Chapter Text
Providence feels different. There’s a buzzing in her dorm room, even though Shauna’s phone hasn’t begun to ring.
She hasn’t stayed in all day waiting, or anything. Jackie’s never been a morning person, so Shauna manages to get in a run, shower, and two meals before she parks herself in her room. Shauna tries at nonchalance, sitting still at her desk and looking at her homework, but her hands keep shaking and her legs inevitably shuffle herself into an unsubtle pace across the room.
Her phone lurches into motion, buzzing and ringing sharply, the sound bouncing off the walls. Shauna jumps, leaping toward it, letting herself have one big breath before she presses to answer.
She brings it to her ear, and all she hears is breathing. It’s like the hundreds of times Jackie laid right next to her and Shauna could feel the rising and falling of her chest at the same time of each inhale and exhale tickling her hair. Her stomach flips.
After a second, Jackie speaks. “I guess you’re making me speak first.”
Shauna lets out a laugh that’s a mix of exasperation and humor. She’s released one like it so many times around Jackie. “You’re the one who wanted to call.”
“I think you wanted to, too.”
Shauna’s hands tighten on her phone. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
“Right.” Jackie clears her throat, and Shauna aches to see her face. “I mean, it’s pretty clear we can’t predict what the other person is going to do anymore.”
“Could we ever?” Shauna would have never imagined Jackie watching Game Day, or having a Twitter account. Or reading fanfiction, and not the x Reader stuff, but narrative ones, when she complained about having to do her English readings all through high school.
“I’d like to think at some point. But then things got complicated. I—I’ve thought about what you told me, that night.” Jackie takes a breath and elaborates. “At Lottie’s party.”
“I said a lot of stuff.” Shauna picks at the leg of her jeans.
“Yeah, I did too. And…you weren’t all wrong. I did fuck us up a little. I was insecure and scared because I knew you were so much smarter and prettier and better than me, and would leave if I didn’t force you to stay.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. Shauna, you’re at Brown! You left me in New Jersey, the first second you could.”
“You could’ve gone somewhere other than Rutgers.” Shauna’s mouth twists as she remembers. “Northwestern was recruiting you.”
“They weren’t that serious,” Jackie mumbles.
“They were. You were just so set on Rutgers you couldn’t see that.”
“Cause I would’ve died in Chicago. It’s too far from you. I know we’re both mad at each other right now, but I miss you like crazy. I think if you blew me off I would have gotten on a train to Providence and knocked on every dorm until I found you.”
Shauna can’t help it, the image is too clear in her mind. She moves the phone to sit on her thigh to muffle it, but she laughs. If anyone were to do that, it would be Jackie.
“Are you still there?”
Shauna lifts the phone back up. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I wrote out a speech to say to you, but then I remembered you said I just like to hear the sound of my own voice—”
“--I don’t know if I ever said that—”
“--I got the fucking gist.” It’s the first time in this conversation that Jackie actually sounds mad, the way she did that night at Lottie’s. Shauna’s eyes squeeze shut. “Honestly, that part was worse than the Jeff part. I–I went into your phone the night we kissed.”
Shauna’s eyes snap open. She digs one of her hands into her desk. “What?”
“You weren’t talking to me!” Jackie’s speaking with something between a yell and a whine. “You pushed me away, I wanted to know how to fix us. You’re the most important thing in my life. The reason I laughed that night wasn’t because it was a joke, it was because I couldn’t believe it was real. I thought the way I felt kissing Jeff was it, and then I kissed you, and it was what they talk about in movies and all the books you read. It was like a fairy tale, like magic—”
“You don’t need to get all Hallmark on me,” Shauna mumbles.
“I’m serious, that’s what it felt like. A fucking Hallmark movie. But you pushed me away and I figured you…I don’t know. You were always texting someone for those few months, so I thought you might have told them about me and I could use that. And you were, obviously. Seeing all of what you sent, knowing it was about me, oh my god, it was awful. It was worse than when I thought you rejected me. You hate me, Shauna.” Her voice breaks at the end, and Shauna curls into herself.
