers, “but it was so much harder, too, because I knew I could have you. You always wanted to do what I wanted. We’d have sleepovers and every time we’d be lying there in the bed I’d think about how if I asked to kiss you, you’d let me. I felt gross and scared. Then I made myself do it anyway, and then I felt selfish even though I thought you liked it. Because maybe it was just fun for you like I was pretending it was for me.” Her arms tense against Shauna’s shoulders. “What were you thinking, then?”

“I don’t know,” Shauna answers honestly, surprised by how hoarse her voice sounds. “I was confused. I guess I felt used. I just wanted it to mean something too.”

“What about now?” Jackie sounds worried. “What are you thinking now?” She shakes her head, corrects it. “If I kiss you, what will you think now?”

Shauna knows what she’s really asking. She remembers Jackie in her bedroom on Thursday, paling, wondering what Shauna had thought of as Jackie’d kissed and touched her. “It’s not like before,” she reassures her. “I just don’t want it to be temporary. I’m scared too, and I know the stakes are different for me but I don’t think they could ever be high enough to change my mind. What’s the fucking point without you, Jackie? I obsessed over this idea of having some great adventure without you at Brown, being better than you, never speaking to you again, and that’s a joke. I’d have never admitted it, not even to myself, but I’d have been miserable. I don’t want a life without you in it, and I want you in it just like this. It’d just feel empty otherwise. Wouldn’t it?”

Jackie nods against her eagerly, and Shauna hears her sniff, feels her release Shauna briefly to wipe her tears away.

“I’m not saying we have to tell anyone,” Shauna prefaces, “but we have the summer and then we can do visits and calls. Let’s just figure it out.”

“Okay,” Jackie says tearfully, folding so easily. It makes Shauna wonder what else she’s missed out on just because she’d never actually tried to ask for it. She wonders how many requests Jackie—unknowingly or not—has just been waiting for, ready to fulfill. 

She closes the gap between them, brushing her lips over Jackie’s, taking the kiss, too. Jackie goes lax against her, pliant, cradling Shauna’s face gently in her hands. Giving herself over so easily like she means to send a message with it, like that message is take whatever you want. I will give you whatever you ask for. 

Shauna presses in, both hands on Jackie’s lower back as their lips meet, as their mouths come together so softly, without urgency. The kiss is slow and long, and deep down Shauna had been worried that if they did this, it would too easily—uncontrollably—snowball into more. It doesn’t. Shauna tilts her head and savors Jackie’s mouth and kisses her again and again, sweetly, and then harder, hungrier, and Jackie whimpers but matches her pace, and Shauna wants but she mostly just wants this for now. Jackie’s hands on her cheeks. Jackie wearing her flannel, trembling against her and turning their kiss wet and salty with her tears.

It feels different than before—not incredibly different, but there’s a safety there, a comfort. This kiss feels like a promise. 

Shauna makes her say the words aloud, too, when they part for a moment to catch their breath. “You’re mine,” she whispers, brushing her nose against Jackie’s. “Say you belong to me.”

Jackie shivers against her and Shauna knows it’s not from the cold. “I belong to you,” she whispers back. They kiss again, and that primal thing inside of Shauna surges forward to the surface out of nowhere. She bites hard at Jackie’s lip, just enough to draw a gasp and a soft, “Ow,” from her. It doesn’t bleed, but it’s enough to leave her bottom lip slightly plump and temporarily marked with lines from Shauna’s teeth. Shauna stares at it darkly and feels something settle and relax in her chest, as though sated. “What was that?” Jackie breathes, touching her lip curiously, her eyes heavy on Shauna’s. Her lipstick is messy, smeared. 

“I don’t know. Sorry,” Shauna lies, glancing toward her car. The song has ended, and Green Day is starting to play instead. She needs to turn it off. “Let me take you home.”

-

Jackie’s house is completely dark from the outside. It’s a good thing; it means her parents aren’t waiting up for her, that her father had essentially shrugged Jackie’s absence off and just gone to bed instead.

Jackie’s still wearing Shauna’s flannel in the passenger’s seat, and she fiddles with a corner of it almost nervously as she asks, “Are you sure you don’t wanna come in?”

Shauna’s been on edge for the entire ride home, warm between her thighs since they’d kissed and she’d watched Jackie run her tongue over her swollen lip. She shakes her head, and it’s not because of her mother’s request or for fear of upsetting Mrs. Taylor. Jackie’s pink cheeks are telling her Jackie knows, too.

“Night, Jax,” she says gently instead, leaning across the center console to go in for a kiss on the cheek. Jackie turns her head slightly so that their mouths catch instead: brief, chaste. Shauna lingers, hesitating, and then leans in again, opening her mouth wider, tasting the inside of Jackie’s, undoing the job Jackie had done of cleaning her lipstick up after last time. 

Jackie lifts a hand and grasps her chin, kissing her back fiercely, burying a soft moan between them. Her other hand fumbles around and Shauna hears a seatbelt unbuckle.

Jackie pushes her backwards and climbs into her lap, dress hiked up as she straddles her, and Shauna grips her waist and lets Jackie tip Shauna’s head back and take over. She drags her mouth down Shauna’s neck and Shauna tries to keep her breathing steady and her mind intact.

For all of Jackie’s amazing qualities, she is definitely still Jackie, still flawed, still self-centered sometimes. Sometimes she hears things but doesn’t actually listen. Sometimes even when she listens, she acts like maybe if she just pretends she hadn’t, she’ll be able to get her way and everything will be fine.

“You wanna do this here?” Shauna tries to point out, to make her see sense even as Jackie’s pressing frenzied, open-mouthed kisses to her neck.

And maybe Shauna is more of a romantic tonight, even though it’s usually Jackie, because Jackie licks up to her ear and just rasps, “Yeah. I don’t care if you don’t.”

Shauna uses all of her willpower to push her back by her shoulders, blink up at her, and breathe, “I told you ‘no’ earlier. Not yet.”

Jackie freezes and then looks contrite. Shauna watches her glance around them like she’s taking in their surroundings, realizing what she’s doing. The flush to her cheeks deepens and Shauna can tell it’s from embarrassment. “…Oh.”

“It’s gonna be different now,” Shauna warns. She feels guilty, because she knows Jackie doesn’t mean to do it and that this is making her feel bad, but it’s too important to just let go. “You can’t ignore something I say because you don’t like it.”

“I don’t—“ Jackie starts quietly. “I just thought…” Shauna gives her the time to finish, but Jackie doesn’t seem to have an ending ready. Shauna watches her deflate. “It wasn’t like that.” She huffs, leaning in, staring at Shauna’s mouth and confessing, “I’m really not trying to do the thing where I ignore you and you feel like everything’s one-sided and I never ask what you want. I was listening so closely. I know you feel guilty and you want to do this right. You just kissed me and my brain stopped working. I’m just horny.”

The absurdity of that word coming out of Jackie’s mouth makes Shauna burst into giggles, and Jackie smiles with relief, almost like she’d been hoping for that sort of reaction.

“Yeah, I can fucking tell,” Shauna laughs, motioning for Jackie to get off of her. Jackie collapses back into the passenger’s seat gracelessly with a heavy sigh, and Shauna watches her pull down the sun visor to check her own reflection. 

“Fuck,” Jackie murmurs, touching her fingers to her mouth. Her lipstick has smeared all over again. Shauna’s sure it’s all over her own lips and neck now. “Can you come over tomorrow?”

“You should go to church with your parents,” Shauna says. “Spend the day with them and earn some points back. I made plans with my mom.” She’s not technically lying.

Jackie wrinkles her nose unpleasantly and whines, “I don’t care about spending time with anyone but you,” but Shauna can tell she’s going to do it. 

“We can hang out Monday after practice,” Shauna offers. Jackie accepts that with a reluctant head-tilt. “Goodnight for real, Jackie.”

Jackie leans over swiftly and steals a peck from her, then pointedly holds the flannel tight to herself with one hand, retaining ownership, and reaches out to open her door. She steps outside, taking her flower with her, but turns before she closes the door and bends over, looking back into the car and teasing, “I’ll be thinking about you tonight. You better think of me too.”

Shauna knows it’s an innuendo, but she can’t help but reply sincerely, “You’re the only thing I think about.”

Jackie’s nose scrunches up and her eyes turn soft. “Don’t say things like that while you’re asking me to leave,” she complains, but closes the door and makes her way up her driveway with a couple of glances back at Shauna.

Shauna smiles to herself, watching her until Jackie reaches her door. Jackie waves and blows her a kiss, and Shauna catches it for some reason like a complete fucking dork. Jackie’s laughing fondly at her as she slips inside and disappears from view.

Shauna drives home: exhilarated, giddy, covered in traces of Jackie’s kisses, whole.

Chapter 16

Notes:

Humbly revealing myself as a simple "The Wilds" girlie who has done this on anon so as not to spam my existing subscribers with constant updates from a fic belonging to a different fandom. I go by Tnr92 and you can look me up on Twitter to say hi if you'd like. This is going to continue to be updated anonymously though. Sorry for not having watched as much of Yellowjackets as I should before writing for it!!

Jackie, Shauna writes in the morning, on the first page of an unused journal she hadn’t anticipated cracking open for at least another few months. But there’s something about the “starting fresh” of it all that had made her reach for it not long after she’d blinked her eyes open and let the memories of the previous evening wash over her.

I dreamt about you last night. We were in my bed, just talking and laughing together for a while. I don’t remember anything we said. I wanted to kiss you, but I was too nervous to try. Not all that different from how things are when I’m awake. I have so many memories of just looking at you, watching you talk, thinking about how your lips might feel. Even before you ever kissed anyone for the first time, I always thought you’d be a good kisser, that you’d just know what to do somehow. I always wondered how you’d taste. When you’d let me borrow your lip gloss, I’d put it on and think about my lips tasting like yours. I still think about it every time, even now.

Spending yesterday evening with you was the happiest I’ve been in so long. I wish that things were different, that I could’ve spent the night. I stayed up late thinking about you. I thought about touching you. How soft your skin would feel. The sounds you’d make. 

Should I feel as embarrassed writing all of this out as I do? I spent so much time airing my grievances here instead of saying them to your face like I should’ve. Maybe it just feels strange writing out something that feels nice for once. I think I’ll stop here for now, but this is where I’m going to keep the good things, the entries that I write when I’m feeling how I am this morning. Or maybe just where I keep all things Jackie. Is there really a difference, as in love with you as I am?

Shauna

-

Shauna’s mom is curled up on the living room couch with a book and a mug of coffee, waiting almost patiently for her. Shauna hasn’t made her wait long—it’s just after nine—and she feels eyes following her as she plods into the kitchen in her pajamas, sticks a slice of bread in the toaster, and then yawns.

“Good morning,” her mother greets her: light, casual.

“Just get it over with, Mom,” Shauna sighs out, not in the mood for pleasantries. The toaster dings and Shauna fumbles to get the hot toast onto a plate. She brings it to the living room and sits down next to her mother to eat it plain. 

“I’ve had some time to process,” Ms. Shipman tells her, still sounding relatively unaffected—so it hadn’t been put on, at least. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Shauna answers reflexively. She really doesn’t even know how to start to broach an analysis of her own okay-ness. She feels like there are about twenty layers to dig through to reach a real answer and she isn’t really sure where to even initially plant the shovel. She feels okay. It would be hard not to feel okay after last night. And there are other ideas that sit in the back of her mind, summarized by words and phrases like “closeted” and “guilt” and “separate colleges” and “the Taylors” and “Jeff and Jackie” and “Nationals” and “homophobia”, but those are problems to be dealt with if and when they arise. 

She might actually not be that okay if she digs, and she’s maybe just painting over it all with the good things, like the fact that Jackie’s kissing her again. Fuck it, though; so what if Shauna’s chosen to be an optimist for once in her life? Sue her. 

“Okay.” Her mother doesn’t seem convinced, though. “How is Jackie?”

Shauna throws the most ridiculous hail mary she’s ever thrown in her life, because actually, now that she’s thinking about it, maybe it’s better if her mother doesn’t know everything about her love life. “I never said it was Jackie, you know.” Ms. Shipman laughs at her, and Shauna scowls. Never mind, then. “She’s okay.”

“How long has this been going on, Shauna?”

“Last night was our first date,” Shauna mumbles, not looking at her.

“That’s not what I asked.”

Shauna grimaces and thinks about lying. She actually resents having to talk about this. There had been a relief to revealing the stuff about girls, but her mother knowing that it’s Jackie feels like she’s been peeled back in a way she hadn’t been ready for. Sure, Van and Tai and Melissa know, but they haven’t known Jackie like her mother’s known Jackie. They won’t stare at her and analyze and think back like her mother will. 

She tries a different approach, hoping to scare her away. She rolls her eyes and sasses, “Well, Mom, are you asking about when she kissed me for the first time, when we admitted it meant something, or do you need the exact date and time that Jackie shoved my hand into her underwear?”

The thing about Shauna’s mom is that she’s actually kind of cool. For a mom, anyway. Though Shauna would never admit it. She’s reasonable, and down to earth, and only tolerates the uptight unreasonableness of the Taylors because of how important Jackie is to Shauna.

So it’s not that surprising when she just says back, visibly unfazed, “Sounds complicated.”

Shauna just gives her a sour look. “So?”

“So, I’m your mother.” Ms. Shipman sips her coffee and sets her book aside. “I know you like your privacy, Shauna, and I think I do a pretty good job of staying out of your way because I know that you’re a good kid. Hell, you’re going to Brown.” She pauses, squints at nothing, and then checks, “You are still going to Brown, aren’t you?”

Shauna knows why she’s asking, and feels the need to defend Jackie here. “Yes, Mom. Jackie actually said she wanted me to.”

There’s a long silence at that, and Ms. Shipman makes a soft, thoughtful sound, relaxing. A faint smile appears on her lips. “...That was very mature of her,” she says, finally. “Very selfless.”

“Yeah,” Shauna says.

Ms. Shipman clears her throat. “Well, what I’m trying to say is that I’m your mother, and this is a big deal, Shauna. Even if you don’t want it to be. Even if we both wish that it wasn’t. So I’m not asking because I’m being nosy, but because I want to help.” Shauna focuses on getting a few bites of food down, sensing there’s more coming. “Is Jackie gay?”

It feels dirty to answer. It feels so gross, like it’s not her place to say, especially when Jackie’s never said so herself. But Shauna knows the answer. And she knows where this is going, too, and why her mother’s asking. Why it’s actually important that she knows. Shauna’s stomach sinks, lower and lower, so low that she reconsiders taking another bite. “Yeah.”

Ms. Shipman is quick and decisive with her response. “Then I need you to talk to her, Shauna, and tell her two things. I need you to tell her that I know what’s going on, and I need you to tell her that she can stay here for as long as she wants, if she ever needs.”

The reality of it all smacks Shauna hard, then and there, a blow to her full body. It lands heavy and hard, and she drops the toast in her hands and buries her face in her palms instead, leaning over and sobbing out of absolutely nowhere, processing all over again that this is going to ruin Jackie’s life, that Jackie will eventually either have to choose Shauna over absolutely everything, or worse, not choose her. What if Jackie doesn’t choose her? Even the best conversation they’ve had about this has been a commitment to continue in secret. 

She feels the plate being moved out of her lap and then her mother’s arms are around her, holding her while tears streak down Shauna’s cheeks. “I love you, sweetie,” Ms. Shipman murmurs to her, like she knows exactly what this is about, and that it’s not actually about the Taylors, as sorry as she feels for Jackie. It’s about her own insecurity. “And you are so strong. No matter what happens, you have an incredible life ahead of you.”

Her mother’s fucking hedging her bets, is what this is, and Shauna recognizes it. She doesn’t trust Jackie not to break Shauna’s heart. She’s not reassuring her that this will end the way Shauna wants. She’s reassuring her that she’ll be able to push through the pain if it doesn’t.

Shauna shrugs her off harshly and stumbles to her feet, wiping at her eyes, glaring hard at her. “Jackie loves me,” she says, and wishes she didn’t sound so weak, that she wasn’t crying as she said it. “Nothing her parents say to her is gonna change that.”

But she can remember thinking it, not that long ago: envisioning a life where Jackie loved her back but they hid it together forever. Maybe even with husbands at their sides. She’d told Jackie she’d be her secret forever. Maybe she’s being held to it. Is she being held to it? Is that the plan?

She doesn’t want to know the answer.

Her mother only says, “Shauna, let me just finish saying one thing, okay?” She pats the couch next to her and Shauna reluctantly takes a seat again, but at the far end this time, as far away from her as she can get. “I will help you both however I can, okay? Let me make that very clear.” She sighs. “Frankly, I’ve realized there wasn’t even much of a point to me worrying about the sleepovers. I’d rather you do it at home than sneak off to some empty parking lot where who-knows-what’ll happen to you. It’s not like anyone’s risking a pregnancy.”

Shauna knows she’s trying for a smile from her here. Shauna attempts to give her a small one, but she’s not sure if she succeeds. 

“But,” her mother continues, “if I’m being honest, I was relieved when you told me you wanted to apply to a different school from Jackie.” She’s talking more gently now, like she’s worried that she’ll set Shauna off again. “I know you love Jackie. I do too. But I also remember a lot of times where you got frustrated with her. Jackie’s always been… very big. And I think sometimes she made you feel small. And I understand, now, that you’ll be closer than ever, and maybe that… lends itself to everything being a little bit more, moving forward, instead of a little bit less. And I just want you to be okay.”

“She told me to go to Brown,” Shauna reminds her tersely, reading between the lines, understanding what’s being said here. She’s being told she’s codependent. She’s being warned she’s giving herself over to something potentially unhealthy, and doing it so fully that she could wind up letting it overwhelm her and destroy her entirely. Her mom had seen how much their last fight had affected her, after all. 

She doesn’t care whether it’s a valid concern. She doesn’t care about anything now except seeing Jackie tomorrow. “You don’t have to worry. I’m happy. You should want me to be happy.” She wipes the last tears from her cheeks. “And I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

She stands and leaves, and spends the rest of the day holed up alone in her room. Her mother doesn’t disturb her.

-

She makes Jackie breakfast again on Monday morning—not so much because of the lingering guilt from last week, though that’s a part of it, but because Jackie’s still not at one-hundred percent with her food intake and Shauna wants to do whatever she can to get Jackie back into form in time for their next game.

She has it waiting in her lap when she picks Jackie up, but Jackie ignores it to curve a hand around Shauna’s neck the second she’s in the passenger’s seat, draw her in, and press an eager kiss to her mouth—and then another, and another, slow and long.

Shauna’s talk with her mom has rattled her a little, and she reluctantly ends it early to glance past Jackie to her house. “Aren’t you worried your parents will see?”

“My dad already left for work, and my mom’s still asleep,” Jackie tells her. “Trust me; I’m careful.” She slides her hand up to bury it into Shauna’s hair and then kisses her again. Shauna lets her, and Jackie’s tongue leaves a minty taste on her own. “Say the word,” Jackie murmurs, “and I’ll skip first period.”

Shauna smiles and lets out a breathy laugh before it gets smothered by Jackie’s next kiss. “Can’t. We missed so much already.”

“So long as you know where my priorities are.” Jackie dips her head, kissing down Shauna’s neck. “What I’m gonna be thinking about all day.”

“State this weekend?” Shauna pretends to guess. She’s missed Jackie’s mouth. It’s doing wonders on her neck right now, just lightly enough to not leave any marks. “That feels really good.”

Jackie hums pleasantly against her. “State and you touching me. Or me touching you.”

Shauna’s not sure she should call it a “game plan”, because this maybe isn’t as something as simple as a game to Jackie, but it’s clear she has a strategy: flirting relentlessly until Shauna changes her mind. Making it clear that Shauna’s wanted and well on her way to being entirely forgiven. 

It might work.

“We’re gonna be late,” Shauna pants out, reluctantly pulling away from her and offering her a new Tupperware. “Eat this while I drive.”

Though she looks grateful for the food, Jackie gives an exaggerated sigh and says, “Not exactly how I’d hoped to hear those words come out of your mouth, but alright.”

Shauna snorts and shifts the gear into drive. “How would that even work? I’m not a guy.”

Jackie pops the lid open and then sucks a stray drop of syrup off of her fingertip. “No idea, but I’d be willing to give it a shot.”

Shauna bites down on the inside of her cheek, smiling, and gives Jackie a sidelong look. “Are you gonna be like this all day?”

“Yeah.” She’d remembered the fork this time. Jackie takes a bite, grinning. “More subtly, though. Unless you tell me you hate it.”

“I’m not gonna tell you I hate it.”

Jackie raises a curious eyebrow at that, her smile morphing into a smirk. “Oh, you really shouldn’t have told me that, Shipman.”

“Use my name,” Shauna requests, focusing on the road now. “If you’re really not mad at me.”

“Okay.” Jackie reaches over with her free hand, squeezing Shauna’s. “Anything else before we get to school?”

Shauna thinks of her mom, of filling Jackie in about her. She knows she should soon. But she doesn’t want to ruin this morning by doing it now. “Just… finish that this time. You’re worrying me. Three square meals today, Jax.”

“My stomach shrank, is all,” Jackie says, and Shauna’s knows it’s true, but it doesn’t change how slow she’d been on Friday.

“I know. Just try.”

“I am trying. I’ll get there.” Jackie takes a deep breath, lets it out. “We’re gonna win. And then we’re gonna fly out to Seattle three weeks from now, and you and I are gonna share the fanciest hotel room of our lives, and then I’m gonna climb you like a fucking tree. Shauna.”

Shauna short-circuits for a full two seconds and then has to slam down on the brakes abruptly when she realizes she’s almost missed her next turn. Jackie barely manages to keep a grip on the Tupperware. “Oops,” Shauna mumbles, gulping. “Sorry.”

Jackie watches her with amusement. “Should I stop?”

“No, don’t stop,” Shauna says shortly, making the turn.

-

Jackie’s different with Shauna at school. It’s going to be like that, clearly—Shauna only needs the sample size of Friday and today to understand. She’d expected these differences, though: the lack of open flirting, mostly, and just a tad less friendliness, given the attention on them after their fight. It’d almost be suspicious for them to be joking around together and sharing fond looks so soon.

But it’s more than that. Wiskayok High is Jackie’s domain. She’s the reigning queen—officially, even, thanks to her Homecoming crown—and Shauna and Jeff had still humiliated her. She’s in the midst of taking back her authority and maintaining it. There’s a powerful aura to her as she maneuvers through the halls with Shauna at her side, or maybe even a half-step behind her. A confidence in Jackie that emanates from her. Shauna is her sidekick again.

She’s willing to be that here for Jackie’s sake, to take orders and willingly place herself beneath Jackie at her request. Not only because of what she’d done to her, but also because she knows that it’s not the constant treatment it’d used to be. Things are different outside of school now. And them on the outside is what feels real.

She wonders if this is how it’d used to feel for Jackie, always. Like clocking in, putting on a mask and pretending. Shauna had hidden her feelings for Jackie, and her resentment of her, and that had been exhausting enough. Jackie hides everything. Jackie had only come the closest to taking her mask off with Shauna, and even then she hadn’t fully removed it. Not until that night two weeks ago.

She can’t believe it’s only been two weeks since they’d come home from Lottie’s house and changed everything between them. It feels like it’s been months.

She follows Jackie to her locker now, watching her open it and start to collect the textbooks she’ll need for her first two classes. Jackie’s always kept her locker well-decorated, and Shauna stares at the small picture of the two of them inside, and then her eyes drop to a photo of Jeff posing in his football uniform. Jackie could’ve gotten rid of it on Friday, but hadn’t. Shauna tries not to overthink that.

As Jackie goes to close her locker door, she catches Shauna looking and then follows her gaze. When her eyes settle on the photo, she plucks it off of her locker and shows it off to Shauna. “Want to put it in yours?” she asks, because there are two senior girls a few lockers down, within earshot, trying and failing to subtly listen in on them. Shauna hears them giggle.

“No,” Shauna says. “He’s disgusting.” She takes the photo from Jackie and tears it into little pieces. She doesn’t think Jeff’s disgusting, mostly just that he’s a stupid, horny teenager, but now they’re both running with this narrative, burying him together. She likes the feeling of being on the same side as Jackie, teamed up against him. She doesn’t particularly care how deserving he is or isn’t of it.

Shauna’s locker is bare this morning, devoid of Sharpie vandalization. Jackie shoots her a satisfied look that is indisputably hot and Shauna has to try her locker combination three different times to get it open. She’s still blushing as she closes it a minute later. 

They separate until Physics, where they’re lab partners, and today’s lab starts the same way all of the others do: Jackie helps a little at first and then quickly loses interest, leaving Shauna to earn them their inevitable ‘A’ on it while Jackie scribbles into the margins of her open notebook. 

Shauna concentrates hard on the magnets she’s working with, eyebrows furrowed, teeth chewing on her bottom lip; they’ve already weighed them, and next there’s a diagram she’s meant to copy, to place them all correctly, by mass, in the contraption sitting on their shared table, and then there are several complicated calculations to do after the fact. She hears the sound of a paper tearing, but doesn’t really register it, and then a small square is being edged across the table into her peripheral vision, Jackie’s manicured fingers the culprit.

She glances, sees Jackie’s familiar scrawl: You look cute when you’re focused.

Shauna hides a smile and huffs, then realizes she’s lost her place and forgotten which magnet is which. They’re all different colors, and she rechecks the diagram again, and then her own notes about how much each color had weighed.

The paper’s withdrawn quickly, then replaced seconds later. Shauna’s eyes dart over to it.

Skip lunch to make out?

Shauna looks at Jackie tiredly and finds her waiting with a smirk. Shauna’s hand moves to the paper, where she scribbles a quick Eat and then means to end her response there, but another glance at Jackie tells her the smirk has only widened. Food, she adds, and Jackie smothers a laugh and crumples the paper up, then takes it back. 

Shauna thinks Jackie’s done, then—and for another minute or two, she is—but then a fresh square is being slid across the table just as Shauna’s halfway through her math equation. “Stop distracting me,” she mumbles, careful not to be overheard, not looking at the note this time. She hears Jackie tapping impatiently at it, and resolutely waits until she’s completely solved the equation before she takes a look. 

I’ll be respectful and wait…

Satisfied that she’s read it, Jackie takes it back and adds something else, just below it. Shauna, curious, waits this time for it to be returned to her, and reads it immediately when Jackie moves it within her eyeline again.

But I just wanted to be honest…

Off it goes, back to Jackie. Shauna sighs quietly, impatient. Jackie seems pleased with herself as she continues writing, clearly aware that she has Shauna’s full attention. She taps next to the third line as she slides it over.

Because I REALLY think you should know…

Shauna’s nostrils flare and she glares this time. Jackie bites her lip to suppress a grin and motions to her with one finger. One more line. 

Jackie writes it, and this time turns the paper over so it’s face down and tucks it under Shauna’s lab worksheet, effectively transferring it into her possession. Shauna fishes it out immediately and turns it over.

I’ve been thinking about you all morning and I’m starting to ache. Like, right now. Watching you.

Shauna stuffs the note into her pocket with a quickness, cheeks blazing, and doesn’t look at Jackie. She swallows hard and stares down at her worksheet, but the numbers in front of her are blurring and she’s not sure she even knows what two plus two is right now.

Jackie is merciless. Another smaller slip of paper is pushed under her worksheet and left for her to retrieve, and Shauna puts her pencil down and rubs at her eyes and then at her warm cheeks before she grabs it. There’s maybe three feet of space between herself and Jackie and it feels like three inches, she’s so overly aware of her. 

This one’s face down again. Shauna exhales and flips it over.

What if I touched myself for you?

Shauna clears her throat, wet between her thighs, and tucks this note away too. She might frame it, actually, and hang it somewhere she’ll see those words in Jackie’s neat handwriting every day for the rest of her life. 

It doesn’t take her long to consider it, and she blinks down at those stupid math problems once again and then just vocalizes a quiet, soft, “Mhmm,” in her throat. 

Jackie’s next exhale almost sounds relieved. Her final note comes a moment later.

I love a good compromise :) 

-

“I didn’t mean here,” Shauna whines quietly hours later, when Jackie pulls her close seconds after their last teammate has left the locker room to head to practice and starts mouthing at her jaw and neck. 

“Not that,” Jackie puffs against her skin. “Just kissing. For a second. Been waiting all day.”

Shauna twists around halfway, double-checking the locker room door, her mind already going hazy. On the way to look, she spots Van’s gloves on a nearby bench and makes a mental note to grab them and take them out to her. 

She faces Jackie again and backs her up against the nearest locker. The impact is sudden and satisfying, and Jackie bites softly at her neck and then grabs her hips. Shauna gives them ten seconds in her mind—and then they need to go—as she cups Jackie’s head and then her cheek, redirecting her to her mouth. 

Eight, seven, six, her brain counts down, and then Jackie’s tongue is in her mouth and she loses track. She buries both hands in Jackie’s hair and she’s been pent up all fucking day; she doesn’t even mean to but somehow her thigh ends up between Jackie’s and just one accidental second of pressure has Jackie moaning desperately into her mouth. Shauna kisses her harder, resisting the urge to bite at her lip, to leave evidence that they’ve just been doing this in the form of swelling there.

The locker room door swings open and Jackie shoves Shauna back by her hips with a quickness. Shauna stumbles away, nearly trips over a bench, and as her heart shoots up into her throat and she steadies herself, her eyes snap to the door.

It’s Van, mouth open uncertainly, eyes wide. “Shit,” Van says.

Shauna exhales heavily, so fucking relieved, and lets her shoulders sink and her body relax. She almost wants to laugh, but then she looks over at Jackie and her burgeoning smile fades. 

Jackie’s eyes are wide and her whole face is red, and her chest is rising and falling with unmistakable panic. She’s terrified. “Van, she kissed me,” she says hastily, and Shauna’s heart drops. “I… I’m not—”

“I’m just here for my gloves,” Van interjects, raising her hands in surrender and then moving across the locker room quickly. She aims a brief sympathetic glance at Shauna as she retrieves her gloves, and Shauna’s heart only sinks further.

“Fuck, Jackie,” she breathes, not shocked, not angry, just… Maybe this was needed. Maybe Jackie throwing her under the bus is a reality check. Jackie bows her head, hearing the disappointment in her voice. Shauna glances at Van, silently asking for permission, and Van fiddles with her gloves for a moment and then nods. “Van already knows.”

Now it’s Jackie who stiffens, who raises her head to look sharply between them. “What?”

“I fucking made the mixtape at her house, remember?” Shauna reminds her. “It was kind of obvious.”

Van fills in the rest for her, telling Jackie, “I’m dating Tai. Shauna’s known since she came over that day. I’m not gonna say anything, Jackie.”

Jackie blinks rapidly at her, taking that in, and then exhales heavily and slumps against her locker. “Oh,” she says, but like she’s still processing it. “...Tai?”

“Yeah, since last semester.” Van presses her lips together, looks between them uncomfortably, and then declares, “I’m gonna go.”

“Yeah,” Shauna breathes. “We’ll be out in a second.”

The door swings shut behind Van, and Jackie and Shauna stand in awkward silence for a moment. Shauna’s eyes drift to the unused hair tie on Jackie’s wrist. “You should finish up. I’m just gonna head to the field.”

Jackie squeezes her eyes shut, guilt etched into every inch of her expression. “I’m sorry.”

“You have more to lose,” Shauna says quietly. “You just thought quickly. It’s a good thing you can do that.” She kind of means it, but she also kind of doesn’t. “I’d have wanted you to do it. If it ever happens for real, I’d rather it be me than you.” She doesn’t mention the outcome she’d want most: for it to be both of them facing it together. She leaves room for Jackie to offer it up.

Jackie doesn’t. Instead, she says, “It won’t ever happen for real.”

“Ever?” Shauna echoes immediately, swallowing thickly.

Jackie looks uncertain. “I don’t know. Not on accident, I mean.”

“Okay.” 

That’s something. That’s progress. It leaves room for hope. Shauna will take it.

Shauna crosses to her and kisses her on the cheek. Jackie’s still trembling a little as she turns and kisses Shauna’s lips, but Shauna can tell it’s an attempt at reassuring her, and another attempt at an apology. “Let’s just not do it at school again,” Shauna suggests. “Do you still want to come over?”

“Yeah,” Jackie says, nodding, still shaken. “Just… yeah, you head out. I just need a second.” Jackie places a hand over her chest, no doubt feeling her pounding heart, a slight hint of panic lingering behind her eyes.

Shauna leaves her there, still processing everything as she jogs down to the field, not sure yet how to feel about it all.

Chapter 17

Shauna makes herself focus on practice for an hour. She’s back to her usual form now herself, after slightly underperforming on Friday, and most of her efforts are mental—not thinking about Jackie in the locker room, not letting herself analyze it and turn it over in her head, because she knows deep down that she won’t like what comes of it. 

Jackie is almost as bad as Friday. Not physically; she does a better job of keeping up, but she’s checked out mentally, behind on plays because she’s distracted, because she’s not reading her teammates and her opponents ahead of time like she should be. Shauna keeps feeling eyes on her throughout their scrimmage and knows they’re Jackie’s, but she won’t let herself meet them.

When it’s over, Tai goes straight to Coach Martinez and starts what looks like a very serious conversation with him, and Coach Ben pats Jackie on the back and offers her a bottle of water as she sits down on a bench on the sidelines, her head in her hands. Shauna watches Mari go to Jackie and kneel down in front of her, comforting her with her hands on Jackie’s knees.

Lip curling up with dissatisfaction, Shauna heads straight for them both. She can hear Mari as she gets closer: “—our captain; everyone knows how good you are. I’d be off too if my best friend tried to—”

“Jackie doesn’t need your help,” Shauna cuts in, knocking against Mari’s thigh a little too hard with the toe of her cleat to get her attention. It’s not quite a kick, but it’s not not one.

“Ow!” Mari snaps, glaring up at her. “What the hell, Shauna?”

“She’s still a better player than you,” Shauna says coolly, “and at least Jackie’s boyfriend didn’t dump her for his own cousin, so she’s got that going for her.”

Mari shoots to her feet. “You know what? Fine. If no one else will say it, I will. If we lose our shot at Nationals it’ll be because of you. You fucked Jackie up because you got jealous of her and acted like a total cunt.”

“Hey,” Coach Ben cuts in sharply, stepping closer to them, and Jackie rises too, pressing a gentle hand to Mari’s shoulder and pushing her back from Shauna with a warning shake of her head.

Mari only spares Jackie a brief glance, undeterred. The whole team is watching them now. “Why are you even here, Shauna? You obviously don’t give a shit. We can all tell you’re only on the team because you just follow Jackie around like a pathetic little puppy.”

Shauna’s fists clench. She sees red, and it’s only Tai cutting in that prevents her from lunging past Jackie at Mari and—and doing something, probably involving her fists, maybe even her teeth. “Shut up, Mari,” Tai sighs out, coming up from behind Shauna and tugging her away by her arm. “Trashing Jackie’s best friend isn’t gonna make her pick you to be her replacement.”

“That’s not—” Mari starts, flustered, and Shauna smirks at her and lets Tai pull her away.

The rest of the team starts to disperse, and Shauna’s focus shifts to Tai, who releases her off to the side to cross her arms and tell her quietly, “I talked to Coach Martinez. You and Jackie are gonna stay late today. Van and I will help you get her some extra practice. If she’s not fit by Wednesday, we’ll do it again. I am not losing out on a Nationals spot because of your bullshit.”

Shauna clenches her jaw and then mumbles sarcastically, “Great. I’ve always wanted to go on a double date.”

-

It doesn’t take long for the soccer field to clear out, leaving just the four of them behind, and Van dribbles a soccer ball around in front of the goal off in the distance as Tai tells Jackie and Shauna on the sideline, “We’ll do it like this: Jackie attacking from the top of the box, Shauna on defense, Van in goal. I’m gonna watch and give feedback unless I need to step in at some point. Jackie, get around Shauna and get a shot off. We stop when I say.” She looks between them both, watching them sit side by side on the bench, and adds, “Van filled me in. You have two minutes to work it out or set it aside, and then we’re starting.”

She leaves, heading toward Van, and Shauna mutters a quiet, “Bitch,” at her back, not really meaning it. She can feel Jackie staring at her again. 

“I wish you’d told me they knew,” Jackie mutters after a moment.

“I was getting around to it.”

“Does anyone else know?”

Shauna hates that this is what Jackie cares about, that it’s what she’s focusing on. She hadn’t wanted it to come out like this, but she doesn’t want to lie. “My mom. That’s it.”

Jackie’s head whips around. “What?”

“She saw me leaving for our date.”

“You could’ve—”

“What?” Shauna snaps, rounding on her, glaring. Jackie looks taken aback by her anger. “Lied, Jackie? Lied to my mom about who I am? I told her I was going out with a girl. She knew right away it was you. She loves you. She told me to tell you that if anything happens with your parents you can come stay with us.” She stands up with a sigh. “Your first instinct was to sell me out today and I… I’m trying not to be, because I know it’s complicated, but I think I’m pissed off, or frustrated, or… I don’t know, Jackie. Something.”

Jackie stands too, facing her, eyes low. “I didn’t know I’d do that,” she murmurs. “It just came out. I’m sorry.” There’s a moment of silence between them, and then Shauna watches Jackie look up and around: first at the empty parking lot in the distance, the stretch of field around them, and then at Van and Tai, who are standing close near the goal now, smiling and chatting with each other. Shauna sees Jackie soften as she watches them. “They’re kind of cute, actually.” She pauses, then turns and steps in closer to Shauna out of nowhere, winding her arms loosely around Shauna’s neck in a hug that is unmistakably not platonic.

It’s jarring, the sudden adjustment: Shauna’s never been like this with Jackie in front of another person before. The negative emotions coursing through her suddenly fade into the background, superseded by the knowledge that Jackie is nearly pressed to her, looking into her eyes, aware that they can be seen. Trying to let herself acclimate to being seen, at least in front of people she knows will keep their secret safe. That’s what this is. It’s a better apology than any of the ones Shauna’s gotten in the past hour.

Shauna shrinks the gap between their faces, asking a silent question. “Okay,” Jackie breathes out shakily, answering, and then they’re kissing softly, just a simple press of lips against lips.

It’s supposed to be, anyway, but Shauna steps closer, slides an arm around Jackie and traces the curve of her spine while her other hand holds her at her waist, and Jackie shivers and then presses against her, sighing into Shauna’s mouth, kissing her again and again.

A sharp whistle startles them apart: Van’s fingers in her mouth and then a wide smile on her lips. “Hot!” she teases.

Shauna looks at Jackie’s blush and knows there’s a matching one on her own cheeks. They separate, and Jackie takes her hand and leads her out onto the field, demanding, “I’m not staying later than five. Shauna and I have plans.”

“So do we,” Van says, smirking. “Probably the same ones.”

Tai smacks Van on the arm and changes the subject. “Let’s just get this done. Jackie, watch your footwork. If you lose the ball to Shauna, we reset.”

Van tosses the ball to Jackie, and then they begin.

-

“Better,” is Tai’s verdict after half an hour, while they’re all by the bench downing bottles of water Coach Ben’s left behind for them. “We’ll see during Wednesday’s practice if we need to do it again.”

Jackie’s soaked in sweat, and Shauna isn’t much better, but she’s in a decent enough state to wind an arm around Jackie’s waist and help hold her up when she starts to sway a little. 

“I just need to eat,” Jackie says.

“Mom will have something waiting,” Shauna assures her. A flicker of worry passes over Jackie’s face, and Shauna asks her carefully, “Do you still wanna come over?”

“I guess anything beats my house,” Jackie sighs, finishing the rest of her bottle.

“Hey,” Van chimes in suddenly, looking back and forth between them. “I was thinking… Tai and I had plans for when we go to State. For when we’re up there the night before the game.” Tai grimaces like she knows what Van’s about to say and like she has some doubts about her saying it. Van notices, but it doesn’t seem to deter her. “Anyway, where we’re going… We looked it up and there’s this bar not too far from the hotel. We were gonna sneak out and go for just a couple of hours. Just to check it out. Since our game isn’t until one o’clock on Saturday. I’ve got a guy who can get us all fake IDs for fifty bucks each, if you guys want in.”

Shauna’s not particularly interested, especially at that cost, so she defers to Jackie for an answer.

Jackie tilts her head, curious. “Who else is coming?”

“Just us,” Van says with a laugh. “I mean, obviously.”

Jackie scrunches her nose up. “Wait, why is it obvious?” Shauna’s equally lost.

Tai realizes why they’re confused before Van does, then laughs and huffs out, “Jesus, it’s a lesbian bar.”

Jackie flinches. Shauna perks up a little, too curious now to dwell on Jackie’s reaction. “Wait, seriously? I’ll go.”

“Yes!” Van says, raising a clenched fist at her. “It's just gonna be cool to see what it’s like. That there’s a whole world out there, you know?”

Tai sighs beside her, watching Jackie, and says, “C’mon, Jackie, relax. No one will know us there. If you’re nervous, you can just buy a drink to take the edge off. Just one, though. If either of you show up to our game hungover I’ll kill you.”

Van adds, “Yeah, you can order something fruity with one of those little umbrellas, dance up on Shauna, and then find someplace dark to make out. Let loose a little.”

Jackie stares off into nothing for a second, her cheeks flushing, and Shauna knows she’s picturing it. Shauna’s picturing it, too. “I can go,” Jackie says, finally. “Just for a couple of hours.”

Van beams at them. “Sweet. Get me scans of your licenses and fifty bucks each by Wednesday and you’re in.”

-

It’s a nice distraction, for the first couple of minutes of their drive: thinking of walking into an entire building where she can wrap her arms around Jackie and lay claim to her, let everyone know what they really are to each other. Calm Jackie’s nerves about it all, maybe even dance with her—Shauna with no rhythm, probably, but having Jackie pressed to her and a little alcohol in her would melt her embarrassment away.

Even seeing those other women… She doesn’t know what they’ll look like, if they’ll all have short hair and play softball and everything else Shauna’s heard before. Jackie isn’t like that, and neither is Tai, and Van and Melissa both have long hair too, so maybe it’s a lie. Maybe they’ll all be dolled up even more than Jackie likes to be, leaving lipstick stains on the cigarettes they smoke, dancing on each other in thigh-length dresses. Shauna isn’t sure what to expect, but the anticipation of it is making her head spin.

She’s been learning more about herself each and every day since the beginning of this thing with Jackie. And she knows she likes boys, but she’s starting to think that she likes girls so much more, actually. It’s always going to be Jackie, but in a universe where it wasn’t, these imagined women are already holding her attention more than any boy at their school ever has. She could see herself at Brown, if she and Jackie had never made up, going to bars like this one and staring longingly at girls with honey blonde hair.

Maybe that’s it, actually: she’ll just always want whatever is closest to having Jackie.

Jackie clears her throat and stirs Shauna out of it. “I can literally hear you thinking right now,” she half-jokes, and Shauna can tell she’s nervous. Jackie thinks she’d been remembering the locker room again.

Now she is. Her mind rushes down a path she hadn’t let it travel earlier: Jackie stabbing her right in the front, setting her up to take the fall. If it hadn’t been Van, if it’d been someone who’d tell… Shauna can see how it’d go, how Jackie’d let it go. How Shauna would fall in line and let it happen the way Jackie wants, too. 

Shauna Shipman: creepy dyke who’d kissed her straight best friend without her consent. Who’s harbored a humiliating crush that Jackie, as her better, as a normal girl, would never return. It’s her worst nightmare. It’s the thing she’d feared the most from the very beginning: being mocked and made fun of for her unrequited feelings. 

There is a rational part of her that tells her the truth right away: It’s not like Jackie thought that far ahead. She just panicked.

Jackie, of course, would be horrified by this outcome too. But Shauna can’t shake the knowledge that if the wrong person had caught them instead, Shauna would be in her room right now in tears after skipping soccer practice, would be a social pariah by the following morning, and Jackie wouldn’t be at her side for any of it.

So, now she knows. If worst comes to worst, she’s on her own. And there is a loneliness in that—one that threatens to tear a hole in her chest in almost the same way that seeing Jeff lead Jackie into the woods had.

She wipes a stray tear from her eye and just keeps driving. There is nothing she can do about it. She can’t change Jackie. She won’t leave Jackie. The only thing she can do is make sure they don’t get caught again.

Jackie reads her like a book this time. “I wouldn’t let everyone tear you apart, you know. That wouldn’t be the plan.”

“Then what’s the plan, Jax?” Shauna asks. She knows she sounds bitter. “Say we fuck up and it happens again. Then what?”

She can tell Jackie’s thinking it over even as she speaks. “Well… I don’t know; fucking damage control. If we’re at a party, then we were drunk. If we’re sober, then… you just wanted to try kissing a girl. I don’t fucking know.”

“The team knows I’ve already kissed Melissa,” Shauna reminds her.

Jackie runs a frustrated hand through her hair. “Then I’d figure something else out, okay? I’m not gonna let people jump right to the idea that you’re in love with me and I don’t love you back. You just…” She goes quieter, meeker. “You just have to be the one who started it.”

“What, and in this hypothetical scenario you kissed me back because you felt sorry for me?” Shauna tosses out, squeezing hard on the steering wheel.

“I didn’t say that.” Shauna glances over at the tremble in her voice, sees Jackie’s eyes starting to shimmer as Jackie chews nervously on her bottom lip. “It just can’t get back to my parents. It can’t look like a big deal, because if they find out and it’s just a stupid kiss for fun they’ll be upset but if they think it’s more, even if it’s just on your end, they won’t let us see each other, Shauna. And that can’t happen.” Jackie wipes hastily at her eyes. “So I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I just knew I had to put it on you. I would’ve figured it out from there and done whatever I could, anything I could. It won’t happen again, but if it does, we can both just say it didn’t mean anything. Just like you and Melissa. People will laugh it off again.”

There’s a hole in that logic. Shauna will have kissed two girls for fun, then. That’s enough to start rumors about her. She doesn’t care about that, though, anywhere near as much as she cares about keeping the magnitude of her feelings and the extent of her relationship with Jackie a secret. So it’ll have to be good enough.

“Okay,” she says, finally, and tries to let it go.

-

Jackie’s visibly nervous as they walk up to Shauna’s front door together.

“It’s just like hanging out with Van and Tai today,” Shauna tells her, trying to help ease her anxiety. “It makes things easier, not harder. Mom’s harmless. And she’ll be nice, and she won’t tell anyone.”

Jackie forces a laugh. She sounds lost. “I just… Am I supposed to hold your hand? Should I?” She winces. “Oh, God, does she know we’re having sex? I’ve known her since Kindergarten, Shauna.” She heaves a deep sigh, looks almost comically dismal as she processes the full extent of what she’s walking into, and breathes, “Oh, wow.”

This has gotten cute very quickly. Shauna hides a smile as she admits, “Yeah, she knows.” At Jackie’s wide-eyed look, Shauna can’t resist filling her in completely: “I, uh, also might’ve mentioned a detail about you shoving my hand into your underwear the first time. It’s a long story.”

Jackie blinks at her like she thinks Shauna’s gone absolutely insane and then just swivels on her heel, turning away from the house and taking the first step back toward Shauna’s car. “Nope. I cannot go in there.”

Shauna grabs her wrist and stops her in her tracks, pulling her back in close. “Jackie, it’s okay. It’ll be nice. Hold my hand.” She’s starting to see the lighter upsides to this, to Jackie and her mom in the same room now that her mom knows everything. She’s thinking about Jackie calling Tai and Van cute, now. She wonders if her mom will think they’re cute… and then immediately deletes that thought from her brain before she’s forced to acknowledge that she had it.

She hasn’t thought of it before: what they might look like from the outside. Not in a favorable way, anyway. More just in an outed, sneered at, teased, and looked upon with disgust sort of way.

She captures Jackie by the hand and Jackie lets herself grudgingly be dragged up to the front door and inside. 

Shauna’s mom is watching television in the living room. Jackie drops Shauna’s hand immediately and then wipes her own off on her soccer shorts. “Hi Ms. Shipman,” she says quickly.

“Jackie,” Shauna’s mom greets her easily. Her eyes slide to Shauna and Shauna gives her a subtle nod: Message to Jackie delivered. “It’s nice to see you. I left a couple of plates by the microwave. I didn’t expect you two to be so… delayed getting home.”

Shauna realizes what’s being implied and heat immediately floods her cheeks. “We stayed late with some teammates for extra practice, Mom,” she counters defensively. “We have State this weekend, remember?”

“Well, I just hope you were somewhere safe while you were practicing,” Ms. Shipman says, and Jackie turns as red as a tomato. Shauna would be just as bad if she weren’t so busy rolling her eyes. “Jackie, my only rule is that you need to be home by your curfew, okay?”

“Okay,” Jackie squeaks out.

“I’m gonna shower,” Shauna declares, and then tells Jackie, “You eat. Then we’ll swap.” She kisses her goodbye on her heated cheek for good measure, fully aware that she’s throwing her to the wolves, and Jackie looks at her pleadingly as Shauna turns to leave her. Shauna pretends not to see it.

As she’s reaching the stairs, she hears her mother suggest distantly, “Jackie, why don’t you heat that up and come eat it here by me?” She suppresses a smile as she climbs to the second floor.

-

Once she’s showered, Shauna eats her own plate up in her room, fondly rereading her journal entry from over the weekend, toying with the idea of starting a new one soon. She wants to show it all off to Jackie once she’s filled a few more pages, but it’s not even close to ready yet. She vows to spend more time with it in the next couple of weeks, maybe even take it with her and write during her free period.

Eventually Jackie emerges from her shower in the clothes she’d worn to school, a knowing scowl on her lips, hair still damp. Shauna closes her journal and sets it aside along with her empty plate.

They haven’t spoken since Shauna’d ditched her in the living room, and Shauna watches her close the bedroom door and then greets her with a teasing, “How’d it go?”

“Fine.” Jackie’s pouting anyway as she collapses onto the bed next to Shauna. They sit side by side together: Shauna cross-legged, Jackie with her knees tucked under her. “She was nice.”

Shauna bumps Jackie’s shoulder playfully with her own. “Did you tell her how much you’re completely, totally head over heels in love with me?”

Jackie rolls her eyes and mumbles, “Something like that.”

Shauna grins. “Oh, you really did get the boyfriend talk, didn’t you?” Jackie shrugs, biting back a smile, and Shauna realizes, “And you liked it.”

“Not all of it,” Jackie protests, picking at the comforter. “But. She… she made me cry. In a good way. So. It was okay.”

Shauna just looks at her: watches her roll her eyes again, trying to play it off. Looks at the pink in her cheeks and the pretty flecks of green in her irises and the still-present slight pout to her mouth. Her gaze settles there, low, as Jackie licks her lips and stares back. Jackie looks a little confused now, like she wants to ask her something: probably why she’s being quiet all of a sudden, why she’s just looking at her. 

Shauna leans in and kisses her, lifting a hand to cup her cheek. It’s not harsh, but it’s forceful enough to convey that there’s a purpose behind it; it’s the kind of kiss that starts something, that isn’t just meant to stay a kiss.

Jackie’s hand grips her knee for stability, because Shauna’s deepening it with Jackie’s permission, pressing forward, pressing Jackie backward. Jackie catches herself on her other hand and opens her mouth, letting Shauna’s tongue taste hers. Her legs slide out from under herself, extending, and then she pulls Shauna down to the mattress with her, rolling them sideways, still kissing, legs tangling together. 

They don’t slow down, and Shauna’s too aware of everything: Jackie’s fingers sliding into her hair, the earnest press of her mouth, her thigh between Shauna’s, Shauna’s thigh between Jackie’s. She’s been wanting to wait for things to be less messy between them, and now, after today, they’ve only gotten messier. Now Jackie is sitting with guilt, too—and Shauna can so obviously tell. Jackie’s kisses feel like apologies, the way she’s leaning into them a little desperately, sweeping her tongue into Shauna’s mouth in the exact way she’s learned Shauna likes. 

Maybe they’re just meant to be a little bit broken together, and Shauna is waiting for a perfect moment that’ll never come. Today had been scary, had shown her a world where their time could be cut short. And she misses Jackie’s body so, so much. Her hazy mind is already struggling with any thoughts that aren’t about that: about how Jackie feels against her, how soft she is beneath Shauna’s hand where it’s fallen to her hip.

Shauna’s hips shift, rocking forward, her thigh lodging itself higher and pressing, and Jackie gasps into her mouth, fingers tightening in Shauna’s hair. There’s no friction for Shauna, but she feels heat spark between her thighs as she does it again, and then again, and Jackie isn’t kissing her anymore, is rolling her hips to meet the contact and panting into her mouth.

Jackie doesn’t pull away to look at her carefully, doesn’t ask her something sweet like, “Are you sure?” or double-check that Shauna actually wants this after denying it to Jackie over the weekend. Jackie takes, pent up and shameless, gripping her hair tighter and tighter, the offer to touch herself instead happily tossed out the window. 

It’s so Jackie. Trying to be the best version of herself and falling short because of her own selfishness. She’s so needy like this. So unabashedly desperate, starting to whimper and moan into the small space between their mouths, murmuring, “Please, please, please,” under her breath like she’s worried Shauna will stop and call this off. Shauna’s hand helps guide the rhythm of her hips, and she’s forgotten how much she likes this: the power, the control.

“I won’t stop,” Shauna reassures her, closing that small gap to kiss her again, swallowing Jackie’s grateful moan. “You’re gonna come, Jax.” 

A short, desperate cry of relief leaves Jackie’s lips and at first Shauna thinks she has, already, but her hips only pick up speed and Shauna realizes she’s just reacting to Shauna’s words, that they’ve turned her on so much they’ve pushed that incredible sound out of her.

Jackie’s moving so slickly against her now, soaked through two layers of fabric, and this isn’t actually their new first time, Shauna decides—that will come with entirely bare bodies and drawn-out kisses and long looks and the soft press of their fingers; Shauna will make sure of it—but this is a frenzied interlude, something she’ll excuse later as them just needing to get it out of their systems. 

Jackie has spent multiple days making it obvious how badly she needs to get it out of her system, and now Shauna can feel her starting to tremble. “Fuck,” Jackie curses under her breath, and then her mouth drops open and she’s breathing harder, faster, shifting the angle of her hips in a way that makes her start moaning with every roll of them, like Shauna’s thigh is catching her better now. Her voice gets high, strained, and she whines, “I’m gonna come, I’m almost…”

Shauna’s so wet and achy and she feels herself starting to pulse there in time with Jackie’s moans, eager for contact, for attention. She needs it soon or she feels like she might pass out. “Jackie,” she breathes, just to have the name in her mouth. It belongs there. “Hurry, I need you.”

Jackie crushes their bodies together and stiffens, then shudders hard against her, muffled sounds pouring from her as her hips give a few final shaky jerks and the hand in Shauna’s hair clenches, pulls. Shauna grabs for Jackie’s thigh and pulls it up higher until she feels the delicious pressure of it, and the first rock of her hips almost makes her see stars. Jackie’s still riding the high of her own orgasm, she knows, as Shauna starts to grind against her. 

It takes a moment, but then Jackie’s breathing slows and her fist relaxes, and her hand slides down to Shauna’s back, gripping her, pulling sideways. Shauna realizes what she wants and goes with it: Jackie’s rolling them both, positioning herself on her back, trying to get Shauna on top of her. 

Jackie sits up, once they’re there, face flushed and eyes dark as she grabs at Shauna’s shirt and pulls it up and off. Shauna looks down at herself, remembers she’s not wearing a bra, and would normally feel a little self-conscious about it given the circumstances and the relative re-newness of this, but she’s frankly too turned on to care. As Jackie lays back down and her heavy eyes sweep down Shauna’s torso, Shauna leans over and plants both hands on the mattress, then starts to work her hips on Jackie’s thigh. Her eyes follow her own movements rather than look at Jackie’s face—not due to nerves, but because she’s worried about how much watching Jackie watch her might speed this up.

“Let me see you,” Jackie rasps after a moment. “Lean back.”

Shauna’s control is always a little bit of an illusion in the grand scheme of things, isn’t it? There’s no other explanation for why she moves unthinkingly, sitting up, adjusting her arms so that she’s reaching back behind and beside herself and holding herself up that way instead, putting her body on display. She’s getting less pressure where she needs it with her hips at this angle, too, which is staving things off but obviously doesn’t feel as gratifying. She has to shut her eyes when it feels like the alternative is to look at Jackie again. She can feel that heated gaze on her, pulling a flush to her cheeks and bringing forth another rush of warmth to further dampen her shorts. 

She’ll come like this. The lesser friction doesn’t matter. She’s rolling her body, grinding her hips, and Jackie is watching her do it. It’s not even going to take long. Her movements are already getting jerkier and her body’s already starting to tighten.

Jackie’s hands slide over her thighs, squeezing encouragingly, and now her voice sounds low and amused and a little breathy: “You’re so beautiful,” she says, and Shauna blushes to the roots of her hair, her scalp tingling. “You’re gonna go quickly again, aren’t you?”

Shauna nods and tips her head back, lips parting, her breathing picking up. She can really feel it now: that spark at the edge of her consciousness, just barely out of reach, simmering, about to ignite and set off the beginning of that final climb. Jackie’s hands slide down toward her inner thighs and her thumbs press into the flesh there, rubbing small circles higher and higher, teasing her inches from where she’s rocking faster, grabbing hold of that spark and turning the simmer into a burning flame.

“Jackie,” she gasps out in warning, her thighs quaking, and then she’s chasing it harshly, trying to fly over the edge instead of tipping over, hips burning from exertion, fists tangling in the sheets. She knows she’s making sounds, but she can’t hear them over the piercing white noise in her ears. She feels Jackie sit up, feels a hand over her mouth, and then she’s soaring, pleasure bursting from between her thighs and sending shockwaves throughout her body.

“Shauna,” she registers Jackie murmuring to her partway through it, her ears suddenly working again. Jackie sounds embarrassed and soothing all at once. “Shauna, babe, shhhh.”

“What?” Shauna asks dazedly into Jackie’s hand, another swift pulse of pleasure shooting right up her spine at the pet name. She’s still shakily riding out the last few waves of her orgasm as Jackie pulls her close and frees her mouth, and finally she slumps forward, letting Jackie take on the bulk of her weight. “Fuck,” she whispers, feeling it finally ebb away completely, leaving behind the satisfying sensation of having been deeply sated.

She slips off of Jackie and collapses next to her, feeling around for her shirt and then gripping it tight, pressing it self-consciously to her chest. She closes her eyes and catches her breath, feeling Jackie shifting and then an arm sliding over her abdomen. Jackie presses a soft kiss to her neck. 

It clicks for Shauna, then. “Shit. I was loud.”

Jackie burrows in closer to her and shakes with quiet laughter. “...Yeah.”

Shauna can’t help the slow smile that forms on her lips despite herself. “It didn’t feel all that different for me,” she realizes.

Jackie seems to consider it too, and decides, “Me either.”

“We were always in love, whether we talked about it or not,” Shauna murmurs. She feels so tired, but she knows she can’t sleep. She has to take Jackie home soon. “...But this time doesn’t count, okay?”

Jackie laughs again. “Sure. We were just fooling around.” She says it like she doesn’t believe it at all, and like she doesn’t care if Shauna knows it.

“It wasn’t, like, a full thing,” Shauna insists anyway, her eyes on the ceiling. “Just… some friction.”

“Okay.” This time Jackie sounds like she can see the logic, at least. She lets out a satisfied sigh. “Well, thanks for the friction, then.”

Shauna snorts. “You clearly needed it.”

Jackie scoffs at her, but Shauna can feel her smiling against her neck. “I needed it?”

“I didn’t beg.”

“I didn’t need my mouth covered.” Jackie gives the underside of her jaw a playful nip, then kisses her neck again, her hand starting to run slowly back and forth across Shauna’s abdomen. Shauna processes the affection for a moment, then suppresses a knowing smile.

“You’re so turned on again, Jackie.”

“No,” Jackie denies it, and Shauna waits her out patiently in the silence that follows. “Okay, I am.” Shauna giggles. “You should’ve seen yourself, Shauna. Just give me a minute and I’ll be fine.” 

Shauna yawns through a grin and sits up, pulling her shirt on, then twists and wraps her arms around Jackie, flopping back down half onto her and cuddling contently into her. “I wish you could stay over.”

“I could try to call,” Jackie offers, but they both know she shouldn’t, especially on a school night.

“Just another half-hour,” Shauna decides, closing her eyes, and Jackie hums her agreement, her hand moving to stroke up and down Shauna’s back.

They’re silent for a while, Shauna almost drifting off, not thinking of anything in particular. She knows Jackie’s been thinking, though, when she mumbles out of nowhere, “I don’t know how I’ll survive college without you.”

Shauna lifts her head, blinking her vision into focus. Jackie’s eyebrows are furrowed and she’s frowning almost thoughtfully. “We’ll figure it out, Jax.”

“I want you to go to Brown,” Jackie reiterates to her. “You’re going. It’s just… even just yesterday without you was hard. It’s… God, it’s four years.”

Shauna tries to ignore the ache in her chest and her own rising anxiety about it. They’re not even factoring in the secret-keeping, the fact that they’re trying not to get caught, that Jackie won’t be open about it. Shauna can’t bear to deal with that all at once. “We can trade weekends visiting,” she suggests, and tries not to think about how suspicious that is, how their new friends will think it’s odd that they spend every weekend driving four hours to see each other. “And we’ll both be home for the holidays,” where Jackie’s parents will ask her about potential new boyfriends, over and over, and each time she’ll have to rebuff them and create even more suspicion, all while trying to spend as much of her time in Wiskayok with Shauna as possible. Or worse: she’ll get a boyfriend to ease that suspicion. Shauna can’t even begin to entertain the details of what that would entail.

Not to mention after. Graduation. And then what?

She blurts it out, something desperate tearing out of her, needing to know. “Would you marry me?” she asks, and Jackie’s eyes jump straight to hers, a little wide and surprised and soft. “If it were allowed? If we could, do you think you ever would?” 

Just as quickly, Jackie’s eyes dart away. Shauna can see the doubt starting to cloud them. 

“Don’t think about me like I’m a girl,” Shauna says. “Think like it’s me. You’re just you and I’m just me. And we live together and wake up together every day, and…” She pictures it. She’d used to be so afraid to picture it. She still is, a little. “...and our house has an office where I go to write, and a garden with rabbits that keep eating our vegetables, and we cook dinners together after work and—”

She stops, seeing the first tears start to leak from Jackie’s eyes. Then Jackie buries her face in her hands and nods, over and over again, trembling, crying quietly. “Yes,” she sobs.

Shauna curls a hand around Jackie’s wrist, stroking it with her thumb. She tries to stay calm, to not give away that her heart finally feels like it’s been fully given life for the first time. “Then let’s think about that. Not about the hard part. About what’s on the other end of it.”

She holds Jackie close, then, until Jackie’s trembling subsides and her tears eventually dry. Until it is time for her to go home to the Taylors again.

Chapter 18

Notes:

This chapter: a (mostly) fluffy interlude

Coming up soon: A hotel room, JackieShauna and TaiVan at a lesbian bar, and the game that will determine whether or not they wind up on a plane to Seattle

The next few days start to pass a little more quickly for Shauna, finally, after two straight weeks of chaos.

She has two tests coming up on Friday and spends her free period on Tuesday tucked away in the school library, studying. Jackie shows up after the first five minutes dressed like a prep school student in a long-sleeved white shirt with a blue sweater vest.

She’d warned her last night that she wouldn’t be picking her up for school this morning because she has an intense study session planned at the actual library directly after school. Jackie had wanted to go with her, but Shauna’s ninety percent sure that would’ve resulted in her spending most of her time making out with Jackie against a shelf instead of actually studying. So, Jackie’s apparently decided to come keep her company now instead—at a table in the back corner, where Shauna had hoped she’d remain relatively uninterrupted for the hour.

“You’re missing your French class,” Shauna greets her with disapproval, but her eyes are soft on Jackie. 

Last night is still so fresh in her mind. The way Jackie had watched her. The way she’d listened to Shauna picture their life together and had confessed to wanting all of it too. Shauna had fallen asleep in a dreamy daze, so aware that she’d asked Jackie would you marry me and Jackie had said yes.

Of course it hadn’t been official. And it’s not even legal. But Shauna will hold onto the memory forever anyway, until hopefully someday she can ask for real. 

Jackie grins and settles into the seat next to her. “Do I look très bien doing it?”

Shauna rolls her eyes but says, “Yes.” She watches Jackie ease her bag onto the floor and then retrieve a magazine from it. “Really, Jackie?”

“It counts as reading,” Jackie insists. “I’m just keeping you company.”

Shauna’d brought what she’s fondly dubbed her “Jackie journal” in her backpack and had intended to spend her last ten minutes working on a second entry, but that plan’s out the window now. She can’t do it with Jackie right there; she’d probably start asking about it and it’d just be embarrassing. 

She sighs to herself. They’ve discussed no longer flirting or doing anything even tangentially non-platonic at school, so in the end, when she finally redirects her attention to her Calculus textbook, she mostly just winds up feeling eyes on her occasionally.

She doesn’t hate the feeling of Jackie watching her work her way through the problems, especially with the knowledge that she’s skipping class to do it. Just to come sit near Shauna and be in her presence and look at her. If she thinks too hard about it, it starts to over-occupy her mind, starts to make her stomach do flips, so she just shakes the thoughts away and does her best to replace them with more productive ones.

Jackie’s surprisingly polite and noninvasive about it all. She doesn’t even speak again until Shauna looks up at her eventually and asks, “How did you know you’d find me here, anyway?”

Jackie smiles and says, “I guessed. Where else would you be?”

“Study hall,” Shauna suggests. “Or out in the quad.”

“You hate people, and it’s less crowded here.”

She’s not wrong. Shauna tilts her head as if to say fair and then redirects her attention back to her textbook. When Jackie doesn’t say anything else, Shauna mumbles, “You’re being surprisingly…” She can’t figure out how to word it initially. “...Quiet.” 

A month ago, Jackie wouldn’t have given a shit that Shauna needed to study. She’d have probably complained about her being boring and then dragged her out to the quad and made her sit through a gossip session with a few girls Jackie likes and Shauna doesn’t. The thought brings a small smile to Shauna’s lips—not because of the memory, but because Jackie’s changing her behavior for her, and this is proof.

“Do you want me to distract you?” Jackie asks—innocently, but it’s still cutting it close enough for Shauna to shoot her a warning look. “What?”

“This is why you’re not invited after school.”

Jackie heaves a dramatic sigh and flips to another page in her magazine. “It’s not my fault you have low self-control.”

Shauna snorts and doesn’t take the bait. They both know Jackie’s so much worse. “What are you doing this afternoon instead?”

“I don’t know. I thought about extra soccer practice, but I don’t want to kill my legs. Maybe I’ll see if Mari wants to hang out.” Shauna stiffens and Jackie cracks a smile. “Oh, that got a reaction. Noted.”

“You wanted one,” Shauna mutters knowingly, going back to her math problems. 

“I like her when she’s not being an ass to you,” Jackie admits. “You did kick her first.”

“No, she was talking shit about me first,” Shauna says, not looking up.

“As if you hadn’t already started storming over to us before she ever mentioned you,” Jackie laughs out. “You just don’t like that she wants to be my friend.”

Shauna heaves a sigh. “Whatever. She should be less obvious about how desperate for your approval she is.”

“I don’t think it’s that obvious. I think you just have enough personal experience with it to recognize it in someone else,” Jackie says playfully, earning a sharp glare from Shauna that has a little less bite to it than it would’ve not too long ago. 

“Not true. Tai noticed too.”

“Well, if it helps, I think Mari probably has a different motive than you did.”

The thought of Mari secretly wanting Jackie is so comically absurd that it eases the tension in Shauna’s shoulders and almost makes her laugh. “She’d probably at least make out with you if she thought it’d make her popular.”

“Hmm.” Jackie looks like she’s thinking about it now. Thinking about it a little too much. Shauna’s smile drops. Jackie sees it and laughs. “Okay, relax. I’m kidding.” Shauna says nothing, just grips her pencil tighter and goes back to scribbling down numbers. She hears Jackie giggle. “Shauna.”

“I’m fine. I have studying to do.”

Jackie sighs, a frustrated edge to it. “God, it’s actually so hard not to flirt with you when you get all possessive and jealous. I’ll just have to wait until later to let you know what I think of it.” Shauna’s mouth twitches, but she tries her best not to crack. “Are you sure we can’t hang out a little today? I could meet you in the library parking lot. Just for like, five minutes. You have to make a copy of my license there anyway.”

Shauna thinks it over. “Alright,” she decides, giving in. “Just for five minutes.”

-

It’s been longer than five minutes. Shauna has two printed paper copies of their licenses in her backpack, but she’d also come directly back out to Jackie’s car to deliver hers after venturing into the library to make them, so now she also has three hickeys and exactly zero minutes of completed study time. 

Jackie’s finishing up a fourth one in the backseat of her car when she drags her mouth up to Shauna’s ear and tells her, “I’ve been thinking about Friday night today. Since we talked earlier.”

Shauna tries to follow. Does she mean the hotel room they’re sharing? “Oh.”

“When we go out,” Jackie clarifies. Her teeth scrape the shell of Shauna’s ear, making her shiver.

Shauna’s been thinking about it a little too in the past day. Mostly about kissing Jackie there in the bar. Particularly about kissing her in front of everyone, having people look at them and see that Jackie wants her. How badly Jackie wants her. And then about what they might finally do together in their hotel room afterward, maybe, if Shauna decides to let it happen. 

Jackie brushes her nose across Shauna’s cheek, returning to her lips, kissing her softly there. “I wanna dance with you,” she says. “Is that okay?”

Shauna nods. “Yeah, I want to.”

“I was thinking, today,” Jackie goes on leadingly, “about if maybe I danced with someone else there, too.” Shauna’s whole body tenses against Jackie’s. Something hot and angry and sick flickers in her chest. She starts to pull back, but Jackie wraps her arms around her and keeps her close. “Listen. Just… tell me what you’d do if I did that.”

Shauna almost groans when she realizes. This is a continuation of their talk in the library. Jackie wanting to tell her how much she likes the idea of seeing Shauna get possessive.

She’s so not in the mood for their toxic, game-y brand of flirting right now. But she feels like she owes it to Jackie to play this one out, at least a little. Each time she gives into something like this on Jackie’s request it makes things feel more even between them. Like she’s making up for her own wrongs by indulging conversations she doesn’t want to have. 

She thinks it over and then lies, “Maybe I’d dance with someone else, too.” Then Jackie’s tensing against her, and okay, maybe this isn’t all bad. Shauna’s kind of just as toxic about this too, actually. She likes Jackie being possessive right back. 

“No you wouldn’t,” Jackie says shortly, but she doesn’t say it like she knows it’s true, she says it like she’s angry that it could be.

“I would if you watched.” Another lie. There’s not a chance in hell. She doesn’t even know how to have eyes for anyone other than Jackie. 

Jackie’s hand slides up to the back of her neck and tightens its grip there, and Shauna can tell she’s trying to steer things back on track when she says, “I want you to watch me.”

Shauna lets it happen. “Why?”

Jackie kisses her slowly, distractedly, like she’s thinking her way through it while her tongue flicks into Shauna’s mouth. “I wasn’t thinking about kissing Mari earlier,” she admits, ignoring the question. “I was thinking about you seeing me kiss her.”

She knows what Jackie really means, what Jackie likes about it, but still her stomach lurches.

“Like, during a dare or something,” Jackie goes on, lips brushing Shauna’s again. “If I had to.”

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow. “I’m not sharing you,” she warns lowly.

Jackie’s lips stretch into a pleased smile, like she’s gotten exactly what she wanted. “I know. I was just thinking about what you’d be like after. If you felt like you had something to prove. I just think it’s hot. I just like the idea of… pulling that out of you somehow.” Her breath is warm against Shauna’s lips. “I know it’s in there.”

Shauna closes her eyes and lets Jackie kiss her again. She’s not dumb; she can see how it’s the same: herself getting a thrill out of the idea of Jackie being angry about Melissa, Jackie wanting to see Shauna pissed off and possessive. The difference is that Shauna can’t see herself ever riling Jackie up on purpose now that she knows the truth. She’s not sure she can say the same for Jackie. She can picture it too easily: Jackie soaking up attention and aiming secret looks in Shauna’s direction, checking that she’s watching, that it’s getting a reaction out of her. 

It’d work, is the thing. Jackie could dance with someone else or kiss someone on a dare and Shauna would simmer angrily for a few hours, then pounce on Jackie when they’re alone. Certainly Jackie knows it would work too. Shauna would resent her so much for it, though. 

She puts her foot down—breaks the kiss and presses her open mouth to Jackie’s neck, biting down in warning, telling her harshly, “Don’t you dare fucking try it, Jackie.”

Jackie’s head rolls to the side and she moans like Shauna’s got a hand down her shorts. Shauna finishes the hickey, leaving behind a dark purple bruise, and the look Jackie gives her afterward is eager and excited and dark.

A minute later, Shauna gets out of Jackie’s car on slightly shaky legs, ignoring the guilty pulsing between her thighs as she fast-walks back into the library with her backpack in tow. She has more studying to do.

-

That evening, what was supposed to be a dreamy entry about imagining Jackie marrying her someday becomes something very different:

Jackie,

If you knew how truly sick it makes me feel to watch you kiss other people you wouldn’t ever talk about doing it in front of me again. Jeff made me feel like throwing up. I’d die a little on the inside every time. It’s only gotten worse. I can’t bear the thought of you kissing anyone other than me.

I always kind of liked, deep down, how obsessive you were about everything to do with me. I just didn’t like being controlled. I’ve always wondered if you knew how easily you could completely manipulate me just by giving me affection and attention. You still can, but now I think you do a better job of choosing not to.

Thank you for letting me go to Brown, but please don’t ever stop being possessive. I like feeling owned by you. I’d feel half-empty without you, waiting forever for you to come back and retake what’s yours. Until then, you’d just haunt me. Just like that Adrienne Rich poem.

Shauna

-

Wednesday is uneventful until Melissa. She’s late to the locker room that afternoon, and as Shauna’s other teammates start to file out Shauna finds herself thoughtfully watching her pull on her shin guards and cleats. Melissa hasn’t looked at her since Jackie’s locker room stunt on Friday, let alone acknowledged her, and it’s been clear for days that there’s unresolved tension between them.

She’s been content to leave it while she’s been so distracted with Jackie, but as she studies Melissa now, she can’t help but think about how they’d left things. She thinks she should at least attempt a genuine apology. She likely would’ve by now if Jackie hadn’t forced that humiliating one out of her instead. 

The problem now is that Jackie isn’t leaving the locker room, is just lingering near the door and monitoring the rest of them, making sure everyone gets changed and exits in time. Only Jackie, Shauna, Melissa, Nat, and Crystal are still there when Shauna wanders over to Jackie and offers quietly, “I’ll make sure they get there if you wanna head down.” Crystal and Melissa are too far away to hear her, but she feels Nat’s eyes on her as Jackie stiffens and then glances from Shauna to Melissa. 

“I’ve got it,” Jackie says, crossing her arms, and Shauna knows she’s figured it out.

“Please?” Shauna tries, widening her eyes just slightly. She’s not sure exactly how to do that look Jackie’s obsessed with on her, but she’s pretty sure some part of it involves her eyes being a little bigger and softer. 

Crystal exits. Jackie stares at Shauna and wavers. 

“I just need one minute,” Shauna adds gently.

Jackie’s lips twitch and then she leans sideways to look at Nat. “C’mon, Nat, pick it up.”

Nat rolls her eyes and finishes putting her shoes on. Melissa looks up, sees who’s left, and immediately starts trying to dress herself faster. “You gonna walk me down so Shauna and Melissa can make out in here?” Nat teases, and Melissa and Shauna both flinch.

“I’m gonna walk you down to make sure you don’t take a detour to get high before practice,” Jackie says, eyes narrowed. Nat grins as she passes them, exiting, and Jackie shoots Shauna one final warning look and then follows her out.

Melissa’s almost done; she’s putting her hair up now, whole body stiff, still sitting on the bench with her back mostly to Shauna. And now that they’re here, Shauna isn’t actually sure what to say. 

She goes with the blunt truth. “I feel like I should give you an actual apology?”

Melissa doesn’t turn around, just mumbles sarcastically, “You sound so sure about it.”

“It’s more that I’m not sure if you want to let me.”

Melissa finishes with her hair, stands, and turns to her. She looks annoyed more than anything else. “Why should I believe anything you say? You don’t actually feel bad. The only person you care about is Jackie.”

“That’s not true.” It really isn’t. She loves Jackie most, of course, and sometimes she maybe lets that dull her moral compass, but Shauna can’t think about any part of that Saturday night without feeling awful. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t say what I should’ve said with Jackie in here that day. That shitty apology wasn’t about me and you, it was about me and Jackie. So I think I should give you one that’s actually about us.”

