Chapter Text
2011
There comes a point, somewhere in the off-season, when Jackie Pike realises she loves Shane Hollander.
With Hayden doing more of the kid-wrangling over the summer, Jackie tackles household projects. She's deep-cleaning the pantry, all her bulk goods pulled out and spread over the kitchen island. There's two kinds of ginger ale. There’s pasta made from lentils instead of wheat: that had been a good find. She keeps that around, and Shane can just swing by and if whatever she's feeding the kids doesn't work for his diet, he and Hayden cobble together something that complements slightly greenish high protein noodles.
It's good. It’s good for Hayden: he’s been friendly with his teammates as long as she’s known him, but since he and Macca got split up after their rookie years, he’s not had a close buddy. Macca’s somewhere out west now, like Hayden’s family. And Hayden is… Hayden is Hayden, but he’s a lot to handle. Too loud, too goofy for the older and steadier guys, she thinks, and too sweet, too “married with kids” for the partiers and troublemakers. When Hayden had described Hollander as seeming younger, in person, than he did on TV, more nervous than you’d expect for a rising star, and practically allergic to after-practice drinks, Jackie had been curious and redoubled her insistence that Hayden bring him home for dinner.
Hayden had barrelled past Shane’s diet-based excuses to reject dinner invitations, and only afterward thought to check whether Jackie could accommodate Shane’s diet. Jackie made him give her Shane’s number so she could get specifics, and maybe their united front made a difference. Hayden has an unshakeable conviction that the people he likes, Jackie will like. It’s been a pain in the butt, and it’s been a delight, depending on who he’s bounced up to.
Shane seems to bring out in Hayden something that other players don’t; sides of Hayden that Jackie knows and their families know, but which hockey hasn’t called for in the time she’s known him. A protectiveness that isn’t overbearing. A patience which reminds her of how Hayden is with kids, but which is never patronising. A confidence which isn’t hinged on bravado or competition: Hayden is as capable as the next man of leaning into either, but he’s also interested in people and in what makes them tick. Jackie had hooked up with him and punctured his ego and he’d come back, fascinated, but never resentful. Hayden Pike does not go through the world fearing rejection or expecting to justify himself at every turn, which makes him a diamond in the muck of hockey players.
Jackie doubts that Shane has thought this through the way she has - he’s not married to Hayden, and he’s not had to navigate newborn twins with Hayden. But Jackie thinks that Shane sees her Hayden, and Shane needed her Hayden as much as he needed a good winger.
It’s summer, but well into pre-season conditioning, so Shane is back from his family cottage. He and Hayden work out and calculate protein ratios together. They swap some of their workouts to the afternoons and take the twins for the morning, so Jackie can get her hair done or see her friends in peace. Shane comes over on hot days and the three of them hang out in the Pikes' pool while the girls nap.
This particular afternoon, Hayden and the girls are at the park, and Shane isn’t in their orbit. His own family rightly want to see more of him in summer, and his mother - Yuna, Jackie’s met her once or twice and she’s a powerhouse with a schedule the way her son is a powerhouse on the ice - evidently tries to stack a lot of promotional work into the pre-season period.
Jackie pulls out of the pantry bulk supplies of oatmeal, chia seeds, nuts, dried berries. The oatmeal she had already; she makes that for the girls, now they've graduated from baby rice cereal, but the rest is Shane.
Somewhere at the tail end of last season, Hayden had dragged a couple of guys over to play video games - "a LAN party! Like the old days!" he'd said, although it was a Nintendo Wii and they have wifi. He and Shane had kept playing, long after the others left and long after Jackie went to bed. The only surprise about Shane wandering into her kitchen the next morning as she was setting up breakfast for the girls was that he seemed perfectly awake, unlike her husband, who was still snoring in their bed. He'd been wearing one of Hayden's t-shirts, and he'd been looking a little more awkward than usual.
"You're up early," Jackie had said. "Or did you go straight from taking down zombies to morning workout?" He hadn't come from the guest room but rather the games room, where the exercise bike and free weights live, and there was a light sheen of sweat on his brow. A good look on him, she'd thought, and the fact that Hayd's t-shirt was a little too small for him hadn't hurt either.