“I—” Shauna cuts herself off. Does she hate Jackie? Can you really love someone as much as she does, want someone as much as she does, and also hate them? “Those were the worst thoughts I had. I didn’t hate you all the time.”
“But you did some of the time. I never hated you.” Shauna hugs her arms around herself. “I always loved you. I was awful at showing that, and I realize that now, so I’m sorry about that. I want to be better.”
Shauna straightens a little. “So you want to be friends again?”
“I…I don’t know. Yes. I’ve thought about it a lot in the past six months. I don’t like living without you. I can do it, obviously, but it feels wrong.” Jackie quiets. “Things would be so different, though.”
“Is that bad?”
“I guess not, if you were so miserable before.” The angry quiver in her voice is back.
“I–” Shauna bites her cheek. She didn’t know what to expect from the conversation, but it wasn’t this. She’s getting whiplash. There was no script she could have prepared. “So you’re just going to switch a flip and be a perfect best friend? I don’t think it works like that.”
“It’s a two way street,” Jackie says. “You still haven’t apologized, you know.”
“You didn’t apologize for going through my phone.”
“I—” Jackie takes a loud breath. “Okay, I’m sorry I stole your phone and I was being super weird and controlling and obsessive about it even before then, since it clearly only made you hate me more. I just wanted to know what was going through your head, and I knew you wouldn’t tell me. Would you have?”
Shauna frowns. Almost says if you asked, but then she remembers Jackie did ask a lot in those last few months of their friendship. It was just too late, and the damage of not for years was too much. “No. I thought you didn’t care about me.”
“It’s not true. I can’t tell you how wrong you were.” Jackie pauses, then says, “Are you ready to apologize, now? Or do you really not feel bad for any of it?”
This was the part Shauna dreaded. Giving away the little control she had left. Because taking Jeff from Jackie, disarming her by revealing all of her resentment, leaving for Brown, that was control. She got to hold something over Jackie for once. But still. “I fucking hate Jeff. I should’ve never touched him.”
Jackie’s silent on the line. Then, “That’s not actually an apology.”
Shauna sighs. Grits her teeth. Reminds herself she really means it, as much as she hates to admit it; hurting Jackie hurt her right back. She can hear the sadness in her voice through the line, and it’s cutting into her. “I’m sorry I did it.”
“Which part?”
“Most of it.”
“So not the part where you refused to tell me anything about how you felt? Because I still don’t get why you didn’t just tell me that I was making you so upset.”
Shauna rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “You never listened to me.”
“I–” Jackie cuts herself off. There’s some shuffling at her end of the call, and Shauna absently wonders where she is right now. Maybe she’s walking in town where everyone can hear, or maybe she’s pacing alone in her room like Shauna is. “Okay, let’s make a deal.”
“You called me to make a deal?”
“Yeah. You start telling me what you feel, and if I get all defensive and weird, you can yell at me to quit it, and I’ll listen.”
Shauna scoffs. “You act like it’s that easy.”
“It is.” Jackie’s voice is firm. “Do you really want to keep living like this, miles apart, and never speaking to each other? Because that’s the other option.”
“I dunno.” The space is awful. Shauna doesn’t think she’ll ever be fully free of Jackie like she thought she would be with it. But the distance is the only thing keeping herself from losing herself in her again, too.
There’s more shuffling on the other end. Shauna hears something snap open. Her brows furrow, but before she can question it, Jackie’s voice is back.
“Let me show you,” she says, her voice rushing through the line. “I’m looking at tickets to Providence. I can come next weekend, and if you still don’t believe we can do this, we can call it off.”
“What is this?” The situation is shifting itself out of Shauna’s control. “What are you even saying?”
Jackie’s breath is right in Shauna’s ear again. “I’m a lesbian.”
Shauna lets out a strangled, “Cool?” Because seriously, this conversation has gone in ten million directions.
There’s a beat of silence. “I’m…I’m being brave, and telling you the stuff I was too scared to before. And that’s all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say?”
Jackie huffs, and Shauna can picture her pout. “Did you really just push me away because you thought I was laughing at you?”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s not because you think my lips are gross.”