It’s odd, calling herself and Melissa an “us”. She knows if Jackie were here it’d piss her off, even though Shauna doesn’t really mean anything by it. They’ve made out a couple of times now and both times had been about Jackie. Still, there’s something there under the surface that Shauna feels like will never get unearthed in a universe where she has Jackie. She’d never really given Melissa a chance. She seems like a sweet girl; she’d just liked the wrong person when she’d picked Shauna. 

“I did use you, because it’s always gonna be me and Jackie,” she clarifies. “But you weren’t pathetic that night. I was. You did the right thing.”

Melissa softens just a tad at that, but her tone is still sharp when she says, “I know I did.”

“I don’t think I could’ve in your place,” she admits. She’s being generous to herself; she knows she couldn’t have, if it were Jackie pushing her up against a truck and wanting to use her as a distraction. “And I’m really grateful you said no.” She tells her the rest quickly, too aware, again, of what Jackie would think of it all: “I love Jackie, but I think you deserve to know that I liked kissing you. It helped me clear some stuff up, and it’s… like, it’s a good memory. The first time, anyway. And you’re cute.” Melissa looks taken aback. Her cheeks have gone pink. “It’s just… there’s Jackie. So.”

Melissa’s eyes dart around, and Shauna can tell she’s flustered. “I don’t get it,” she admits, finally. “You just kind of do whatever she says. She orders you around and you let her. You know there are plenty of other girls who’d, like… not treat you like that, right?”

Shauna doesn’t let herself get angry. Something in her needs this to end well. “You don’t see everything,” she says, moving closer, letting her feet carry her to Melissa. “I don’t expect anyone else to understand. But thank you for caring.” She leans in and kisses her on the cheek. She knows this would make Jackie angry too, but something about it feels right. Like it’s a fitting goodbye, a feel-good end to whatever this mess between them had been.

Melissa’s cheeks are red now. “Um. You’re welcome?”

“Wanna head down?” Shauna offers.

“Okay,” Melissa says, and Shauna leads the way.

-

The first time Melissa gets the ball in the back half of the field during their scrimmage, Jackie sprints in for the challenge and muscles her off of it, shoulder to shoulder, after a few seconds of them fighting for it, sending her to the ground in a move that is very much allowed this time. Then she dumps the ball off to Nat on a breakaway, who slams it into the back of the net not five seconds later.

Shauna watches Nat and Jackie tackle each other into a celebratory hug, then sees Tai also watching close by, her arms folded across her chest with satisfaction. “She’s finally back,” Tai declares. “About fucking time.”

Melissa gets pulled to her feet by Gen, grass stains all over her clothes, then sends Shauna an aggravated look—can you fucking call her off already, it says quite clearly. Shauna responds with an apologetic shrug and means it.

Mostly.

-

“Anything you wanna tell me?” Jackie asks her later, as Shauna drives her home. 

Shauna turns the radio down, thinking it over. She’s been able to sense the animosity radiating off of Jackie since the beginning of practice, but she’d mostly expected her to be over it by now—especially after having the opportunity to take it out on Melissa. 

“Do you trust me?” she asks, finally.

Jackie sinks down in her seat a little, pouting, turning petulant. “That’s not fair.”

“You’re right to be upset,” Shauna tells her. “I actually changed my mind in the locker room. Melissa and I made out and we’re moving in together as soon as she graduates. We’re very in love.”

Jackie huffs and rolls her eyes. “What did you talk about?”

Shauna decides on full disclosure. “I apologized to her for real this time. I told her that I liked kissing her and that she was cute, but that I love you. And I kissed her on the cheek. Then we left.”

Jackie’s nose scrunches up with disgust, her eyes narrowing at Shauna. “Seriously?”

“She’s a nice girl, Jackie,” Shauna says flatly. “She could’ve had sex with me.”

“Yeah, and she didn’t because she’s stupid,” Jackie mutters.

“She didn’t because she’s nice.” Shauna makes the turn into Jackie’s neighborhood. “If you’re gonna be jealous, you could at least be more intense and aggressive about it instead of like… petty and childish. At least then it’d be attractive.”

Jackie looks her over with guarded interest. “...Intense and aggressive how?”

“You know how, Jackie,” Shauna says, valiantly fighting off a blush.

She pulls into Jackie’s driveway and parks, and Jackie takes a breath, something clearly occupying her thoughts. Finally, she leans over and kisses Shauna goodbye on the cheek, murmurs, “I still need permission to touch you first,” and then she’s out of the car before Shauna can respond.

Shauna watches her head inside, her mouth dry, then picks herself back up and drives home.

She finds a package waiting for her on her bed and tears into it curiously before she’s even taken her dirty soccer clothes off. Her hands close around soft material and she lifts the article of clothing into the air, staring at the simple “Brown” emblazoned across the front of her new hoodie. A gift from her mother, she assumes. She takes her shirt off right away and pulls it on, then studies her reflection in the mirror, wrapping her arms around herself. It’s comfortable and perfectly oversized. She loves it.

She hopes Jackie will love her in it, too.

-

Jackie, she writes in the school library on Thursday, during the last ten minutes of her free period. Jackie’s left her to her own devices this time.

I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time this week thinking about what it would be like to marry you. I’ve imagined you in a dozen different dresses you’ve shown me in magazines over the years, mostly back when you thought you’d marry Jeff. I saw you talking to him in the hallway this morning, by the way. It’s hard not to be jealous, but I could tell it was him that wanted to talk to you, and that you were trying to end the conversation. I guess he still wants you back. I can empathize. 

I think I’d know what you’d like in a wedding. Definitely the most gorgeous cake anyone’s ever seen, and flowers everywhere. Poppies, probably. White wine for everyone to drink, because you’d like something sweet more than something bitter. 

I don’t think I’d ask for much. I’d just want to give you everything you wanted. I’d just be happy to be marrying you.

Shauna

-

Jackie comes over on Thursday afternoon—it’s so much easier, lately, than Shauna going to Jackie’s and no doubt having to deal with scowls and piercing stares of disapproval from Mrs. Taylor, so she’s been avoiding Jackie’s place ever since they’d made up—the both of them freshly armed with fake IDs courtesy of Van.

They study them together on Shauna’s bed, turning them over in their hands and squinting at all the little details. 

“It looks just like my real one,” Jackie marvels. “Only with a different birth date.”

“Not the worst investment,” Shauna muses. “We can use these for three years.” She glances at Jackie. “Not that you’ll need it much, with all the frat parties you’ll be going to, but maybe if we ever want to try a bar near Brown together.”

She tries not to think about it, but her own mention of frat parties stirs up something unpleasant in her. She doesn’t want to think about Jackie drunk and flirty and surrounded by pushy sorority sisters and even pushier boys.

“What kind of bars do they have near Brown?” Jackie asks her, so incredibly casually that Shauna can immediately tell she’s asking a very important question. “Have you done research?”

Shauna hasn’t. “No. I don’t know.” It takes her a second to realize that by ‘what kind’, Jackie’s almost certainly fishing for an answer about the kind they’re going to tomorrow night. She’s thinking about Shauna visiting one without her. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t think it’s really gonna be my kind of thing.”

Tomorrow will be interesting, for sure, and Shauna’s excited to check it out. But she expects it to be like skydiving or an infamously spicy hot sauce—something to try just to say she did it one time. She’ll probably spend most of tomorrow night feeling overwhelmed and out of her depth, glued to Jackie’s side while girls check Jackie out and ignore Shauna, and then the highlight of the night will come when Jackie pulls her in to kiss her or dance with her, to show everyone else that she wants Shauna, not them. 

“Well, we need to pick out outfits,” Jackie reminds her. They’re leaving on their bus directly after school, so they’re all meant to pack their bags tonight. “If only I knew what the hell girls wear to bars.”

Shauna knows she’ll be of no help herself. “Yeah. I mean, you can probably just do what you do for parties, right?” Jackie will look hot like she always does, of course, but there’s a part of Shauna that just wants to dress comfortably. Maybe let Jackie put some makeup on her in the hotel room, then just tug on a button-up, some jeans, and a flannel, and maybe the pair of non-prescription glasses she’d gotten herself around the time she’d first applied to Brown. She thinks they make her look older, more intellectual. She’s never unearthed them and let anyone else see her in them.

She looks over at Jackie and sees her staring across the room at the Brown hoodie Shauna’s left draped over the back of a chair. “What’s that?” she asks.

Shauna stands and retrieves it for her, hoping it won’t make things awkward, that actually holding it in her hands won’t make it all feel too real for Jackie. Shauna leaving—them separating—has existed in the abstract so far. 

She brings it to Jackie and holds it out to her, showing her. Jackie blinks at it and then takes it into her arms. “It’s soft,” she says, and then she surprises Shauna by tugging it up and over her own head. 

It’s even bigger on Jackie than it is on Shauna, and Jackie hums thoughtfully and then lies down in it, holding herself the same way Shauna had held herself in the mirror yesterday, closing her eyes. Shauna’s heart twinges and warms as she watches Jackie curl up into a ball with the word “Brown” crinkled brokenly across her chest. 

She doesn’t even have to think about it. On instinct, she breathes, “You should keep it,” and the words feel so right in her mouth. 

Jackie opens her eyes and then her arms, inviting her, and Shauna fits herself right where she belongs, cuddling into Jackie and feeling soft, warm sleeves envelop her body. 

“I’ll take it when you leave at the end of the summer,” Jackie murmurs. “That way it’ll smell like you.”

“Okay,” Shauna whispers, and wonders to herself how on earth—when her love for Jackie already feels so limitless—Jackie can still manage to find little ways to make her fall more deeply every day.

Chapter 19

Jackie is a woman on a mission on Friday—and doesn’t try to hide it from Shauna, either. She dumps her overnight bag in the backseat of Shauna’s car in the morning and then goes on and on about their three-hour bus ride to Atlantic City, their game tomorrow, about the briefing on their opponents Coach Martinez has planned in lieu of a practice once they reach their destination. 

But it’s her hand that Shauna pays attention to as Jackie rambles: the way it settles on Shauna’s thigh not ten seconds into their drive, thumb stroking over loose-fitting cotton. Shauna thinks she’s just being affectionate at first—maybe still riding the slight high of the two of them cuddling and softly making out on Shauna’s bed for half an hour yesterday afternoon—especially given that she seems very passionate about what she’s saying. 

Shauna’s listening. “—and by the way, I haven’t heard, like all of the details, obviously, but Coach Martinez did give me a heads up at the end of practice on Wednesday that their left forward is really quick in the beginning but usually gasses out around the 75th minute—”

But then Jackie’s hand curves down toward her inner thigh, holding her there instead, which could also just be mindless, unthinking affection, as distracting as it is.

The inching upward, closer to where Shauna’s starting to get warm, and the slight increase in pressure from her hand, though, is definitely not a coincidence. Shauna blinks hard and fast and tries to focus on the road, but all of her brain cells have honed in on Jackie’s extended pinky brushing dangerously close to the seam of her pants. 

“—switching to a 4-4-2 at this point feels silly when we’ve been undefeated with a 4-3-3, so personally I think Lottie’s just over-worrying. What do you think?”

“Uh,” Shauna says, because Jackie obviously knows what she’s doing, “I’m not really doing much thinking right now, Jax.”

It suddenly feels too quiet in her car, without any music or the sound of Jackie’s voice, and Shauna catches Jackie’s contained smile in her periphery. “Want me to move it?” Jackie asks her, giving her thigh a firm squeeze that has Shauna’s teeth sinking into her lower lip.

It’s another sudden, harsh reminder that Shauna’s probably only ever in control as much as Jackie’s willing to let her be. They’re going out tonight, and making plans to kiss each other, rub up against each other on a dance floor, and go back to a private hotel room together. Jackie wants her—and clearly has woken up this morning and decided to do whatever she can over the next sixteen hours or so to convince Shauna to let her have her. 

There is still guilt bubbling in the depths of Shauna’s chest. There will be guilt for months, for years, probably. And she hasn’t let go of this idea of a new, romantic first time. But Jackie’s hand is so close, and Shauna feels herself fold and unravel.

“No.” Her eyes dart to their surroundings, to the parking lots they’re passing by. “Should I pull over?” If they’re quick enough, they won’t miss anything.

Jackie laughs, fingers curling, nails dragging so close to her center. “Jesus, Shauna; I had a whole day planned to try to get you to crack.”

“Shut up,” Shauna mumbles, her cheeks blazing.

“Keep driving,” Jackie tells her lightly. “Wait for tonight.” But her hand is sliding inward, arm fully extending, and Shauna’s eyes flutter as she reaches a stop sign and Jackie’s hand cups her gently, barely there. “You’re gonna look so beautiful in that dress we picked out.”

The reminder of her own deception clears some of the fog in Shauna’s brain. She hadn’t packed the dress Jackie’d chosen for her yesterday. Instead, she’d gone rogue with her own outfit. She knows Jackie will be upset about it later, because she’d been excited about coordinating again, but ultimately it had been as simple as Shauna wanting to go out feeling like herself. She’ll be uncomfortable as it is; she hadn’t wanted to tack on the discomfort of wearing a dress she doesn’t like, regardless of how much Jackie might love it on her. It’s the one and only ounce of control she’ll be retaining today, evidently. 

Her thoughts dissipate with slight pressure from Jackie’s palm. Shauna takes in a shuddering breath and shifts her left leg—the one she isn’t using to drive—spreading herself a little wider.

Jackie waits until the car’s back at a steady speed and there’s an open road ahead of them to dig her heel in. Shauna’s lips part and her breathing gets heavier. She can tell she’s wound up from this week, too: the time in Jackie’s car at the library on Tuesday, and Jackie whispering in her ear about touching her when she’d dropped her off on Wednesday, and the making out yesterday, Jackie’s lips so soft and slow, the gentle exploration of her tongue before Shauna’d finally put a stop to it and distracted Jackie with her closet.

She knows Jackie won’t touch her properly here, that she’s doomed to be left hanging this morning, but she can’t stop her body from eagerly accepting the press of Jackie’s hand, the gentle circles from her heel. Shauna’s reaction time slows and she keeps her distance when a car pulls out onto the street in front of her. She squeezes the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles go white. The last time Jackie’d touched her here with her hand had been the same day they’d fought. That morning in the hotel room, Jackie’s fingers pressing inside of her, her mouth—

“Shauna, stop,” Jackie warns sharply, and Shauna brakes abruptly, maybe five feet away from the bumper of the car ahead of them. Jackie gives her center one final squeeze and then takes her hand away, and Shauna’s body loses its stiffness, but she can still feel herself pulsing and her blood rushing in her ears. Jackie’s fingers rise to comb through Shauna’s hair instead. “I left you a note in your locker yesterday, before we left,” she tells her idly, as though they haven’t just narrowly avoided a wreck. “I might’ve gone a little overboard, so I just thought I’d warn you. And it’s kind of out of date now, I guess.”

“We said no flirting at school,” Shauna reminds her breathlessly, still recovering. 

“It’s not signed by me or addressed to you,” Jackie counters, shooting her a teasing smile. “I think a little anonymous note in your locker is pretty safe in the grand scheme of things.” Her fingers clench in Shauna’s hair, just enough to cause some tension against her scalp. The receding heat in Shauna’s cheeks flares up again. “But if you think about it, we don’t really need to flirt if, like… we both know what we’re both thinking about all day. You know?”

“Mm.” Shauna’s still thinking about her hair, wondering if Jackie’s going to pull at it. Now. Or tonight. The thought makes her heart skip a beat, and she doesn’t realize until now how much she’d like it. She hopes she’s calmed down by tonight, because right now she can only think about Jackie just… grabbing, pushing, biting. Tearing her apart. It makes her feel guilty again, because she’s certain that Jackie would want it sweet for their new first time too. She’d kissed Shauna so sweetly yesterday.

“You’re not listening to me at all,” Jackie laughs out next to her, and Shauna realizes she’s missed something, or possibly a lot of things.

She glances at Jackie even as she reluctantly turns into their school parking lot. “Sorry.”

Jackie’s hand withdraws from her hair and she jokes, “I didn’t realize I’d make you malfunction so easily. Guess I needed my memory refreshed.”

They park, and a minute later they’re winding through halls of students together, Jackie a little out in front like always. She leads Shauna to Shauna’s locker first, tells her, “See you in Physics?” with a smile and a quick wink, and Shauna forces herself not to stare at Jackie’s ass in her skirt as Jackie walks away.

Still reeling a little from the car, she manages to get her locker open and sees it right away: the small, folded note Jackie must’ve pushed through the slits in the metal, sitting right on top of one of her textbooks.

She looks around, making sure no one’s close enough to catch a glimpse of what she’s about to read, then retrieves the note and opens it.

Jackie’s so incredibly, attractively blunt about it:

I’m gonna try to change your mind today.

I want you to just think about it. When I look at you today I’m gonna be thinking about it too. When I touch you anywhere today, I’ll think about touching you where I really want to. I’ll wish I could ask you out loud if it’s working. If it’s turning you on. If you’re ready to do this with me.

Call me off and I’ll listen. All I can do is make you wish you didn’t feel like you have to. 

She folds the note back up and stuffs it into her backpack quickly; it’ll eventually join the others she’s saved in a drawer in her nightstand. She takes her time gathering the textbooks she’ll need for the morning, giving herself time to stop blushing. 

She heads to her next class with her eyes low and her heart racing, rereading the note in her head, every syllable etched permanently into her brain.

-

Jackie knows now that she doesn’t need to convince Shauna of anything, but that doesn’t make the note not exist, and it succeeds in its intention: now they’re both thinking about it all day.

It turns their eye contact into something charged—even in Physics, when it’s just Jackie glancing to the back row and asking her curiously, “How much do you think Misty hates being the only one without a lab partner?” the note makes the glance she gives Shauna feel like something more. Because Jackie is looking at her, and Jackie wants to fuck her tonight—or make love, or whatever the hell they’re supposed to call it now—and that just… does something to Shauna, that knowledge, that inevitability.

They’re going to Atlantic City, and they’re going to go to a bar full of women who want each other, they’re going to feed off of that energy together, and they’re going to press close, hips against hips, and move, and they’re going to make out like they want to devour each other right where other women can see them, and then they’re going to go back to their hotel room and Jackie is going to be inside her and she’s going to be inside Jackie. That’s happening. Tonight.

“It can’t be that bad.” Shauna manages to speak normally, by some miracle. “I mean, I kind of know the feeling, ‘cause you barely count.”

Jackie shoves at her arm with a playful, “Hey!” and meets Shauna’s grin with one of her own, but then her hand grabs at Shauna’s wrist and gives it a short squeeze, something new and knowing flickering in her eyes, and now Shauna’s thinking about the last time they shared a motel room and Jackie pinned her arms above her head by her wrists.

It’s like that all day, all the way to them loading up on the bus after school, sitting in the very back seat together with Shauna by the window. Van and Tai grab the seat across from them and shoot them knowing looks, and Van stage-whispers, before the bus gets too crowded, “Hey, we’ll come knock on your door around ten tonight, okay? Be ready.”

Jackie spends much of the drive chatting away with their closest teammates: Tai and Van, Nat in the seat in front of them, and Lottie and Laura Lee in the seat in front of Jackie and Shauna. Shauna listens occasionally, and manages to catch something about Nat wanting to do another drunken hangout tonight and Tai shutting it down: “We can’t play around anymore, Nat; it’s fucking State.” Which, of course, is just a cover to hide that Van, Tai, Jackie, and Shauna won’t be around to show up.

Shauna feels bad that Melissa isn’t invited, especially given that Van knows about Melissa based on a few comments she’s made. Maybe part of it’s that she’s a junior, and none of them are close with her. But part of it might also be that Tai doesn’t exactly have a desire to out herself to anyone else, even if it’s someone who’s the same, who won’t tell. 

She’s thought about asking Tai more details about what it is that’s stopping her from coming out. If it’s more than just the reaction from their peers, if it’s her family, too. If maybe she’s not so different from Jackie in that way. It’d be nice for Jackie to have someone to talk to who’d understand.

Their chatter dies down eventually, and as the sky starts to darken and afternoon becomes evening, Shauna finds herself resting her head against the window and closing her eyes. She feels fingers tangle with hers not long after, and lifts her head briefly to shoot Jackie a questioning look, but Jackie just smiles and tilts her head toward their friends. Van and Tai are talking quietly amongst themselves—though it wouldn’t matter if they did see—and Nat, the only other person they’re in view of, is facing forward with her head tipped back and her mouth wide open, midway through a nap of her own. Shauna can hear Laura Lee and Lottie debating whether Christians are allowed to play with tarot cards and use Ouija boards.

Jackie moves their joined hands to rest on Shauna’s thigh, further out of Nat’s prospective view in the event that she were to wake up, which feels a bit moot when Jackie just winds up resting her head on Shauna’s shoulder anyway. 

Shauna stiffens, because technically Laura Lee and Lottie could turn around and pop their heads over the seat at any moment—but it is just Jackie holding her hand and resting on her, which is easily something friends could do. They’ve done it before, even.

She’s a little paranoid, maybe, and keeps an ear on their conversation anyway. Even more so when Jackie’s fingers detangle from Shauna’s and her hand finds its new favorite place on Shauna’s inner thigh. 

Shauna exhales and turns her head, burying a whispered warning into Jackie’s hair: “Jax.”

If they’re avoiding flirting at school, certainly they should be avoiding Jackie touching her like this in the back of a school bus. Van and Tai could turn and see them at any moment—though it’s not them she’s necessarily worried about, as embarrassing as it’d be.

Jackie partly ignores her; her hand doesn’t move higher like it had this morning, but her fingers scratch back and forth where they’ve settled, making her skin tingle through her pants. Shauna’s been… ready all day, so to speak, so there’s not much change there, just more of the same damp, uncomfortable fabric, but she can feel her breathing getting slightly uneven.

Jackie tips her chin up, angling her mouth into Shauna’s neck, and presses a soundless kiss there. Shauna hears the quiet words even as she feels them form against her skin: “Are you wet?”

Shauna’s heart rate doubles and her breath hitches; she had not expected those words to come out of Jackie’s mouth—especially not here and now. Now Jackie’s fingers crawl inward. Lottie’s talking about a trip her parents took her on to Paris once. When Shauna glances over, Van is showing Tai something out their window. 

Shauna doesn’t answer. Jackie cups her and finds out for herself, Shauna assumes, even through the fabric of her pants. She knows for sure when Jackie presses harder for a moment—Shauna holds her breath and squeezes her eyes shut—pushing the fabric up against her underwear, and when her hand comes away Jackie wipes it on her skirt. There’s nothing visible on the material afterward.

Shauna, however, has been left with a small dark spot where Jackie’s hand had pressed on the fabric for that prolonged moment and allowed things to… seep. She clamps her legs shut immediately.

Jackie goes back to holding her hand, but this time she uses her other hand to stroke at Shauna’s arm, almost soothingly, her soft exhale barely reaching Shauna’s ears. Shauna closes her eyes again and focuses on the gentle caress of Jackie’s hand, fills in blanks in her head, imagines what Jackie might say to her now if she could, how she might tease her, reassure her: Poor Shauna. I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you tonight. Just wait a little longer for me, I’ll—

“I think we’re almost there,” Van blurts loudly, and Shauna’s eyes snap open as Nat jerks awake with a start. Jackie immediately unhands her and sits up, and Shauna blinks herself out of a daze and looks out her window. 

The surroundings of the highway they’ve been on for miles have started to populate with taller buildings, indeed signaling their entrance into Atlantic City. They’ve arrived.

-

It’s nearly nine o’clock when Coach Martinez and Coach Ben release them to their rooms for the night, and Shauna’s non-dress reveal is delayed by over another half-hour when Jackie excitedly suggests they put their outfits on separately: Jackie in the bathroom and Shauna in the room itself. 

Jackie does Shauna’s makeup and hair for her beforehand, giving her a few more waves to complement her natural ones and then having way too much fun getting up close and personal with Shauna’s face to trace her eyes with liner and eyeshadow. She gives up all pretense when she paints Shauna’s lips with the same lipgloss she’s got on herself, just leans in partway through and kisses her gently, like she’s trying to be careful not to smear things too much.

It’s a bit heavenly, honestly: sitting on a soft queen bed with her chin in Jackie’s hand, alternating between featherlight touches to her eyes and lips and cheeks and Jackie’s mouth teasing hers open, the taste of strawberry gloss passing back and forth between their tongues.

It doesn’t matter how slow their kisses are; they’re more charged than anything intimate has ever been between them, like a pot ready to boil over. She knows Jackie feels it too; she murmurs, “You’re so beautiful,” during their fourth break to make out like the words almost pain her to say. 

It’s only Shauna noticing the clock on the nightstand reads 9:38 that finally springs them into action again. 

When Shauna’s makeup is done: lighter and subtler than Jackie’s, like she’d requested, Jackie kisses her one last time and then teases her, “See you soon,” as she disappears into the bathroom with a maroon dress in hand Shauna’s never seen before. She knows it’s a recent purchase because Jackie had told her so; she’d bought it on Tuesday while Shauna had spent her evening at the library. Jackie doesn’t let her get a good look at it before she closes the bathroom door, but a quick glance has Shauna thinking it seems smaller than Jackie’s usual dresses.

With that on her mind, Shauna opens her overnight bag and gets started on herself. She’s gone with a navy blue button-up and loose-fitting jeans, which she winds a belt through that matches her necklace and bracelet. The necklace is tight, sitting right up against her throat, and the bracelet winds around her right wrist several times, covering the bulk of it. Her shoes are her trusty chucks again.

She finishes it all up with a flannel that’s largely greyish-brown, but has hints of the same maroon color as Jackie’s dress peppered throughout—the only thing she’d been told about the dress beforehand had been the color, and it’s her own way of still adding that little bit of coordination. She rolls the sleeves up to her forearms, and then, finally, she digs out her glasses—black frames, square and full-rimmed—and slips them on, and looks at herself in the mirror above the TV stand, using her hands to straighten her flannel so it settles properly over her shoulders.

The first thing that strikes her is that she looks like she’s in college. That had been the goal, ultimately: to find some sort of way to offset the slight fullness of her cheeks she’s fairly regularly being reminded contributes to her baby-facedness. The second is that she feels good. Like herself, but also attractive. Maybe even a little confident—though she won’t quite go that far, yet.

The third thing is something she doesn’t exactly have words for yet, but it’s something like… that she wants to stand next to Jackie looking like this. For reasons. Like, specifically with her looking like this and Jackie looking like how she used to look next to Jeff. She could stand where Jackie’s boyfriend used to stand. Jackie could be the girlfriend of this Shauna Shipman, and it would fit. She smiles at the thought even as it strikes her that they’ve never used that label. She finds it doesn’t matter; Jackie’s more than just that word to her anyway, so it feels too small, too unable to encompass everything that Jackie is to Shauna and Shauna is to Jackie.

She’s still unpacking that when the bathroom door opens and Jackie calls, “Can I come out?”

Shauna gets ahead of the verbal lashing that might be coming her way: “Yeah, but I didn’t wear the dress.”

Jackie sounds confused. “You didn’t wear the dress? Why not?”

Shauna doesn’t want to explain all of it, so she just says, “It came with heels and I can’t dance in heels.”

“Oh.” Jackie sounds disappointed. “You should’ve said.”

Shauna’s getting antsy now. “Just let me see, Jax.”

“It’s fucking tiny,” Jackie warns her with a slight huff. “I swear it didn’t feel this small when I tried it on at the store.” She steps out, wearing heels that are going to put her at maybe an inch taller than Shauna all night, and Shauna’s mouth pops open. The dress is short, maybe a few inches from showing Jackie’s underwear, miles of thigh on display underneath. The top sits low, too; Shauna can see cleavage between the two slim straps that run up and over Jackie’s shoulders. From what she can tell, it looks like it has an open back as well. Shauna’s first thought is that she wants to drag Jackie to the bed and peel it off of her. Her second is that she’s going to need to bring a nightstick or a knife or… something to this lesbian bar tonight to ward away any potential competition.

It takes her a moment to realize that Jackie’s checking her out, too. “Oh,” Jackie says, eyebrows rising, eyes scanning her from head to toe, and then back up to her face again. “Okay.”

She’s so hard to read. Shauna immediately assumes the worst. “Shit, I should’ve—” she starts, reaching up to take her glasses off.

“No,” Jackie interjects immediately, still studying her like she’s processing it all. She moves closer as she does. “No, you… you should’ve done this. Exactly this.”

Shauna’s hand falters and she combs her fingers through her hair instead, nervous butterflies blooming in her stomach. “You think so?”

Jackie stops in front of her and Shauna notices they’re actually still the exact same height, just like always. Either the heels aren’t as high as they’d looked or Shauna’s chucks are making up the difference; maybe a little bit of both. “Yeah,” Jackie exhales. She seems nervous. “Just… here. I didn’t know you’d… Just, hold on.” She reaches out, carefully adjusting the collar on Shauna’s flannel, then reaching up and running her fingers through Shauna’s hair, teasing it out a little so that the waves fall more messily. She reaches out to the box of tissues on the TV stand and grabs one, balling it up and gently wiping Shauna’s lipgloss away, murmuring, “This doesn’t match,” her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Finally, she finishes up by popping open the top button on Shauna’s shirt with a soft, “There.”

Shauna reexamines herself. She notices the changes right away, how they’re all subtle, but all improvements. “Thanks,” she mumbles, blushing. She can see them both in the mirror now, can see the way Jackie’s eyes are still lingering on her. She stares at Jackie in the reflection, losing her breath again at how unbelievably gorgeous she looks. Her shiny hair is falling perfectly over her shoulders and her dress is hugging every curve of her body just right. Shauna sees her move in, take hold of Shauna around her waist, dip her head and start kissing hungrily at her neck. 

“You look so good,” Jackie murmurs to her, and Shauna can’t stop staring. They look so good together; she’s so distracted by the sight of Jackie pressed to her that the feel of her mouth almost fades into the background. It’s the first time she’s ever looked at them both and truly felt like Jackie’s in her league. “Maybe we should just stay here.”

Shauna laughs quietly and suppresses a comment that she’d been thinking the same thing, finally wrenching her eyes from the mirror and pulling back, separating Jackie’s mouth from her neck so that Shauna’s lips can find hers instead. Her hands roam over the smooth material of the dress, up along Jackie’s exposed back and around to her chest. Jackie melts against her with a soft moan.

A series of heavy knocks at their door pries them apart immediately, and Jackie starts wiping near her lips self-consciously with her thumb as Shauna gives her own mouth a hearty swipe with the back of her hand. 

It’s Shauna who opens the door to Van and Tai: the former dressed in a simple T-shirt, overshirt, and jeans; the latter in a dress not unlike Jackie’s, though less revealing and more casual. 

Van grins at her. “Ayy! Really hitting the theme hard tonight; nice.”

Shauna tilts her head quizzically. “Huh?”

“She’s saying you look like a dyke,” Tai tells her, and Shauna finds the word doesn’t sting at all when it isn’t being said with venom.

“...Cool?” she offers, figuring it’s probably a compliment in this context. 

Van leans over to look past her as Shauna opens the door wider, revealing Jackie examining her reflection one last time in the background. “...And Jackie is… being Jackie,” she says wryly.

Tai laughs. Shauna glares at them, a little confused.

“She looks straight,” Tai elaborates.

“You’re wearing a dress too,” Shauna accuses. 

“It’s in the vibe,” Van explains. “Alright, c’mon, get her out here. We have two hours until midnight and Coach wants us up and in the lobby at nine in the morning. We need to start walking.”

“How far is it?” Shauna wonders as Jackie joins them.

“Just a few blocks. Ten-minute walk at most, probably,” Van says. “Everyone have your IDs?” Shauna produces both her own and Jackie’s from her pocket, and Van gives her a satisfied nod. “Alright. Let’s roll.”

Chapter 20

Notes:

A second 10k word chapter has hit the fanfic

Also, NEVER do research on what people danced to in clubs in the 90s. Traumatic experience tbh. Had to cleanse my Spotify with sage and a prayer after suffering through that last "90s club mix" playlist

Shauna’s seen bars in movies and on TV, and so she’d had a little bit of an idea in her head of what they might be in for. There’d been plenty of talk about dancing, so she hadn’t expected some kind of small-town, quiet, jukebox type of place, where a bunch of sad, lonely men (maybe in cowboy hats) nurse a whiskey while a bartender listens to their problems all night.

But Velvet Hour—a name which Shauna reads over the entrance in colorful LED lights—is barely a bar. At least not the kind Shauna’s heard of. A heavy bass booms from inside; she can feel it in her chest before she ever enters, and she can hear some Eurodance song Jackie would—

“I love this song,” Jackie gushes while they wait in line to enter, grinning, and Shauna can’t help but smile back at her, just happy she seems less nervous than she had on the walk over. 

Anyway, this place is a club.

Van and Tai get their IDs checked first and are given wristbands and let through, so Shauna isn’t as nervous when it’s herself and Jackie’s turn. The bouncer’s eyes narrow slightly at Shauna, who reaches up and adjusts her glasses self-consciously, but ultimately he either believes she could be three years older than she actually is or can’t be bothered to deal with her, and they’re waved in as well. 

Jackie takes her hand the second they’re inside, and Shauna buzzes with endorphins as she pulls Jackie closer, out in front of her, up against her. She rests her chin on Jackie’s shoulder and wraps her arms around her as they look out at what they’ve walked into, Van and Tai hovering close by. Van looks excited, but Tai looks enthralled. Like she’d had high expectations and this place has somehow still exceeded them.

The crowd is massive, packed tight, moving in a hypnotic rhythm to the music. There are women everywhere: all kinds, all hair lengths and colors, all different styles of clothing. A woman in a dress that reminds Shauna of Tai’s is dancing on a woman with a backwards cap that makes her think of Melissa. There are a few men, too: many of them shirtless, all of them dancing with each other intimately or dancing not-intimately with their female friends. 

This isn’t like skydiving or eating a hot pepper. The music isn’t great, and it’s too loud, but Shauna is holding Jackie without a care in the world and Jackie is letting her, and that’s enough to make it feel like home.

Van finishes processing it first, shoots the rest of them a grin and then lets out a whoop, dragging a laughing Tai into the crowd. “See you at midnight!” she calls back to Jackie and Shauna, and Shauna hadn’t known the plan had apparently been to split up, but she finds she doesn’t really mind.

There are a few booths available to sit at, but the majority of the furniture she can see nearby consists of small, circular tables surrounded by two or three barstools. Most of them are occupied by duos and trios sitting and drinking together. Almost everyone on the dance floor itself is holding a drink too. Nearby, Shauna spots a second exit that seems to lead out into a large patio area, where she can distantly see groups of people smoking together. 

Jackie pulls out of her grip suddenly, retaking her hand and then asking her over the music, “What should we do?”

Shauna doesn’t really know, but she’s nervous to do anything fully sober, so she just suggests, “Drinks?” She’s bought what she thinks should be enough cash for one drink each. Jackie nods, and Shauna leans in and checks, “What do you think of it?”

Jackie squeezes her hand and says, loudly, “Kind of intimidating!” 

It is. Shauna feels out of her depth as she lets Jackie lead her through the crowd by the hand. They reach the bar and find two empty stools to sit on, side by side, eyeing each other with slight confusion while they wonder what to do next. There’s no drink menu. 

It’s a little quieter over here, and she can hear Jackie when she speaks at a fairly normal volume to tell her, “Just don’t ask for a Malibu and milk or they might kick us out.”

Shauna laughs. “What should I order, then?”

The bartender, an older woman with two sleeves of tattoos on her arms, interrupts them to ask, “What can I get you ladies?”

Jackie, suddenly nervous, clears her throat. “Um, do you have something fruity? With, like, an umbrella?”

Shauna resists the urge to press a palm to her forehead at Jackie and just adds, “I’ll have a Malibu and…uh, coke.”

Fortunately, the bartender seems to find Jackie charming, like most people, and just gives them a fond smile and says, “One Malibu and coke and one fruity drink with an umbrella coming right up.”

When she leaves, Shauna tells Jackie wryly, “You’re lucky she’s too busy to interrogate us about our ages.”

Jackie just laughs at her and says, “Call us even, then, ‘cause I know that bouncer was eyeing your cute little cheeks at the door.”

Shauna’s halfway to giving her the finger when the empty stool on her other side is abruptly occupied by a dark-haired woman with a lip piercing who calls out, “Jerri!” with familiarity. The bartender turns her way as she finishes up with Shauna’s and Jackie’s drinks, then brings them over with a smile. 

“That’ll be $12.92 for you first-timers,” she tells them with a wink, then redirects her attention to the new patron. “Your usual, Amy?” Shauna digs through her pocket for the twenty-dollar bill she’s brought. 

“Yes ma’am,” the woman—Amy—replies, but then she gives Shauna and Jackie a bright smile and says, “And put their drinks on my tab as a welcoming present.”

“Oh,” Shauna says, giving up on digging with a slight flush. Amy’s probably in her early twenties—22, 23 maybe—and almost certainly just being friendly, but there’s a part of her brain that’s acknowledging that a woman’s just bought her (and Jackie) a drink for the first time. She feels a little nervous about it in a good way. “Thanks.”

“Thank you,” Jackie chimes in, but she’s eyeing Amy carefully now as she slips a tiny straw into her drink and takes a sip. 

Amy’s watching Shauna as the bartender hands her the beer she’d ordered. “So is it your first time here or first time at a lesbian bar at all?”

“Both,” Shauna says, glancing to Jackie on her other side as though for confirmation, though of course Jackie doesn’t need to give it. “We’re, um, just visiting Atlantic City for the weekend.”

“Oh, really? So you don’t go to school here?”

She must take them for exactly twenty-one, unsurprisingly. “No.” Shauna crafts the lie quickly—or, part-lie, anyway. It’ll be true soon. “I go to Brown.”

Amy’s eyes widen. “Really? Like, Ivy League Brown?” At Shauna’s nod, she grins. “So the cute glasses aren’t just for show, then. You’re actually a genius.”

Jackie clears her throat abruptly, nudging Shauna hard and distracting her before she can fully process the compliment. “Can we go sit at one of those booths?” she asks curtly, gesturing.

Shauna looks over in that direction with a frown. “They’re all taken.”

“Usually if there’s just one person using it, house rules are to give it up if anyone asks for it,” Amy chimes in helpfully. “Want me to go ask that guy over there if he’ll move?”

“I can ask,” Jackie counters sharply.

Amy seems unfazed by her attitude. “Sure. Go for it.”

But Jackie glances back and forth between them—from Amy’s impassive expression to Shauna’s slight bewilderment—and then doesn’t move. “Shauna, you go ask.”

Shauna colors, intimidated by the thought. “No way. You’re the one who wanted to move.”

Jackie glares hard at her and then slips off her stool, drink in hand, and leaves for the booths. Amy snorts as Shauna, still confused, watches her go. “What, is she scared she’ll get hit on by a girl if she’s alone for one minute?”

Shauna looks at her, taken aback. “What?”

“Your friend,” Amy clarifies, taking a sip of her beer. “Tell her not to worry; we’re used to seeing girls who come here just to get away from being hit on by men at straight bars. To take a night off from being bothered just to have fun, you know? If you’re not giving off the right vibe, the women here will leave you alone.”

Shauna forces a laugh when she realizes. “Oh.” She’s a little giddy to get to do this for the first time. “Jackie’s not straight. She’s my, uh… well.” She makes a vague gesture, uncertain.

Amy almost chokes on her beer. “Shit.” Then she chuckles. “Well, I read that wrong. Never mind. She’s pissed because I was flirting with you.”

Shauna’s cheeks color and a warm feeling invades her chest. “Oh. Thank… you?” She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say. 

Amy laughs and pushes Shauna’s drink toward her. “Here. Take your drink and have a good night. She’s gonna struggle to hold down that booth without you.”

“Thank you,” Shauna says again, still blushing as she slips off of her stool, drink in hand. “Thanks. You’re… You’re really pretty—”

Amy laughs and shoves her away gently by her shoulder, motioning her on, and Shauna gives her one last thankful nod and maybe has a slight spring in her step as she maneuvers back through the crowd to find Jackie alone at one of the booths.

Pouting. Arms crossed.

Shauna slides in next to her and kisses her on the cheek. “Baby,” she greets her knowingly, something about the atmosphere and her own confidence making the word slip out so easily. 

Jackie’s eyes flicker to her and Shauna sees her defrost, maybe even melt a little. Still, she says, “I’ve decided I hate it here.”

“No, you don’t,” Shauna sighs, leaning in closer, pressing a long kiss to her jaw this time. Jackie leans into it. Shauna notices her drink’s half-gone already. “Just let me catch up to you and it’ll get fun.” She swirls her drink and takes a sip, then cringes. It’s awful. Rum with a slight dash of coke. She tries again, gets two large gulps down and then shudders. 

When she looks over at Jackie, Jackie’s suppressing a smile and watching her. “Fruity drink with the umbrella not looking so bad now, is it?”

Shauna thinks about ordering one. She’s still got her money, technically, and how bad will two drinks each really be? One per hour. She’ll just wait a little while.

For now, she wraps an arm around Jackie and they just watch people dance as they finish their drinks together. Jackie gets hers down first and then decides, “I wanna try dancing.”

Shauna’s not nearly inebriated enough to feel comfortable with that. “Can you give me, like, half an hour?”

Jackie laughs. “Okay. Maybe I’ll find Tai and Van and dance with them, then.” She looks at Shauna and Shauna can tell she’s just a little sloppy, whatever had been in that drink of hers starting to kick in. “I don’t want you to be alone, though.”

“I’ll be fine,” Shauna promises. “I’ll just finish this and then come find you.”

There’s a part of her that wants Jackie to be able to explore this place outside of her. Not the girl part of it, but just the atmosphere. She wants her to have fun. To feel at home like Shauna does among these people. And to not feel so tied to a wallflower like Shauna all night. 

Jackie eyes the dance floor as though considering it, then fixes her gaze to Shauna and says, “If you don’t show up in fifteen minutes I’m coming back here, okay? And no flirting!”

“You too,” Shauna warns her. “I’ll jump on her back and get myself kicked out.”

“I’ll stab her with my little umbrella,” Jackie counters, pecking her on the check. 

Shauna grins fondly at her as she watches Jackie slide out of the booth, offer her a flirty parting wave, and then disappear in search of their friends.

It takes a few seconds once she’s gone, but Shauna quickly realizes she’s the one using a booth all by herself now. She looks around, doesn’t see any tables available, and decides to just sip her drink until someone else comes and tells her to leave.

She loses track of time not long after, feeling her drink start to fog up her mind. What little nerves still exist within her start to ebb away, and the music feels less grating on her ears. She almost wants to dance to it. She wants to find Jackie and kiss her and dance to it.

She looks around at the crowd on the dance floor, hoping to at least find Tai and Van—if Jackie’s not with them, they’ll either know where she is or she’ll be nearby—and what she finds instead is far more interesting than Jackie dancing with their friends.

That “everybody dance now” song is playing—Shauna would normally find it obnoxious before her drink, but right now it’s fine—and Jackie is dancing to it out in the center of the floor, visibly laughing, having the time of her life. There is a second fruity drink in her hand that she’s procured somehow without any money, a glowing neon ring Shauna’s seen several clubbers wearing is around her neck and she has another around her left arm, she has a pink fucking feather boa around her neck too, and she’s surrounded by at least three shirtless and definitely gay men who seem to not only have adopted her into their friend group, but made her the star of it. 

The sight is so hysterical, and somehow so Jackie—of course she would go to a lesbian bar and immediately become queen bee of the first group of gay men she runs into—that Shauna finds herself giggling uncontrollably into the last few gulps of her drink.

Shauna recognizes herself as verifiably drunk now, when it feels genuinely difficult to stifle her laughter, when she keeps glancing at Jackie wiggling her hips in her feather boa while the young men around her cheer her on and the giggles keep reclaiming her again and again. She loves Jackie so much; she’s genuinely so hilarious right now and Shauna’s just so happy she’s having fun. 

“What’s so funny?” a new voice asks her as she’s tipping an ice cube into her mouth, her drink officially gone, and Shauna looks over at the edge of the booth and sees a girl watching her. She looks younger than Amy had, maybe barely twenty-one herself, and there’s a second girl at her side. They’re both blonde, and the one who’d spoken doesn’t really look like Jackie, but she doesn’t not look like her. 

“Is anyone sitting here?” the second girl asks before Shauna can answer the question.

Shauna does the math as quickly as her slow-moving brain can. Two girls. They’re standing kind of close together, like maybe they’re together. This is safe.

“No, yeah, go ahead,” she offers, gesturing toward the open seat, and they slide in together, all the way around until the one who’d spoken first is sitting next to Shauna and the second one is right on her other side. Shauna turns away from them and looks back at the dance floor, spotting Jackie again, smiling when she sees her downing her drink while the boys cheer for her. She should probably go save her soon before she winds up wasted the night before their big game, but she’ll give her another ten minutes, maybe.

“What?” the girl next to her asks, watching her, and Shauna just grins and points. A raised eyebrow is the response she gets, and then a short laugh. “Oh, God. Do you know her?”

Shauna nods, and to her surprise the second girl pouts like she feels sorry for her. “She left you here on your own? Didn’t you come with any other friends?”

Those are too many questions for Shauna right now. She does her best. “A couple. They’re a couple. They’re here. Somewhere.” She looks between them, wondering if she’s being impolite. “Sorry, what’re your names? I’m Shauna.”

“Maya,” the one sitting next to her says, “and this is Laiken.” 

They’re cute together. “How long have you been dating?”

They both laugh. “Oh, no, we’re not,” Laiken says, shaking her head. 

“We’re not each other’s types,” Maya adds. “We do have the same type, though.” They start to share a look with each other, and Shauna redirects her attention to Jackie, checking on her again. Still happy. Still dancing. Perfect. 

Pleased, Shauna shrugs and tells them, “Oh. I don’t really know how any of that works yet. I don’t think I have a type.” Just Jackie. Jackie and then anyone who looks kind of like Jackie, maybe.

Laiken laughs. “Okay, you are so not twenty-one.”

“We aren’t either,” Maya reassures her before Shauna can worry. “We’re sophomores at Stockton. Do you go there?”

Shauna shakes her head, thankful her lie’s already been prepared earlier. “No, I’m just visiting with my friends. I’m a freshman at Brown.”

Like Amy, they both immediately react with interest. “Brown?” Laiken echoes, grinning. “Holy shit.”

“What are you majoring in?” Maya asks.

“English,” Shauna says. “I might switch to English Lit, though? Not sure yet.”

“What kind of books do you like?” Laiken questions. Shauna’s finding it hard to keep up. She’s starting to feel like she’s in an interview. She really wants to be dancing with Jackie now.

“Um…” Shauna starts, eyebrows furrowing, but Maya elbows Laiken like she’s annoyed with her and then rolls her eyes. 

“Hey,” she says before Shauna can find an answer. Her hand reaches out, covering Shauna’s wrist where it rests on the seat between them. “Do you wanna dance?”

Shauna looks back and forth between them, her mouth open uncertainly. She thinks she’s putting a few puzzle pieces together now. She’s… maybe being flirted with again? But like, doubly this time?

“With who?” she asks, feeling dumb.

“Either of us,” Laiken chimes in, smiling kindly at her. Then she shrugs and offers, “Or both of us.”

Shauna blinks at them, taken aback. She feels like she’s missing some information. Is this how things work here in this world? Or is this just how things work in the world of bars and clubs in general? Why is she being flirted with while Jackie isn’t?

She feels like everything’s turned upside down tonight. She wonders if this is how Jackie feels all the time. Being constantly approached, constantly plied with attention. It feels… really good.

Jackie is still there, right in the front of her mind, always Shauna’s first choice. But she hadn’t expected this—the attention, or that it would affect her like this. There’s a part of her, not as deep down as she’d like to think it is, that wishes she could say yes. Become the meat in a hot-college-girl sandwich. Her drunk brain really likes that idea.

“Sorry,” Maya says before she can answer at all, probably sensing her hesitation. “We can just talk, if we’re being too forward?”

Shauna swallows hard and admits, “I’m still just confused about who I’m supposed to be dancing with.”

They laugh like that’s very funny, and Shauna knows she should tell them to go now. Maya’s hand is skating up her arm in a way that feels nicer than Shauna should let it feel, settling at her bicep, squeezing it affectionately. “Have you ever danced with a girl?” she asks, and Shauna shakes her head carefully.

Laiken adds, eyebrows raised, “Have you ever been with a girl?” like she’s watching Shauna act nervous and expects the answer to be that she hasn’t.

This is where she can bring up Jackie. And then they’ll leave. 

She licks her lips. She should say it. Maya’s tilting her head, tucking a strand of Shauna’s hair behind her ear like Jackie does sometimes, waiting, and Shauna has butterflies in her stomach. They’re both so pretty, actually, and she feels tongue-tied. 

The seat depresses on her other side, suddenly, heavily, without warning, and then fingers are curling around Shauna’s right cheek, forcibly turning her head to the left, where she sees a flash of a pink feather boa and then a mouth is hot and heavy and so relievingly familiar on hers. 

She reaches out, everything else forgotten, and buries her fingers in Jackie’s hair, eagerly pulling her closer, surrendering to her completely when Jackie bites at her lip and slips her tongue into Shauna’s mouth. They make out like they’re starving for it, Jackie gripping her hard at her cheek and her shoulder, and she tastes so good; Shauna’s really going to have to try one of those umbrella drinks.

Jackie pushes Shauna away lightly when she seems to have decided they’ve put on enough of a show, and Shauna watches her shift her gaze to their audience of two. “Bye!” she says pointedly.

Maya and Laiken exchange an amused look, a little wide-eyed and flushed, and then Laiken just says, “Fair enough.”

They scoot out of the booth, more giggly than actively intimidated or flustered, and throw Jackie and Shauna a few animated lingering looks before they vanish back into the throng of drunk dancers. Shauna realizes, belatedly, that they’d probably mostly just thought the whole thing was hot.

She’s pretty sure Jackie might be the only one who doesn’t think so, actually. When Shauna’s eyes flicker back to her, she sees that Jackie looks pissed, only now it’s directed at her. Shauna flinches instinctively.

“Are we doing this?” Jackie asks her sharply. “Really?”

Shauna feels a flicker of guilt spark low in her stomach. “Sorry,” she says. “I was just—”

“Enjoying the attention,” Jackie finishes for her. She’s not as wrong as Shauna could pretend she is. 

Something dark and wrong and doubting wriggles deep in Shauna’s chest, and she hates the thought that strikes her, and that she can’t unthink it once it worms its way in. “Do you hate that it’s me,” she blurts before she can stop herself, “or do you hate that it’s not you?”

The thing is, Jackie’s gorgeous. It’s obvious she’s being mistaken for straight. If she were to make the first move with someone tonight, make it known—

And that’s different, still, from being approached like Shauna has been, but it’s clear that girls could like Jackie. Girls would like Jackie if they thought she might like them back. Which means that Shauna’s just poking a behemoth of a bear now.

Shauna won’t shut her damn mouth for some reason, not even with Jackie’s expression hardening in front of her. She’s trying to soften it, maybe. Maybe this will help soften it. “It’s okay if it’s both.”

An uncomfortable tension creeps in between them, and it reminds Shauna of the bonfire night, when everything had blown up. Her skin prickles uncomfortably. Jackie has softened, just a little, but into something vulnerable and upset. It’s no better than the coldness of a few seconds ago. “It’s not both,” she insists, and it’s almost ridiculous how unconvincing a lie it is. Jackie’s a little drunk. She doesn’t sell it at all.

Now Shauna feels a flicker of anger in her replacing the guilt. The abstract idea of Jackie being jealous is fun. It’d even been a little fun with Amy earlier. But the line has been crossed now, and it’s dipped into decidedly not fun, and Shauna wishes she’d never stayed in that booth, because she can feel herself turning bitter toward Jackie now.

“This never happens,” she says, emphasizing it, making sure Jackie’s hearing her. “This night you’re having now, with me? I’ve had a thousand of them. You can’t handle one?”

“It’s not the same. I wasn’t yours for those,” Jackie protests. 

“I wanted you to be,” Shauna fires back. “It still hurt the same.”

Jackie pulls out of her grip, separating from her. “Fine. Enjoy your fucking revenge, Shauna, but don’t expect me to just sit here and not have fun, too.”

“Wait,” Shauna blurts, grabbing her to keep her in place, so confused now. “What are you talking about? Are you talking about dancing with other girls?”

“Are you?” Jackie counters.

Shauna’s eyes widen. “No! I don’t—” She processes it finally, fully: what Jackie’d just said to her before she’d tried to leave. She flinches again. “What the fuck, Jackie?”

Jackie’s being so over-the-top, unattractively jealous, actually. Threatening to go rub herself all over someone else because she saw a girl tuck Shauna’s hair behind her ear. Calling Shauna getting flirted with revenge like that actually isn’t completely insane. 

 “I’m not doing it on purpose,” Shauna goes on sharply. “I can’t help it if people finally notice me.”

“You can tell them you have a girlfriend,” Jackie snaps, and Shauna blinks wide at her.

Yeah, forget whatever she’d been thinking back in the hotel room about labels. The label matters. It actually matters so much. 

Shauna’s still angry, but now she’s angry and kind of turned on. “Yeah?” she pushes. “Do I?” She hates that this is how it’s come out, though: with Jackie furious and trying to stake a claim on her instead of a sweet proposal or a fond declaration. 

“I don’t know,” Jackie throws back at her. “Do you? Because you’re not really acting like it.”

“You’re acting crazy,” Shauna accuses her hotly. “You’re so jealous. It’s killing you that someone else might want me when I’ve spent years watching boy after boy want you while you scared them all away from me. And you hate that you never cared about them, and that now when you do care all of the attention’s going to me instead.”

Jackie’s eyes are so dark, practically black now, and a guilty thrill shoots through Shauna when Jackie bites out, “Stop it, Shauna.”

She eases off, calming a little now that she’s gotten it out. She knows she’s pissed Jackie off, that they’re both drunk and things have gotten messy very quickly, and she tries to reel herself back in and smooth it over. She says something else she knows is true: “I think you could have most of the girls in here if you wanted. I think they’ve all noticed you. It’s impossible not to notice you in that tiny fucking dress. They just don’t know you’re an option.” She grabs at Jackie’s body, pulling her closer until she’s practically halfway in Shauna’s lap, their noses nearly touching. “And you’re not allowed to test that theory out. Ever.”

It takes her a moment to realize that Jackie’s breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling rapidly against Shauna’s. Shauna drops a hand to her thigh, the motion shielded from the dance floor by the table in front of them, and slides it under Jackie’s dress without warning, letting the backs of her index and middle fingers brush over the fabric between her thighs. It’s damp. 

She’s the most confident she’s ever felt—better than her highest peak, her previous record, set when she’d first touched Jackie and completely undone her. She knows it’s the attention from tonight that’s done it. It’s the closest she’ll probably ever come to knowing what it feels like to be Jackie. The role reversal, even now—her hand between Jackie’s thighs, throwing Jackie off-kilter—isn’t lost on her. 

Jackie’s legs spread a little at her touch and a flicker of surprised arousal ignites in Shauna’s core. She presses her mouth to Jackie’s ear, noticing the deep flush in Jackie’s cheeks as she leans in and laughs out a flattered, “God, you’re insane; I’m not gonna finger you under a table in a club where like, fifty people can see us. How bad do you have to want it to even think maybe I’d do that?”

Jackie shoots her a flustered look, ashamed, embarrassed, and pushes Shauna’s hand out from between her thighs.

Undeterred, Shauna asks, “Do you wanna dance now?”

“Yeah.” It’s hard to tell over the music, but she thinks Jackie’s voice sounds breathy, strained. “Let’s go dance.”

She leaves the pink feather boa and the neon rings on the table before she leads Shauna out onto the floor. They pass the group of men from earlier, and one of them notices Jackie and calls out, “Yesss, get your girl!” prompting the others to whistle and laugh happily at them. Jackie acknowledges them with a quick wave, then motions back to the booth, pointing. Shauna knows she’s trying to tell them she’d left the stuff they’d given her there. They seem to understand.

Once that’s done and they’re finally buried in the crowd, Jackie stops and turns around, pulling Shauna to her firmly. They press together, Jackie’s arms draped over her shoulders, and Shauna grips her hip and lower back on instinct. Their foreheads meet, and as they start to move together one of Jackie’s hands shifts to cup the back of Shauna’s neck.

Shauna has no idea how to dance to this music, but they’re packed in so tight that she finds it’s easier to move with the right rhythm than it is to move out of rhythm from everyone else. She doesn’t know the song: it’s something that’s more music than lyrics, pulsing through her body hard and vibrating her chest. She’s still tipsy enough to not mind it, especially not with Jackie’s body against hers, fingers lifting her chin, Jackie brushing her parted lips over Shauna’s.

She’s burning up now, both from the heat of the bodies around her and internally. Jackie’s thigh has wound up between hers somehow and they’re both rocking against each other, hips sliding and parting and coming together again. Shauna hasn’t had any thoughts in her head for at least a couple of minutes now, and the first drunken one that does finally flicker through, she acts on immediately.

She grips Jackie’s hips and holds her flush against her, pausing their dancing to kiss her hungrily, savoring the feel of her tongue, the sting of her nails at the back of Shauna’s neck. Then she withdraws and guides her into turning around, sliding her arms around Jackie’s abdomen and resting her hands low, inches from the hem of her dress. 

Jackie tips her head back into Shauna, exposing her neck as they move to the music together again in this new position, and Shauna takes some of the skin between her teeth, and then her hand dips lower, curving just under Jackie’s dress, fingers pushing up and brushing again. Things have changed; the fabric is slick now. She hears Jackie moan.

She has no idea how much of this is normal or if it’s massively inappropriate; she isn’t watching anyone else to see what they’re doing, and she hopes that means no one’s watching them either, that they’re all too tightly packed for anyone to get a proper look at them. Then she realizes that maybe she doesn’t hope that, actually, because Jackie is leaning against her, all over her, reaching a hand up into Shauna’s hair now and pulling to make sure Shauna’s mouth stays on her neck, all while Shauna’s hand has disappeared beneath her dress—and Shauna doesn’t hate the idea of other women seeing any of that.

She withdraws her hand anyway, sliding it back up Jackie’s body all the way to her ribcage, resisting the overwhelming urge to grasp her breast. She can taste the sweat on Jackie’s neck. She can feel her sounds vibrating in her throat. She releases Jackie’s neck, bites at the shell of her ear. “Let’s leave soon,” she says right into it. “I can’t wait anymore.”

Jackie shudders against her and turns around, and Shauna sees right away how flushed her cheeks are, how blown Jackie’s pupils have gotten. “I need to cool off outside,” Jackie demands, and Shauna knows it’s her way of rejecting Shauna’s request. She’s not ready to go yet; either she’s really enjoying this place or she’s loving driving Shauna insane. Maybe it’s both. “Don’t dance with anyone else, Shauna.”

Jackie slips out of the crowd with a warning look at her, leaving her standing there alone and breathing heavily, bodies jostling her. Shauna tips her head back and expels a heavy breath, uncomfortable here on the dance floor without Jackie. She closes her eyes and tries to move her body in what she hopes is a way that doesn’t make her look silly. The beat’s easy to follow, and she reaches up and runs her fingers through her hair to try to help unpaste it from her sweaty scalp.

“Shaunaaaaaa!” a familiar voice roars from behind her with an insane amount of drunken enthusiasm, and then she’s being stumbled into and thrown off-balance. Van grabs her arm quickly, righting her own wrong, pulling Shauna backward straight into her arms and up against her body. 

Van’s laughing as her hands settle at a respectful spot on Shauna’s waist, and a moment later Tai pushes her way around past the both of them, light on her feet and full of laughter just like Van. Van reaches out for Tai and pulls her in close, face to face, and suddenly Shauna’s not in a hot-college-girl sandwich, but she is in a Tai-and-Van one. 

Tai leans past her to make out with Van, and they’re both so drunk, drunker than Shauna. They’ve definitely broken their own one-drink rule. 

A laugh bubbles out of Shauna before she can stop herself, and then Tai and Van are separating and laughing again too, and then they’re all dancing together, bodies pressed close, and it feels nothing like dancing with Jackie—it’s too light, too fun—but it feels nice having Van solid behind her and Tai’s hands on her shoulders, at least in her current state. She can tell they’re playing some kind of game with each other, particularly with the way Tai’s biting her lip while she looks at Van and playing with a tendril of Shauna’s hair. 

“Where’s Jackie?” Van shouts into her ear.

“Outside!” Shauna replies, and then adds with a roll of her eyes, “Stop proxy-fucking each other through me! Or whatever this is!” She can’t let them know she’s not hating it, after all.

Van squeezes her ass playfully, making Shauna jerk away from her and into Tai. “Go find her! We still have another hour!”

Shauna leaves them with surprise, hardly believing so little time has passed.

She pushes out of the crowd, wiping sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her flannel, happy to cool off outside herself. She exits, hovering near the door to the patio and looking around, trying to find Jackie.

She does, and freezes up right away. It’s not… bad, but. Maybe just not as bad as it could be.

Jackie’s up against the brick wall on the far side, and Shauna can see her intermittently when there aren’t bodies moving between them. There’s another girl with her—some long-haired, tattooed redhead in a leather jacket—talking to her a little too closely for Shauna’s liking, offering Jackie a cigarette and then lighting it for her. Jackie takes a drag and then reacts to something being said to her: smiling wide, tipping her head back, laughing.

Shauna’s seen that move before with Jeff. This is how Jackie flirts. Specifically, it’s how Jackie flirts when she’s just enjoying the attention. It tells Shauna that this girl isn’t actually a threat, but the fact remains that Jackie’s flirting with another girl. That’s enough to make her blood boil.

She’s halfway across the patio before she realizes she might be a hypocrite if she does what she’s planning on doing. She freezes again, trying to get her emotions under control, taking a breath and then angling her head to get a clearer look at Jackie again. 

They’re talking. Smoking together. The redhead nods at Jackie and puts a hand on her arm, and Jackie glances at the touch with a small smile but then a few seconds later she shifts her body in a way that breaks the contact. They keep talking, and Jackie reaches down and pulls at the end of her dress to cover herself up better, takes another puff on the cigarette, and then says something casual that makes the other girl nod.

Shauna moves robotically to the nearest table she can find and forces herself to take a seat. This is not an emergency, she tells herself. They’re having a conversation. You aren’t Jackie. You will not have a jealousy-fueled meltdown. …Yet. 

There’s another person at her table: a young woman sort of reminiscent of Nat, smoking alone, who looks Shauna up and down and asks, “Hello?” like she’s a little confused.

“Sorry,” Shauna sighs. “I just needed somewhere to sit while I wait for my girlfriend.”

“Oh. Cool.” They fall into a comfortable silence, and Shauna must be obvious about continuously checking up on Jackie, because after a moment the girl pipes up, “The redhead flirting with that straight girl who’s, like, giving her nothing back? Not judging if watching’s your thing, but…” She trails off with a grimace, like she very much is judging.

Shauna’s starting to feel frustrated on Jackie’s behalf, honestly. “She’s not straight.”

Not-Nat sits up with interest, staring. “Shit. She’s hot. Huh.” Then she shrugs, looking Shauna over. “So are you, though. Guess it makes sense.”

Shauna hides her smile, turning away to focus on Jackie again. She wants to go over there so badly. She decides she will. She’ll just be cooler about it. Friendlier. A part of her is waiting, though, for Jackie to break it up before Shauna has to. Almost like it’s a test. 

Shauna watches with furrowed eyebrows as the redhead shifts closer. Jackie’s midway through some story she seems very excited to tell. 

“You might wanna get in there,” Not-Nat says, reading the signs faster than Shauna.

The redhead dips her head, going in for a kiss while Jackie’s mid-sentence, and Shauna’s heart leaps into her throat. Jackie jerks her head back and turns her cheek, surprised.

“Oooh,” Not-Nat narrates, cringing. “Swing and a miss.”

Shauna’s seen what she needs to. She’s up quickly, closing the rest of the distance between them as Jackie’s fumbling out, semi-drunkenly, “Sorry, you seem really nice, but I’m here with someone tonight and I’m, like, crazy into her—” Shauna grabs her arm and tugs her around, cutting her off, and Jackie makes a sound of protest but then registers who she’s staring at. Right away, she looks embarrassed. “Did you see that? I swear I just wanted a cigarette and then she was being sweet so—”

Shauna kisses her shortly, beaming, and Jackie stiffens for a moment like she’s processing it, then cups Shauna’s cheek with her free hand and kisses her again. “How’d it feel to flirt with another girl?” Shauna teases when they part.

Jackie blushes. “I wasn’t.”

“You were a little. You did your Jeff laugh.”

“That’s not, like, for real,” Jackie huffs, and then admits, “I just got excited when she seemed to think I… when I wasn’t written off. So I didn’t leave right away.”

Shauna knows what she means. She also knows, now, what the validation and attention feels like from women, and how it probably means even more to Jackie. So she’d let herself have a taste of it and then shut it down when it went too far. Shauna’s trying to see the bigger picture, given that the alternative is to take a swing at a stranger who could probably beat Shauna up.

“Okay. Can we be even now?” She looks past Jackie; her suitor has, predictably, vanished in a cloud of humiliation. “Because I didn’t lead anyone on until they tried to kiss me, Jackie.” Jackie’s shoulders sink, and Shauna clarifies quickly, “I’m kidding. Mostly. I’m like, five percent mad. But I also heard you telling her you were crazy about me, so.”

Jackie lets out a sigh of relief, her arms winding loosely around Shauna’s neck, the cigarette still in her hand. She seems on the verge of a pout as she says, her words only faintly slurred now, “Boys are so much easier. Even the gay ones.”

Shauna snorts. “You walked into a lesbian bar and still got a boy to buy you a drink.”

“They were really nice,” Jackie tells her. “I ran into them near the bar. I told them about you. They kept calling me ‘queen’ and using all of these words and phrases I didn’t know, but it all seemed good.” 

Next, she frowns thoughtfully. “This place is actually so stupid, though. If I wore this dress at a kegger half the guys in our class would be climbing over each other trying to get me a beer. Here? Apparently it just means I want men. At a lesbian bar. Clearly I don’t understand gay woman logic.” 

“Clearly,” Shauna echoes with amusement.

Jackie looks Shauna up and down and then decides, “Well, except that all of them can tell you’re like, crazy hot, apparently. I always felt so confused back home when it seemed like I was the only one who noticed. I mean, there were guys who were interested, but if they noticed like I noticed, a little possessiveness from me wouldn’t have done a thing to stop them. At least we finally found some people who aren’t fucking blind.” She huffs. “But then they don’t like me, or don’t think I’d like them, or whatever. So.”

“Jackie,” Shauna tells her with abject fondness, “everything that has come out of your mouth in the past minute has been absolutely hysterical. Just so you know.”

Jackie seems unamused. She removes an arm from Shauna to take a drag of the cigarette, then blows the smoke out to the side and replaces her arm again. “I wasn’t trying to be.”

“Put that out,” Shauna requests, pressing Jackie gently back into the brick wall. “I wanna kiss you without worrying you’re gonna light my hair on fire.”

Jackie offers it to her in a silent request for her to take care of it herself, and as Shauna accepts it she sees a hint of shiny gloss on the end. She changes her mind and brings it to her lips, inhaling until it burns. 

Jackie watches the smoke tumble out of her mouth as Shauna asks her, “Would you really prefer a kegger to this place?”

Jackie looks away, sighing. “No. Of course not.” And then her eyes are back on Shauna again. “It’s gonna be so weird to go back, knowing the difference now. I haven’t been scared to touch you, or thought about how I was looking at you or where I was looking and if I was being too obvious, or worried about when the next time I’m gonna get to kiss you will be. I wish everywhere was like this.”

“It kind of can be,” Shauna points out, putting the cigarette out against the wall and then discarding it. “I mean, it’s not the same, because there’ll be assholes. But we can tell people and then just do what we want.”

She can tell Jackie doesn’t even think about it, doesn’t even give it consideration before she shakes her head. “I don’t wanna tell people.”

“Then when?” Shauna wonders. She knows she’s being pushy, and changes gears. “Tell me, then, Jackie. Tell me tonight. I know you know. It’s okay. Everyone here is okay with it.”

Jackie pulls on her neck, tugging her closer, avoiding her eyes. “I just… I just wanna kiss you now.”

Shauna steps into her, lips brushing Jackie’s, and tries again, so quietly, “Right here. Just me and you. It’s okay. This is the safest place you’ll ever be, Jax. You’ve been acting on it all night. We’ve been talking around it and about it all night.” She feels Jackie tensing up against her and reaches up to brush a soothing thumb over her cheek, fingers combing gently through her hair after. “Not saying it doesn’t make you like it any less when you kiss me or when I touch you. You’re not flipping a switch. You are who you are either way. It’s already over, and you already can’t turn it off and go back to before you knew. So… just be, okay? I love you. I want you to love you.”

She feels Jackie lean forward, tilt her head up. Her mouth ghosts over Shauna’s. Shauna feels her lips start to form the words. Then stop. Then start again, and stop again. Shauna hears her sniff. “I’m gay,” Jackie whispers, then, just like that, and it’s like a floodgate opens. She doesn’t stop. “So many of the women here are so pretty. You were right earlier. I care so much more about what they think of me. I think I’m—I’m not doing it right, or… I’m scared that I spent so long pretending to be someone else that even here they think that’s the real me, too. Like I’m… Even here, I’m accidentally...” She trails off, exhaling shakily.

Shauna doesn’t know much about any of this yet, because it’s new to her too. But she feels like she’s gathered enough information over the course of the night to take an educated guess. “No, Jax, it’s just a bunch of fucking stereotypes. It’s stupid. Here.” She pulls back, and for the second time in her life now she peels off her flannel and holds it out for Jackie while Jackie shivers outside in a dress. She helps her put it on, and Jackie looks down and laughs at how ridiculous it looks, her eyes a little watery. “There,” Shauna says, satisfied. “You’re in a flannel, which is apparently gay, I guess, even though I’ve worn them forever.” 

A hint of a smile forms on Jackie’s lips. “To be fair…”

Shauna laughs and slides her hands underneath the material, around the curve of Jackie’s back, and leans in closer. “You can finish that sentence or you can make out with me.” Jackie laughs and then kisses her.

They’re not the only couple making out on the patio, and Shauna doesn’t do it for the display of it all anyway. She doesn’t think about anyone or anything else. Just Jackie’s hands in her hair and the slow drag of her lips over Shauna’s, the even slower swipe of her tongue. 

Shauna takes control of it all with her body, pinning her, then backing off just enough to let Jackie arch her body eagerly into Shauna’s. She can feel it starting to get heavy again.

Shauna breaks it off first, deciding, “I’m gonna finally go buy us drinks, okay? Then we can finish them out here and go dance one last time.” That’ll make it three for Jackie and two for herself, with plenty of time to recover for the game tomorrow. “I’ll be right back.”

Jackie nods, licking her lips. Shauna’s flannel is hanging off of her at her upper arms now, her bare shoulders exposed, making the article look even bigger on her than it already is. The music is faint outside, but still very much audible, and so when Shauna leaves Jackie, the last thing she sees is Jackie sort of swaying idly to it in her oversized flannel, chewing on her bottom lip like she isn’t quite sure what to do with herself until Shauna gets back.

She passes a group of girls on her way inside and hears one say, distantly, to another, “Oh my God, see that girl by the wall over there? In the dress and the flannel? I bet it’s her girlfriend’s. That’s so cute.”

Shauna’s always found the idea of “jumping for joy” to be a little silly, but by golly, if she doesn’t almost do it then and there.

She hurries back, not five minutes later, with two fruity umbrella drinks, and presents one to Jackie with a pleased grin. Jackie responds by digging something out of the pocket of the flannel with a guilty little smile. “What’s that?” Shauna asks, trading one of her drinks for it. She sees it’s a small, blank paper, and when Jackie motions for her to turn it over, Shauna does.

You’re adorable! 609-337-32…

Shauna doesn’t read the rest, just crumples it up in her hand as soon as she realizes what it is and decides, “Okay, you’re too powerful with the flannel. I want it back.”

“No!” Jackie squeals when Shauna jokingly grabs for it, twisting away from her and darting out of reach. Shauna catches her easily with Jackie in heels, grabs her around the waist with one arm, careful not to spill either of their drinks, and just leans in and kisses her near her ear. 

“Chug these, dance, and then go?” she suggests again, and Jackie starts downing hers without another word.

They stumble back onto the dance floor afterward, still a little giggly, fresh alcohol coursing through their bloodstreams. Shauna’s brain is fuzzy again and all she can focus on is that she wants her hands on Jackie’s body—both of them, preferably, maybe forever, but certainly now, when there are other women nearby who might start to think that they could be the ones touching Jackie instead. 

She sinks her teeth softly into Jackie’s neck when they’re back-to-front again on the dance floor, thinking mine—perhaps a bit petulantly—with her arms wound around Jackie’s waist.

It’s probably a good thing she’d surrendered her flannel to Jackie; Shauna’s pretty sure if she were still wearing it the heat of Jackie and every other body jostling against hers would be enough to make her pass out. Within minutes, the bits of Jackie’s shoulders and back peeking out above the flannel are covered in sweat. The skin of her neck is salty with the taste of it. 

Neither of them is finding any of this funny now; Jackie’s pressing back into her so fervently that Shauna’s surprised she hasn’t crumbled against the force of her, and it’s most tense right at their hips, where Jackie’s grinding up against her, catching her in a spot close enough to the right one just often enough that it’s starting to get slightly dangerous. 

She groans, mouth still on Jackie’s neck, hands sliding to Jackie’s hips to direct her, urging her body to move just a little bit differently against Shauna’s, a little bit better, chasing the feeling for a moment. She knows she’ll be embarrassed by it tomorrow, but right now all she can think about is the way the friction is making her throb, the way Jackie looks over her shoulder at her when she realizes not only that Shauna’s taken control of her, but why she has. 

Jackie reaches back for Shauna’s neck and pulls her head forward, placing Shauna’s ear by her mouth, and even though everything about her eyes says please keep going her mouth pants out, “Not here, not yet.”

Shauna releases her, quivering, and then Jackie turns around and is on her immediately, throwing her arms over Shauna’s shoulders and kissing her hard. 

They shift against each other to the beat of the song playing, hips rocking and realigning, and then Shauna’s thigh slots firmly between Jackie’s, pressing, reversing their roles, giving her something to rub up against beneath her dress.

Shauna can’t hear anything over the pounding bass and screeching synths now but she can feel the way Jackie’s movements change right away, the way she goes weak in the knees and starts rolling her body with an eager, desperate purpose. Her hands grasp Shauna’s shoulders and hold on tight. Her mouth falls open, breaking their kiss, hot breaths exhaled against Shauna’s chin.

In her right mind, Shauna would tease her, call her a hypocrite. But she’s thoughtless, eyes low on her own thigh, everything in her consciousness honed in on how slick Jackie is against her. Would anyone know if they let it happen here? Would Jackie be able to stay composed enough to hide it?

A hand yanks at Shauna’s arm, making her head turn, her body slow. It’s Tai, there to collect them both with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. Van is a couple of feet behind her, eyes darting between Jackie and Shauna’s entangled bodies with the dark eagerness of someone who isn’t even trying to hide that she’s turned on by what she’s seeing.

They’re pulled from the crowd, and Tai motions toward the exit. Shauna fumbles for Jackie’s hand and clutches it tightly, and they let themselves be led.

“Is it midnight?” Shauna rasps when they’re outside by the sidewalk and the music is fainter, easy to talk over. She clears her throat at the sound of her own hoarse voice, hoping Van and Tai will mistakenly attribute it to overuse and not arousal. She glances to Jackie, though, and can tell by the look on her face that Jackie knows the truth—her eyes are still dark and heated on Shauna’s.

“Just after,” Van says shortly, not quite meeting either of their gazes. “We should head back.”

“Did you two have fun?” Tai asks suggestively, teasing them. 

“Did you?” Shauna counters. 

She doesn’t really register that Tai and Van are both still pretty drunk too until Tai smirks and gets uncharacteristically revealing: “Yeah, but we had ours in the bathroom instead of on the dance floor,” and Van turns even redder than she already is. 

Shauna cringes and pretends she isn’t wondering why she and Jackie hadn’t thought of that. “Ew. Please tell me you washed your hands.”

“Do not try to lecture us about washing anything,” Tai laughs out, turning away from her and grabbing Van’s hand. They head off down the sidewalk in the direction of the hotel, leaving a confused Shauna behind—until it hits her and she looks down at her thigh.

She can feel it, but she doesn’t think it’s visible. Tai must’ve just been fucking around. Hopefully.

Jackie, as red as Van, presses up against Shauna’s side with a mortified, “Oh, God,” and then surreptitiously tries to reach down and wipe at Shauna’s thigh with the sleeve of her flannel.