"I slept some," Shane had said. "I just… habits, you know."
Jackie knew about athletes and their habits - even Hayden, as much a bundle of chaos as any toddler, had them. Shane had a few more than most.
"Could I, uh, shower?" Shane shifted from one foot to the other, like that was an imposition to ask. He was comfortable using Hayden's gear, but not asking this of her.
Jackie had found him a towel and another pair of Hayden's sweatpants - slightly too large for Hayden, probably a bit too small for Shane. "Since you were working out in those," she said, indicating the blue sweatpants Shane had been wearing yesterday and now this morning.
"Yeah, uh. Thanks," Shane had said, ducking into the bathroom.
Jackie had kicked herself, in the back of her mind. She hadn't thought to investigate breakfast options for Shane. She made oatmeal for five and, to her surprise, Shane had accepted a bowl. Oatmeal fitted within his macrobiotic diet, apparently. The maple syrup that usually went with it in their house didn’t, but after some nudging from Jackie, Shane had suggested peanut butter. By the time Hayden came out to claim his, Jackie had ensured that most of the girls' oatmeal went into their mouths and not on the floor, and Shane was rattling off his top five recipes for high-protein overnight oats.
Hence the chia seeds, nuts, and dried berries. The girls eat Shreddies or Cheerios in summer but she does these little jars in the fridge for herself and Hayden. She compares notes and new combinations with Shane and, although he's almost never here for breakfast, he will accept one as a snack when the rest of them are eating ice cream or cupcakes.
Jackie finds an out-of-date packet of sunflower seeds (none of them had liked those in their oatmeal) and tosses it. They have three identical bags of mixed nuts, in three different parts of the pantry, because those are one of the things that she and Hayden both tend to buy "just in case". For instance, just in case Shane's around and they might have run out.
So there it is. Jackie loves Shane Hollander. So does Hayden, clearly.
Jackie turns this awareness over in her mind. It doesn't feel like a problem. She's not lusting after her husband's best friend - although he's hot, that's undeniable. She just… loves him, for who he is, and at the same time, she loves him like an extension of her husband.
2012
The Metros roster gets a shake-up, bringing in fresh talent. Once the trade deadline passes, Jackie breathes out a sigh of relief that she’s been holding in since the end of season. Actually, she’s been holding it since the Metros signed Shane Hollander second in the draft. In a slump like the Metros had been for seasons, when you’re high enough in the draft order to sign the next big thing - or one of the two next big things, that year - you rebuild your team around him. You trade out your weakest players, yes; but you trade out guys like Hayden, too, in return for another team’s draft picks the following year.
Jackie knew this when she married Hayden, of course. She’ll pick up the kids and pack up the house and organise the move, when the time comes. If the time comes, because Shane has said - not to the press, of course, but to her and Hayden - that he wants to retire in blue and white, wants to see the Metros retire his number 24 when he finally comes to the end of his career. If the Metros management see the same thing she sees - that Shane and Hayden click, not just on the same line but as teammates and training partners - if they’re keeping Hayden as Shane’s winger this year, then the Pikes might be in Montréal until Hayden retires.
Jackie doesn’t want to leave Montréal, to leave behind her friends and her parents. And she doesn’t want to leave Shane, or for Hayden to have to leave him behind either.
2013
The Metros make it to the playoffs, although they’re knocked out in the second round. Hayden has his best year yet, putting up serious points for the first time in his career. Mostly assists, but Shane is damn good at scoring goals, and this year, Haden is damn good at setting them up. Not that he was bad, before; the Metros wouldn’t have had him on Shane’s line since Shane’s rookie year if he were, but he’s levelled up this year.
Shane is good for Hayden’s game, as well as a good friend. Shane watches game tape and analyses it in his spare time, and picks apart Hayden’s play style; and Hayden takes criticism better from Shane than he does from any other player. They put in extra time on the ice, and while Shane doesn’t hassle Hayd about his diet, this year in particular Hayden got more serious about talking with the team nutritionist, trying to retain as much bulk as possible to still have energy to burn through the playoffs. It paid off, and there’s little chance of the Metros splitting up Pike and Hollander now.