“No.” Shauna remembers the taste of strawberry lip gloss and licks her lips, like there’s still remnants. Definitely not.
“And did you like kissing me more than kissing Jeff?”
“God, yeah.” Shauna’s response is so immediate it makes her cringe. She thinks she hears Jackie let out a far off scream, though.
“Okay,” she says, voice in close again. “Call me crazy, but that makes it seem like we want to date each other, and have been doing a really bad job at showing it.”
Shauna lets out a disbelieving laugh. “This is how you’re asking me out?”
“I’m saying we should try it. And if I can’t get past what you did, and you can’t get past what I did, at least we gave it a shot. But I want to try.” There’s something trembling in her voice, but it’s not thinly veiled rage anymore. “Do you?”
It’s all that Shauna’s wanted. It’s also an impossibility in her mind, but it’s clearly not one now. She stares at her wall blanky, long enough that Jackie goes, “Well, Shauna?” at least a few times before Shauna mumbles an “Uh huh,” and promptly cuts off the call. It’s hard to admit that she’s weak, but she is. She wants Jackie, she always has, always will, and will always jump at the chance to get her.
Jackie sends Shauna her train details, coming in the following Friday and leaving that Sunday. Three days to see if Shauna still hates her as much as she convinced herself she did, and if Jackie wants to murder her for what she did. The part of Shauna that took AP Psychology is concerned about the time constraints on their weird, impromptu study. The part of Shauna that aches sleeping in her bed without Jackie wrapped around her tells her to give it a shot.
She tells Emily she has a friend visiting, and Emily goes “Oh, nice,” not understanding that it’s actually very not nice and Shauna is freaking the fuck out every day and feels very hot everytime she thinks about the fact that Jackie is going to be here, in Rhode Island, by the end of the week. She can’t look at Mia, because she sees her hair and her brain goes Jackie!!!! and her heart does somersaults and she has to tell her stupid body that she’s not here, not yet.
School drags in a way they never did before. The class discussions that usually invigorate her mind in a way they never could at Wiskayok High bore her. She drifts off thinking the last time she saw Jackie, in their caps and gowns, and how she really believed it was the last time they’d look each other in the eye. It was such an obviously incomplete moment, now that she can think back on it. Tai was right, you can’t erase 13 years in a few months.
Friday comes, and Shauna goes for a run she tells herself isn’t fuelled by anxiety, even though she makes it six miles with no water or food in her stomach. Then she realizes her dorm is sort of a mess. Jackie’s room is always tidy, and she’s used to the clothes Shauna throws onto the floor on her own, but maybe she should clean up the empty beer cans she and Emily tossed under her bed last night.
By the time she’s done, it’s half an hour before Jackie’s train arrives, and Shauna replaces her pacing around her dorm room to across the platform. A few people give her sidelong looks, but she can’t just sit there, especially when she hears the Amtrak whistle announcing that Jackie is almost here. After months. Shauna’s going to throw up.
She somehow doesn’t, and the train slows before coming to a complete stop. The doors open, and Jackie’s the first one out, of course, with a massive duffle swung over her shoulder. She’s wearing jean shorts that accentuate everything soccer did for her legs, a loose green shirt, and her white sneakers. She looks good, and not in the exaggerated, almost overdressed way she did every day of high school. She’s dressed like the weekends she and Shauna would drive to the grocery store to pick out candy for a movie marathon.
Jackie finds Shauna instantly and walks in a straight line to her. She doesn’t run up and sprint into her arms the way she would have before everything, but there’s no more of the obvious avoidance from the past few months. Her eyes stay stuck on Shauna, though they roam across her body, like they’re assessing for any minute change. Whatever Jackie finds doesn’t show on her face.
She stops herself a foot away from Shauna. It’s a chasm of space they’d never dream of having before. It’s then that Shauna realizes that she’s met so many new people, but she still has felt that brutal sense of loneliness she’s had since Lottie’s fight, unable to be filled until now.
“So,” Jackie says. Her voice feels like a balm on every cut and bruise on Shauna’s heart. “What are we doing?”