Shauna pulls away and blurts, “Leave it; it’s fine,” locking elbows with Jackie and steering her around to follow distantly after Van and Tai. Jackie and Shauna could pass as friends like this, but Tai and Van are still hand-in-hand, unmistakably a couple, and seemingly unbothered by that fact even as they leave the safety of the bar and start to return to the real world. Shauna supposes that makes sense; they’ll never see any of these people here in Atlantic City ever again anyway. And it’s not a long walk; they’ll all be back at the hotel soon.

Jackie stiffens next to her and suddenly the tension between them is so thick Shauna thinks they’d need a chainsaw to cut it. She can tell they’re both thinking about it, about the fact that they’re headed back to their shared bed now. Everything she’d felt on the dance floor comes roaring back into her body. She can feel herself pulsing between her thighs. She’s been turned on all week, and then turned on all night, and she’s almost nervous about how things might play out in a few minutes because she isn’t sure how Jackie will want it to go.

She feels just like she had in her car this morning: guilty, wishing she wanted it to be sweet. God, she hopes Jackie just fucking pounces on her. Drags her to the bed, husks dirty things into her ear Jackie’s probably never even thought of saying, lets her nails tear up Shauna’s back. 

She takes a breath, reining herself in. Jackie’s been silent all the while, and Shauna can see the hotel coming into sight up ahead. The other way—the way it will almost certainly go—is still plenty appealing in its own right. Soft kisses, whispered affection, slow, gentle caresses…

No, Shauna can’t even pretend to herself to want it like that. She’s too worked up. She might cry if Jackie starts trying to find a way to put on mood music or light some candles.

Jackie’s bicep flexes against Shauna’s and then she tugs her closer, leaning her head affectionately on Shauna’s shoulder. Sweetly. So damn sweetly. 

Fuck.

The streets are quiet around them. Faintly, Shauna can hear bits and pieces of Tai’s and Van’s conversation, but no one else is walking the sidewalks closely enough to get a good look at them. Shauna uses her free hand to reach over and stroke along Jackie’s forearm. She feels goosebumps rise on Jackie’s skin. “You’re quiet,” Shauna says, finally.

“Just waiting,” Jackie murmurs, capturing Shauna’s hand in her own, lifting it to her lips to press a quick kiss to the back of it. It’s adorable. 

Shauna suppresses a grimace and sends a silent message to her stupid pulsing clit to slow its roll, because it’s clear now how this is going to go. Jackie’s putting out a very obvious vibe here.

Her body ignores her. It still knows it’s about to have Jackie touching it, and that seems to be good enough for Shauna’s body even if it’s not good enough for her mind.

“Me too,” Shauna breathes out. They’re at the hotel now. Van and Tai have already disappeared inside. Their room is on a different floor, and it’s immediately clear that they haven’t stuck around in the lobby to say goodnight. Shauna doesn’t blame them.

Jackie and Shauna separate a little, because now there’s a small chance they could run into someone they know. Shauna leads the way to the elevator, stepping inside when it arrives, and Jackie follows, glancing shortly at her as she presses the button for their floor. Shauna doesn’t get a chance to decipher her expression; it’s too fleeting. The doors begin to close, the gap between them shrinking to nothing. The air feels electric, suddenly, as it presses in against Shauna’s buzzing skin. The elevator moves, jerking upward.

And then Jackie shoves her hard against the wall, teeth at Shauna’s lips, nails digging stingingly into her waist, and Shauna moans out her relief loudly enough that it echoes, desperately kissing her back.

Oh, she thinks just before her brain shuts down, thank fucking God.

Chapter 21

Shauna may have lost the key to their room.

Normally, this would be a mild inconvenience, corrected easily down in the lobby, but Jackie’s at her back with her mouth on Shauna’s neck, one hand dragging over her abdomen and the other palming her roughly through her bra right in the middle of the hallway, so Shauna’s understandably floundering, digging frantically through her pockets.

“Shauna,” Jackie pants harshly into her ear, impatient, and a frustrated whine climbs up Shauna’s throat.

“I can’t find it,” she rushes out, breathless. “I don’t—” She reaches back, wriggles her hand into the small space between her ass and Jackie’s body, digging into the pocket of her pants there. Her fingers brush cool metal and she almost whimpers with relief. She has a brief flash of a memory, then, of stowing it away there absentmindedly while getting ready.

Once it’s out, she’s faced with a new challenge: getting it into the keyhole while Jackie’s fingers are on the bottom button of her shirt, undoing it, and Jackie’s mumbling into her neck, “Do you know what I’m gonna do to you?”

“Yes,” Shauna whispers—she has a pretty fucking good idea, anyway; tons of ideas, even—hand fumbling, key scraping against the hole and not going in. The next button on her shirt comes undone with a soft pop. Jackie’s hand roams eagerly over the exposed skin of her navel, her other hand still kneading Shauna’s breast. “Fuck, Jackie, just give me a second.”

Jackie’s hands pause on her mercifully, just long enough for Shauna to shove the key in and turn it. She grabs the handle and the door gives, swinging open. Shauna barely remembers to retrieve it before she’s urged swiftly inside, Jackie’s body firm against her. She doesn’t immediately see a nearby surface to place the key on, so she just drops it onto the floor as the door latches shut, letting Jackie spin her around and slam her up against the wood. 

The impact doesn’t hurt—not with Jackie’s mouth immediately on hers, coaxing her lips apart, and certainly not with the swift way her two remaining shirt buttons are being undone. Jackie shoves the shirt off of her when she’s finished, hands roaming eagerly over Shauna’s bra and then sliding down her stomach, nails scratching. 

Shauna grips Jackie’s waist and deepens their kiss with a low groan, trying to taste every inch of the inside of Jackie’s mouth. She feels Jackie’s hands trembling against her abdomen, and then Shauna’s belt’s being frantically loosened, the buckle clinking as it’s undone, and there’s suddenly less tension around her hips. Jackie pulls the belt free with one final harsh yank, letting it fall to the floor, and then she’s at the button of Shauna’s pants next.

They’re barely kissing now, mostly just breathing hard with their lips touching and their tongues brushing, and Shauna’s body is thrumming and throbbing with heat as Jackie tugs down the zipper and buries her hand in Shauna’s underwear. 

The first touch is electric, slamming straight into her core and making her pulse leap. She arches into Jackie with a sound she’s never heard herself make—something high and too needy, too pathetic for her liking, but Jackie moans and dips her head to nip at Shauna’s jaw and it’s obvious she’d loved it. “You’re so ready,” Jackie whispers, fingers dancing featherlight against her. “You feel like… like silk.”

“Jackie, move,” Shauna pleads, her breath catching when she feels the first real shift in Jackie’s touch.

Jackie’s fingers start stroking over her in earnest, gliding through her, burning her up, and Jackie’s never been bad at this but something about it now is… Shauna can’t describe it, beyond that it feels less uncertain, maybe. She’s not even sure if it’s all just in her head, if she’s just more desperate for Jackie’s touch tonight than she’s ever been because it’s been a couple of weeks, but…

“You’re so good at this now,” she says anyway in a near whimper, letting her head tip back and rest against the door, her hips rolling slowly into Jackie’s hand. “Jackie,” she whines, and she’s not even sure what she’s asking for; it’s so perfect already.

“I practiced a lot,” Jackie pants out, kissing hungrily along her jawline, “on myself,” and then down to her neck, turning harsher, nipping and biting, “thinking of you.”

That knowledge will serve Shauna very well many times in the future, when she’s on her own in her bed and using her imagination, but right now it’s just another little thing pushing her closer to the brink, making her knees start to go weak. Jackie’s hand is quick and firm between her thighs, not teasing, making it clear that Jackie’s very intently focused on one goal. 

“Inside,” Shauna gasps out—because she wants it, but also because she wants to prolong this; if she keeps getting this kind of attention on her clit it’ll be over too quickly.

Jackie kisses very purposefully up to her ear and then just says, low and firm, “No.”

A flaming heat rolls through Shauna’s abdomen, pulls tight, and then snaps with one final drag of Jackie’s fingers, and Shauna arches into her, grasping for her, accidentally ripping at her own flannel when she yanks Jackie forward against her. The waves of bliss are short but strong, and leave her still throbbing, not as sensitive to touch between her thighs afterward as she usually is.

She tucks her face into Jackie’s neck as she catches her breath, secretly hoping that Jackie hasn’t understood what’d happened at the end there. That Jackie’s denial had set her off a little early. They’re both so soaked with sweat, and Jackie’s hand is still in her underwear, showing no immediate signs of withdrawing. Maybe because Jackie can still feel Shauna pulsing against her hand.

Shauna tries again, kisses Jackie’s neck softly and then murmurs, “How about now?”

Jackie doesn’t move. She’s breathing unevenly as she whispers, finally, “You liked that. When I told you no.”

Shauna squeezes her eyes shut and suppresses a groan. “Fuck,” she mumbles, because Jackie’s going to be insufferable in bed for the foreseeable future. Maybe even out of it, too.

Jackie steps away from her without warning as Shauna’s still trying to steady her breathing by the door, and reaches out to take her hand. “Come on,” she urges, pulling her forward, and Shauna goes with her on shaky legs, letting Jackie quickly steer her to the edge of the bed and press down on her shoulders. Shauna succumbs to her guidance, sitting, and Jackie reaches down and tugs off her own heels, then kneels and starts in on the laces of Shauna’s shoes. Shauna watches her, mouth open, lips dry. 

Her shoes and her socks are gone in a flash, and then Jackie’s up again, an alluring hunger in her eyes as she shoves Shauna onto her back and then whispers, “Help me get these off.” Her fingers curl around the waistband of Shauna’s pants, pulling, and Shauna lifts her hips. She’s just in her bra and underwear once Jackie tugs them off, aside from a few accessories: her choker, her bracelet, her glasses. Jackie leaves the bracelet alone, but leans over her to take the choker and glasses off and then tosses them to the floor.

The flannel is next; Jackie straightens up between Shauna’s parted thighs, still standing, treating her to the image of Jackie shrugging it off and then starting to pull her dress up, exposing the tops of her thighs. 

Shauna’s hand creeps across her own abdomen, fingers splaying out and brushing unconsciously over the edge of her underwear as she risks a request: “Wait.” Jackie freezes, eyes dropping to Shauna’s, then sweeping curiously down to her hand. “I wanna be the one to take that off of you.”

Jackie’s fingers tug the dress back down immediately, undoing her progress, but then she sinks a knee onto the bed between Shauna’s legs and tells her, “I want you to do something for me, then.”

Shauna squirms under her heavy gaze, feeling too seen, too aware of everything about herself, her body. “Okay,” she says quietly.

Jackie doesn’t ask; she crawls overtop of Shauna with a hint of almost comical overeagerness—which breaks the tension for about two seconds before it’s promptly reignited when her hand grasps Shauna’s and shoves it lower, into Shauna’s underwear. 

When Shauna doesn’t move, her own wetness against her fingertips, her cheeks flooded with heat, Jackie lowers her head and whispers into her ear, “Just to get you ready for me again. I don’t want you to finish it.”

“I’m…” Shauna protests weakly, swallowing hard, “pretty fucking ready, Jackie.”

“Not like that.” Jackie pauses, mouth dipping to her neck, teeth stinging pleasantly there, marking her. Shauna’s hips want to seek friction, but Jackie’s on her hands and knees and so all that’s waiting for her is her own fingers. “Like… how I am.” Jackie kisses her firmly, tugging on Shauna’s bottom lip with her teeth. “Until you want me like I want you.”

“How do you want me?” Shauna licks her lips, her wrist twitching to life. She lets her fingers start to circle, tease.

She knows Jackie notices, because her eyes flicker to Shauna’s arm and then there’s something new behind them: excitement, arousal. Shauna hasn’t done this for her in a while now. 

“Badly. Like it hurts,” Jackie whispers, lips brushing Shauna’s cheek, kissing her there. “Like I’ve spent every night picturing it. Sometimes I imagine you telling me you love me, and sometimes you’re moving in me so hard and fast I can barely breathe.” Shauna’s lungs feel tight, suddenly, and her breathing starts to get ragged. The build between her thighs is growing rapidly, and she dips her fingers lower, prodding where Jackie had refused to indulge her before. “My favorite,” Jackie goes on, as Shauna teases into herself up to the first knuckle, rocking into the friction from her palm, “is when you do both.” Shauna’s arm shifts lower, adjusting to let her press more fully inside of herself, but Jackie’s hand grabs at her wrist again before she can and holds it in place. “Not inside,” she breathes. “Are you?”

Shauna lets her eyes flutter shut for a moment, nervous butterflies sprouting in her stomach. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to.”

“It’s okay.” Jackie pulls her hand out of her underwear by the wrist and then straddles her waist, tugging on Shauna’s arms to get her to sit up. She feels like the world’s sexiest marionette, Jackie moving her every which way she’d like and then reaching around and unhooking Shauna’s bra. She tosses it aside and grabs Shauna by the back of the neck, waiting for Shauna to look up at her and then leaning down to kiss her. 

With Jackie’s mouth slower on hers now, Shauna finally lets herself process Jackie’s earlier confession. Her hands slide over Jackie’s thighs. “I can do that,” she mumbles against Jackie’s lips. “Both.”

Jackie nods and guides Shauna’s hands to her waist. “Take it off,” she whispers, and Shauna tugs her dress up her body and over her head, revealing her inch by perfect inch, watching Jackie’s hair spill out neatly over her shoulders. She’s not wearing a bra. She looks like heaven.

“You’re so pretty,” Shauna rasps, kissing her hungrily, scratching her nails down Jackie’s thighs harshly enough to leave little thin red lines behind. 

Jackie’s hips jerk forward in Shauna’s lap but she insists quietly, “I can wait a little longer.” She shifts back up onto her hands and knees. “Use your hand again.”

“You just wanna watch,” Shauna realizes, but she’s less nervous this time when she lies back down and lets her hand slide over her stomach and curve into her underwear again.

“Yeah,” Jackie confesses, her own hand tracing a path down Shauna’s arm until it reaches her wrist. Shauna thinks she’s going to move it again, but instead Jackie curls a finger into her underwear and tugs on it. “Without this.”

Now Shauna’s nervous again. “Oh,” she breathes, but lifts her hips to let Jackie have what she wants anyway. 

When it’s gone, and she’s completely bare, Jackie’s fingers join Shauna’s, touching the backs of them lightly, feeling the way Shauna starts to move against herself. Shauna takes in breath after shaky breath, trying not to get herself off like this, but Jackie presses down on her fingers firmly, forcing her to up the pressure. “Harder, Shauna. Like you want it.”

“I want it,” Shauna says earnestly. “I just want you.”

“Get close,” Jackie tells her, letting her hand go, wriggling out of her own underwear so that they’re both nude.

Shauna gives in and does, closing her eyes, feeling Jackie’s on her as she strokes hard and fast over herself. She can feel her body starting to flush, hotter and hotter, and then her teeth sink into her lower lip and little sounds are slipping out of her, her hips starting to move against her hand. She feels Jackie’s breath on her neck, and then teeth tugging at her skin. She knows she must have more bruised than unmarked skin there at this point, as much as Jackie’s lips have covered her, as rough as she’s been. The thought only takes her higher, and in seconds she’s moaning quietly, toying with her own release, chasing it even as she tries not to spill over.

Jackie yanks her wrist away and presses it against the mattress, flattening her bare body over Shauna’s, and Shauna arches into her with a gasp, overwhelmed by the feel of her. They’d done this once, upright, in the shower, and then never again—not fully naked like this—and Jackie is so warm. Shauna lifts her thigh into Jackie’s center and then Jackie’s the one gasping softly, rubbing against her. She’s so slick between her thighs that she slides effortlessly against Shauna, even wetter than she’d been back at the bar. Their next kiss is wild and uncontrolled and they’re right back to the energy from out in the hallway, tangled together and starting to rock their hips. 

“Under the covers,” Jackie manages to get out, and they fumble around for a moment, getting pillows under their heads and a comforter over them, pulled up to their waists. Jackie rolls on top of Shauna again and grinds her thigh in between Shauna’s, picking right back up where Shauna’s hand had left off, their mouths meeting in a rough clash of teeth and tongues. 

It’s too much pressure for her in the best kind of way, and Shauna digs her nails into Jackie’s back and warns her, “That’s gonna make me come, Jax.”

Jackie’s thigh moves away, but Shauna doesn’t even have time to be relieved before Jackie’s hand is there instead, not pressing inside of Shauna, rubbing swift circles on her clit instead. Shauna grips her even harder, back arching, and stops breathing as she tumbles over the edge again, a warm, tingling pleasure coursing through her, one hand moving to the back of Jackie’s head and grasping a fistful of her hair just to have something else to hold onto. When she remembers to breathe again, it comes out slow and heavy, her body sinking down to the bed as she lets out a frustrated little whine. 

She’d done everything Jackie’d asked for. She wants to be fucked. Like, the-living-daylights-out-of-her kind of fucked. These first two times have felt really good, but it’s not reaching deep, making her eyes roll back in her head and her toes curl. It’s not Jackie all over her, in her, on her, just… everywhere. Shattering her into a million little oversexed Shauna pieces. 

Jackie pushes up onto one hand and looks down at her, their only source of light—a lamp they’d left on before they’d gone to the bar—casting a pretty glow across her face. She’s smirking, which makes Shauna want to slap it off. Maybe just lightly, though. “Are you trying to make me beg you for it?” Shauna whines, because she really doesn’t know what this is now. “Is this revenge for those girls at the bar? Or do you—”

Jackie kisses her with a laugh to cut her off. “Maybe I just like riling you up.”

“You like control,” Shauna huffs, landing on it, finally. “And riling me up. You know you’re relying on me to touch you too, right? I could do even worse—”

Jackie cuts her off again, the next kiss a little firmer, no hint of a smile on her lips. Her tongue teases into Shauna’s mouth, just barely, and when she pulls away Shauna leaves her lips parted, almost hoping she’ll come back for more. Jackie doesn’t, just whispers, “You won’t. You only did it that first time because you had something to prove. You like giving me what I want even when it’s not what you want.” Her hand cups Shauna between her thighs, fingers searching lower, making Shauna’s heart rate pick up and her body come alive again. 

Jackie’s head shifts, mouth moving to her ear now. “That’s kind of your thing, right? Even when you hate it, deep down you like it as long as it’s me. You do things that you don’t wanna do because you do wanna do them for me. I tell you that you can’t have what you want from me because I don’t feel like giving it to you, and you fucking come, Shauna.” She kisses her there, at the shell, almost sweetly. “Sometimes I think I’m the only person who’ll ever be able to make any sense of what goes on in your head, and it’s taken me eighteen years to fully get there.”

Shauna swallows thickly, half-listening to her, half-focusing on the slight pressure teasing against her entrance. “Aren’t you special,” she breathes dryly, her eyelids heavy. The airy quality to her voice probably takes the sting out of it.

“You tell me,” Jackie says, slowly sinking two fingers into her. Shauna groans out her relief, giving Jackie’s bicep a thankful squeeze. Her other hand is clenched around her shoulder blade. “Tell me what I am, Shauna.”

She’s not moving now; she’s settled in deep and Shauna’s hips are wriggling, trying to get anything out of her. “What do you want?” she strains out. “You’re gorgeous, you’re my girlfriend, you’re… God, you’re such a fucking egomaniac sometimes. Just fuck me.” 

Jackie laughs into her ear, says, “I’m surprised you gave me some leeway with the ‘sometimes’,” and then starts driving into her firmly, hitting her quick and deep where she knows Shauna likes it.

Shauna’s legs rise and lock around Jackie’s waist instantaneously, and she pulls her close so she can use her neck to muffle her moans. It’s inconvenient enough as it is that the bed is creaky and rattling against the wall; she’s genuinely worried about getting caught by being too loud with Melissa and Gen sharing the next room over. 

“Maybe,” Jackie pants into her ear, a teasing edge to her tone, “I got you off twice so I’d finally get to do this for longer than a couple of minutes.”

“Fuck you,” Shauna whimpers feebly, not meaning it, her thighs already quivering. It’s just… too right, too good. Jackie knows too much. “Slow down, then.”

“No.” Jackie speeds up instead. She starts curling her fingers with so much force that Shauna’s mouth drops open against Jackie’s neck. Her eyebrows raise and furrow and she starts crying out softly with every few thrusts, embarrassed by it but unable to stop it. She feels a vibration in Jackie’s throat—a sound Jackie starts to make but manages to trap there—and then Jackie sounds a little undone herself when she breathes out, “I need you to touch me like this too.”

Shauna tries to get out a verbal agreement, to reassure her that it’s happening next, but her mouth is otherwise occupied and all she manages is an eager nod against Jackie’s throat. She tries to kiss her there, to suck a patch of skin into her mouth, but winds up moaning around it and letting it slip out through her teeth. Her eyes roll back behind their lids. Her toes curl, finally.

“Jackie,” she whimpers, still frustrated, because Jackie knows what’s missing and still hasn’t corrected it. “Say it.”

“Yeah?” Jackie groans, her lips brushing Shauna’s ear. “Do you need that? This isn’t enough for you?” 

Shauna nods frantically again, even though it is, even though Jackie’s moving in her just right and she’s so, so close, her core already pulled so taut. Jackie probably knows, can probably feel it inside of her. “Please,” she hitches out around another moan.

Jackie doesn’t make her wait any longer. “I love you.” She kisses Shauna’s ear. “I love you so much. I’ll love you forever. I’ll never love anyone else like this.” Her breathing turns more labored; Shauna’s so tight on her, smothering desperate noises against her throat, hips rocking frantically to meet the press of her palm. “And you won’t either. You’re not allowed to. You’re mine.”

Shauna nods again, gasping into sweaty skin when one thrust hits perfectly, and then it keeps happening: Jackie reaching in, Shauna quivering, right at the edge.

“Now you say it,” Jackie urges her, and Shauna’s nails sink into her back, digging in hard.

“I’m yours.” Shauna says it like a plea. “I’m so fucking yours, Jackie, I’m so—“

She seizes up and then falls apart with a muffled shout—not muffled enough, probably—and her vision swims behind her fluttering eyelids. She loses her sense of everything that isn’t the explosion of pleasure from her core, emanating out in strong waves that have her gasping for air against Jackie’s neck. Her body keeps rocking, seeking friction beneath Jackie’s, trying to prolong it, until finally she collapses back against the mattress and her trembling legs unhook from around Jackie, freeing her.

Her fingernails are still in Jackie’s back, but they’re at her lower back now instead, and Shauna realizes she’s probably done some things without realizing it just now while she came, and that at least one of those things had been clawing the shit out of Jackie’s back. 

“Sorry,” she pants out, blinking up at her dazedly.

Jackie’s pupils are blown. “Don’t be,” she breathes, ducking her head to kiss Shauna softly on the lips. Shauna swallows as they part, the last of her faculties returning to her, and realizes Jackie’s two fingers are still nestled inside of her. 

She sighs, almost serenely, hands sweeping up Jackie’s sweaty back and hips wriggling, inner muscles squeezing. “Maybe you should just leave them in me all night,” she decides, mostly kidding.

Jackie smiles, amused. “What, let them marinate?”

Shauna cracks up. “Ew.”

“You said it.”

“Or maybe we should just sleep now,” Shauna teases instead. “Big game tomorrow.”

Jackie kisses her again: a swift, sweet peck that’s in discordance with her reply: “I’ll literally strangle you in your sleep if you pass out right now.”

“Well, that wouldn’t help anyone.”

“Melissa can sub in at midfield.”

“Yeah?” Shauna laughs out. “And whose fingers are gonna sub in at your vagina?”

Jackie giggles and asks, “Do you really want me to answer that?”

Shauna’s face falls and she has a thought she’d never had before—not aside from in the abstract, anyway. “Wait, is there someone?” Not in, like, a real way, but in a way that maybe Jackie has ideas about who the second-most attractive girl on the team is after Shauna. “Is it Mari?”

Jackie laughs harder at that. “Shauna.”

“Hey,” Shauna whines, “that’s not an answer.”

“If I tell you, you’ll never look at her the same,” Jackie warns, grinning like this isn’t turning Shauna’s world upside down. “Are you sure you wanna know?”

“You have a backup crush?” Shauna asks her.

“No.” Jackie huffs at her, rolling her eyes with amusement. “It’s not a crush. It’s silly. Like, ‘Who would I, from the team, if Shauna didn’t exist?’ I’ve thought about it. Have you not?”

“I mean.” Shauna blushes. “I didn’t have to. It’s kind of already happened.”

Jackie’s smile falters. Shauna can immediately tell that she really hadn’t liked that. “Wait, you’d choose her?”

Shauna feels flustered. “Is that surprising?”

“I don’t know,” Jackie says too quickly. “I just… I thought she was just, like, there. At the right time.”

“Maybe it’s both,” Shauna replies hastily. She wants this conversation to be over badly now. “Anyway—“

“I’d fuck Nat,” Jackie blurts, almost haughtily, like it’s revenge for Shauna’s Melissa confession. “If I had to pick. I think she’s pretty.”

The room goes silent. Shauna stares up at her, processing that, filled with a sudden, overwhelming urge to deck Natalie Scatorccio in her stupid fucking face for having the audacity to exist. “Shut up,” she demands reflexively.

Jackie’s eyes darken. “Make me.”

Shauna rolls them over immediately, Jackie’s fingers slipping out of her, and latches onto Jackie’s neck properly now, teeth scraping hard, catching her heavily enough near her collarbone that Jackie hisses in pain. But her hips move with the sound, rolling into Shauna’s, almost as if she’d liked Shauna hurting her a little, and it’s—

“Fucked up,” Shauna mumbles, finishing the thought aloud, not sure if she’s even talking about Nat or the way Jackie’s just reacted anymore. Her brain settles on Nat. “Don’t ever tell me something like that again.”

“You kissed yours,” Jackie fires back at her, but it’s toothless, breathy. “Twice.”

Shauna does the role-reversal in her mind, imagines knowing Jackie’d kissed Nat. How she’d feel about it. She bites at Jackie again, softer this time, right at where her shoulder meets her neck, and marvels, “How haven’t you killed her yet?”

“At first you and I were fighting, and I was distracted,” Jackie murmurs, arching into her. “Humiliating both of you in the locker room helped. I like putting her in her place. It makes me hate her less.” Her dark eyes flicker with something mischievous, dangerous. “Isn’t she next door?”

Shauna nearly groans, letting her head drop. “I’m not enabling this,” she decides. “No.”

“You can’t not touch me.”

Shauna tries for a more logical argument, thinking quickly. Other rooms; other neighbors tonight. They’re at the end of the hall, so there’s no room on their other side. The room across the hall is either empty or occupied by strangers. All she has is: “Gen’s in there, too. And it’s late. They’re probably asleep anyway.”

“I’m not scared of Gen,” Jackie scoffs. “And if they’re asleep, what are you worried about?”

Shauna gives up on arguing with her, just comes up with a solution for this in her head and starts kissing down Jackie’s body. Jackie hums like she’s pleased with herself, evidently convinced she’s gotten her way, and Shauna marks up the swells of her breasts, lets herself focus on the way Jackie grips her hair and starts to breathe more heavily. 

She’s yanked back up to Jackie’s mouth before she can do more, and as Jackie kisses her fiercely Shauna pushes up with her thigh, pressing into her. Jackie breaks the kiss and tips her head back, moaning softly, but then Shauna rolls her hips forward and her next moan is too loud, exaggerated.

Shauna stops and fixes her with a pointed look. Jackie pulls her close by her cheeks and smiles into their next kiss. 

“Don’t,” Shauna warns lowly one last time, biting at Jackie’s lip. 

Jackie just kisses her over and over again, long and heavy, mumbling, “Just touch me, Shauna.”

Shauna’s hand slides low—too low, scratching at Jackie’s inner thighs, higher and higher, until she feels the slick on them. Jackie trembles under her, lips brushing softly against Shauna’s, little breaths puffing out of her as she waits. 

Shauna cups her carefully, gently, stretching the moment out, savoring the way Jackie gasps into her mouth. It’s been too long since she’s felt Jackie like this: wet and warm against her, swollen under her fingers. She strokes once, just to explore, and Jackie’s moan is needy and guttural and so obviously real, right on the edge of a volume Shauna’s uncomfortable with. 

Jackie won’t have to exaggerate much, is the actual issue. All she really has to do is refuse to try to keep quiet—just not hide her face somewhere and smother her sounds like Shauna had. 

“Baby,” Shauna tries again for the actual last time, brushing over her clit teasingly, feeling Jackie’s body immediately straining into her, seeking out more. “Be quiet for me?” she asks sweetly—sickly sweet, sweeter than she’s ever asked for anything. “Be good?”

“No,” Jackie breathes out curtly, unfazed.

Shauna huffs, dropping the act, snaps, “You’re such a fucking brat,” and then shifts onto her elbow and claps her left hand over Jackie’s mouth, pushing two fingers all the way into her without warning.

Jackie’s eyes go wide and then she lets out a heady moan into Shauna’s palm, her hands grasping weakly at Shauna’s back as her eyes flutter shut again. She doesn’t fight Shauna on it at all, just flutters on her fingers and raises her hips in a silent request for movement, then lets out another muffled sound when Shauna starts stroking in and out of her. 

Shauna dips her head to rest it on her own forearm, not watching Jackie, just focusing on driving her fingers in hard and keeping her palm sealed tight over Jackie’s mouth. She’s annoyed that she can’t even enjoy this as much as she wants to; she’s too busy silently cursing Jackie for being so fucking difficult about this.

And of course Jackie’s into this thing that’s inconveniencing her—blatantly into it, moaning ardently into Shauna’s hand, mostly defeating the purpose of putting it there in the first place given that it’s almost seemed to turn her on more, and Shauna knows she’s failed, she’s losing this battle. The only way to win would be to stop touching Jackie altogether, and fuck it, she’s just not willing to concede that just to keep her quiet.

“Shut up,” she hisses instead, her eyes shut, her fingers starting to curl and move faster, harder. Jackie moans eagerly and she isn’t sure if it’s from the words or the new movement. It’s so hot, and Shauna’s so frustrated with her. “They don’t get to know what you sound like. You want other people to know what I do to you?”

She’d hoped to appeal to Jackie’s possessiveness somehow, and boy, has she read that one wrong; Jackie squeezes hard on her fingers, and when Shauna checks on Jackie’s face at the sound of her strangled, muffled cry, she sees that her pupils have blown out even worse than they’d been before and that she’s several shades redder now. Her nails sting on Shauna’s back, and then one of her arms is reaching down to yank Shauna’s hand out of the way without warning, freeing Jackie’s mouth—

—Just in time for her orgasm to hit, way faster than Shauna had expected, and way stronger, too: Jackie clamps down on her fingers so tightly it hurts and she calls out Shauna’s name around a wanton, desperate moan, her back arching, her whole body stiffening and shuddering. It lasts for several seconds, and Shauna gives up, letting Jackie exhale several more sharp cries of pleasure before she finally stops rippling on Shauna’s fingers.

Jackie comes down slowly, and they catch their breath in silence for a short while afterward, Shauna still inside of Jackie. Eventually, Shauna sighs and just says, tucking her face into Jackie’s neck, “You’re gonna regret that when you’re sober.”

Jackie swats weakly at her back. “I’m not drunk.”

“Just recklessly vindictive, then,” Shauna amends. “And you came so fast; what the fuck. Do I get to start calling you Thirty-Second Jackie?”

Jackie laughs tiredly. “I can’t imagine why. The week of build-up, you rubbing and touching me all night, the hand on my mouth, doing that perfect thing with your fingers you know gets me off while you say that amazing stuff to me…”

Shauna processes all of that with an open mouth, then hopes she hasn’t drooled on Jackie’s neck. “Amazing stuff, huh? Like calling you a brat and telling you to shut up?”

Jackie’s silence is a beat too long. “…Can we not unpack that tonight?”

Shauna grins, lifts her head and nips at Jackie’s ear and then husks, “Stop talking.”

Jackie scoffs and turns her head, kissing her firmly, then shoots back, “No.”

Touché. Shauna backs down before they turn their bed into an active war zone, as hot as that’d probably be, and asks, “Can I do it again, how I want it? I just want it to be about me and you. I wanna do what we talked about before.” 

“I didn’t bet on you being the first one to try to make this night sweet,” Jackie admits, but nods and kisses her cheek. “I can go again.”

Shauna leans over her, sliding her fingers partway out of Jackie and gently testing pressing into her again. Jackie’s pleased sigh is all she needs to start with renewed confidence. This time, Jackie curls a hand around Shauna’s neck and holds her close, their lips inches apart, Shauna ready to kiss her quiet when it’s needed. 

“Do you think about how we could do all of this forever?” Shauna wonders, because she’s been trying not to but the thoughts of it have started trickling into her head more and more often, the longer she’s continued to feel safe with Jackie, reassured and hopeful.

Jackie nods beneath her, eyes closed, lips parted. “Yes.”

Shauna keeps her pace slow, stroking in and out and curling against her lightly, trying to build Jackie back up gently. “Tell me what you think about.”

Jackie’s thumb strokes over her cheek. Her eyes stay closed and Shauna likes to think she’s seeing it all there as she describes it. “An apartment after college. Decorating it pink and green like we won’t get to do for school. Watching TV, picking movies together. Like, actually together, not just me. Trying to figure out how to cook simple stuff. My legs in your lap while you read and I try to get your attention. How—” She cuts herself off, gasping. “That feels good. Fuck.”

Shauna’s stretching deeper, stroking longer and a little more firmly. “Good,” she breathes. “I can try, uh… more, if you want. If it doesn’t hurt.”

Jackie kisses her so softly and then whispers, “I trust you.”

Shauna pulls out of her, explores her with her index finger for a moment to get it wet, and then goes slowly with three, watching Jackie carefully for any change in her expression. Her eyebrows knit together but then loosen, and her breathing picks up slightly as Shauna finishes burying the last inch. “Is it okay?”

“Yeah.” 

Everything feels so still and silent between them while they breathe together and Shauna waits to move. “I’m gonna—“ she warns, and Jackie nods. 

It starts again this time, and Shauna works up to quicker, firmer strokes right away, spending more time with her mouth on Jackie’s, helping keep her quiet. 

“I love you,” she murmurs, swallowing Jackie’s moan, and then it’s hard and fast and Jackie’s writhing under her and Shauna’s back is burning and stinging but she can hardly feel it when she has Jackie quivering around three of her fingers. “I want everything too. All of it. Promise me we’ll have it someday?” Jackie nods against her, gasping for air, her body straining and tightening. “Tell me.”

“Promise,” Jackie whimpers, and then she arches up and falls apart with another cry. Shauna gets to this one in time, kissing her through it, letting Jackie jerk and shudder beneath her until it’s over.

Jackie’s breaths are long and unsteady for a while afterward, and her thighs shake when Shauna removes her fingers and Jackie’s legs move to tangle with Shauna’s. They hold each other close in peaceful silence, nose to nose with their heads at their pillows, taking turns closing their eyes or staring at one another. Jackie sweeps a hand through Shauna’s hair and then scratches soothingly at her scalp, and immediately Shauna feels like she’s about to fall asleep.

“Don’t,” she warns. “That feels too good. I’ll pass out.”

“You should,” Jackie whispers. “We have to be up in seven hours.”

“I don’t care about the game; I care about being here with you,” Shauna mumbles, and Jackie gives her a light prod in the arm.

“Hey. I do.” Then she smiles. “Besides, no Nationals means no hotel room in Seattle.”

“Actually, this game is so important,” Shauna decides. “We have to win.”

Jackie practically throws herself at her, giggling as she flattens Shauna to the mattress and cuddles into her. Shauna wraps her arms around her, nuzzling into her neck, wishing two people could be close enough to maybe just temporarily melt into each other. Just for a bit. Just long enough to confuse where exactly one of them becomes the other. It’d be nice for their outsides to match how Shauna feels about Jackie on the inside for a little while, is all.

After a moment, Jackie murmurs, “I love you too. I meant to say it back, but I was a little busy earlier.”

“You told me toward the beginning,” Shauna reminds her gently.

“Yeah. But I like saying it back when you say it.” Jackie yawns and then kisses her head, settling against her, closing her eyes. “I’ll say it every day,” she decides sleepily. “I’ll say it forever.”

They fall asleep just like that: blissfully intertwined, painfully unready to have to go back to pretending in the morning.

Notes:

Thoughts on a Genlissa hotel room interlude thrown in somewhere? Because I absolutely have exact thoughts on how this situation went for them and it's hilarious enough that I'm tempted to actually write it. Maybe I'd throw it up on my Twitter if I don't actually post it in the fic.

Anyway, hope this chapter didn't disappoint; thanks so much to those of you who have continued to follow this and leave kind words <3

Edit: The Genlissa interlude has been written! Here it is as a companion piece: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66257038

Chapter 22

Notes:

For those of you who missed it, the Genlissa chapter is up as a separate fic! Here is the link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66257038

Though both of them wake up before their alarm, Shauna wakes up after Jackie, and blinks herself awake to the sight of Jackie bent over near her overnight bag, rummaging through it in search of her soccer uniform. There are still traces of her makeup around her eyes and her cheeks, and her hair is tousled in the most attractively messy way. All she’s wearing is a pair of underwear and Shauna’s flannel from last night.

Shauna stretches beneath the covers with a soft sound of satisfaction, and Jackie’s attention is pulled to her. She abandons her bag, straightening up, and Shauna watches the flannel settle just right, leaving an open space that shows off Jackie’s belly button, just a slight amount of abdominal muscle, and the inner curve of both of her breasts. Shauna stares openly through sleepy, half-lidded eyes, and Jackie’s mouth curves into a soft, knowing smile. “Good morning.”

Shauna nods her agreement—yes, it is a good morning—and then Jackie’s crawling back onto the bed and over top of the lump under the covers that is Shauna’s body, looking down at her fondly. She nuzzles into Shauna’s neck on her hands and knees, murmuring, “My baby,” with quiet affection, and then she’s kissing every inch of Shauna’s face overdramatically: her cheeks, her forehead, her chin, the tip of her nose. “Mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah.”

Shauna scrunches her face up with a smile she knows probably looks dopey but can’t get rid of, and finally Jackie finishes at her mouth and then collapses on top of her, squishing her into the mattress. Shauna wraps her arms around her, holding her tight, and almost starts to fall asleep again with Jackie’s comfortable weight on her. But then Jackie lifts her head to get a better look at her, and Shauna watches her eyes fall to Shauna’s neck. “I’m all over you,” Jackie muses with satisfaction.

There’s a faint tingle between Shauna’s thighs, but she does her best to ignore it. She watches Jackie sit up, straddling her waist, and then reach up for the flannel. Her hand moves slowly, fingers curling around the edge of the material right near her chest, and Shauna knows she’s being teased now. She watches Jackie slip the flannel to the side and show off one of her breasts, covered in marks Shauna had left behind at the swell. “You’re all over me, too.”

Shauna hasn’t said a word yet. She’s not sure she needs to. She reaches up for the comforter and gradually tugs it down, trying to make a show of revealing her own chest, her stomach, everything she can manage before it pools where Jackie’s on top of her. And Shauna’s bare—not just her lack of clothes, but her lack of hickeys, too. She’s sure her neck is terrible, but Jackie hadn’t gotten to anything else. 

Jackie eyes her hungrily. “Feeling neglected?” she asks, and Shauna’s mouth goes dry. She doesn’t think, just nods her agreement and feels her thighs flex and tighten with anticipation. She wonders where Jackie’s going with this. She wonders if they have time for it but doesn’t dare check. Jackie’s making her feel like prey again, but this time Shauna’s embracing the nervous arousal stirring in her. “Was last night not enough?”

Oh, God, she truly has no idea what the right answer to that is. Or if there’s a right one. It’s sexier to say no, but Jackie might also get mad at her for it. If she says yes, Jackie might reward her for the compliment, or she might call this off entirely.

Shauna’s made some questionable reads of Jackie in the past, to say the least, but she hadn’t gotten into Brown by not being pretty damn intelligent. She thinks quickly, lets her eyes flutter shut and then arches her chest up with a soft whine, dodging the question entirely.

Jackie, smart in her own right, rephrases for her sharply, with authority: “You need me again, Shipman?”

Oh, the nickname really works like this, in that voice, with that tone. It works so well that Shauna feels the warm rush between her thighs, that she gasps with surprise and a moan catches in her throat. She nods again, wetting her lips. 

Jackie rises off of her, sending Shauna’s eyes snapping open in a panic, but it’s only so that Jackie can shove the covers the rest of the way off of her, and then she’s straddling Shauna’s lower thighs instead, near her knees, and leaning over to capture the swell of Shauna’s breast in her mouth.

Shauna closes her eyes and just breathes unevenly through it, threading her fingers through Jackie’s hair and focusing on the slight sting of Jackie’s mouth pulling her skin taut, over and over again. Jackie ignores the places she can’t leave marks on and finds too many places she can: Shauna’s ribcage, her abdomen, her hips. She slides down Shauna’s body all the while, passing over where she’s wet and quivering to scrape at Shauna’s inner thighs with her teeth. When she starts to suck hard at the sensitive flesh there, Shauna whimpers and spreads her thighs wider, even though the stretch hurts a little after last night.

She palms her breast in her free hand, once she’s mentally counted the fourth hickey left on her inner thighs and Jackie’s still made no effort to give her some better stimulation, taking to the task herself. She pinches, rolls, squeezes, and she’s not the most sensitive here but it’s making her tingle in a way she can tell is affecting her, placing the first building blocks to something Jackie will really need to take over soon.

She feels Jackie’s head lift under her hand, hears her rasp, “Yeah. Touch yourself.”

She’s fucking on one this morning, Jackie. Something about fucking Shauna late into the night in private rooms and then waking up the next morning with her really brings it out in her, apparently. Shauna takes in the encouragement eagerly, kneading herself harder, then swapping breasts. Jackie moves an inch higher and licks a string of slick off of her inner thigh, then nips and sucks at the skin there, leaving hickey number five, and Shauna feels like she might combust. 

Then Jackie’s mouth is gone completely, her arm’s shifting, and Shauna feels two fingers circling her entrance with just enough pressure to warn her before they’re swallowed up completely. It soothes the burn between her thighs and pushes a soft moan past her lips, but it’s not enough. Even when Jackie curls them, Shauna’s attention is pulled to the needy pulsing of her neglected clit. 

Jackie’s tongue, flat and broad, strokes over her other thigh instead, collecting the wetness there, too. “I forgot how you tasted,” she confesses lowly. “The only thing I could remember was that I liked it. And maybe that you were a little sweet.” She lifts her head, kisses Shauna with tongue an inch above where Shauna really needs her. “I was right.”

Shauna’s hips strain towards her. “Jackie—”

“Shh,” Jackie interrupts soothingly. “Let’s do this right this time.”

Shauna whimpers, remembering her instructions from the last time. She lets her mouth fall shut and keeps her eyes closed, even lets go of Jackie’s head and her own breast and slides her hands up under her pillow, out of the way. She tips her head back, focusing on the faint, pleasurable pressure of Jackie’s fingers sliding deep and rubbing at her. Jackie’s going so slowly, though; building Shauna up carefully, placing the blocks like she’s playing a game of fucking Operation. Still, Shauna doesn’t complain.

The first sweep of her tongue makes Shauna’s whole body jerk. It’s the only one she gets for now; Jackie’s mouth seals over her and then just rests there, letting Shauna throb between her lips and squeeze around her fingers. Shauna opens her mouth, lets her breaths start coming out loud and shaky, panting. The first pull of Jackie’s lips makes her curse, and she whimpers a nonverbal apology and clamps her jaw shut after. Jackie curls her fingers harder, just once, in reward for her atonement, and Shauna trembles.

It’s purposefully slow, meandering, all the way through: gentle, consistent thrusts paired with intermittent, faint sucks at her clit, and it builds painstakingly but it still does very much build, maybe stronger than it ever has. Shauna’s trying so hard to be quiet—for more than one reason, now—and she tries to focus on that one singular goal, trusting Jackie to take care of her in the background even when Shauna’s not trying for it, when she’s not keeping herself hyper-aware of every pleasure point. 

She’s never not given Jackie her full attention during this, and it could almost sneak up on her for the first time if it weren’t so slow. If Jackie wasn’t taking her time, sinking into her just right, using her mouth just often enough to keep Shauna on her toes. Shauna feels herself start to tense up, and from there it’s just a waiting game: waiting to see how often Jackie will suck at her, which one will finally be the one to push her over.

Jackie waits until Shauna’s attention’s fully on her again, until she’s stretched thin on patience, wriggling and straining even if she never complains aloud, until she’s gritting her teeth to avoid begging Jackie for it. Her whole body feels pulled taut, her hands are clenched into fists beneath her pillow, her toes are curled. She’s a coil wound tight, ready to spring free with a startling amount of force. 

Jackie’s fingers slide out again. Then don’t push back in. Her lips leave Shauna’s clit with a parting brush. Shauna looks down at her, eyes wild and dark and confused, as Jackie kisses one inner thigh and then the other, and then looks up at her coyly. “Use all that pent up energy in the game today,” she breathes, and licks a final stripe right up Shauna’s center that makes her hips jerk before she slides off of the bed and onto her feet. “I’m showering now,” she adds. “Don’t get yourself off while I’m gone. I’ll find out.” She smirks at the dumbfounded look on Shauna’s face, then pads away into the bathroom with a teasing toss of her hair.

A humiliated flush covers Shauna’s cheeks as soon as it fully hits her what’s happened, that she’s sprawled out naked on the bed and Jackie’s probably laughing at her in the bathroom now. She doesn’t like this at all. It feels like something Jackie could’ve done to her before, just to show off how much power she has over her, how helpless and pathetic she can make Shauna act around her. She’s embarrassed; she’d done everything Jackie’d wanted her to—kept quiet, kept her hands where she’d known Jackie’d wanted them, not demanded anything—and then just gotten abandoned like it’d been funny. 

She knows in her head that it’s just a game, that Jackie hadn’t meant to elicit this reaction in her. But it’s tapped into an old, open wound Shauna maybe hadn’t realized she’d never filled properly, just painted over with the euphoria of knowing Jackie loved her back.

The wounded part of her wins out and she waits until she hears the shower running, then stumbles over to her bag, trying to ignore her trembling legs and the sharp ache still present between her thighs, digging out her uniform and changing into it. She wants to shower, especially after last night, but she settles for pulling her unwashed hair up into a ponytail for now, and—once she’s mostly dressed for the game—taking her deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, concealer, and the parts of her soccer uniform she’s yet to don next door. She needs to talk to Melissa and Gen anyway, preferably before Jackie gets to them and executes whatever fucked up little plan she’s probably cooked up. 

Melissa’s the one who opens the door. She immediately flushes when she sees it’s Shauna and won’t look her in the eyes. Gen, midway through putting her hair up in the background, already freshly showered and in uniform, shoots Shauna an amused look. 

So, it’s kind of obvious that they’d heard.

“I need to use your bathroom,” Shauna says curtly. “And your shower. Jackie’s gonna take forever in ours.” Melissa lets her in wordlessly and closes the door behind her. Shauna stalks into the bathroom and winces at her reflection; she’d seen it before, back in her own room, but here, close up and under brighter lighting, the view is so much clearer. Her eyes are surrounded by faint black smears, and of course her neck is covered in hickeys. “Do you have eye makeup remover?” she calls out to them, splashing water onto the rest of her face and then rubbing half-heartedly at it with her hands.

“Uh, I think I do,” Gen says distantly. “One sec.” Shauna starts in on brushing her teeth, Melissa still hovering in her eyeline near the door like she isn’t sure what to say. Gen comes in and offers her a pack of wipes, then snorts at her neck and says, “You look rough. Long night?”

Shauna finishes up, spits, and then tells Melissa, “She’s hilarious. You guys must have so many fun talks on the bench together.”

Melissa rolls her eyes but still won’t look into Shauna’s. “Don’t get all pissy with us. We didn’t do anything. It’s not our fault Jackie’s a jealous psycho and you just let her be one.”

Shauna’s already on-edge, and something about Melissa, of all people, having an attitude with her now about Jackie only sets her off further. Her eyes dart to Gen and she snaps, “Say anything about last night to anyone and I’ll tell everyone Melissa’s into girls too.” She realizes, belatedly, as soon as the words are out of her mouth, that she doesn’t actually know if Gen knows about Melissa. She might’ve just outed Melissa to her own best friend. 

The twinge of guilt that sparks in her chest and starts to grow is quickly snuffed out when Gen just crosses her arms and scoffs to Melissa, her eyes still on Shauna’s, “God, they’re merging.”

“Real nice, Shauna,” sighs Melissa, but she sounds tired more than genuinely angry. It’s like she’d expected this. “Well, if my stupid crush on you wasn’t dead before…”

Gen’s head turns sharply toward Melissa at that. A light, pleased smile plays on her lips. Shauna glances back and forth between them with a piece of floss midway to her teeth, studying them, and then pulls a face. “Jesus.” She turns away, processing that while she flosses. “Never mind. I’ll just out both of you.”

Gen gives a start and says, “I never said I was—” and then cuts herself off at a nervous look from Melissa. 

Shauna laughs coldly, tosses the floss into the trash, and then hastily wipes at her eyes with Gen’s wipes. “Right. You’re not gay; you just fuck your best friend. Heard that one before.” 

Melissa blushes beet red. So does Gen. “We haven’t done that,” Melissa rushes out, and Shauna believes her—mostly because she’s so desperate to be believed that she adds, “Just some kissing,” and then Gen looks at her like she shouldn’t have said anything. “Sorry,” Melissa squeaks out.

When Shauna’s finished with her eyes and satisfied with the results, she motions for them both to back away from her. “Well, good luck with that,” she says to Melissa, meaning it. “I’ll be quick.” They let her close the bathroom door in their faces.

True to her word, she rushes through removing her uniform, dousing herself in water, and scrubbing quickly at her hair and body with the hotel shampoo and body wash left in the shower. She pulls her uniform back on afterward and puts her hair back up, then covers her neck in concealer. When she’s fully dressed, she goes back to her hotel room and drops off her things while Jackie’s still showering, turns off the alarm that’s blaring on their nightstand, and then heads downstairs on her own.

–

Shauna’s still in a bad mood at breakfast. The team trickles in slowly with their coaches and Misty there bright and early to receive them. Jackie shows up at some point; Shauna doesn’t really look at her, just picks at the yogurt she’d gotten from the hotel’s breakfast buffet and becomes aware of her when Jackie settles into the seat next to Shauna. She feels Jackie’s eyes on her over and over again, though. When everyone’s distracted or up getting food, Shauna says curtly to her, still not making eye contact, “Leave Melissa and Gen alone. I took care of it.” Then she goes back to eating, not leaving Jackie the time or space to question her.

They’re given a short pep talk, eventually, and some last-minute instructions from Coach Martinez: “So, it should be about a thirty-minute ride out to the field, which should put us there around ten. That’ll give us nearly three hours to get stretched out, work out any kinks, and finish any last-minute prep.”

“Plus to do face paint and ribbons and eat lunch,” Misty interjects enthusiastically. “I made turkey sandwiches. And a few ham, too, just in case anyone has allergies.”

“Alright,” Coach Ben adds with a clap of his hands. “We load up in five. Finish up your breakfast and meet us out front.”

Shauna’s eyes stay on her yogurt cup as she fishes out the last few spoonfuls. She can feel the tension between herself and the body on her right. Jackie doesn’t stand up to get breakfast, even though Shauna knows she hasn’t eaten, and eventually Shauna huffs and goes to throw her cup away, ditches her spoon, and snags a blueberry muffin from the buffet. She drops it onto the table in front of Jackie on her way out, and Jackie flinches when it lands. 

Nat’s at Shauna’s side in a flash, falling into step beside her and tossing a glance over her shoulder at Jackie, then asking her quietly, “What the fuck was that?”

Nat’s really the last person Shauna wants to talk to about Jackie. Or about anything ever now, maybe. “None of your business.”

“It is if you two are fighting again. It’s the whole team’s business. You’re gonna cost us a state title.”

“Just because we didn’t talk during breakfast doesn’t mean we’re fighting,” Shauna says flatly. “I’m just focusing on the game.”

Nat looks at her, and Shauna makes the mistake of turning her head and looking back. Nat’s face is… odd. Concerned, but like it’s for more than one reason. “She was, like, visibly upset the whole time, Shauna. Turn around.”

Shauna pauses and does. She can’t see Jackie at the table, but she can see the way Lottie, Laura Lee, and Mari have all surrounded her, and that Mari’s leaning over her and stroking at some part of her: probably her back. 

Of course. Kiss-ass.

A few of their other teammates are lingering nearby, watching nervously. Tai and Van are both watching Shauna, clearly confused after what had been a resoundingly pleasant end to the time the four of them had spent together last night. 

Shauna’s fist clenches and unclenches nervously. She doesn’t feel guilty, seeing this, actually. Obviously none of them know the truth, but it doesn’t change the fact that Jackie had been a dick to Shauna this morning and now everyone’s comforting Jackie like Shauna’s done something wrong instead. “I didn’t do anything to her,” she tells Nat. “She’s being dramatic. And everyone’s falling all over themselves to comfort her, like always, because God forbid Jackie ever be in the wrong about something.” She turns around and pushes her way out into the parking lot, and Nat doesn’t follow her.

Shauna finds a seat in the third row by herself, on the side that won’t put her facing the hotel out her window, and stares at the road instead. 

It’s clear, fairly quickly, that this Jackie thing is now the talk of the morning: their teammates are whispering to each other as they load up onto the bus and pass Shauna to find seats of their own, and Shauna grits her teeth and just ignores them.

No one sits by her. The bus pulls out of the parking lot.

Shauna sighs and closes her eyes, trying to sink into her own head and let the chatter in the background fade away. They have three hours to prepare for the game. Three hours to fix things—though Shauna’s not even sure she wants to right now. She’s really heated about this. They were supposed to be past it. Done with Jackie making Shauna feel like this. It’s like… something this morning had been triggered. Something painful and festering had been carved out of her and pulled to the surface, then left to settle there. 

She’s not Jackie’s toy. Not her plaything to be put back down on the shelf whenever Jackie wants, expecting Shauna to just wait until it’s time to be played with again. She’d hated feeling like that when they were friends, and she hates it even more now.

She knows—she knows—that Jackie’d just been trying to do some stupid sex thing. But let her see how she likes it. Let her see how she likes returning to an empty hotel room after her shower, feeling silly like she’d made Shauna feel silly, not sure when Shauna will pick her back up and play best friends with her again. This is just Shauna doing her own version of it right back. It’s only fair.

Jackie doesn’t make it the whole bus ride; she sinks into the seat next to Shauna with about ten minutes left to go, and Shauna can hear and smell and sense that it’s Jackie, even the sound of her breathing familiar to her by now, but she doesn’t turn to look at her. She doesn’t even open her eyes.

“Where’d you go this morning?” Jackie asks her unevenly. Shauna doesn’t know where anyone else is sitting, but she assumes someone’s close enough to overhear them. 

“You were taking forever in the bathroom,” Shauna answers simply. “I went and used Melissa and Gen’s. Then I came down.”

“Oh. Okay.” Jackie sounds hesitant. “You didn’t wanna use our shower?” Now she’s obviously just making conversation for the sake of it, for the sake of being able to have Shauna talking to her.

“I would’ve.” Shauna lets the words sit, lets their meaning become clear. With you. If you hadn’t ditched me. When she’s sure Jackie’s gotten it, she finishes, “But you took too long.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Jackie breathes out, a clear double-meaning of her own behind the words. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s bullshit, but whatever,” Shauna mumbles, opening her eyes to stare out her window again. They’re somewhere in the suburbs now. They have to be close. They’ll have a small audience for the game—just a few family members and friends; Shauna’s mom’s making the drive today but Jackie’s parents aren’t—and they hadn’t needed to use some big Atlantic City stadium, obviously.

“I didn’t know you’d be so upset,” Jackie says, fingers tentatively brushing Shauna’s wrist. 

Shauna pulls her arm away, tired of talking about this here, like this, in stupid coded messages. Anyone listening will think they’re fighting about shower length, which is just, like… the least believable thing ever, anyway. “I don’t wanna talk about it right now.”

“Okay,” Jackie says quietly. “Let’s talk when we get there.”

-

When they arrive, Coach Martinez shows them to their locker room in a rec center that neighbors Schaeffer Field. Those of them that hadn’t completely suited up do it now, and Shauna only stops in to dump her bag there and then moves to leave. This time it’s Tai who corners her before she can go, and Shauna rolls her eyes.

“On behalf of the whole team, take a walk with Jackie,” Tai tells her firmly. “Sooner rather than later. None of us wanna do this shit again.” She doesn’t say it like it’s a request. Shauna knows it isn’t. “Head left down the path out of here and you should hit a wooded area. I saw it on our way in.”

Shauna brushes past her, mumbles, “Real subtle,” and earns a glare from Tai in response. 

Misty seems to be the only one who’d overheard them, though. Jackie must not be far behind Shauna to the exit, because Shauna hears Misty tell her enthusiastically, “I’ll take charge of the face-painting until you get back, Jackie!”

“Good idea, Misty,” Shauna hears Jackie agree in a rush. “We won’t be long.”

-

Tai had been right; Shauna can see the woods in the distance as soon as she starts down the path. They’re early enough that the area seems deserted for now, even before the path reaches the trees, and Shauna scowls to herself as she hears footsteps catching up to her in what sounds like a quick jog. 

“Shauna.” Jackie breathes her name out like she’s frustrated with her. “I said I was sorry.”

“So?” Shauna crosses her arms, still walking. “I’m allowed to stay mad at you after an apology. You can’t just say the magic words and make me un-pissed.”

Jackie sighs, “Usually I can, actually.”

“Well,” Shauna fires back, “maybe I’m not your little sidekick bitch anymore, so. Sorry that me having a spine is inconveniencing you.”

Jackie looks over at her with bewilderment. “I am so fucking confused. Are you this pissed about this morning, or did I do something else?”

She says it like it’s stupid. It’s the worst feeling in the world: having Jackie dismiss something that feels so heavy and big to Shauna. She’d used to do that all the time, too.

Shauna stops, rounds on her, and snaps, “Don’t ever fucking leave me in your bed like that again, Jackie.” 

Jackie freezes up, taken aback, and then confused. Her mouth opens, then closes. Her expression settles. “What is this really about?” she asks calmly.

Shauna’s nostrils flare and she sets off at a brisk pace again. Unpleasant memories flood her brain at such a high frequency that it almost overwhelms her, and it all comes spilling out of her mouth before she’s ready. “Whenever we do our double-feature movie nights at the theater—seeing something you wanna see and something I wanna see—we always see mine first, but it wasn’t always like that. I had to practically beg you to make it like that eventually—and offer to always buy the popcorn—because what was happening when we saw yours first was that you’d say you were hungry or tired or whatever else afterward, and we wouldn’t stay for mine.”

Jackie doesn’t say anything, but she’s staring hard at the ground as they walk and Shauna can tell she remembers this, that she knows it’s true.

Shauna keeps going. “One time, I really didn’t want to go to a party Randy’s cousin was throwing and you talked me into it by saying you’d sleep over at my place and we’d go check out that new museum I wanted to see the next day.” They’re almost to the woods now. “Then, at the end of the night, you had Jeff give you a ride home instead.”

Jackie speaks quickly now. “Shauna, I remember that night; that was complicated; Jeff was—“

“I have more,” Shauna cuts in quietly. So many of them had made it into her diary. “I have hundreds more. Times I did whatever you wanted and you made me feel stupid.”

This thing that’s been dug out of her isn’t about this morning, she understands now. It’s the feeling she’d had on the bed that’s jogged her memory, reminding her of all the times Jackie’s made her feel that same feeling. It’s those times—so many incidents that they’ve still never addressed—that she’s pissed off about.

“Once,” she goes on, and Jackie flinches at the word, at the knowledge that she’s going to have to hear another one, “we had plans to try that new burger place that opened up on Waddell, and you told me I better look nice for it when I pick you up—“

Jackie winces at this one, interjects, “Shauna,” like it’s painful for her, and Shauna knows she remembers it too.

“So I did—I tried to. I did my makeup. Then you came out in like, sweatpants, and laughed at me and said you’d been kidding. Then made me take you there like that anyway.”

It’s annoying, now, watching Jackie sniffle and wipe at her eyes like she’s the victim here.

“I had been kidding, but I thought you looked really pretty and I got nervous. And back then I didn’t understand why I was nervous, which made me uncomfortable, and I took it out on you and made you feel uncomfortable instead,” she explains. “I was just being an insecure asshole.”

“You humiliated me,” Shauna says with finality, and then drops onto a bench at the side of the path, safely tucked away in the wooded area now. “You made me feel small. All the time.”

Jackie doesn’t sit down next to her; instead, she kneels in front of her and takes her hands, looking up at her. “Shauna, I’m sorry. I was a shitty friend sometimes. A lot of the time. I took you for granted and I had so much going on in my own head that I didn’t think enough about what could be going on in yours. But now it’s, like… all I think about.” She swallows thickly. “I think I’m driving myself a little crazy trying to get into your head and work out what’s going on in there. But I also think it’s working. I’m understanding you now.” She forces a laugh. “I feel like these past few weeks I’ve been on a crash course to getting a PhD in Shauna Shipman. I hear you, okay? This morning—not happening again. No embarrassing you for doing what I want you to. Got it.”

Shauna soaks in the words slowly, carefully, letting them settle. Chewing on them to try to understand if they’re enough to soothe the ache in her chest. She pulls one of her hands from Jackie’s and cups her cheek, watching Jackie look up at her determinedly.

“For the record, though,” Jackie adds, “it wasn’t supposed to be embarrassing. I was just imagining winning today, heading back to Wiskayok to celebrate with the team, and then how it’d be with you after a day of waiting. I—“ She blushes, looking away. “What I did to you, I… did to myself in the shower. And then when I came back you were gone.”

Shauna’s fingers trace her jaw and she decides, with a shaky sigh. “You’re a much better girlfriend than you were a best friend, you know.”

“I wanna be good at both,” Jackie sighs, moving to sit next to her instead. “But I do love that you can call me that now.” She squeezes Shauna’s hand and scoots in closer, resting her head on Shauna’s shoulder. “I wish I hadn’t stopped this morning. You were…” Jackie trails off and Shauna can tell she’s losing herself in the memory.

“You should get back to the team,” Shauna says quickly, too aware of where this could go if they keep talking about it here. Alone. Jackie stirs, back in the present now, and looks at her. “They need you today, Jax.”

“Are we okay?” Jackie asks.

“Yeah,” Shauna breathes. “C’mere.” It’s playing with fire a little, maybe, to draw Jackie into a kiss, to tilt her head and deepen it slowly, but Shauna’s craving the comfort of it. She doesn’t feel fixed, because this reopened wound is too raw and now the memories are too fresh, but she’s cooled down. It’s helped her to create a mental divide between Friend Jackie and Girlfriend Jackie. Friend Jackie had wronged her so many times, unintentionally or otherwise. Girlfriend Jackie is embracing their obsession with each other and actually attempting to communicate, and though she’s fucking up occasionally, she has her heart in the right place.

She’s also pressing her body to Shauna’s now with her tongue buried in Shauna’s mouth and her hand sliding up Shauna’s thigh, mumbling between kisses, “You’ll only take a couple of minutes, if you want.” Which Shauna could let herself be offended by, if she wanted to, even though it’s almost certainly true—especially after this morning.

She doesn’t take offense, but she does pull away and make herself insist, “You’ve been dreaming about taking this team to Nationals since the day Coach Martinez made you captain, Jax. I’ll be fine.”

“I just need you to know that if it’s between us and Nationals—”

“I know,” Shauna laughs out. Jackie settles down, relieved. “I’m good. We’re good. Get your captain voice ready and go lead. You can even call me Shipman for the next five hours.”

A coy smile stretches across Jackie’s lips. “You liked that this morning.”

Shauna practically shoves her to her feet. “Go! I’ll be right behind you.”

“Okay.” Jackie lingers, though, smiling fondly at her, and then leans down to give Shauna another kiss. “I already miss not being able to do that whenever I want,” she confesses when they part.

“Me too,” Shauna says, though that’s not something she particularly wants to think about right now, either. 

Jackie backs away from her, blows her one last kiss, and then starts jogging back down the path.

Shauna slides down a little on the bench, alone, and closes her eyes. Thinks back on those bad memories and how she knows them so well, has read her own recounting of them over and over again in her journal over the years.

She wonders if maybe it’s time to let it all go for real. To do some book-burning.

-

This game is the hardest one Shauna’s ever played.

Number ten is taller and bulkier than Shauna and is all over her in the midfield; her only weakness appears to be that Shauna can get around her if she’s quick on her turns or gets a decent through ball from Lottie. Numbers one and two are both all over Jackie at striker, and even though Jackie’s been quick on her feet this game, they seem to have identified her as the biggest scoring threat and successfully shut her down thus far. 

Them double-teaming Jackie has opened up some holes, though, and led to a goal from Nat after a run up the right side, and then a rare sneak into the net from Lottie, who’d seen an opening on the field, called the best audible of her life, and rushed past Shauna with a short, “Cover mine!”, letting Shauna drop to center back temporarily while Tai curled a perfect cross over the defense and straight onto Lottie’s towering head at the end of her run.

Their opponents are so quick on the counter, though, and Shauna’s being run ragged trying to get back in time. She’s stopped two breakaways on her own already, and Lottie and Laura Lee have been doing work as well—Lottie and Tai are both having the game of their lives, honestly—but at halftime it’s still 2-2 despite their best efforts.

Coach Martinez pumps them up in the huddle on the sidelines while Misty eagerly passes out water. “We’re holding steady, which is perfect. We didn’t expect to be ahead here. It’s those last fifteen minutes.”

Shauna takes a long swig of her drink and lifts her jersey up to wipe at her sweaty forehead with it. When she lowers it, she sees Nat nearby in the huddle, eyes darting up from Shauna’s exposed torso, eyebrows raised with amusement, and then her expression shifts into something knowing and almost… satisfied? Shauna blinks at her, confused, and then she remembers what her body looks like as of this morning and flushes hard. She tears her eyes from Nat, who’s already moved past it and seems to be focused on their coach again. 

“They’re gassing, and we’ve been focusing on endurance in practices. Watch those counters on defense, wait for seventy-five minutes, and then hit them hard. We’ll start looking to send in some fresh legs at midfield at around eighty minutes, but Shauna, I want your speed for all ninety. Are you good?”

Shauna straightens up, surprised to have been addressed directly. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“Okay. Taissa and Lottie—perfect. You keep playing in this second half like you have the first and I’m gonna start calling for you both to get the ball whenever we can get it to you. Natalie, great timing on your runs. Van, they’re hammering you but you’re holding. Keep at it. And Jackie, our goals are coming off of holes they’re leaving to double up on you, so I’ll bet anything their coach is over there changing their game plan now.”

Jackie nods, running a hand over her sweaty scalp. “I think they’ll leave number two on me, but I can try to keep pulling number one toward the center, too. She’s trying to get into my head.” At that, Shauna shoots her a curious look. She wants to ask about it but doesn’t get the chance.

“That’ll leave more space for Nat on the right side,” Coach Martinez says, nodding. “Coach Scott, anything to add?”

Coach Ben shakes his head, giving them all a small smile. “You’re doing well. Just play your hearts out and do your best. I believe in you.” He puts his hand in. “On three?”

They all follow his lead. Shauna’s hand slides in right over Jackie’s. “Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!” they shout, and then jog out onto the field again.

The energy feels even more electric now. Shauna watches Jackie and Nat go to center field and stand by the ball. The referee blows his whistle, Jackie taps the ball to Nat, and the second half begins.

-

Now that Shauna’s listening out for it, trying to pay attention, she can hear her:

Number one is a bitch. 

“Ooh, close!” she teases when Laura Lee mistimes a through ball to Jackie and Jackie overruns it. It gets booted the other way downfield by number two, and Shauna turns away and sprints back to chase it before she can hear Jackie’s response—if she even gives one.

Another time, they’re all jostling for position on a throw-in from Mari and Shauna sees Jackie being guarded by number one, then watches Jackie take a subtle elbow to the ribs and wince. The referee’s busy watching Mari’s feet, not paying attention. 

The next time it’s a dead ball for a goal kick from Van and they have a few seconds while she chases the out-of-bounds ball down, Shauna goes straight for number one, gets within a few feet of her and calls out, “Hey! Play clean. Watch your elbows.”

“Shauna,” Jackie warns her distantly, overhearing. Nat hears her too, but only gives her an overeager nod, like she’s been getting a few to the ribs herself. 

“Tell your captain to watch her flat ass,” number one calls after her, and Shauna almost rounds on her, fists clenched.

“Shauna, you’re out of position!” Jackie barks at her. Van boots the ball up the field and Shauna curses, rushing back to take her place. 

The next time play’s dead again, Jackie finds her and tells her, “Don’t do that again. I’ve got it.”

“Fine,” Shauna mumbles, and Nat won’t stop fucking watching them. 

-

Ninety minutes. It’s 3-3. A couple of the juniors have been subbed in at left and right midfield, but it’s Tai who’s been the star of the show now: she’d scored their third goal herself and has been all over the field, even when she technically wasn’t supposed to be. Normally Shauna’d expect Coach Martinez to chew her out after the game for it, but with Nationals on the line it’s an all-out war, and if Tai still seems to have enough gas in the tank to somehow pop up in the backfield, midfield, and up front, all right when she’s needed, then so be it.

Shauna’s about gassed herself. It’s that week of not eating; she can tell. Jackie isn’t gassed, at least, having been required to do less running at striker, but she’s been shut down all game and Shauna’s worried about her confidence. Especially with number one tearing her down verbally all the while. Shauna’s been listening and trying not to fume about it, but Jackie’s been called names, taunted after every mistimed run or mis-hit ball. Still, she’s been a solid presence, as much as she’s been allowed to be.

They slip into added minutes with the score still tied. They’re given five. 

It happens in the fourth: Tai sprints to the backfield and wrestles the ball away from number three, then turns with open space. Shauna sees it so clearly, out of nowhere, the way through: it’s a give-and-go. She sprints up, calling for the ball, and she knows Tai sees it too. Tai dumps it to her, sprinting past her after, and Shauna turns and feeds it up to Tai again. Tai beats a defender and looks up.

And Jackie’s making a run. 

“Tai!” Shauna can hear her calling for it distantly. Number two is on her line, but number one has made a mistake, has dropped just a little too far back, which leaves Jackie onside when Tai curves the ball through the air to her in a perfect cross. 

And Shauna will never be able to pinpoint what, exactly, causes it. Number one tearing her down all game. That week of not eating. Those drinks at the bar last night, their fight this morning, a little soreness from what they’d done in bed together. It’s a perfect ball. Jackie’s gotten hundreds like it in practices and put them into the net over and over again.

But Jackie is just a half-second late to it, maybe. Maybe less than that. The ball glances off her forehead and goes wide, straight to the feet of number one, who boots it downfield. Shauna, caught off-guard, mentally halfway to celebrating already, is late to turn. 

Only Lottie, actually—still playing so well—isn’t late. But two forwards from the other team have slipped past everyone else, one of them has the ball, and Van already sees it, is already charging out of the goal while Lottie’s forced to commit to the player with the ball. The forward dumps it off to her teammate, predictably, who’s left to face Van alone. Shauna can only watch as she slides the ball to her right foot and Van tries to make her body bigger. 

The ball sails past Van’s fingertips into the net, and with thirty seconds left on the clock, Shauna knows it’s over. Everyone knows it’s over.

Number one knows it’s over when, as her team’s forwards and midfielders mob each other at center field to celebrate, she taunts Jackie in a mocking baby voice, “Awww, did the little princess just cost her team Nationals?”

Shauna turns, watches Jackie’s already crumpled face crumple further. She sees red. Number one’s jogging gleefully to join the mob now.

Shauna takes off at a run, intercepts her halfway there at an angle, lowers her shoulder, and crashes straight into her, flattening her to the field with a sickening crack.

Number one howls in agony, clutching at her ankle, and Shauna leans over her, taking in the image of her rolling around in pain with unbridled satisfaction. “Have fun at Nationals crippled, bitch,” she says lowly, then spits on her and walks away. 

A whistle blows, and Shauna thinks it’s for the end of the game, but suddenly the referee is at her side, holding up a red card in her face, and Tai’s shoving her so hard Shauna almost stumbles over. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Tai shouts at her. 

Number one’s teammates are realizing what’s happened, are surrounding their friend as their coaches sprint out onto the field, and spectators wearing red in the stands are booing distantly.

“Get off the field!” the ref demands when Shauna evidently hasn’t moved quickly enough, and it’s Nat who comes and steers her in the proper direction. Shauna hasn’t gotten a good look at Jackie yet, and she’s not sure she wants to now.

Coach Martinez receives her on the sideline, grips her arm so hard it almost hurts, and tells her firmly, “I don’t know how interested you were in playing soccer in college, Shauna, but I promise you I will do everything in my power to make sure you never set foot on a field again.”

Shauna plops onto the bench a moment later with her jaw clenched. 

It’s a painful wait for the end: they have to get number one off of the field and replace her as a formality, and then Jackie and Nat have to kick the ball off again while the Yellowjackets play down a player. It doesn’t matter anyway, of course. The ball only gets passed twice before the whistle sounds three times, signaling the end of the game. They’re not going to Nationals.

Shauna stands up as it ends, watching their opponents share a now lukewarm celebration at midfield as the Wiskayok players stand alone, each of them processing it in their own way. Van paces in front of the goal with her hands on her head. Nat kicks forlornly at the grass. Tai collapses onto her back, visibly gasping for breath. 

Jackie crumples to her knees and buries her face in her hands, crying.

And the strangest thing happens, then, for Shauna: She feels an odd prickling sensation all over her body, like she’s being watched by a thousand eyes, like maybe something’s reaching out for her. The trees in the distant woods seem to rustle and dance. And a gust of wind brushes past her legs—just her legs—like something invisible has just taken a swipe at her there and missed.

The prickling feeling fades. She takes off toward Jackie, and she’ll have forgotten it ever happened by the time she reaches her.

She collapses onto her knees next to Jackie and leans over her, hugging her tight, listening to her sob, murmuring, “Baby,” because she knows no one can hear. 

“I missed,” Jackie cries, trembling beneath her. “I should’ve had that. It’s all my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Shauna says, because that’s what she’s supposed to say. Maybe it’s true. Maybe Jackie had blown it. But there had been other scoring opportunities too, even if Jackie’s had been the best one, and Shauna doesn’t really care whose fault it is. “You did great, Jax. They were on you all game. Nat or Tai should’ve scored again. I could’ve played further up and helped.” She couldn’t have; not with the quick counters. Jackie knows it too. It doesn’t matter. “I could’ve done what Lottie did. And Mari was fucking useless, like always. The juniors were too.”

Jackie’s still crying, and Shauna strokes at her back and goes quiet, just holding her for a while.

She processes how it’d ended, finally, and muses, “I think I broke that girl’s ankle.”

Mari gets to them next. She practically pries Shauna off of Jackie to take her place, and insists, “Fuck whatever these other bitches are gonna say to you, Jackie; those two ugly cunts were up your ass all game like they lived there. They wouldn’t let you do anything.” Then she adds, to Shauna, “And at least you being a total psycho about Jackie was fun to watch this time. Small victories.”

For once, watching Jackie wipe at her eyes and then let herself be pulled into a hug, Shauna almost likes Mari.

Chapter 23

They’re swept out of Atlantic City on a bus home fairly quickly. Shauna’s mom had met with Coach Martinez and wanted to take Shauna home herself after the incident on the field, but Shauna had refused to go without Jackie, and Jackie had refused to leave the team—even with some of them acting a little frosty toward her in the minutes directly after the match.

There’s less chatter on the ride back. They sit in relative silence, all probably reviewing the game in their heads, going over how it could’ve gone differently, what each of them could’ve done. There’s no doubt that Jackie’s last-minute header is at the forefront of their thoughts. 

And then there’s number one’s ankle. Shauna knows there will probably be a punishment for it. The ball had been dead. It’d clearly been a targeted attack, even if she hadn’t meant to do so much damage—though Shauna’s been parroting the same innocent, “I didn’t see her!” to everyone, even if they all know better, just for the sake of plausible deniability. She’d also seen Coach Martinez wind up on the receiving end of some heated words from the other team’s coach after the game.

She doesn’t care. She’s proud of it. The game had been over anyway regardless of whether she’d been thrown out, so it hadn’t changed the outcome, and she gets an adrenaline rush every time she thinks about hearing that cracking bone as number one had hit the ground hard. Let anyone try fucking with Jackie like that with Shauna around again.

Jackie’s cuddled into her now in their bus seat, head on Shauna’s shoulder, Shauna’s arms around her. They’re allowed right now, with emotions running so high, with Jackie still crying off and on a little, and Shauna doesn’t savor the negative emotions but she does savor the contact, the way she’s allowed to hold Jackie and stroke at her back and no one will accuse them of anything. 

