Chapter Text
Jackie calls their apartment once a week, gossiping with Michelle until asking to be passed over to Shauna. Michelle thinks nothing of it.
“Hi,” Jackie says, mid-November. “Happy almost Thanksgiving.”
“Do you think your dad is currently yelling at your mom for forgetting to get the right type of potatoes again?”
“Probably. It’s not her fault the right one changes every year.”
Shauna laughs. “She’s not innocent. That one year I went over, she kept yelling at me for not stirring the cranberry sauce fast enough.”
“Yeah, that was my fault. I kept distracting you by talking about Ross and Rachel.”
“Don’t start again.”
“I won’t,” Jackie says, and Shauna smiles into the receiver. She’s surprised how quick she and Jackie got back to talking normally. When Michelle handed the phone to her for the first time, it shook a little in her hands, but it was like Jackie knew and stuck to easy topics of childhood and their current classes or roommate drama.
“Anyway, I just invited Michelle to Thanksgiving here, and I said you and your other roommates are welcome to come.”
“Oh.” Shauna leans against the wall. Michelle’s watching her, grinning, probably thrilled about a group trip to London. She turns her body the opposite way. “Yeah, that could be nice.”
“I promise my mom and dad won’t be there,” Jackie laughs. “Just me. And Diana, but you’ve met her already, and your roommates. Very casual.”
“That sounds good,” Shauna says, even though her stomach turns. She and Jackie have been doing fine on the phone, and they were okay in the airport, but part of her is waiting for another moment that proves that a decent friendship for the two of them is unattainable. She’s a lot more likely to be proven right visiting her in person rather than speaking for ten minutes on the phone once a week.
“Oh, and Tai, Van, and Lottie,” Jackie adds, and Shauna freezes. “They’re studying abroad, too—well, Tai and Van are. Lottie’s still at NYU, but her parents are gone for Thanksgiving so she asked for a flight here. You know how they are. But the three of them are coming earlier, so they’ll only be there for one day with you. Michelle was saying maybe you guys could do a long weekend.”
Shauna still hasn’t caught up to Jackie’s first statement. “I didn’t know Tai and Van were abroad.”
Jackie chuckles, but there’s unease in it that carries over the phone. “Yeah. I thought it’d be nice to see everyone together again.”
“Do they know I’m coming?”
“I don’t know if you’re coming, yet.”
Shauna rolls her eyes. She glances back at Michelle, who mouths we’re going, like she can see how much Shauna wants to chicken out. Of course she’s finally able to read Shauna the one time she really needs her not to.
Talking to Jackie is one thing. They were probably always going to end up reconnecting if Jackie was telling the truth and was planning on doing it, because when Jackie really wants something, she makes it happen. But she never planned on being in the same room as the others again. She thinks the last time she was, they were all in high school in Randy Walsh’s backyard, a week after losing States, and a day before Jackie and Shauna’s fight.
“I’ll be there,” Shauna mumbles despite all of this, and Jackie’s excited scream almost makes up for her building dread.
They take the train to London. Her roommates all jump in excitement into the cab to the station while Shauna clambours in. Her body feels off balance. Her brain decides to play all the ways this is going to go wrong in vivid detail the entire ride until Michelle navigates them through the city and they’re standing on the steps of Jackie’s building.
Like their apartment in Paris, Jackie’s is up several flights of stairs. Diana lets them into the building and Shauna tries to give her a steady smile, though she’s sure it’s faltering.
They pause right before the apartment because Diana’s key is getting stuck.
“Goddamn it,” she mutters. “I hate this fucking door, it locks everytime you close it—” She pushes her entire body against it until it falls open with her, and Shauna’s hit with the smell of turkey and potatoes. Jackie looks up, wearing a sweater with a turkey embroidered poorly across it, stirring something on the stove. She immediately abandons it.
“You’re here!” She rushes toward them, slippered feet pounding against the wood floor, and beelines for Shauna. She pulls her in tight and Shauna closes her eyes, sinking into it.
Okay, she can do this.
When her eyes open, she’s staring right at Van. She sits on the couch, one hand in a bowl of chips, the other a fraction from Tai’s. Lottie’s next to Van, watching Shauna carefully.
“So you guys are just fine now?” Van asks. Tai elbows her, but she’s also giving Shauna a what the fuck? look, so it’s not very effective.
“Huh?” Michelle asks while Jackie glares.
“It’s a valid question,” Lottie says quietly.