They’re still rooming together on roadies, most of the time. Jackie’s pretty sure they do that as a strategy to spare Shane from rooming-with-rookies duties; or possibly management let them do it, to spare the rookies from Shane. Hayden had confessed to her, during Shane’s rookie year, that the worst thing about rooming with Shane was that Shane kept his mouth shut during video meetings, but when they were in a hotel room, Hayden would be treated to Shane Hollander’s uncensored opinions on everyone’s weaknesses.
“Do you want to switch roomies?” Jackie had asked. The Metros pair up rookies with older players, on the road, but there was no reason Hayden had to stick with the same rookie every trip. This was before Jackie had really met Shane - she’d seen him after a couple of games, and at team parties, but Hayden hadn’t yet brought him home for dinner or to hang out. This must have been November, still early in the season, and Hayden had just got back from a string of away games.
“Nah,” Hayden had said. “Babe, can you get this dry cleaned for me?” He hung his suit bag on the back of the bedroom door. “I can’t do that to the kid. He’s… particular, I guess?” Hayden pulled out his washkit and went to hang it in the bathroom. “Have we got more of my razor-heads here, or do I need to order more? I should probably just get a subscription, huh.”
“Particular how?” Jackie asked, leaving Hayden to rummage for his own razors.
“Like… really specific bedtime routine, I guess. Likes his peace and quiet. Gets up at exactly the same time every morning. Travels with his weird protein-smoothie powder and has exactly the same thing for breakfast every day. You know what he said to me?”
“No, babe, I wasn’t there. What did he say?” She had a basket of clean laundry and was sorting socks. Two pairs onto the bed, those would go upstairs to the girls’ room after this. One pair for Jackie’s drawer. One sad, lonely sock for the lonely sock bin.
Hayden wandered back into the bedroom and started tossing his clothes into the hamper. “He said he likes that management have the rookies rooming with older guys. Said he hated overnight away trips in Juniors because the guys always wanted to party, or stay up all night watching movies. Said he never understood it, how can you play well without enough sleep?”
“Oh no,” Jackie had said. “You’re right, you can’t leave him to deal with just any roomie.”
“Some of the guys wouldn’t take well to evening Shane Hollander’s Hockey Tips experience, either.”
“Doesn’t sound like you enjoyed it much,” Jackie pointed out. Hayden having emptied his suitcase, she lobbed two pairs of skate socks straight into it, and followed that up with three pairs of briefs. It was easier just to keep the suitcase half-packed, rather than get to the day of a flight and discover that some kid-related laundry emergency had taken priority over the grown-up washing and there weren’t enough of Hayden’s things clean and dry.
“It’s a lot,” Hayden agreed. “Especially after a game. But he’s damn good, it’s kinda impressive how much detail he breaks down and how fast.” He shrugged and started rummaging in his drawers for compression gear.
“Maybe ask him to dial it back, then? Like, not in the evening, or not after a game.”
“Like… no kid talk on date night?” Hayden asked. Jackie had been thinking more of “Less hockey talk when you come to dinner at my parents’ place,” from when they were first dating. Hollander had to be obsessive, to wear out Hayden’s patience for talking puck.
“Something like that,” Jackie had said.
That had been in his rookie season. Now Shane has the A on his jersey - it’s practically a given that he’ll have the C if and when Gionta moves on - and Jackie knows he speaks up more in team meetings, and he’s learned to moderate his feedback: he’s been working closely with one of the rookies, a third-line winger with a promising knack for stealing the puck. Shane has also convinced Hayden to spend two weeks with him before training camp starts, working with a coach in Seattle - some kind of shot doctor, from what Jackie understands. Shane has been doing that kind of thing every summer, but Hayden usually stays in Montréal, works with whoever is local or sticks to conditioning.