“You shouldn’t have hurt that girl,” Jackie whispers to her when they’re almost home.

Shauna squeezes Jackie tighter and just says it again: “It was an accident. I didn’t see her.” She knows Jackie knows better, though.

She isn’t sure if anyone had been close enough to hear everything after the collision, or if anyone had been watching closely enough to see the whole thing. Her parting comment. The spit. She wonders if Jackie had seen it.

“Did I scare you?” she checks, because that might be the one thing that could make her regret it.

Jackie’s mouth hovers a little too closely to her neck, then. Her lips brush too heavily against Shauna’s skin as she just says, “No. You didn’t scare me.” The weight of what she doesn’t say is startlingly massive. 

And, oh, they can never unpack this. Shauna might go permanently feral if they do. She pretends she doesn’t know. She vows to never revisit this new knowledge ever again, not even alone in her own head. They can both take it to the grave. 

“Good,” she breathes.

-

Shauna doesn’t go home like she’s supposed to, like she’d promised her mother she would. Instead, she goes to Jackie’s.

It’s her first time at the Taylor’s since the day she’d showed up with breakfast for Jackie during their fight, but her presence is overshadowed by Jackie collapsing into her mother’s arms and delivering the news of their loss. Mr. Taylor is there too, and Jackie’s mom hugs her close while Shauna hovers nervously beside them, not sure what to make of it all.

“Well, at least it’s all over and done with, and you won’t have to miss your Prom,” Jackie’s mom tells her brightly, relatively unfazed by Jackie’s devastation. “Why don’t you let me run you a warm bath?”

“I can do it,” Shauna jumps in, sensing the sooner Jackie can get away from her mother, the better. She offers Jackie a small smile. “We both need to get cleaned up anyway. The team wanted to meet up at Lottie’s tonight, just for a little while.”

They’d planned a celebration in the event of their victory, and on the bus they’d settled on doing it anyway, only with maybe some sad music and sipping their drinks in miserable commiseration instead of chugging them and dancing around together. Nat had jokingly referred to it as a team funeral instead.

“Okay,” Mrs. Taylor agrees. “Just be home by midnight. And no drinking or boys.”

“Promise,” Jackie agrees, only half-lying, and kisses her mom on the cheek. Shauna follows her upstairs.

As soon as they’re alone in Jackie’s room, Jackie presses herself to Shauna and wraps her arms around her, just holding her in silence, cheek-to-cheek. Shauna hugs her back and closes her eyes. 

“Do you think they’ll hate me tonight?” Jackie worries. “They hardly spoke to me on the bus.”

“It’s just fresh,” Shauna says, because she can’t say no when she’s not sure it’s true. “We couldn’t have gotten this far without you. Deep down they know that. And a lot of them will mostly be over it by tonight. Especially the juniors. They have another year.”

Jackie pulls back at that, sniffling, wiping her eyes. “Oh, God,” she realizes, “I’m never gonna play a soccer game with you ever again. We’re never gonna practice together, or… or jump on each other after a goal, or put our jerseys together to make a 69.”

Shauna suppresses a smile. “I mean… we can definitely still make—”

Jackie pushes at her shoulder with a huff, cutting her off before she can make a very obvious joke. “I’m serious, Shauna. It’s over. Forever.” Her face starts to crumple. “Everything will be, so soon. We’re graduating in four weeks, and then summer will fly by and you’ll just be… gone.”

Shauna wipes at her eyes for her and kisses her shortly, cupping her cheeks. She doesn’t want to think about it either. “Let’s do like we did when we were kids,” she suggests. “Put on bikinis and take a bubble bath together. I’ll wash your hair.”

-

She winds up having to borrow one of Jackie’s bikinis, which is a little tight on her—Jackie seems to like that, though—and together they settle into the tub, the bathroom door locked, bubbles everywhere. Shauna scoops up a big handful and dumps it on Jackie’s head, recalling, “I was always champion of Bubble Tower.”

“We are not playing Bubble Tower,” Jackie laughs out, shaking it off aggressively, and Shauna’s just happy to see her smiling. 

“Spoken like a girl on a seventeen-game losing streak.”

“You’re insane for remembering that. Of course you know exactly how many times in a row you beat me.” Jackie moves in closer through the bubbles, tilting her head, pressing her lips to Shauna’s. “Maybe we need to invent some new games.”

She kisses Shauna again, harder this time, and Shauna pulls back after a moment, hesitant. “Are you sure?” she asks. “Today was a lot.”

Jackie just kisses her for a third time and whispers, “Let’s just forget about everything for a little while.”

She slides forward onto Shauna’s lap under the water, and then her arms reach back behind herself and untie her bikini top. She peels it off and drapes it over the edge of the tub, bubbles obstructing Shauna’s view, and then reaches around Shauna and does the same. She tucks her own hair neatly behind her ears when she’s done and then descends on Shauna’s mouth again. Her hand finds Shauna’s under the water and drags it to Jackie’s abdomen, then slides it inside of her bikini. 

There’s a difference there, between the water and what Shauna feels against her fingers. “That’s…” she murmurs an inch from Jackie’s mouth, a little distracted by it, by how much of it there is, “…that happened quickly.”

“It’s been like that,” Jackie confesses.

“You’ve been upset, though,” Shauna says, eyebrows furrowing as though this is a logic puzzle that isn’t quite coming together correctly. 

“Yeah.” Jackie sounds guilty. “But it’s been there. Since… since—“

It clicks. “Don’t finish that,” Shauna warns, and then slips inside of her.

“Okay,” Jackie whispers. She sounds so, so guilty; ashamed, almost, as her hips start to subtly rock. They both try to be mindful of the water, how it could splash over the lip of the tub if they’re not careful. 

Shauna’s breaking her promise to herself. She’s thinking about it. Unlocking something that should stay sealed up tight. “Fuck,” she huffs. She loves it. It’s so—It makes her feel— “That’s so fucked up,” she accuses, turning it around on Jackie, but she’s transparent; it comes out low and quiet and unmistakably excited.

“I know. But you like it,” Jackie murmurs, cupping her face, pressing their foreheads together. The bubbles are dissolving. Soon it’ll just be them. Shauna’s catching Jackie just right with her palm, and she can feel her starting to tighten.

“Yeah.” How did they get like this? So broken, so tangled up together and greedily feeding off of each other’s desperate need to possess and be possessed. Shauna knows that’s what this is, ultimately: She’s mine. You hurt her, I destroy you. That’s what turns Jackie on about it, she knows, because she’d felt it too, listening to stories in the locker room about Jackie taking apart the girl who’d defaced Shauna’s locker. “I’d do worse, you know,” she adds lowly.

She remembers Jackie on her couch, them talking about Jackie fucking other girls: What would you do?

And herself: the flashes of violence, the primal anger—the same kind she’d felt out on the field.

This is the first time she’s had the clarity to understand it: they’re never getting away from each other. They could flee to opposite ends of the earth and there would still be something tethering them together. Jackie could die and Shauna would still feel the ghost of her every day for the rest of her life. 

Jackie asks her now, again, her breathing so quick and shallow, “What would you do?” This time she corrects it, though, and asks what she really wants to know. “What would you do for me?”

“Anything,” Shauna strains out. Jackie’s so close. “Anything, Jax. I’d die for you.” She dips her head, closes her eyes like it’ll somehow shield herself from having to reveal the darkness she knows has overtaken them. “I’d kill for you.”

Jackie comes at that—for that. Twitching over her with hitched breaths, getting off on being handed everything Shauna can give her. “Fuck,” she pants out when it’s over, hands gripping Shauna’s shoulders. Then she lets out a weak, breathy laugh. “We’re in a fucking bubble bath.”

Shauna chuckles too, hiding her face in Jackie’s neck. She can sense a silent agreement being communicated between them as the tension starts to ebb: We fucked about it. It’s out of our systems. Let’s never bring it up again. She wonders if it’s naive of them.  

A knock at the door, strong and rapid, makes them both jump. They hadn’t locked the door to Jackie’s bedroom. “Jackie!” It’s Mrs. Taylor. Shauna pulls out of Jackie immediately, fumbling for her bikini top as Jackie does the same. “Shauna’s not in there with you, is she? Her mother’s on the phone.”

“I’m here!” Shauna calls quickly. Jackie’s trembling next to her but still manages to get her top tied first. 

“She’s very upset.” Mrs. Taylor sounds confused and Shauna isn’t sure whether it’s about the phone call or that they’re in here together. “You were supposed to come straight home.”

Jackie fumbles her way out of the tub, dripping, and moves like she’s planning on cracking open the door. “Jax!” Shauna hisses, stopping her, shaking her head. “Your body,” she mouths.

Like Shauna’s, it has hickeys in too many places and there are faint scratches down her back. The concealer on her neck is completely gone. They haven’t brought clothes to change into. 

“Um, we’ll be out in a second!” Jackie calls instead, digging through her bathroom closet now to retrieve two towels. Shauna finally gets her top tied and stands up. 

This had all been poorly planned. They’d both figured that a bubble bath would seem innocent enough if something like this happened, that it would look worse to lock Jackie’s bedroom door. But they hadn’t thought about the details of being looked at, only about the broad idea of what they were doing.

Mrs. Taylor asks, still confused, “Are you both in the tub together?”

Jackie’s going pale so quickly Shauna can see it happening. She takes a towel from her and drapes it over shoulders, hiding her neck and torso—she winces when she sees she has hickeys all the way down to her hips—and takes over for Jackie, thinking quickly as she cracks the door open, Jackie and the tub out of view. “Bubble bath in our swimsuits,” she says easily. “Like when we were kids. I thought a game of Bubble Tower might cheer Jackie up.”

Jackie bundles herself up hastily, stepping into view with a smile of her own plastered to her lips.

Mrs. Taylor relaxes right away with a fond scoff at them. “Oh, God, yes, I remember you two and those bubbles. I’m pretty sure I have several pictures in an album somewhere.” But then she frowns at Shauna. “Now, from what I’ve just heard, you should be at home.”

“I’ll go.” Shauna slips out quickly, glancing back at Jackie hopefully. “If I’m not grounded, see you tonight?” She’ll see her tonight either way, but Mrs. Taylor doesn’t need to know that.

“If you’re not grounded,” Jackie agrees, “pick me up at nine?”

Shauna nods and goes, changes into some spare clothes she’s left over in the past, and drives home with a racing heart. 

She isn’t sure how close they’d actually come to getting caught, because Mrs. Taylor’s brain will never go there until she witnesses them firsthand or Jackie tells her the truth. But it’d felt close.

-

Shauna’s mom is waiting for her at the dining table when she arrives. “Shauna, sit.” It’s the first private conversation they’ve gotten the opportunity to have since the game. 

“I’m good,” Shauna tries, slinging her duffel bag over her shoulder and dropping her cleats by the door.

“Shauna Marie Shipman,” her mother says firmly, and this is actually the most pissed off Shauna’s ever seen her—at least directed at Shauna. “Put your bag down and take a seat. Now.” Shauna drops into the chair next to her a few seconds later with her jaw set. 

Before her mother can say anything, she blurts, “I just wanted to knock that girl on her ass. I didn’t mean to like, crack something, or whatever happened. It was an accident.”

“Your coach called. Her parents have been at the hospital all afternoon. It’s a fracture. She won’t be able to play with her team.”

Shauna expends every bit of willpower within herself to not show any sort of pleasure at that. She knows how much worse it would make things. “I’m sorry, Mom, but she was being a bitch. Like, a huge bitch. She was fouling players while the ref wasn’t looking and talking shit to… to everyone.” She doesn’t mention Jackie specifically. She certainly doesn’t mention that this had been all about Jackie. That’s a can of worms she doesn’t need opened right now. Or ever. 

“You’re smart enough and old enough to know how to use your words, even when someone else crosses a line.”

“Well, I’ll write a fucking apology letter or something, then,” Shauna huffs. 

“Yes, you will,” her mother agrees. “And you’ll write one to her parents, and to her team. And you’ll get a job this summer to pay me back, because I’m going to offer to cover the copay for that girl’s medical bills.” Shauna opens her mouth to protest, but her mother interjects, “You’re lucky that’s all you’re getting. Now go upstairs. You can write the letters tomorrow.”

Shauna drags her bag up to her room without complaint, already formulating a plan to sneak out.

-

Lottie’s really leaned into the somber mood; she has the team sprawled out all over the living room furniture and floor with beers in their hands while sad country music's playing from a stereo.  

Jackie and Shauna are the last to arrive, delayed by Shauna having to wait out her mother’s bedtime. “This is sad,” Jackie sighs when she sees them all.

“Sad circumstances,” Tai mumbles, not looking at her. She’s been taking the loss the hardest along with Jackie. Everyone else seems generally bummed, but Tai’s been morose since the final whistle and Shauna hasn’t seen a break in her yet. She’d spent half the bus ride home shooting daggers at everyone—mostly Jackie, though.

“Let’s maybe turn this off,” Jackie suggests carefully, heading to the stereo while Shauna accepts a beer from Van. The music dies with a click and it feels too quiet. Approximately eighteen pairs of eyes stare at Jackie as she awkwardly clears her throat and faces them. “I know,” she starts carefully, “that today was hard. For all of us. I’m…” Her mouth twitches, face wilting almost imperceptibly. “…Totally heartbroken. I wish this wasn’t the end of our season. I know we didn’t expect to win Nationals with so many amazing teams there, but I wanted so badly to just make it to Seattle.” She tries for a joke. “If anything, just to show up those losers on the baseball team.”

It lands…alright. There’s a soft ripple of laughter.

“For a lot of us, this is our last year. And even if we all didn’t always get along… this team was so special. We were something. I’ll remember us forever.” Jackie wipes at her eyes. A few of the other girls are doing the same. “And I’m so proud of everyone. I’m so sorry I couldn’t do it for us today. I… I know I failed all of you. I let everyone down.”

“Jackie,” one of the junior girls says gently, pityingly, and several players start to stand up and wobble drunkenly toward her, surrounding her in a giant group hug. 

Shauna doesn’t join it, letting Jackie have her moment, and she hears Tai snort nearby, then catches her rolling her eyes. She closes the gap to her shortly, settling in front of her. “You don’t need to do this tonight.”

“What,” Tai slurs back, “are you gonna break my leg, too?”

“It was her ankle,” Shauna says evenly, “and just a fracture.”

Mari’s at her side, suddenly, surprisingly not buried in the Jackie group hug and trying to like, get a whiff of Jackie’s hair or something—Shauna nearly chuckles to herself at the thought. “Wait, you got an update?” she asks. “Is she out permanently?”

Mari’s question has drawn more attention from the others, and most of the room hears Shauna answer, “Yeah, she can’t play.”

“Is it kind of fucked up that I wanna celebrate that?” Nat chimes in, squinting like she isn’t sure about it. “That bitch nailed me in the ribs like, five times. I have bruises forming.”

“At this point, I’ll celebrate anything,” Van sighs, clinking her beer against Nat’s. “To number one’s fucked up ankle.”

They all cheers half-heartedly and take a long swig. 

Then Lottie says out of nowhere, “Hey, Shauna, didn’t you spit on her, too?”

Shauna sees over a dozen heads turn to look at her. She gulps. “Uh… maybe?”

-

A half-hour later, they’re all buzzed and in much higher spirits. Even Tai’s laughing a little at Lottie’s impression of Shauna—because as it turns out, Lottie, of all people, had been the closest to the action and had heard every word.

“Do it again, Lot!” someone calls out even though it’s only been five minutes since the last time, and Lottie straightens up right away, sashays across the room and then leans over Mari.

“Have fun at Nationals crippled, bitch,” she snarls, mock-spitting, and Mari dissolves into cackles alongside a few of the other girls. 

Shauna gives the group a small smile, not really sure if she’s being laughed with or at, especially considering she doesn’t find it all that funny. She figures it’s better than being called crazy, at least.

Jackie’d done the rounds for a while, vacillating between chatting with, getting sniffly alongside, and cheering up their teammates, but now she’s settled next to Shauna on one of the couches, leaning up against her in a way she almost wouldn’t sober. Shauna’s doing an excellent job of not touching hands with her or putting her arm around her, if she does say so herself. Especially as buzzed as she’s gotten.

“Let’s do team superlatives,” Gen suggests sweetly, eventually. “For the seniors. It’ll be a fun sendoff.”

Misty, forever an honorary Yellowjacket, is also here, and she lights up like she loves the idea. “Yes!”

“Explain,” Nat says, skeptical. She’s sitting sideways in a chair, legs draped awkwardly over the arm.

“Like, most-likely-tos,” Gen tells them. “Someone says one, and we’ll all decide which senior it goes to. Like… most likely to be President one day.”

“Tai,” several of them respond at once, and Tai tips her beer to them in thankful acknowledgement. 

Laura Lee jumps in with a cheery, “Most likely to become a nun!”

“You,” the majority of them chorus, but a stray, fainter voice offers, “Jackie!” on a delay, which causes a smattering of laughter that has Jackie rolling her eyes blushingly and Gen almost choking on her beer as she exchanges a glance with Melissa. Shauna catches it and sends them both a warning look. 

Then Melissa offers, “Most likely to wind up in jail,” and Nat’s already up on her feet and taking a bow before they can even start saying her name. She flips them all off as she flops back into her seat. They’re all laughing again, then, and Shauna smiles as she sips at her beer. She will miss these girls, as much as she doesn’t want to admit it or think about it. 

“Most likely to marry a literal prince,” goes to Lottie, after some debate between Lottie and Jackie that leaves Shauna feeling sour. “Most likely to actually play professional soccer,” gets split several ways at first, but they eventually settle on Van after she lobbies for it. Jackie preens when they elect her, “Most likely to win Prom Queen,” in the most obvious choice of the night. 

Then Lottie offers, “Most likely to experiment with girls in college.”

Shauna hasn’t been picked for one yet, and for the first time she can see a few coy pairs of eyes sliding her way. No one says a name at first. 

“I mean, we have two proven senior experimenters here,” Mari teases. Melissa’s already blushing. “I say Shauna over Lottie, though. Makeout trumps a peck.”

“Whatever,” Shauna mumbles. She can feel Jackie heating up at her side.

“What, no pushback?” Mari asks her, raising an eyebrow, smirking. “You planning on munching carpet in college?”

“God, Mari,” Nat interjects tiredly, “do you really have to put it like that?”

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it!” Mari insists. “I’m just asking if she thinks she’ll want to.” Jackie’s grown so tense that Shauna’s starting to worry the others will be able to see it all over her body. “Or maybe she already wants to now.”

Then Tai says, drunkenly, out of nowhere, “Fuck it. Van and I are dating.”

Shauna’s head jerks around, as does every other head in the room. Even Van looks shocked at Tai’s side—but not upset. Shauna knows enough to understand. It’d been Tai alone holding them back from this. Just like Jackie. 

Mari reacts first, barking out a stunned laugh. Like maybe she thinks it’s a joke. “What?”

“I mean,” Tai goes on, and she’s drunk but Shauna can tell that she’s not wasted, that this is a conscious decision on her part, “what’s the fucking point, right? I have one more month of school in this shithole and then after summer’s over I’m never coming back unless it’s to visit my parents. And they don’t care who I date, and it’s not gonna follow me to Howard if I don’t want it to. And I wanna fucking go to Prom with my girlfriend. So, fuck it.” She takes Van’s hand in her own, and Van looks at her like…

Like Shauna knows she’d look at Jackie if she ever did this. Proudly. Like she’s so incredibly in love and like she’s been waiting with bated breath for this moment. Like it’s a dream come true.

“Oh my God,” Lottie practically squeals at them, and even Nat’s grinning widely from her chair. “You guys!”

If anyone’s uncomfortable, they clearly take the hint that they shouldn’t express it, because everyone’s all over Van and Tai immediately, demanding to know when, and how, and probably plenty of other sordid details. Shauna watches them laugh and smile and share and give and receive hugs, and Jackie is still tense and unmoving at her side all the while.

“What?” Shauna asks worriedly when she notices. She doesn’t realize until she looks at Jackie that she’d already started to hope that this would do something. Like, that Jackie would see the reception, the smiles, the hugs, the laughter, and it would loosen something within her. Give her a new perspective. “It’s nice, right?” she tries quietly. “Everyone’s being nice.”

She knows it’s a girls’ soccer team, that Gen and Melissa probably aren’t the only others and that most of them are going to be kinder about this than their peers at school. They’re in a bubble tonight. But it’s something.

Jackie murmurs back, audibly afraid, “Tai’s really mad at me right now, and they don’t have any reason to keep us a secret anymore.”

Shauna stiffens. Then processes that Jackie’s watching something amazing happen to someone else, something that Shauna’s pictured for them a dozen times over—coming out and being accepted by their friends—and this is not a happy moment for Jackie at all. It hasn’t given her any sense of comfort or belonging. Her only takeaway is how it could be bad for her own efforts to remain closeted. 

They could flee to opposite ends of the earth and still remain irrevocably tethered, Shauna had thought earlier. She realizes now that she doesn’t need to test that theory to know that it’s correct. They’re already on different planets as it is.

Shauna gets up without another word, walks past all the happy pandemonium until she reaches the backdoor and pushes her way outside.

Then she sits down on the steps of Lottie’s back porch, buries her face in her knees, and in the safety of her own solitude she lets herself start to cry.

Notes:

Probably a fitting chapter to mention that the title of this fic (and its little Genlissa spinoff) comes from the Gigi Perez song "Kill for You"!

Chapter 24

Notes:

We're heading into the home stretch of this fic :) I'm not sure if it'll be finished in 30 chapters, but I definitely don't see it going past 35. Thanks for reading!

Shauna wants it to be Jackie when the backdoor swings open and closed two minutes later. She wants it to be Jackie apologizing, offering her hand and telling her to come back inside, that she’s had some major epiphany and that she’ll do what Tai’s just done, that she doesn’t care about the consequences because Shauna’s worth it. That they won’t have to keep stealing kisses when no one’s around to see them, that Shauna won’t have to wait some unknown amount of months or years to stop stressing over locked doors and overheard noises that are Jackie’s fucking fault—because apparently the only time she starts to consider laying any sort of public claim to Shauna is when it’s out of revenge, not love.

But she knows none of that is realistic. She isn’t asking for it, either. A part of her just wants to hope for it anyway—for the infinitesimally small chance that Jackie will hit fast-forward on their relationship and jump straight to where Shauna so desperately wants to be. And she’s allowed to be sad when she gets another reminder about how far from it they actually are.

Shauna feels a weight settle on the step next to her and then hears the flick of a lighter. “Go away, Nat,” she hiccups into her knees. A moment later, the smell of weed invades her nostrils.

She lifts her head, glaring, but imagines it’s lacking in venom with her eyes all watery and tears streaming down her cheeks. Nat just blinks at her and offers her the joint in her hand. Shauna’s eyes flicker to it, full of judgment. 

“It’ll get you totally out of it,” Nat tells her simply. “Weed and alcohol at the same time.”

“Fine,” Shauna says, because that does sound nice right now, and so then all of a sudden she’s getting high with Nat Scatorccio, who as of last night she’d decided was at the top of her shit list. 

They pass it back and forth—Shauna still crying and coughing a little—until it’s a tiny nub. Nat puts it out and Shauna blinks at nothing, her vision still blurry with unshed tears.

Nat’s the first to speak again, eventually. “High school’s fucked up.”

Shauna forces a laugh. She’s never been a receptacle of Nat’s drug-fueled wisdom before and she’s not particularly interested in starting now. “I don’t think my problem is exclusive to high school.”

“Not, like, completely.” Nat shrugs. “But I think people will give less of a shit after graduation. In other places. There’ll always be assholes, but you’ll be okay.”

Shauna sighs and sits back on her hands, tilting her head up toward the sky. She closes her eyes. “I know. I’m not worried about me.” She doesn’t want to out Jackie. This is toeing a line. But she senses Nat’s already there anyway.

“Yeah, I figured. I had a point; just give me a sec.” Nat clears her throat. “It used to really bother me what people said about me, even if I didn’t show it. I only stopped giving a fuck when I realized how small it all is here. Like, there’s a whole world out there. I think she’ll get that too, eventually.”

Shauna forces another laugh, looking over at her with disbelief. “Holy shit; is this a pep talk, Nat?”

Nat rolls her eyes. “You were fucking sobbing. I don’t like seeing girls cry.”

Shauna studies her. She can see it for a moment—though she’ll never admit it aloud. The appeal. Jackie’s little not-crush. 

She doesn’t realize she’s staring until Nat laughs and asks, “What?”

Shauna’s eyes dart away quickly. She might be a little high now. “She didn’t say anything, did she?” she asks, hopeful that Jackie actually had. That maybe she’d gone behind Shauna’s back and confided in someone. It’d be a step forward. “That’s not how you knew?”

“No. I just suspected, and I know what hickeys look like.”

“Great.” That officially makes Nat finding out Shauna’s fault. “Jackie won’t like that you know.”

“Whoa,” Nat replies, raising both eyebrows. “It’s Jackie?”

Shauna’s face burns. It’s only the weed starting to take effect that prevents her pulse from skyrocketing. “Shit,” she whispers, “I thought you—” But a smirk is stretching across Nat’s lips now, wide and knowing, and Shauna takes a heavy swing at her with an open hand. “Bitch.”

“Sorry,” Nat laughs out, dodging her. “Of course it’s fucking Jackie. Jesus. I can’t believe you actually thought I’d think it could be anyone else.” She digs something else out of her pocket, and Shauna almost laughs when she sees it’s a second joint. “I need to be more faded for this.”

“For what?”

“Talking to you about Jackie.” Nat lights up the joint. “Were you fucking before the Jeff thing? You were, right?”

“Yeah.” Shauna figures she might as well spill.

“Do you know what she wants out of it?”

“Yeah,” Shauna says again. 

“And is it the same thing you want?”

“Yeah.”

“So then… shit takes time,” Nat says with a shrug. “What, do you want a big romantic gesture? You want her to take you to Prom?” She shoots her a knowing look. “You wanna be like Tai and Van?”

“No,” Shauna insists, even though she does want all of those things. “I mean… yeah, of course I fucking do, but I already know it’s not happening. I’m still allowed to be sad about it.”

“Well, at least you’re a realist.” Nat puffs on the joint. “You’re with Wiskayok High’s future Prom Queen perfect princess soccer captain whose mom’s on the PTA and whose whole life plan had already been laid out for her, until you came in and fucked it all up. So now your life’s gonna fucking blow just like hers always has. That’s the way it is.”

Shauna glares down bitterly at her feet. “I know.”

“I’m just saying.” Nat pauses, then offers the joint to Shauna. Shauna can feel her high starting to kick in strong, but she accepts it anyway and takes a drag, because why not. “Hey, if you can’t hold out, then there’s always another option.” Shauna raises her eyes to Nat’s, curious. “Go to Brown, cut Jackie off, and fuck every attractive person you can find there. Have the time of your life. Then you guys can run into each other in, like, ten years, at our class reunion or something, have the best fuck of your life in the bathroom by the gymnasium, probably cry a bunch during and after, and maybe Jackie will have the courage to leave her husband by then.” She smiles wryly. 

“Okay,” Shauna says slowly, “that was so fucking bleak that it actually did kind of help me feel a little bit better.”

“Perspective,” Nat replies with a wise nod. She takes the joint back, blinks at it, blinks at Shauna, then adds, “I’m really fucking high. Wanna show me those hickeys again? That was funny as fuck today.”

Shauna does a double-take, midway through stroking her lips with her tongue. They feel bigger than usual and they’re tingling. “Uh…?”

Nat gives her a wolfish grin. “C’mon.” She reaches out and tugs playfully on Shauna’s shirt. Shauna tries to bat her hand away but misses, her reaction time too delayed. “Honestly, I can’t imagine Jackie giving them to you.” Then she pauses, thinking. “Actually…”

“Just for a second,” Shauna agrees, just to get Nat to stop trying to imagine Jackie sucking on her body. She’d never do this sober, but out here with Nat, high as a kite and cross-faded, it’s just, like, a vibe. She’s relaxed. All of her problems are sort of melting away. And it’s kind of funny, actually—that she’s got all these marks, that Jackie had put them all over her but still hasn’t made her come today. Even though she’s so good at it. Nobody would guess how good she is at it, probably. A part of her kind of wants to at least show off these things Jackie’s done to her, since she can’t show Jackie herself off. 

Shauna leans back, tries to catch herself on her hand, but misses and winds up flat on her back on the porch instead, her head throbbing a little from the collison. She’s laughing hard now, and Nat’s laughing too—almost as hard, but then less hard when Shauna pulls up her shirt, letting the cool air wash over her body. She stops just below her chest and Nat leans over her, eyebrows raised. “Whoa,” Shauna hears her say, and her voice echoes in a way that sounds nice. “I’m kinda proud of her, damn.” Her finger pokes at a mark on Shauna’s ribcage. Her hand is cold when it lays flat there.

“Jackie loves giving hickeys,” Shauna breathes out mindlessly, closing her eyes. “More than me.”

Nat snorts. “I really did not need to know that.”

The backdoor opens, and Shauna feels her shirt being yanked down by Nat, and then a sharp, familiar voice: “What the fuck, Nat?”

Shauna sits up quickly, while Nat’s saying, “Hey, Jackie,” cool as a cucumber. 

Her whole world’s spinning. Everything sounds so far away. Shauna knows she looks as out of it as she feels. 

“How high did you get her?” Jackie asks Nat angrily, watching Nat get to her feet. Shauna attempts to follow, but trying to stand makes things spin harder, so she stays put. “What did you give her?”

“Just weed,” Nat says. “She wanted to. She was out here crying, Jackie. I was just trying to help.”

“Oh, I’m sure you were. Helping. Not surprised your way of helping involves trying to get her out of her shirt.”

There’s a pause from Nat. Shauna’s trying to come up with the right words to stop this, thinking to herself that this is very very bad. Nat and Jackie are supposed to get along. They shouldn’t be fighting.

But they are. Nat’s laughing out, “Really, Jackie? You know, for someone who doesn’t want anyone to know, you sure are making it obvious by being such a jealous asshole.”

“Listen, guys,” Shauna tries weakly. “Don’t fight.” But they aren’t listening. They’re doing the opposite of that.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jackie says evenly.

“Yes you do.” Nat’s gaze is hard on her. “Go inside before you make things worse by starting a fight with me over her, Jackie. People whisper enough about you two already, you know.”

Jackie’s eyes widen slightly, then fill with fury. Her lip trembles. “Shut up. No they don’t.”

“They do.” Nat’s pissed now, too. Shauna knows Jackie’s comment had done it. The one practically calling her a slut. “The whole team thinks Shauna’s in love with you.”

Shauna finally wobbles her way to her feet, trying to find some way to fix this. She can see the rising panic written all over Jackie’s face. “They can think that,” Shauna insists. “It’s fine.” It’s not fine, mostly because Nat hadn’t said that they think Jackie loves her back. It’s actually so embarrassing that Shauna doesn’t even want to process it, and she’s very happy she doesn’t seem to have the capacity to right now. “It’s fine, Jax.”

“You’re lying,” Jackie says firmly to Nat. 

Nat rolls her eyes. “I know you’re under a lot of pressure or whatever, Jackie, but you don’t have to be a dick. I told you your girlfriend was out here bawling her fucking eyes out, you know. Maybe focus on that.”

Jackie flinches at the word “girlfriend”—the word they’ve been giddily using for each other since last night. It’s like she’s a different person. Shauna squeezes her eyes shut, feeling like crying again. 

Oh, God. She’s too high. She can’t control her emotions, and she’s definitely about to start sobbing. 

“Nat,” she says, because she can’t even look at Jackie right now but she doesn’t want to be alone. “Can we go somewhere else?”

Nat turns to her, softening. “Sure, yeah.”

“What?” Jackie asks sharply. “No. Shauna—“

But Shauna’s not listening. Her eyes are getting bleary and everything’s hazy and she can’t walk straight and every piece of her is screaming at her to get away from Jackie so that she doesn’t have to watch her deny them anymore, doesn’t have to see the panic and the flinching and the anger and the fear. 

Her feet carry her away, down the steps and out to the backyard, where she closes her eyes and just lets more tears stream down her cheeks. Her body feels like it’s floating now, but like her heart isn’t floating with it, like it’s sinking lower and lower down into her toes as she drifts away. 

A hand catches her wrist, pulling, and Shauna’s world spins again as she’s guided around into a body. She wants it to be Nat, not Jackie—and what a strange thought that is—but a second later she’s getting a whiff of Jackie’s familiar perfume. Jackie steadies her with two hands on her biceps, expression pulled tight with worry, and Shauna flinches beneath her touch.

“You’re not my favorite right now,” she says. Is there something higher than a kite? A plane? Shauna’s as high as a plane. She’s crying like she’d used to when she’d taken flights as a kid, too. “You can, like, feel your feelings. I just don’t wanna watch.”

“Don’t cry.” Jackie’s voice has softened now. Her thumbs are swiping over Shauna’s cheeks. “Please don’t cry.”

There are eyes on them now. Nat, still. Jackie seems to have made the same determination as Shauna: that it’s a lost cause to hide from her. 

Shauna looks. Nat’s on the porch, hands shoved awkwardly into her pockets. She’s sort of… guarding the door? No one can push it open with Nat standing right by it, anyway.

“I think I’m gonna keep crying,” Shauna informs Jackie, because when she blinks more tears eek out of her eyes. “Sorry.”

Jackie’s forehead pushes up against hers, then. That’s nice, that she’s doing it in front of Nat. It reminds Shauna of soccer practice with Tai and Van, and holding hands in front of Shauna’s mom. “I tried to let you out of this,” she reminds Shauna, who takes way too long to think back and remember in her current state. “You said you wanted me.”

“That wasn’t a real choice,” Shauna says. She does remember the conversation. She even remembers knowing Jackie would say something like this to her someday. Blame her for her own suffering at Jackie’s hands. If she weren’t so fucking blazed she’d be pissed at her for it, but as it is she’s just sort of generally moody. Mostly, Jackie’s bottom lip looks amazing and Shauna wants to bite it, maybe just enough for it to hurt. Maybe that’s vengeance enough. “You know I can’t not choose you, Jackie. You knew then, too. You’ll know forever.” She cards her fingers through Jackie’s hair, and it’s so soft around her fingers. It almost makes her dizzy. “Wow,” she mumbles. “Jackie. Jax.”

Jackie sighs and asks, louder, “How much, Nat?”

“We split two,” Nat calls back faintly. “No idea how much she drank beforehand.”

“I’m fine.” Shauna’s not. I mean, the weed thing is fine, but she feels sad. Like, generally not emotionally good. Jackie’s hair is cheering her up. “You’re so fucking soft. Fuck. I want—” She takes some of it into her fist. Pulls a little. Jackie, flushing, grabs her hand and moves it away.

“Are you mad at me?” Jackie asks her, like this version of Shauna is in any shape to answer it fairly. A sober version of Shauna would recognize it as unfair, too. “Because we can’t be like Van and Tai right now?”

Shauna’s lips start trembling. There are more tears coming. She shakes her head. “I’m just really sad. I feel…” She wishes she had her sober brain now. It could choose the right word, the right phrase. Explain this thing that’s bubbling inside of her. “Bad.” She winces. “Hold on. Shameful. I’m… I’m a shameful thing. I’m embarrassing.” That’s it. That should be good enough.

“Oh,” Jackie sighs, so incredibly sadly, “I wish you could read my mind, Shauna. So you could see how so completely not true that is.”

Nat can hear all of this. Shauna’s suddenly acutely aware of it. Jackie seems not aware of it, or like she’s consciously choosing to ignore it. But also, Jackie’s breath smells like beer, so she might just be slightly drunk herself. “It feels true. Like, anytime we’re not alone.”

Jackie’s fingers are sliding through her hair now. Her thumbs are still stroking Shauna’s wet cheeks. “You’re so beautiful, Shauna,” she murmurs. “You’re my best friend and my favorite person in the whole world. You’re my home. I think you’re the only girl I could ever make myself be brave enough to be with like this. There’s so much I wanna do for you someday. Just… just not yet, okay? Not now.”

She can’t reconcile this Jackie with the one who’d been so afraid in front of Nat, so stiff inside with everyone else. It’s like there are two of her. One who loves Shauna and one who doesn’t. Shauna isn’t like that. She can’t hide it. It’s no wonder everyone thinks she loves Jackie. Because all of her does. 

She pulls away, conflicted, and immediately starts to lose her balance. “Fuck.” Jackie grabs hold of her again. “I think I’m stuck,” she says, and she doesn’t mean her body, trapped here with Jackie because she’s too woozy to make it on her own. “I’ll never leave. You know it, Jackie. You can do whatever you want because you know it.”

Maybe it isn’t a tether, this thing between them. Maybe it’s a chain. 

Jackie doesn’t get a chance to refute her, because the backdoor bangs into Nat and Jackie separates from Shauna—just enough to look like she’s helping a friend keep her balance—and then Nat’s hissing out a sharp, “Ow!”

It’s Lottie, peering out at them curiously. “Oh. There you guys are.”

“I smoked out Shauna,” Nat tells her easily. “She’s fucking blitzed.”

Lottie laughs hard at that, watching Shauna try to take a step and stumble again, Jackie’s hand catching her by the arm. “Just make sure if she’s gonna puke, she does it out here or in one of the bathrooms.”

“That’s the plan,” Jackie says, and Lottie disappears back inside with another chuckle. The door closes.

Nat and Jackie exchange a look. “I won’t say anything,” Nat promises.

“I know.” Jackie sounds certain. But there’s an air of authority to it. Something beneath it that’s low and hostile. Nat would be easy to fuck over, at least at school. The drugs are an obvious start.

With sudden clarity, Shauna realizes there’s not a chance in hell Jackie hadn’t gone to Melissa and Gen behind her back at some point today. She’s been determined to cover her bases at every turn. Which is exactly why this Tai and Van thing has rattled her. She’s losing control. 

“Jackie?” Shauna pipes up, leaning against her. This feels important to say, suddenly. She feels Jackie turn and look at her. “I know Tai and Van won’t tell, even if Tai’s mad at you.”

Nat laughs disbelievingly. “Wait, are you actually that paranoid? They’re not fucking sociopaths, Jackie. Tai will cool off about the game.”

Jackie doesn’t say anything initially, just starts to lead Shauna back toward Nat. Shauna can’t tell if she feels reassured or not. “I’ll talk to them,” Jackie decides, finally.

Nat rolls her eyes. “What, like you just talked to me?”

Shauna sighs. “Be nice, Jackie.”

Jackie ignores them both. “It’s cold out. Let’s get inside.”

-

Much of the next hour passes in a blur. Shauna separates from Jackie for a while after she finally crests over the worst of the high, once she can finally walk fairly straight again. The party starts to feel more like a party and less like a funeral. They’re all trying to forget the disappointment of the day.

At one point, Shauna winds up sprawled across Van’s lap, having a Josta that’s been spiked with a shot of vodka waterfalled into her mouth. At another, she stumbles around Lottie’s mansion in a haze with a full bladder and winds up mistakenly pushing a bedroom door open to find Gen and Melissa tangled up on a bed with their tongues down each other’s throats. 

They jump apart right away, thankfully fully clothed, and then relax a little when they see Shauna’s the one in the doorway. “You’re gonna learn really quickly to be more careful about that,” she warns them. 

“No kidding,” Gen breathes, her hand over her own racing heart, so incredibly reminiscent of Jackie in the locker room with Van. Melissa, beet red, adjusts the askew hat on her head. She’s kind of half on top of Gen, leaning over her, and Shauna feels strangely proud of her for it. She blames the weed and alcohol for fucking with her emotions.

“Locking the door is better,” she adds, “but people will ask questions if they ever try the handle and catch you together in a locked room. So be ready to talk your way out of it. Your best bet is in a car somewhere deserted. Or your bedrooms, but only after your parents have gone to sleep.”

They both seem a little dumbfounded. “...Thanks,” Melissa says, finally.

Now that she’s here, Shauna sees an opportunity; she might as well ask. “Did Jackie talk to you guys today?”

Gen scoffs. Melissa grimaces.

“Threatened the shit out of you?” Shauna guesses.

“She made you look sweet,” Gen tells her.

“Thought so. Thanks.” Shauna locks the door for them pointedly before she backs out and closes it.

Eventually Shauna gets dragged into a game of Truth or Dare by Laura Lee of all people, who sits her down affectionately on the kitchen floor where the others have gathered in a circle. Laura Lee’s very obviously drunk, and wraps her arms around her in a hug that Shauna’s just inebriated enough to be fine with returning. 

Jackie isn’t here. Mari, Crystal, Lottie, Nat, Akilah, and Misty are. Shauna gets through several rounds unaddressed and unscathed, more than happy to just watch the others make fools of themselves. Then Crystal dares Laura Lee to touch someone’s boob, and after some taunting and egging her on—and a bit of reluctant drunken acquiescence on Shauna’s part—Laura Lee prods at Shauna’s chest with an index finger, and they all make fun of Laura Lee for getting some “girl-on-girl action” just to get her blushing about it. 

Jackie arrives right around then, slotting in at Shauna’s other side to join the game and wondering, “What’s so funny?”

“Laura Lee getting to second base with Shauna,” Lottie jokes.

Shauna interjects quickly before Jackie can mentally implode, “Not actually. She poked me.”

“Oh,” Jackie says, and Shauna can practically see her processing it and then hesitantly coming to the determination that no serious violation has occurred.

Laura Lee chooses Mari, who picks dare because they all kind of are at this point. “I dare you… to give someone a hickey,” Laura Lee decides, shocking everyone into a chorus of surprised laughter. They’ve been dancing around this kind of stuff for a few rounds—Lottie’d had to pull at Nat’s ear with her teeth and Misty had started it all off before that by blushingly kissing Akilah on the cheek—and now it’s clearly escalating, getting… gayer, for lack of a better term. Shauna wonders if it’s Tai and Van’s fault, if the news about them has this kind of thing on everyone’s minds. 

Mari looks amused. “Anyone I want?”

Shauna’s stomach turns. She feels like she knows where this is going. “Stop acting like you aren’t gonna pick Jackie,” she deadpans. It’s reverse psychology. If she calls Mari out for it, maybe she’ll feel compelled to pick someone else. 

Mari huffs out a sharp, “Shut up.” Then the flicker of embarrassment on her face is replaced by something knowing, smug. “Maybe I should pick someone who might actually like it.” And then she’s crawling across the circle toward Shauna.

This is… almost as bad. It’s one step above the “horrific” Shauna would brand Mari doing it to Jackie. 

Then she thinks about it. Glances at Jackie and sees the way she’s forced her expression into one of neutrality. Faking it fairly well for everyone who isn’t Shauna. Jackie’s going to hate Mari for this.

That’s certainly an upside, even if it’s the only one.

Mari grabs her chin too aggressively, turning her head to expose her neck, and Shauna shoves her hand away, thinking quickly. Her neck’s covered in concealer. “Just do my shoulder or something. I don’t want you sucking on my neck.”

Mari laughs derisively but follows orders, pulling Shauna’s shirt sleeve down without much fanfare to expose her shoulder and then leaning over to suck a patch of Shauna’s skin into her mouth. Shauna makes a show of looking reluctant, grimacing—it isn’t hard; she definitely doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of this, even if it doesn’t feel terrible. She glances at Jackie’s tight-lipped, simmering expression as the suction stings halfway between her shoulder and her neck. The other girls are giggling, giddy, like it’s all in good fun. 

Shauna feels a laugh against her skin, hot breath expelled there, and then something sharp scrapes too pleasantly over her, almost biting, making Shauna’s traitorous body tingle. Then Mari releases her and leans away with a proud smirk at her audience.

Shauna ignores the fleeting feeling and pushes her back with a scowl, complaining, “Don’t use your fucking teeth, what the fuck.”

“Just thought I’d leave you a gift for your spank bank, gaywad,” Mari fires back, already on her way back to her place in the circle. A few of the girls giggle, but it’s still all good-natured, all fun and games. Shauna flips Mari off anyway and gets it right back in return. There’s a fresh bruise on Shauna now; the only one not hidden away. She hopes she isn’t blushing. 

The game continues, but Shauna gets to her feet and abandons it after a couple of minutes, sensing it’s what Jackie wants; she’d been able to practically feel Jackie’s gaze searing into her cheek the longer she’d sat there with Mari’s spit on her skin.

She goes to the nearest bathroom and wets a wad of toilet paper with soap and water to wash it off, eyeing the mark in the mirror with distaste. She can see the imprint of Mari’s mouth there; she hadn’t held back, very obviously out of pure spite, and it’s dark and purple and going to be there for days. 

Jackie’s waiting for her outside when she exits. Shauna isn’t the least bit surprised to have her hand taken, to be yanked down the hallway and past too many rooms, as far away from the party as they can possibly get.

It’s still a risk. But Jackie, again, seems willing to take them when she has a claim to stake. 

“Are you mad?” Shauna asks as she’s led.

Jackie doesn’t answer, just pulls her into one of Lottie’s guest rooms at the back of the mansion, locks the door, and guides Shauna up against the wall. 

Shauna’s eyes are unfocused. She knows she’s still a little high. And Jackie’s still a little drunk, but her gaze is sharp on that sole visible mark. 

Shauna watches her look. She feels a strange swell of pride, suddenly. She wants to forget that it’s Mari’s, but she doesn’t want to forget that it’s not Jackie’s, that Jackie’s looking at it and that Shauna can tell she’s thinking of Shauna and other girls. 

It excites her. Yeah, she thinks, this is me without you. Hurry up before someone else wants to do this to me for real.

Maybe someone at Brown. Not that Shauna would let them, and Jackie knows that. But it doesn’t mean the idea of someone trying can’t unsettle Jackie anyway, and Shauna knows it does. She’s too jealous for it to not.

“Maybe I could say it there,” Shauna offers, and Jackie’s eyes slide up to hers, silently seeking clarification. “At Brown. I could tell everyone there that I have a girlfriend. Even if you don’t tell people at Rutgers.”

It’s not fair. But it’s worth the suggestion just to see Jackie’s pupils dilate.

“I’ll tell anyone who asks.” Shauna keeps going, her voice low. “I’ll say I’m crazy about this girl. My best friend Jackie. Like you did at the bar. And then you won’t have to worry.”

She should probably accept that she keeps doing this to herself. That giving Jackie these things feels good, that handing everything over just to get approval from her in the moment and then resenting both herself and Jackie for it later is an addiction. 

“Would you like that?” She pulls on Jackie’s hips, pressing them to her own. “I’ll do it. If you’re good for me at Rutgers, too.”

That’s better. Now it’s an attempt at a slight amount of reciprocity. Baiting a hook and then swapping it out for a deal once Jackie’s had a few seconds to process how much she wants it. Shauna doesn’t want much in return; just her loyalty. No flirting with frat boys. Just Jackie pretending to be single and emotionally unavailable. 

Jackie’s eyes flash with something else, though—something new, arousal and surprise mingling there—and Shauna has to swallow down the lump in her throat. She knows what it is. She likes it herself. She hadn’t realized Jackie did too.

She pushes, presses, smoky courage still lingering in her lungs, alcohol in her veins. “When we have phone calls, I’ll check. I’ll ask you if you were good.”

Jackie’s hands slip shakily down to Shauna’s pants, unsnapping the button there, pulling slowly on the zipper. “Shauna,” she breathes, a desperate edge to her tone.

Shauna’s perfectly aware that Jackie’d dragged her all the way here with the intent of feeling Shauna melt under her aggressive touch. That’s not how this is going to go now. She’s uncovered something. She wants to use it. She’s sick of Jackie trying to control everything around them the way she still controls Shauna.

Something’s cracking open in Shauna after today—the morning, their fight, the game, their parents, Tai and Van getting what Shauna wants so badly, Jackie making her cry, Mari throwing accusations at her and then her stupid body making them true. She wants to have something good. To just be able to take it. She’s always needed to work on that. On just taking things she wants.

Jackie leans in, tries to kiss her. Shauna turns her head so that Jackie’s mouth ghosts over her cheek instead. 

She’s never denied her this before, and immediately Jackie’s body locks up. Her hands falter on Shauna’s pants. “What’s wrong?” she asks, worried. 

“That’s not,” Shauna starts, and swallows again, trying to work up the courage to get it out. “That’s not where I want your mouth.”

She feels Jackie’s steady exhales against her cheek go still as she stops breathing for a moment. Shauna leans back and looks at her, watches her blink rapidly, eyelashes fluttering prettily, cheeks warming to a faint pink. “Okay,” Jackie whispers. Something tight in Shauna’s chest loosens. Some of her nerves dissipate. 

Jackie’s fingers curl into her waistband and pull, and she kneels to take them all the way down. Shauna caresses her jaw, dips her fingers into Jackie’s soft locks, then repositions her hand on the top of her head instead, fingers tightening in her hair. She steps out of her pants and lets Jackie push them to the side. 

“Do you wanna move to the bed?” Jackie asks her, looking up at her, and heat drops low in Shauna’s abdomen at the angle, at Jackie’s meticulously done hair already getting messy beneath her hand. She’ll have to spend so much time fixing it after Shauna’s done with her. Her makeup, too. That cherry red gloss. Shauna shakes her head, uses her other hand to touch her thumb to Jackie’s bottom lip. Then she smears the gloss down her chin. 

It’s taken her a lifetime, but she finally has Jackie Taylor on her knees. 

“What are you—?” Jackie starts, confused and maybe even annoyed, but then Shauna pulls on her hair, tipping her head back a little, and Jackie stops talking, flushes a deep, deep shade of red and grabs onto both of Shauna’s hips as though to steady herself. Shauna sees her thighs clench. “Fuck. Okay. Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Shauna breathes, checking.

“Yes.” Jackie’s eyes are dark and hopeful. “Definitely.”

She keeps forgetting that Jackie lets her have most things when she asks for them. 

She pulls her face in closer, and Jackie paints over the fresh hickeys on Shauna’s inner thighs with her tongue. The skin is sensitive there, and Shauna’s grateful when she’s gentle, when she doesn’t use her teeth like she had this morning when she’d made them. 

Jackie kisses up and up, Shauna’s hand sliding to the back of her neck and pulling, and then she tugs at Shauna’s underwear with her teeth, just enough to separate the damp material from her skin. “Take it off,” Shauna groans, and in an instant Jackie’s yanking it down to her ankles with trembling hands. “Good…” Shauna almost says it, but then backs out of it, swallowing it down, and just whispers the word again. “Good.” Jackie shifts against her, a breath coming out shaky against Shauna’s thigh, and Shauna can tell she’s eager to hear it. It’s a reason not to give it to her yet.

She wants to mess her up so badly, actually. She wants Jackie under her thumb the way she’s spent so long under Jackie’s.

Shauna kicks her underwear away and scratches her nails up the nape of Jackie’s neck and over the base of her skull. Jackie licks her lips and drags them across Shauna’s thigh, pressing a faint kiss there, waiting. 

“You’re so small like this,” Shauna realizes quietly, looking down at her. She really is. She’s thin, light. Smaller than Shauna, most of her body swallowed up by a loose coral top and a short skirt. With Jackie below her like this, it’s almost hard to believe she’s the same person Shauna’s let run her whole life.

Jackie shivers but doesn’t say anything, just keeps tracing over Shauna’s skin with her lips, avoiding where she doesn’t have permission to go yet. 

“Tell me you love me, Jax,” Shauna demands.

“I do,” Jackie breathes, eyes rising to Shauna’s, lips resting against her thigh, the bottom one stretched by the dragging contact with her skin. “I love you so much.”

Shauna swallows thickly, fingers twisting behind Jackie’s head, nails digging in. “Put your hand on your thigh,” she rasps, just to see if Jackie will, and how she’ll do it if she does, if she’ll hesitate or ask questions. Jackie closes her eyes, drapes her fingers over her inner thigh just above her knee. “Higher,” Shauna urges her, watching intently. “Under your skirt.”

Jackie can’t get any redder than she already is. Her wrist twists, her arm moves, and her hand vanishes beneath the material. She lets out a shuddering breath. 

“Higher,” Shauna says again, and Jackie bites her lip. Her movement comes to a stop after another short adjustment, and Shauna can’t see her hand, but it doesn’t look high enough. “Higher, Jax. All the way up.”

“Shauna.” There’s nothing behind it but air. It’s like Jackie had just wanted to say her name. Shauna watches her arm shift just slightly. 

“How is it?” Shauna murmurs.

Jackie has an attitude about it; her eyebrows furrow and she frees her lip from her teeth, her eyes still closed as she sighs pointedly, “Wet.” Like it’s obvious. 

“Prove it.” Shauna can have an attitude, too. “Show me.” 

Jackie does something beneath her skirt that makes her own breath catch, and then opens her eyes and withdraws her hand, holding it out like she’s not sure what to do with it now. Two of her fingers are coated. Shauna takes hold of her wrist and pushes it toward Jackie’s mouth, and Jackie looks up at her again, almost awestruck—or maybe just shocked—and then licks tentatively at her own fingertips. She’s seen Shauna do this, made Shauna do this, but never returned the favor.

“More,” Shauna says shortly, pushing on her wrist again, helping Jackie take them in to the second knuckle. Jackie’s lips close around them. Shauna finds the words, finally. “Good girl.” Jackie whines around her fingers and removes them, her eyes wide, her thighs trembling as her knees dig into the carpet. She leans forward, her mouth all over Shauna’s thighs again, making it obvious what she wants. Shauna’s hand hasn’t left her hair. “Okay,” Shauna gives in breathily, because she’s only got so much self-control left. She’s been pulsing painfully for minutes. “Finish it this time.”

Jackie nods hurriedly between her thighs, wrapping her hands around them, and then dives in with her tongue. It’s messy and desperate and it feels euphoric. Shauna’s head tips back against the wall and she grabs onto the edge of the dresser next to her with her free hand, gritting her teeth to prevent herself from rewarding Jackie with a moan too soon. Jackie is aimless and sloppy, very obviously having the time of her life between Shauna’s thighs, her tongue licking in quick, flat strokes that lack precision but create a heavenly amount of pressure. Shauna squeezes her hair tight and pulls her closer, not holding back, grinding against her tongue. She’s using Jackie, and Jackie’s making high-pitched little sounds against her like she’s enjoying it.

That’s a lot to process all at once, especially in her current state, so Shauna just doesn’t yet, just focuses on her own body and loses herself in the building pressure between her legs, the hot coil tightening in her lower abdomen. She arches off of the wall, recognizes the moment she slips into inevitability and warns Jackie in a whisper, “I’m gonna come.”

Jackie squeezes her thigh and just keeps licking at her, and Shauna rushes right up to the edge and goes tumbling over with a soft cry, pulling hard at Jackie’s hair, jerking forward into her open mouth, which goes lax and rests against her, Jackie’s tongue just waiting there for her when she needs to roll her hips into it a few more times. 

The instant the pleasure starts to ebb away and Shauna’s finally in the midst of catching her breath, she recognizes the stranglehold she has on Jackie’s roots and immediately releases her with an embarrassed, “Shit, Jax, sorry.”

She makes herself look down. Jackie looks like she’s been put through the ringer: hair all askew, lower half of her cheeks deeply flushed in a way that Shauna suspects might have something to do with friction, because her chin is red too and her lips are swollen. Her gloss is well past smeared, and Shauna’s slick is shining on her mouth and chin and some of her cheeks and even on the tip of her nose. But she looks so alive, too: eyes wide, pupils blown, tongue darting out to lick Shauna off of her lips. She’d liked this a lot. “Don’t apologize,” she tells Shauna, her voice low and hoarse and wrecked.

“Okay.” Shauna gulps. It’s harder to keep playing this role when she’s not turned on anymore, but Jackie clearly is, so she tries her best: reaches out to cup her chin, runs her thumb across the slick on her cheek, spreads it like she had Jackie’s gloss earlier, and then says, “You made a mess. Go clean yourself up.”

Jackie sits back on her calves, looking frazzled and flushed as Shauna drops the contact and goes to retrieve her underwear and pants. “Are you doing me?” she asks. 

“Already did,” Shauna reminds her. “In the tub.” She finishes getting dressed, runs her hand over Jackie’s unruly waves as Jackie looks at her pleadingly, and adds, “Take your time. You’ll need a lot of it to fix this.” She goes to the door, watches Jackie slowly start to get to her feet on trembling legs and leaves her with a parting, “And don’t get yourself off once I’m gone. I’ll find out.”

The last thing she hears before she closes the door is Jackie huffing out a frustrated whine; the last thing she sees is Jackie leaning up against the dresser with reddened knees and shakily adjusting her skirt.

-

The party’s winding down and clearing out by fifteen to midnight, because most of them have a curfew. Jackie’s gone for over twenty minutes after Shauna leaves her, and when she finally does emerge, Shauna’s riding out the rest of her high on the living room couch with Van’s legs draped over her lap. 

Jackie looks surprisingly well-put-together again. The slight imperfections of her hair could be attributed to something as mild as some time outside in the wind, and her makeup and gloss have been neatly reapplied. 

“Hey,” Van greets her before Shauna can. “You about to head out?”

“If my chauffeur can drive,” Jackie replies, eyes sweeping down Shauna’s exhausted and inebriated body. “Something tells me we’re gonna need a workaround.”

“You could drive us to yours,” Shauna suggests, watching her mouth, back to thinking about what she’d done with it earlier, how messy she’d looked. She hasn’t really stopped thinking about it since it happened, actually. “Go inside so your parents can see you’re home, then sneak back out, drive me to mine and stay over.”

Jackie crosses her arms, raising an eyebrow. Their eyes meet and hold, and Shauna can just tell that Jackie’s thinking about it too. They’re having a secret conversation about it in the span of milliseconds. “And how are you gonna explain to your mom why I’m suddenly in your bed in the morning?”

Van snorts. Shauna whacks her on the leg. 

“Okay, so maybe I nap in my car out in front of your house until I’m sober enough to drive?”

Jackie sighs. “I’m not gonna let you do that. I’ll drop you off tonight and then find a ride home.”

“I gotchu,” Van chimes in helpfully, reaching for Jackie’s hand and pulling her close. “This is, like, the best night of my life. Least I could do is pay it forward.”

“Thanks, Van,” Jackie says.

“I’m happy for you guys,” Shauna adds quietly. Van’s smile is one part grateful and one part pitying, and suddenly both Jackie and Shauna can’t look each other in the eyes anymore. 

The drive home with Jackie is blanketed by tension, and Shauna tries to let herself enjoy the faint buzz of the weed but there’s too much bouncing around in her head. 

She glances at Jackie, watches her constantly checking her mirrors and squeezing the steering wheel tight. Jackie really does almost never drive. She has Shauna. “Jackie?”

“Yeah?” 

“I keep thinking about it.”

Jackie straightens up slightly in her seat. “Tai and Van? Or…?”

“No.” Shauna closes her eyes, picturing it again. “You looking up at me like that. Like I’m…” She doesn’t know how to finish it. Powerful. A God. The sun. Jackie revolving around her for once instead of the reverse. No wonder Jackie’s always loved it so much, if this is how good it’d made her feel, too.

“I look at you a lot,” Jackie tells her. “I just make sure no one notices. Usually not even you.”

“You don’t do it on your knees,” Shauna whispers. It feels dirty to say it like that—because it is. “I really like you doing it there.”

Jackie licks her lips. “I like it, too.”

It feels like they’ve reached a silent agreement about something, then. Shauna lies awake for half the night thinking about it.

-

On Sunday, Shauna writes her letters one by one: first to number one, whose real name turns out quite fittingly to be Violet (Shauna accidentally puts an “N” in there at first and has to erase it), and then to her parents, and then to their soccer team for fucking with their chances at Nationals.

When she’s done and her mother is satisfied and her hand has recovered from gripping a pencil for so long, she spends some time journaling. She has so much to catch up on from over the weekend, and it’s the night at the bar that she focuses on first:

Jackie,

Friday night made me realize something that’s difficult to admit. I always knew I wanted to be with you, but I think what I never admitted to myself was that a part of me wanted to be you, too. I did want the attention you were always getting. I wondered what it’d be like to have the picture perfect boyfriend and to be the most popular girl in our class. Maybe, deep down, that’s part of why I wanted to kiss Jeff back that night. That part wasn’t about him. It was about feeling what it was like to be Jackie Taylor kissing her boyfriend. Like maybe if I could become you for a moment, I’d feel like I’d won somehow, and maybe that’d all be a good enough replacement for not having you like I wanted.

I wonder what it’d be like to just live in your skin for a little while. Would you hate it? Me being that close to you? Sometimes I’m so happy about Brown, and other times I find myself wishing we could just melt together into one person, or I could crawl inside of you and never be let out. Or consume some part of you so that I’d always have you in me.

I know I sound crazy. I just want too much of you, I think.

Shauna

And then an entry about the previous night comes next, which she can’t even fully express herself about in a journal, because it’s just too much, too carnal and debauched, so she works her way around the edges of it:

Jackie,

I have a new favorite thing to picture when I think about having sex with you. I think about having control. Telling you what to do. I think about pulling your hair and seeing myself on your mouth. I don’t think I can write anything more about it because it makes me feel too… something. I don’t know what. It might be guilt. I used to fantasize about you controlling me in bed even while I hated you for actually controlling my life. I guess this is what progress looks like?

Shauna

-

Monday.

It starts off normally enough: Shauna rolling out of bed, making herself and Jackie breakfast, picking up Jackie in her car. Shauna doesn’t sense that anything’s off. She doesn’t get an odd sinking feeling or a strange premonition of what’s to come.

But then she gets to school. 

She finds Tai standing in front of a snickering crowd at her locker; this time Tai’s the one with a slur scribbled onto the metal. Word has spread. At lunch, Van wanders out to the quad with a day-old black eye and a story about running into the wrong boys from their school while she’d been out on her first public date with Tai. 

Jackie sees all of it too—and sees her future in it, in the consequences of Tai and Van being themselves in a world that isn’t moving fast enough to keep up with them. 

And just like that, everything between Jackie and Shauna begins to swiftly unravel.

Chapter 25

How it actually goes, on Monday, is like this:

Jackie slides into Shauna’s passenger seat and accepts the jam and toast Shauna’s brought for her with a soft smile, eyes crinkling up fondly at the corners as she tells her, “You’re so sweet.” 

Shauna can’t help but smile back, even with her mind still lingering on some of the less fortunate parts of Saturday night. She hasn’t forgotten what Nat had said.

People whisper enough about you two already, you know. The whole team thinks Shauna’s in love with you.

It’s not like Nat to make something like that up, even in a moment of anger. And as incredibly much as Shauna hates the humiliation of it, the one thing she hates even more is the idea of it spooking Jackie. 

But Jackie seems… okay this morning. She doesn’t kiss Shauna hello, but she does reach out for her and sweep a hand up her arm as Shauna drives and Jackie eats. Her touch pauses at Shauna’s shirt collar, and then she pulls it to the side to expose more of Shauna’s shoulder, and Shauna knows she’s looking at the mark there. 

“You didn’t cover this one,” Jackie says, like she isn’t quite sure what to make of this discovery.

“Oh. Yeah.” Shauna had gotten ready on autopilot and hadn’t really thought about it. “I guess it just didn’t feel like I had to?” It's under her shirt anyway, for the most part, and it hadn’t exactly been a secret.

Jackie’s fingertips move to rest on it. Shauna can feel her staring. “Could you? I have concealer in my purse.”

“Nobody’s gonna see it,” Shauna points out.

“Yeah, but I can see it.”

Shauna almost laughs. “Alright, Jax. I’ll get it when I park.”

“Okay.” Jackie fiddles with the radio, turning it on low. “So,” she says, taking a breath like she’s about to start a conversation she doesn’t particularly want to have, “Jeff called yesterday.”

“…Oh.” Shauna hadn’t expected that. “Why?”

“I have a guess, but I don’t know for sure. My dad answered and when he came and got me I told him to say I was busy. But apparently he wants to talk to me today.”

“Oh,” Shauna says again. She’d been saving half of her own toast to finish later and suddenly she doesn’t have the appetite for it.

Jackie forces a nervous laugh. “You’ve gone mute.”

“No. I’m just… Maybe I don't know what I’m supposed to say.”

“I think,” Jackie starts, her hand finding Shauna’s hand now over her thigh, taking it, squeezing, “it’s probably about Prom? I mean, we lost the game Saturday, and then he calls Sunday… Word’s probably spread that we aren’t going to Nationals, so.” She hesitates. “And he’s, you know, been… hovering.”

There’s a chance that even as recently as Friday Shauna would’ve just pouted in silence about all of this, and then maybe scrawled a sentence or two into her old journal about how frustrating it is that she’s still stuck dealing with Jackie and Jeff drama after everything they’ve already been through. 

But not now. “You’re not going to Prom with Jeff, Jackie.”

Jackie reacts to that with a lot of indignation and a tiny sprinkle of guilt. Shauna sees through it. Her voice is a hint too loud and high. “I didn’t say I was.”

“You’re obviously entertaining it.”

“No,” Jackie says quickly. At Shauna’s sidelong look, she doubles down. “No, Shauna. I don’t want to go with him, and even my mom won’t want me to go with him. It’s just… I’ll have to dance with him. Traditionally, anyway. The Prom King and Prom Queen have a dance, and as much as I don’t want him to win, I think he will. And I know he wants to get back together.”

“I don't wanna talk about this,” Shauna decides. She can read between the lines. An unsettling amount of people think that Shauna’s gay and has feelings for Jackie, apparently, and thanks to Tai and Van everyone’s going to know that Jackie has lesbian friends, and now she’s going to Prom without a boy on her arm. Of course Jackie wouldn’t be able to handle it all. And only one of those three things can be remedied. 

“I’m looping you in.” Jackie sounds frustrated now. “That’s all. Because I didn’t want you to freak out and think the worst, exactly like you’re doing right now.”

“You can’t go to Prom with anyone else,” Shauna presses. She’s still stuck on it. “I’ll fucking—“ She’d lose it, probably. Seeing Jackie clinging to some boy, Jeff or not, smiling and laughing with him right in front of her face, slow-dancing with him while Shauna watches alone from the sidelines. Right back where they’d started. 

“You’re not listening to me,” Jackie says. “Shauna. Jeff’s gonna come find me today, and I’ll say the same thing I’ve been saying from the beginning, to you and to him: I don’t want to get back together. If I have to suffer through one dumb dance with him while everyone watching fucking laughs about how awkward it is, then I guess we’ll just have to deal with it when it happens.” They reach their school, then, and Shauna parks with a quiet sigh. Jackie turns and faces her. “Stop pouting. We’ll go back to your place afterward and slow dance in your bedroom. I’ll stay the night. It’ll be nice.”

It’s that, finally, that yanks Shauna out of her spiral. “Really?” she asks. “You’ve already thought about this?”

“As soon as I was done crying about the game on Saturday I started thinking about it,” Jackie says gently. Her fingers tangle with Shauna’s. “Before we even got back to Wiskayok. Quit being an idiot. Just because we aren’t telling anyone doesn’t mean you’re not still my Prom date.”

“This would’ve helped to hear when I was having a meltdown at the party,” Shauna says sheepishly. 

“I didn’t think I needed to clarify that I wasn’t planning on torturing you all night by flirting with someone else,” Jackie sighs out. Shauna watches, trying to push down the shame bubbling up in her chest, as Jackie turns and digs through her purse. She offers Shauna the concealer a moment later. As Shauna eyes herself in the mirror and starts to dab it on, Jackie adds, “So, like I was saying, I’ll probably have to dance with Jeff for one song. But I’ll wish it was you, okay? In case you just, like, needed to hear it.”

“Okay,” Shauna mumbles. “I’ll just go to the bathroom or something during it, I guess.”

“Not too early.” Jackie looks around them to make sure there aren’t any witnesses, then cups Shauna’s chin and turns her head, leaning in for a quick kiss. “You still have to be there to see me win.”

The heaviness in Shauna’s chest settles. “You’ll look pretty in your crown,” she admits, picturing it. 

Jackie beams affectionately at her, and just like that, the last vestige of tension between them melts away. “And you’ll look pretty in your dress.”

-

Shauna can tell that they’re both in higher spirits as they wind through the halls that morning, fresh off of working things out in the car. They’re separated fairly quickly, though; Jackie gets stopped by a few of her other friends, who start talking to her about the soccer team and how “bummed” they were when they heard about the loss, and anyway, did Shauna really break some girl’s ankle? Before Shauna can figure out how to address that, Jackie gives her a smile and a wave that Shauna knows means she can go on without her; Jackie will take care of it. 

Shauna goes to her own locker first, and is well on her way to first period when she runs into a murmuring crowd clogging up the halls: some just curious and trying to see past the bodies around them, others whispering or laughing with each other. They’re all facing the lockers on one side of the hall. 

Shauna works her way through them at first, annoyed and not particularly interested in whatever’s going on, but then she manages a glance sideways through the bodies and sees Tai at her locker, midway through putting her combination in. And then she sees what’s written on the locker.

Her blood runs cold, and she freezes. Every muscle in her body tenses. Then a switch flips, and suddenly she’s boiling hot instead. 

She turns, shoving through students until she breaks free by Tai and stares angrily at the metal. “Tai,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. Maybe she just wants Tai to know she has someone with her, that she’s not alone for this.

Tai doesn’t look at her, just finally gets the door wrenched open. Her jaw is clenched tight with fury. Shauna notices a scrape on her elbow. “Get out of here, Shauna,” she mutters.

“Let me go find stuff to clean it off,” Shauna says, ignoring the dismissal. “We’ll find out who did it. Jackie can help track them down. Just like she did with mine. And then…” She trails off, searching her brain, but she doesn’t know what she’s looking for.

“That’ll fix everything?” Tai asks, pausing and turning to glare at her. There’s something unreadable behind her gaze. Shauna wonders if it’s regret.

She can feel dozens of eyes on them. She’s trying to tune them out, but she can hear the murmurs, the snickers. “No. I don’t know. It might help.”

But she knows instinctively that this isn’t the same as the word on Shauna’s locker. That’d been a few whispers and one freshman with a vendetta. Tai and Van have blown up their social lives. 

Shauna finally makes herself look at the crowd. She skates over coy smiles and girls leaning in toward each other with hands over their mouths, boys nudging each other and pointing with wide grins. 

Then she turns back to Tai and decides, “You go to class and I’ll take care of it. You did it for me.”

Before Tai can respond, Shauna sees honey blonde hair in her periphery and then Jackie’s pushing her way out of the crowd with confusion, spotting them, and then spotting the locker. Shauna watches her eyes widen and then her face go pale. “Oh,” Jackie says faintly.

Tai knows Jackie better than Shauna does in this moment—or at least it clicks more quickly for her how Jackie is going to respond to this. “Jackie, go,” she snaps.

Jackie takes a step back immediately. Her eyes haven’t left the word “DYKE” scrawled in bold black. “Okay,” she agrees quickly. 

“Wait,” Shauna cuts in, confused, but suddenly Jackie’s reaching for her wrist and pulling. So many people are watching them—at least partly unable to hear them due to the din of everyone talking over each other, but they can still see them. 

“Shauna, let’s go,” Jackie tries, but Shauna pulls out of her grip with alarm. 

“What are you doing?”

This isn’t like Jackie. When the team’s in trouble, Jackie steps up and does what she can to fix things. She’s their captain. That’s how things are.

But now, instead, Jackie moves in close and looks at her like she’s silently pleading with her to understand. “You shouldn’t get involved in this. People might…”

She doesn’t finish it, and Shauna stares hard at her. “Tai’s our friend, Jackie.” 

The locker door slams behind her. Tai has her things. The crowd jostles amongst themselves, disturbed by something, and then starts to disperse. There’s some scattered murmuring, and then abruptly students begin to leave in a rush, and Shauna sees Coach Ben is the one whose arrival has triggered the exodus. 

He pushes through fleeing students until he sees the locker, and then his face falls. “I’ve got it,” he says immediately, his hand settling on Tai’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of it. Get to class, alright? Come see me after, Tai.”

“Thanks, Coach,” Tai mutters. 

Shauna hovers anyway and feels Jackie tug weakly at her wrist. She pulls away again and heads for Tai instead, something in her chest cracking in two, wrapping her up in a hug without any regard for who might see. And there very much are still people looking, people seeing.

Tai doesn’t return it with her arms, but after a moment of stiffness her chin settles on Shauna’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” Shauna murmurs, because she doesn’t know what else to say, and Tai laughs wryly.

“No it won’t. But at least it was my choice, and I only have to spend a month being a total fucking pariah.”

“You’re not a pariah. You have me,” Shauna insists. “And Van. And the whole team; Jackie—”

“Shauna,” Tai interjects, and she almost sounds like she’s the one who feels sorry for Shauna here, “I don’t have the whole team. And I definitely don’t have Jackie.”

Shauna pulls away from her and looks around. Jackie has disappeared.

-

Shauna spends her first period fuming. She’s angry for Tai and Van, first and foremost—and it’s made even worse by the whispers she hears in her class: 

Did you hear about Taissa Turner and Van Palmer? 

No wonder Tai wouldn’t go out with Bobby last semester.

Van’s definitely the dude. 

I wouldn’t fuck either of them anyway. No loss there.  

But she’s angry at Jackie, too. At the way she’d tried to pull Shauna away from it all, to leave Tai to fend for herself, and at the way Jackie’d left them both there afterward.

She waits at Jackie’s locker after class, and something feels different in the halls again: they’re buzzing, alive in a way that Shauna instinctively senses isn’t good. 

Jackie doesn’t show up right away, but Nat spots Shauna there and is on her in a flash, eyes narrowed with an anger that isn’t directed at Shauna. “What the fuck happened to Tai and Van?” she hisses. 

“Someone wrote ‘dyke’ on Tai’s locker,” Shauna says. “I haven’t seen Van.”

“I have,” Nat says. “She has a fucking black eye, and her locker got hit too.” Shauna’s stomach drops, then starts to turn unpleasantly. She thinks of Tai’s scraped elbow. “I tried to get to her this morning but she didn’t see me.”

Shauna’s eyes scan the crowd around them and finally she spots Jackie just outside of a nearby classroom, talking to some girl on the Prom Committee like nothing’s amiss. “I have to go,” she says distractedly to Nat, starting toward her. 

She can hear Jackie, as she gets closer: “I’m shocked he even had the balls to ask after what he did. I’d honestly rather go alone than—”

“Jackie,” Shauna interrupts sharply, and Jackie goes quiet, glances at her, and then refocuses on the other girl. Shauna thinks her name’s Alyssa. 

“One second, Shauna.” It’s not out of the ordinary for Jackie to be dismissive of her like this when they’re at school, but Shauna’s not going to let her get away with it today. “Anyway, it just feels even more humiliating to go with my asshole ex than it would be to—”

Shauna grabs her arm and pulls her away. Jackie makes a sharp sound of protest but then doesn’t fight her on it.

“O…kay?” Shauna hears Maybe-Alyssa say distantly behind them. 

Shauna leads her past curious eyes all the way to their old, now-unused locker room, too aware of the last time she’d come here like this: Tai dragging Shauna here to tell her about falling in love with Van.

She feels sick as she double-checks that they’re alone. Jackie doesn’t look much better with her facade dropped; she’s watching Shauna finish up with the expression of someone who knows she’s about to get an earful. 

Shauna rounds on her, finally, and lets her have it. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Jackie?”

Jackie averts her gaze and says nothing, chewing on her bottom lip. 

“You have to help. You know Tai would do the same for you if it were us.”

Jackie won’t look at her. “Coach Ben will take care of it.”

Shauna scoffs. “He’s gonna talk to a bunch of people who are gonna lie and cover for each other, and it’ll keep happening every morning. You can solve it and put a stop to it. People will talk to you. People will listen to you. Nobody’s gonna think you’re fucking gay just because you don’t want your teammates bullied.”

The words settle, met with silence. Shauna swallows thickly, processing them, really thinking about it.

She’s probably wrong, actually. She can’t think of a single time someone’s pushed back on something homophobic in Wiskayok without either turning out to be gay or winding up accused of it. That’s just how it is here. 

Shauna sets her jaw anyway and decides, “Fine. I’ll do what I can by myself, then.”

That gets Jackie to look at her. “No,” she pleads hastily. “Shauna, I know you wanna do the right thing—”

“Yeah,” Shauna snaps, “I do. Even if you won’t. You can make whatever decision you want for yourself, Jackie, but you can’t choose for me.”

Jackie sniffs and wipes at her eyes. “You know what people will think if you act like this. If you go off trying to solve this and start hanging out with Tai and Van all the time now. I’m just trying to protect you.”

“Oh,” Shauna lets out a sarcastic laugh. She’d anticipated this. “Are you? Because wasn’t it you who said I should be myself? Now you’re worried about people making assumptions?” She levels her with a stony glare. “Now that it might come back on you, right?”  

“That’s not fair,” Jackie breathes, stepping closer. Shauna steps back. “When I said that, I thought—I meant—”

“What?” Shauna pushes, fuming.