Shauna ignores them. She sits next to Tai, crossing her arms over her chest. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Tai looks at her for a long time, clearly running some sort of assessment in her head that Shauna’s not sure she’s even capable of passing. “It’s nice to see you.”
“You too.” Her voice is stiff and emotionless, but she gets the words out.
“Your hair looks nice,” Lottie says, leaning forward to inspect it. It’s a little longer than it was in high school, but not by much, and dyed a little lighter. Not like how Nat’s was senior year, but closer to auburn.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Jackie agrees, which Shauna is confused by, because Jackie hasn’t said anything about it before. Shauna wonders if she’s fishing for a compliment from Lottie, too, but she doesn’t seem offended when Lottie doesn’t say anything about her own hair. She just smiles prettily at all of them, and Shauna swallows in order to fight one building on her own face.
“So you all know each other?” Michelle asks, sinking into the cushion next to Shauna. Jackie notices and moves to the couch too, sitting right between the two of them. Van giggles and says something to Tai, and Shauna decides she doesn’t want to know what it is, because all she hears is “junior year.”
“We played soccer together,” Lottie says.
“We were almost state champions,” Van sighs.
“Almost,” Tai grumbles.
“She’s still bitter,” Van says to Shauna. “You’re over it, right? Tai, everyone else is over it.”
“Whatever,” Tai sighs, but she smiles and takes Van’s hand.
No one reacts. Shauna doesn’t either, since she caught Tai and Van making out once a month by accident in high school, but Jackie takes a sip of a glass of wine sitting on the table in front of the couch without a single emotion playing across her face. Shauna must have missed something in her vacation from everyone else in Wiskayok.
“Do you want something to drink?” Shauna’s sure the question must be for all of them, but Jackie looks at her as she says it. She nods.
Jackie takes her by the elbow towards the kitchen. It’s only twenty feet maximum from the couch, but the sizzling of the food feels like it creates enough of a sound buffer as Shauna says, “Happy late Thanksgiving.” They decided to celebrate that Friday, since none of them had time off for the actual holiday. It’s one of the few things Shauna misses about the US; that weeklong break was convenient.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” Jackie doesn’t let go of her elbow; her hand migrates down to her wrist instead, holding it loosely. It sends tingles up Shauna’s arm, and she hates it. She tells herself to calm the fuck down, because she can’t be going all crazy over Jackie. That’s what ruined them last time.
“I tried to tell them to be nice, but I guess they had to give you some shit,” she says to Shauna. “You ignored them, too.”
“I know.” Shauna doesn’t feel as bad about it as she does with Jackie, but it did always sting when her friends at Brown would talk about going home over the holidays to their hometown friends, and she’d have to say she was watching movies with her mom who passed out halfway through from being so exhausted from her job. Maybe the self isolation thing wasn’t her smartest decision.
Jackie pours her a large glass of wine, and then gives three to Amber, Kelsey, and Michelle, too as they walk over.
“The turkey needs another hour,” she says as she stirs the mashed potatoes one more time. “Everything else is done.”
“Sounds good,” Michelle says.
“You have a lot of board games,” Kelsey says. She looks at the shelf hanging on the wall as she takes her glass.
“They’re Diana’s. She’s obsessed,” Jackie says.
“Jackie acts like she doesn’t make me play The Game of Life with her every night,” Diana says, leaning over to taste the mashed potatoes.
“Every other night,” Jackie corrects.
“Yet you, your wife, and your four children always lose,” Diana says, smiling, while Kelsey gives Jackie a confused look, but for some reason Diana looks at Shauna while she says it, and it takes a second for Shauna to truly register her words.
Wife?
She looks at Jackie, because this has to be some joke. Jackie must have told Diana that they used to make out as teenagers, and Diana’s making fun of Jackie “experimenting”.
But Jackie shrugs and says, “Sue me for taking the scenic route through life. Not everything is about winning.”
Shauna’s eyes narrow. For one thing, that’s wrong, because Jackie was always about winning. She cared so much about soccer games she wrote out their plays while Shauna did homework at sleepovers. And another, she’s not blushing or waving Diana’s you want a wife accusations away.
Though she does give a half second look at Shauna. It’s so quick, Shauna can’t detect the emotion in it. Jackie’s hand around her wrist tightens, fractionally.
“Jackie!” Van calls. “We finished the chips! Or are they crisps?”
She holds up the massive bowl. Jackie laughs breathily and grabs it from her. She busies herself with refilling it, still avoiding Shauna—everyone’s—gaze.