Shane apologises to Jackie for taking up more of Hayden’s time with hockey. Jackie can’t really say to him “Hayden’s career would be a blip on the radar of hockey, if it weren’t for you; keep kicking his ass”, but she says something about the nature of the game.
A few days later, Hayden asks her if she’d like to go to Seattle with them, and bring the kids. “Shane suggested it. We could get a rental together? I know it’s no ‘week on a tropical island’ getaway, but there are beaches, and Mitty said there are some great playgrounds for kids in the city.”
Shane’s good for Hayden’s career in other ways, too, the absolute funniest of which is that Jackie’s instagram picture of the two of them on the ferris wheel, each with one of the twins on his lap, gets copied and goes slightly viral online. A lot of hockey fans have strong feelings about Shane Hollander in proximity to toddlers, it turns out. And Hayden’s agent gets calls from multiple baby gear companies wanting him to star in ad campaigns targeting “active dads”.
The company Hayden accepts gives him two of everything - ostensibly because he has twins. If they are transparently hoping that a rather more famous hockey player might be seen out and about with their “practical gear for active dads”, Hayden just thinks it’s hilarious.
2014
"Canada's Winter Olympians: Hottest 100", Hayden reads off his phone. "Got any guesses?"
"Tessa Virtue," Jackie says. "For sure. I bet Moir's in there just because they look so good together."
"Hottest woman and thirtieth-hottest man, apparently."
The Olympic break means she has an unusual stretch of time with Hayden that February. Hayden still has training, of course, but fewer meetings and none of the intensity that comes with two games a week in season. The girls are at kindergarten, and Arthur is usually down for a nap when Hayden gets back from the rink. Hayden, like everyone else who isn’t off skating their asses off in the Olympics, is trying to bulk up a little, regain muscle and energy stores that the first half of the season has already worn down.
"Patrick Chan," Jackie suggests, surveying the living room. For once, it’s in halfway decent order.
"Third hottest man," Hayden answers. He plucks a cashew nut out of the bowl of mixed unsalted nuts on the coffee table, tosses it in the air, and catches it in his teeth.
"All of the Dufour-Lapointe girls." Jackie drops onto the opposite side of the couch, and steals a peanut.
"No, Maxime isn’t on the list."
"Objectively wrong,” Jackie declares. “Next guess: no hockey players, because my husband's not selected." Hayden gives her a wry smile that re-confirms that neither of them expected him to be in Olympic contention, and they both know he’s a local darling but Canada at large isn’t desperate to see him shirtless.
"Shane Hollander: hottest Canadian Olympian," Hayden reads, with an air of satisfaction. "Well, hottest man. Right up there with Tessa Virtue."
"Good for him," Jackie says. "Hey, do you reckon she's single? That would be a gorgeous couple, Hollander and Virtue."
Hayden chokes slightly, and throws his next cashew at her instead of into his own mouth. Jackie catches it in her mouth. "I think if anyone told him that, he'd be terrified to even say hi to her in case someone made a big deal of it," Hayden says. He's not wrong.
"He hates these 'hottest player' ranking things, doesn't he?” Jackie says, because she knows Hayden is right. “Though that doesn't seem to have put him off doing another underwear ad."
"The duality of Shane," Haden says, and flops across her legs. "Babe, there's another one. I passed it on my run this morning. I can't go on an innocent run without running past my best friend plastered on the side of a bus shelter in just his tighty-whities. They're not even trying to, you know, disguise the package, either."
"I think that's the point of underwear ads, to show off the package in Calvin Klein's finest wrapping."
"Do they have to do it with my best friend?"
Jackie ruffles her husband's hair. There's something here that she hesitates to press too hard on. "You see him in his underwear all the time, Hayd. And out of it! I know all about those locker rooms of yours." She waggles her eyebrows, exaggeratedly.
"Babe, you've met Shane. The least likely man in Montreal to stand around half-dressed in locker rooms. Or anywhere, really."
"More's the pity," Jackie says, and Hayden splutters. "What? He's hot!"
"Hotter than Tessa Virtue?" Hayden asks.
"Hmm…" Jackie pretends to think about it for longer than is strictly necessary, just to make Hayden squirm. "No, not possible."