“I didn’t even know if we were still gonna be friends when I said that,” Jackie explains. “I meant that I wanted you to do what you needed to do to find someone else and be happy. Did Tai look happy to you this morning? And I saw Van with a black eye on the way to class, Shauna. I can’t let that happen to you.” Her eyes narrow. She looks determined now, like her own words have further convinced her. “If I have to do the wrong thing to protect you, and us, I will. Even if it hurts them.”

“I can’t.” Shauna shakes her head, disgusted. “I’m not gonna pretend I don’t care, Jackie.”

Jackie’s eyes slam shut. She looks frustrated. “Think, Shauna, please. If people start assuming things about you, it could get back to my parents. Think about what that does to us. If you come out, I don’t know what that does to us. At my house or at school. Please just think about it. This could mess everything up. I might not be allowed to see you.”

But Shauna doesn’t want to think about it. It’s too much. She focuses on what she can: the simplicity of what she knows is morally right. “Tai and Van are my friends. I’m not abandoning them. People are gonna think what they want—They already do anyway. ” She walks past Jackie to the exit, their shoulders bumping harshly. “Do what you need to do, Jackie.”

“Shauna—” Jackie starts, but Shauna’s already gone.

-

She makes Misty swap places with her in Physics so that Shauna sits alone and Jackie and Misty are lab partners instead. She can’t bear to spend an hour sitting next to Jackie today. She’s still trying to wrap her head around their conversation, around the fact that Jackie is ditching Tai and Van and letting them be thrown to the wolves out of self-preservation.

Shauna’s under no delusions about everything Jackie has at stake, how her life will change if she’s found out. But she’d always been so proud to be the captain of the Yellowjackets, had always eagerly taken on the responsibility of it all and gone above and beyond. Her girls couldn’t even have a drunken spat without Jackie getting in the middle of it and resolving it. Certainly she could step in on Tai and Van’s behalf and then blame it on some sense of captain-adjacent duty, even with their season over. Or… or she could think of something; some solution that won’t have everyone whispering about how Jackie Taylor is defending those lesbians, and actually, now that you mention it, she’s always been insanely close with Shauna Shipman, who’s always hovering around her in those flannels.

“Fuck,” Shauna whispers to herself, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

Jackie spends half the class visibly distressed, glancing over her shoulder at Shauna when she gets the opportunity. Shauna doesn’t make eye contact. She doesn’t talk to Jackie for the rest of the day. She doesn’t know what to say to her.  

Van gives Shauna, Nat, Lottie, and Laura Lee an explanation for her eye out in the quad at lunch while Tai picks silently at her meal. Jackie’s conspicuously off sitting with her other friends instead and Mari has unsurprisingly tagged along with her.

“We had a date on Sunday,” Van starts, looking relievingly aloof about it all, at least. “Some guys saw us holding hands outside of the movie theater, in the parking lot. I didn’t recognize them; they were probably sophomores or something, but there were three of them. They started heckling us, so I flipped them off, and it just kinda escalated from there. One of them pushed Tai down when she tried to get in the middle of it. It all happened pretty fast.”

Laura Lee looks horrified. Shauna watches her carefully as she asks, “Can’t you find out who they were and tell the police? Or at least the principal?”

“I, uh… might’ve swung first after they got in our faces and used some words I didn’t like,” Van says with a ghost of a smile. “And I got at least a couple of them pretty bad right back. Plus Tai got a good kick in, too.” She offers Tai a fond smile that Tai returns half-heartedly, a muted sadness still there behind her eyes. “I’m alright.”

“Wow,” Lottie mumbles. “I’m so sorry.”

“Town fucking blows,” Nat adds in commiseration, nodding. Shauna sees her look past their group and find Jackie at the other table. 

Laura Lee, meanwhile, is scooting closer to Tai and hugging her tight as she says, “I love you guys. God does too. Don’t listen to anyone who says any differently, okay?”

A senior boy Shauna vaguely recognizes walks past their table, eyes them all, and whistles at them with a wolfish grin. “Hey, ladies. You guys all gonna make out, or is it just those two?”

“Clever,” Shauna says, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

Nat flips him off. Lottie tosses a pickle from her sandwich at him, and Tai snaps, “Fuck off.”

“God hates you!” Laura Lee adds, earning a few surprised, amused looks from the rest of them until the boy distracts them with an announcement.

“Yellowjackets dyke brigade coming through, everyone! Hide your sisters!” A few students from nearby tables laugh as he backs away with a self-satisfied grin. It’s so stupid. Shauna hates that it actually makes her chest pang.

Jackie’s watching them stiffly now. Shauna wonders if she feels vindicated.

“Sorry, guys,” Van sighs when the moment’s passed. “We never wanted to drag you into this.”

“You’re our friends,” Shauna says firmly. The others nod, and Van and Tai both meet Shauna’s eyes with grateful understanding. Like they know what she’s choosing for herself by staying here, what she’s risking.

It almost feels punctuated, then, by Lottie wondering, “Where are Jackie and Mari?”

Nat points them out. “Over there. Making their choice.”

“Oh,” Lottie replies, quieter now.

They go back to eating and don’t bring it up again.

-

There are many ways in which Shauna is nothing like Jackie, and apparently her interrogation skills—alongside her complete lack of social pull—are a particularly glaring difference. She tries between classes all afternoon: goes to boys in letterman jackets and the girls they’re dating and tries to be intimidating, tries to ask about Tai and Van’s lockers like she’s confronting them as suspects. 

One boy laughs at her, looks her up and down, and asks, “What, worried you’ll be next?”

A girl in a pink skirt just looks confused and asks her if she’s that girl that’s always with Jackie Taylor. The friend standing beside her tells Shauna with disgust, “I heard a rumor this morning that the girls’ soccer team throws parties where they all just hook up with each other. Please tell me that isn’t true.”

“It isn’t,” Shauna bites out, and then storms away from them.

During her final attempt of the day, right before her last class, a boy in a backwards cap that reminds her of Melissa gives her a pitying look and offers the realest response so far: “No idea who did it, but if I were you I wouldn’t be trying to find out. Those chicks are a lost cause, and you’re gonna wind up target numero uno after them, dude.”

Shauna’s frustrated and demoralized by the time she finds Coach Ben in his office. He’s sitting alone in silence, seemingly staring at the wall in deep thought before Shauna’s appearance in the doorway startles him out of it. “Shauna,” he says sharply, sitting up straight.

“Hey.” She clears her throat awkwardly, then leans against the open door. “Have you heard anything?”

“I’m looking into it,” he says vaguely, and at Shauna’s raised eyebrow he deflates a little. “I promise I’ll do my best. But it’s not looking great so far.”

“Too many suspects,” Shauna murmurs knowingly, crossing her arms. She’s always hated Wiskayok, but never more than she does right now. 

“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” he agrees. Shauna watches him run a hand through his hair, and then, after a moment of hesitation, he gestures to the seat on the other side of his desk. “If you’d like to talk,” he offers. “You took this morning pretty hard.” He says it knowingly. Looks at Shauna like he’s seeing right through her. It makes her uncomfortable.

She pushes off the door and mumbles, “Don’t worry; the season’s over, so you don’t have to, like, pretend to understand, or act like you care about any of us. Just try to find whoever did it.”

She turns and leaves, but only gets a few steps away before he calls after her, faintly, “I do understand.” She pauses. Hears him add, “And care.”

She clenches and unclenches her fists, just to move blood through her veins, and then glances back at him. He hasn’t left his desk. He looks almost sad. She thinks of him asking Tai to his office earlier in the day and wonders if he’d done it just to have this conversation with her too. 

She almost just nods her acknowledgement of it and leaves anyway, but something pulls her back to the doorway, where she reaches him and blurts, before she can think about it, “Why are you here when you could be somewhere else?” It isn’t what she’d thought she’d ask. She hadn’t really known what she’d ask at all, other than that outright going so you’re gay, huh had felt inappropriate. But still, that it’s this surprises her. 

Coach Ben thinks the question over with furrowed eyebrows. “Well,” he says, finally, “I guess because the last time I got an offer to leave, I was worried about being too tied to another person.”

She thinks of Brown. She gets it and also doesn’t get it. “Isn’t that okay, as long as you’re in love?”

He shrugs. “I think that’s something we all have to decide for ourselves.” Shauna watches him, can tell that he’s debating saying something more. He finally seems to decide that she’s worthy of it, or perhaps smart enough, mature enough to speak about his personal life to like they’re equals. “It was a risk. If it hadn’t worked out, I’d have been left with nothing.”

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow. “And now you’re single and still in Wiskayok,” she says, like it’s that simple. “You should’ve gone.”

He laughs, maybe tiredly, almost fondly. “Maybe someday I will. Good luck in Providence, Shauna.”

“Thanks,” she says, and goes.

-

She’s ten minutes late to the parking lot after Coach Ben, and it’s fairly deserted, most of Wiskayok High already emptied out for the day. It’s how she spots Jackie immediately, leaning up against Shauna’s passenger side door like it’s any other day, like she’d defaulted to waiting for her there because that’s what they always do. 

Shauna’s sure it’d been calculated. Mari drives, and probably would’ve happily given Jackie a ride home, but she’s here now strong-arming Shauna into doing it instead anyway. 

Shauna greets her stiffly, “Don’t worry; none of your fucking friends would tell me anything anyway, so I figure it’s a waste of time for me to keep asking.”

“They’re not my friends,” Jackie says quietly.

“They dress the same as your new lunch buddies,” Shauna shoots back, wrenching her car door open. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Jackie climbs in on the other side and opens her mouth like she might argue, but then she closes it and seems to think better of it. Shauna turns the radio on—not enough to drown Jackie out, but just enough to fill the silence. 

Jackie stares out the window as they speed down the road. Shauna squeezes the steering wheel and feels the anger drain out of her, replaced by a sick dread. The realization seeps into her chest and sinks low in her stomach.

“It’s not gonna be the same anymore, is it?” she asks, already aware of the answer.

Jackie sniffs. Shauna knows there will be tears in her eyes soon if there aren’t already. “Just don’t leave me,” Jackie whispers.

She glances at Jackie’s hand, almost reaches for it. She doesn’t. It feels like a chasm has opened up between them. “Don’t leave me. Deal?”

Jackie nods, still not looking at her. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Shauna breathes.

It isn’t okay. But maybe they can get away with pretending—at least for a little while.

Chapter 26

Shauna gets a lot done in the next few days. 

She goes shopping alone for her Prom dress and finds something knee-length and dark green that doesn’t make her feel like crawling out of her skin when she tries it on. She decides it’ll do. 

She plans a hangout with their new lunch crew for Wednesday afternoon, because it feels necessary. They don’t have practices together anymore, and they’ve been pretty much collectively getting teased and taunted during their meals for several days straight, so it feels like an evening at Lottie’s place with some weed might be sorely needed, even if Laura Lee won’t agree to partake. They all agree on Tuesday at lunch to go to Prom together as a group too, with Lottie’s driver taking them there in a limo the Matthews own. Shauna tries to figure out how to tell Jackie.

She lights some logs in her fireplace one evening while her mom’s out on a late shift, and doesn’t miss the irony of it as she burns page after torn-out page of her old journals, all about how much she resents Jackie, even as she finds herself starting to feel those same feelings again. 

They don’t talk at school. Shauna gets teased about that, too—about their “breakup”. But not like it’s serious, not like it has teeth. More like Jackie’s just finally come to her senses and stopped hanging out with the loser friend that’s always existed in her shadow. Misty and Jackie stay lab partners, and Jackie keeps eating at her new lunch table with Mari. Shauna still gives her rides home, but only after the parking lot’s emptied out and no one’s around to see them together. 

Tuesday evening, Jackie comes over. She calls ahead and drives herself this time, and Shauna’s mom cooks, and they make awkward conversation about the year coming to an end. Summer plans. Trips that Shauna’s not sure will actually happen now.

“We just have to survive until summer,” Jackie says to her later on Shauna’s bed, and Shauna thinks about that in silence for an entire minute afterward: survival.

Surviving until summer. Then it’ll be that they just need to survive the summer so that Jackie can get away from her parents in the fall. Then they’ll be surviving college, the distance. And then what?

Shauna’s not particularly interested in survival. She’s bursting at the seams to live. 

That chasm is still between them on Shauna’s bed: Shauna resting with her back up against the wall and her knees pulled to her chest, Jackie sprawled out flat on the mattress, eyes tracing patterns across the ceiling. 

They talk with less warmth in their voices today, like they’re both tiptoeing around each other, two puzzle pieces gently testing different spots to see where and how they fit together now. For Shauna, at least part of it’s that she’s both frustrated with Jackie and trying really hard not to be. It feels like she’s fighting against herself, shoving her bubbling emotions down over and over again for Jackie’s benefit. Just like she’d always used to.

She asks her eventually, “What do you actually wanna do with your life?” What she’s really asking is: What’s the plan?

Jackie shoots her a quizzical look, like it’s not a perfectly valid question. Then Shauna watches her expression settle, thinking it over. 

“Before you,” she starts slowly, “I thought I had it all figured out. But even then, at some point I guess I realized that it wasn’t gonna be Jeff. He was just gonna be the high school boyfriend.” Jackie rolls over onto her side, facing Shauna but not looking at her, watching her own fingertips trace aimless patterns across the comforter. “I knew I wanted Rutgers with you. And then I guess I thought I’d find a nice guy there. From the best frat I could get us into parties at. And maybe he’d have a friend or a brother for you. Some sweet, sensitive type who actually liked all of those boring books we read for English Lit in high school.” She gives Shauna a soft, but ultimately sad smile.

“Then what?” Shauna urges her quietly.

Jackie shrugs. “We’d all get married, live close by, get jobs. You and I would have kids at the same time. I always kinda figured I’d wind up a stay-at-home mom by like, twenty-five, and you’d be writing at home, so we’d get to hang out every day. And then we’d just… I don’t know. Grow old together. All four of us.”

It sounds so simple. Almost juvenile in its simplicity, actually. It’s also all about them. The men are side characters even in a fantasy produced by Jackie when she’d thought she was straight. Just afterthoughts filling roles.

“Why are you majoring in communications?” Shauna wonders.

Jackie opens her mouth like she has an automated response ready, but nothing comes out. She looks confused again. “I don’t know. I read that it’s a popular major for the sorority I wanna rush. The one my mom was in.”

Shauna would laugh if that weren’t so pathetic. Jackie can be so excruciatingly frustrating sometimes. “So what are you gonna do with your degree?”

Now Jackie looks annoyed. Her eyes flicker up to Shauna’s, narrow, and then she shifts back onto her back, visibly uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” she says again.

“You could do something with clothes instead,” Shauna offers. “They have fashion degrees. Or like, marketing. We could go to the library and take one of those career aptitude quizzes online.”

Jackie’s jaw tenses. “That sounds stupid,” she mumbles.

Shauna feels something inside of her snap. “No, what’s stupid is you promising me a future you have to screw up your life plan for and then refusing to come up with a new one.” Jackie sits up quickly, glaring daggers at her, an intense, visible pain behind the anger. The air in the room is crackling, suddenly. Shauna doesn’t back down. “Tell me what we’re doing, Jackie. Because if it’s really me, the way it should be, there’s probably no sorority, at least not for very long. And no kids at twenty-five for you to stay at home for. So what then?”

“Stop,” Jackie protests, fists clenching. “I don’t have to decide that right now. I’m not ready to.”

“Well,” Shauna bites out, “I wasn’t exactly ready for my best friend to start asking me to fuck her, but you did, so here we are, dealing with it.”

Jackie laughs wryly, but it’s wet, like she’s already holding back tears. “Oh. Okay. You’re saying this is all my fault.”

“I’m saying that you didn’t have a plan; you just took what you wanted. So now I’m asking for one.”

“You asked me to take it.” Jackie’s gaze hardens. “You told me to. You can’t blame me now—“

“I don’t care about that,” Shauna interrupts harshly. “I just wanna know that you want this.”

“I do!”

“Then show me!” She doesn’t raise her voice too loudly, but it’s enough to make Jackie flinch and fall silent. “Things are awful at school. You won’t be with me there. I get why. But you’re still joining the same sorority with the same degree you have no plan to do anything with, like you’re gonna be popping out a kid at twenty-two. You can’t just slot me into the same bullshit, Jackie. I don’t fit. So if you want me to believe that we’re really doing this, and you can’t show me by coming out right now, you can at least show me by coming up with something new. Something that makes sense and includes me.”

Jackie’s lips tremble and then she buries her face in her hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whimpers. “I don’t know how to make everyone happy. It feels like I can’t do anything without someone hating me.”

There are people who don’t know Jackie like Shauna does—people like Melissa—who would just describe her as a mean girl. Like Jackie’s that simple, that shallow and easy to sum up.  And it’s true that she can be dismissive and condescending and self-centered. When Jackie really doesn’t like someone, she’ll usually let them know it, even if she’s passive-aggressive about it. 

But in her heart of hearts, Jackie is so tragically desperate for approval that Shauna’s always found it sad.

Maybe that’s the hardest part about all of this. That Jackie just wants to be liked, and yet she’s been born with something that will make so many people automatically hate her. Including the people whose opinions matter most of all to her, the people whose approval she’s tailored her whole life toward earning from the moment they’d taken her home from the hospital. 

“I’ll never hate you, Jackie,” Shauna says gently, sighing. “Not for real.”

Jackie lifts her head and wipes at her eyes. Tears drip from her chin. “I wish you would,” she says, and Shauna blinks at her with confusion. “It would make it easier to choose you if I knew not choosing you meant I’d lose you completely.”

Shauna’s gut twists. She can feel her frustration boiling over. “I wish the idea of me off at Brown waiting in limbo to find out if you’ll ever be with me the way I need was just as horrific to you as the idea of not having me.” She hates being reminded of how selfish Jackie can be at times. It’s exhausting to listen to it again now. “I think you should leave, Jax.”

Jackie’s face softens with hurt. “Shauna.”

But Shauna’s hurt too. She turns away and lies down. “I really don’t even wanna look at you right now, honestly.” She should stop there, but it’s too in her nature to sink the dagger in fully once it’s already pierced skin. “Ever since you ditched Tai yesterday, even thinking about kissing you makes me feel sick to my stomach.”

She hears Jackie’s sharp intake of breath and feels the way Jackie goes still behind her on the mattress. 

It works, though. It only takes seconds for Jackie to recover, slip off of the bed, pull her shoes on, and hurry out the door.

When she’s alone, Shauna sets her jaw stubbornly and doesn’t let herself cry.

-

Tai and Van’s lockers are defaced for the third time in a row on Wednesday morning. The whole school knows about it now, and Coach Ben and their principal have hit a wall while looking into it. Shauna hears a rumor that they’re going to start having the faculty patrol the halls and stand out in the parking lot in the early mornings, because it seems to be happening before most students even arrive.

Tai doesn’t show up for the second period class Shauna shares with her, and Shauna excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She’s never seen Tai cry before, not even when they’d lost State, but she hears someone trying to stifle their sobs in one of the stalls and when she checks under the door she can tell it’s Tai. 

She knows it’s not just the locker. It’s everything. The things Shauna’s getting just enough of a taste of to understand: the looks, the comments, the acquaintances who used to smile at her and avoid her eyes now. The coldness, the murmurs, the prickly feeling of being watched but never being able to find the source in time. 

They fit a little too tightly into one of the stalls together, but Tai lets her in when she realizes it’s Shauna. “I think maybe I made a mistake,” she tells her through bleary eyes as Shauna slides her hands up and down Tai’s biceps, trying her best to be comforting. As soon as the words are out, Tai looks wracked with guilt. “God, please don’t tell Van I said that.”

“I won’t tell anyone anything,” Shauna promises, and stays there with her until Tai’s tears dry.

-

Jackie had driven herself to school that morning after the way things had ended the night before, which makes it easy for Shauna to head straight to Lottie’s after school. 

“How are your parents, like, never home?” Nat asks her as the first few of them to arrive seat themselves on the familiar furniture in her living room. 

“Right now they’re in Greece,” Lottie says idly as she brings them each a bottle of some expensive brand of flavored water. Nat’s already lighting up the first joint as Laura Lee looks on uneasily. “I think next month is Bulgaria? Or Belgium. Wait, definitely Belgium, because they promised to bring back chocolate.”

“Bulgarian chocolate might be the shit,” Nat says, exhaling a puff of smoke and then passing the joint to Shauna. “You never know.” Shauna takes a small, measured hit, aiming to avoid a repeat of the mess she’d been on Saturday night.

Van and Tai arrive just minutes later, and pretty soon the six of them are splayed out lazily around the room, all getting high sans Laura Lee: Nat sideways in her favorite lounge chair, Shauna in another, Laura Lee and Lottie on the larger couch and Tai and Van cuddled up on the two-seater. Despite everything, Shauna feels envious as she watches Tai rest her head on Van’s shoulder.

“Is this, like,” Van ventures eventually with a chuckle, “technically our version of a GSA, since Wiskayok would never actually let us have one?”

“What’s a GSA?” Laura Lee asks. 

“Gay-straight alliance,” Tai explains. “I heard they have them in some schools closer to Trenton.”

“It’s like, just a bunch of gays and straights coming together and vibing,” Van adds. “Like us.”

Tai laughs and corrects, “I mean, they probably have events and stuff. To like, support the gay students. Straight people show up to be nice. They call themselves allies.”

Laura Lee lights up and declares with pleased innocence, “So I’m an ally.”

“Yes you fucking are,” Van says with approval, giving her a thumbs up. “And so is—well, actually, what the fuck are the rest of you, anyway?” She screws her face up almost guiltily. “Uh, no pressure, though.“

Nat starts laughing hard—probably mostly from the weed, because it’s not that funny. It gets a giggle out of Shauna too, though, because are they really about to do this?

She actually truly feels safe here, now that she thinks about it. They’ve been getting teased together for three days now over it, and it’s bonded them more intimately than months of playing soccer together. The idea of any of them turning around and throwing each other under the bus is so ludicrous that Shauna just instinctively knows it’d never happen.

Nat seems to feel the same way, because when she finally recovers and she’s still grinning, she sighs, “Fuck, I don’t know. I could probably try it out. She’s gotta be hot, though.”

A round of mostly-weed-fueled giggling overtakes them all, and then Lottie chimes in, “Okay, so, that girl I told everyone about? It wasn’t just a peck.” Five heads swivel sharply to look at her, and Lottie blushes but finishes, “We made out. For like, a while.”

Van’s jaw drops. Laura Lee blinks wide. Nat suddenly seems intensely interested in hanging onto Lottie’s every word.

“I just wasn’t gonna tell the whole team that, obviously,” Lottie laughs out. “It was nice. And it didn’t really feel like a big deal at the time, but… I don’t know. Maybe it’s all still a work in progress. I’ll probably figure it out in college.” She shrugs and doesn’t seem to feel the need to elaborate any further, and so the attention shifts to Shauna.

Three of them already know everything, but Shauna doesn’t know how best to say it to Lottie and Laura Lee now. It still isn’t fully her secret to tell. 

She opens her mouth, unsure of what’s exactly going to come out of it. But then the doorbell rings. 

Nat sits up, angling her head curiously. “Did someone order food?”

Van pats her stomach eagerly. “I sure fucking hope so. I could go for like, three burritos right now.”

“I didn’t order anything,” Lottie says. She gets to her feet and heads to the door with relative grace for someone who’s split three different joints with four other people. They watch her open it a crack and peek out. She stiffens, then calls out, “Shauna,” pulling the door open wider.

Jackie stands on the porch with her teeth sinking into her lower lip and her hands in her back pockets, looking very much uncertain about being there. Shauna sees Tai and Van stiffen. 

She gets up quickly, wobbling over, and slides out past Lottie onto the porch. Lottie exchanges an unreadable look with the rest of the group but then returns to her seat, leaving them enough privacy to speak lowly to each other. Shauna can immediately tell that the energy has shifted. They’re not all relaxed and comfortable inside anymore—like Jackie’s disturbed their peace with her arrival.

She faces Jackie hesitantly. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

“I called about coming over to your place,” Jackie explains with her eyes low. “Your mom answered and said you’d mentioned something this morning about having plans at Lottie’s today. So… I guess I just decided to come here.”

Tai appears in the doorway suddenly, asking Shauna with distaste, “You invited Jackie to this?”

“No,” Shauna says too quickly, defensively, and doesn’t miss the way it makes Jackie’s eyes widen slightly with hurt. “She just… she’s just here.” She doesn’t know what else to say. Jackie’s invited herself to this and—either unknowingly or with too much optimism about the outcome—put Shauna in a nightmare of a position.

“Tell her to go,” Tai demands. She doesn’t walk away after, just stands there and waits with her arms folded across her chest, eyes boring holes into Shauna’s face. 

Shauna’s chest feels tight. It only gets worse when Jackie drags her gaze from Tai’s glare to Shauna’s look of hesitation and straightens her spine, finding the inner confidence to demand right back, “I have just as much of a right to be here as you, Tai.”

Tai barks out a laugh. “Oh, do you? That’s hilarious, Jackie. Look, Shauna can put up with you all she wants outside of school, but don’t expect the rest of us to be okay with you just being our friend when it’s convenient.” She turns around in the doorway, facing the others. They’re looking on now, but Shauna isn’t sure how much they’d overheard. “In fact, let’s put it to a vote! Guys, all in favor of Jackie joining the conversation we were just having? Does anyone feel good about that?”

“Tai,” Shauna sighs out, finally finding her voice. “I’m not saying you can’t be upset with her, but you know she won’t say anything.”

Tai ignores her. “If you want Jackie here, raise your hand.”

The other four girls blink out at them, and then at each other. Nat exhales heavily but then half-heartedly raises her hand, though she seems to know it’s pointless. Lottie hesitates, but looks at Van and then Tai and doesn’t move. Laura Lee seems to take her cue from the majority. 

Tai faces them both. “Well, would you look at that? Four to two. Bye, Jackie.” Jackie presses her lips together tightly and then abruptly shoves past Tai anyway, ignoring her offended, “Hey!” and stepping swiftly into the living room.

“This is ridiculous,” Jackie huffs, facing the rest of them. Shauna trails in uncertainly after her, watching her relax her shoulders and make her tone lighter, forcing an easy, poised facade. “I’m our captain. You can’t just plan a team hangout and not include me, guys.”

Van sighs. “Jackie, be serious.”

“I am serious.” Jackie fakes a familiar laugh, looking around at them all. Shauna can barely watch. “C’mon. Just because the season’s over and we’re not all eating lunch together doesn’t mean we can’t still spend time with each other after school.”

The front door closes and Shauna feels Tai nudge past her on her way over and then wrap an arm around Jackie’s shoulders. Jackie flinches, but Tai’s acting friendly now, pulling her closer and saying lightly, “Okay, Jackie. You wanna hang out? We were actually all just going around discussing whether or not we’re into girls. Shauna was just about to take her turn. And then you can go right after her. Sound good?”

Jackie stiffens. Shauna makes her feet move, stepping in quickly and pulling her out of Tai’s grip by her arm. Jackie stumbles into her, their fronts bumping. Shauna doesn’t look her in the eyes as she mumbles, “C’mon, this isn’t worth it, Jax.”

“Oop,” Tai adds idly. “Guess that makes it five to one, actually.”

Shauna glares past Jackie at her, and Nat sighs out, “Don’t be a dick, Tai. She gets it.”

The whole atmosphere feels tense and awkward now, even through their highs, and Jackie’s arm is stiff beneath Shauna’s grip. Despite the dismissal, she doesn’t move right away, and Shauna finally ventures a look at her. She knows her well enough to spot when Jackie’s trying to keep it together, trying to put on a brave face and hide that she’s crushed, and this is hurting her so badly. “Fine,” Jackie mutters, sniffing, wiping a lone tear away. “We’ll go.” She flips her hand over and takes Shauna’s wrist with it, stepping toward the door, pulling.

Shauna swallows thickly and stays put. The last thing she wants to do is sink the knife in deeper again. But this is the first time she can ever remember feeling completely safe being herself in a group of people. She doesn’t want it to end so soon. And as much as she’d like Jackie to be there, she clearly isn’t welcome, or isn’t ready to be the version of herself that would be welcome. So they’re at an impasse. 

Jackie pauses when she feels the tension—when Shauna’s arm is fully extended—and looks back at her with confusion. “I, um,” Shauna fumbles. “I can’t drive yet. I just smoked.”

“I can drive us,” Jackie replies quietly. “I’ll bring you back here later tonight and you can get your car then.”

Shauna looks around. Van’s wincing at them and Tai’s just watching knowingly, perfectly aware of exactly what’s going on here. Nat’s frowning slightly and Laura Lee and Lottie look like they can hardly bear to witness this. Shauna wouldn’t be surprised if Laura Lee were to lift a hand and watch through her fingers, she looks so uncomfortable. All of them clearly realize what Jackie’s yet to figure out.

Gently, Shauna withdraws herself from Jackie’s grip and takes a step back. She doesn’t say anything; she’s not sure she’d be able to get it out. She can’t bear to watch Jackie process it.

It takes a few seconds for Jackie to speak. “Oh,” she says. She’s gone cold and distant. Even that one word alone makes Shauna flinch. “Alright. Got it. Fine.” Shauna feels her move away, hears the sound of her swift footsteps, and then the doorknob turning. 

She doesn’t have it in her to send Jackie fleeing from her two days in a row. “Jackie,” blows past her lips before she can second-guess it, and then she’s following her with a lump in her throat.

“Don’t, Shauna,” Tai groans, but Shauna doesn’t listen. Jackie slips out through the front door and Shauna’s out right behind her, trailing behind her down Lottie’s driveway like a forlorn puppy.

“Jackie, can you just—?”

“What?” Jackie bites out, rounding on her. Tears are streaming down her cheeks now even as she forces out a sarcastic laugh. “Not get upset about the fact that my friends fucking hate me and my girlfriend’s so disgusted with me she’d rather stick around with them than spend time alone with me?” She shakes her head, her face crumpling. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Do you want me to be honest?” Shauna asks, stepping closer, her heart in her stomach. Jackie shrugs helplessly. “Going in there and telling them about us would probably be a good start.”

“Tai knows and she hates me anyway.” Shauna can tell right away that Jackie doesn’t want to do it, that this is her way of coming up with an excuse to push back on it. 

“Because she feels betrayed,” Shauna explains, though she knows it’s deeper than that. She still has a fresh memory of Tai in that bathroom stall. “Because she knows you’re a hypocrite. If you—”

But Jackie’s reacted to that like Shauna’s struck her, and now she’s interjecting, “Okay, wow.”

Shauna sighs. “Jackie. You’re treating Tai and Van and anyone sticking by them like we’re diseased. They can understand why and still take it personally. But if they saw you go in there and at least be honest with Laura Lee and Lottie, maybe that’d be… you know, progress. I don’t know.”

“And then even more people would know,” Jackie says pointedly. She’s got such an obviously combative edge to her tone that Shauna knows right away it’s not happening.

“You asked me how to fix it,” Shauna reminds her. “If you don’t like the answer, then I guess it’ll just stay broken.”

Jackie closes her mouth, clenches her jaw. Her teary eyes slide past Shauna to look at Lottie’s house. “So you’re staying,” she says sharply. “You’re choosing them.”

Shauna exhales hard and looks at Jackie tiredly. She wishes Jackie could just get it. That she could understand without being told, and it’d feel a little less like they’re living in different worlds now. “It’s not about you or them. I’m choosing me. They don’t make me feel bad for who I am.”

Jackie’s body locks up. Defensive, she asks, “And I do?”

“No, Jackie,” Shauna groans. She’s still not getting it. “I just fucking like the fact that I can sit around with my friends and talk about liking girls if I want, and it’d be okay. It gets lonely only having you. So it matters to me to stay here today.”

“I’m lonely, too,” Jackie argues. Her tears have stopped coming, but she’s still wiping the last remnants of them from her cheeks. “I need you. Please, let’s just go.”

Shauna shakes her head reluctantly, and feels even worse when Jackie’s face falls all over again. “You don’t have to be lonely, Jax. C’mon.” She offers her hand, even as sure as she is that Jackie won’t take it. She lets herself have just a little bit of hope. “Come back inside with me. It’s just like my mom. You can hold my hand.”

Jackie takes a step back from her, looking away, eyes finding a spot on the ground. Shauna lets her arm fall back to her side. In the silence that follows, Shauna can feel the air getting heavier, the space between them widening, that chasm growing and growing. 

“It was only two people,” Shauna breathes, defeated. 

Jackie doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t really have to. Shauna knows what it’s really about: just the being seen of it all, the knowing that someone else knows, the loss of control. Jackie probably tosses and turns every night over Tai and Van knowing as it is. She’s probably started to wonder if she’s miscalculated about Melissa and Gen, if they’ll out themselves soon like Tai had and then might finally take revenge on a girl they clearly don’t like. Nat gets high and says shit she shouldn’t sometimes, like leaking Shauna’s kiss with Jeff. Even Shauna’s mom occasionally talks on the phone with Jackie’s mom, and that’s yet another avenue for an unfortunate slip-up.

So, ultimately, it’s that Laura Lee and Lottie just aren’t worth it to her. But Shauna doesn’t know how to make that hurt any less anyway: the idea that Jackie’s done the math in her head, put Shauna into an equation, and sided against her because something else had held more weight. She doesn’t know how much longer she can take feeling like she’s not being chosen before she starts to buckle, starts to drown in the resentment of it.

Jackie leaves without saying goodbye. Shauna treks back up to Lottie’s front door, pushes her way inside, and collapses back into her chair. “I like both,” she mumbles.

It takes a second for the tension in the room to dissipate, for them to take a cue from Shauna and move on from everything that’s just happened. But then Lottie lets out a soft laugh and says wryly, “I’m shocked.”

Laura Lee, however, seems genuinely surprised. “Wait,” she asks, eyebrows furrowed, “you like boys?”

Nat snorts so aggressively that she accidentally spews out the joint between her lips, which starts a chain reaction of laughter that Shauna could almost make herself join in on, were she not still thinking about Jackie. 

She can tell that Lottie and Laura Lee have figured out the rest—probably just now, probably watching Jackie and Shauna together. They hadn’t needed to be told. The only thing keeping it from being obvious in the first place—at least to the teammates who’ve spent so much time with them over the past couple of years—had been the other girls’ refusal to go there in their heads.

And that’s the saddest part, ultimately: that all Jackie would’ve had to do is go inside and tell two girls something they already knew, and maybe she’d be tucked up against Shauna now the way Tai and Van are, laughing at Nat scrambling across the floor to recover her joint instead of curled up at home on her bed awaiting another night of restless sleep.

Chapter 27

Notes:

A lot going on in this one at a 13k+ word count... hope you, uh, enjoy? Feel things? Lmk how it goes!

When she gets home from Lottie’s that night, Shauna calls Jackie’s house. Her mom answers and tells Shauna, “Jackie’s not feeling well and isn’t taking calls tonight. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to speak to her at school tomorrow.”

It’s confirmation that Jackie hasn’t filled her parents in on the Tai and Van situation and all of the fallout—which isn’t surprising at all, honestly; it would only make things worse for the both of them—and it’s also confirmation that Jackie doesn’t want to speak to her.

Shauna just says, “Okay, I hope she feels better. Goodnight, Mrs. Taylor,” and hangs up. Maybe more space is for the best. Three days of feeling light years apart feels like plenty enough for Shauna already, but everything between them feels so uncertain that she doesn’t know what else to do anymore but let it sit and hope it all fixes itself somehow. Maybe they both just need to cool off and settle down and miss each other for a little while. 

Jackie doesn’t talk to her for the first half of Thursday, but she leaves the quad five minutes early during lunch, and not long afterward Shauna finds a note in her locker:

Can I come over Saturday? Call tonight and tell me if I can’t. Otherwise, I’ll see you then. 

She thinks she’s mostly just relieved, as bare bones as the note is, as little detail as it’s providing about why Jackie wants to see her. It’s a landing point. Something to wait for and look forward to. 

Still, a small amount of her is nervous. She isn’t sure if the message feels so detached because Jackie’s detached or because she’s paranoid about someone else reading it. It’s probably the latter, but as the day chugs along she starts to feel consumed by thoughts of Jackie showing up on Saturday with a guilty look on her face and broken promises on her lips. 

She can’t think that way. Jackie had been the one to ask Shauna not to leave her first. 

-

Friday, Lottie suggests they all come over and get drunk that night, maybe even stay over in any of her several guest rooms if they’d like. They joke about how it can be a celebration, because Tai and Van have gone two days without their lockers being vandalized due to the faculty adjustments. And just like that, they all have plans with each other again, and Shauna’s finally starting to feel like she might have actual friends outside of Jackie. All it took was almost everyone else in the senior class ostracizing them, apparently. 

Though Mari’s actually made an effort or two to say hello now and then—though not to Shauna—and a few of their classmates are fine, the only fully friendly exception to the rule might be Misty, who still lingers in the periphery and has tried to get Shauna to swap back with her in Physics once already this week because she feels bad that Jackie and Shauna seem to not be getting along. Shauna almost wishes they could invite her, just out of kindness and a little bit of pity, but they’ve got this unspoken rule that it’s just the six of them, that anyone else who were to be brought in would probably have to be into girls in some way to ensure they could be trusted. And Shauna’s not exactly going to take it upon herself to go ask Misty Quigley if she maybe, perhaps, might be into women; her obvious crush on Coach Ben doesn’t necessarily automatically nix the possibility, but it doesn’t feel like a great jumping off point.

However, what does happen is that thinking about the hypothetical of including another person puts Shauna in a certain mindset on Friday afternoon, and then, as though it’s fated, she runs into Melissa coming out of the girls’ bathroom as Shauna’s going in, and they wind up bumping straight into each other near the sinks.

“Shit, sorry,” Shauna says as Melissa mumbles, “Whoops, I—” and then they register who they’re speaking to and they both go awkwardly silent. 

“Oh,” Shauna goes on curtly. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Melissa clears her throat uncomfortably. “Uh. You okay?”

It’s an absurd question on the face of it, because at first Shauna thinks she’s talking about their minor collision, but then she realizes that obviously Melissa knows about what’s been going on this week. The whole team probably does. Some of the juniors have had some kind words for Tai and Van, from what Shauna’s heard—though mostly behind closed doors—and no one’s outright been mean, at least. 

“Yeah,” Shauna lies, “I’m fine.” Melissa forces a small smile at her that very much says I know you’re not, but at least you’re okay enough to lie to me about it. “You?”

“Yeah. I’m good.” Melissa’s looking toward the door now. Shauna can tell she wants to leave. But now there’s an idea in her head.

“How’s Gen?” she asks, just to check, and Melissa’s cheeks immediately redden. That settles that. Shauna doesn’t wait for an actual answer, just goes on, “So, um, a few of us are gonna hang out at Lottie’s tonight. You can come, if you want. Gen too.”

“Really?” Melissa seems pleasantly surprised. “Is it, like, a team thing?”

“Kind of? Not really.” Shauna checks over her shoulder, making sure no one’s coming, before she clarifies, “There’s a condition, though. You have to be honest if you go. Like, about you and Gen. Or just yourself, if you come alone.”

Melissa’s eyes widen. “Wait, what?”

“Look,” Shauna sighs out, “I can’t really say anything, but it’s… it’s for that, sort of. For some of us, anyway. And no one will tell. Tai and Van are coming too.” She moves out of the way, toward the stalls. “Everyone’s coming over at seven. You don’t have to call ahead or anything. I won’t tell anyone I invited you, so your secret’s safe if you don’t show up.”

Melissa furrows her eyebrows. “I’ll think about it,” she says, finally. “And talk to Gen.”

“Okay.” Shauna hesitates. “Another thing. If you do show up, don’t mention anything about me and Jackie. She isn’t coming.”

She enters a stall so that she doesn’t have to see Melissa’s reaction to that. A moment later, she hears her footsteps leaving the bathroom.

-

“I invited someone tonight,” Shauna finds herself drunkenly confessing to Van around eight o’clock that night in Lottie’s kitchen. Lottie has some pop song blaring from a stereo in the living room, and Shauna can distantly see Laura Lee being playfully spun in circles by Nat, who has a joint hanging out of her mouth.

“Dude,” Van responds, midway through pouring them both another drink at the counter. “You can’t just do that shit without permission.”

“She’s into girls,” Shauna clarifies. “I figured it’d be fine.”

Van snorts. “Okay, so you invited Melissa?”

“I didn’t say that.” Van shoots her a knowing look that Shauna ignores. “Is there some sort of rule against new people? I assumed after the whole Jackie thing that the requirements were anyone trustworthy who won’t be an asshole. And no one’s more trustworthy than someone with the same secret.” She shrugs. “Whatever; clearly she decided not to come, anyway.”

“How is that, by the way?” Van asks her, passing her a red solo cup that smells like alcohol and lemon. Shauna takes a sip of it anyway. “The Jackie thing?”

“We’re not talking,” Shauna says curtly. “She’s coming over tomorrow.”

“Are you worried?”

Shauna promptly chugs half the drink, pulls a face at the taste, and then blatantly lies, “Not at all.”

Van laughs half-heartedly. “I’m really sorry things are so fucked up.”

“You have it way worse. Don’t be sorry.” Shauna takes another swig, content to just not think for a while, and almost has the rest down when the doorbell rings. A collective groan from the other four girls sounds from the living room, and Shauna exchanges a look with Van. 

“Shit; you get it,” Van urges her, giving her a slight shove back toward the living room. Lottie’s had the same idea; she’s just appeared in the kitchen doorway and waved Shauna over. “It’s not food this time?” Van checks hopefully, and Lottie shakes her head.

Shauna feels a foreboding sense of deja vu as she goes to the door and prepares to face the person on the other side. But when she pulls the door open, it’s Melissa waiting anxiously on the porch, finger halfway to pressing the doorbell again. And Gen’s with her, looking equally nervous.

“Oh,” Shauna says, pleased.

“Sorry we’re late,” Melissa rushes out. “We, uh… we kinda went back and forth about it.”

Something ginger and too eager slams into Shauna’s left side, knocking her a step to the right, and then Van’s gasping out, “No way! Both of you?”

Someone turns the music down, and then Shauna can hear more voices in the background. Nat asks, “Who’s there?”

Lottie wonders, “Wait, did one of you guys invite someone?”

Tai sounds relieved when she realizes, “It’s Melissa,” who’s the only one visible from the living room with the door cracked like it is. Shauna opens it wider, revealing Gen. “Wait, what?”

Shauna figures she should probably clarify quickly. “I invited them,” she says, and then clears a path out of the doorway and shoots Melissa an expectant look that tells her she better finish the explanation quickly.

“Uh,” Melissa says, hesitantly stepping over the threshold with a look back at Gen. “I kinda got told this was a gay thing and that I could come? And bring Gen?”

“It’s ninety percent a gay thing,” Van agrees, and then looks like she’s trying to do the math in her head. “Wait, if Shauna counts as fifty percent, and Laura Lee’s zero, and we actually don’t really know what the fuck Nat and Lottie are—”

“Baby, you’re saying too much,” Tai rushes out, having already crossed the room to silence Van with a hand over her mouth. Melissa takes Gen’s hand and gently pulls her inside, both of them as red as tomatoes as their fingers interlock, and Tai unhands Van instantly. “Oh. I see. Never mind.”

Nat’s jaw is hanging open. “No way.”

“Women’s soccer,” Van says matter of factly, a serene smile on her lips. “Never fails.”

“Jesus,” Nat huffs out, recovering. “That makes eight of us here tonight and I’m the only one who hasn’t kissed a girl aside from Laura Lee.”

“We could fix that,” Lottie says, and Nat’s head swivels around so quickly to look at her that it’s a miracle it doesn’t twist clean off. Shauna’s eyes dart to her too—just in time to see her finish off a beer and then wave the bottle in her hand suggestively.

“Oh, God,” Shauna hears Melissa squeak, as though she’s immediately second-guessing coming here. Across the room, Laura Lee does the sign of the cross and murmurs a short prayer. 

Shauna goes to the kitchen to make herself another drink.

-

The game is a bit of a mess, logistically, because they all want different rules: Van and Tai are in a relationship, Gen and Melissa are something that makes them set boundaries at no making out or using tongue with other people, which as it turns out is identical to what Van and Tai are comfortable with—though Van and Tai add a five-second rule as well, and then Melissa and Gen eagerly adopt that one, too. Lottie and Nat are down for anything, and then Laura Lee says maybe she could do a peck, but it’ll probably be just a kiss on the cheek. Shauna asks to sit out entirely, perfectly aware that they all know why even if none of them feel like they can say it aloud.

“I’ll be, like, the bottle ref,” she insists even as they all boo her and shoot her down from around the circle she’s found herself reluctantly dragged into. 

“What the fuck is that?” Nat laughs out. “You just made that up.”

“No,” Shauna protests futilely. “What if it lands between two people? Someone needs to call it.”

“I’m sure we’ll do just fine figuring it out as a collective,” Lottie says politely. “Shauna, we can find something appropriate for you when the time comes. We’ll just do one spin each and then play something else. Van, do you wanna start?”

“This is the best night ever,” Van slurs fondly as she accepts the bottle and places it in the middle of the circle. “Guys, this week has honestly made me forget how much I fucking love being gay. Like, how fun and great it is when the whole world isn’t shitting on me for it. I’m so happy we all came over tonight.”

Shauna’s heart warms over despite herself, and even Melissa and Gen seem moved by the sentiment. 

Then Van spins the bottle wildly and eight pairs of eyes are locked in on it. It whirls around and around and around… and then comes to a stop on Tai, right at Van’s side. Tai immediately relaxes, pleased, and the rest of them share relieved looks, happy to not have to kiss Tai’s girlfriend right in front of her and risk facing her wrath, regardless of how chill they’d both seemed about the prospect of it.

What starts as an amusing result winds up kicking the game off with a bang: Tai hauls Van in and kisses her hard, showing off, and Shauna finds herself tilting her head in drunken curiosity and watching them make out with her mouth hanging open. Lottie’s clapping and laughing at them and Melissa and Gen are both giggling nervously, halfway through their first drinks. Nat whistles and cheers, and Laura Lee watches through her fingers until it’s finally over. 

Van sits back on her hands, dazed, as Tai spins next. It lands on Laura Lee, who immediately turns red. In an instant, Van’s back in the present and grinning. “Let’s go! You got this, Laura Lee!”

Even Gen can’t help but laugh at Laura Lee’s darkening cheeks and encourage her, “Just a peck. It’s no big deal.”

Nat’s the most inebriated of them all, and as the others offer encouragement more in line with Gen’s she’s pumping a fist and loudly chanting, “One of us! One of us!” like she hadn’t just decided she could maybe kiss a girl only a couple of days ago. It’s so stupidly funny that Shauna finds herself dissolving into chuckles and then having to wave off an amused, questioning look from Melissa. 

It isn’t lost on her—the difference between this, tonight, and the party with the whole team, the truth or dare game where they’d started to toe the line and then Mari had given her a hickey. That had felt nerve-wracking; she can remember trying to play along, trying to act like it was just stupid and fun and didn’t matter.

This feels like what that should’ve felt like. Sans a few moments she’s shared with Jackie, she’s maybe never been happier than she is right now. Maybe that should feel pathetic, should mean that her life has been a little too devoid of moments of utter joy, but all she can focus on now is that Laura Lee’s puckering her lips like she’s just ate a lemon, getting pecked on them by Tai, and everyone’s going wild like the USWNT has scored a game-winning goal at the World Cup. 

“Nat’s last to kiss a girl!” Lottie immediately jeers at her when the hype finally starts to die down, and Nat flips her off with a scowl even as her free hand accepts the bottle from Tai. 

“I might be last, but I can do better than a peck,” Nat huffs, spinning. It lands on Shauna. Nat collapses onto her back like she’s been shot and the rest of the circle dies laughing. 

No one talks about why Shauna won’t kiss her, and what goes unsaid doesn’t even bring tension to the moment; they’re having too much fun. Nat grabs Shauna by the face and practically frenches her cheek instead of the peck they’d agreed to, and Shauna shoves her off and huffily wipes it away to another chorus of laughter. 

Gen’s visibly nervous for her turn, and so is Melissa. Shauna watches on with some empathy; she can see a little of herself and Jackie in them. Maybe because they’re best friends, but also in the way Melissa’s smile falters when Gen spins Lottie and then they both go for it for those full five, tongue-less seconds. Shauna could imagine herself reacting in the same muted way if Jackie were ever to kiss another girl.

It’s the first kiss since Tai and Van’s that’s been somewhat real, and Shauna can tell Gen’s self-conscious about it when she pulls away and returns to her seat. Her hand finds Melissa’s right away and their fingers interlock, and they stay that way as Melissa spins the bottle and it lands on Van.

Both girls blanch at the result. “I don’t know, man,” Van admits reluctantly. “I know we’re not super close or anything, but somehow I feel like this one might be like kissing a brother or something.” Melissa nods an embarrassed agreement. Eventually, they settle on a quick, lingering press of their mouths. 

Shauna spins next and lands on Melissa, and for the first time it’s genuinely awkward. Gen stares hard at both of them, eyes darting back and forth, and Shauna grabs Melissa’s wrist and lamely kisses the back of her hand, then drops Melissa’s arm into her lap as swiftly as she’d taken it. “Next,” Shauna says pointedly, and they move on.

Laura Lee spins, gets paired with Tai again, and gives her a kiss on the cheek this time. Lottie closes out the game with her own spin, and they all watch in silence until it slows to a stop on Nat. 

“Oh,” Lottie says, almost thoughtful.

Shauna expects Nat to crack a joke or don a smirk, but when her eyes slide to Nat she’s actually just blinking at the bottle like she’s still processing that it’s pointing at her. 

Lottie crawls over to her and Nat’s eyes snap up to meet hers, and then Lottie pulls her in by her neck wordlessly. There are a few nervous giggles as the kiss starts, slow and almost careful, but then they quickly fade away into silence. Shauna’s eyebrows rise when it deepens, and lift even higher when Nat seems to finally relax into it, and then there’s tongue, and Nat’s hands are moving to rest on Lottie’s hips.

“Okay,” Tai intervenes, finally, reaching out and prying them apart. “Let’s play something else before this moves past PG13.”

“Says the girl who just had Van’s tongue in her mouth ten minutes ago,” Nat says sourly, but she shifts further away from Lottie and wipes self-consciously at her lips, not looking any of them in the eyes.

When things have settled down, Shauna wanders back into the kitchen, starts mixing a new drink, and finds herself staring longingly at the phone on the wall just beside Lottie’s fridge. She thinks Jackie would’ve loved tonight, if only she weren’t so busy being too afraid to be a part of it.

The next hour flies by and is just as good as the last: they swap drunken stories about girls, crushes, feelings. Shauna listens more than she talks. They play “Fuck, Marry, Kill” with female celebrities—and a few male ones, for the sake of Laura Lee, Shauna, Nat, and maybe Lottie; they’re still not really sure what’s going on there yet and Lottie doesn’t seem bothered either way—and argue the accuracy of each other’s decisions. Gen and Melissa are quieter than the others, but Shauna makes eye contact with Melissa at one point and knows that the look Melissa shoots her is a grateful one. It isn’t lost on her that it’s different for them, as juniors; they have another full year in Wiskayok on their own and no one else to help make it bearable. Shauna feels sorry for them.

Her empathy for them is slightly diminished later on in the night, however, when she wanders outside to the back porch for some fresh air after a few of the girls have temporarily split off from the group, Gen and Melissa included. They’re outside, as it turns out, and Shauna gets an eyeful of them kissing, Melissa pressed up against the wall of Lottie’s house with Gen’s hand up her shirt. 

“Shit,” Shauna curses, immediately turning away from them. 

“Jesus,” Gen huffs, “you’re like a fucking heat-seeking missile with us.”

“It’s not on purpose.” She braves a look at them, finally, and sees Melissa blushingly kneeling down to retrieve her hat from the ground.

The silence that follows is awkward, and Shauna almost goes to leave, but then Gen asks, “Why isn’t Jackie here?” Then she amends, “I mean, I’ve heard she’s not hanging out with you at school, but she’s not here, either?”

“Gen,” Melissa says quietly, elbowing her like she’s warning her not to pry. Gen rolls her eyes but seems to agree to let it go.

“Sorry. Never mind.”

“It’s hard for her,” Shauna feels the need to say anyway.

“It’s hard for everyone,” Gen replies. “We’re all scared.”

Shauna resists the urge to start arguing with her and just heads inside instead. 

-

She doesn’t stay overnight in the end. Only Tai and Van and Laura Lee do. Nat had bummed a ride from Laura Lee to get there, so Shauna offers to drive her home, and it’s nearly two in the morning by the time they find themselves on their way to Nat’s place in Shauna’s car. Nat’s quieter than usual, perhaps because she’s sobered up, and eventually Shauna just asks her, “Did you like it?”

Nat knows what she means. “I think so,” she says, and then almost looks flustered. “I mean, yeah. Just… not sure what that says about me. Or if I’d like it with anyone else.”

Shauna raises an eyebrow. “Are you saying you have a thing for Lottie?”

Nat scoffs. “Shut up. I’m saying she’s hot.”

Shauna leaves it alone, then, and just thinks back on the night again as she drives. The gossiping, the laughing, the silly games, the drunken, hazy chaos. Again, her mind drifts to Jackie. “Jackie would’ve had so much fun tonight,” she says. 

Nat hums a short agreement. She seems distracted. Shauna finds out why when she blurts, finally, “Lottie asked me to stay tonight. She said I could sleep in her room with her.”

Shauna nearly swerves off the road. “What?”

Nat laughs shortly, like she knows it’s a big deal but doesn’t want it to feel like it is. “Yeah. Uh, it was all so casual, though. And I guess I’m kind of sick of that. Being something casual to everyone.”

Shauna doesn’t know what to say to that, so she just nods and then reaches for the radio. They finish the drive in silence.

-

Shauna wakes up at noon with a mild hangover and spends the first hour of being awake drinking two entire bottles of water and fixing herself a late breakfast she struggles to get down. Her mom’s left a note behind on the fridge about being out grocery shopping.

She showers after, and tries not to think about Jackie, and definitely not about how it’s nearly one o’clock and there’s still no sign of her, not even as much as a phone call.

She’s just changed into fresh clothes for the day and finished toweling off her hair when she hears the doorbell ring downstairs. Her stomach flips. 

By the time she gets down to the living room, her mom, apparently back, has the front door open and is greeting Van with a surprised, “Oh; a new friend! Hi there.”

“Mom, can you not talk about me like I’m in Kindergarten?” Shauna sighs out as she arrives at the door. 

Van shoots her a bright smile and a wave. “Hey, man. I know Jackie’s supposed to be coming over, but I figured I’d stop by in case she wasn’t here yet. See if you wanna hang out.”

“Sure,” Shauna steps out of Van’s way, quietly pleased, and so does her mother. “Mom, this is Van. You’ve seen her in a goalie uniform.”

Shauna’s mom gives an “ah” of recognition and then says, “Nice to officially meet you, Van. If you two need the living room just let me know.”

They head up to Shauna’s room together, where Van looks around like she’s studying it all. Shauna feels self-conscious, suddenly, and overly aware that no one on the team has ever seen her room before aside from Jackie. “Cool,” Van decides. “It’s not what I thought your room would look like.” It’s kind of a backhanded compliment, but Shauna lets it go. Van sits on Shauna’s bed and digs into the bag she’s brought with her, pulling out a VHS tape. A movie. “Tai’s got a thing with her parents today so she’s too busy to hang out with me, and I figured you might need a distraction from waiting around for Jackie. I brought this.”

Shauna sits down next to Van and studies the picture on the front. Two women pose in close quarters with rope wrapped around them, and the title, “Bound”, is emblazoned across the bottom.

“Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly,” Van tells her. “It’s so good. I, uh, didn’t think about the fact that you apparently only have a VCR in your living room, though, cause I have one in my bedroom. We definitely don’t want your mom around for this one.”

“I’ll tell her,” Shauna decides, something in her stomach bubbling nervously in a good way as she stares at the cover. “It’s okay. She already knows about me.”

A half hour later, Van and Shauna are sitting on the couch with a bucket of popcorn between them and Shauna’s watching one of the women on the screen slide her hand up the other’s thigh, under her dress. She has memories of doing this to Jackie. Her mouth is dry, and she hadn’t even known they made movies like this. 

Her mom appears behind them in the kitchen and calls out, “Girls, did you want—?”

“Mom!” Shauna huffs, fumbling for the remote and frantically pausing it. “We’re fine!”

She hears the fridge open and then close. “Okay, just let me know!”

As soon as her mother’s gone again, Van dissolves into chuckles. Shauna rubs at her warm cheeks sourly. “You good?”

“Fine,” Shauna mutters, unpausing.

They chat throughout the slower parts of the movie: mostly about Tai and Van, whether things are okay at home, and then about how they’re not okay at school but they’re slowly getting better. Mostly in that the less fresh the news about Tai and Van is, the more their classmates settle into icy apathy instead of active hostility. Shauna doubts it’ll be fully settled before graduation, though, and Van seems to agree.

“Your eye is looking way better,” Shauna tells her eventually. 

“It was worth it,” Van says back. “Getting hit. I’d do it again.”

Shauna gets it, so she doesn’t push back, only says, “Just be careful.”

The movie has a happy ending. Shauna’s surprised. “Oh, I thought they’d have them die for some reason.”

Van snorts. “You think I’d bring you a movie where the lesbians die?”

“I mean, this kind of thing seems like it’s in short supply,” Shauna points out.

“Fair. But still.” Van gives her a satisfied smile. “So, verdict on your first lesbian movie?”

Shauna doesn’t have to think it over for long. “It was good. I wanna show it to Jackie.”

“You can borrow it.” Van gives the front door a lingering look. “It’s almost three. She didn’t say what time she was coming over?”

“No.” But it’s so incredibly like Jackie to just give her a day and then expect her to wait around for most of it. She sighs. “Wanna go listen to music upstairs?”

Van brightens. “Dude, I can give you recs. I’ve seen your collection and it’s totally uninspired.”

“Hey!” Shauna huffs, but follows her upstairs nonetheless. 

They put on Shauna’s Garbage cassette and Van scribbles a few artists down onto a piece of paper while Shauna looks over her shoulder. “You’re getting an education today,” Van decides. “Ani DiFranco. Check out her self-titled album. Indigo Girls; ‘Closer to Fine’ is literally life-changing, man. Jill Sobule is a deep cut but she’s got this song called ‘I Kissed a Girl’ I played over and over again for like a week straight. Oh, and K.D. Lang; her most famous one’s ‘Constant Craving’ but she’s got plenty of others. We’ll get you started with the basics there, but I’ve got plenty more. I'll drop those off tomorrow.”

“I know some things,” Shauna says defensively, but she takes the paper gratefully nonetheless. “I took Jackie to the library on our first date and read her some lesbian poetry.”

She expects Van to be impressed with her, but instead Van’s face softens and she says, “That’s adorable.” Shauna feels her face warming as Van fixes her with a knowing smile and adds, “Jackie sat through poetry? She must really love you.”

“Shut up,” Shauna mumbles. A song she doesn’t really care for starts playing from her stereo and she takes the opportunity to get up and go fast-forward it, deflecting, “Tai loves you. Doing what she did for you.”

Van looks uncomfortable, though, and asks, “Did she say it was for me?”

“No,” Shauna says too quickly, thinking back to the bathroom, to Tai wondering if she’d made a mistake. “No, I don’t think so. I guess it just seemed like you wanted it more. Like me.” And if Jackie came out, it’d feel like it was for Shauna, not for herself.

“Tai talks to me about it,” Van says carefully, like she’s thinking back. “It was kind of eating at her, you know? Like, the downsides of coming out are obvious, but the downsides of not—those mattered too. They were just silent, I guess. We used to talk about how we both felt like we were suffocating. Maybe breathing is a little painful now, but at least we finally have some air.”

Shauna turns away. She doesn’t know why she can feel wetness building behind her eyes. Or maybe she does, but she’s surprised that it’s happened so easily. 

Van knows, though. “Oh, Shauna,” she sighs, rising and moving to her, fitting her arms around her in a sideways hug.

Shauna doesn’t hug her back, just stands there with her arms pinned to her sides by Van’s embrace and mutters, “Sorry.”

“She’ll come around,” Van reassures her. “Just give her time. I know it probably doesn’t feel like it, cause it’s kind of obvious you’ve loved her for like, ever, but it’s so new.”

“How did you deal with it?” Shauna asks her when she pulls away, finally braving facing her, letting her see the tears welling up. 

Van shrugs. “I guess I mostly enjoyed what I did get.” Then she smiles in a way that lets Shauna know a joke’s coming. “Plus, our parents let us have sleepovers in our beds before, and now we’re stuck on the couches, so. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it's gone sometimes.”

Shauna forces a laugh. “My mom knows everything and she still lets Jackie stay in my room. She says we’re gonna do it anyway so we might as well do it somewhere safe.”

“Shit, your mom’s cool,” Van laughs out, impressed. “Tai and I have had to get creative all week.”

Shauna winces. “Gross. Too much information.”

“Okay, well, I literally saw you trying to get Jackie off on a dance floor, so.”

Shauna remembers. She also remembers the way it’d been obvious Van thought it was hot. She hadn’t exactly hated watching Tai and Van make out last night, though, so maybe they’re even. “Can we please change the subject now?”

Van laughs. “Sure, Shauna.”

-

Van leaves at five. Shauna lingers near the phone afterward, thinking about calling the Taylors. She’s starting to get worried. She hadn’t known what to expect from Jackie’s specially requested visit, but her not showing up at all feels like it has to be the worst outcome. 

She prays she isn’t making a mistake and finally picks up the phone. 

Jackie’s dad answers, which is half-relieving; she’d wanted Jackie, but he’s easier to talk to than Jackie’s mom. “Taylor residence.”

“Hi, Mr. Taylor, it’s Shauna. Is Jackie there?”

“Hey, Shauna.” He sounds warmer than the last time she’d spoken to him like this, after the fiasco with Jeff and Brown. “She’s actually been out since this morning. Is she not with you again?”

Again?

“Oh.” Jackie using Shauna as an alibi has happened before—usually when Jackie’s snuck off somewhere with Jeff—routinely enough that Shauna’s best friend reflexes kick in. “Um, yeah, she just was, but she went out to pick up food for us and it’s been a little while so I thought maybe she stopped back home to grab something. I’m sure she’ll be back soon.” She forces a laugh. “She’s probably arguing with someone about them getting the order wrong as we speak.”

Mr. Taylor laughs too. “Alright. If she takes much longer and you start to get worried, give us a ring.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Shauna hangs up, uncertain. The only thing she’d thought Jackie was hiding from her parents was Shauna. The only thing Jackie’d used to hide from them was her hookups with Jeff. Shauna feels sick to her stomach, suddenly. 

She can feel her mind starting to go there. Coming apart. Jeff asking Jackie to Prom; her turning him down like Shauna knows she had, but then things getting worse, Jackie feeling more and more isolated and in search of some sense of security. Her visiting Jeff these past couple of days. 

Don’t leave me, she’d pled, and what better way to ensure you won’t be left than to do the leaving? It’d be so simple, so seamless: Jackie slipping back into her old life. The worst of the friction would stem from her mother not approving of Jeff anymore, but that’s nothing compared to what she’d face with Shauna.

God. That’s what this is. A breakup meeting. They’d all shut Jackie out on Wednesday and it’d been the final straw. 

Shauna slides down against the counter and sits on the kitchen floor, legs tucked against her chest, face in her knees. She feels herself hollowing out so that she won’t cry. The prospect of a life without Jackie feels so empty now, so purposeless. She’ll go through the motions at Brown like a husk. She’ll get an Ivy League degree and feel nothing. 

The doorbell rings and Shauna snaps out of it, scrambling to her feet with her heart going haywire in her chest, her palms clammy and her legs trembling. She almost feels like she might throw up on her way over. 

She pulls the door open and Jackie looks shy on the other side. Uncertain, too. Like she isn’t quite sure how Shauna will receive her when their last communication had been the both of them begging each other for something and both of them refusing to give in. She has her backpack with her. “Hey,” she says softly.

Shauna opens her mouth to greet her in return. What comes out instead is: “Were you with Jeff today? Are you here to break up with me?”

The words land so hard for Jackie that she actually takes a half-step back. She looks so surprised. And then so… hurt.

Shauna knows right away that she’s fucked up.

“What?”

Shauna’s eyes slam shut just so she won’t have to look at the expression on Jackie’s face. “I’m sorry. It’s five o’clock. I waited all day and then I called your dad and he thought you’d been with me the whole time, and it sounded like you’d been saying you were with me lately when you weren’t, and the only time you used to use me as an excuse was with… with Jeff.”

She opens her eyes. Jackie’s jaw is clenched but she doesn’t look angry. She looks like she’s trying not to cry. 

Shauna’s chest gives a painful throb. She knows she’s done it again. Trusted her stupid brain at the wrong time. Spiraled. There’s a mystery here that needs solving, but Jeff isn’t the solution. “I’m wrong,” she says aloud, more for herself than for Jackie. “You love me.”

“I was at the library,” Jackie says quietly. “Thursday afternoon, and Friday afternoon, and most of today. It took longer than I thought. I didn’t want them asking why, so I told them I was hanging out with you.” 

Shauna tries to move past the heavy moment, tries to put it behind them, but it lingers like a dark cloud over their heads. “You never go to the library.”

“Yeah, well, I did.” Jackie sounds tired now. “For you.”

It takes a moment. Then Shauna remembers. Her face crumples and the guilt eats her alive. “Oh.” Even after Wednesday. Jackie telling her I’m lonely, I need you and Shauna refusing to follow her, choosing herself. Jackie had gone home and probably cried for a while and then she’d spent her free time over the next few days doing this. And Shauna had brought up Jeff, who she knows deep down has been dead and buried to Jackie for over a month now. She feels ashamed.

Jackie reaches for the zipper of her bag and asks stiffly, “Do you want to just take this? I was gonna come in and show you, but now I think maybe I should go.”

“Please don’t,” Shauna begs. “Stay, Jackie. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t like this until just a few minutes ago. I thought maybe you’d changed your mind and weren’t coming, or… I just didn’t know.”

Jackie still looks upset, but now, at least, she takes a hesitant step toward Shauna and lets space be made for her in the doorway. “I wanted to call from the library,” she admits quietly, “when I realized how late it was getting. But I was printing out so much stuff they started charging me—which I honestly didn’t know was a thing.” She huffs, and it’s so normal, so Jackie, that Shauna lets herself hope they can move on from this horrible start. “And then I didn’t have money for the payphone.”

“Let’s go to my room,” Shauna offers hopefully, letting Jackie move into the living room, closing the door behind her. “You can show me there.”

But Jackie steers them right back into rocky territory, rounding on her with wide, wounded eyes. “You seriously convinced yourself I might be getting back with Jeff and then coming here to dump you? You think I’d do that?”

“No. I don’t know.” Shauna fidgets. “I didn’t know what you were thinking. We weren’t talking.”

“We promised,” Jackie reminds her. “I meant it.”

“Me too.”

“Then that’s the end of it,” Jackie’s eyes search hers carefully. “Okay?”

Shauna nods. It feels like an agreement they should seal with a kiss, just to soften it, just to really feel it: the love, the commitment. 

But they haven’t been doing that lately, either, and Shauna knows it’s her own fault just as much as it’s Jackie’s. Definitely even more her own fault, actually, after what she’d said about the thought of it making her sick. Or maybe exclusively her fault. 

Jackie brushes past her and heads upstairs. Shauna dutifully follows.

They sit on the bed, right where Shauna had sat with Van just a few short hours ago, and Jackie takes a folder out of her bag. It’s not inches thick, but there’s a decent stack of papers inside, enough to give it some weight. 

“I started here,” Jackie murmurs, opening it to the first page, and Shauna can just tell that it’s all falling flat, that Jackie had probably shown up excited to show her this and Shauna had taken the wind out of her sails. 

Shauna looks down, eyes flickering over the word “results”, among others, and there’s a bullet point list of ten words and phrases Shauna catches just enough of to reach an understanding. They’re careers. Jackie’s taken an aptitude test.

The folder's so thick. It’s not just an aptitude test; she’s done a deep dive into all ten of them.

“I started with—“ Jackie begins, but Shauna reaches out and closes the folder promptly, takes it from Jackie and sets it aside on the bed, then cups her jaw and leans in to bring their mouths together firmly.

She feels Jackie’s surprise in the way she tenses up against her, in her sluggish response. But then she’s sinking into it, just like Shauna, finding comfort in the familiar press of their mouths. It feels like returning home after a long, tiring trip away. Shauna slides her hand into Jackie’s hair just to have it there, just to get to hold her close, and she feels Jackie tentatively lift her arm up and reach out for Shauna’s shoulder. Her hand comes to rest on it, not pulling. 

Neither of them forces the kiss, or anything further. It’s light, learning, a reacquaintance. Jackie’s lips taste like vanilla, like the chapstick she’d stolen from Shauna last semester and then forgotten about. Shauna wonders if she’d put it on in some sort of attempt to have a piece of Shauna with her. She wonders what else Jackie had done. If she’d gone to sleep every night in Shauna’s flannel—the one she’s kept ever since their date.

Jackie pulls away first, with a soft little, “Oh,” like she’s still surprised that Shauna had kissed her. Shauna watches her eyelashes flutter as Jackie’s eyes open. 

It slams into her hard, then—how much she’s missed this. Back when things felt just a little bit okay, enough that they could put everything aside and just enjoy existing together. Or maybe when they were just better at ignoring their problems. 

She wants to be kissing Jackie again. There’s something about the image of Jackie in a library, biting her lip in front of a computer screen, scrolling through mountains of information for hours on end in an effort to make Shauna feel like she’s committed to a life together… It’s more attractive than anything she’s ever done. Even tearing apart that freshman who’d fucked with Shauna’s locker. Even the night in the guest bedroom at Lottie’s.

It’s Jackie’s newest way of saying I want to be yours, and Shauna’s body is screaming at her to show her that she is, to reward her, to thank her, to ease the pain of this past week, to apologize for its existence. She rests her forehead against Jackie’s, eyes closing, then tilts her chin up and gently rejoins their lips. 

Jackie only lets her linger for a moment before she breaks the kiss, their lips nearly touching as Jackie whispers, “How do you feel?”

Shauna doesn’t know how to answer that. Happy? Whole? Warm? Turned on? Like she’s so full of love she might inflate and float away and burst like a human balloon? And she also doesn’t know, at first, why she’s being asked.

But Jackie doesn’t stop. “About kissing me? Is it…?”

The unfinished question douses Shauna in ice water. She kisses Jackie again, harder, just a press of mouths to both prevent her from speaking and to reassure her. She’s not sure she can handle feeling any guiltier than she already does. 

She breaks it just as quickly as she’d initiated it. “Yes,” she answers. “I want to. I miss it.” But she should suggest Jackie show her the folder now. It’s clear that she’d worked hard on it. “But I want to see what you did, too.” 

Jackie nods against her, their noses brushing. “In a second.”

They don’t kiss again—not right away. Jackie shifts closer, wraps her arms around Shauna, and nuzzles into her neck, breathing in deep. Shauna rests her chin on Jackie’s shoulder and strokes at her back, just enjoying the way the rest of the world fades away with them wrapped up in each other, the way it feels like she’s back at the center of Jackie’s universe where she belongs. 

“I love you,” Jackie whispers. 

“I love you too,” Shauna murmurs back. She loves getting to say it second, just because it means that Jackie’s said it first.

One second turns into a minute, and then two, the both of them holding each other, hands sliding just to feel, and to comfort, and then to explore. Jackie’s the first to change things: her fingertips dip lower, press against Shauna’s hip bones, and then move up a couple of inches, skating over the warm skin just beneath the hem of Shauna’s shirt. 

Shauna closes her eyes and just focuses on her breathing and the steady, strong pump of her heart. She slides her own hand around to Jackie’s front to press her palm over Jackie’s heart, to feel it beat. It’s not in tandem with her own; it’s faster, harder. Jackie’s head turns. Her lips press to Shauna’s neck, holding a long kiss there.

Shauna tries again. “It looked like there were ten…?”

“I miss your hands and your mouth,” Jackie whispers into her neck. “Let’s look at it after.”

It’s the best feeling in the world: being wanted by Jackie. She’ll succumb to it every time if the circumstances allow for it, and maybe even sometimes when they don’t. 

Her other hand fumbles backward, feeling around, finding the folder. By the time her fingers close around it, Jackie’s tongue is flicking over her pulse point and her lips are pulling the skin taut there. Shauna’s only just been able to stop applying concealer every morning again, but she doesn’t stop her, just fumbles around with limited movement to set the folder carefully on her nightstand. 

As soon as it’s there, Jackie releases her skin and moves back to her mouth: soft but deep, like she’s trying to coax Shauna into something passionate but not fiery and desperate. Her hands cup Shauna’s cheeks with gentle care. Her tongue moves slowly, deliberately, taking gentle passes into Shauna’s mouth. She doesn’t pull or bite with her teeth.

Shauna’s hands slide to the hem of Jackie’s shirt and make their way under. Jackie breaks the kiss and removes her top, and then reaches back to unclasp her bra. Shauna takes it off for her, and then lets Jackie climb fully into her lap, allows Jackie’s hands to guide Shauna’s face and mouth forward to her chest. 

Jackie’s head tips back, her breath hitching, as Shauna’s tongue works over her, hands gripping Jackie at her ribs. “I think about you all the time,” Jackie whispers, like she thinks maybe Shauna just needs to hear it. It’s not to turn her on; it’s reassurance. “I miss you so much.”

Shauna doesn’t let it make her bitter this time, doesn’t think about how it’s Jackie who has the power to change it and fix it. She just wraps an arm around her, presses one last kiss to her body, and then leans forward, delivering Jackie gently to the mattress and the pillows and then settling over her. She takes her own shirt off and then reaches down and snaps open the button on Jackie’s shorts. “Do you want these off?” she breathes, glancing up into Jackie’s dark eyes, noting the flush to her cheeks. 

Jackie nods and lifts her hips, but says, “I told my parents I was staying over.”

Shauna gets the message: We have time. Don’t rush.

Patience has never been either of their strong suits, and Jackie’s shorts come off quickly. Shauna knows what she wants: to be on top of Jackie, to draw it out once it actually starts, to look into her eyes for it. 

On her knees between Jackie’s legs now, Shauna’s eyes skate over every inch of her: her sharp gaze, parted lips, her chest shiny with Shauna’s saliva, the soft plane of her stomach, her thighs. She still can’t believe that Jackie’s hers forever. That Jackie wants to belong to her for the only life they get to have. And when Jackie looks like this, Shauna suddenly finds it much easier to parse why she’s so often a little insecure about it. Getting to spend her whole life with the best friend she loves will probably always feel too good to be true. Maybe she’ll forever be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But her thoughts are elsewhere now, singularly focused on what’s right in front of her. 

Jackie shifts her head, elongating her neck like she wants Shauna’s mouth on it. Her arm rises, hand outstretched, fingertip curving into the space between the cups of Shauna’s bra, pulling her forward by the band. 

Shauna goes willingly, palms settling into the mattress, crawling up Jackie’s body and tangling their legs together, one thigh between Jackie’s, one of Jackie’s thighs between her own. She rests her weight on Jackie gingerly and kisses slowly up her neck, listening to Jackie’s breathing getting louder, heavier in her ear. Their bodies melt together. She feels Jackie’s hands on her back, and then the pressure of the band there disappears with a quiet snap. 

Shauna noses at the lobe of her ear, kisses her cheek. She feels the stretch of Jackie’s soft smile. Her mind wanders for just a second—back to the folder, to that list, to page after page after page. Hours of work. Days of Jackie driving herself halfway across the Wiskayok suburbs to get it done, imagining herself as ten different things, Shauna at her side for all of them. Shauna wants to hear about every second of it. 

She kisses Jackie hard, just to contain herself, and Jackie’s fingers wind into her hair. When they pull away, Shauna searches her eyes and then asks, lips curving up at the corners, “I saw ‘fashion designer’ on there.”

Jackie laughs fondly at her. “You dork. I’m practically naked under you for the first time in a week and you wanna talk career paths?”

“Maybe I just like being right,” Shauna teases. 

Jackie runs her fingers gently through Shauna’s hair, and together they lapse into a comfortable silence. Shauna drags her unhooked bra out from between their bodies, tosses it, and then settles against Jackie with a soft sigh. Jackie kisses the tip of her nose and says, “I’d have to learn to draw. Maybe I should learn to write like you do, too.”

“You don’t need to,” Shauna tells her. “You know how to just say things.” 

Jackie shakes her head thoughtfully. “No, it’s like, a valuable skill. Being able to collect everything you’re thinking and put it down. Sometimes I think so much and I don’t know how to let it all out. But you do.”