Shauna stands there, wordless, for too long, so long that Jackie laughs in her face. It’s been so long since Shauna’s seen the way her expression lights up with the sound, and how her eyes twinkle with it. Despite the twinge of hurt, Shauna smiles, too. “I thought you didn’t want me to boss you around. Where’s your big plan for the weekend?”
Shauna crosses her arms. “Maybe I was skeptical about you not being Type A.” And she was. She half expected Jackie to come barrelling off the train and drag Shauna to one of the fifty places she’s researched on Google Maps.
“Maybe I’m hungry, and need lunch stat.” Jackie raises any eyebrow. “So show me the Providence charm.”
Shauna takes Jackie to The Cheesecake Factory. Jackie wrinkles her nose as they enter, but it was a five minute walk away, and she said she was hungry, so Shauna thinks she’s being fairly chivalrous. They walk side by side. Their hands don’t brush absently like they did so many times for so many years. Jackie doesn’t hip check Shauna when she stares off into space. Anyone would look at them and think they were meeting for the first time.
As Jackie runs to the door of the restaurant to open it for Shauna, a thought pings through her brain. Some people would look at them and think this was a first date. Is it? Shauna’s still unclear about what exactly it is they’re doing. But the idea makes Shauna’s stomach flip.
They come in at the tail end of the lunch rush, and a server with bags under her eyes hands out the menus. “Anything to drink?”
“I’ll have a Diet Coke,” Jackie says.
Shauna picks at her nails until the server clears her throat. “You?”
She jolts up, makes eye contact with Jackie, who looks about to laugh again. “Oh. Uh, water.”
The waitress walks away, and Jackie waits for her to get out of earshot before saying, “I don’t trust places with menus this big.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Do you come here a lot?”
“Sometimes. Mainly when we’re all hungover.”
Jackie studies her split ends. “So you made friends?”
“Yeah, Jackie, I made friends. Are you surprised?”
“No. Of course not.” She releases her hair. “I’m happy for you.”
She doesn’t sound it. Her voice is flat and her eyes shift away from Shauna. The waitress comes back, and Jackie takes a massive gulp from her soda.
“Do you have a roommate?” she asks.
Shauna shakes her head. “Maybe in the fall, but we haven’t gotten our housing yet. I have a single for the summer.”
“So I can stay in your dorm room?” Jackie smiles to herself, but then something shifts, and her eyes widen. She pushes her hands out towards Shauna, shaking them. “I mean, if you don’t want me to, I can book a hotel. Since I didn’t ask. Shit. I should’ve asked.”
“You can stay with me.” Shauna’s impressed with her own generosity. And by how fun it is to see Jackie panic.
Jackie’s entire body deflates in relief. “Cool. Awesome. So, what do you want for appetizers?”
They look over the menu together, heads almost touching, and Shauna spends more time looking at the slope of Jackie’s nose and the way her lips press together as she speaks the names of the items than the menu itself. She’d feel stupid for it, if Jackie’s eyes didn’t keep meeting hers, and if she didn’t see them jumping across Shauna’s face, too.
It’s then that Shauna realizes: this is the first time in years they’ve been on the same page. Everything’s out in the open. Some of what’s out there hurts, like that Jackie never told Shauna about her suspicions about her lesbianism, and her breaking into her phone. Thinking about it makes her heart burn in a way that’s familiar, a way she’s been feeling since Jackie got with Jeff and talked differently with her new baseball player girlfriend friends.
But it also feels different, knowing Jackie did it all because of Shauna. Because she wanted to be with her so badly and was scared of Shauna’s rejection. There’s some power in that, knowing that Jackie is just as consumed in her thoughts by Shauna as Shauna is in hers by Jackie.
They order, and their food comes out. Jackie doesn’t ask about Brown, but she asks about what’s around Providence, like what the good bars are that will take their fake IDs and what coffee shops Shauna frequents. When Shauna brings up the people she goes to the bar with, or how Emily has a running list of the top chais in the area, Jackie’s face tightens, and that ignites a spark of something delicious in Shauna, because she’s seen that expression on herself in the mirror so many times before. It’s jealousy.
Jackie really is turning the tables on their dynamic, intentional or not.