“Sit with us, Shauna,” Lottie says. Her voice is gentle, but since Lottie’s pretty quiet, when she says something people usually listen, and Shauna still has that instinct in her. She settles back next to Tai.
“Are you still at Brown?” Lottie asks.
“Yeah,” Shauna says. “I’m studying English.”
“I could’ve guessed that,” Tai says. “English or history. You were really good at those.”
Shauna smiles. She thinks about what Misty said, that the team loved her. It seemed ridiculous a few weeks ago, but no one is calling her out for Jeff, even though they definitely could, so maybe they have some mutual respect, at the very least.
“She’s going to be an editor,” Jackie announces, placing the bowl back down, and Shauna stiffens.
“That’s the plan,” she agrees. “Are you still going to law school, Tai?”
“Duh,” Van says. Tai nudges her shoulder with a smile.
“What about you, Van?” Jackie asks.
“I’m going to be a big time director. So Shauna, if you want to be a screenwriter, I can be your in.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I’m going into counseling,” Lottie says.
“Oh, you’ll be such a good therapist,” Jackie says. “You’re always so calm. I was such a mess before games.”
“No one noticed,” Van says. “It’s not like you threw up before that one tournament sophomore year.”
“I thought we all agreed not to talk about that,” Jackie groans.
“I never agreed,” Lottie says.
“Traitors,” Jackie mumbles. She sinks into Shauna’s side. Her skin seems to radiate into hers, even though they’re both wearing sweaters.
“So, Shauna,” Van says with so much energy that Shauna takes it as a warning. “Are you seeing anyone at Brown?”
Jackie goes still against her. Tai shoots Van a look, and Lottie lets out a sigh.
“Uh.” Shauna shakes her head. “No.” She’s had flings, but they never amount to anything. She just…she never felt like her heart was in it. In the back of her brain, she knew it was Jackie, that compared to how she felt about her, nothing could be as strong, so what was the point?
She ignores that Jackie’s hand comes dangerously close to resting on her thigh, right in the space between their bodies on the couch cushion. She wants her to place it there. She doesn’t think she can handle it if she does.
“Me either,” Lottie says.
“Yeah,” Jackie says, almost right in Shauna’s ear. “Me either.”
Shauna pushes herself up. The world is too hot and for some reason half a glass of wine was enough to make her unsteady. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Jackie looks up at her, blinking. “Um.” She stands up, too, and points to the left, past the kitchen. “That way.”
Shauna runs to it. She looks back, and Jackie sinks close to Tai, the four of them huddling together. Shauna bites her cheek and pushes the bathroom door open.
It’s tiny, with barely enough room for the toilet, shower, and sink, let alone for her to stand, but she slams the door shut and sinks against it anyway.
It seems like Jackie’s flirting, or is attempting to. And that the others are egging her on. So either this is some massive ploy to get back at Shauna’s transgressions by fucking with her feelings, which there is a chance of, though not a massive one since no one has as much as alluded to Jeff since Shauna walked in, or Jackie’s actually trying to get Shauna to make out with her, and maybe more since clearly she doesn’t have a boyfriend this time around.
Except that should be impossible. Shauna isn’t surprised that Jackie likes girls—she spent way too much time groping at Shauna’s chest in high school for her to think any differently. But what’s really driving her crazy is that Jackie’s clearly told people that she likes girls, when she wouldn’t even admit it to Shauna in high school when they were kissing every other weekend. It was always to help me practice with Jeff or to help you practice for Randy or because everyone does it, Shauna. Like it was an obligation of girlhood, rather than something she truly wanted.
A knock pounds on the door hard enough that she feels it in her back and bounces up.
“Hey?” Jackie’s voice comes through the wood. “We’re eating in ten minutes.”
Shauna lets out a breath and opens the door. Jackie’s still there, a furrow in her brow.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Shauna says, or really, chokes out. “I’ll help you set the table.”
“It’s already set.” Jackie studies her, and Shauna’s tempted to slam the door shut again. “Listen, I know it’s weird to be like this after so long, so if you want me to do anything diffe–”
“No,” Shauna cuts her off. It’s stupid, but the last thing she wants is Jackie to stop what she’s doing. She wants to see it through. To see what all of Jackie’s actions actually mean, in the end.
“Oh. Okay.” Jackie’s face brightens. Hesitantly, she reaches out and takes Shauna’s wrist again. When Shauna doesn’t pull back, she brings her hand in hers. It’s a loose hold; their fingers don’t interlock, but when Shauna squeezes, Jackie squeezes back.