“I probably could’ve let it out a little less,” Shauna tries to joke, but it comes out half-hearted. She hasn’t told Jackie about burning pages of her old journals. She hasn’t told her about the new journal, either. She decides she should. “I’m trying that thing I told you about on our date. Writing the good things down for you. I started a new journal.”

Jackie’s eyes snap to hers, wide, curious. “Can I see?”

Shauna laughs. “I’m half-naked on top of you, so now who’s the dork?”

“Okay,” Jackie says, “maybe I can suddenly empathize. Just read me one entry?”

Shauna thinks it over. She can’t resist the request, in the end, as flustering as the thought of fulfilling it is. 

She peels herself off of Jackie reluctantly, fumbling for her backpack next to her bed, withdrawing the journal. She flips through it, eyes skating over words and paragraphs, trying to decide which entry is the least embarrassing. 

As it turns out, they’re all embarrassing. She can’t read any of them aloud. She’s not even sure she could comfortably let Jackie read them silently without Shauna being somewhere miles away, ideally blissfully unaware that her words are being consumed by someone else’s eyes—even if it’s the person she’d intended them for. 

She’s written one entry to a page, so she can easily choose one and hand the journal over. She doesn’t want to agonize over it any longer, so she just picks the first one and says, “Here. I can’t read it out loud.”

She makes herself settle next to Jackie, and they read the entry together in silence. 

Jackie,

I dreamt about you last night. We were in my bed, just talking and laughing together for a while. I don’t remember anything we said. I wanted to kiss you, but I was too nervous to try. Not all that different from how things are when I’m awake. I have so many memories of just looking at you, watching you talk, thinking about how your lips might feel. Even before you ever kissed anyone for the first time, I always thought you’d be a good kisser, that you’d just know what to do somehow. I always wondered how you’d taste. When you’d let me borrow your lip gloss, I’d put it on and think about my lips tasting like yours. I still think about it every time, even now.

Spending yesterday evening with you was the happiest I’ve been in so long. I wish that things were different, that I could’ve spent the night. I stayed up late thinking about you. I thought about touching you. How soft your skin would feel. The sounds you’d make. 

Should I feel as embarrassed writing all of this out as I do? I spent so much time airing my grievances here instead of saying them to your face like I should’ve. Maybe it just feels strange writing out something that feels nice for once. I think I’ll stop here for now, but this is where I’m going to keep the good things, the entries that I write when I’m feeling how I am this morning. Or maybe just where I keep all things Jackie. Is there really a difference, as in love with you as I am?

Shauna

Shauna finishes first and hides her face in Jackie’s neck, her whole body thrumming uncomfortably. With Jackie, it rarely feels like there’s any more of herself left to peel back and expose. She’s already been so deeply carved out and looked upon, over and over again. This feels like ripping out the last vestiges of her insides and handing them over.

She always finds a way to do this: to offer herself up to Jackie like this before the reverse. Even with a folder right there on her nightstand. 

Jackie sounds breathless when she asks, “Is that true? About my gloss?”

“It’s all true.” Shauna keeps her face hidden. Even when she hears the turn of a page. 

Jackie takes more, and Shauna looks, finally, and lets her.

Jackie,

If you knew how truly sick it makes me feel to watch you kiss other people you wouldn’t ever talk about doing it in front of me again. Jeff made me feel like throwing up. I’d die a little on the inside every time. It’s only gotten worse. I can’t bear the thought of you kissing anyone other than me.

I always kind of liked, deep down, how obsessive you were about everything to do with me. I just didn’t like being controlled. I’ve always wondered if you knew how easily you could completely manipulate me just by giving me affection and attention. You still can, but now I think you do a better job of choosing not to.

Thank you for letting me go to Brown, but please don’t ever stop being possessive. I like feeling owned by you. I’d feel half-empty without you, waiting forever for you to come back and retake what’s yours. Until then, you’d just haunt me. Just like that Adrienne Rich poem.

Shauna

And more, and more, and more.

Jackie,

I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time this week thinking about what it would be like to marry you. I’ve imagined you in a dozen different dresses you’ve shown me in magazines over the years, mostly back when you thought you’d marry Jeff. I saw you talking to him in the hallway this morning, by the way. It’s hard not to be jealous, but I could tell it was him that wanted to talk to you, and that you were trying to end the conversation. I guess he still wants you back. I can empathize. 

I think I’d know what you’d like in a wedding. Definitely the most gorgeous cake anyone’s ever seen, and flowers everywhere. Poppies, probably. White wine for everyone to drink, because you’d like something sweet more than something bitter. 

I don’t think I’d ask for much. I’d just want to give you everything you wanted. I’d just be happy to be marrying you.

Shauna

Jackie,

Friday night made me realize something that’s difficult to admit. I always knew I wanted to be with you, but I think what I never admitted to myself was that a part of me wanted to be you, too. I did want the attention you were always getting. I wondered what it’d be like to have the picture perfect boyfriend and to be the most popular girl in our class. Maybe, deep down, that’s part of why I wanted to kiss Jeff back that night. That part wasn’t about him. It was about feeling what it was like to be Jackie Taylor kissing her boyfriend. Like maybe if I could become you for a moment, I’d feel like I’d won somehow, and maybe that’d all be a good enough replacement for not having you like I wanted.

I wonder what it’d be like to just live in your skin for a little while. Would you hate it? Me being that close to you? Sometimes I’m so happy about Brown, and other times I find myself wishing we could just melt together into one person, or I could crawl inside of you and never be let out. Or consume some part of you so that I’d always have you in me.

I know I sound crazy. I just want too much of you, I think.

Shauna

Jackie,

I have a new favorite thing to picture when I think about having sex with you. I think about having control. Telling you what to do. I think about pulling your hair and seeing myself on your mouth. I don’t think I can write anything more about it because it makes me feel too… something. I don’t know what. It might be guilt. I used to fantasize about you controlling me in bed even while I hated you for actually controlling my life. I guess this is what progress looks like?

Shauna

“Fuck,” Jackie whispers, and then the journal’s being tossed aside and Shauna’s suddenly pressed flat to the mattress, Jackie’s hands all over her, pulling impatiently at the zipper of her pants. 

“I sound psychotic,” Shauna breathes out, because she’s reread them all now too, this time through another person’s eyes, through Jackie’s, and she knows it’s true. “I sound fucking obsessed with you.”

“I know,” Jackie rasps, her voice hoarse and cracking. “Come here.” She yanks hard at Shauna’s pants, practically tearing them off of her legs, and then crushes her to the mattress with a bruising kiss. Their thighs slot together, Jackie’s knee pressing hard, and it feels so unexpectedly good that it rips the breath from Shauna’s throat. She breaks the kiss to seek out air, and Jackie murmurs, “I feel it too. Like crawling inside of you.” Shauna watches her lean down, eyes so dark, lips almost on Shauna’s as she goes on, “You own me too. You’d haunt me too. You know that, right?”

Shauna arches into her, throbbing between her thighs, hitching out, “We’re never just gonna be fucking normal about each other, are we?”

“Do you want us to be?” Jackie asks, her hand slipping into Shauna’s underwear, her fingers sliding down and in. 

“No,” Shauna moans, and then they’re rocking together, hard and fast, not taking their time at all. Shauna’s fingertips dig into Jackie’s shoulders, clutching her tight, keeping her close. It builds more quickly than she wants it to. It always does. And then she comes with her mouth by Jackie’s ear, groaning, toes curling, suddenly way too sensitive to Jackie’s touch. One of her hands darts lower to seize Jackie’s wrist, stilling it. 

“Oh,” Jackie pants out against her ear, audibly both surprised and disappointed. “You’re done?”

Shauna nods, too distracted by her own comedown to get into another verbal sparring match about the swiftness of it all. She’s thinking about something else now instead, anyway. “Can I see the folder now?”

Jackie’s head drops and Shauna feels a laugh being smothered into her neck. “Jesus. You’re relentless.”

“I’ll get you after,” Shauna promises, kissing her cheek. “For a while after.” Jackie wriggles against her, playful, impatient, but then sighs and rolls off of her.

“Okay. I just think maybe I should tell you something first.” She cuddles up to Shauna’s side for it, resting her head on her shoulder, an arm lying flat across Shauna’s bare stomach. Shauna hums, giving her permission to start. “So. I started off just wanting to do an aptitude test. It gave me those ten. And then while I was looking at them, I started really thinking about it. Like, not just what I wanted to do, but how I wanted to do it. I found some stuff. Some… some places. That’s what I wanted to show you.”

“Okay,” Shauna says, curious. Jackie sits up, and before she retrieves the folder she collects the Brown hoodie Shauna’s got hanging from her closet door and pulls it on over her head. Shauna haphazardly tugs her shirt back on, staring at Jackie rejoining her in nothing but her hoodie and a pair of underwear. Jackie sits cross-legged next to her and drags the folder onto her lap, opening it. 

Shauna gets a better look at the careers list:

1. Public Relations Specialist
2. Fashion Designer
3. Event Coordinator
4. Human Resources Manager
5. Journalist
6. Real Estate Agent
7. News Anchor
8. Interior Designer
9. Teacher
10. Mediator

“People,” she muses, making the connection right away. “They’re all about working with people.”

Jackie’s been so… Jackie about this; she’s got ten small packets of paper inside, all labeled with color-coordinated tabs and subdivided into different sections. Shauna watches her flick through to the second packet and pull it out. 

Jackie looks nervous. “So, fashion design. I can do this one a few ways. A Bachelor’s degree in fashion, or in a business field like fashion merchandising.” She shows Shauna a page detailing generic requirements for each degree, though it doesn’t seem specific to Rutgers. “And um, there are schools that specialize in this stuff that I could go to instead of a typical four-year university.” And finally, she learns the source of Jackie’s nerves when Jackie finishes, “There’s one in Providence. The Rhode Island School of Design. They offer a Bachelor’s in apparel design.” She hands Shauna several sheets of paper, all detailing the school and the program. 

Shauna flips through it all with butterflies in her stomach. “Oh.”

Jackie speaks quickly. “I could go to Rutgers for a year. Just do some gen ed stuff, and join the sorority I want. And then… maybe I could transfer.”

She cobbles together all of the pages, snatching the ones out of Shauna’s hands too before she can finish looking at them. She sets the packet aside and grabs for another, not giving Shauna a chance to interrupt. “Even this one. Mediator. I had to look up what it was. They work in the legal field to help people reach an agreement without going to court. I could major in psychology, business, even communications. Or I could do a law program. There’s a school in Providence, Johnson & Wales, that has a business program I could transfer to. And Providence College has a psychology program.” She’s throwing so much information at Shauna now—so many papers—that it’s getting difficult to keep up with it all and listen to her at the same time.

“Or if I want to be a teacher, there’s the Feinstein College of Education there, and they have like seven different programs depending on what age or subject I’d like to teach. And to be a journalist or a news reporter I can get a degree in journalism at Roger Williams University, which is in Bristol, and that’s like half an hour from Providence. To be a real estate agent I just have to get a license, so that one’s pretty simple. And…” 

Jackie surveys all of the packets strewn across the bed. Shauna’s hands are empty now save for the one she’s using to prop up her chin, staring at Jackie with her palm shielding her mouth from view. It’s probably for the best. The smile she’s aiming at Jackie is probably embarrassingly affectionate. “Well, I guess you get the idea. I don’t have to apply for a transfer until around the end of my first semester at Rutgers, so I have six months to decide what I wanna do. But I kind of devoured everything I could find on the RISD website, so… maybe I’m leaning that way for now.” Exhaling deeply, Jackie finally turns and risks a look at her. “What do you think?”

Shauna fixes her mouth before she removes her hand. “This is honestly the hottest thing you’ve ever done.”

Jackie scoffs. “Shauna, I worked hard on this.”

“I know. I’m serious.” Shauna scoots closer, wrapping her arms around her, resting her head on Jackie’s shoulder and looking out at it all. “I love it. I love all of it. Let’s do it.” It’s a timeline, finally. A plan, and a light at the end of the tunnel. “Survive this month, survive summer, take a year apart. And then you come to Rhode Island.”

“Even for the year apart,” Jackie starts slowly, “I thought about what you said. About you telling your friends at Brown who I am. And about how we talked about visiting. But we always talked about you visiting Rutgers a bunch, and I was thinking maybe I’d come up to Brown more. Maybe every two weeks or so. I could tell my friends that I’m always going home to Wiskayok to see my parents or something. And your friends could know who I am, and when we’re at Brown, we’d be… we’d be us.” Shauna lifts her head, staring intently at her. Her heart’s beating so quickly now. She can feel something heavy building behind her eyes.

“And then if you wanted to come to Rutgers, like, once a month, you’d be my best friend because I want to get to stay in my sorority, at least for the year. But that’s just when you come to me. And it wouldn’t be hard for me to act like I want a break from dating for a couple of semesters after all of those years with Jeff. I’ve already used it as an excuse with my mom to go to Prom alone. And… and then I’d be all set up at Brown anyway, with you, with everyone knowing there, when I move to Providence sophomore year. All that’s left to figure out is my parents, but we’ll only be back in Wiskayok for the holidays, and I’ve at least got everything worked out through the end of next summer.” Jackie bites her lip. “What do you think?”

Shauna doesn’t say anything at first, just nods and feels her throat tightening and aching. “Yeah,” she manages softly.

Jackie’s shoulders loosen and relax. “Okay.” She turns away from the mess on the bed, finally looking at Shauna, and her face softens at the sight of her watery eyes. “Oh, Shauna.”

“I’m not crying,” Shauna says immediately, reaching up to press her palms into her eye sockets. “I’m fine.” It’s just that she’s getting everything she ever wanted, finally. That’s all. 

Jackie gingerly pries her hands away by her wrists, revealing red, newly tear-streaked cheeks. She leans in and gently kisses the dampness away. “It’s not bad, right?”

“No.” Shauna’s lip trembles. “It’s really good. It’s perfect.” Even the year apart sounds nice like this. Plenty of visits, with a reasonable end date and just enough time to establish themselves individually in their own way. Jackie will get to do her sorority thing for a little while. Shauna can join a few groups and clubs at Brown on her own. Their lives will split into two overlapping circles instead of forever remaining a single all-consuming one. “Do you think you’ll hate leaving Rutgers for me, though?”

Jackie shakes her head. “It’s okay that it’s temporary. It always just felt like this thing I was supposed to do because of my parents anyway. And the idea of it got a lot less fun when I realized I wasn’t gonna have you there with me.” She cups Shauna’s cheek in her hand and kisses her sweetly. “Now, next I need to show you the research I brought for after graduation. Which states will be the friendliest toward us so we know where to settle down, house-hunting tips and trends, adoption programs—”

Shauna nearly chokes on her own spit and then coughs out, “What?”

Jackie grins at her. “I’m kidding, Shipman.”

Shauna groans and shoves her onto her back, crawling over her. “Don’t call me Shipman unless you’re being all… how you were that other time. Which you’re not. Cause it’s my turn.”

Jackie arches up into her with a pleased smile and suggests, “You should take your hoodie back.”

And Shauna does.

-

They have sex again in the morning—slower this time, and in a new way, hands simultaneously and sleepily working between each other’s thighs. It doesn’t feel real, more like a hazy dream as Shauna strokes with her fingers and works her hips in a foggy daze. She doesn’t know who’d started this, only that they’d woken up pressed close and after a little bit of teasing hip movement hands had been shoved low and legs had been spread. 

Last night feels like a dream, too. One she hadn’t wanted to wake from, so they’d just stayed up late together, talking and kissing and touching over and over again so it all wouldn’t have to end. Shauna’d lost count of how many “I love you”s she’d panted into Jackie’s mouth. She adds another one now.

“I love you too,” Jackie moans, her hand faltering, and Shauna can almost taste victory. She knows she’s been trying harder than Jackie just now, trying to get her touches just right, determined not to come first and be teased about it. Jackie’s fingers are barely brushing over her; she’s too distracted. After a moment, she recovers enough to push two of them inside of Shauna and pump them half-heartedly, erratically, but Shauna can feel Jackie’s thighs starting to tremble where they’re pressing in on Shauna’s hand.

Jackie’s fingers crook deep, and Shauna’s hips jump. It surprises even herself. “Oh,” she breathes. “That, Jax. That.”

“Uh huh.”

Suddenly, they’re both climbing, noses brushing, mouths inches apart. Shauna tries to focus on the circles her fingers are making even as a familiar pounding starts to build between her thighs. Jackie rocks into her touch and tenses up, then presses their mouths together and releases a long, low moan on Shauna’s tongue, and Shauna tips over the edge with her, cupping Jackie tight in her hand as Jackie’s fingers slow inside of her.

Something’s gotten into the both of them, she knows, because even after last night and now this morning, Jackie rolls on top of her straight away, wide awake, flattening Shauna onto her back, and starts again with a mumbled, “Spread your legs.”

Right now, Shauna attributes it to the giddy high of finally being able to look forward to their future. Of course things won’t be easy, but she can’t think of a scenario much better than the one Jackie had presented to her. She’s excited for it. She’s almost forgotten about that silly idea of everything between them being too good to be true, of it all being temporary before it’s inevitably ruined, because that’s just how, deep down, Shauna expects most things to go.

But Monday, she remembers.

-

It starts with a bad decision born partly from habit: a bad decision she’s been making over and over again, but this time she makes it off of the back of a weekend with Jackie, full of new memories that make her heart feel pleasantly swollen and warm. One of those memories is of Jackie’s reaction to her journal, Jackie reading everything and not only accepting it, not only enjoying it, but repeating some of it right back to her like she could’ve written it herself.

Throw in the gift of Jackie’s folder, and Shauna wants to give her more. More to read, more to react to, more to return. 

So the journal goes back into her backpack and comes with her to school.

She’s too eager, too love-drunk, and plans to take it to her free period, but she also takes it out to the quad alongside the sandwich she’s brought for lunch. She doesn’t eat with the others at their usual table, just finds a nice empty spot on the grass on the outskirts of the dining area and sprawls out with her journal and her food, offers her curious friends a wave from her new spot to let them know that she’s got alternative plans for the day, and digs around for a pen.

“Jackie,” is as far as she gets before she hears footsteps out of nowhere, way too close.

She snaps the journal shut, stiffening, and glances over her shoulder to see Mari’s come to a stop behind her, a smirk on her lips. “Is that your diary?” she teases. “Is that where you scribble all your little love notes to Jackie?”

“What the fuck do you want?” Shauna snaps, worrying Mari’s not just blowing her usual smoke, that she’d actually seen the name written there. She places the journal on the ground on her other side and glares up at her. 

Mari rolls her eyes and lets it go. “The Physics notes. I have it sixth period. I asked Jackie, but she says she’s been borrowing Misty Quigley’s since last week, and that they’re not as good as yours.”

Shauna almost laughs. “And you two expect me to let you copy my notes? In exchange for what?”

Mari wiggles her eyebrows. “I’ll let you see my boobs.”

“I’ve already reached my trauma quota for this stage of my life, but thanks,” Shauna says curtly.

“I was kidding, Shitman. I don’t know; what do you want?”

Shauna opens her mouth—probably to tell her to fuck off—but never gets a chance to speak, because a sudden commotion from the quad draws their attention away. It’s Shauna’s table at the center of it all; Shauna looks over just in time to see Van on her feet, shoving a boy away from her, and then he’s lunging back at her and the other girls are shooting to their feet too—Lottie, Nat, Tai, and even Laura Lee—and then a few nearby students surround them, both to watch the exchange and to break it up, and Shauna loses sight of it all. The two teachers supervising the senior lunch period immediately start to rush over.

“Shit,” Shauna blurts, scrambling to her feet and taking off without a second thought, shoving through onlookers, being jostled back and forth along the way. By the time she breaks out of it, a teacher is steering Van toward the entrance to the school and she’s holding a bloody napkin to her nose as Tai follows swiftly behind, a hand on Van’s wrist. The other teacher is guiding the boy away in another direction. Lottie, Nat, and Laura Lee are in the middle of gathering up their food and their things, plus Van and Tai’s stuff too, and Shauna hurries over to them. “What happened?”

“Usual bullshit,” Nat huffs. “Van said it looks worse than it is, so I think she’s okay, but she’s headed to the nurse’s office with Tai. We’re gonna wait for her outside in the hall and just eat there.”

“Do you think they’ll suspend her?” Laura Lee worries.

“They better not,” Lottie replies harshly. “She just pushed him back. He threw the first punch. Everyone saw it.”

“Let me just get my stuff,” Shauna says quickly. “I’ll meet you guys there.”

She turns away and heads back to her backpack, her heart still racing a little, the image of Van and that bloody napkin making her stomach turn. She picks it up, starts to zip it, then double-checks the contents first: two textbooks, her notebook, her—

She pauses. Had she put her journal back into her backpack? Because it isn’t there.

She looks down at the ground and sees nothing but grass. She remembers now. Setting it down, and then leaving it.

Her heart shoots up into her throat. 

“No,” she breathes, and then she drops to the ground with her backpack and starts sifting through it quickly, desperately. It’s not there. She hadn’t left it there.

“No, no, no,” she mutters anxiously, looking around wildly for it, eyes searching the ground. It’s gone. It’s gone.

She stands, letting her backpack fall from her hands. It hits the ground hard, toppling over, contents spilling out, but her mind is already elsewhere, her brain is on fire with utter hysteria. She finds Jackie’s lunch table—Mari’s lunch table—and Jackie isn’t there, almost certainly just hasn’t arrived yet.

But Mari is. Mari has her journal. It’s cracked open wide as she sits on her bench, facing out toward an audience: boys in letterman jackets, girls with meticulously curled hair and perfect makeup. Her mouth is wide open in stunned amusement even as her lips move. She’s reading. She’s reading aloud. 

Shauna’s chest collapses. Her hands shake.

And then she rushes toward Mari in a blind panic, hoping somehow that it isn’t too late.

But the time has come for the other shoe to drop.

Chapter 28

Shauna has never been a particularly selfless person.

She could be mistaken for one, if no one looked too closely at Shauna and Jackie: Jackie always calling the shots, usually getting her way. It could be assumed that Shauna goes where Jackie goes and does what Jackie does just because she wants to put her first, to make Jackie happy. That she’s just glad to see her having fun, smiling. 

It’s never been that, of course. It’s just something they’d fallen into naturally, maybe initially because Jackie had been louder, more social, more assertive. And by the time Shauna had been old enough to resent her for it, it’d felt too late to change it. 

But now, today—through the panic, the rage, the fear—there is one thought screaming itself over and over again in Shauna’s head:

I have to protect Jackie.

A few of Mari’s onlookers notice her just before she goes barrelling through the crowd, and she can hear Mari now, laughing through, “‘I’ve always wondered if you knew how easily you could completely manipulate me just by giving me affection and attention,’” and then adding her own commentary with, “Oh, God; that’s so embarrassing.”

Shauna bumps past one body, and then another, and the crowd is murmuring now, chattering, laughing. It draws Mari’s attention and she pauses, looks up, and finds Shauna coming straight for her.

“Someone grab her!” a boy shouts with amusement, and one of the jocks closest to Mari decides to listen. Shauna breaks out into open space feet from Mari just in time to be lunged at and grabbed by her arm.

She’s ready, and already yanking out of his grip and swinging at him with a fist, which connects with his shoulder, sending pain shooting up her whole arm. Someone else in a letterman jacket seizes her in a bear hug from behind, trapping her arms. As she tries to wriggle out, the boy she’d punched rubs at his shoulder like he’s mildly irritated but then snaps at her, “Fucking bitch,” and helps the other boy wrangle her.

She’s fighting all the while, and it takes her a moment to realize that tears are streaming down her cheeks, that she’s making noise: grunting, puffing out air, then whimpering when she can’t get free. 

Mari watches all of it with disbelief, journal still open in her hands. “What the fuck, Shauna?” she says. “I mean, I know I gave you shit about Jackie, but oh my God. You’re a fucking psycho. That shit about her lip gloss?”

“Shut up,” Shauna snarls, still pulling, wriggling, fighting. Someone grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks, and she feels more tears prick at the corners of her eyes. She can’t keep trying to free herself without ripping her roots from her scalp, and finally she feels her energy drain out of her. She stills.

There are so many eyes on her. Not one person is doing anything to stop this. Her friends have gone inside. So have the teachers. She’s utterly alone.

“I mean,” Mari goes on, “writing about what you think she’d fucking sound like in bed?” She scans the current page. “You like feeling owned by her? I mean, we all know you’ve been her little lapdog since like, Kindergarten, but I didn’t think you were getting off on it.”

“Read it out loud!” someone calls out, but Mari doesn’t finish the second entry, just turns the page to the third. Clearly she’s already read the first aloud to everyone. Shauna can feel herself collapsing internally. She feels like she might throw up at any second.

It’s her worst nightmare come to life. Being outed in humiliating fashion, treated like she’s obsessed with Jackie and that her feelings couldn’t possibly be returned. Being the creepy, pathetic sidekick who loves Jackie while Jackie doesn’t love her back.

She never thought she’d wish for her own worst nightmare to come true so that Jackie’s worst nightmare won’t. But here she is, tears still coming, lip trembling with anguish and fury, and yet hoping that Mari will keep being stupid and oblivious, keep steering this in a direction that has Shauna taking the full brunt of this.

There’s so much chatter and laughter around her that she has to block it out for her own sanity. She can feel herself wanting to shut down, wanting to check out of this, but she can’t. Not when Mari still has more to read.

And she does. She starts reading the third entry aloud next, expression smug, voice taking on a haughty tone. “Jackie, I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time this week thinking about what it would be like to marry you.”

It’s not a reprieve, not any better to have Mari reading something sweet instead. In a way, it’s worse: having her emotions exposed in this way. She’s not just obsessed with Jackie, doesn’t just lust after her; she loves her. Fantasizes about a life with her. A life she’s not even legally allowed to have. 

Mari reads about Shauna imagining Jackie in wedding dresses, and people are laughing at it. Laughing at the image of Jackie walking down an aisle toward her. At Shauna envisioning how they’d plan it together, at Mari’s mocking tone as she reads, “I think I’d know what you’d like in a wedding. Definitely the most gorgeous cake anyone’s ever seen, and flowers everywhere.” She pouts at Shauna. “Aw, cute. Too bad she’s not interested and you’re a massive creep.”

Wriggling again, unsuccessfully, Shauna gathers saliva on her tongue and then spits at her. It almost reaches her, even from feet away, and Mari recoils with her nose scrunched up in disgust. 

“Really, Shauna?”

“Cunt,” Shauna snaps, and a few scattered laughs—directed at her, not with her—are the only response. Mari’s already flipping to the next page, seemingly having had her fill of this entry, too.

Shauna had mentioned being jealous of Jeff in it, and he’s hovering near the back of the crowd, also doing nothing to stop this, face twisted into a look of utter confusion. Like he’s trying to wrap his head around what he’s hearing,

Shauna remembers the last two entries. They’re the worst ones. She can’t let Mari read them aloud, but she doesn’t know how to stop it. There are still arms around her and fingers twisted into her hair and she’s trembling with an overwhelming amount of anger she doesn’t want to feel but has to, because if she doesn’t cling to the anger she’ll sink into the sadness instead.

That’s one thing she won’t do. Fall to her knees and sob and beg for mercy and look even more pathetic. 

She goes on the offensive instead. “You think I don’t know why you’re her new best friend all of a sudden? You don’t give a fuck how I feel about her. You just wanted to take my place. You always have.” She sneers, hoping she looks confident doing it, that it isn’t showing how broken she feels on the inside. “At least I actually care about Jackie. At least I’m not using her. No one’s forgotten about Danny, Mari.”

Mari’s whole body locks up. Her jaw tightens. For once, the crowd has gone silent.

Shauna digs into her harder. “This isn’t gonna change the fact that your ex-boyfriend would rather fuck his own cousin than be with you. Maybe being friends with Jackie will stop people from making fun of you to your face for it, but that’s what you’re known for, Mari. That’s what you’re gonna be remembered for.”

Mari’s fingers have gone white where they’re holding her journal. Her eyes are blazing. For a moment, Shauna thinks she might toss the journal aside and attack her. It’s exactly what Shauna wants. She’ll happily take a dozen punches if it gets the journal out of Mari’s hands.

But Mari takes a few breaths, like she’s reining herself in, and says, “And you’ll be remembered for this.” Her eyes dip back to the journal. Her mouth opens. 

Shauna’s heart seizes and before she can stop herself she blurts, “Don’t!” 

It’s the wrong thing to say, and everyone knows it. Shauna wrenches her body forward, gets laughingly pulled back again by four arms stronger than her own, and feels fresh tears brimming in her eyes. She tries to stay angry, to turn them into tears of fury, but Mari is reading again, starting, “Jackie,” and she feels more helpless than she ever has.

Loving Jackie isn’t embarrassing or shameful for her when it’s requited. But this is. This is a part of herself she’d have happily never revealed to anyone—even Jackie. That Jackie had read it on Saturday night and not judged her for it hadn’t stopped her from continuing to judge herself.

And now everyone else will know about it, too. 

“I always knew I wanted to be with you, but I think what I never admitted to myself was that a part of me wanted to be you, too. I did want the attention you were always getting. I wondered what it’d be like to have the picture perfect boyfriend and to be the most popular girl in our class.” Mari looks up at her, eyebrows raised. “Shocking. Like it wasn’t obvious when you tried to fuck him?”

“Shut up,” Shauna says. She knows she sounds weak, like she’s lost the will to keep fighting. Maybe she has. All of her hopes rest on someone showing up and stopping this. One of her friends. A teacher.

Just not Jackie. Anyone but Jackie. She hopes Jackie never has to witness a single second of this. She still isn’t sure why she’s missing, but whatever the reason, she hopes it keeps her away for however long it takes. She can’t bear to have Jackie see her like this and then abandon her to it. 

Because that’s how this is going to go. They have a plan for the future now, but Jackie’s made it more than clear that it doesn’t include coming out in high school. She isn’t ready. With no way to spin this, she will let Shauna take the fall.

“Maybe, deep down, that’s part of why I wanted to kiss Jeff back that night,” Mari goes on with a knowing smirk. “That part wasn’t about him. It was about feeling what it was like to be Jackie Taylor kissing her boyfriend. Like maybe if I could become you for a moment, I’d feel like I’d won somehow, and maybe that’d all be a good enough replacement for not having you like I wanted.”

There are eyes shifting to Jeff now. He’s beet red, humiliated, caught in the middle of something he’d clearly had no inkling about. Randy, standing next to him, nudges him teasingly, like he’s enjoying that Jeff kissing Shauna has led to his own embarrassment. 

Mari reads ahead silently before she continues aloud, and then fixes Shauna with a look of repugnance and astonishment, her jaw going slack for a moment. “Oh, you’re actually, like, certifiable. Jesus. She needs a restraining order.”

“Read it!” someone shouts.

“Don’t read it,” Shauna says lowly, her stomach bubbling and her chest boiling. She might actually throw up; she can feel it hovering at the bottom of her throat. “I’ll fucking kill you if you read it.”

In the moment, she means it. She knows it does nothing to make her look less crazy than Mari’s accusing her of being. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that nothing else from her journal comes out of Mari’s mouth.

The part about living in Jackie’s skin. Melting together. Crawling inside of her, consuming parts of her. And the next entry; all of that next, final entry. She could marry Jackie and those things would never go away. And Jackie would have to agree to stay with her knowing it would mean being known to everyone as the girl who read those things about herself and liked them. Even her own parents would know once word got around. Maybe the humiliation of that would be too much. Maybe Jackie wouldn’t have it in her to stay. 

Mari’s lips twitch. Then her eyes drop to the page. “I wonder what it’d be like to just live in your skin for a little while.”

Shauna launches herself forward, trying with everything she has to rip herself free. A chunk of her hair gets torn from her head; she feels every strand as it separates with a stinging pain. Her eyes water as the boys’ hands flounder for a bruising grip on her biceps, and they grunt with the effort of subduing her again. Mari steps back from her, though she seems largely unperturbed by the threat of Shauna escaping.

And out of nowhere, in the midst of the action, a new voice in the crowd asks, “What the fuck is going on?” 

Shauna recognizes it. An icy feeling shoots down her spine. 

Mari recognizes it too, and so does everyone else. Heads turn toward Jackie, who’s determinedly pushing her way through the mob, her eyes wide and angry and confused. 

Distracted by Jackie’s arrival, the boys holding Shauna loosen their grip on her.

And Shauna tears herself out of their arms in an instant and launches herself at Mari again. 

Then it’s just screaming and shouting all around her, and laughter, and people egging them on as they crash to the ground together, Shauna straddling Mari’s waist, Mari’s arms all tangled up in Shauna’s, fighting her off from landing any blows. “Get the fuck off of me!” Mari screeches at her, grasping Shauna’s wrists in her hands, and Shauna doesn’t think, just leans down and sinks her teeth into Mari’s shoulder, right where Mari had left a hickey on Shauna’s. Mari yelps, then screams, “She’s biting me! Fucking freak!” Her hand releases Shauna’s wrist to yank at her hair, and Shauna jerks back, scalp stinging, raises a clenched fist, and then suddenly feels arms around her stomach, dragging her backwards off of Mari before she can hit her. 

She flails, seeing red, but then it’s Jackie’s voice firm in her ear, telling her, “Stop, Shauna,” and Shauna goes limp immediately. Mari kicks out at her while she’s vulnerable, catching her right in the chest and knocking the wind out of her, and she tries to find her own footing, gasping for breath, finally stumbling to her feet with Jackie propping her up.

She wonders how much Jackie had seen. How much she’d heard. If she understands what’s happened here. 

There’s so much fucking laughter.

“Can you breathe?” Jackie asks her quietly. Not tenderly, just quick and steady, like it’s the first thing of many to take care of. Shauna sucks in air and gives her a short nod, not looking at her. 

Mari’s risen to her feet, too. She’s touching her shoulder gingerly and coming away with droplets of blood on her fingertips. But none of that seems to matter to her when she sees Jackie cross from Shauna to her and lean down to pick up the open journal at Mari’s side. 

Mari’s instantly at attention. “She’s fucking crazy, Jackie. You should see what’s in there. She wrote all this stuff about you.”

The buzzing, laughing crowd suddenly quiets, like this is the moment they’ve all been waiting for. Shauna makes herself look at Jackie, finally. She’s not looking at the journal in her hands. She’s watching the crowd, eyes darting around with barely-concealed fear, and then settling on the open page. Mari’s in view of it, too, and Shauna watches Mari’s face contort. Then Mari’s turning red, and Shauna knows which page it is: the fifth and final entry. Jackie’s letting her see it, unaware that she hadn’t gotten to it yet.

Mari fills her in with a humbled, “I wouldn’t have read that one aloud, Jackie, I swear. I didn’t—That’s fucked up. I told you she’s crazy.”

Jackie’s face is a mask. She snaps the journal shut and Shauna can’t read her at all now.

And again, Shauna hadn’t been delusional enough to think that Jackie would spare her from the humiliation of this. She has no vision of Jackie swooping in here and declaring her love and the two of them stalking off proudly together, hand in hand. But she doesn’t know what’s going to happen instead. 

Whatever it is, she’ll do her best to accept it. This is her fault for taking the journal here, leaving it unattended. She’ll take the punishment. But Jackie will be punished, too. There’s no way to undo that. She can be Shauna’s girlfriend or she can be the girl whose best friend is secretly obsessed with her, and neither of those are good things to be here. So maybe Jackie’s just been left to pick her poison. And when Shauna thinks of it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad: just asking Jackie to hold her hand again, to not leave her here the way she’d left Tai at her locker.

There are worse things Jackie could do, too, that Shauna knows she never would. Call her disgusting. Humiliate her further. 

She doesn’t realize she’s trembling until Jackie looks at her. She’s aware of everything, suddenly. The hush of the crowd. The faint taste of Mari’s blood in her mouth. Her own racing heart and churning stomach.

“I’m sorry,” spills out of her mouth in a whisper before she can think the words through.

Jackie blinks at her, and the mask cracks. Her lips tremble. Shauna can see the pity in her eyes, the sadness. But she can see frustration, too, and the hint of resentment: How could you be this careless? How could you ruin it?

Because it is ruined. What Mari read aloud will spread around the school like wildfire, and then throughout the community. To Jackie’s parents and beyond. It’s only a matter of time—days, maybe even hours—and then Jackie will be barred from seeing her. 

And Shauna doesn’t know what that means for them. Do they press pause until the fall? Are they meant to sneak around until then? What kinds of questions will Jackie’s parents have for her? How much more will they question in their heads?

It seems to sink in for Jackie same as it sinks in for Shauna. Tears start to spill down Jackie’s cheeks, and Shauna can’t tell if the blood she’s tasting now is from Mari or from her teeth biting down on the inside of her own cheek. 

She takes a shaky breath, and then she protects Jackie again. Her ears burn with humiliation as she says, “I wanted to tell you. I just…”

Jackie flinches and then spares her from more, closing the gap between them swiftly and then pressing the journal into her hands. 

“You’re giving it back to her?” someone calls out with disappointment. 

“She didn’t even read it all,” another let-down spectator adds.

Jackie doesn’t react and doesn’t make eye contact with Shauna, just turns and hurries away, wiping at her eyes frantically as she goes.

Shauna doesn’t follow. She knows it’s not what Jackie wants, that it would just make things look even worse. 

But Mari does. She calls out, “Jackie, wait!” and shoots a venomous glare at Shauna like she’s the one who’d hurt Jackie, and then starts after her, calling her name again.

Shauna can feel dozens of eyes on her after. The crowd doesn’t disperse, just watches her with low murmurs and scattered snickering as she moves back to the grassy outskirts of the quad with a hollow chest, recovering her backpack, robotically gathering her things. 

Then she heads inside to the nearest bathroom, pushes her way into a stall, and finally throws up. 

-

She doesn’t find her friends after she finishes emptying her stomach. She drags herself back out into the empty hallway ten minutes later and feels the pressing urge to just get out, to escape the last couple hours of the school day before word travels any further than it already has. 

She has time before their next period ends and the halls start to flood and gossip starts to spread, so she hurries to her locker with red-rimmed, puffy eyes to dump her textbooks there before she goes. When she opens it, she sees a single sheet of notebook paper inside, folded several times into a neat rectangle and slipped through the slots of her locker door. She grabs it, exchanging the books from her backpack for it, and opens it with trembling fingers, still sniffling quietly to herself. Through blurry vision, she reads it.

Shauna,

I wanted to do this for you too, even if it’s just once and even if it’s not as good as what you wrote to me. I thought about what to say all morning, but I’m not a writer like you and I don’t know how to turn everything I feel into words like you do. I’ll try. I want you to have something that makes it clear. I know how you get about us sometimes, and I think it might help to have something to look at to remind you of what’s real.

I love you. I think I always have and I know I always will. I love your eyes and your smile and how sweet you can be and how protective you are. I love that you’re my best friend and I love knowing you in ways that no one else ever will. I love that you gave me a reason to be brave and that now we have a plan and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I’ve wanted things before, like Nationals, like the Homecoming crown last semester, but those things feel so small now. I’ve never wanted anything like I want a life with you. I hope you know that. I hope you know how much every single thought I have revolves around you. I’m so completely obsessed with you that it scares me sometimes. I know it’s mutual. I just need you to know that it’s mutual, too.

We have three more weeks now, and then it’ll be summer, and we’ll get to spend every second we can with each other until August. I know I can’t give you everything you want right now but I promise I won’t make you wait forever. Just give me this summer so we can be us without anyone else’s input, and then a little time next year at Rutgers so I can focus on figuring out which parts of me I want to keep. I think sometimes I don’t know the real me because I’ve spent so much time trying to be someone else. I just know that whoever I am wants you more than anything. I hope that makes sense. 

I want to say more but lunch is half over and I promised you I’d eat better, so I have to go! I love you and I’ll come over this Saturday!

xxxxx Jackie 

She’s been crying off and on since Mari started reading her journal, but none of it compares to how she cries now, to how she clutches the letter tight and sobs into her locker in the empty hallway. Her thoughts flicker rapidly, from I ruined everything, it’s ruined to why can’t she just be with me to replaying Jackie shoving her journal into her arms and running away in tears. 

She can’t lie to herself about it anymore. She’d wanted Jackie to kiss her. She’d let herself hope for it deep down and overcompensated for it in her thoughts by telling herself it’d never happen. She’d wanted her to tell everyone to go fuck themselves and then grab Shauna’s face and pull her in like something out of a movie. She’d wanted them to go down together, hand-in-hand; nothing else would’ve mattered to Shauna, then. She could handle any insult about it as long as she had Jackie at her side.

The nearest classroom door opens and a teacher peers out at her curiously, and then understandingly, sympathetically, at the sight of her tears. She opens her mouth to speak and Shauna slams her locker shut hastily and hurries away.

She flees her school like she’s escaping a nightmare and drives without thinking about where she’s going, just heads in a direction that makes sense somewhere deep down inside of her. Eventually, she realizes she’s close to the old park she and Jackie used to play at as kids, and that seems like a fine enough place to land, so she goes there.

It’s barely past one o’clock, and she’s surprised to find it empty. Everything looks the same as it had on the night she’d taken Jackie here for their first date. She wonders if it’ll be their only date now. Jackie had been so sure about them, and Shauna wants to believe that this hasn’t changed everything, just made it more difficult, but there’s a gnawing piece inside of her that tells her maybe it has, maybe it’s over. She tries to block it out, but it gets louder and louder the longer she sits on a swing with Jackie’s note folded up in her hand.

She opens it, reads it again to try to reassure herself. It’s mutual, it says. If that’s true—if it’s really true—then Jackie would give up everything and everyone to be with her if it came right down to it. Because Shauna would give it all up in an instant.

She stands up, walks around the little playground, and tries to let her mind wander. To memories of Jackie giggling at her, extending a hand to pull Shauna up onto the jungle gym with her. To them tucked together in a slide, shooting each other goofy grins. Jackie stage-whispering, “No one will find us here,” fingers sliding through Shauna’s and gripping them tight, Jackie leaning in and surprising Shauna with a sweet kiss to her cheek.

She knows now why her subconscious had brought her here. It’s because it’s the only place where only Jackie would know to look for her. Shauna doesn’t want to be found by anyone else.

But she waits, and waits, until it’s been an hour since their last class would’ve let out. And there is no sign of Jackie.

And the gnawing piece inside of Shauna takes hold of that knowledge and lets it fester and grow, until Shauna’s back in her front seat and gripping the steering wheel tight, staring out at nothing and trying not to panic.

She knows the idea in her head is a bad one. It’s selfish and risky and—

But she just has to know. 

So she starts her car and heads to Jackie’s house.

-

She’s barely parked out on the street, against the curb, before Jackie’s front door swings open rapidly. Shauna gets out of her car and watches Jackie turn and take a second to close it carefully, quietly, and then Jackie’s moving quickly again, urgently, rushing across the front yard to Shauna with unbridled panic in her eyes.

“Shauna, you have to go,” she demands, nudging her sideways to pull her car door open for her. Shauna takes her in with wide eyes and notices several things: Jackie looks like she’s been crying, her hair is messier than usual, and her fingers—her nails on the hand she’s using to pull at Shauna’s car door look dirty; they have a brownish color around their edges and trapped beneath them.

“Wait,” Shauna says, feeling stupid for honing in on such a small detail, but something in her gut tells her it’s important. “What happened to your—?”

“Shauna,” Jackie interrupts her, breathless, afraid. They’re standing face to face now by the curb, and Jackie keeps glancing toward her house. “Please. Someone already called my parents.”

Something squeezes tight in Shauna’s chest. She tries to say something, but nothing comes out.

Jackie grabs her arm, pushes her harshly toward the car. “Get out of here before they see you, I can’t—” She takes in a shaky breath and Shauna watches her eyes start to water. “I’ll have to say things to you that I really don’t wanna say, so just—Don’t come back here, okay?”

Shauna’s heart skips several beats and then sinks, and she doesn’t budge. Nausea climbs up her throat. “What does that mean?” she blurts. “I don’t know what that means, Jackie.”

Jackie’s grip on her arm tightens until it hurts. “It means not here.”

The front door opens as Shauna’s processing that, and Jackie jerks away from her like she’s been burned, glancing back at it, watching her mother come storming out, her father in hot pursuit of his wife. 

“How dare you!” Shauna watches Mrs. Taylor bark out, and everything’s happening too quickly, her brain’s moving too slowly. For a moment, Jackie looks so devastated that Shauna almost thinks those angry words are being directed at Jackie, but it’s immediately evident that they’re for Shauna when the next ones come. “We accepted you into our home, treated you like family—” 

Jackie’s mom is upon her in seconds, and Shauna flinches backward against her car as Mrs. Taylor pulls her daughter backward behind her like Shauna’s something she needs to be protected from. Jackie sinks into the background, tears starting to stream down her cheeks. Mr. Taylor lets it happen too, just watches Shauna with disappointment as his wife lays into her. “The Farleighs and their boy told us everything you wrote about our daughter in that book, you disgusting, filthy girl. I don’t want you near her or our family ever again, do you hear me?” 

Shauna’s vision’s gone bleary. Her whole body’s trembling and she doesn’t know how to stop it. Her eyes dart from Mrs. Taylor’s furious expression to Jackie tucked protectively against her father and she feels so angry, so abandoned and devastated and alone. 

Looking at Jackie is a mistake. Her mother sees her do it and her face hardens further. “Jacqueline’s disgusted with you too. She wants you out of her life.”

It’s so clear—too clear what’s happening here. Shauna’s never thought Jackie was much like her mother, but she sees it now, remembers Jackie in the locker room, angry at Shauna: “Shauna wants to apologize.”

Shauna had given into her then. Jackie gives into her mother now, unconvincingly—she doesn’t have to be convincing, which is another thing that’s clear, because obviously they’d seen Jackie with Shauna alone just now, and it doesn’t make sense that she’d seek Shauna out the way she had if what Jackie says now were true, if some part of her didn’t either love her back or want to try to fix their friendship, to forgive her for her feelings.

Jackie says it anyway. Just to save face with her skeptical parents, to salvage something, to try to repair what she’s broken by falling in love with Shauna. “I–I am. I’m… I’m disgusted and I don’t want you in my life.” Her father’s hand squeezes her bicep in silent support. Jackie’s face crumples, but neither of her parents are watching her to see it happen.

Shauna’s heart doesn’t break the way she thought it would. It just hardens into stone. Her stomach turns with genuine revulsion. Suddenly, Jackie doesn’t look quite the same to her anymore. The invisible, ethereal light that had seemed to emanate from her every time Shauna had stared at her is gone, and what’s left behind is just… a girl who’d written her that letter this morning in secret and then told her she’s disgusting hours later because someone else had demanded it.

Shauna loves Jackie, and she knows what this is and why it’s happening and what it means and also doesn’t mean, but so many parts of herself are battling each other internally now. That love, her stubbornness, her self-respect, how much more of this she can take.

It’ll always be Jackie. But she wonders, for the first time, if maybe Nat was right. As miserable as it’d sounded out on that back porch at Lottie’s party, maybe they’d be better off running into each other in ten years. Because Jackie saying that she just needs one year doesn’t ring quite so true when she’ll still do something like this on command. And Shauna’s not sure she can take being with this version of her anymore.

Brown’s still waiting for her. It’s starting to feel like freedom again.

“Fine,” Shauna says hollowly, and pretends she doesn’t see the way Jackie’s eyes widen, the way the sadness in them shifts to uncertainty and fear. “I’ll leave you alone.”

She doesn’t even know if she means it. She doesn’t know if she’s saying it for Jackie’s parents’ benefit or if she’ll actually follow through.

She cries the entire drive home either way.

Chapter 29

By the time she reaches her own driveway, Shauna has resigned herself to going numb. She’s run out of tears. She can’t do it anymore, can’t stand in front of yet another person and sob and tremble and feel weak and embarrassed, even if that person is her own mother. Her emotions are draining out of her, leaving her empty, but feeling nothing other than a heavy weight in her chest is so much more preferable to what she’s been forced to feel for the past few hours. 

There’s no room for her to park at home. Her mother’s car sits on one side of the driveway and the other side is occupied by Van’s car. Van and Tai are sitting on the trunk of it, Van’s nose a nasty shade of purple after her own fight in the quad. Not far from them, Nat’s leaning against the passenger’s side door. Lottie and Laura Lee are sitting together on the steps of Shauna’s front porch. 

All five of them rise to their feet, straighten up, or slide off of the car upon sight of her. Shauna wipes at her eyes and cheeks and parks against the curb, exhaling harshly. She just wants to crawl into bed alone and sleep. Anything to turn her brain off and put a stop to the aching hole in her chest. She doesn’t want to deal with everyone else feeling sorry for her, pressing her to talk about it all.

“Dude,” Van greets her first as she approaches them, “your mom’s been freaking out. We said we’d keep watch for you.” She sounds as pitying as Shauna had dreaded. 

“I’m fine,” Shauna lies. “I just took a drive. Your day was worse than mine.” She shrugs, trying to play her own suffering off, in case they somehow don’t have a full grasp of what’s happened. The fact that they’d all shown up at her house probably says otherwise, though.

She won’t tell them about going to Jackie’s. Especially not what she’d said. She’ll take Jackie calling her disgusting to the grave just so she never has to deal with yet another person walking around with the knowledge of it. It doesn’t ease the sting of it to know she hadn’t meant it. She’d said it. It’s a memory now—one Shauna will never forget. 

Laura Lee is the bravest of them, apparently; she fiddles awkwardly with her hands but approaches Shauna with a worried, “We heard about what happened today after we went inside.” Then she clarifies, “About Mari reading stuff from your journal about Jackie. And that it sounded like you liked her and she didn’t like you back. That’s so awful, Shauna.” She reaches out, but Shauna jerks away from her touch.

“I said I was fine.”

Tai sighs and shakes her head. “Great. Amazing plan. Shut down and refuse to talk to your friends about it.” Van elbows her sharply and shoots her a look of cautious reproach. 

“We’re just checking in on you,” Van says diplomatically. Carefully. Like Shauna’s a scared animal they might startle into fleeing if they make the wrong move. “It sounded… rough.”

Shauna almost laughs, it’s such a massive understatement. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to relive a second of it. So she keeps downplaying it. “Van, you got punched in the face today.”

“It looks worse than it is,” Van insists calmly. “You got outed to the whole school.” The whole town, actually. Outed not just as gay, but as an obsessive creep in love with Wiskayok’s darling. And Jackie could have spared her from some of it, but hadn’t.

Shauna takes a breath and tries to stop thinking about it. She isn’t angry at her. Jackie has her own problems—problems Shauna will never have, and battles Shauna will never have to fight. She’s just… tired. And not sure where to go from here.

“It’s okay to admit that it fucking sucks, Shauna,” Nat chimes in, a knowing eyebrow already raised. “Or to be sad, or pissed off. We came here to try to help.”

Before Shauna can keep deflecting, Lottie pipes up from the porch steps, “Would it help if you hit something? ‘Cause you could hit me.” Five confused heads turn to stare at her. She gives a half-hearted shrug, self-conscious with so many eyes on her. “If you wanted.”

There’s a brief moment of silence. And then Nat says, “What the fuck, Lottie?” 

Laura Lee breaks first, bursting into nervous giggles like she isn’t sure she’s allowed. Then Tai snorts. Van starts to smile before either her injured nose or her concern for Shauna’s reaction puts a stop to it. 

It’s so stupid, and Shauna’s stunned to find a short laugh forcing its way out of her. At least part of it is genuine amusement, not just disbelief. 

“Okay, never mind,” Lottie huffs, and that just makes their scattered laughter start up all over again. Shauna doesn’t contribute this time, but she can feel herself almost wanting to smile, and that’s something. A feeling that isn’t either horrible or nothing at all. The thousand pound weight in her chest lightens just a little, just enough that she almost feels like she can take in a breath without there being something aching behind her expanding lungs. “Guess she already hit Mari, anyway.”

“I heard you bit her,” Tai corrects with a glance at Shauna.

“That feels on brand,” Van decides. 

Shauna sighs and goes to the porch, and then pauses when everyone aside from Lottie—who’s already there—moves to follow her, like a line of baby ducklings. 

She tries to stay sour. Bitter. Empty. But Van and Laura Lee look so hopeful and Nat and Tai are burying their clear concern behind looks of annoyed expectance. 

Shauna bites her lip. Then rolls her eyes. And ignores the faint fluttering in her chest, the warmth threatening to melt the icy barrier she’s tried her best to construct around it since Jackie took a dagger to her heart. “Fine. Come in, I guess.”

Laura Lee beams at her.

-

“Oh, thank God,” Shauna’s mom greets her with relief as soon as she’s inside. She’s on the phone, but she hangs it up right away and rushes to Shauna, pulling her into a hug so tight that Shauna isn’t remotely ready for it.

“Mom,” she says, muffled, “I’m okay. I just went to the park for a while.”

“Okay.” Ms. Shipman cups the back of Shauna’s head so hard it hurts anyway. Her other hand strokes up and down Shauna’s back as Shauna’s arms hang limply at her sides. “I nearly called the police. You had me worried sick.”

Shauna tries to piece everything together. Her friends know about what’d happened. Her mom must know, if she’s been so worried about Shauna getting home just a little bit late. Jackie’s parents had already been told within hours, too. It’s spreading so quickly. 

Her anxiety spikes and she tries to pull away. Her mom lets her go, looking past her at the group by the front door. Shauna sees something in her face soften. 

“Well,” her mother exhales, finally, “I guess I’ll set a few extra plates out for dinner.”

-

It’s the strangest thing. Shauna wouldn’t have dreamed of it even two weeks ago: her mother at one end of the table, Shauna at the other, and five girls from the Wiskayok soccer team chowing down between them, making conversation like Shauna hasn’t just had the worst day of her life, like she isn’t barely holding it together for the sake of everyone else in the room.

They’re laughing at each other’s jokes, looking to Shauna like they’re hoping she might laugh too. Nudging her, riffing off of her mother in between complimenting the cooking. Van burps too loudly and claps a hand to her mouth, catches her nose, and lets out a curse from the pain of it that has her face turning red as she looks guiltily to Shauna’s mom. 

“Let’s at least get a Bandaid and some pain reliever on that after dinner, Van. I have a cream that works wonders,” is all Ms. Shipman says, though. 

It all almost feels normal, beneath the bizarre abnormality of it. Shauna can’t make sense of any of it. She’s quiet during dinner—somber, morose, internally devastated and trying not to be—and her thoughts drift to Jackie, probably off having dinner right now too. Her table of three. Silent, tense. Lonely. 

She feels her eyes well up and she blinks it away, lets go of the thought before it can fester and take hold. She notices Nat watching her carefully, and Shauna quickly glances away, refusing to meet her stare. 

Later, Shauna hovers near her mother while she gently places a Bandaid over Van’s nose. The other girls are off in the living room, showing no signs of leaving anytime soon, and Shauna can hear them arguing distantly about what to put on the television. 

“Thanks, Ms. Shipman,” Van says politely, offering her a small smile before she pads away to join the others with a lingering look at Shauna. 

Ms. Shipman watches her go, eyebrows pulled tight with concern. “What happened to her?” she asks Shauna. 

“She tripped,” Shauna says. She doesn’t even entertain telling the truth after today. It feels like the least she can do is to spare her mother from any more anxiety than she’s already dealing with. 

“Jackie’s mother called me today,” Ms. Shipman tells her quietly, while they have a moment alone. Shauna looks sharply at her, wondering what she’s been told, what she knows. If she knows Shauna had gone over there. “About an hour before you got back.” So no, then. The call had happened beforehand. “She… very passionately filled me in.” Her mother’s lips quirk with distaste. “It actually felt nice to finally get to tell that woman what I’ve always thought about her.”

Shauna doesn’t meet her eyes. “I bet she didn’t like that,” she tries to joke.

“No,” her mother says with a bittersweet smile, a hand rising to cup Shauna’s cheek, “she didn’t.” With a swipe of her thumb, she goes on, “So you covered for Jackie today.”

Shauna shrugs helplessly, feeling empty and carved out again. Hollow. “I know how scared she is. I couldn’t ruin her life.”

She can feel her mother’s eyes searching her face even as Shauna refuses to look at her. Taking her in, analyzing her with a fond warmth. “I love you,” she says, finally. “I know we’ve had our ups and downs, and things haven’t been perfect lately. But you have such a good heart.” She tucks some of Shauna’s hair behind her ear, and Shauna’s eyes raise questioningly to her mother’s. “I know how hard it must’ve been.” Her expression firms up, her lips pressing into a thin line before she admits, “It took everything I had on that phone, Shauna. With the things Mrs. Taylor was saying about my daughter, the things she was accusing you of. It took everything.”

Shauna swallows down the lump in her throat and says nothing.

“I’d have driven over there afterward,” Ms. Shipman goes on. “Done whatever I could to get Jackie out of that house. But I just couldn’t take the choice away from her and put her in harm’s way. I’ve just… done my best to make sure she knows she has a home here. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Nothing, Shauna wants to say. Jackie’s an adult too, same as Shauna. It’s always been up to her. It’s always just been about waiting for her to be ready.

“I hope she’s okay,” Shauna says faintly. She knows Jackie’s not. She’d broken Jackie’s heart today just as much as Jackie’d broken hers. She’d been forced to leave her trapped in a home that would deem her girlfriend disgusting. It isn’t lost on Shauna that that word’s for Jackie too, and that Jackie’s well aware of it. Her parents unknowingly think she’s disgusting. The only accepting friends she has have been pushed away, are no longer speaking to her. And now things are in limbo with Shauna, too, and it seems impossible that they’ll be able to carve out time to see each other—and that’s if they both even want to. “I don’t know how to help her either.”

Her mother’s arms wrap around her, but she doesn’t give Shauna an answer, a solution. Still, Shauna lets herself sink into it this time, lets herself be hugged tight by a mom who knows her and loves her, who tells her gently, “Tell your friends they can stay over tonight, if they’d like. They just need to call their parents first. It’s a school night.”

Shauna welcomes the subject change. She can’t dwell on Jackie without starting to cry again, and after the day she’s had, it’s too much to bear. “I’m going tomorrow. I want to.” She’s already decided not to miss school over this. Even if it’s hard. Even if it means fielding insults or worse, even if it’s risky. Hiding feels like confessing to a sin, admitting that there’s something wrong with the way she feels. She’d hid at home last time after Jeff, devastated, but also ashamed. She’s not ashamed this time. And she won’t act like it. 

Her mother doesn’t argue, even despite the flicker of fear behind her eyes. Shauna’s thankful for it. It makes her feel trusted, grown up. Strong. But she also knows that her mother must be missing details, even if she’s heard about the journal. The way Shauna had been restrained. The fight with Mari. She hopes she never finds out. “Okay. If you need me, call my work number from the front office and I’ll come straight there. You don’t have to stay the full day. And if anything else happens, I’ll pull you out myself. Permanently, if we have to.” Her mother studies her carefully. “We’ll figure something out, okay?”

“I know. I’ll be alright.” Shauna pulls out of their hug, glancing back to the living room. She can hear the opening notes of the 20th Century FOX theme playing. A movie’s about to start. 

Her mother follows her gaze knowingly. “Go be with your friends.” She pauses, thoughtful. “They seem sweet. You’ve never had this many over before.”

-

Everyone stays. 

About an hour after the movie’s ended, the others head upstairs to raid Shauna’s pajamas and get ready for bed. Shauna lingers in the kitchen to get herself a glass of water, just to finally have a moment to herself. She knows they’ve kept her occupied on purpose. Kept her distracted with the movie and with jokes and with the kind of gossip that doesn’t matter, like if Shauna stays focused on them she can’t possibly have room to relive the day instead.

It’s working, in a way. She’s not talking much, and she’s not exactly flitting around with the brightness of Laura Lee, but without them she’d have probably avoided her mother and holed up in her room and wallowed all evening. Instead, she’s present, forcing smiles and nods at the right times, holding herself together. 

Van reappears not seconds later, while Shauna’s filling her cup with tap water, and Shauna can’t help but offer dryly, “Were you assigned to tail me?”

“I volunteered,” Van says, leaning up against the counter beside her. Shauna glances at her.

“That Bandaid’s too big for your nose. You look silly.”

“I found out I’m suspended tomorrow,” Van tells her idly, ignoring her attempt at a distraction. “My mom told me when I called her tonight. She got a call from the school. He got three days, though.”

“That’s… sort of justice?” Shauna decides, screwing her face up. “Partly?”

“Should’ve been zero, but I’ll take it in this shitty town,” Van says. “Guess it was because I shoved him. So I was just supposed to take a fist to the face and do nothing, apparently.” Shauna turns the faucet off and Van eyes her carefully. “You doing okay?” At Shauna’s look, she corrects, “Don’t answer that. Are you… not falling apart?”

“I’m fine.” Shauna sips her drink and looks away.

Van sighs. “It’s okay to break down a little, if you need to. I can give you a few minutes alone. It’s not stupid.” She hesitates, and then adds, “You’re not stupid, you know. I mean… you weren’t stupid. For hoping.”

Shauna stiffens and wonders sourly when Van had become a mind-reader. But she supposes it makes sense that she’d understand. She’s been through it too, in a way. “Thanks,” Shauna says quietly, “but I was.”

“You’re not,” Van presses gently. “She loves you.”

“Not like Tai loves you,” Shauna blurts, and then guilt invades her chest and turns her stomach. She knows it’s not the same.

Van does too. “Tai’s parents never cared. It was always about Wiskayok for her. I’m not saying it isn’t hard, but Jackie’s, like… It’s just on another level. Tai gets it, too.”

“Tai hates her,” Shauna says curtly.

“She doesn’t hate her,” Van corrects, shaking her head. “It’s just that Jackie got to keep you and everything else by hiding. Tai did what she thought was the right thing to do and got punished for it, and Jackie ditched us for it too. It’s not fair.” Shauna just stares at her, not sure what to say to that. “And neither is what happened today, to me or to you or to Jackie. It all fucking sucks.” She shrugs. “The least we can do is be there for each other, right? So if Jackie’s ever ready to accept the help, we’ll be here.” She offers a small smile. “At least until the end of summer. Then we’re both getting the fuck out, same as you guys.”

“Where are you going?” Shauna asks, realizing she doesn’t know.

“Following Tai to D.C.,” Van says. “I’m taking a semester off. Then I’m gonna apply to some film programs there wherever I can.”

Shauna glances away, her eyes swimming before she can stop them. “Jackie and I had a plan, too,” she confesses. “She wanted to transfer to a school in Providence after her first year.”

“Not past tense, dude,” Van sighs out, nudging her. “Stop. It’ll still happen.”

“I don’t know.” Shauna shrugs weakly. She wants to stop talking about this now. “Let’s head back up, okay?”

She can tell Van wants to keep reassuring her, but she bites her tongue and nods instead. “Okay.”

-

Everyone staying leads to a cartoonish setup in Shauna’s bedroom: They draw straws for who gets to “spoon Shauna all night” (Nat’s words) and Lottie wins out. Tai and Van set up a pallet on the floor after Shauna leads them to the linen closet. Nat curls up in a large chair right by the bed, and Laura Lee digs a sleeping bag out of Shauna’s closet and borrows one of Shauna’s pillows, then sets up not far from Tai and Van.

“This is ridiculous,” Shauna sighs out once they’re all settled in and the lights have been turned off save for the lamp on Shauna’s nightstand. “You guys didn’t have to stay.”

“You’re welcome, Shauna,” Tai says flatly.

“Can’t cry yourself to sleep at night in a room full of people,” Van adds. “It’s… science or something.”

Lottie shifts next to her with a hum of agreement, wriggling up against Shauna’s back and throwing an arm over her. “Hope it’s okay that I’m a cuddler,” she mumbles sleepily.

“Lottie,” Nat huffs, reaching over to the turn the lamp off, “I swear to God if you try to fuck Shauna tonight…”

Scattered laughter echoes in the darkness and Shauna glares sourly in Nat’s general direction. 

“I don’t think it’s Lottie and Shauna we should be worried about,” Laura Lee giggles out.

Van gives an offended gasp. “Laura Lee! That’s a slanderous accusation.”

“Get your hand off my boob, then,” Tai says. Shauna hears a hurl mimed from Nat’s general direction and a soft laugh from Lottie behind her. 

“She’s kidding,” Van insists. “That was a joke.”

“Does Tai even make those?” Nat wonders.

“Fuck off,” Tai mumbles.

They fall silent, giggles eventually tapering off. Lottie’s hand finds Shauna’s and interlocks their fingers, and Shauna lets it happen. It’s comforting. Odd, coming from Lottie, who’s someone she’s still trying to get to know beyond their time on the Yellowjackets together, but if she closes her eyes she can almost imagine…

She bites her lip. Thinking of Jackie is sobering. Thinking of Jackie alone in her bed tonight is even worse.

Can’t cry yourself to sleep at night in a room full of people.

“I wish she had this too,” she thinks, and she doesn’t even realize she’s whispered it aloud until she feels Lottie’s hand squeeze hers.

-

Tai had messed with her alarm clock, she learns, when it goes off at six in the morning.

A series of groans and complaints accompany the blaring, and Shauna fumbles to turn the alarm off, finding it a little difficult to maneuver with Lottie sprawled halfway on top of her. 

Slowly, everyone but Shauna begins their day. Van’s got the worst of it, probably: she technically doesn’t even need to get up, but she’d apparently promised everyone else that she’d shuttle them all back to their houses to get showered and changed for the day, and that she’d round about half of them up to take them to school too, given that they’d left their cars in the parking lot the day before. Shauna barely registers the mass exodus from her room and the promises to see her at school, just fixes her alarm and then rolls over and goes back to sleep.

When she finally wakes up again, her chest is back to feeling heavy. She drags herself into the shower, filled with dread, and her throat tightens as she scrubs at her scalp, but she doesn’t let herself cry. She leaves without eating breakfast. Her entire drive feels like willingly marching herself to her own doom. It still feels necessary, but she wishes it didn’t. She wishes her hands weren’t trembling on the wheel. 

The hallways are icy. It’s different from after she’d kissed Jeff, and different, even, from Van and Tai—who love each other, who aren’t a threat. Even the freshmen seem to know who she is. Some of the boys smirk and leer at her, and others watch her with wary distaste. The girls eye her with disgust and give her a wider berth. Like they’re worried Shauna will make them her next victim, like getting too close to her will somehow cause her to turn her affections to them instead. And what a horrible thing that would be for them, of course, to have Shauna Shipman find them attractive. How unfortunate must poor Jackie Taylor be to find herself on the other end of it.

She feels like a leper. She feels as disgusting as Jackie and her parents had told her she was. The sheer brick wall of loathing that is her classmates’ reaction to the sight of her takes her breath away.

She inhales shakily at her locker and closes her eyes, trying to block it all out. There’s nothing written on the door, at least. The precautions put in for Van and Tai are protecting her now too. She just has to make it through two and a half more weeks. She can skip Prom this weekend. She doesn’t want to go anyway when she’ll be treated like this, when Jackie won’t even be coming over this Saturday to help her get ready before they go with their separate groups.

Before she can open her locker, a light hand falls to her shoulder, making her flinch away in fear. She spins, and it’s Principal Berzonsky, fixing her with a knowing look of disappointment. “Shauna,” he greets her, “no need to get your things right now. I’d like to see you in my office.”

He escorts her down the hall as more and more eyes watch on, as conspiratory, knowing, amused looks are exchanged, and she’s almost forgotten about the fight—that this could even be about that instead of somehow about her newfound status as a social pariah—until she sees Mari already sitting in one of two chairs across from Berzonsky’s desk, awaiting their arrival. 

Mari doesn’t look at Shauna. Not at first. Shauna can only see her right cheek and part of her profile, just enough to spot the slight swell in the left side of her bottom lip. So she’d banged it on some part of Shauna when they’d fallen, then. Good.

Or not good. Unlike the bite to her shoulder, this is a visible injury. Proof of their altercation. Shauna hadn’t dealt with the repercussions of this part in her head yet. A fight on school grounds. Of course news of it would spread to the faculty. Rumors of it, at the very least. 

She hovers near the door, instinctively wanting to keep her distance from Mari. But Berzonsky settles behind his desk and then tells her expectantly, “Have a seat, Shauna.”

Finally, Mari turns, eyes rising with the illusion of looking into Shauna’s, but she doesn’t quite meet them. It’s like she can’t. 

Shauna’s mouth falls open in surprise as Mari reluctantly exposes her left cheek to Shauna’s view. A nasty trio of parallel scratches have marred the skin there, swollen and red. Like something had attacked her, clawed at her. Her left eye is bruised.

“I didn’t do that,” Shauna blurts reflexively. Mari’s eyes narrow condescendingly at her, conveying something like are you stupid, and Shauna’s stomach gives a surprised lurch. It’s like Mari expects them to be in this together, on the same team for it. 

She swallows, fumbling into the chair, registering a flicker of something behind Mari’s eyes before they dart away. It almost looks like guilt. 

“So there was an altercation between you two,” Berzonsky fills in the blanks, and Shauna catches up, realizes what Mari’s narrowed eyes had been about. 

Mari clues her in pretty blatantly, in case Shauna needs it, with, “That’s just a stupid rumor. We had an argument. My cat did this.”

Berzonsky raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “So you two didn’t fight out in the quad yesterday?” He looks to Shauna. “Mari didn’t kick you?”

Shauna straightens up, giving Mari a brief glance and getting nothing back. Mari stays tense, jaw set, eyes facing forward. Shauna does the math quickly. The worse her punishment for this, the larger the chance it could impact her future. Brown. She already has one school-affiliated incident on record at State. She’d been lucky Coach Martinez hadn’t seen fit to fuck with her future for that one. “…No,” she says, finally. “It wasn’t like that.”

Berzonsky studies them for a moment, back and forth, then sighs, clearly frustrated. “Your cat?” he asks Mari with disbelief.

“Yeah,” Mari replies firmly. “He’s an ass—“ She catches herself a second too late, and corrects, “A real jerk. Sir.”

“And Shauna didn’t… bite you, then,” he finishes knowingly for her, a tired look on his face.

“That was also my cat,” Mari says shortly, crossing her arms. Shauna can’t help but turn and stare at her, studying her swollen lip. Maybe that hadn’t been Shauna after all. Maybe nothing on her face had been. So where had it come from? None of the girls had mentioned anything about fighting Mari last night. 

“Fine.” Berzonsky seems to have reached the end of his rope. “I’m sending the both of you home for the day and I’ll be contacting your parents. Consider this a one-day suspension. And a warning.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You can go.”

It’s the oddest feeling, afterward: walking out to the parking lot with Mari trailing feet behind her, something that feels almost like a silent truce between them. Shauna would beat her black and blue if she thought she could get away with it, but she occupies her mind instead with the thought of those ugly scratches. They’re bad enough that she wouldn’t have expected Mari to be willing to show up to school with them.

She can’t resist, as they exit the building one after another, shooting Mari a smug look over her shoulder and quipping, “Surprised you showed up today.”

Mari could say the same to her, but she doesn’t. She just gives her the finger, but it’s half-hearted, a strange lack of heat behind it. “I had a test.”

“I hope they don’t let you make it up. You look like you got mauled by Freddie Krueger, by the way.”

“Fuck off, Shauna.” Mari ups her pace and overtakes her. “I felt sorry for you for two seconds, but don’t worry, it’s passed.”

Something angry and hot flickers in Shauna’s chest. She moves faster, keeping up. “You have no idea what you did yesterday.”

Mari stops, whirling around. Shauna flinches and freezes, feet away. “Oh, I heard,” Mari tells her, laughing dryly. She says it like she expects Shauna to already know it. “Clearly she let me know.” She gestures to her own face.

Shauna stares blankly at her for a moment, the wheels turning. Then it clicks. Mari had followed Jackie. Jackie’s nails. The brown under them. Dried blood. 

She cocks her head in disbelief, taken aback. Her brain still can’t process it for a moment. Jackie’s nails slicing at Mari’s cheek, Jackie giving up her secret to Mari by punishing her for what she’d done. Bruising her eye, cutting her lip, still wielding her social status to swear Mari to secrecy afterward, because clearly Mari hasn’t spread it around. She pictures it, staring at Mari’s fucked up face, and something in her…

She laughs, and she doesn’t really know why. A genuine one, at first, something fluttering in her chest, replacing the anger with something light, an exhilarating fondness for Jackie and what she’d done. But then it turns derisive, and knowing, and indulgent. “Oh,” Shauna says, like she’s just now put the pieces together. “So I can actually tell you how completely fucking stupid you are, Mari.” She expects Mari to snap back at her, but for some reason Mari just grits her teeth and looks away and takes it. “You ruined everything,” Shauna bites out, and now her eyes are watering and it’s not funny anymore and she hates that she’s letting herself cry in front of Mari again. She thinks of Jackie, alone with Mari, frantic and furious and panicking. Attacking her, screaming at her. “Do you have any idea? I hope Jackie laid it all out for you after she clawed the shit out of your face. I hope she told you every little detail about us, you stupid fucking asshole.”

Mari flinches as the words land, and Shauna recognizes it, recognizes that this is doing something, that Mari feels it. It’s getting to her. So she digs in harder. “Let me fill you in.” She’d promised herself she wouldn’t share this. But she shares it now out of pure malice. “I went to Jackie’s yesterday. I’ve known her mom since Kindergarten. She told me I was disgusting and she made Jackie tell me I was, too. We’ll have that memory forever. We can’t fucking see each other now because of you.” Mari still won’t look at her, and Shauna watches her lift a hasty hand to wipe at one of her eyes. “Because of your stupid high school bullshit. I bet you’d out Jackie without a second thought if you thought it’d mean you’d win Prom Queen instead.”

“No,” Mari chokes out, finally. She sounds so small. “I wouldn’t. I like Jackie. I—“ She swallows thickly. “I promised I wouldn’t, even after what she did to me. I just didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do,” Shauna says sharply. “And if you ever tell anyone…” Her legs start moving, carrying her toward Mari, toward her own car in the distance, and Mari blanches and gets out of her way. Shauna pauses beside her, glaring hard, gaze piercing through her. “I really will kill you.”

Mari steps away from her, eyes wet, but there’s something defiant behind them. “Just because she loves you doesn't mean you’re not still a psycho freak,” she says. 

It doesn’t hurt her. She doesn’t feel it at all, beyond the satisfying acknowledgement of Jackie’s feelings.

She shrugs ambivalently at Mari, then walks away and leaves her there, trembling and in tears. She drives home.

-

There’s a voicemail message for her mother from Berzonsky waiting when Shauna gets back. She deletes it.

Van, home alone for the day same as Shauna, answers her landline on the third ring. “Palmer residence, what’s up?”

“It’s Shauna,” Shauna says. “I got suspended for the day too.”

Van hums understandingly. “Well, you did bite someone. Even if she definitely deserved it. And worse.”

Shauna twirls the phone cord around her finger, hesitating for a moment, and then asks, “Do you wanna hang out today?”

“Yeah,” Van says easily. “I’ll pick you up in half an hour?”

“Okay.” 

They hang up. Shauna stares at the phone and thinks of her mother last night, watching the group of girls gathering for a movie in the living room. 

It’s odd to think that something good has come out of something so painful. And even odder to think that having these issues with Jackie has coincided with the introduction of something positive into her life. Maybe even created the space for it. 

Acknowledging that Jackie being gone and everyone else being here might be correlated, especially now, feels like a new form of betraying her.  

But she lingers on the idea, even in Van’s passenger’s seat, heading somewhere Van’s chosen without telling her and Shauna hasn’t bothered to ask about, listening to the Ani DiFranco album Van had let her borrow. 

She gives voice to it, finally. “I’ve never had any friends other than Jackie.”

Van glances over at her, unperturbed and unsurprised. “I know,” she says easily. “I’ve been going to school with you guys since Kindergarten.”

Shauna stares out her window, feeling guilty. “I guess this just doesn’t feel like a coincidence. The timing. All of us getting… Just. Hanging out like we are.” Becoming friends. 

“You could be filling a void,” Van offers an alternative with the ease of someone who clearly isn’t thinking about this as deeply as Shauna is. “Or could just be the circumstances. Us versus the world. She could’ve been a part of that.” She pauses. “She still could.”

“Yeah.” They both know Shauna’s not really agreeing. She’s done hoping. “Am I overthinking it?”

“Jackie did like to have a monopoly on you,” Van replies, “but she’s not malicious. You—“

“I know,” Shauna cuts her off sharply, sensitive to this, too aware of the years she’d spent believing it. “I know she’s not.”

“Okay,” Van says carefully. “What I was gonna say is that you need people right now, and she knows it. And if she made a different choice she’d want us around too. She’d be right there with us. So if you’re asking whether or not I think you only have other friends now because Jackie isn’t here to keep you to herself, my answer is that I don’t think so, dude. Shit went down and we tightened ranks. It just happened.”

“Yeah,” Shauna says just to say something. She’s still staring out her window, processing silently.