They eat and fight over the bill halfheartedly, even though they know Jackie’s parent’s credit card is covering this weekend, like it does most things Jackie.
“I asked you,” Jackie insists. “It’s etiquette.” It’s the closest they’ve come to admitting to what they’re trying right now, so that’s when Shauna gives in.
Shauna shows her around the city until sunset. Jackie never pulls on her arm to drag her somewhere, but she does point in excitement when she sees a place she wants to do a photo op. She asks sweetly if Shauna can take a photo for her instead of shoving her phone into her hand and demanding she use the angles she taught her, or Shauna will be in big trouble, and Shauna realizes Jackie’s serious about this. She’s thought this through the way she did a soccer play, how she’s going to show Shauna that things can be different.
“I promised you in the Poconos that I’ll take you to a bookstore,” Jackie says, with such a shine in her eyes that Shauna knows she planned this.
“You’re making good on that?” Shauna guesses. Jackie smiles and motions across the street. Shauna hadn’t even realized they were in front of one.
Jackie buys her ten new books, so big they have to carry them back between the two of them. She doesn’t use her parent’s credit card, either, but the debit she has of all the birthday and Christmas money she’s saved up over the years.
They walk back to Brown together, still not touching the entire walk. Shauna’s hands shake a little with her key before they enter her dorm. A lot of the decorations are the same as her bedroom, plus a few more posters she and Emily printed out, and without any photos other than the dog of Wiskayok. She gets the key in the latch and clicks the door open, and Jackie’s last thread of restraint must be snapped, because she basically shoves Shauna to get inside, spinning around.
“My friend has an air mattress for you,” she says.
Jackie looks at the open space on the floor where a carpet Shauna found on Facebook Marketplace is. She nods, then looks back at the walls.
“It’s different,” she concludes, which is surprising, since Shauna expected her to point out all the posters she recognizes from her attic. But Jackie’s walking over to the corkboard that Emily found in a dumpster and gifted Shauna that has photos of the two of them, plus some of their classmates and a few event stubs over it. “Who’s that?”
Jackie’s pointing to Emily, obviously. “My friend who lives on the floor above. She has the air mattress.”
Jackie nods, and keeps studying the photos until a knock on the door comes. Shauna runs to get it, and Emily’s there, mattress in her arms.
“I have to stop carrying things too big for me on these stairs,” she complains, handing it all to Shauna, and immediately, half of it falls to the ground. “Can I say hi?”
Shauna hesitates. The idea of Jackie being here is weird enough, already too much of a bridge between her worlds. Having her Wiskayok best friend meet her Brown best friend (it’s weird to think best friend and not think Jackie, she’s not even sure she can call Emily that, maybe closest friend), is a synapse she’s not sure she wants to create.
But Emily got her the air mattress, so Shauna opens the door a little wider to let her in while she sets it up. She hears her and Jackie exchange hellos.
“Shauna doesn’t talk much about high school,” Emily says.
“Oh,” Jackie says. “Yeah, I guess there’s not a lot to say.” Shauna can feel her eyes on her, but she focuses on plugging the air mattress in. It starts making a horrific sound that makes Jackie wince and Emily cover her ears with a laugh.
“Have fun with that,” Emily says, and if she realized the awkward situation she’d created, Shauna would flip her off, but there’s no way of her knowing, since she’s right. Shauna said she doesn’t like Wiskayok because it’s small and narrow minded. She never mentioned Jackie, because it felt like a betrayal to herself to, before she knew Jackie thought of her, too.
The mattress inflates. Shuana gets out her spare sheets and spreads them out for Jackie, who’s quiet. It’s early, barely 9, a time neither of them would dream of going to bed in high school, but Shauna grabs her pajamas anyway. Jackie unpacks her big duffel bag and takes out her own, a silk pair in pastel pink.
They’ve changed in front of each other so many times, but it’s strange now, and Shauna’s extra glad she didn’t go to Rutgers now, because how could they have been roommates if they are like this? Shauna eventually turns her back on Jackie and pulls off her clothes, skin prickling knowing Jackie is right there, until she’s done and turns around in time to see Jackie pulling her shirt over her head, smooth skin of her back exposed.