"Good, because I'll give you a celebrity pass for Tessa Virtue but not Shane Hollander."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Jackie says. "Not without you."
Hayden's eyes briefly bug out of his head.
"I'm just saying, babe, if you ever want to organise me a hot hockey player threesome, you can start with Shane Hollander. No questions asked."
"Shane would die of embarrassment," Hayden says, reproachfully. Jackie had been mostly joking, partly testing Hayden's responses, but now Hayden sounds hurt that she'd even consider suggesting it. She leans down and kisses his forehead.
"I know, it's not his style of thing. But a girl can dream…"
"You'd be into that? Like, not Shane, but two guys and you?"
"Hmmm… two hot guys in peak condition and with incredible stamina? No. Can't see the appeal there at all."
Hayden sits up and pulls her into a kiss that turns filthy fast. "I can do stamina," he says. "I can do stamina for two."
2015
They do not have a threesome with Shane Hollander, or any hockey player. And if Jackie had been wondering a little, about Hayden and the way Shane’s underwear campaigns seem to haunt him personally, she ends up thinking that she might have been projecting. Actually, she ended up not thinking about it at all for a while, because while the Metros were having their strongest season ever, Jackie was wrangling two five-year-olds in their first proper year of figure skating. They’d done an intro clinic in the fall - they’d done two, actually, one for hockey and one for figure skating, and the girls had been insistent on “the dancing one”. Jackie had worried a little: the gender divide was clear even at that age, and perhaps she ought to nudge them in favour of hockey.
When she’d asked Hayden, he’d shrugged, and said “Maybe Arthur should do figure skating, too. I think I like the idea of my kids taking up a sport that won’t claim all their teeth.”
Really, Jackie blames figure skating. The Tessa Virtue thing had been a joke. Mostly a joke. She and Hayden had been jokingly checking out celebrities for years. Hayden had fewer opinions on men than he did on women, but he certainly knew who she would find hot. She admired women he didn’t, too, and he knew which ones; but everyone liked looking at women, right?
The thing is that everyone in her world looks at women. She sits in the family reserve seats with the other WAGS, gossiping and checking out Instagram. Rose Landry is getting more gorgeous every year, and always at the centre of some Hollywood gossip. Janelle Monae’s 2014 Met Gala outfit has broken out of her trademark black-and-white with that stunning cape; with the 2015 theme announced, Jackie isn’t the only one of her friends looking forward to seeing what Monae and her stylist have planned this year. Tina Fey, the WAGS agree, looks better in a tux than any of their husbands. Amy Adams’ stylist must be trying to wash her out under floodlights.
Gina Rodruigez could wear the lovechild of a Little Black Dress and a tablecloth and have the self-confidence and poise that meant she looked good in it, better than Jackie or most of her friends did when done up in formalwear and then photographed by strangers. Jessica Chastain is… well, Jessica Chastain in her black-and-gold Globes gown is where Jackie started to wonder if she was looking at celebrity fashion coverage with different eyes to the rest of her friends. Jackie doesn’t want to wear that gown. She doesn’t have hair like that or want to have hair like that. She starts to think that perhaps she doesn’t envy all of these women - at least, not exclusively. She does envy their poise and their ability to hire stylists who would bring out the best in them.
The thing is, she might also want to… not even touch. These are celebrities way above “local hockey famous”, she doesn’t expect or realistically desire to touch Rose Landry in her (no doubt carefully curated) relaxed, laughing panel show persona. If presented with Jessica Chastian and her gorgeous, Golden-Globes perfect curls, Jackie cannot imagine touching. Just to admire would be … well. At this point, she has to concede she isn’t looking at only with scrutiny, nor with envy.
Enter, into this new phase of Jackie Pike self-awareness, Josiane. Josiane is not red-carpet perfect. Josiane is a little older than Jackie, and she is the twins’ figure skating coach/choreographer. Josiane had a daughter of her own, four years older than the twins. She is a single mom; Jackie never found out the story there, and the fact that Jackie hesitated to ask should have been the first internal warning sign that something is not quite moms-as-usual here.