“For what it’s worth, I think it’s kind of romantic,” Van says lightly, sending Shauna’s head swiveling around to face her uncertainly. Van shoots her an amused look. “I mean. I have memories of you two crawling all over each other during naptimes. And hogging the best two swings at recess.” She laughs. “You know, I tried to invite you to a birthday party once in the second grade. I didn’t invite Jackie because we didn’t really have anything in common and my parents said I could only have so many people over. Do you remember what you did?”

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow. She can’t recall this at all. “I didn’t go?”

Van shakes her head. “You said you wouldn’t unless Jackie could too, because you’re best friends and best friends don’t do anything without each other.”

“Oh,” Shauna says, forcing a knowing laugh. It sounds exactly like something Jackie would’ve come up with back then. And then not stuck to it herself, of course. “No wonder I resented her eventually.”

“Well,” Van sighs out, “not that I’m not just as fucking obsessed with Tai, but… I don’t know. That kind of, like… bond, I guess? A whole lifetime of being completely inseparable? It must be nice.” She pauses, thoughtful. “Codependent and unhealthy and a little fucked up, but still.” 

“A lot fucked up,” Shauna corrects quietly, returning her attention to the gas stations and stores they’re passing by now. “It’s okay to say it. I know it is.”

“But if it’s what you want…” Van says, letting it trail off leadingly.

They both know it is. She’d had fantasies of trying to live without it not so long ago. Now she’s just wishing she had the opportunity to give herself over to it in full. 

But could she live without Jackie, if it came right down to it? Brown. New friends, a new life. A fresh start. New loves who wouldn’t compare but could maybe keep her distracted long enough so that the pain could fade into a dull ache, squirreled away to stay hidden in the depths of her chest. She’d think about Jackie every day. Wonder if she’s okay, if she’s finally come out, who she’s letting touch her the way Shauna used to. If she’s thinking of Shauna every day too. Dragging herself through month after month or year after year, waiting for a reunion that feels fated. Who would reach out first? How would either of them know when it’s time, when it could actually work? How long would it take for the doubts to creep in in the meantime, the maybe she’s moved on for real, the what if she doesn’t even want me anymore, the she’s probably better off without me anyway?

Even trying to picture it makes her sick. She doesn’t know how to let go, not even temporarily. She’s still damaged beyond repair, still built for one person and still broken in a way that only Jackie knows how to fix.

She swallows down bile and changes the subject. “Where are we going, anyway?”

-

Van takes her to some indie movie rental place tucked into the back of one of Wiskayok’s many strip malls.  

“This is my backup plan,” Van tells her as they browse, Shauna mostly just trailing after her. “If film school doesn’t work out. If I can’t help make movies, I’ll at least make sure I’m surrounded by them.”

She takes her to a small section in a faraway corner. One row of one shelf, a notecard taped beneath it with a hastily scrawled “Queer” on it. Shauna flinches instinctively at the word, and Van notices.

“It’s not meant like that,” she clarifies. “It’s not an insult. I know the owner.” Shauna’s eyes skate over the row. Van pulls out VHS after VHS, men on almost every cover. “Lame,” she mumbles. “Nothing new came in.” Finally, she plucks out one she seems familiar with and shows it to Shauna. “Fried Green Tomatoes. It’s pretty good. I’ve been meaning to get a copy. They’re not gay gay, but they’re totally gay.”

“Okay,” Shauna agrees idly, deciding not to question her. Her eyes drift to the horror section in the distance, and she sets off in that direction as Van’s tucking the VHS under an arm. 

“Of course you like dark shit,” Van laughs out, following her. 

Shauna doesn’t tell her about how she used to stay up late sneaking horror movies with Jackie, even when they were too young for them. How they never scare her, and that her favorite part of them is how much they scare Jackie. The gory ones would have Jackie groaning out a “Gross!” and hiding her face in Shauna’s neck. The jumpscares would make her grip Shauna’s arm or hand tighter. 

Shauna picks out two and tries to be polite given that Van’s offered to pay for their rentals. “Which one? You pick.”

Van chooses It, which winds up having over a three-hour runtime, which means that by the time they’ve stopped for lunch on the way back to Shauna’s, popped popcorn in her kitchen, and burned through both movies, school is done for the day and Tai’s huffily knocking on Shauna’s front door. 

Shauna lets her in, and she stamps right past her and crosses her arms pointedly at Van where she’s lounging on the couch, stray bits of popcorn caught in the folds of her shirt and sitting in her lap. “You couldn’t have let us know?” she says to the both of them, but mostly to Van.

“What?” Van asks dumbly. “About our movie day? You guys had school.”

Tai rolls her eyes. “Okay, and we thought Shauna did too. When she didn’t show up we all wondered if something else had happened this morning.”

“I tried to go,” Shauna says with a shrug. “Mari and I got pulled into Berzonksy’s office and sent home for the day.”

“Yeah, we realized it was probably that when we didn’t see Mari at lunch.” Tai gives a slight huff of annoyance. “But still.”

“Aww, babe,” Van teases, rising to her feet, moving to Tai and trying to hug her. “Were you worried about your best best friend Shauna? You’re so sweet…“ Tai scoffs and tries to wriggle out of her grip with a scowl, but Van pulls her, laughing, to the couch, and they collapse on it together in a tangle of limbs, Van peppering noisy kisses all over Tai’s face, mumbling something about “my considerate, smart, sexy, adorable girlfriend—“ under Tai’s protests as Shauna looks on uncertainly. 

A squeak of shoes near the door distracts her. Lottie, Nat, and Laura Lee have all gathered at the entrance. “We got a ride with Tai this time,” Laura Lee explains. 

Shauna sighs. “Fuck it. Take me back to when I didn’t have friends.”

Van detangles herself from Tai and sits up with a grin. “You love us.” To the others, she adds, “Shauna told me she wants to have an orgy, but only if we can talk Jackie into it too.” Shauna grabs the nearest pillow and throws it at her. 

“Laura Lee can watch,” Lottie plays along, smoothly entering Shauna’s living room and collapsing next to Van on the couch. “Oh, you guys were watching movies? Which ones?”

“You can’t stay the night again,” Shauna tries to tell them. Nat passes by her and grabs a handful of popcorn from the bowl on the coffee table. Laura Lee edges past Shauna with a guilty smile. Even as they all pile onto the couch, Shauna tries to stick to her guns anyway. “Seriously. I’m a big girl.”

-

They stay again—even Laura Lee, who apologizes to God before lying to her parents on the phone about how she needs another night to finish the group project she’s working on. They eat dinner again, watch Shauna lie to her worried mother about her day. Don’t rat her out when she says it was okay, that people weren’t kind but didn’t really bother her. In fact, they nod along, covering for her, insisting that things weren’t too bad and that it’ll blow over, a silent understanding amongst them that Shauna would prefer not to worry her mother, not to drag her into any of it. Her mother seems hesitant to just accept it, and Shauna feels concerned eyes following her as she helps clean up the table afterward, but Ms. Shipman doesn’t press the issue.

That night, Tai changes her alarm again; Lottie holds her tight as they fall asleep again. 

Shauna pretends to hate it. Maybe she genuinely doesn’t love being coddled, but she likes knowing that they care. 

Nat sits on her bed in the morning, while Shauna’s still groggy and the others are on their way out to Tai’s and Van’s cars, and says quietly, “Hey. I should tell you something.”

It sounds serious enough that Shauna sits up and blinks until her eyes can focus on Nat’s steady, concerned expression. “What?”

“I didn’t say anything before because I knew you’d be up all night if I did,” Nat explains. “But I talked to Jackie yesterday at school.”

Shauna’s wide awake in a second, adrenaline and anxiety and frustration coursing through her. “What the fuck, Nat?”

“Listen,” Nat heads her off, “it was just her pulling me aside in the hall for like two seconds. But she’d noticed you weren’t in class and asked if I’d seen you. I told her about us staying over. She wanted me to ask you to meet her during her free period the day you come back. In the equipment shed by the field.”

Shauna doesn’t realize how tense she is—how tightly she’s squeezing her fists—until she feels her fingernails biting into her palm. 

Nat preempts her questions with, “That was it. We couldn't exactly hang around talking to each other without it looking weird. I told her I’d tell you.”

“Did she…?” Shauna falters. “How was she?”

“I don’t know.” Nat hesitates, like she thinks maybe she shouldn’t share more. “I mean, not great. Shaken up. But she wasn’t skipping school, so.”

So probably surviving. Not outed to her parents. Not being made a mockery of at school, at least not in the way Shauna has been and will be. 

“Okay.” Shauna doesn’t know why she phrases what she says next like a question. The words just slip out. “I should meet up with her?” 

Nat catches it same as Shauna, and does her the favor of ignoring it, pretending not to notice the way Shauna flinches. Shauna watches her get to her feet. “I’ll see you at lunch, alright? Find me if people are being assholes and you need backup. We can skip a class and smoke out back or something.”

Shauna forces a laugh. “Yeah. Sure. Smoking at school. Not like I have an Ivy League education on the line or anything.”

Nat gives her a small smile and leaves. Shauna lays back, staring at her ceiling, and kicks herself again for making it a question. Of course she’ll go. She can’t not. Jackie wants to see her.

But the thought of it puts a pit in her stomach. Maybe because of what Jackie might say. But maybe because of what Shauna might say, too.

-

Nothing has changed since yesterday; if anything, word has spread further, more details have been shared. 

There’s a cluster of boys near Shauna’s locker that laugh at her as she puts in her combination, trying to ignore them. She barely knows them—only really does know them at all because she’d been forced into their presence at a few parties via Jeff and Randy.

“There he is!” one of them calls out teasingly, and out of the corner of her eye Shauna sees Jeff arriving. They’ve been waiting by his locker, hovering near Shauna’s merely by coincidence. It doesn’t make her feel any better.

She inputs her combination incorrectly, distracted when she sees one of them make a gesture she doesn’t catch fully and then hears Jeff sigh.

The halls are populating, getting louder. Shauna only manages to overhear a few words: “—your girl right there.”

And then Jeff’s huffed, angry, “Dude, shut up.”

“—were the one telling—‘s a good kisser—“

There’s a bout of laughter from that, mean enough to be at Jeff’s expense, light enough to sound like they’re just trying to rib him. Shauna’s fingers fumble at the dial. 

There’s a break in the din around her, and the next part she hears clearly: “Jury’s out whether she’d be thinking of you or Jackie during, though.”

Someone guffaws. “Probably both.”

“I was there when Mari read that shit. It’s both for sure, but mostly Jackie.”

There’s a light, playful tap to Jeff’s bicep. “Even better. That’s a win, man.”

Another boy jokes, “Hey, if Jackie won’t take you back, she’s the next best thing. Just throw a wig on her and ask her to lose a few pounds; I’m sure she’d be happy to pretend.”

The whole group erupts. Jeff shoves one of them away tiredly. Shauna’s trembling fingers finally wrench her locker door open a little too aggressively.

At least two dozen folded up pieces of paper come tumbling out of her locker, spilling out onto the floor at her feet. The hall quiets slightly as those closest to her notice, including Jeff and his friends. 

She doesn’t look at the boys, just reaches out for one of the few notes that hadn’t fallen. There’s a pit in her stomach that she knows is her gut telling her this isn’t good. 

She unfolds it, reads it. Maybe we should give you what you want. 

She doesn’t understand it. But there’s an ominous undercurrent to it—to all of this—that has unwanted tears pricking at the corners of her eyes anyway. 

Another hasn’t been folded tightly enough, and she can read the words a fucking freak written in a scrawl neater than the one on the note in her hand. She knows then that these aren’t from just one person. 

She grasps at a third, swallowing thickly, opening it even though she knows now that she shouldn’t. She can feel so many pairs of eyes on her. The writing on this one doesn’t match either of the first two.

Can’t wait til you leave Wiskayok and we never have to see your ugly dyke face again.

She reads another: a fourth writing sample.

Jeff and Jackie will NEVER want you, loser.

And another.

CREEP. Just do us all a favor and stay home for the rest of the year.

She’s unfolding another and trying to make out the words through bleary vision when someone appears at her side and yanks it out of her hand, and she doesn’t realize it’s Nat until she murmurs gruffly, “C’mon, Shauna; just get your stuff.”

Shauna grabs two textbooks robotically and lets Nat steer her away. When she glances over her shoulder, she sees her classmates snickering and Lottie kneeling in front of her locker, collecting the scraps of paper to throw them all away.

-

She makes it through her first class by keeping her head down and saying nothing.

She makes it through her second by moving seats to sit next to Tai. 

“I heard,” Tai greets her carefully before class starts, while others are still filing in and chattering around them. Many of them seem to be ignoring Tai’s and Shauna’s presence entirely, or at least pretending to—which Shauna’s quickly learning is the kindest form her ostracization comes in. 

Quietly, Shauna tries for a joke, like it might make herself feel better. “I’m not sure whether I’m more offended by the slurs and insults or by the fact that apparently the takeaway for some people was that I like Jackie and Jeff.”

Tai takes it in stride, playing along with a raised eyebrow and a quipped, “A lot of straight people act like the world revolves around men.”

Shauna knows what had done it. That stupid fourth entry in her journal. The one about wanting to kiss Jeff and be Jackie. Maybe it’s a good thing that it’s being given so much attention, that to their classmates he isn’t just the afterthought Shauna knows he is. Maybe it means there’s less heat on her feelings for Jackie somehow. Less heat on Jackie, rather. Jeff is sharing the humiliation, the punishment. 

She decides she won’t correct anyone—not that any of them have bothered to ask her anything, let alone talk to her at all.

Her third period is Physics with Jackie. Shauna gets there early and sits alone in the back at Misty’s old table. She takes out her textbook and notebook and keeps her eyes down as the first few students file in.

She tells herself not to look, but she can’t help but do it anyway. Her eyes flicker to the open door at the entrance, and then in front of herself, and her pulse jumps when Jackie’s already there, also early, her back to Shauna as she settles too carefully into her seat, spine ramrod straight. She shivers slightly as soon as Shauna’s eyes are on her, and something flutters in Shauna’s stomach as she wonders if Jackie just knows somehow, if she can feel Shauna looking at her. She wonders what she’s thinking, if she’s okay. If she regrets giving into her parents and saying what she’d said. What they’re going to say to each other later when they’re alone. She clutches her pencil tight in her hand, worried and anxious and hopeful and confused all at once.

Someone laughs meanly and Shauna wrenches her eyes away to follow the noise. Two girls are watching her, leaning in close to each other and whispering, and Shauna knows she’s been caught staring.

Her cheeks burn. She drops her eyes to her notebook again. 

Still, she can feel a tug in her chest—even as class starts, even as she tries to keep her eyes off of Jackie and on the chalkboard at the front of the room. She’s not imagining it: the invisible pull between them. She knows Jackie isn’t paying attention either. That she’s thinking of her free period right after lunch.

She realizes she’s staring again and hastily blinks herself out of it. 

When their class ends, Shauna leaves quickly. 

She drags herself through the day, through the looks and the whispers, and by lunch she almost feels immune to them. The notes in her locker and Jeff’s stupid friends have been the worst of it, and she’d expected to cry more today than she has. It feels like the emotions have been building and building and she’s been fighting them off, but it’s getting easier somehow, not harder. 

Their opinions don’t matter, ultimately, is what it is. They’d used to. She’d certainly fantasized about being popular and beloved in the past, but all she’d ever really wanted was Jackie’s approval. To love Jackie and be loved back. Not knowing where she and Jackie stand is a far worse fate than being taunted by people she’ll never see again in three weeks. It doesn’t make them less dangerous and less awful, but it does make them fade into the background when Jackie’s around.

She’s there at lunch, sitting in her same spot with the same other friends, picking at her food like she doesn’t have much of an appetite. But Mari’s seat is empty beside her now—permanently vacated, Shauna imagines. She wonders what Jackie’s let them think the reason for it is. In their world, is it Shauna or one of her friends taking the blame for Mari’s face after some hypothetical second confrontation later on in the day? Or maybe Jackie had confessed to doing it herself. Maybe she’d even defended Shauna a little, acted like her feelings were unwanted but that Mari had been just as terrible for revealing them. That’d be something, at least. Progress. Jackie standing up for her publicly, drawing a line somewhere. Finding a way to show that she cares without outing herself.

Nat, the first to join Shauna at their usual table, takes a leaf out of Tai’s book and tries to lighten the mood by teasing her gently, “Well, you’re definitely taking advantage of not having to hide it anymore.”

Shauna tears her eyes from Jackie and rolls them at Nat. Lottie joins them next. Neither of them say anything about this morning, but Lottie checks in with a quick, “You okay?”

Shauna nods. “Fine.” She isn’t, truly, but only because she’s too preoccupied with what comes next after lunch. Jackie’s free period. Shauna skipping class to meet her. 

She glances at Jackie again, eyes flickering to her and away. Then she processes what she’s seen, and her eyes dart back.

Mari’s settling into the seat beside Jackie, murmuring something to her, and Jackie’s answering with a tight smile and a nod, scooting slightly to make room for her. The others at the table greet Mari kindly, pretending not to notice her healing wounds, and they all fall into easy conversation. 

Like nothing had happened. Like Mari hadn’t ruined them just to hurt Shauna, and Jackie hadn’t clawed at her for it. Jackie’s arm is so close to Mari’s that they’re brushing slightly, and something has settled into Shauna’s chest like an anchor. 

Nat notices first: the way Shauna’s gone stone-faced and tense, the way she’s staring like she’s looking through something. “Shauna,” she says sharply, following her gaze. “Don’t—“

But Shauna’s already up, already storming away—not to Jackie, as Nat had maybe feared, but away from the quad, somewhere she can be alone to sort out how she feels about this.

She never gets that far. She doesn’t get further than thirty feet, actually, before she tosses another glance in Jackie’s direction at the exact wrong time, not looking where she’s going, and bumps hard into someone. She throws her arm out on instinct, hand brushing something soft, and her head swivels around as she regains her balance, her eyes landing on a girl she recognizes from the cheerleading squad, who’s frozen and gaping at Shauna in disgusted offense, a sack lunch in one hand and an open, half-finished fruit punch Snapple in the other. “What the fuck?” she barks at Shauna, too loud to avoid drawing attention to them. “You just tried to fucking grope my chest.”

“What?” Shauna huffs out, screwing her face up. “No I d—” She blanches, suddenly doused in liquid, red splattering across her white Yellowjackets shirt and her light grey flannel. Some of it drips from her chin and the ends of her hair, and she can hear laughter starting to spill out around her.

The girl steps past her, smug, and Shauna’s eyes follow her darkly, watching her lips sneer out an added, “That’s for Jackie, too. Dyke.”

Shauna holds herself back, fists clenching, cheeks flaming, and looks past her. Nat and Lottie are already rising to their feet like they’re going to come help her. But then Nat pauses, eyes flickering in another direction, past tables of giggling students, and Shauna follows her gaze right to Jackie, who’s already popped up out of her seat unthinkingly—even faster than Nat and Lottie had—and seems to have caught herself standing up at her table, unsure of what to do with herself, the rest of her friends watching her with a mixture of confusion and curiosity.

And it’s Mari, shockingly, who taps at Jackie’s hand as though to snap her out of it, then exchanges a look with her.

Shauna can’t read it. She doesn’t know what to think. 

But then Jackie’s swallowing hard and fumbling over the bench she’d been sitting on, moving away from her table, marching straight toward Shauna in front of everyone. Dozens of eyes follow her as she closes the distance between them, takes Shauna abruptly by the arm, and leads her away.

Shauna’s heart starts going haywire. “What are you doing?” she mumbles as they fast-walk toward the school together, leaving uncertain rumblings from their classmates in their wake. “Nat and Lottie were coming.”

“I have a spare shirt in my locker,” Jackie says curtly, but the nervousness in her tone is clear. “It’s fine.”

They don’t speak again for a minute; Shauna’s too shell-shocked, even as Jackie takes her to the girls’ locker room, unhands her arm, and collects a towel from one of the cabinets along the wall. Shauna watches her hands shake as she closes the cabinet door. Jackie clutches the towel tightly and returns to Shauna by the sinks, settling in front of her, searching her eyes carefully for a moment before she starts to gently wipe the sticky drink from Shauna’s chin and neck. Jackie’s eyes, watery and shimmering, follow her own movements.

Shauna doesn’t know what to say, and Jackie doesn’t say anything to her either. For a moment, she turns away to wet a part of the towel, and then it’s on Shauna’s collar where the bone is peeking out above Shauna’s stained shirt. 

“I think it’s almost gone,” Jackie says quietly, finally, lifting the towel to dab carefully at Shauna’s jaw, then squeezing it around some of her hair. The strands are sticky and clumped afterward, and Jackie combs her fingers through them. Her hand comes away red, and she bites her lip, blinks out a couple of tears, wipes it on a clean part of the towel, and keeps trying.

Shauna feels so small and uncertain. “It’s okay, Jackie,” she mumbles. “You should just go.”

Jackie shakes her head, her jaw tightening the way it always does when she’s particularly determined about something. Shauna recognizes it best from the soccer field. “I can get it.”

“I need to shower,” Shauna presses gently. Jackie’s hands are shaking again. “It’s not—”

“Just—” Jackie interrupts her, frustrated, but the towel’s just turning redder and wetting Shauna’s hair with the sink isn’t doing enough. Jackie falters, then her face crumples and she drops the towel to the floor, her lips pressing tight as she covers her face with her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whimpers. “For the other day, and… all of it. For what that girl just said to you.”

Shauna’s throat aches with the effort of keeping herself from crying. “You have to go back,” she makes herself say, trying to stay focused on what matters. “That was bad, Jax.”

“I know.” Jackie wipes at her cheeks and takes in a deep, shuddering breath, her eyes on Shauna’s. “I’ll fix it.”

“I know,” Shauna echoes. “Do what you have to do.”

She knows what she’s giving Jackie permission to do. Overcompensate if she has to. Make up some story about feeling sad for her ex-best friend who’d wronged her. Maybe even act like something had happened now, while they were alone, that had made her regret giving Shauna her empathy. Whatever it takes. 

“I don’t think we can meet today anymore,” Jackie whispers. “If you don’t show up to class after lunch now…”

Shauna nods. She gets it. “Yeah.”

“Would you have?” Jackie asks her nervously, carefully. “Met me?”

Shauna’s eyes soften. “Of course.” One second of doubt and her fear of the outcome aside, she wouldn’t have missed it for the world. 

Some of the tension leaves Jackie’s shoulders, and she’s visibly relieved. “Okay.” She looks toward the door to the locker room, staring, almost like she’s waiting to see if someone will burst in on them again. 

When no one does, she grabs Shauna by the hand and leads her away from the door and the sinks, pulling her along until they can turn one corner, and then another, until they find themselves as far from the door as they can get. “What are you—?” Shauna starts to ask, but Jackie cups her cheek and steps in close, nudging her body backward into the lockers and kissing her firmly. Relief and want flood Shauna’s chest, but she shoves her desire down. They can’t do this here. Jackie needs to go, and— “Jax,” she whispers into her mouth, pressing a warning hand to her shoulder to stop her, separating them with gentle pressure. Jackie exhales hard against her lips, trembling like she thinks this is a rejection. But Shauna only says, “Your shirt.”

It’s dangerously close to Shauna’s damp, stained flannel, and Jackie immediately glances down, checking herself. Shauna watches her, lips parted, breathing elevated, finding nothing on the material. Jackie comes to the same conclusion, then only seems to consider something for a moment before she reaches for the hem of her shirt and pulls her top up and off. She tosses it onto the nearest bench and then presses her body to Shauna’s, grabbing at her with both hands now, her bra getting damp instead as she kisses Shauna greedily, like she isn’t sure when she’ll get to do it again. 

Shauna shuts her eyes tight and groans, grasping at Jackie’s bare waist, kissing back just as fervently, recognizing this for what it is now: a stolen moment, a risk Jackie’s decided she’s willing to take, an advance Shauna doesn’t have it in her to say no to regardless of how hurt she is and how little time they have to indulge it. Jackie’s not looking to end things between them. Jackie’s desperate for it not to end.

Jackie’s hand winds around her neck and tugs her closer, crushing their mouths together, pouring so much into it that Shauna can do nothing but whimper against her and try to keep up. They’re both trembling now, and Shauna’s hands are roaming over every inch of exposed skin she can find like she’s trying to memorize it all. She grips at Jackie’s thigh, cups her breast through her bra, and Jackie has to leave soon because the longer they spend doing this the more Jackie might have to explain away later, which means that Shauna should stop this.

But it’s Jackie who finally breaks the kiss and rests their foreheads together, breathing hard, hands clutching at Shauna’s flannel tightly like she doesn’t want to let her go. Her eyes closed, she brushes their noses together and then asks, voice pained and cracking, “Has it been that bad all day?”

Shauna knows what she’s asking. “No,” she lies. “It’s fine. Nobody’s said anything. They’re just ignoring me.”

“Okay.” Jackie sounds only mildly relieved. “I’ll tell people to leave you alone. I’ll say you’re…” She swallows hard, still flushed and out of breath from their kissing. “That you were still my best friend, and I don’t want anyone bothering you.” She presses her lips to Shauna’s again, long and lingering, and then one last time: shorter, a peck. She pulls away sniffling, and Shauna watches her turn and collect her shirt. It’s dark in color, safe to pull on even with a couple of slight splotches of pink staining her bra underneath. 

Shauna can’t find it in herself to be angry about Mari right now, but she also can’t not ask about her while she has the chance. “You took Mari back.”

Jackie finishes pulling her shirt on, growing stiff, eyes lowered. “I told her she could still sit with us if she didn’t tell anyone the truth about me and you. Or about what I did to her. She promised to make something up about her face.” Her gaze lifts to Shauna’s, the guilt in it transparently clear. The rest of her explanation goes unspoken: Mari can make up excuses about her cat or whatever else all she wants, but it’s all but certain that everyone will assume Shauna is the culprit.

“Did she hurt you back?” Shauna checks, searching what parts of Jackie she can see now, seeking out scrapes and scratches and bruises and finding nothing.

Jackie shakes her head. “No. It wasn’t like that. She just tried to push me away.” Something dark flickers behind Jackie’s eyes now. “It took her a minute.”

“Okay.” Shauna takes a deep breath, gearing herself up for one last question. “And your parents…?”

“I’ll live.” Jackie gives her a wavering smile, tears immediately starting to brim behind her eyes again. “It’s you I’m worried about.” When Shauna doesn’t say anything, Jackie blinks out a few of them and then visibly tries to collect herself. “Okay. We should get that shirt for you.”

“I can just wear this,” Shauna tries to reassure her again. “Everyone will hear about what happened anyway. You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” Jackie gives her eyes and cheeks one final wipe, taking in a shaky, calming breath. “We can just get it really quickly. It’ll only take a minute. You can rinse your hair in here and then change into it before lunch ends.”

They leave the towel on the floor of the locker room for Shauna to clean up later, and Shauna follows Jackie out self-consciously, grateful for the empty halls as they make their way to Jackie’s locker. They don’t speak in public initially, even with no one else around. Shauna watches Jackie enter her combination and feels paranoid as they stand out in the open together, even though she knows she shouldn’t. The entire senior class had already seen them exit the quad together. They’re not even touching each other. There’s nothing additional to discover just by looking at them.

Jackie opens her locker and then gives a start. There’s a small pile of folded notes sitting in her locker, not unlike the much larger pile that had been in Shauna’s this morning.

Shauna’s heart shoots up into her throat. Fear squeezes her chest tight as she watches Jackie reach into her locker to read one of them. Someone had found out about Jackie. Mari. She’d been angry after the confrontation with Shauna and gone back on her word, outed Jackie in revenge, all because Shauna hadn’t just kept her cool and—

Jackie’s tense, uncertain expression softens into something foreign but unmistakably hurt as she takes in the message on the note. Her eyes well up and her lips tremble, and Shauna can’t read the note from where she is but she’s already seen enough. “Jax,” she breathes, “I’m so sorry.”

Jackie’s eyes lift to hers and there’s something so pained in them, something… upset, and sad, and… and there’s no fear, no panic. Just a guilty devastation that Shauna feels all the way to her bones. 

Jackie’s fingers tremble as she offers Shauna the note. Shauna takes it and reads it.

Jeff and Jackie will NEVER want you, loser.

Shauna’s confused for all of two seconds. Then it clicks. She remembers Lottie collecting the notes this morning. Shauna hadn’t stuck around to see her ever throw them away. She’d slipped some of them into Jackie’s locker for Jackie to find. So that Jackie would know. So that Shauna couldn’t protect her from it.

Shauna crumples the note in her fist, teeth clenched, her chest burning hotter by the millisecond. Jackie reaches for another note and Shauna shoots forward to grab at her wrist. “Don’t.”

“These were left in your locker,” Jackie rasps, connecting the dots. She pulls out of Shauna’s grip and snatches another up. 

“Jackie,” Shauna tries. “I didn’t put them here. Don’t read them.”

But Jackie’s already opening it, flinching at whatever it says inside. Fresh tears fill her eyes. “You lied to me. You were gonna keep this from me.”

“It’s just people being stupid.” Shauna avoids her gaze. “I didn’t care. Lottie must’ve just—”

“Didn’t care?” Jackie takes in a shaky breath, opening another, reading it, and then her eyes squeeze shut and tears roll down her cheeks. “These are horrible.”

Shauna sees this one: How’s this for a journal entry: Shauna, the world would be a better place without—

She doesn’t finish it, just takes it from Jackie and then rips it up and lets it fall. “I didn’t even read most of them.”

“Don’t do that,” Jackie warns her with alarm, her voice thick and uneven. “You have to show them to Principal Berzonsky. Or Coach Ben. These people can’t just—”

“Just what?” Shauna cuts her off, exasperated. “Walk past my locker in a crowded hallway and slip a note in? Should a teacher stand guard at my locker all day to stop them? It’s bad enough that every time Coach Ben’s gotten anywhere near me today he’s just been giving me these sad puppy looks. I was relieved when Berzonsky was too chickenshit to bring up what Mari and I were fighting about after he called us into his office. You really think I’d want that kind of attention? Or that it’d help?”

Jackie looks back at her, lip trembling. “I don’t know.” She glances back to the pile in her locker and says again, helplessly, “I don’t know.”

“I’m fine.” Shauna kneels and starts gathering the bits of torn and crumpled paper on the floor. “It’s just over two more weeks. I’ll get through it.”

“Someone hit Van,” Jackie says, like she’s really thinking about it now, like everything’s finally setting in. “You could get—”

“I know.” Shauna’s more than well-aware. She wouldn’t be shocked if it happens at least once before graduation. She can tell she’s more hated than Van and Tai ever were. She’s just hoping she’ll be able to hide it from her mother. “Ratting out some stupid notes isn’t going to make me safer. If anything, it’ll just piss them off more.” She straightens up, finally, and nudges Jackie aside to get access to her locker. Jackie stumbles out of the way, looking more lost than Shauna’s ever seen her. “Just go back to the quad, Jackie. I’ll grab your shirt after I throw these away.”

Jackie sounds so meek behind her when she tries, gently, “Shauna—”

“It’s not,” Shauna interjects sharply, throwing her a severe glance over her shoulder that makes Jackie’s eyes widen with hurt, “really your problem anymore, is it? We’re not even supposed to be friends. You shouldn’t be seen here with me or you’ll have to make up some excuse about feeling sorry for me.” She crumples the last of the notes into a fist. “You’re better off acting like you don’t care. Please just go. Take care of yourself. People are already gonna start to talk, and you have way more to lose than me.”

But Jackie just stares at her, wide-eyed and shaken, like she’s not sure what to say or do. Shauna watches her blink herself out of it, eyes following Shauna as Shauna moves to toss the notes in the nearest garbage can. Jackie’s body straightens, her jaw tightens. “I’m not—” Jackie starts determinedly, but her voice catches and Shauna watches her gulp. “I was never going to abandon you.” Even as she says it, she’s glancing up and down the halls to ensure that they’re still alone. 

Shauna retrieves the shirt from Jackie’s locker and closes the door. She feels so tired, suddenly. If this is what a conversation in the equipment shed would’ve been, maybe it’s best that they can’t have it today. “You sort of already did,” she says gently, not saying it to be mean, to start a fight. It’s just true. It’s just a horrible choice Jackie had been forced to make. “And the best thing for you is to stick to it until you’re ready, even if it means we can’t see each other right now.” She watches the way Jackie’s expression loosens and softens into something achy and pained. Shauna’s chest pangs with the guilt of inducing it, but she knows the truth of her own words with too much certainty not to say them. “Don’t stick up for me in front of everyone like that again, Jax. Don’t give people any more ammo. It’s not worth it.”

She makes herself turn and go before anyone can show up and find them like this: bodies shaking, tearfully staring at each other. There’s a bitter taste in her mouth, a sharp bite to her parting words that she hadn’t intended but that had come out anyway.

It’s there in Jackie’s words, too, when she calls out after Shauna without warning, “You’re not worth it, you mean? Don’t I get to decide that? You really think I can just watch people treat you like this and do nothing?”

Shauna pauses, eyebrows furrowing, a silent puff of air leaving her lips. She swallows down a flicker of frustration before she turns back to Jackie. 

Jackie thinks she’s said something that matters. Or implied something, maybe. Her arms are crossed, her eyes are intense. She’s staring back at Shauna like this exchange means so much more to Jackie than it should.

Shauna would laugh if she weren’t so exhausted. “I don’t know what you think you mean by that, Jackie, but I can’t let you give me hope anymore. My spirit’s fucking broken. I’m just doing what I have to so that there can be an us someday.” She shrugs, aware of the slight quiver in Jackie’s tight expression. “What you’re going through is horrific, and I know you feel like keeping this a secret is just what makes sense for you right now. I love you, and I get it. I’ll live, too. I’ll survive.” She exhales heavily, her shoulders dropping. Jackie’s eyes take in the sight of her trying not to crumble under the weight of her own confession. “I’ll be around if you need to talk, okay? Just reach out to Nat. Let me know when you figure out what you want to do about this summer.”

With that, she goes. 

Jackie sniffs behind her, like she’s starting to cry again, but doesn’t try to stop her.

Chapter 30

Shauna showers.

After, she towel-dries her hair and then pulls Jackie’s shirt on, trying not to think about the way it’s a little tight on her, about Jeff’s friend this morning and ask her to lose a few pounds.

She spends her free period, when it comes, tucked away in the corner of the library, sitting on the ground between the shelves where she hopes she’ll be able to just get away from everyone for an hour. It takes fifteen minutes for some freshman or sophomore to wander into her line of sight and stare at her like he’s trying to figure out if she’s that girl everyone’s talking about. It drives her away to the bleachers outside instead. 

The rest of her day is uneventful by comparison. She’s still largely numbed to the looks and the iciness and the whispers. She thinks about how Jackie would handle it all were she ever in Shauna’s position and feels like it’d break her. Jackie actually cares. She’s fed off of these peoples’ admiration of her for too long to not. 

She avoids her friends for as long as she can, because decking Lottie seems like a bad idea—particularly on school grounds—and she also just doesn’t have the energy for it, especially after her talk with Jackie. She wonders what Jackie’d had to say to her friends afterward. 

Shauna and I were friends for so long, and I know all of those things she wrote about me were fucked up but I don’t want everyone to make her life miserable for it. I just felt bad for her.

Probably something like that. You’re so nice, Jackie, her friends would say back. She doesn’t deserve how kind you’re being to her. 

Van and the others are waiting for her out in the parking lot after, and Shauna tenses up upon sight of them, eyes zeroing in on Lottie, who steps forward with a calm self-assurance that only manages to make Shauna simmer even hotter under her skin. 

“Not today,” she bites out, shouldering past her in pursuit of getting to her car. “Leave me alone.”

Nat, to her credit, seems to understand that her anger, while aimed in the general vicinity of all of them, seems largely directed at one person, and sighs out, “What did you do, Lottie?”

It gives Shauna pause, and she turns around with a scowl. “You don’t know?”

“It was my idea, too,” Laura Lee blurts, and both Tai and Van fix her with confused looks. They don’t seem to know anything either. “I mean. Lottie saved it all and asked me if Jackie should know, and I came up with how to tell her.”

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” Tai interjects. 

“Lottie took those shitty notes people left in my locker this morning and put them in Jackie’s for her to find,” Shauna snaps. 

Tai grimaces. Van flinches and then asks, “Seriously, guys? Have some tact here.”

“I did,” Lottie insists. “I picked out the ones that were obviously directed at Shauna so that she wouldn’t mistake them as being for her, and I was going to let her know beforehand that I left something in her locker too. But I didn’t get a chance before lunch, and then she rushed off with Shauna.” There’s a note of curiosity in her tone at the end, but Shauna doesn’t have any intention of satisfying it.

Much to Shauna’s horror, Van considers the explanation and then just says, “Well, she did need to know, I guess.”

“No,” Shauna cuts in, fuming. “What the fuck, Van? No she didn’t.”

Nat says dryly, “Oh, she wants to play hero.”

“Fuck you.” Shauna whirls away from them, storming off.

“Shauna,” Van calls after her, audibly frustrated. “Come on. You know Jackie wouldn’t want that stuff hidden from her.”

“You don’t get it,” Shauna snaps back.

“We really do!” Tai shouts as Shauna extends the distance between them. “Shauna! You can’t protect her! The whole fucking school knows what’s happening to you!”

Shauna stiffens by her car, fingers on the handle, and clenches her jaw. There’s something about her own friends reminding her of it all that’s particularly humiliating. 

Everyone knows how much of an outcast you are now. Everyone talks about you and about what’s being said and done to you. Jackie would’ve heard about it all anyway.

She glares over her shoulder at them, raising her voice just enough for it to carry. “Don’t show up at my house again today. I won’t let you in this time.”

Then she gets into her car, slams the door, and drives away.

-

For the first time in three days, Shauna and her mother eat dinner alone. Shauna knows she should do a better job of acting aloof. She shouldn’t be so quiet, so sullen, and shouldn’t pick at her food with a lowered gaze and tense shoulders.

Her mother would have to be completely oblivious not to notice it all. Shauna must be telegraphing it loud and clear, in fact, because Ms. Shipman opens with, “How about you stay home tomorrow? Take a break.”

“I don’t need a break,” Shauna says gruffly. “I have twelve more days. I’ll be fine.”

“Shauna.” Her mother waits until Shauna’s eyes reluctantly lift to her and then says, “If there’s more going on at school than you’re telling me—”

“I’m just sad about Jackie,” Shauna interrupts. “Okay? And school’s the only place I can see her. I don’t wanna stay home.” She lowers her gaze back to her food, prodding at it with her fork. “I don’t wanna talk about it, either. I get it; everyone cares. Just leave me alone.” She’s not hungry, really. 

“Shauna,” her mother tries again, and Shauna just rises from the table and slides out her chair, taking her plate to the kitchen and leaving it on the counter next to the sink.

She glances over at the dining table before she goes upstairs and wishes she hadn’t; the sight of her mother—leaning forward, defeated, elbows on the table and eyes closed, forehead in her hands and thumbs rubbing at her temples—lingers with Shauna all the way up to her room. 

-

She can’t sleep. It’s not that she doesn’t try, but after hours of tossing and turning she knows she feels like something’s missing. It’s her first night alone since Mari and the journal. 

She doesn’t need them. She’s not a fucking child. But her room feels strangely empty and so does her stomach.

At just after three in the morning, Shauna shuffles downstairs in the darkness until she reaches the kitchen and opens the fridge. Her dinner plate is there, wrapped in plastic, and Shauna’s chest goes tight at the sight of it. Her throat’s aching faintly by the time it’s being reheated in the microwave. None of this is her mom’s fault. Shauna knows she could’ve been kinder. 

She almost has the last of her dinner down when the phone in the kitchen rings. Shauna immediately rechecks the time. 3:34 AM. Who would call her house in the middle of the night? And why?

She lurches from the dining table and hurries over, practically wrenching the phone off of the receiver. “Hello?” she asks, forgetting to whisper.

There’s a brief silence, and then the voice on the other end is so soft and quiet and surprised. “Hey. You’re awake.”

Shauna sinks to the kitchen floor, pressing the phone tightly to her ear, fingers squeezing it so hard it hurts. “Hey,” she murmurs.

“I couldn’t sleep.” Shauna hears Jackie sniff. “I mean, I usually can’t now. I figured it was a longshot, but I thought maybe you couldn’t either. Please don’t be mad I called.”

“I’m not mad,” Shauna says immediately. “Why would I be mad?”

“You were mad today,” Jackie reminds her. She sounds nervous. “Because I risked things.”

“I just don’t want you to lose everything without having a choice in it, Jax.”

“That’s the thing,” Jackie says quietly. “Today was a choice.”

Shauna doesn’t know what to make of that. “It’s not the same,” she says, finally. “You know what I mean. You just reacted. That’s different.”

Jackie doesn’t say anything, and Shauna closes her eyes and lets the silence stretch, listening to Jackie’s breathing. 

“Are you safe there?” she asks Jackie after a moment. “Are you hiding right now?”

“If I hear footsteps, I can hang up before they see me,” Jackie reassures her. “I’ll be fine.”

“What about…?” Shauna searches for the right words. “Are they being nice?”

She can feel Jackie’s hesitation. “I don’t know. I think… I think they don’t know, but. They don’t bring it up at all, not even to say things about you, and sometimes it feels like it’s because they’re scared of what I’ll say if they do.” She pauses. “Or maybe I’m just worried that’s what it is. But I cried so hard after you left, Shauna.” Her voice cracks. “And not like how I was supposed to. Not like I was grossed out or felt betrayed or was just sad about losing my friend.”

Shauna breathes in deep, trying to keep her own emotions in check. “I miss you,” she whispers. “I’m sorry I snapped at you today. I just… didn’t want things to get worse for you than they already are.”

“I know you wanna protect me,” Jackie whispers. “I wanna protect you too. I don’t think I can stop.”

“People will think—”

“I know. Maybe just some of them.”

“All of them,” Shauna says knowingly. “Jackie.”

Jackie falls silent again. Shauna closes her eyes and waits.

“Maybe I forgive you,” Jackie suggests tentatively. Shauna knows it’s ridiculous. 

“Mari read aloud to most of the senior class that I fantasize about what you sound like in bed, want to marry you, and kissed your ex-boyfriend to be you. They heard her say that I wanted to live in your skin.”

Jackie sounds like she knows it’s ridiculous too when she says, “Yeah.”

“Not to mention it’ll take a day at most for it to get back to your parents that you’re being nice to me again.”

More silence. Shauna senses there’s something Jackie’s thinking that she either doesn’t want to say or isn’t sure she should. 

“Okay,” is what she does say. She sounds near tears. “I… I just don’t know if I can do this.”

Shauna’s heart lurches and then plummets. “What?”

“Just…” Jackie’s voice cracks again. “I love you. This is really hard. It feels like… like there’s no point.”

Shauna takes a deep breath, a heavy weight settling in her stomach. She thinks Jackie means their relationship. It certainly sounds like it. “No point to what?”

“Anything.” Jackie sounds hollower now. “Just. Any of it. I’m so tired. My parents will hate me and I’ve tried so hard for so long to be what they wanted, what everyone wanted, and everyone else will hate me too, and I can’t help you and it feels like it’s my fault that you’re going through all of this in the first place. Every day of my life has felt like a lie for months now and the only person who makes me happy is getting tortured for it and there’s nothing I can do about it without ruining everything else.” She takes in a loud, shaky breath, and Shauna’s frozen against the kitchen cabinet, very aware that Jackie isn’t talking about them right now, that she means something worse. “You could be normal, if— I just know you have this amazing future ahead of you no matter what happens to—”

“Jackie,” Shauna cuts in sharply, staring hard at the floor in front of herself, her vision going bleary. “Shut the fuck up. Shut up. You don’t mean that.”

“I’m sorry.” Jackie’s crying quietly now. 

“I’ll come pick you up right now,” Shauna insists, squeezing the phone tight, trying to calm her racing heart. All she needs is Jackie’s permission. “I can be there in ten minutes.”

“And blow my whole life up,” Jackie says faintly.

“Yes. It has to be better than this. You’re scaring me, Jax.”

“I’m just upset,” Jackie tries to reassure her, her tone laced with shame and guilt. “I… I shouldn’t have said that.” She sounds the wrong kind of regretful. Like she just wishes she hadn’t revealed it. 

“I can’t do any of this without you, Jackie. You get that, right?” Shauna wipes at her eyes, trying to clear her vision, but more tears are coming fast. “We’re getting that house with the office and the garden. And we’re gonna hang out at places like that bar in Atlantic City, and one day we’ll get rings, too.”

Jackie sniffs and says quietly, “For all we know we might both have gray hair in our wedding photos.”

Shauna smiles, cheeks wet, relieved that Jackie has it in her to make a joke about it, at least. Even if she’s just doing it so that Shauna will stop panicking. “That’s okay. It just means I got to spend the rest of my life watching you go gray.” 

Jackie just breathes into the line, saying nothing, and Shauna pretends not to know that she’s still crying.

“Let’s stay here for a little while,” Shauna tries. “Let’s do this every night if we can, just for a little bit. We can set our alarms for three and then you can call me. We don’t even have to talk. Just don’t fall asleep.”

“I won’t. I’ll stay up.”

“Promise?” Shauna closes her eyes. “Promise you’ll stay here with me?”

“Okay,” Jackie says softly. “I promise.”

-

She finds Mari with perfect timing right after first period: coming out of one of the bathrooms as Shauna’s heading past it toward her second class of the day.

Shauna spots her and is on her in an instant, gripping her arm tight and yanking her the few needed feet back to the bathroom before Mari even has time to process it. A couple of heads turn as Shauna shoves her inside, but no one interferes.

The bathroom’s empty. Mari finally manages a clipped, “What the—?” and when Shauna pushes her up against the counter she cuts herself off with a sharp, “Ow! What the fuck, Shauna, Jesus!”

Shauna’s glare is so intense that when Mari catches sight of it she wilts immediately. “You wanna be Jackie’s best friend?” Shauna asks her curtly, voice low and deadly serious. “You wanna be me so fucking badly?”

Regaining some bravery, Mari scoffs and tries to shove her back, but Shauna just grabs her wrists and pins her hands to the countertop. “Fucking ow, what are you—?“

“Listen to me.” Shauna squeezes her wrists until Mari stops struggling and lets out a quiet whine. “You think you were up her ass before?” Mari grimaces like she wants to protest, but Shauna doesn’t give her the opportunity. “You’re gonna do what I used to. Follow her around. Go to her house whenever you can. Do what she wants, keep her company, make her day better. Be fucking nice for once in your life. I don’t care if she asks you to stop. You’re on Jackie duty until graduation.”

She loosens her grip, her point made, and Mari snarks, “Do I have to fuck her, too?”

Shauna ignores that. “Say you’ll do it.”

“Jackie’s not exactly my type.” Shauna clamps down hard on her wrists again. “Okay! Okay!”

“You owe me after what you did,” Shauna warns her while Mari squirms against her. 

“I said okay!” Shauna lets her go, finally, and Mari winces as she rubs at her wrists. “And what exactly am I supposed to do when she tells me to fuck off?”

“She won’t.” Shauna thinks it over. “Not in public, anyway, and not in front of her parents. And you’re gonna find a way to make her want you around. She needs a real friend. Someone she can actually talk to about things.”

“Are you crazy? She already fucked up my face,” Mari reminds her sourly. The evidence of it is still faint on her cheek. “She’s not gonna talk to the person who outed her girlfriend about her feelings or her problems or whatever the fuck. She’s being nice because she has to, but she hates me now.”

“I hate you,” Shauna corrects. “Jackie liked you before. Find a way to make her like you again. At least… enough.”

Mari settles back against the counter with a sigh, and for the first time in her life Shauna just stands with Mari in contemplative silence and exists with her. It’s bizarre: feeling like they’re on the same team again. It’s clear that they hate each other. Jackie’s virtually the only thing they’ve ever had in common. 

Shauna takes a deep breath and then says, carefully, “Look. She’s not doing well. Okay? And it’s your fault. Unfortunately you’re all she has right now.”

Mari’s eyes flicker to her and then away, and Shauna watches something heavy settle into her shoulders. An invisible weight Shauna would like to think could be the guilt of it all.

“You’re dumb,” Mari mumbles, finally. “I don’t get the appeal, clearly, but Jackie’s way too into you to ever forgive me.”

“So tell her you apologized to me,” Shauna suggests, glancing toward the door. They’re probably running out of time. “Tell her whatever you need to. Tell her you want her to be able to talk about how she feels with someone. Just fix it as best as you can.” She steps back, turning away to go.

“Or what?” Mari asks her sharply. “You’ll threaten to kill me again?”

Shauna stiffens, clenches her fists, and makes herself leave without replying.

-

In second period, Tai greets her dryly, “In case you were planning on being a stubborn ass again today, you should know that Nat got suspended on all our behalves until next Tuesday. She’s banned from Prom, too.”

Shauna doesn’t even know what to say to that. “What? How?”

“Fight in the school parking lot after you left. With a boy from the baseball team.” Tai gives a half-hearted roll of her eyes. “He came up to us acting like an asshole; Lottie and Laura Lee and I couldn’t do anything on school grounds that might fuck up our college plans and I stopped Van when I reminded her about not screwing up our Prom.” 

She almost smiles as she goes on, taking her seat, and Shauna follows her lead. “Then Nat said she wasn’t going to college and didn’t care about Prom and kneed him in the dick. Berzonsky was on the way to his car and saw him rolling around on the ground. She’s out for three days. Lottie’s skipping today to keep her company—and probably isn’t exactly devastated that she gets to avoid you, too. Anyway, it’ll just be the five of us this Saturday, I guess.” 

Shauna forces a laugh. “Oh, I’m not going to Prom.”

“What?” Tai seems confused, like this doesn’t make sense to her. It throws Shauna off. She’d assumed this was obvious. “Why not? Didn’t you buy a dress?”

“That was before.” Shauna digs through her backpack for her notebook and textbook with a shrug. “Why would I go?”

“I don’t know, because it’s Prom?” Tai’s eyebrows furrow. “If you’re trying to avoid people, why not just skip as much of the last two weeks of school as you can while you’re at it, then?”

“Spite, mostly,” Shauna half-jokes, before adding seriously, “And other reasons.” Things about Jackie that she can’t say within earshot of other people. 

“And those don’t apply to Prom?” Tai asks. Shauna hesitates. She does have a point. “C’mon. You have the dress. Lottie has a limo. We’ve even talked about staying over at her place on Friday to hang out and then getting ready together Saturday. Nat’ll be with us for that part. At least show up Friday with the dress and then decide on Saturday. You shouldn’t let some assholes screw it up for you. And…” Tai shoots her a knowing look and lowers her voice. “I know you don’t wanna miss the crowns.”

“Alright, Jesus,” Shauna sighs out. “I’ll think about it.”

“You can borrow Van for a dance if you want,” Tai offers.

“Sure,” Shauna agrees half-heartedly, thinking of swaying with Jackie instead, wishing she lived in a reality where it could be something more than a pipe dream.

-

She makes it to lunch relatively unscathed. A few aggressive bumps in the hall, a couple of snarky comments, the usual looks. But no notes in her locker, no drinks in her face. 

She doesn’t think it’s genuinely helped, but Berzonsky had given a speech over the intercom in the morning: something vague about bullying and a zero-tolerance policy for violence. Shauna had kept her head down during it, bombarded with glances and longer looks throughout the whole thing. She’d assumed it was because of her—which was partially true. But she finds out from Van at the quad that Nat and Tai had been the catalysts.

“So this idiot’s dry-heaving on the ground,” Van recounts with enthusiasm, Tai sitting next to her, Laura Lee parked shyly next to Shauna and stealing glances at her like she’s worried Shauna might berate her at any moment for the notes in Jackie’s locker, “and Berzonsky’s pissed at Nat, right? And Tai just storms up to him out of nowhere, gets right in his face, like: ‘Maybe if you would just do your fucking job none of this would be happening!’ He didn’t know what to say. I thought he was gonna suspend her too, but then he just went back to blubbering at Nat about violence being unacceptable.”

“Ben’s pissed at him too,” Tai adds, and it takes Shauna an extra second to realize that she means their coach.

“You two are on a first name basis?” she notices.

“Well, he’s the only one who actually cares around here. We talk.”

“He’s kinda cute,” Laura Lee muses, smiling at them like she doesn’t expect them all to recoil from her. 

“Okay, Misty Quigley,” Van jokes. “He’s also gay.”

Tai frowns and swats her on the arm with a sharp, “Van.”

“I already knew,” Shauna says.

“I know you did,” Tai sighs out with a pointed look at Laura Lee, whose face immediately falls.

“Oh. But I wouldn’t say anything.” She looks around at them hopefully. “I’m, like, still part of the team, right?”

“Of course you are,” Van agrees. “Tai, stop being a bigot.”

Tai rolls her eyes despite her smile, and Shauna gives a short laugh.

“Shauna!” a boy shouts urgently on her right, and she turns with a jolt to see him approaching her with an open Gatorade. He shoots her a grin and gives it a sharp jerk, and the liquid sloshes as Shauna flinches back, but it stays in the bottle, not enough force applied, and he laughs and keeps walking past their table. 

“Oh, fuck you!” Van calls after him tiredly. Shauna just sighs and runs a hand through her hair, relieved.

A few tables away, both Mari and Jackie are looking at her while some of their friends chuckle at the spectacle. Jackie whirls around and says something harsh that makes them all falter and then look confused. 

Shauna chews on her lip, worried and uncertain, and then wrenches her gaze away. 

-

She goes out to the bleachers for her free period again, declaring the library a lost cause, especially with their final tests of the year approaching and more students spending their extra time studying. She’s distracted digging through her backpack for study materials of her own as she arrives, and already has a foot up on the first row when she realizes she isn’t alone.

It’s bad enough that she has company, but even worse is that that company is Jeff Sadecki, who’s apparently elected to sit here alone in front of the school’s biggest field with his head in his hands during what Shauna suspects must be his own free period. Or maybe he’s skipping class. When he lifts his head at the vibration from her foot landing and she sees his face is red and tear-stained, she suspects it might be the latter.

Shauna blinks at him, baffled. “Are you crying?”

“No,” he says hastily, wiping at his face haphazardly. “No, I just… I was running. I sweat a lot.”

Shauna stares at him for a beat, wondering what the hell she’s supposed to do now. “I need to spend my free period here.”

“Okay,” he says with a sniff, and then doesn’t move.

“Okay,” she says leadingly, stepping up fully onto the bleachers now. When he just nods at her, she lets out a quiet sigh and then walks to the end of them, placing herself as far away from him as she can and then resting her notebook on her lap.

It only takes a minute for his throat to clear and for him to say, conversationally, like she hasn’t had the most insane week of her life and he hasn’t been impacted by it either, “Crazy how close it all is to being over. Just two more weeks.”

Shauna takes a deep breath and rolls her eyes to herself. “Yep. Crazy.”

She’s made a mistake by responding; out of the corner of her eye she can see him tentatively rising to his feet and making his way closer.

“Hey. Uh.” He stops several feet away, but on the same row now, and asks, “Can we talk, actually? Since we’re both here?”

Shauna lifts her eyes and narrows them at him, not hiding her annoyance. 

“Just for a second?” he adds, palms up and out like he wants her to know he means no harm.

“Fine.” Best to get it over with at this point, though she has no idea what she and Jeff Sadecki could possibly have to talk about. Nothing she’d like to get into, at least.

He lowers himself onto the bleachers and then leans back, settling in, his eyes darting to the field but mostly lingering on her. “Are you, like… good?”

“Better than you, apparently,” Shauna deflects, eyeing his tear-streaked cheeks with distaste.

Jeff heaves a sigh. “Yeah, well… I haven’t had the greatest week. Or month. Jackie dumped me, and then some of her friends started saying I was a creep to you, and now all of the guys are on my ass about… the stuff this week. And Jackie just… She said some pretty rough things to me today.”

Shauna really doesn’t want to be having this conversation, but that last part keeps her in it. “Did you ask her to Prom again?” she says knowingly.

“Yeah,” Jeff admits, hanging his head. “I thought… I mean. Some people are saying stuff about her. After yesterday.” His voice has turned probing now, and his eyes are a little too intent on her.

Shauna opens her mouth, almost tells him to fuck off, but then closes it and lets herself think about it first. What she says instead is, “What, you thought that because a few people are saying she might like me it’d spook her into going to Prom with you?”

“No,” he says guiltily, wincing. “I don’t know. I just…” He clenches his jaw and looks away. “I don’t know why I kept asking. I know she doesn’t like me anymore.” He hesitates and then adds, “After today I don’t think she ever did.” There’s another sidelong glance at Shauna, and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

“I don’t have anything to do with you and Jackie.”

“You do, though.” He sniffs, eyes sweeping over the field now. “I was thinking about it a lot this week. Things were so fucking good. Or at least I thought they were. I remember Jackie and me at Homecoming. That was the best night.” He’d swept Jackie away as soon as the final song ended and hadn’t bothered to give Shauna a ride home. Jackie had managed an apologetic look at Shauna, new crown shiny on her head to match Jeff’s, and mouthed something about Shauna asking one of her friends instead. Shauna had walked home. Jackie had complained at their next sleepover about Jeff being too rough when he fingered her.

Jeff’s still going, correcting again, “Or I thought it was. But then I kissed you, and—”

Shauna’s head jerks sharply toward him and her eyes widen with alarm.

“—and I know things went crazy really quickly and I felt like I needed Jackie back, because we were… you know. Us. I kinda panicked. But the shitty thing is that everything I said in that car that night to you about your body and stuff was true, and you were way more into kissing me than Jackie ever was, which is crazy because you’re not even into guys, so then what does that say about Jackie when—”

“I’m into guys,” Shauna says abruptly, just to make him stop. She doesn’t realize the implication until Jeff pauses and looks at her like it means something that she is. “I just also love Jackie,” she adds quickly. “Just Jackie.”

His face twists like he’s trying to make sense of that. Finally, he decides, “Can you tell people you’re not into me, then? Because I’m getting shit from all of my friends. They all keep talking about you being obsessed with Jackie and wanting to be with me and… it’s confusing.” He rubs tiredly at his face. “I knew I was just the high school boyfriend to her, you know. I just didn’t realize how… fucking miserable she was.”

He’s an idiot. Shauna stops herself from telling him so. “What did Jackie say to you?”

He grimaces. “No way. I’m taking that to the grave.”

“I’ll tell anyone who asks that I just want Jackie, not you, and to leave you out of it,” she offers. No one’s bothered to ask her. “And I won’t repeat what Jackie said to you.”

Jeff thinks it over. “Ever?” Shauna nods. 

He sighs, checks around them like someone who could overhear might be hiding, and then slides across the bleachers until their knees are nearly touching to mutter to her, “I never got her off.”

Shauna can’t help it; she snorts and has to rein it in when Jeff deflates next to her. She’d expected something worse. Something cutting about his personality or character. “Oh. Yeah.”

His face falls. “You knew?”

“Half the soccer team knew.” She knows that she shouldn’t have said that the instant the words are out of her mouth. It’s practically instinct, apparently, to keep sabotaging Jeff and Jackie even after it’s died, been buried, and sent off into the afterlife. 

At that, Jeff’s face darkens. He looks genuinely upset, not just in his usual mopey puppy way. Shauna remembers what he knows, what he’d hinted at wondering about Jackie just moments ago, and grabs hastily for his wrist when he starts to stand up, keeping him seated. “Wait. I didn’t mean that. Nat overheard something once. That’s it.” It’s a partial truth. 

Jeff looks at her, jaw still tense, Shauna’s hand still gripping him. 

And past them, a group of girls wander into view, talking amongst themselves. Shauna knows some of them. They spot Jeff and Shauna and react with collective surprise, voices turning to whispers, though they keep walking and avert their gazes. Shauna releases Jeff’s arm, jerking her hand back, and scoots away from him with a frustrated sigh.

It’s not the worst thing in the world. More heat on Jeff, even more on Shauna, less on Jackie. Certainly Jackie will know it’s nonsense when she hears the rumors these girls are going to spread.

“Fuck,” Jeff groans under his breath, dropping his face into his hands. He knows what’s in store for them too. “I can’t believe I ever fucking liked high school.”

“You should probably go.”

He sniffs like he might cry again and then snatches his things up and storms off in a huff.

Shauna watches him go, sighs out a soft, “Moron,” and goes back to studying.

-

Dinner that evening is easier. Shauna pokes at her food in awkward silence for all of two minutes before she makes herself admit, “School’s pretty awful right now.” Her mother looks up sharply at her. “But I don’t want to leave. It’s bad there for my friends too. And Jackie’s miserable. I can’t just abandon all of them.”

Her mother studies her for a moment, worry etched into her expression, and asks, “Shauna, are you in danger there?” If she hasn’t already, she’s probably going to make the connection to Van’s nose and realize that she hadn’t tripped. Shauna hopes that she can redirect her from it for just a little longer.

“No. It’s not like that. No one’s threatened us or anything. They’re just saying things.”

She doesn’t know if it’s true that she’s not in danger. It certainly doesn’t feel true after Nat’s fight and Van’s injuries. And that strange note in her locker that had felt like a threat: Maybe we should give you what you want.

But she knows it’s what she has to say right now.

-

On the phone that night, Shauna whispers to Jackie, “I won’t be here tomorrow night. There’s something at Lottie’s. Before Prom Saturday.”

“You’re going?” Jackie asks. She sounds tentatively pleased. 

“I don’t know,” Shauna sighs out, but the tone of Jackie’s voice is already doing some work to sway her. “I’m thinking about it.”

“What are you wearing?”

Shauna notices Jackie doesn’t assume it’ll be a dress. That’s certainly a thought. Not one she’d entertained for this particular event, but she likes that Jackie had thought about it. “A green dress.”

Jackie makes a soft, fond sound that puts butterflies in Shauna’s stomach. “I’m wearing a pink one.”

“Of course,” Shauna replies, laughing softly.

“Well, it’s more of a rose gold, technically, but I think it still counts.”

“It does if my dark green does.” 

“Still pink and green,” Jackie says gently. “Just… slightly different shades.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, everything much lighter than last night. Shauna knows it’s a long shot, but she says anyway, “You could come over if you want. Tomorrow. Lottie’s. And go back home Saturday after.”

“Even if I wanted to go,” Jackie says slowly, and Shauna knows a rejection’s coming, “I don’t think I could ever get away. Not right now. I can’t just make some excuse and disappear for a night.”

Shauna thinks it over. The solution comes to her so easily. “What about Mari?”

Jackie’s quiet for a moment. Shauna can sense her hesitation. “What about her?”

“Say you’re staying at her place,” Shauna suggests. “Have her pick you up.”

“And take me to Lottie’s?”

“Yeah. And drop you off there, because no one’s gonna want her around. Then she can pick you up and take you home tomorrow. Your parents would never think she’d bring you somewhere to see me.”

“I’m not sure she would.” Jackie pauses. “She was nice today, though. I know she’s been, like… She just feels bad.”

“Yeah. So you should think about asking her.”

“Maybe.”

Shauna knows it’s probably a no, given the risks, but the fact that Jackie hadn’t said it outright feels like a step in the right direction, at least.

“If you don’t come,” she says gently, “maybe I’ll see you at Prom? If I do go?”

“Please,” Jackie sighs out. “I’d… I want to see you. Even if it’s just to look at you.”

Shauna sits back and closes her eyes, resting her head against the cabinet behind her. “I want to see you too. You’re gonna look so beautiful, Jax.”

“You will, too.” Jackie hesitates, and then murmurs, “We could try to sneak away if we get a chance. Even if it’s just to sit in my car for a little while. I’ll drive it there separately from my Prom group just so we have it. I’ll say I don’t feel well and want my own ride just in case I need to leave early.”

“Yeah.” Shauna’s smiling at the thought of it. “After you get crowned. We could drive to the park or something. And still be back home before curfew. You could drop me off.”

“Yeah,” Jackie breathes out.

It feels like a fantasy. Something Jackie will probably be too scared to try when they’re actually at the dance.

But it’s something to hope for.

Chapter 31

Notes:

Ok so this chapter is over 18,000 words long, I just wrote a bunch of it, and there are probably some mistakes in here but just bear with me. I might clean up small things later and make some subtle changes but I wanted to get this out since it was so highly anticipated. Have a good weekend everyone and thanks for your patience!

Friday is easier. Friday is funny.

Right away, it’s all about Jeff and Shauna. She hears his name in every whisper that follows her. They’d “snuck away” for a “secret meeting” at the bleachers. She even catches something about them holding hands there, which definitely hadn’t happened. More rumors and judgments fly. Shauna’s “just confused”. She likes both Jackie and Jeff. She likes Jackie but only because she’d really wanted Jeff. She likes Jeff but only because he got to be with Jackie. She wants to be both of them, she wants to be Jackie, she wants a threesome with them. 

Sometime between third period and lunch, someone manages to sneakily scribble “Shauna Slutman” onto her locker. When Shauna sees it, she blinks blankly at it and then feels the corners of her lips tugging upward, even though she knows she maybe shouldn’t be reacting this way. Something’s bubbling in her throat, and… 

She snickers. A few students nearby are watching her subtly, pretending like they aren’t waiting for her reaction. She bites down on her lip and tries to subdue herself, but the more she rereads it, the funnier it’s getting. Shauna Slutman. It’s so stupid. It’s actually hilarious.

By the time Tai finds her there, having planned to walk with her out to the quad today, Shauna’s full-on giggling at her locker like a deranged person and Tai’s confused eyes are following Shauna’s non-verbal, explanatory gesture to her own locker door. Shauna watches her read it.

“Shauna Slutman,” Shauna explains, dissolving into muted laughter again. Tai glances between Shauna and the locker and spends about half a second trying to keep her composure, but Shauna can see her holding it back too. “It’s okay,” she reassures her through her snickering, and Tai lets it go, too.

“Shauna Slutman,” she echoes, matter of fact, and then they both burst into laughter together, right there in the middle of the hallway, ignoring the strange looks befalling them from passersby. 

When they finally reach the quad and tell Van, she laughs until there are tears in her eyes. Laura Lee just smiles a little cluelessly, like she’s not sure she finds the humor in it but is happy they do, and Lottie gives a slight chuckle and doesn’t quite meet Shauna’s eyes. It breaks the ice between them, though.

Shauna doesn’t pick a fight with Lottie, just says, “I think I’m gonna leave it there until the janitor cleans it off. I kind of like it,” and makes Van start laughing all over again.

-

She must make it obvious that she’s decided to go to Prom; it’s probably the way she stares too long at herself in the mirror at Lottie’s house on Friday afternoon with her dress pressed to the front of herself, or the way she watches and listens too closely when the others talk about their plans for the night. Because not long after they’ve all settled down together in the living room, Tai moves to sit next to Shauna and says, smug, “So I changed your mind.”

Shauna doesn’t correct her, just gives a noncommittal shrug and doesn’t talk about the calls with Jackie. It feels like something that’s just theirs. 

“I’m not going home tomorrow while you’re all at the dance,” Nat interjects sourly from the couch as Lottie relaxes next to her. “Give me a few hours alone in a mansion over my shitty trailer anyday. I doubt my mom’s even noticed I’ve been gone.”

Shauna’s eyebrows raise. She knows Tai and Van have caught it too, because they both immediately look to Lottie with amused interest, and while Laura Lee doesn’t seem to have read between the lines there, Lottie’s already clearing her throat and standing quickly, chiming in, “Anyone want a drink? I’m, uh, parched.” The doorbell rings before any of them can speak up, and Lottie seems grateful for it. “Oh, I invited Melissa and Gen. They’re not going to Prom tomorrow but I figured they might want to hang out and stay over. We have five bedrooms, which should be plenty.” She makes her way to the front door. 

“Hmm,” Van muses, exchanging a look with Shauna that tells her Van isn’t going to let this go. She’s already counting on her fingers. “Me and Tai, Gen and Melissa, Shauna, Laura Lee… doesn’t that only leave one bedroom, Lot?”

Nat grimaces and lifts her eyes skyward. Lottie ignores her and pulls the door open a little too swiftly, greets Gen and Melissa with a “Hi!” that’s unnaturally bright. 

Van snickers and reaches over to bump Nat’s leg with her fist. Nat slaps it away with a huff and Tai and Van laugh at her. “Please shut up.”

Shauna’s gaze drifts to the front door and she watches Melissa slip inside, hand-in-hand with Gen, her eyes finding Shauna too quickly to not be purposeful. She gives Shauna a forced smile and a quick nod. They haven’t spoken since the journal, and Shauna doesn’t hold it against her. She’d avoid herself too if she were them.

She lifts a hand and waves half-heartedly in response, and Melissa waves back. Gen’s eyes are on her too, filled with unbridled sympathy, and Shauna makes a mental note to avoid a conversation about it all with either of them. She doesn’t want any more looks like the one Gen’s directing at her. In fact, her ideal plan is to just get drunk with her friends again and forget about it as best as she can, pass out alone in one of the guest rooms while trying not to be sad about the fact that Jackie hadn’t shown up tonight, sleep off a hangover, and then look nice for Jackie at Prom. Simple.

She gets started in the kitchen with Nat, who helps her mix identical drinks for all of them and seems, like Shauna, to be grateful that she’s not being plied with sympathy or questions. “You okay?” is all Shauna asks her, thinking about Nat’s fight but also a little bit about Lottie, and Nat gives her a short nod.

“You?”

“Kinda.” Shauna shrugs. “For, like, the circumstances.”

“Good. Me too.”

Shauna gives her a sideways look as they stand over the drinks and Nat pours, and Nat’s lips quirk uncomfortably. She’s so walled off that it’s almost funny. “So, does Lottie—?”

“Please don’t,” Nat interrupts, wincing, and Shauna laughs and finishes it.

“So, does Lottie have a second fridge or something with more peach juice?” She nods to the bottle in Nat’s hand. “We’re gonna run out later.”

Nat groans quietly, embarrassed at herself, but she manages a soft laugh on the end of it. “Fucking hell.”

“Do you know?” Shauna slides the finished glasses out of the way, closer to herself. 

“I’m not sure. I think there’s some pineapple juice in there, though. We can just use that.”

“Okay.”

The awkwardness lingers, pressing in on them again, weighted by what Shauna hadn’t been asking about. She feels like she should ask somehow, even though Nat clearly doesn’t want her to.

She nudges her lightly, trying not to throw off her pour. “Hey,” she says, heavier, serious, drawing Nat’s eyes to her with her tone. She speaks a little slower, a little more purposefully. “Are you genuinely good?” This time it’s just about Lottie. 

Nat knows what she’s asking. She rolls her eyes like it’s an obligation, but her expression softens just a fraction. “I’m good.”

It’s sincere. Shauna can tell. As far as she’s concerned, that’s that. “Cool. I’m gonna get drunk now.” She reaches for one of the glasses as Nat finishes up and starts chugging it, and Nat laughs at her.

“Sounds like a plan. Not like I have anywhere to be tomorrow.”

-

The sun hasn’t even come close to setting by the time Shauna’s a little tipsy. They’d come over early, almost directly after their final classes save for quick trips home to collect their makeup and Prom outfits, and it’s not yet six o’clock when they’re on their second round of drinks and Nat’s passing around joints again.

The music’s up, the room smells like smoke, and Van and Tai are dancing around together with Laura Lee spinning nearby, off in her own world. Gen’s the highest of them all, save for maybe Nat, and is straddling a red-faced Melissa on one of the couches and keeps going back and forth between giggling at the look on her face and dipping her head to kiss at her neck. Nat’s splayed out in an armchair, completely baked, and Lottie’s only had one drink and keeps lecturing them all about not getting too messed up with Prom coming up in less than twenty-four hours. It’s mostly fallen on deaf ears. 

She’s found some camaraderie in Shauna, who’s had just enough liquid courage to confess to her, “I might need help with my makeup for Prom tomorrow.” She’s done it on her own before, but never with confidence—usually Jackie does it for her, of course—and never for an occasion like this.

Lottie gives her the kindest, softest smile and winds up dragging Shauna to her bedroom and sitting her down in front of her vanity, sifting through a makeup bag while Shauna watches her own reflection in the mirror.

“My hair, too,” she offers quietly, and Lottie gives a pleased nod. Shauna knows she doesn’t need to explain further.

“Let’s make sure her jaw drops when she sees you.”

Lottie winds up playing with Shauna’s hair first: putting it up in different shapes and styles with clips and pins and other things Shauna’s never used before, getting Shauna’s opinion on it all. The other girls drift in and out, curious, but don’t interfere. Nat wobbles in at one point, gives Shauna a kind tap on the shoulder, and says, “I can help with makeup, too.”

“I don’t know that your look would suit Shauna,” Lottie jokes, and Nat rolls her eyes.

“I know how to do more than one thing.”

She leaves, and Lottie’s eyes linger on her as she goes. But rather than talk about Nat, she says out of nowhere, “I’m sorry about the notes. I thought it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t like upsetting you.”

Shauna shrugs uncomfortably. “Things are hard enough for her.”

“I know.” Lottie unpins her hair, letting it fall, running her fingers gently through it and watching Shauna in the mirror now. “I won’t do anything like that again. I think she knows enough.”

Shauna bites her tongue to avoid an argument about it not being Lottie’s place to interfere anyway. She’s spared from anything further by the doorbell ringing.

“That should be the pizza,” Lottie says, setting the hairbrush in her hand down on the vanity. “Be back in a minute.”

Shauna stays put. Alone, her eyes fall to Lottie’s makeup. She wonders what Jackie would do to her with it. Then she wonders what Jackie will do to herself. What her dress will look like beyond the color. If they really will get to sneak away, if Shauna will get to take it off of her, or slip a hand beneath it in the back seat of Jackie’s car.

She sighs, an uncontrollable shiver shooting up her spine, and tries to stop thinking of Jackie for now. Just for one fun night with her friends. 

“Shauna!” Lottie calls out from the living room suddenly. She sounds surprised, and maybe a little uncertain. 

Shauna stands and pads down the hall, to where the music has been turned down to half-volume and the other girls are all gathered in varying states of inebriation. Lottie has the front door pulled open, and there on the front porch, arms wrapped around herself almost defensively and looking like she isn’t quite sure she should be here, is Jackie.

If Shauna were carrying something, she’d have dropped it. She hurries over without a word and winds her arms around Jackie’s shoulders, pulling her in for a tight hug.

“Hey,” Jackie says, sounding a little surprised and breathless herself. It takes a second, but then she’s hugging Shauna back, too. Quietly, and maybe half to Lottie, she adds, “Please don’t take a vote this time.”

“I won’t let them,” Shauna promises, pulling back at last, unable to keep her hands off of Jackie. She’s here. She’d actually shown up.

She cups her neck, staring softly at her, but then she remembers Lottie’s right next to her and Jackie seems so nervous; her hands slip away quickly, because Jackie had technically never come out to Lottie or Laura Lee. 

Jackie seizes Shauna’s hand with her own, though, and then says to Lottie, swallowing hard, “I… I can say it this time, if everyone needs. I’m sure you know anyway by now, but… I can, if—“

“You don’t have to say anything, Jackie,” Lottie interrupts, shaking her head. “Come on in.”

Inside, Gen’s dismounted Melissa at some point and they’re both just staring with surprise. Nat and Van and Laura Lee seem happy to see Jackie—Laura Lee’s practically beaming—and even Tai is just watching with crossed arms and a slight smile. 

Jackie hovers by the landing, faced with so many pairs of eyes and Shauna’s hand in hers, and Shauna watches her take a deep breath. Then she just asks, “Could I have a drink?”

Van springs into action with a laughed out, “Absolutely,” and time seems to start moving again. Shauna leads Jackie to the kitchen, and while Van’s mixing her something the pizza arrives, not a minute after Mari’s car has finished leaving Lottie’s driveway. 

“She’s picking me up in a few hours,” Jackie explains shyly to Shauna without using her name. “I didn’t think I should risk the night. My parents think we’re going to the mall and then seeing a movie.”

“Wait,” Van cuts in, catching on. “You and Mari?”

Jackie nods. “I guess she figured it was the least she could do.”

“You can say that again.” Van shakes her head. “Glad she knew not to try to come in and say hello.” She hands the new drink over to Jackie, but lingers with them in the kitchen afterward to watch her sip it, a fond expression on her face. “I’m glad you’re here, Jackie.”

Jackie offers a faint smile. Shauna can see the nerves behind it. “Me too.”

“Good.” Van steps back like she’s going to leave, tilting her head in the direction of the living room. “I’m sure you’ll be glued to Shauna, but come say hi to Tai at some point, okay? I think she’d like you to.”

“Okay. I will.”

When they’re alone, Jackie sets the drink down on the counter and leans up against it, taking a heavy breath. Shauna lets the edge of the surface dig into her hip, turned toward Jackie, watching her carefully. “I really didn’t think you’d come,” she admits. She hadn’t even remotely entertained it, honestly.

“Me either.” Jackie’s hand hasn’t left Shauna’s yet. She squeezes it now. “But then I thought that it’s not so different from the lies I used to tell about Jeff. They never caught me then. And Mari can help with you like you used to help with Jeff.” She goes silent, then, her face falling slightly, and finally adds, “I’m sorry I used to make you do that.”