Shauna gulps. They’ve talked about it, there’s a chance that if she reaches out to touch that skin, Jackie would welcome it. But Jackie turns around before she can pluck up the courage, so Shauna sits on her bed while Jackie sits on the air mattress, and they just look at each other.
“Did you tell anyone about me?” Jackie asks.
Shauna shakes her head.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Jackie’s eyes narrow. “Liar. You promised you won’t do that anymore.”
Shauna sighs, laying onto her back to look at her ceiling, instead. “You won’t like the answer.”
Jackie prods the foot Shauna still has hanging off her bed. “I don’t care. I want to hear it.”
Shauna’s face crinkles. She likes the first part of their agreement, with Jackie thinking about her more, but she’s not a fan of this second part. She’s so used to keeping things locked inside herself that putting them out there is like trying to twist her insides outside herself.
“Shauna,” Jackie insists, poking her again, and Shauna now knows where all the pent up insistence she must be holding back is going. “Answer me.”
“I didn’t want to think about you,” Shauna says. “I thought we were over, and I’d fucked everything up beyond repair, and that you could never change.”
“Do you still think that?”
Shauna lifts herself onto her eyebrows and sees Jackie, head cocked, closer to her, but still hovering on the edge of the air mattress. Shauna flops back down, because seeing Jackie looking up at her is making her dizzy. She presses a hand to her forehead.
“I dunno.”
“By the end of the weekend, you won’t,” Jackie says. She still sounds as confident as she did on the phone about it. Shauna grumbles something between assent and doubt, and shuts the light off.
Jackie tends to fall asleep quickly, so when a few minutes pass, Shauna figures she did, but then Jackie’s voice continues in the darkness. “Were you mad at me? Is that why you didn’t say anything about me?”
Shauna nods, then realizes Jackie can’t see her. “Yeah. I…” She trails off, but she’s started, and she can hear the hitch in Jackie's breath, waiting for her to finish. “I wanted you to say something at graduation.”
“I wanted you to.” Jackie’s quiet for a moment. “I’m still mad too, you know. Not as much as when I first found out, but…I’d never do what you did.”
Shauna sighs. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Shauna says. “You never let me get a boyfriend. You made fun of everyone I tried to date. I did everything you wanted, you had no reason to want anything else to yourself. We were living in different worlds, Jackie.”
“I did want something else. To be with you. ”
It’s still weird to hear it out loud. Shauna can’t tell if she resents or loves the way it makes her breath quicken. “It’s still different.”
Jackie doesn’t respond. Shauna knew she wouldn’t like it.
The next day, Jackie continues her routine of acting like she’s new and improved. This time, Shauna shows her around campus, and she doesn’t even complain when Shauna explains all the old buildings. Shauna sees her eyes glaze over a few times, but a minute or two later Jackie’s back, bouncing behind her and asking overenthusiastic questions.
It’s nice, and despite her misgivings, Shauna regrets that this weekend will end soon. There’s some possibility in what they’re doing. She half expected Jackie to burn out by now and start dragging her around, but she stays a step behind Shauna.
They eat lunch at some overpriced place a few blocks away from Shauna’s dorm. Jackie makes Shauna order for her, and she nods in assent when avocado toast comes out.
“How many times did I order for you, and it wasn’t what you wanted?” Jackie asks.
“Maybe 25% of the time?”
Jackie frowns at her food.
They walk back into town, and Jackie asks, very politely, to go to the zoo.
“They don’t have any rabbits,” Shauna warns.
Jackie makes a face. “Ugh, you read one book about bunnies when you’re a kid, and your mom makes them the face of every birthday present for the rest of your life.”
“At least it’s not something ugly,” Shauna offers.
“True. Or something scary, like a bear. I think I’d die on the spot if I saw one for real.”
“You know bears are my mascot, right? So you don’t want any Brown merch?”
Jackie gasps. “I never said that!”
Shauna laughs, and it’s conversations like this that remind her why she needs Jackie in her life. There’s never been anything that’s flowed easier than one with her.
Jackie loves the zoo. She takes photos with every animal, then asks Shauna to pose with some, too, in a way that’s less polite than most of her other requests so far.