The second warning is the time she takes the girls down to the rink for after-school free skating, meeting up with a couple of the other kids from the twins’ lessons. The rink has a section fenced off for younger kids, so she doesn’t feel she needs to be on the ice to supervise or shield them from the bigger kids. She and the other moms - Céline and Amanda - settle on the bleachers with coffee, and are chatting about nothing in particular when Jackie spots Josiane’s daughter Emilié on the ice, in the section not reserved for little kids. Jackie loses track of what Céline and Amanda are saying immediately, as she scans the rinkside area. She spotted Josiane easily, a gym bag over her shoulder and - oh. Josiane has seen them, she’s smiling and waving. She’s headed their way. Jackie is suddenly very aware that there is space on the bleacher next to her; but there is space next to Amanda, too. Is she going to sit with me, Jackie’s brain asks, like she’s fucking twelve.
Josiane does sit next to her, and for the record, they have a normal chat, all four of them. About their kids, about the wobbly bunny-hops the girls are doing on the ice. Amanda’s daughter loses her footing and falls; it looks for a moment like she might cry, her head whipping around to look for mom. Jade and Ruby are there in a heartbeat, each holding out a hand to help pull her up. Jackie is proud of her girls, and they are all pleased to see Amanda’s kid shake it off and forget to look for mom. The kids start practicing two-foot turns, and eventually rink staff have to intervene and remind them not to skate backwards during open skate.
Josiane used to be a competitive figure skater, but, as Jackie gathers over the first half of the season, never a national medalist, and her international appearances were few. Jackie’s husband has never been selected for the All Stars, and has never even been in the running for the Olympics. Jackie herself faded out of playing around the age of seventeen, after a promising few years on a junior girls’ hockey team. Puberty hadn’t given her the height or body mass to go with the speed and accuracy that she’d had in her early teens. Jackie thinks she can understand Josiane - certainly she respects Josiane.
She also, clearly, has a bit of a crush on Josiane. But she’s busy; she doesn’t have time to have a crisis of sexuality, if that’s what this is. It obviously isn’t going anywhere. Jackie is married, Jackie’s very much into her husband - more so than a lot of her friends are into theirs, and she feels weird about that sometimes. And, as noted before, she is busy. Also there’s no reason to think Josiane might be into women at all, let alone Jackie specifically.
In the spring, the hockey season gets intense. It always does, but this year is a new level. Hayden gets more snappy with the kids, and Shane comes over less often and leaves sooner when he does. The Metros are definitely going to the playoffs this; they might make it all the way to the cup. Shane seems to be carrying the responsibility of it as if he was personally answerable to the maîre de Montréal for any weakness in his game, or that of his teammates. Jackie worries about him. Hayden worries about him. Jackie tries banishing Hayden to hang out at Shane’s, instead of hanging around their place getting snippy with everyone, but Hayden is very sure that Shane wants to be alone.
Also in the spring, Jackie’s daughters need costumes. Jackie mentally revisits her summer thought process and wishes she’d pushed harder for hockey. At least with hockey you can just pay up the (often alarming) cost and acquire sticks, jerseys, other gear.
Josiane laughs at her bafflement, but not cruelly. “Oh wow,” she says. “I’m guessing you don’t have ballet girls in your family?”
No, Jackie does not.
“Okay,” Josiane says. “We start with the dance basics. Measure your girls - I’ll send you instructions - and I’ll tell you where to get tights and leotards.” Josiane pauses for a moment. “Can you, how do you say?” Josiane, unlike Jackie, has French as her native language. “Coudre?” she asks, in French, and Jackie knows that one, but Josiane makes a needle-in-and-out gesture for good measure. Her face wrinkles up adorably.
“Sew?” Jackie shrugs. “I can take up and let down hems, but that’s about it.”