“Jax, we’re so beyond that stuff at this point,” Shauna reassures her. She glances back toward the living room, where someone’s just turned the music back up. “Everyone’s always happy at these,” she explains gently. “Van and Tai were dancing together earlier. Gen and Melissa have been all over each other, and I’m pretty sure something happened with Lottie and Nat last night when Nat stayed over.”

For a moment, the nerves are stunned right out of Jackie, and her face morphs into a shocked, scandalized expression that reminds Shauna of years of whispered gossip at sleepovers. It almost makes her laugh. “Wait, Lottie and Nat? Is our whole team gay?”

Shauna grins. “Well, not Mari, clearly. And apparently not Laura Lee. You’ll have to poll the others and find out.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that on Monday,” Jackie jokes, lifting her glass again and smiling at Shauna around the rim. “Let them know we’re recruiting.”

Shauna watches her take a couple of sips, something light fluttering in her chest. “I miss you so much,” she confesses, the words spilling out of her, uncontrollable. 

Jackie sets the glass down and turns, cupping Shauna’s cheeks in both hands, leaning in. “I miss you,” she says back, whispering the words right into Shauna’s mouth a second before their lips meet. “I always miss you. Always.”

They kiss there against the counter, Shauna squished against it by the press of Jackie’s body, arms wound loosely around Jackie’s waist. It’s deep, and wanting, and slow, and Shauna savors every second of being able to do it safely. When will they have this peace again, this feeling that they’re not just stealing a quick moment, not plagued by a pressing need to rush? It could be weeks. Months. It’s entirely up to Jackie to carve out long hours of time for her, and Jackie, in her own way, is largely at the mercy of Mari’s guilt-fueled generosity.

Jackie’s fingers glide into Shauna’s hair, brushing over her ear, tracing the shell. Her body presses closer, but she kisses Shauna so softly, prolonging each one like she’s savoring them in the same way that Shauna is. 

Only the sound of an embarrassed squeak separates them—slowly; they don’t jump apart like they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t. Jackie’s body doesn’t leave Shauna’s at all; she just turns her head and follows Shauna’s gaze to Laura Lee at the kitchen entrance, deliberately turned away from them with a shy hand covering her eyes. “Sorry! Van asked me to go grab an extra glass.”

“For what?” Shauna asks. “Everyone has one. Nat and I made sure earlier.”

“I don’t know. She just said to do it.”

Shauna sighs, and Jackie’s hands fall to her shoulders, squeezing gently as Jackie faces her again. She’s still distractingly close, her eyes darker from their kissing and lips shiny with smeared gloss. She looks nervous again, but like she’s trying not to be. 

“Just tell her she’s not funny,” Shauna says to Laura Lee, who catches on then and looks embarrassed and unamused. She disappears and a few seconds later Shauna hears Van’s distant laughter. 

The bubble around them pierced, Jackie just tucks her face into Shauna’s neck and breathes her in. They do still only have so much time, and everything in Shauna wants to take it all for herself. But Jackie is here, and so are their friends, and there are things she had wanted Jackie to experience before that she can give to her now. She knows Van knows she feels this way, too. The more she’s gotten to know Van, the more she’s realized that Van understands more than she lets on, that sometimes she uses humor to communicate things so that it’s easier for everyone. Laura Lee is, unbeknownst to even herself, a message: We’re in here. C’mon. Don’t hide for too long. 

So she refrains from kissing Jackie’s lips again, and holds her tight, and smells her shampoo, and just kisses her on the cheek when Jackie finally pulls back from her. “Want to go in?” Shauna asks.

“I think so.” Jackie cups her face again and just looks at her like she’s memorizing her. “I think it might feel weird.”

“It’s like Atlantic City,” Shauna says, even though it’s not the best comparison. Those had been strangers. But Tai and Van had been there, and this is just a few extra people they know. Just a few more familiar pairs of eyes on them.

“Right,” Jackie says, accepting it anyway. She bites her lip. “Okay.”

-

They all stop drinking for a while, but keep trading puffs on two different joints. Shauna and Jackie both don’t partake tonight. Outside, the sky has darkened further, but mostly because it’s started to drizzle, and Shauna can see Jackie eyeing the weather through the window every now and then as the conversation around them ebbs and flows. 

“Might need to wash the smell of weed off of me,” Jackie explains quietly to her, and Shauna smiles at the silly, pretty image of Jackie dousing herself purposefully out in the rain, arms spread wide, head tilted toward the sky. 

Jackie’s tucked up against her on one of the couches now, head on Shauna’s shoulder, hand in Shauna’s, Shauna’s arm wrapped around her. It’s everything Shauna’s ever wanted, and she doesn’t need alcohol or weed when every bit of her is buzzing from the silent claim she’s staking on Jackie here and the way Jackie’s letting it happen. She keeps dropping kisses onto the top of Jackie’s head, and stroking Jackie’s hip with her thumb, and with every passing minute that they’re paid no particular mind, Jackie’s relaxing further and further. Shauna’s sure it’s helping that Tai and Van and Gen and Melissa are paired off and cuddling, too.  

They talk about everything. Plans after graduation, that Gen and Melissa are officially girlfriends now, favorite songs and movies, what the best date they’ve ever been on is. 

Jackie barely speaks for it. It’s so different, watching Jackie stay silent and take everyone else in like a wallflower when she’s usually the center of attention. Shauna can tell that she feels the furthest thing from their old soccer captain, that she feels like the new kid, and probably even slightly out of place. 

Sometimes people address Jackie, sometimes Shauna, but no one addresses Jackie-and-Shauna until the topic of dates arises and Laura Lee asks them sweetly, “Have you guys ever been on an official date?”

It’s the first time anyone’s just laid it out plainly: they go on dates; they’re a couple. Jackie lifts her head and looks at Shauna like she’s hoping Shauna will answer it.

So Shauna does. “Yeah, just one. Jackie’s gonna plan the next one.” She’s painfully aware of the elephant in the room. When could they possibly make time for a date now? How long will Shauna be waiting for it?

But Laura Lee just grins at the two of them and asks, “Ooh, do you have anything in mind already, Jackie?”

She’s being so kind. Trying to pull Jackie into the conversation, trying to make her feel included after so many long minutes of silence from her. But Jackie’s turning red fast. “Yes,” she answers. “Some ideas.”

“Don’t say them in front of me,” Shauna jumps in, trying to sound more affronted than she actually is. She’s sparing her, really.

It works. They move on. Van brings it back to movies, to some actress she has the hots for that Shauna doesn’t know but that Tai teases her about because she apparently looks a lot like Tai. They talk about celebrity crushes and their types.

Blushingly, Gen confesses, “I don’t know. Maybe someone sporty. Like Mia Hamm.” Melissa’s shy smile says she likes that answer. 

Lottie chimes in, “I don’t think I have a type.” Van coughs something unintelligible into her hand and Tai swats at her arm. 

Melissa says, “I guess I’ve always had crushes on girls with dark hair and eyes,” and then avoids looking in Shauna’s direction. Shauna feels Jackie let out a quiet huff.

Lottie pulls Jackie into the conversation next. “What about you, Jackie? What’s your type?”

Shauna almost thinks she won’t answer it, but Jackie hesitates for only a moment and then gives a shrug. “Shauna.”

Nat laughs. Van does too, and adds, “Groundbreaking. Shocking answer, really.”

And Jackie, suddenly, is sitting up, more animated, but not defensive at all as she replies with a slight laugh, “It really is. Swear.”

“Jackie’s my type,” Shauna chimes in, pleased as can be about Jackie’s answer. She’d been worried she’d say something that’d point toward Nat. Or mention some feature that Shauna and Nat have in common. 

“I think it’s cute,” Laura Lee says helpfully. 

“What a sad existence,” Van teases, though. “If either of you died the other would just never experience attraction to anyone else ever again, apparently.”

Shauna knows it’s not completely true. They all do. But it’s true enough in that they already own too much of each other to ever be able to give all of themselves away to someone else. 

Jackie laughs, looser now, and nods firmly. “Exactly. She’s all I’ll ever want. Besides, if Shauna ever died I’d just die right there with her.” 

There’s no weight to the words in her light tone, but they lodge themselves in Shauna’s chest anyway, a heaviness to them after their first phone call. Literal or figurative, she knows it’s true that Jackie would lose her will to live in a world that no longer had Shauna in it. She knows it because she feels the same. She’s tried to picture life without Jackie, even temporarily, and she doesn’t think she can go back to not having her. She’s not sure how she’d get through it without feeling like she’s only living half a life.

Jackie isn’t finished. “Or I’d want to, anyway,” she adds, a little less lightly, a hint of vulnerability peeking through. “I wouldn’t want to do life without her.”

Across from them, Tai’s expression softens. “Fuck, Jackie,” Van laments with a sigh from beside her. “Came here just to show us all up by saying the gayest fucking shit of the night.”

“I can’t believe we used to think she was just hooking up with Shauna for fun,” Gen piles on with a giggle and a glance at Melissa, and Shauna checks on Jackie to make sure she’s okay with the teasing and finds her flushed and inscrutable. 

It takes a second for her to react, but then Jackie folds her arms across her chest and sits back against the couch with a scowl at Gen. Shauna snuggles up to her, mumbles into her ear, “Don’t worry about it,” though secretly she loves that it bugs her, that Jackie’s upset at the thought of anyone thinking she could’ve just used Shauna without loving her. 

But when Jackie doesn’t relax against her, it strikes her that it probably genuinely stings, that it’s maybe a sore spot. Shauna had thought the same of Jackie once. Even in Atlantic City Jackie had been overlooked initially, dismissed. Shauna remembers how worried she’d been, then, that even her peers wouldn’t see her for who she truly was. Maybe this comment from Gen feels like the same sort of rejection. 

They all see her now, though, and Shauna aims to make sure of it. She plants a fond kiss on Jackie’s cheek, and then another, and another, until she feels Jackie smile and start to soften against her. She knows her friends will tease her for the display later, when they aren’t so fixated on Jackie, but it’s worth it to get to be openly affectionate with her like this, to get to show everyone the way she can make Jackie feel. 

Lottie, for her part, seems genuinely enamored with them. “Aw, look at her melt.”

“She’s blushing,” Gen adds, grinning.

“Jesus,” Jackie huffs, wrapping her arms around Shauna, accepting the affection despite her own mortification. “Okay. I think we’ve embarrassed me enough.”

“We can shift gears,” Van proposes easily. “I know for a fact Gen and Melissa have started cutting class to drive to abandoned parking lots and fuck in Gen’s car.”

Gen rounds on Melissa, her jaw dropping. “You told her?”

Most of the rest of them burst into laughter, Jackie included, and even Shauna chuckles a little at the bright red hue to Melissa’s cheeks and the way she’s trying to sputter out a response to get herself out of the doghouse.

“I just… wanted to make sure I was doing it right,” she says meekly. 

Nat guffaws at that. “You wanted sex advice from Van?”

“Hey!” Van sits up straighter. “Why’d you say it like that?” Next to her, Tai pinches the bridge of her nose, shaking with silent laughter now. “Better me than you, newbie.” Nat’s smile dies and she starts coloring, too.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be here for this conversation,” Laura Lee mutters, doing the sign of the cross on herself. 

Jackie jumps in to spare Nat, finally looking settled in, comfortable. “It’s really not that hard to get the hang of it.”

Nat, apparently not particularly grateful for it, quips, “Well, that’s you and Shauna. You probably just order her to have an orgasm and she just does it.”

Shauna’s jaw drops. About half the group immediately loses it, laughter pouring out loud and hard—and even harder when Van puts her hands on her hips and adopts a stern expression in a clear impression of Jackie and demands, “Come, Shipman,” which also gets the remaining half of them to break. Jackie tries her hardest to sink her teeth into her bottom lip and not react, but Shauna can feel her body shaking with muted laughter despite the deep flush to Jackie’s cheeks.

“Fuck you guys,” Shauna sighs out. “I need new friends.” They all know she doesn’t mean it.

-

They separate for a little while, eventually, reluctantly; Shauna goes with Lottie to look at makeup but doesn’t try anything on with Jackie still here, not wanting to ruin the surprise. Lottie talks her through foundations and eyeshadows and Shauna nods like she understands anything about contouring and shading. She’s grateful for Lottie’s time and attention, but she’s also content to let this remain Jackie’s area of expertise. 

She tells Lottie so, in so many words, and talks about Jackie’s plans to go to school for fashion. She thinks of her conversation with Van about it, remembers Van’s reassurances that it’s going to happen. Shauna’s not so sure, but Jackie showing up tonight has given her a flicker of hope she’s a little scared to indulge. It’s not Jackie’s intent she questions now, only her willingness to be brave enough to follow through with it. She needs more to rebuild her sense of security. More tonights, and to slip away tomorrow during Prom, and more phone calls. More of Jackie reaching out for her in every way she can manage. 

After she’s done with Lottie, she wanders back to the living room and finds Jackie and Tai sitting off to the side together, some distance between them and the others, absorbed in a quiet, serious conversation as Tai holds Jackie’s hand in her own. Jackie’s face is so open and earnest as she listens to Tai, and something in her expression makes Shauna’s chest twinge fondly. Just before Shauna leaves the living room, she sees Jackie give Tai an eager nod and then pull her in for a tight hug Tai seems surprised to be receiving. 

Melissa is in the kitchen, refilling her glass alone. “Want some?” she asks with a glance at Shauna, and Shauna almost laughs at the dark trail of fresh hickeys down the side of Melissa’s neck. 

“Okay,” she says, but only lets Melissa pour maybe half a shot into Shauna’s drink before she stops her. 

They stand together in silence after, sipping at their drinks, and Shauna’s not sure what to say. Through the entrance to the living room, she sees Gen and Laura Lee go rushing past, giggling together, Gen holding out a joint and shouting something about Laura Lee loosening up a little. 

Melissa’s beaming at the empty space where Gen once was when Shauna glances back at her, and she wonders to herself if she’s really this bad about Jackie, too. 

“You could’ve warned me,” Melissa says, her smile fading a little, but not entirely. She shoots Shauna a fond look like she wants her to know there’s no genuine anger there about whatever this is now.

“What?” Shauna asks, curious. 

“It’s really fucking scary,” Melissa says, but she doesn’t look scared. “Falling in love with your best friend.”

“It’s scary with anyone,” Shauna guesses, though she admittedly doesn’t know for sure. She doesn’t know how to feel about potentially bonding with Melissa over this. 

“Yeah, but.” Melissa shrugs. “There’s more to lose.”

Now she does know how she feels; she definitely doesn’t want to talk about it. “Yeah, I know,” she says sharply, and Melissa flinches like she knows she’s hit a sore spot.

“Sorry. I just—“ Melissa looks sheepish, suddenly. “It’s like it came out of nowhere, and I feel so dumb for not knowing like she knew, because now that I do know it’s there it’s so big. It’s like… everything.”

“You’re high,” Shauna mumbles, and busies her mouth with her drink. 

“I know.” Melissa downs the rest of her own. “Anyway, I like it, but it’s scary. Especially with next year.”

This, Shauna does take pity on her for. That’s one thing she and Jackie have going for them. They’ll be free of Wiskayok soon. “Nat’s staying back,” she offers, not sure what else to say. “You’ll have her.”

“I think I want to tell people,” Melissa blurts, and blushes when Shauna looks at her with surprise and uncertainty. “Maybe over the summer. So it’ll be old news by the time we come back. I don’t know if Gen will want to, though?”

She sounds like she wants advice. Shauna doesn’t have any beyond the obvious. “You should talk to her.”

“Yeah.” Melissa swallows hard, nods. “I already know my parents won’t mind. And her parents love me. So maybe… maybe it’ll be okay.”

Jackie’s parents had loved Shauna too, but Shauna doesn’t say that, just nods back and forces a smile. 

They both seem out of things to say, and so when Jackie swings around the edge of the doorway and enters the kitchen, she finds them standing together in silence. The smile she’d sprouted upon sight of Shauna wilts slightly when she processes that she’s with Melissa. 

Shauna straightens up, feeling a pang of guilt and not really knowing why, and Melissa pushes off of the counter and puts some distance between them, mumbling something about finding Gen. By the time she’s moving toward the doorway, she’s almost in a hurry to leave, and Jackie’s already back in Shauna’s arms and rubbing their noses together affectionately, unspokenly marking her territory in a way that’s at least far less aggressive and much more secure than she’s been in the past when it’s come to Melissa. 

Still, she apparently can’t resist asking, “What were you talking about?”

Shauna almost laughs. “Shouldn’t you be more worried about me sneaking off for secret meetings with Jeff?”

Jackie laughs shortly, her exhaled puff of air tickling Shauna’s lips. “I wasn’t even gonna bother asking about that.”

“But Melissa, who’s completely obsessed with Gen now, bothers you,” Shauna points out, tone just on the edge of teasing. 

“Jeff’s an idiot,” Jackie says shortly, tilting her chin up, giving Shauna a soft, lingering kiss. She pulls away and Shauna follows her mouth, earning an affectionate smirk for her efforts, but not another kiss. “Melissa’s your second choice.”

Shauna resists the urge to groan. “You’re my second choice. And third, and like… hundredth.”

“I know. I just wanted to hear you tell me.” Jackie winds her arms around Shauna’s neck and pecks her on the tip of her nose, satisfied now that she’s gotten the response she’d wanted. “I miss when we got to fight over stupid things like who our backup crush would be.”

Shauna doesn’t think that one’s that stupid (seriously, Nat can kind of still kick rocks, even if she has been a great friend lately), but she thinks she gets the idea. Everything’s been so heavy lately.

“Or who the cutest boy in ‘New Kids on the Block’ was?” she offers. 

Jackie laughs. “You so thought it was Jordan and pretended you didn’t just because you didn’t want to be boring. I still can’t believe you said Danny.”

“You thought it was Joey,” Shauna reminds her.

“And eventually you pretended to agree with me. He was the most feminine,” Jackie says, grinning. 

“We can go dumber,” Shauna decides, admittedly enjoying this walk down memory lane a little. “That time we didn’t talk for two days in middle school because I said Beauty and the Beast was a stupid movie after you told me Belle reminded you of me?” 

Jackie smiles wider. “Remember how we used to do candy negotiations at the end of the night on Halloween, and you’d always pout because I made you pay three Tootsie Rolls for every two Jolly Ranchers I gave you?”

“Yeah. You sucked for that, by the way.”

“Supply and demand, babe.” Jackie pecks her on the mouth this time, and Shauna tries not to act on the way she immediately craves more. “Plus you got my Fireballs for free.”

“You got my lemon Starbursts.”

“Oh, are we doing this?” Jackie asks with a chuckle and a raised eyebrow. “I like it. Let’s air it all out. Care Bears and My Little Pony were both better shows than She-Ra, and I did you a favor by not letting you put it on at my house.” 

Shauna can’t help it; a soft, amused sound bubbles up out of her and she buries a smile in Jackie’s neck, shaking with quiet laughter. “You’re so stupid. I love you. That’s what Melissa and I were talking about. Being in love with our best friends.” She pauses while Jackie hums happily against her. “Also, She-Ra was definitely my first crush on a girl, so you missed out. She was pretty.”

“I was your first crush on a girl,” Jackie argues, and Shauna lets her have it. It’s probably true anyway, if she really thinks about it. She-Ra was definitely later than Kindergarten. “And you were mine.” She tilts her head and Shauna feels lips brush her neck. Jackie’s arms tighten possessively around her. “And that’s all there’s ever been for either of us.”

“Okay,” Shauna says quietly, something stirring in her abdomen. She can feel her breathing starting to shorten. 

Jackie pulls out of her arms and Shauna lifts her head, blinking herself out of it. Jackie takes her hand, smiling fondly at her, in a different mood entirely than Shauna judging by the affectionate squeeze of her fingers. Still, there’s a look in her eyes that says she knows what she’s done. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s go outside.”

Shauna looks to the kitchen window. “It’s raining.” Not lightly, either; it’s coming down hard and loud, though Shauna hasn’t heard any thunder or seen any lightning. 

“That’s okay. We can dry off after. We have some time.” They don’t, really—maybe an hour at most—but Jackie tugs her to the back door and Shauna goes with her without further argument, feeling powerless to say no to her.

They’re drenched before they can even leave the back porch: Jackie in a yellow sundress that ends at her mid-thigh, Shauna in long pants, a grey tee, and a flannel she immediately shrugs off as it gets weighted down by the rain. She leaves it by the door under the awning, and Jackie, grinning at her, pulls her down off of the porch and out onto damp grass that squelches under their bare feet. Off in the distance, the rain patters against the water of Lottie’s pool, and Jackie looks at it and says, “We should come here and swim in the summer.”

It makes Shauna’s stomach flip pleasantly. Jackie’s making summer plans. Already thinking of new occasions to use Mari for. Maybe it all won’t be as bad as Shauna had thought. Maybe Mari will play along even after graduation and they’ll be able to manage. 

Jackie draws her in closer so that Shauna’s in her arms, taking in the small smile on her lips with a fondness that reaches her eyes. “You need a new bikini. I wanna help pick it out.”

Shauna’s hair is plastered to her scalp. Her clothes are soaking through, even her underwear. “What are we doing?” she laughs out. 

“I don’t know,” Jackie replies, but then she kisses Shauna happily and steps away, loosening her grip and dropping one of Shauna’s hands entirely to allow herself to twirl around in a quick circle, damp dress spinning out with her. Her head tips back to the sky and she lets the rain fall onto her eyes and cheeks and lips, still connected to Shauna by their fingers. Her makeup starts to run. She’ll have to fix it.

“You’ll need to dry your hair and clothes off before you go home,” Shauna tells her, already thinking through the logistics of it all, and Jackie gives an amused huff and lowers her head, opening her eyes to look at her. 

“I forgot; you are literally the least whimsical person I’ve ever met.” Jackie steps back in toward her, mumbles, “Just turn your brain off for two seconds and enjoy something,” and then her arms are around Shauna’s neck and she’s kissing her firmly. 

Shauna can’t turn it off completely—not for over a week now, not when there’s too much to worry about—but this is probably the closest she can get to it: pressing into Jackie, wrapping her up in her arms, opening her mouth to her. 

Jackie’s smiling into their kiss, exhaling a short, half-laugh of a breath that Shauna feels on her tongue, letting her weight rest against Shauna’s until it throws them off-balance, more grass squishing under their toes as they stumble and adjust and recover. 

Jackie breaks it to laugh, then kisses her again, and again, and Shauna feels a giddiness sweep through her chest, and then, without having to think about it, she’s tightening her arms around Jackie and lifting, spinning them both and earning a pleased giggle against her lips for her efforts as she sets Jackie back down. 

“Am I heavy?” Jackie breathes into her mouth, still pressed close, not willing to part from her entirely to ask the question. 

“No,” Shauna says, and lifts her again for emphasis, and keeps her lifted as Jackie presses several more smiley kisses to her lips. 

She set her down gently after, and Jackie’s eyes flutter open and take her in, hands reaching up to smooth Shauna’s hair back out of her face. Shauna can feel water coming down on her scalp, sliding over her cheeks, dripping from her chin, but her attention is entirely stolen by the shift in Jackie’s expression: from something light and fond and fun to a steady solemness, hands still caressing Shauna’s head and face for a moment and then coming to settle on her cheeks. Something settles behind Jackie’s eyes, too. Like it’s clicked into place.

“What?” Shauna asks quietly, and it’s gone just as quickly as it had appeared; Jackie shakes her head and shakes the evidence away with it.

“Nothing. I just… I love you.”

Jackie’s next kiss is different, smothering the words in Shauna’s throat before she can return them, soft and certain and careful. Shauna’s tried to be romantic before, and she knows she’s done enough to earn Jackie’s approval, but she doesn’t feel like it comes naturally to her. It does seem to come naturally to Jackie, who gets grand ideas like declaring her love to her and kissing her in the rain, apparently, and then pulling away after like she hasn’t just made Shauna’s head spin and declaring, “You should dance with me.”

Shauna does what Jackie wants, even though it feels silly with no music and she’s still not a good dancer, but soon she’s not thinking about that anymore, because it is silly but Jackie’s smiling and laughing and having Shauna twirl her over and over again and they’re stumbling around in the grass together, hand-in-hand, bodies and mouths taking turns pressing.

“Do it,” Jackie urges her through a laugh after she’s coaxed Shauna into trying to dip her, her weight resting too heavily against Shauna’s arm, one of her legs lifting off of the grass.

Shauna lets her lean back a little further, almost there, feels the strain in her muscles and chickens out, pulling her back upright with a defensive, “I don’t wanna drop you!” 

“You weren’t gonna drop me,” Jackie reassures her, but she’s grinning like she thinks she might have as she leans in to give Shauna a wet kiss for her efforts.

“Hey!” a distant shout from the porch interrupts them, and they part to see Van standing there under the awning with her hands cupping her mouth, Tai at her side and the rest of the girls starting to file outside through the backdoor. “What the hell are you guys doing?!” She sounds amused, like she already knows the answer. 

Jackie laughs and just grabs at Shauna’s shirt before she can move away from her, tugging her back in close and joining their mouths. Shauna stumbles forward, arms winding around Jackie again, and lets herself be happily kissed without regard for their audience. It doesn’t go unnoticed by her: Jackie being so shy about this at first tonight and then finally getting more comfortable, wanting to show off a little now. They’re both sinking into it; Shauna can tell. Kissing slow and deep until it’s warming Shauna up low in her abdomen and Jackie’s tugging a little insistently with a hand that’s woven its way into Shauna’s damp hair. Jackie tastes like alcohol and fruit juice.

It’s only a sudden boom of thunder that startles them apart, and then there’s a distant flash of lightning and Jackie’s gripping Shauna’s hand and admitting, out of breath, “Okay, we should probably go inside now.”

Nat welcomes them onto the porch with a teasing, “How romantic,” and a few of the other girls chuckle as Jackie blushingly pulls Shauna back inside. Shauna’s too embarrassed to make eye contact with any of them.

Shauna’s brought pajamas for herself, and Lottie finds something comfortable for Jackie to borrow while her dress dries. Jackie changes in Lottie’s bedroom and gives her dress to Lottie to be tossed into the dryer, blow dries Shauna’s hair and then her own in the adjoined bathroom, and then fixes her makeup there too. While she’s working on the latter, Shauna peels off her soaked shirt and just says, “I think tonight is the most I’ve seen you smile in a while.” Probably since the last time they’d shared Shauna’s bed. 

“I haven’t exactly been doing much of it lately,” Jackie points out, tone light, eyes on Shauna’s newly exposed torso in the mirror as she sets down a makeup brush she’s borrowed from Lottie. Finished, she turns to Shauna and adds, “I think I’m realizing how much I miss being around everyone. And being friends with you.”

“You’re still my friend, too,” Shauna says, taking her pants off next with some difficulty, grimacing as they chafe on the way down to her ankles. She knows what Jackie means, though. The goofiness. Things not feeling so constantly intense.

“I know. But we used to have fun.”

“We still have fun.”

“Well, maybe I’m just getting sick of being so fucking sad all the time,” Jackie decides, reaching out for her, moving into her personal space. “I mean, I’m in love,” she huffs out. Hearing it said aloud, even so plainly, still makes Shauna’s heart leap. “I should be dancing in the rain and getting to take you out on dates and passing cute little notes in class and annoying my friends talking about you all the time. I wanna get to be obnoxious and mushy and gross like everyone else.” Her hands settle at Shauna’s waist and then move inward toward her stomach, fingers dancing along the hem of her underwear as her lips find the curve of Shauna’s jaw. Shauna makes a soft, unconscious sound in her throat, reacting to her touch, feeling a smile against her neck.

“We can go on a date,” it takes her a few seconds to offer, her brain working a little more slowly now. “You just have to…” Jackie’s fingers slip an inch into her underwear and Shauna lets herself be turned and pressed back into the counter. “Um,” she exhales, reddening. “Now?”

Jackie bites gently at her neck. “Yeah, now. While we have time.” Her other hand slides up Shauna’s body, cupping her over her bra. “Do you not want to?” she asks, but like she already knows the answer.

“I want to,” Shauna confirms. Of course she does. Her body’s wanted it off and on all night. They’ve barely been able to see each other this week, and she wants it for the intimacy of it, for the connection, just as much as she wants to soothe the growing ache between her thighs. “But our friends are wai—“ Jackie’s fingers slip lower and Shauna clamps her mouth shut, trapping a moan in her throat as Jackie’s hand starts to move in steady circles in her underwear. One of Shauna’s hands grips tightly at the countertop.

“It won’t take long,” Jackie breathes, pressing an affectionate kiss to a spot just beneath Shauna’s ear. “Say yes.”

“I’m not that fast,” Shauna argues shakily, but Jackie’s fingers are swirling and Shauna’s body’s already starting to betray her. She lets her head dip and turn and captures Jackie’s lips with a soft whine, nodding eagerly, hips rolling into Jackie’s hand.

Jackie’s kisses are firm, and then fast and hungry, her own hips pressing hard into Shaunas’s to get their bodies as flush as they can with Jackie’s arms between them. Shauna’s mouth can’t keep up with her, and she lets it hang open eventually, panting, whimpering with Jackie’s mouth against her own. Jackie slows down for a moment and Shauna manages to tell her, “You’re doing really good tonight.”

Jackie’s fingertips dance lower in her underwear, prodding teasingly, and she answers, “Yeah? Is it good?”

“Not that,” Shauna corrects, and then two of Jackie’s fingers start to press into her and Shauna melts in an instant, her knees going weak, her body sagging against the counter. “Fuck. Not just that.”

Jackie’s other hand falls to squeeze at her hip, fingers starting to ease in and out of her. “I know what you meant.”

Her palm feels so nice, pressing, sliding just like her fingers. “With them,” Shauna manages to clarify anyway, but her mind’s fading fast as Jackie’s fingers move quicker and curl and press. “W-With… You’re…”

“Uh huh. I know, Shauna.”

Shauna falls silent, sensing it isn’t the time, hips rocking faster, hands gripping at the counter and at Jackie’s shoulder, squeezing hard. Every thrust of Jackie’s fingers and press of her palm is pulling her core tighter and tighter. There’s something she’d wanted to say, but she can’t remember it anymore. She’s missed Jackie’s touch so much. 

She’s chasing it now, her whole body tense and aching, and Jackie’s mouth is gone from Shauna’s and she’s breathing a little louder near Shauna’s ear, then urging her quietly, “Tip your head back.”

Shauna does, even though it feels like it weighs a ton, and Jackie’s head dips, mouth moving back to Shauna’s neck as it’s exposed to her. Eyes squeezed shut, Shauna bites back a moan and then starts to tense and stiffen, honed in on the feeling of her skin between Jackie’s teeth, the friction from her palm, those fingers hitting her hard and fast deep inside. “Jax,” she whines, warning her.

Jackie’s lips press into her neck and part, a tiny moan burying itself there. “Uh huh,” she says again, breathless, eager, and Shauna can tell she’s missed this so much too. “Are you gonna?” 

Shauna doesn’t want to. She wants this to last, for them to get to stay like this forever together. It’s too temporary. She wishes they had the whole night. Still, she gives Jackie a quick nod, because she knows it’s almost over.

She has these moments, sometimes, still, where it lands all over again, where it hits her that this is real, that two months ago she thought she was just a toy for Jackie to play with and that Shauna would be cutting contact with her for college, and now Jackie is inside of her and whispering to her that she loves her and just wants her to feel good, and there are so many other things that are terrible but they’re all worth it for this touch and these words. She just wishes she had more to give back. She wishes she could find a way to give Jackie more than just these secret pockets of happiness now. It’s been so nice seeing her smile tonight. 

Her eyes are closed, and that’s what she’s picturing behind them now: Jackie smiling, Jackie out in the rain, giggling at Shauna’s poor dancing, making Shauna twirl her around, laughing so hard she can barely fit their mouths together.

She should tell her she loves her, too, maybe, but Jackie’s fingers are curling so perfectly inside of her, and Shauna’s thighs are trembling, and—

She shudders over the edge with a gasp and a whimper, fingers clamping down onto the counter and Jackie’s shoulder. Her hips jerk forward and her breathing grows ragged. Jackie works her through it in slow movements until it tapers off, and then her fingers are withdrawing, Shauna’s body is slumping, and the whole bathroom is peacefully quiet.

Shauna lets her eyes flutter open, thoughts filtering back in slowly. Jackie leans back just enough to press a soft kiss to her mouth—Shauna isn’t ready for it, too busy recovering to kiss back properly—and Shauna feels Jackie wipe her fingers off on Shauna’s underwear. When that’s done, Jackie rests her arms over Shauna’s shoulders and presses in close, almost nose to nose with her, watching her fondly. “I know,” she says again, gently.

Shauna doesn’t know what she means. Everything, maybe? That this had been good, or that Shauna loves her, or whatever it was that Shauna had been trying to tell her earlier. 

She remembers, suddenly, and it feels too important to gloss over like they had. “You fit in,” she murmurs, clearing her throat when her voice sounds raspier than she’d thought it would. “You were doing it. And you talked to Tai.”

Jackie nods, smiling. “Yeah. It was nice.”

“So you could.” Shauna’s probably not being as articulate as she normally could be. Every thought feels half-baked, but she thinks Jackie gets it. “I mean. You do fit. Do you think so?”

“Yes.” Jackie kisses her gently, and Shauna’s chest feels so warm. “I think so.”

Shauna’s isn’t sure what it means yet, but it can’t be a bad thing, so she can feel herself trying not to smile. Her hand slides low on Jackie’s body, finger tugging at the waistband of the sweatpants Lottie’s let Jackie borrow. 

But Jackie just pecks her on the mouth and stops her with a quiet, “Not tonight. Tomorrow.” Shauna pulls back, eyebrows lifting hopefully. Jackie looks certain about it. “Give me another reason to make sure I see you.” 

Shauna knows it’s a request. Like Jackie knows she wouldn’t be able to say no if Shauna’s hand slipped beneath the waistband now, so she’s asking her to call it off, to wait. “Okay,” Shauna whispers, but lets her hand slide up under Jackie’s top and indulge in feeling her bare abdomen instead. Jackie’s eyes flutter and barely stay open. 

Shauna pushes at her body, gently sending her back into the opposite wall, where Shauna pins her and kisses down her neck. She’ll listen to Jackie; she won’t take this too far. But she wants to give her as much affection as she’s allowed. Their waiting friends are the furthest thing from her mind now. 

She feels Jackie’s arms moving, sliding down her body, and then one of them reaches out sideways for something else to grip, finding the edge of a hanging cabinet of toiletries, and suddenly Jackie’s tensing and letting out a short hiss. Shauna thinks it’s from her teeth on Jackie’s neck, but Jackie pushes her away gently and then examines her hand with a quiet, “Ow,” a single drop of blood swelling from her index finger. “I must’ve—“

Shauna doesn’t think, just takes Jackie’s hand and closes her mouth around her fingertip in lieu of finding a Bandaid, sucking gently, tongue running over the injury, tasting copper and a hint of herself.

Jackie’s cut herself off mid-sentence to watch, eyes a little wider, throat bobbing when she swallows. Shauna’s eyebrows rise with slight confusion. She hadn’t meant anything by it; it had just been instinct. Something she does for her own injuries, too. But now she’s swallowing more copper and wondering if it’s weird, her tongue sweeping over the pad of Jackie’s finger. 

Jackie clears her throat, blinking rapidly, and then withdraws her finger gently. They both look at it, find it isn’t bleeding anymore, and Jackie fumbles for a square of toilet paper from a roll in the cabinet to wipe it off with a mumbled, “Thanks.”

“Sorry,” Shauna mutters, flushing. She knows it was odd. She’s being a freak again. 

But Jackie just looks at her for a second too long, gaze heavy, and then tells her, “Sometimes I want to say things and it feels like they might burst out of me if I hold them in for too long. Is that weird?” 

“No,” Shauna says, happy for the subject change. “I used to write things down so that I wouldn’t scream them.”

Jackie’s eyes flicker away from her and the corner of her mouth twitches. “About me.”

Shauna looks down at Jackie’s hand, sees the toilet paper wrapped around her finger now and a small dot of blood soaking into it. She reaches out for a fresh square and rewraps it herself, holding Jackie’s hand in her own. “I wish I could tell everyone you’re mine,” she says, because it’s the only thing about Jackie that’s been threatening to burst out of her for a while now. 

“I wanted to say things today.” At Shauna’s surprised, quizzical look, Jackie clarifies, “I know the Jeff stuff isn’t true. But… it’s just hard listening to everyone talk like you might want him. That’s all.” 

She wouldn’t have denied it for Jeff. But for Jackie? If it were what she wanted? “I’ll tell everyone I only love you and only want you,” she offers quietly, squeezing Jackie’s hand. “I just thought if I didn’t, they’d bother Jeff more and bother you less.”

“It’s not… just that,” Jackie says carefully. She looks nervous now. “It’s… It’s like it’s there in my throat and—I want it out,” she breathes. “I mean, I don’t, but I do. And I don’t… It’s not that stuff about how you feel about me, Shauna.”

Shauna thinks she gets it. But she needs to hear it. She can’t let her mind run wild with assumptions without getting confirmation. “Then what is it?”

Jackie closes her eyes, breathing unevenly. “That I feel it back. That you would never be his or anyone else’s because you already belong to me, and you always have, and you always will.”

Shauna swallows a heavy lump in her throat. “You want to tell people that?”

She thinks Jackie means it in the abstract. But that she feels this strongly about it internally—so much so that it feels like it’s sitting low in her throat—is something. When Jackie confirms it with a shy nod, it’s enough to make her heart feel warm and full. She can feel more hope creeping in again. Maybe it’ll be just a year after all. She can wait a year. She could wait longer, but maybe she won’t have to. 

“I’ll do anything to make it easier when you do,” she promises, and Jackie’s eyes cling to her eagerly, something soft and appreciative behind them. But when Shauna goes on, “And it’ll get easier before then, anyway, because I think we can make this summer work too, maybe, with Mari’s help, and once school starts your parents won’t have any clue that we’re visiting each other—“ Jackie’s expression changes and she looks confused and a little forlorn instead. Shauna pauses, hesitating. “What?” She’s worried she’s ruined it by mentioning Jackie’s parents, by reminding her of what she has to lose.

A fist pounds at the bedroom door in the distance before Jackie can answer, and Nat huffs out, “I hate to break up whatever’s going on in here, but Mari’s waiting on the front porch and nobody wants her there. Sorry, guys.”

Just like that, it’s over. Time’s up. Shauna’s face falls.

Jackie kisses her on the cheek, gives her one last indecipherable look, and goes.

-

Things wind down after Jackie leaves—back in her mostly-dry dress, evidence of their time in the rain largely erased. Shauna says goodbye to Jackie in the driveway with Mari waiting for her behind the wheel, and holds her close, kissing her for too long. It’s a little bit to annoy Mari, but it’s mostly because she doesn’t want to let Jackie go. When she finally does, Jackie tells her, “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” with a final, meaningful press of her lips, like it’s a promise. 

After, Shauna helps clean up Lottie’s living room with a pep in her step, more excited about the idea of them sneaking away tomorrow than sad to have had to say goodbye tonight. She’s going to get to see Jackie in her dress, and watch her be crowned, and there will be a stupid dance with Jeff, but it’s Shauna Jackie will want to see and dance with and kiss after. Maybe in the empty parking lot by the park, like they had before on their first date. 

“Never thought I’d say this,” she hears Gen say quietly to Melissa as they carry their dirty glasses toward the kitchen, “but I think I like the new Jackie.”

A comment like that would’ve made Shauna feel insecure a few months ago. Someone who was supposed to be more of her friend, who hadn’t even liked Jackie, getting charmed by her in one night—threatening to prefer her over Shauna, even, given that she can tell there’s some awkwardness there between herself and Gen because of Melissa. 

But now it makes her want to grin like a fool. Because it’s someone liking the real Jackie, and Shauna knows how much it would mean to her. She thinks it’d give her hope for the future: that she really can keep finding her people, that she won’t be lonely if she’s herself, that she’ll be seen and then loved. If she can change Gen’s mind, the possibilities seem endless. 

She’ll tell her about it tomorrow, Shauna decides. She’ll grin at her, goofy and giddy like Jackie tonight, and remind her that whether they’re at her parents’ church or a lesbian bar or anything in between, all she has to do is turn on the charm and she’ll be golden. She’s too easy to love. If she lacks it in one place someday—like home, or even Wiskayok in general—she’ll find it somewhere else. Jackie won’t go through her life not being beloved by everyone she surrounds herself with; Shauna’s decided she’ll make sure of it. 

And it’ll start tomorrow, with that crown on Jackie’s head. One last symbol of social approval. Even if Jackie’s had to do some pretending to earn it, Shauna will happily watch her reap the rewards of her efforts. 

And then they’ll sneak away, and it’ll be a night they’ll remember forever. 

She falls asleep thinking about it, and wakes up to a noon alarm.

The other girls are in various states of consciousness and preparedness by the time she drags herself out to the kitchen. Melissa and Gen have already gone home. Only Nat’s still asleep in Lottie’s bed, and Lottie has a fresh hickey on her neck Shauna can tell the others notice, but no one says anything this time, not even Van. 

They get ready in the afternoon: Shauna pulls on her dress and Tai zips her up while Lottie does Laura Lee’s hair. Shauna examines herself in the mirror and feels her nerves growing. It’s simple and strapless and pushes up her boobs a little, and she’d mostly picked it out in hopes of monopolizing Jackie’s attention, but something about her shoulders being bare makes her feel exposed. 

“It looks great,” Tai says to her, and she tries to relax, distracting herself. There’s something she’s wanted to ask Tai about since last night. 

“I saw you talking to Jackie yesterday,” she broaches carefully. 

“Mhmm.” Tai doesn’t give her an opening, and Shauna gets the message. Whatever had been said, it’s private. 

She tries to dig a little anyway. “It seemed like it went okay?”

“Yeah.” Tai places her hands on Shauna’s shoulders and looks at her reflection pointedly. “Just focus on getting ready. You’ll see her soon.”

Tai moves, exposing Van hovering nearby behind her, watching Shauna for a beat too long like she’s taken a particular interest in their conversation. Shauna raises a questioning eyebrow at her, and Van just gives her a knowing smile and a short nod. Shauna would like to think she’s getting better at reading her, and something in Van’s expression is saying You better be ready for what’s coming.

Shauna’s stomach flips with the anticipation that sprouts in it. Her mind jumps to Jackie talking to Laura Lee last night about having ideas for a second date. Is that what’s happening? Had she run her plans by Tai last night and asked for advice on how to pull it off in the short time they’ll have together?

She’s getting too anxious thinking about it, even if it’s in the best kind of way, and Lottie calling her over for hair and makeup is a welcome distraction. She curls Shauna’s hair loosely, and Nat  finally joins them and does Shauna’s eye makeup after promising not to make her look like a raccoon. They don’t let her look in a mirror until they’re done, and when she finally sees herself, her lips part in surprise.

She looks older, like she had back in Atlantic City, but it’s completely different. Almost regal this time. Lottie’s done something with the makeup to make her cheekbones look sharper, and she’s wearing red lipstick that matches a shade Jackie likes to wear when she gets dolled up like this too. Whatever Lottie’s sprayed into her hair has it looking shiny and sleek. 

She thanks them, blushing, though she isn’t sure how to feel about it. She just wants Jackie to like it, mostly. 

Around dinnertime, they say goodbye to Nat and take a limo out to a restaurant together. Lottie pays for their meals, but Shauna only gets an appetizer, too nervous to eat much. 

The Prom itself is being held at a local event center not far from their high school, and as they head there, Van, decked out in a black suit, does her best to pour them five glasses of champagne and then pass them around. “Rest in peace, Nat,” she announces, raising her glass. “You would’ve hated every second of this, but we thank you anyway for taking one for the team.”

They laugh, clinking their glasses, and Shauna watches Lottie drain hers. She’ll no doubt be going home to Nat again tonight, regardless of whatever’s going on there, whatever they’ve decided it means. Tai and Van will be glued to each other all night, of course, whatever grief their classmates give them for it. Laura Lee will happily sleep alone, probably in Lottie’s guest room again. Only Shauna’s night is uncertain. She hopes Jackie’s resolve has held in the past twenty-two hours. It’d feel incomplete without getting to spend some time holding her. 

The dance is in full swing already by the time they arrive: music blasting, students crowding the dance floor and the punch bowl. Shauna doesn’t see Jackie, but she does see where the Prom Committee has set up the voting booth for Prom King and Queen. She should get that out of the way, so she gets her friends’ attention and points. Laura Lee and Lottie seem eager to go with her, but Tai and Van have gone ahead of them, aren’t paying attention, and disappear into the crowd. 

Making a mental note to keep an eye on them tonight in the event of any harassment—though she’s sure Lottie and Laura Lee have planned to do the same, and probably have Shauna on their minds as well—Shauna steps into line for the booth and then makes her way inside a minute later. 

It’s quick: one ballot, Andrew and a couple of other jocks at the top, and then Jackie and two other girls at the bottom. Both have options for a write-in vote, so Shauna scrawls “Flex” on the line for Prom King because it’s the dumbest thing she can think of, then bubbles in the circle next to Jackie’s name. Outside, one boy and one girl from the committee are guarding the ballot box. The girl very purposefully doesn’t look at her as she slips her ballot inside. The boy’s gaze lingers on her for too long, a hint of a smirk on his lips.

“What?” she asks him sharply, but Lottie and Laura Lee appear and submit their ballots, then hastily pull her away.

“No fighting tonight, Shauna,” Laura Lee says pleadingly to her as they search for Tai and Van.

“I wasn’t,” she says shortly. She just hadn’t liked the look on his face. Predatory, but like he’d known something she doesn’t. She won’t let it ruin her night, but it unsettles something deep within her, and the feeling lingers.  

The iciness from the school hallways and the quad is still palpable tonight. Tai and Van are together on the dance floor, and a faster song is playing but there’s a noticeable gap between them and their classmates, like they’re being given a wide berth—just because they’re gay, or for fear of a slow song coming on and them wrapping their arms around each other, maybe. It’s clear no one wants to get too close, and everyone’s vacillating between staring at them and ignoring them entirely. They look off in their own little world together, handling it as well as they can.

Shauna doesn’t want to dance, and winds up convincing Laura Lee and Lottie that they’re okay to join Tai and Van and that she’ll be just fine getting punch on her own. No one bothers her on her way over to the bowl, thankfully, and when she takes her first sip she grimaces at the sharp taste of alcohol. Nearby, Randy catches her eye and gives her a knowing smirk she thinks is probably about the punch and not just him generally being an asshole about the Jackie thing. She nods at him and raises her glass a little, and when he almost looks like he’s smiling now it makes her feel at ease for a moment.

Maybe things are healing. Maybe she won’t get a drink tossed at her tonight, and that stupid threatening note about giving her what she wants had just been to rattle her, and her last two weeks at Wiskayok High will pass relatively uneventfully. She doesn’t want to be naive, and hoping for things has burned her before, but just maybe she can relax a little.

She tosses back the whole cup and fills it again, and sets her mind to finding Jackie next. Just to look at her. She wanders the outskirts of the room, sipping her drink, catching sight of Lottie twirling a laughing Laura Lee on the dance floor and Tai and Van slipping away toward the voting booth. 

She sees Jeff, too, leaning up against the far wall with a drink in hand and a nice tux on, looking surprisingly lonely. She wonders why he hadn’t brought a date, and for a moment she starts to feel bad for him. He hadn’t loved Jackie, but he and Jackie hadn’t been so different: both victims of their own reputations, clearly feeling the pressure to be the perfect, popular couple rather than staying together out of a genuine fondness for each other. Shauna had written in her own journal once that Jackie would be nothing without Jeff, and she knows now that she’d been wrong, that Jackie would be nothing without Shauna. But it’s probably true that Jeff is nothing without Jackie. 

She doesn’t care enough in the end to try to offer him some comfort—the optics of doing that here and now aside—but she spares a thought to it all, at least, and that’s less than his own friends seem to have done for him. They’ve carved out a large space for themselves on the dance floor but are barely dancing, just jumping around obnoxiously together, hollering and whooping, having the time of their lives while their dates look on uncomfortably from the nearest table. Those girls aren’t quite Jackie’s friends—more like acquaintances, friends of friends—and so Jackie isn’t among them.

She keeps moving, and things feel a little odd all the while, but in a way that’s familiar to her by now. Like there are eyes on her, but every time she seeks them out, she can’t find anyone watching her. She feels too seen, and yet ignored, and her skin starts prickling uncomfortably the longer she tries and fails to ignore it. 

She finds an empty table and sets her drink down, planning to sit, but she scans the crowd one last time beforehand, and that’s when she finds Jackie: near the punch bowl now, drink in hand, Mari and another girl on either side of her as Mari pours a drink for herself. They’re all smiling and talking to each other, the third girl’s date there with them, his arm wrapped around her. Two more couples from their Prom group maneuver through the crowd and join Jackie, and Shauna can’t look away from her.

Jackie’s hair is up—probably professionally done, paid for at the insistence of her mother—and thin, shiny silver bars dangle from her ears. Her pink dress is one-shouldered, with a glittery floral embroidery and a slit that starts mid-thigh. She’s practically shimmering in the light, a perfect match for the crowns waiting at the table onstage just feet away from Shauna. The shade of her lipstick matches Shauna’s perfectly, and something in Shauna’s gut tells her she’d arranged that with Lottie. The idea of Jackie taking the time to account for them being all over each other tonight makes her stomach flip. She pictures them in Jackie’s car, kissing hard, lipstick smearing, and them wiping at it afterward with Jackie all giggly like she’d been out in the rain.

She knows she shouldn’t stare, but it’s so difficult not to, and it’s not like her feelings are a secret anyway. It’s Jackie who can’t look for too long—and she seems to sense eyes on her somehow, or maybe just Shauna’s eyes, like it’s second nature to her, because Jackie clearly hasn’t seen her yet tonight. Her reaction gives it away: she gets a moment to herself while her friends pour drinks and then her eyes meet Shauna’s almost instantly, drawn straight to her like magnets, and then her face is changing and a smile is blooming wide on her lips. Shauna can’t help but grin back like a fool. 

Jackie reins it in quickly, mindful of herself, but her eyes keep flickering away and then back to Shauna in secret, like she needs to keep looking, to keep taking her in. Not just her face, even: her whole body, eyes raking down and then darting elsewhere, burning up every inch of Shauna’s skin on their way. 

The crowd thickens between them, putting it to a premature end, and Shauna sighs and takes a seat, focusing on her drink now. She’ll have enough just to take the edge off and help her get through this, and sober up by the time Jackie’s winning Prom Queen. Then they’ll ditch together. She hopes that’s still the plan, anyway. Jackie’s reaction to her certainly hadn’t done anything to worry her.

She hadn’t anticipated the night going perfectly, so it isn’t much of a shock to her when the first hiccup comes in the form of a boy from one of her classes sidling up to her with a knowing smirk and greeting her, “Hey, Shauna. Is that stuff about you and Sadecki sneaking around true?”

She rolls her eyes and answers the way she does for Jackie, not for Jeff. “No, it’s not.”

“I heard it is,” he teases. “Heard you guys fucked at that party a few weeks ago, too, and all that lezzy stuff about Jackie is just to cover it up.”

Laura Lee and Lottie are on it; there in seconds, Lottie already pushing her way between them and asking him sharply, “Did you want something?” as Laura Lee tugs encouragingly on Shauna’s hand and tells her that she should come dance with them. 

Shauna gets tugged away before she can hear his response to Lottie, and then she’s out on the dance floor with Laura Lee, just the two of them, and they’ve barely settled into place in front of each other when the song changes into something slow and couples start pairing off around them.

Laura Lee blinks, wide-eyed, at Shauna, then glances back to where Lottie seems to be getting heated with the boy now and several students nearby are watching. Shauna cranes her neck to try to see, and then Laura Lee abruptly pulls her close, insisting, “Just stay here,” no doubt worried that if Shauna rejoins Lottie it’ll end in someone taking a punch.

Laura Lee’s successfully distracted her, at least, because Shauna’s hands have grabbed her hips to avoid crashing straight into her, Laura Lee’s have found her shoulders for similar reasons, and Shauna’s incredibly confused. “Um?”

Laura Lee’s cheeks flush, and it seems to sink in for her what exactly she’s done. The couples swaying around them are staring. “Oh, God,” she whispers under her breath, eyes squeezing shut as though she’s in pain.

“Let’s maybe not,” Shauna offers, letting her go abruptly, and Laura Lee releases her right away with an eager nod. They both look toward Lottie and see that she seems to have diffused the situation; in fact, she’s watching them now, a hand over her mouth, clearly smothering laughter. 

Laura Lee hurries off of the dance floor, and Shauna barely has two seconds to recover before Van’s slotting right into her place with a smooth, “May I?” Then she grins and adds, “Also, that was fucking hilarious.”

“Before Tai gets a slow dance?” Shauna wonders. Van’s hands feel a little unnatural on her hips, but they’ve done this before in a much wilder atmosphere with a lot more alcohol in them, so it doesn’t feel like a big deal to rest her hands on Van’s shoulders and attempt to sway together for a minute.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Van says easily. “I figured I could spare you one.” She looks on the edge of laughter again as she adds, “Didn’t exactly think Laura Lee was who I’d be filling in for, though. She’s never gonna convince anyone from Wiskayok she’s straight now. It’ll be even worse for her after people find out about Lottie and Nat.”

“You think people will find out?” Shauna wonders. “I didn’t think they cared about it enough to tell anyone. Whatever it even is.”

Van snorts. “They care. Trust me.”

“Hmm.” Shauna doesn’t spend any longer pondering it. It’s none of her business.

“Have you seen Jackie tonight?” Van asks her, lowering her voice. “She looks hot, dude. Seriously.”

Shauna hides a smile. “I know. I saw.” She remembers Jackie’s talk with Tai again, and then Van’s look in the mirror earlier. “You know something about tonight.”

“I promise I don’t. I just kinda know some stuff she said to Tai.” Shauna watches her expectantly, and Van hesitates and then folds, heaving a sigh. “Look. You don’t know this. But she was asking a lot of questions about how it was for Tai, with like… coming out stuff. Just getting advice. Things like that. And I know that they talked things out about the way she treated us after me and Tai came out. Tai said she was sweet and that they made up. That’s all.”

Shauna processes that slowly, thinking it over. She doesn’t know what to make of it. “Like… she might do it soon? Before the end of summer?” She tries not to let her mind run wild, to not picture Jackie spending a couple of weeks living with her, sharing her bed, cleaning up the mess her life would become and then promising her constant visits in the fall, free of worries about having to hide their trips to each other from Jackie’s parents. 

“I don’t know.” Van looks like she wants to say more. “Tai thought it seemed like—” She cuts herself off, visibly changing her mind. “Fuck, I’m gonna get in trouble. Just pretend I never said anything.”

Shauna wants to try to get more out of her, but something bumps into her hard and she stumbles forward into Van, a shooting pain sprouting in her ankle as one of her feet lands awkwardly in the heels she’s wearing. Van catches her, stumbling backwards, and glares past her. Shauna hears faint laughter as she tries to right herself, wincing, testing her ankle. 

“Let’s go sit,” Van says tightly, guiding her away, but the pain’s mostly faded by the time they find seats next to Lottie and a still-flustered Laura Lee. Shauna doesn’t ask who’d done it, just lifts her leg and rests it across her thigh so she can rub gently at her ankle until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

They don’t mention it when Tai arrives, loose and smiley enough to give away that she’s had a drink or two herself already. She pulls Van away to dance to the next slow song that plays, and Van’s visibly wary of the people around them as they take the dance floor. 

Shauna doesn’t want to focus on the unfairness of it all, and distracts herself by looking for Jackie again. She’s sitting with Mari and one of the couples, sneaking looks at Shauna right back, eyebrows furrowed in worry, and Shauna offers her a smile she hopes is reassuring. It doesn’t seem to do anything; Jackie just drops her gaze to Shauna’s ankle for a moment, then gets to her feet, says something to her friends, and gives Shauna a slightly longer look before turning and making her way toward an exit.

Shauna waits until she’s gone and then springs to her feet, offers a quick, “I have to use the bathroom,” to Lottie and Laura Lee, and then hurries after Jackie.

She exits to a hallway littered with more students, much to her displeasure, and there’s a line for the girls’ bathroom, which she suspects rules it out. She wanders down to the end of the hall and pushes through a set of doors to the parking lot. Jackie’s just feet away, smoking a cigarette and clearly attempting to look casual until she sees it’s Shauna. Immediately she goes to her, grabs her hand, and pulls her around the corner of the building, into a small nook that provides them just a little bit of cover in the event that anyone else were to come outside.

“Hey,” Shauna breathes out, grinning. “You look amazing, Jax.”

“You do too.” Jackie exhales smoke from between her lips with a fond look at her, but Shauna can see a hint of sadness in the shape of her mouth afterward. “Are you okay? I saw, earlier.”

“I’m fine. Promise.”

Jackie relaxes a little. “It’s just jealousy. I’m sure he wishes he was the one dancing with you. A bunch of those dickheads probably do.”

“I think you’re maybe projecting.” Shauna says it lightly, teasing.

“Well, I guess you’re not fully wrong.” Jackie attempts a small smile. “I was a little jealous.”

“We can dance later tonight, when it’s just the two of us,” Shauna promises. “Want me to come meet you at your car after you get crowned?”

“Maybe.” Jackie considers it. “Yeah. If nothing changes between now and then.”

A pang of anxiety hits Shauna square in the chest. “What would change? Is there a reason we wouldn’t meet up?”

“Of course not,” Jackie says quickly, gently, reaching out with her free hand to squeeze Shauna’s. “We definitely are. And my curfew’s not until midnight, so we have time.”

“Then what would—?” Shauna tries to ask again, but the exit door swings open and she falls silent, listening with Jackie as a male and a female voice flirt and laugh together around the corner. Feet pad against pavement and their voices grow distant; they’re heading out to the parking lot.

When they’re finally gone, Shauna’s heart’s beating uncomfortably fast—both because of the near miss and because of the question Jackie hadn’t fully answered—and she knows she can’t linger any longer. It’s too risky. “I’ll head back in and see you later?”

“Okay.” Jackie moves in close and kisses her firmly, careful not to smear their lipstick. They both prolong it more than they’d initially intended to, and Shauna suppresses a groan when they finally pull away. Jackie takes another puff from her cigarette like she’s trying to keep her mouth busy, her eyes heavy on Shauna’s lips. “We should probably go in separately. I’ll wait a few minutes.”

Shauna nods but kisses her one last time anyway, mumbles a short, “I’ll cheer for you when you win, but I’m not watching you dance with Jeff,” and then pulls away.

Jackie opens her mouth like she wants to say something, but then falters and just nods, something nervous behind her eyes. “Okay,” she agrees, smiling. “That’s fair.”

Shauna leaves her there, a little confused, trying not to over-worry about the way Jackie seems visibly preoccupied tonight. She’s probably concerned about winning. But it’s only Jeff’s crown that’s truly up in the air—It has been for weeks now, ever since their kiss, and if he loses Shauna knows he’ll blame her for it. She isn’t so sure he cares that much about winning, though, when it means three minutes of awkward dancing with the ex everyone knows dumped him and then refused to be his Prom date. He’s definitely in for a worse Prom than Shauna, even, now that she’s really thinking about it. She wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t left his lonely spot against the wall.

She doesn’t look for him to confirm it, too in her own head for the next long minutes that pass. Anxious for reasons she can’t explain, heart rate never quite coming down after her talk with Jackie. 

She can still feel those eyes on her. No one bothers her again, or purposefully bumps her on the dance floor with her friends, and Tai and Van get some sneers they ignore during their slow dances but everything is otherwise uneventful.

She drinks another cup of punch—her last of the night—and then dances again, and lets Lottie spin her around to some fast song until she’s laughing and also a little nauseous, and at some point Misty Quigley of all people shows up and pointedly asks Laura Lee if she’s genuinely into women or just interested in experimenting with Shauna, which sends the rest of them into hysterics as Laura Lee blushingly and emphatically insists that she’s straight. 

Mari and Jackie take to the dance floor a few times together, usually with at least a couple of other girls with them, but Jackie never dances with a boy—not during the slow songs, anyway—and Shauna can tell she’s having a fun enough time. Maybe not as fun as she would with Shauna’s group, but Prom itself won’t be a bad memory for her, and that’s maybe the goal in the end, given the circumstances. Beggars can’t be choosers, after all, and Shauna will make it up to her tonight. 

Provided nothing changes.

She’s still not sure what that had been about, but Jackie had insisted they’d still get some time together later, so Shauna’s trying not to dwell on it. Still, her nerves are ever-present, even when she’s trying to drown them beneath the memories she’s making with her friends.

It gets worse when she sees the stage getting set up. She thinks she identifies it, then. She wants Jackie to have the night of her life. She wants her to feel loved, to have this memory forever. Before it all comes crashing down, in a month or a year or whenever she chooses. This has been Jackie’s night from the moment she’d started dating Jeff back in freshman year. This has been her crown. Homecoming had just been the appetizer. 

Maybe Shauna should stay to watch her dance with Jeff. It’s the old Jackie’s last hurrah, before they say goodbye to her. And maybe the old Jackie hadn’t had much in common with the real Jackie, but there are parts of her that they share, parts of her that are real and loved. And all of that means something. 

They were friends first. Jackie cares about this. So, as her friend, Shauna should see it through. Stand on the sidelines and admire her as just her best friend for one last time.

She commits herself to it, and as the music dies down she makes her way toward the stage early, gesturing for the others to follow her, wanting to ensure she’s at the front of the crowd. A small space is being left for the King and Queen’s first dance, and they all gather where they’re meant to.

Coach Ben is nearby, starting to collect the nominees, pointing them toward the stage, two envelopes in his hands. A microphone’s been moved to the front of the stage, and Shauna looks past it to watch Jackie take her place as directed. She’s biting her lip and then remembering she shouldn’t because of her lipstick, and Shauna can see her fingers curling and uncurling nervously. She’s trying not to glance at Shauna with so many eyes on her, but the one time she can’t help herself Shauna flashes her a smile and a thumbs up, and it seems to quell Jackie’s nerves a small amount, at least.

“Alright, everyone,” the DJ set up in a corner nearby says into his microphone, his voice echoing through the speakers. The music comes to a complete stop. “Everyone gather at the stage; it’s time to announce your Class of 1996 Prom King and Prom Queen!”

The stragglers make their way over, packing the floor tightly, and Tai gets bumped into Shauna. Shauna doesn’t realize she’s trembling until Tai grabs her hand to squeeze it and then doesn’t let go. Why does she feel this way? And why does it still feel like there are so many eyes on her? She knows it can’t just be all in her head or because she’s nervous for Jackie, but she can’t figure it out.

With the six nominees onstage, Coach Ben approaches the microphone and takes hold of it, then winces when a burst of feedback screeches through the speakers. “Sorry!” he says once it’s died down. “Um. I’ve been asked to announce the results tonight.”

Someone whoops for him—Shauna thinks it’s probably Misty—and there are a few scattered chuckles. 

“I’m sure everyone’s expecting a speech,” he starts. “But, uh… well, I’m just a coach, not a writer, so I’ll get straight to it.” A few relieved claps from the audience seem to validate him, and he nods expectantly and sets one envelope down on the stand next to him, right between the two waiting crowns. He lifts the flap of the first envelope open and starts to withdraw the card inside. “Your Wiskayok High Class of 1996 Prom King is…” 

Shauna looks past him at Jeff. His head is bowed low, hands clasped in front of his face. The other two boys with him are watching him expectantly, already visibly prepared to be gracious in defeat. On the other side of the stage, Shauna sees Jackie glance over at him. She looks like she wants to throw up from anxiety.

“...Jeff Sadecki!”

There’s a group of boys not far from Shauna that absolutely explode with whoops and cheers: Jeff’s friends, some of them recognizable from the day they’d mocked Shauna at his locker. They go wild as he steps forward humbly—not nearly as excited as them—to accept the crown Coach Ben places onto his head. 

“That’s my boy, Jeffrey!” one of them shouts, earning scattered laughter from the crowd. Another couple of them let out a few low barks and pump their fists. It’s obnoxious. It’s stupid. Shauna just wants this over with. 

Coach Ben waits for them to quiet down, pats Jeff on the shoulder, and retrieves the second envelope. “And now,” he starts, hamming it up a little even though Shauna knows him well enough to be certain he doesn’t give a damn about this, some mild fondness for Jackie aside. He’s got the flap open. “Your Class of 1996 Prom Queen is…” 

He withdraws the card from the envelope, looks at the name. Shauna sees something flicker across his expression, and he falters, his throat bobbing. He glances out at the crowd and then back to the card. 

It all only takes a second, at most, and then he’s smiling brightly, announcing, “Jackie Taylor!” and the card is going back into the envelope, stowed away, the flap closed. 

Jackie blows out a breath, stepping forward, and her friends in the crowd are cheering, and Shauna’s only clapping even though she wants to cheer too because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself by seeming too enthusiastic. But all around her, Tai, Lottie, Laura Lee, and Van are happily going nuts, jumping up and down, arms and hands in the air save for the one Tai’s still using to hold onto Shauna’s hand with.

It takes a moment for what else is happening to register: the way there are murmurs among the majority of the crowd, the way Jeff’s friends are clamoring forward toward the front with complaints, and then a male voice that probably belongs to one of them cuts through the crowd above the others to exclaim, “No way!”

It spurns on others, and the murmurs swell, a negative tone to them now, and Jackie’s still standing by Coach Ben, watching the crowd with alarm as he attempts to quiet them down, his face an awkward shade of red.

“Alright, settle down, settle—” 

“She didn’t win!” someone else shouts. “Show us the card!”

“Yeah!” another chimes in. “Show it to us!”

“What’s going on?” Shauna hears Van murmur to Tai.

“I don’t know,” Tai says back. Shauna’s heart sinks into her stomach. She watches Jackie glance to Coach Ben uncertainly, embarrassed, as he continues to talk over the crowd into the microphone.

“That’s enough—If we could get the first dance music up—!”

But the crowd’s gaining momentum, and chants of “Show us! Show us! Show us!” are starting, drowning Ben out. Shauna can feel Tai tense at her side, like she’s ready to head onstage herself and help, or take over, or something—But Jackie does it for her, like ripping off a Bandaid, like she just wants this moment over with, and plucks the envelope out of Ben’s hands, opening it, pulling the card out, reading the name.

Shauna watches her blink at it, and then take in a shaky breath, and then close her mouth tight like she’s trying not to fall apart. Her lips tremble and as Ben defeatedly takes the envelope and card back from her, she looks straight at Shauna, tears forming in her eyes.

Shauna knows then. It’s obvious. Her heart sinks like a stone down into her feet.

On Ben’s other side, Jeff snatches the card out of his hand, reads it, and then deflates, looking out at his friends as they react to him with laughter and good-natured heckling. 

“Go get her, Jeffy-boy!” one says as they cackle and shove at each other. There are plenty of other students laughing at their antics, too, in on the prank, and Shauna isn’t sure if it makes it better or worse that it isn’t even about Jackie, and maybe not even about Jackie and Shauna, either. Almost all of the shouts are being directed at Jeff now, teasing him, and this, evidently, is them giving Shauna what she wants in their minds. Setting her up to dance with Jeff. Setting him up to have to dance with her. 

It’s Jeff who turns the card around, then, with a sarcastic chuckle, leaning into the mic to add a, “Very funny, guys!” as he shows the entire crowd Shauna Shipman printed across the front. “Senior prank, yeah, I got it.” His eyes fall to Shauna and he beckons her with a tired, “Just come get the crown,” bothered but clearly trying to play it off like he isn’t. He doesn’t care about Jackie in this moment. He doesn’t care about the fact that she’s standing next to Ben for no reason now, just as humiliated as Shauna and Jeff.

Jeff has put the pressure on Shauna now, and she feels rough hands shove at her back, making her stumble forward out into open space, exposed to the crowd now. “Shauna Slutman!” someone cheers, and the name isn’t funny now when the rest of them are laughing at it.  

She can’t look at Jackie. She can’t look at her friends. She wants to disappear. It’s only the fury burning beneath the shame that makes her steady herself and go: right up the stairs, cheers and laughter ringing at her back, and past Jackie to Ben, who has the crown in his hands and looks just as sickened by all of this as Shauna feels.

“It’s fine,” she says curtly to him, extending a hand. “Just give it to me.”

The mic picks her up. Someone jokes, “Gonna say that tonight to Sadecki?!” and Shauna hears Tai shout at them to fuck off. “You fuck off!” the voice says back, and she tunes it all out after that. 

Ben hands her the crown, and she takes a deep breath and turns to Jackie, finally. She’s not ready for the sight of her: humiliated, shaken, tears streaming down her cheeks for both herself and for Shauna. It takes everything Shauna has to keep her composure, to just say, “It’s okay,” when what she wants to say is "I’m sorry that they hate me more than they love you.” Carefully, she eases the crown onto Jackie’s head, trying not to pull at her hair. “It’s just a stupid prank,” she adds, like this isn’t horrible, like this won’t forever be one of the worst nights of their lives. “You should’ve won.”

The crown looks beautiful on her, like it belongs there. It really does match her dress. Shauna takes her in and then nods with satisfaction at her as best as she can, still holding herself together. Jackie looks like she’s struggling to breathe.

When their classmates see what she’s done, they start booing. They’re not going to get what they want: Shauna and Jeff awkwardly holding each other for a dance, presented to the crowd to be laughed at and further humiliated. The other students are realizing it. They’re getting something far less exciting instead, albeit still uncomfortable: Jeff and Jackie, the perfect couple, splintered and forced to suffer through one last moment together before it’s over for good. 

Shauna wipes at Jackie’s tears carefully, watching her take in a shuddering breath, but it’s all dying down now: the crowd isn’t packed so tightly anymore, and a few people are wandering away now that it’s going to be boring, and the chanting and heckling and laughing is fading out. Jeff’s friends have had their fill of their amusement and seem to just think it’s funny that they’d made this result happen and that Jeff’s still going to have to dance with his ex-girlfriend.

“I’ll see you after,” Shauna says to Jackie, holding herself together just long enough to get it out. Jackie reaches for her abruptly, but Shauna’s moving too quickly to notice, eager to head offstage and leave them to it, aware that getting away from Jackie and letting the moment pass as quickly as possible is for the best. She won’t stay composed for much longer anyway, herself; she can already feel tears brimming in her eyes and her breath starting to come in shorter gasps. 

She passes the DJ, who looks confused for a moment but then presses a button on his setup, and as Shauna heads for her friends at the front of the crowd, ready to beg them to help her get outside, she hears familiar opening notes start to play.

The crowd isn’t laughing at her anymore, but it feels like the universe is. It’s ‘Linger’. Shauna and Jackie and Jeff have all just been humiliated and Jackie and Jeff are going to dance to fucking ‘Linger’ together while Shauna tries not to have a meltdown outside and Jackie’s inside wrapped up in Jeff’s arms. She feels sick. She might be sick, right here in front of everyone, feet from where Jackie and Jeff will be swaying together any minute now.

She reaches Van first, grabs at her and mutters, “Please just get me the fuck out of here,” choking back a sob, but Van’s looking past her with alarm, and so are Tai and the others, and so is the crowd, too.

“Turn around,” Van demands, and then grabs Shauna’s body and does it for her anyway, and it takes a moment for Shauna to process the sight of Jeff shell-shocked on the stage alone where Jackie had been, a hand still held out in front of him in a silent offering. Jackie, meanwhile, is gingerly making her way off of the bottom step by the stage and onto the dance floor, eyes on Shauna, so incredibly nervous as she finds her footing. 

The song is still playing, and Jackie crosses the empty space to her: shakily at first, and then less and less so, and by the time she reaches Shauna she’s breathing evenly and her eyes are shimmering with something Shauna can’t identify. Her jaw is set firmly, like she’s made her mind up. 

Shauna stares at her, bewildered, not able to put the pieces together even as Van takes her by the shoulders and gently pushes her to take a step forward, closing the last bit of distance between herself and Jackie.

“What are you doing?” Shauna asks her, because she genuinely doesn’t know. Her mind’s racing with a million different possibilities. Jackie had clearly rejected a dance with Jeff. So… that’s it, and they’re leaving now. Revealing that they never stopped being friends. She should take Jackie’s hand and simply lead her out and then they’ll fix things with her parents later. 

But Jackie offers her hand first, steady, not trembling, almost in confirmation, and Shauna glances down at it with wide eyes. She looks up at Jackie and there’s something so earnest and hopeful and… and brave in them. Jackie swallows thickly and then tells her, “I don’t want you to have to do this without me anymore.”

“What the fuck?” someone murmurs behind Shauna, and panic and pride well up in her as it finally processes. People are seeing this. People are knowing because of this. It’s on purpose. Jackie is letting them know. 

‘Linger’ hasn’t even reached the first verse yet. 

Shauna reaches out and takes her hand, and Jackie starts to tremble, then. It’s like all of her strength’s been drained from her, used up to get her to this point. Shauna feels herself settle, growing steady, nervous but put back together again. Like everything that’s drained from Jackie is filtering into Shauna instead.

She steps in close, mutters, “I’ve got you,” and everything else is instinct: her hands on Jackie’s hips, Jackie’s arms around her neck, Shauna pulling Jackie in until they’re cheek to cheek. “It’s okay,” Shauna whispers to her, her revitalized heart warm but beating out of rhythm. “I’m so proud of you. Just close your eyes. I owe you a good memory.”

Jackie nods against her with a soft, watery laugh and Shauna knows she’s doing what she’s been asked. There’s a ringing in her ears that’s drowning out the crowd, drowning out the song, and everything she takes in is just from Jackie: the press of her body, her shuddering breaths, the smell of her perfume. They turn slowly, wrapped up in a gentle embrace, eyes shut tight all the while.

Shauna only addresses the reality of it all once, halfway through the song, to joke, “Do you think they know now?”

And Jackie just laughs nervously into her ear, whispers, “We can make sure,” and then pulls back, cups her cheek, and kisses Shauna: firm and short and chaste. It’s still enough to make Shauna’s knees go weak. She has no idea how many people are still watching, but she’s sure it’s enough. Jackie is out. Jackie is hers.

And Jackie’s life is about to end. But, even so, a new one will sprout from the ashes of it. One Shauna will do anything and everything to make worth giving up what Jackie’s lost tonight.

“I can’t believe they played ‘Linger’,” Shauna murmurs as Jackie caresses her cheek. They only have eyes for each other now, and they’re still swaying, but less so. The song’s almost at its end. “What are the odds?”

Jackie softens. “Shauna, I asked him to play it if I won,” she says, like this is something Shauna should’ve guessed. 

Shauna’s eyebrows furrow. “For you and Jeff?”

Jackie sighs, rolling her eyes fondly. “I was going to ask you to dance. Before these assholes ruined it.”

Shauna’s lips part with surprise. “Oh,” she says, taking a moment to process that. Her heart thumps wildly. 

“I decided yesterday,” Jackie tells her. “I couldn’t just do nothing every day while you went through hell.”

“It’s only been three days,” Shauna marvels, doing the math quickly in her head. Outed on Monday. Gone from school on Tuesday. She’s only been dealing with it since Wednesday, really. “You lasted three days?”

“Yeah,” Jackie laughs out, beaming at her, her eyes so warm and affectionate. “I guess I lasted three days.”

Their next kiss is longer, but a little shy, and when Shauna feels someone new brush up against her she flinches and pulls back, but it’s only Tai and Van settling next to them, beaming at Jackie and Shauna as they embrace each other to dance too, and there are other couples taking the floor and the song is changing and… it’s over. It’s done.

Shauna has no clue what’s next, but she knows she doesn’t want to stay here after everything that’s just happened. “Do you want to go?” she asks Jackie. “Maybe… You could stay at my place tonight?” Morning will be hell. But they can worry about it then. They’ll be safe at Shauna’s house.

Jackie swallows thickly and Shauna knows it’s all setting in for her, too. Someone will tell her parents soon. They’ll know before the end of the night, probably. “I think,” she says carefully, “maybe we should just go somewhere new. Somewhere no one can find us. Just for tonight.”

“Okay.” Shauna releases her, skimming their surroundings to relocate the exit. Her eyes pass over a few couples that are dancing, almost in solidarity with them, and the many many more who aren’t, who are staring at herself and Jackie—mostly at Jackie, like they’re seeing her anew, like they thought she was human and suddenly she’s not. Her hand finds Jackie’s on instinct, gripping it tightly, protectively. She can feel in the squeeze Jackie gives her that Jackie’s taking it in, too, that she recognizes how bad it is. “Let’s go somewhere new.”

And together they make their swift exit, leaving their friends and their school—and, soon enough, their town—behind for just one night, before everything that Jackie Taylor’s life used to be collapses and they’re left to pick through the rubble.