“You’re cuter than the koalas,” Jackie says. Her cheeks are pink even before she says it, which makes Shauna flush, too. It’s weird, to hear the things Jackie would say, and be almost sure it’s flirting, when she could never tell before.
“I’d hope so, they all have chlamydia,” Shauna retorts.
Jackie instantly makes a face and complains, pulling her camera down, “Did you really have to ruin that?”
“Yeah.” Their hands bump against each other as they walk further into the zoo.
They’re touching more, and Jackie’s flirting, but Shauna can still feel the bubble around them from last night. Jackie avoids looking at Shauna for too long, and it reminds her of those long months at school after their fight. She bites her lip. She said the truth, which is what Jackie wanted. She won’t apologize for that.
By the time they leave the zoo, it’s dinnertime. Jackie chooses the restaurant for the first time, and Shauna can tell within the first second of walking in that it's beyond the budget she’s set for the month from the money her dad sent her. The server leads them outside to a covered patio bedazzled by string lights, with candles at each table. He sounds Italian enough to be Nat Scatorccio’s long lost cousin who just moved from Tuscany.
It’s a nice dinner, paid for by Jackie's parents again. Shauna can’t recall a single conversation from it. Jackie still skirts her eyes away from Shauna’s every time they meet.
Emily’s air mattress is surprisingly sturdy. They get dressed back to back again, and even though Shauna can hear that Jackie’s done changing, she can feel her still standing. She turns, and Jackie’s already looking at her.
“Can I stay in your bed tonight?” she asks. Her voice sounds small. “I just…I think I need that.”
Shauna hesitates. She has a twin XL, which means they’re basically guaranteed to be on top of each other. Cuddling is normal from before, but they’ve barely upgraded to brushing hands again.
The longer Shauna takes to answer, the more Jackie deflates, her body sinking, heading towards the air mattress, until Shauna grabs her arms and pulls her onto her bed. It’s slightly lofted, so they both have to jump, but Jackie does so willingly, still wilting a little, but her head holds itself higher.
Shauna turns off the light, because something tells her this will be easier in the dark. As soon as the light goes out, Jackie crawls to her, wrapping her arms around her waist and pressing her face into Shauna’s neck. It knocks the breath out of Shauna. She shivers at one of Jackie’s hands splayed where her shirt rides up on her stomach.
“I need this,” Jackie says again, and Shauna remembers what she kept repeating the first night in the Poconos. We need this. They do. Shauna sinks deeper onto her, and moves her own hands to hug Jackie back, one wrapping right to the bottom of her bra, which makes Jackie release a whispered sigh, and another by her naval. Her pajamas are longer than Shauna’s tank top and shorts, so Shauna doesn’t feel any skin against her hand. She hates that.
They lay for a long time like that. Shauna can tell Jackie hasn’t fallen asleep when she’s right next to her. Her breathing is too fast, and she shifts too often.
Jackie’s face is still at the function between Shauna’s shoulder and neck, so Shauna feels the words against her skin before they reach her ears. “I don’t think we can fix this in a weekend.”
Shauna’s arms tighten on instinct around Jackie. It’s rare for her to admit defeat. It hurts her a little, too, to hear the frustration in Jackie’s voice.
“I know,” Shauna says. They both knew this, deep down.
“Do you believe me, at least a little? That I want to give us a shot?”
Shauna bites her lip. Then nods, just enough that she knows Jackie feels it against her head. She folds herself further into Shauna.
In the silence that follows, Shauna says, “I used the journal you gave me.”
Jackie laughs. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. It helped me realize how much I missed you, I think. I was too trapped in my head trying to justify it before. I didn’t want to regret it.” She swallows. “But I do. I’m still mad about how we were before. I felt like your dog, or some accessory. I felt like I had to prove that I wasn’t one.”
“I didn’t mean to make you hate me,” Jackie whispers.
“I know that now. I’m trying to believe it.”
“Yeah. Too little, too late.”
“Maybe.” Shauna’s mouth twists. It’s easier to say things in the dark, and something about Jackie against her makes it easier, too. “I wish you never found out, mostly. I’m mad you even looked at my phone in the first place.”