“Good enough for this stage,” Josiane says. “There are places that you can buy costumes from, in bulk - lots of ballet classes do it this way. But that costs a lot, and I don’t think it’s worth it for this age. I was thinking: every skater’s family buys the leotard and leggings, and we pool together to buy fabric… I’m planning to have this class skate to “You are my sunshine”, so shades of yellow and orange? It’s easy to drape a little skirt onto a leotard. Just enough that everyone has something that twirls. I have a hot glue gun - we can bedazzle the necklines. Maybe matching headbands?”
Josiane stops suddenly, and laughs. “Sorry, that was a lot.”
“No, it sounds great,” Jackie says. She does not say I love learning how you think.
“I make all of Emélie’s costumes,” Josiane says, like she can read Jackie’s mind. “Maman made mine when I was a kid, and it’s… cool. Interesting. I didn’t have much input into that side of things, when I was seriously competing.” She looks across at Jackie. “Would the other parents agree to this, do you think? My idea was that we could have a craft party, to make the costumes together. Someone cannot sew? Okay, she can do the hot glue gun.”
“That’s a great idea,” Jackie assures her, and before she knows it she’s offering her rec room for the purpose: odds are that she and Hayden have the biggest house, so it made sense.
Jackie ends up going shopping with Josiane, too, for fabric and various bedazzlements. Josiane works a regular job four days a week, so they go craft-shopping on a Friday. The craft store is vast and cavernous and full of fascinating things Jackie has never given much thought to. Some of them make sense - fabric. Buttons. A lot of beads. Other things - who needs styrofoam shaped like a human head but one third the size? What craft could you possibly do with that?
“I’m making my own costume, too,” Josiane tells her, hovering over some roll of shiny, stretchy fabric. “With Emélie, so far, I have bought leotards and sewn skirts onto them, but I want to sew the whole thing for myself. If it is a disaster....” She waves a hand. “There are one or two of my old costumes I still fit into, I think.”
Jackie trails around the store, carrying first one then two baskets, watching Josiane’s excited gestures as she talks about fabric, stick-on diamontes, the routine she’s planning for the girls and the one she is planning for herself, as a capstone to their little gala. She has to text the nanny to let her know that Jackie will be much later than planned.
As they round another row of incomprehensible craft supplies Jackie thinks: I’d follow her anywhere if I could get on my knees and blow her. Wait. Not blow. Her brain glitches out at that point, cross-referencing her body and her experience and telling her that while “get on my knees and blow him” worked for her and, as far as she knows, every man she’d ever had that impulse toward, standing is just a really awkward position from which to be eaten out. Even if the other party looks good on their knees, which Hayden does, and Josiane - fuck.
Jackie snaps the lid down on that line of thought, and stares intently at a selection of ribbons.
“This one, do you think?” Josiane asks, holding up a ribbon somewhere between orange and red. “Or this one?” Somewhere between orange and brown. Josiane is blissfully unaware of what is going on in Jackie’s head and Jackie wants to keep it that way. “The first one,” she said, for no particular reason.
When she gets home, while she’s making dinner and sorting out the kids, Jackie thinks: I really do have to tell Hayden about this. But Hayden is away on a roadie, and she can’t just call him and be like “Hi, husband, love of my life, I’m crushing on a woman. A woman I spend significant time around, no less.” Well. She could, in theory. She’s pretty sure that if she were lightly crushing on, say, a male teacher at the twins’ school, she would have already told Hayden. Hayden would have been giving her shit for it for months. Hell, he has been giving her shit about her “girl crush”. Just less shit than he would give her if this was a hot guy.
So that’s one thing: Hayden kind of knows, but she ought to tell him he's been missing an important bit of it. So did she, but it’s still weird. And when it comes to "Honey, I’m bisexual", there’s two problem outcomes that, realistically, were fairly likely. The first problem would be insecurity. Jackie didn’t think that was overwhelmingly likely, with Hayden, but it was more likely if she brought it up while he was away. The second problem would be endorsement, of a sort, in the “hell yeah, let’s plan threesomes” way, which might also be made worse if Hayden was away and surrounded by hockey players.
Fantasy threesomes and hall passes had been fun when Jackie knew she and Hayden were on the same page, or close to it: straight but a little flexible, in theory. They might be fun again, but not right now. And certainly not with Josiane, dear god. Jackie would die. Of mortification, not hotness.
And Jackie is still a busy woman who wrangling kids, a household, a husband who is only home half the time. Not to mention driving her mom to medical appointments, because her Dad still works and with how much help she gets from her parents with the kids, she owes them that much. So she doesn’t bring it up immediately when Hayden gets back, and it just sort of slips down her endless to-do list.
Somehow, it ends up being Shane she tells first, because Shane brings her a sewing machine the day before the craft-party. Josiane has one, but a second one would be handy, so Jackie asked the WAG chat. Someone must have told Hayden, who told Shane, and it turned out that while none of the Montréal wives had sewing machines, Yuna Hollander did and wouldn’t mind lending it to Jackie.
Shane wanted to set the machine up for her. “Not the actual needle and thread bit, I don’t understand that, but where will you be using it?”
While he’s arranging the machine on the table in the rec room, fiddling with cables and connections, Shane says, with a little frown,
“No offense, Jacks, but couldn’t you just pay someone to make the girls’ costumes? I didn’t know you knew anything about sewing.”
Jackie doesn’t, really, but she wants to. She tells Shane all about it: what Josiane had said about keeping it simple; the fact the whole class needs the same costume and this is better for everyone; the plan for working on them as a group so not everyone needs to know how to sew. When she’s pulling out her phone to show him the sketches Josiane sent, showing the design and then the template for the skirt piece, she catches herself. This is not really Shane’s idea of fun.
“Sorry,” she says, putting a hand to her mouth. “I’m just. It’s cool. She’s really cool. Josiane, I mean.”
Shane nods, with a little smile that’s as good as a hearty laugh from anyone else. “I get that. Hayden mentioned you had a bit of a… what does he call it? Girl crush?”
Jackie’s heart clenches. “He told you that?”
Shane must sense her anxiety, but he misreads it. “Not - he doesn’t mean it like that.” Of course he doesn’t. “It’s just a thing people say. Apparently. I don’t hang around with a lot of girls, but like… I looked it up online. Like a friend crush, I guess? Or being really impressed with someone?”
“That’s what girl crush means, yeah,” Jackie tells him.
Shane pulls out a box from his bag and adds, “Mom sent these, too. Spare needles and those little wheel things, and other… sewing machine stuff.”
Jackie takes it from him, and then reaches for his wrist. Shane freezes when she touches him; he often does that, if people touch him unexpectedly.
“It kind of is a crush, though,” Jackie says. “The other kind.”
“Oh.” Shane says.
Jackie forces her fingers to let Shane’s wrist go. Shane wraps his own hand around it, standing with his hands in front of him like he’s in trouble. Jackie realises this must be weird for him.
“Not - I’m not - there’s nothing for Hayden to worry about,” she says.
“So you’re not…?” Shane is looking at her now, with confusion and something that might almost be fear in his eyes.
“Um,” Jackie says. “I mean. I am… bi?” Shane looks even more confused. “Bisexual. Probably. I mean, I have a crush on a woman. I’m not gonna do anything about it, Hayd and I are fine, but like… I have eyes. I see hot men all the time, I can admire them from a distance. And now hot women, too? Interesting women. Cool women.”
“Okay,” Shane says. “That’s… good?”
“I. Yeah. Don’t worry about it,” Jackie says. “I’m just a bit silly, because it took me this long to figure it out.”
Shane nods, and it seems like it’s at this point that he understands something, some shred of what she’s just blurted out to him. “I get that. And Hayd knows. Alright, here’s the manual as well, you’ll need that to figure out threading it.” He pulls that out and lays it next to the machine. “It’s pretty common with girls though, isn’t it?”
“Sewing?” Jackie says, and Shane snorts.
“No. Liking… both.”
“I guess,” Jackie says. She doesn’t try to explain the difference, or that she actually doesn’t know any women in her circle of WAGs and moms who call themselves bi. Shane is Shane, but he’s still a hockey guy. Not really the ideal audience for Jackie Pike’s Big Bisexual Awakening.