“I’m not,” Jackie says. As she does, she tightens herself around Shauna, like she’s worried she’ll push her away. “I know you’re mad at me, but we would have fallen apart anyway. At least we’re here now, with me knowing.”
Shauna didn’t think of it like that. She always thought Jackie finding out about her betrayals—Brown, her account, Jeff—was the problem. But maybe it was the only solution, for anything between them to become better.
“I know a weekend’s not enough.” Jackie’s hand moves along Shuana’s stomach, and Shauna’s muscles quiver at it. “But I don’t think we’re meant to end. I seriously had no idea you liked Game Day before I went into your phone. Isn’t it some sort of fate that we met twice? Isn’t that the world pulling us together?”
“I don’t believe in fate,” Shauna mumbles. “And I think Game Day caused a lot of our problems, actually.”
Jackie laughs. It tickles Shauna’s throat. “Okay, it’s not fate, but it’s a pretty neat coincidence. I think we should take it as a sign. That we’ll find each other no matter what.”
“You mean that we’re never getting rid of each other?”
“Yeah. We’re one and the same.” Jackie removes her hand from Shauna’s torso, and giggles a little when Shauna whines. She wraps their hands together, instead. “We’re stuck with each other. So we just have to keep trying. ”
J is Jackie, who is also Shauna, who is also Marie, who is also Jackie. It’s a scary thought, that their relationship is so intertwined with them that they’ll never get it out of their systems. But if it can keep feeling like this, maybe it’s worth rebuilding.
The next day, Jackie climbs onto the train platform draped in a new hoodie with a bear embroidered across it.
As the whistle comes from the distance, she turns to Shauna. They don’t say anything. They’ve barely spoken since last night, but their hands stayed clasped until morning, and haven’t separated yet.
“We’ll keep in touch, right?” Jackie finally says. She uses the hand not in Shauna’s to push her hair out of her face. “You’re not just being nice because I came all this way while planning to ghost me?”
“No, you were right. I did miss you.”
Jackie’s hand squeezes hers. “So…” She bites her lip. “You’re the only one I want to be with.”
The words warm Shauna’s chest so much a smile involuntarily crosses her face. Jackie grins in time with her.
“You’re kinda leaving me hanging,” she says, her grasp on Shauna’s hand now enough to turn her knuckles white.
Shauna rolls her eyes. “You too. You know that.”
Something passes on Jackie’s face, and Shauna realizes she didn’t. She really questioned it, even though Shauna devoted the majority of her life to her.
They do have a lot to talk about, and the thought makes Shauna’s stomach flip in between dismay and anticipation. But the train’s almost to the platform now, so Jackie pulls her into a hug instead, and Shauna sinks into it, hand grasping at her back, clenching the fabric of the sweatshirt tight.
“We’ll figure this out,” Jackie says, and it’s not an order, but it’s said with enough conviction that Shauna believes her. Jackie’s always gotten what she puts her mind to, eventually. It’s a fact of the universe that she used to hate, but she’s happy to know it now.
The train comes to a stop, and Jackie pulls herself out of Shauna’s arms. She looks her right in the eyes. Shauna keeps waiting for her to move away and onto the train, heart already falling at the thought, but instead Jackie moves closer.
Their lips meet before Shauna can realize it’s happened. Jackie’s are gone from hers before she understands they were there, because it was just a peck, like a tiny souvenir of a kiss.
Jackie giggles, gives Shauna’s hand one more squeeze, and walks onto the train. Shauna stands on the platform, exactly where she left her. What’s she supposed to do? If this were the end to one of the romance movies Jackie made her watch 100 times, Shauna would run onto the train and give her a real, lifechanging kiss, one without all the confusion of their first one, hopefully one that’s a little too obscene to do in public, but they wouldn’t care because this is their happily ever after.
Except this isn’t an ending. The whole point is that there’s days, weeks, months, years left of Jackie and Shauna. So instead, Shauna’s pocket buzzes.
She pulls out her phone. It’s her first text from Jackie since their fight.
Jackie
See you soon!!!!