They all end up pressed against each other at the too-small dinner table. Amber and Tai discover that they’re both at Howard and dominate the conversation comparing dining halls and dorms. Shauna doesn’t mind because her brain isn’t functioning well with Jackie nearly on top of her from how close they are.
By the time cranberry sauce gets to their side of the table, it’s almost gone. Jackie puts a tiny spoonful onto her plate before handing the bowl to Shauna.
“That’s not a lot,” Shauna says.
“You like it more than me,” Jackie replies.
Shauna adds some of what’s left to her plate, and then adds more to Jackie’s. Jackie takes the portion back and puts it on Shauna’s plate. Then Shauna puts it back on Jackie’s.
Jackie’s eyes narrow. Shauna gives her an innocent smile.
“Let’s go around saying what we’re grateful for,” Lottie says loudly, snapping Shauna back to attention. Michelle’s giving them a curious look. Actually, everyone is looking at them. Jackie sinks a little in her seat, blushing.
“I’m grateful for free, good food,” Tai says. “Thanks, Jackie.”
She waves the compliment away. “My pleasure. You know I just like an excuse to see all of you.”
“I’m grateful for God,” Kelsey says.
Van snorts. Shauna averts her eyes to her plate to keep from doing the same.
“I’m grateful we’re not in New Jersey right now,” Van says.
“Me too,” Jackie says. “I’m grateful all of us made it here.”
She hooks her foot around Shauna’s as she says it.
They’re split up for the night. Kelsey calls the couch, and Shauna thinks Lottie has a murderous glint in her eyes when she says that, but she doesn’t comment.
“There’s space in my room, Lot,” Jackie says. “It can be like one of our team sleepovers.”
“It’s not the same without Nat snoring and keeping everyone awake,” Van complains.
“No, that was Mari,” Tai says.
“It was both of them,” Shauna says.
“It’s for the best that you’ll actually be able to sleep. You guys have early flights,” Jackie says.
“We should’ve stayed for longer,” Lottie says.
“I told you that you could,” Jackie says. She clicks the door open, and Shauna ignores the rest of the conversation to take it in. There’s pictures in frames that she’s sure Jackie didn’t choose, because they’re pictures from random skylines with no theme or reasoning, but below it are pasted several photos. Most of them, from what she can tell, are her and Diana around London, and a few of her, Diana, and Michelle in Boston. There’s none of them, and for a second she’s hurt even though she threw out all of her photos of Jackie except a few she stuffed in a box in Wiskayok, but then she reminds herself of the flannel and feels a lot better.
Jackie’s bed is pressed up against the wall, queen sized and layered with green sheets and blankets. A pink throw pillow is across it, too. She still kept the theme she always planned on having with Shauna, then.
Jackie throws a few extra blankets at Tai, Van, and Lottie. “The floor’s not too bad. Shauna can sleep with me, the bed’s big enough.”
“Figures,” Van mutters.
“You can take it,” Shauna offers, both desperately hoping Van agrees and declines at the same time.
Van barks out a laugh, glancing at Jackie. “Yeah, no.”
Jackie rolls her eyes. “Let me know if you guys need pajamas or anything extra. I’m going to try to clean the kitchen.”
She leaves, and Shauna begins to dig through her bag. She brought her nicest pair of pajamas, which are flannel pants and a shirt that she hasn’t stained with hair dye or her own puke. They all get dressed without comment. It’s nothing they’re not used to.
Van keeps looking at Shauna’s shirt though, and Shauna looks down. It’s just her Liz Phair concert tee.
“I didn’t know you were a fan,” Van says.
“I have been since high school.”
“Oh.” All three of them are now looking at her, and Shauna regrets saying it. She sits on the bed, hoping Jackie will come back in. They’ve already talked about high school, so Jackie can tell them that and the conversation will be done.
The sink is still going full blast. Tai says, “I’m surprised you’re here, to be honest.”
“Well, I am.”
“I think it’s good,” Lottie offers. “Everything that happened was a long time ago. I’m glad you and Jackie were able to move past it.”
“It is good,” Tai agrees. “I’m just confused why it happened now.”
“She’s friends with my roommate, so she stayed with me in Paris. And we saw each other in Madrid, and I guess it felt like we were ready.” More like Jackie showed an ounce of regret and Shauna pounced at the opportunity to be in her life again, but whatever. It’s been working out fine, minus Shauna now back to feeling antsy every time Jackie’s not near her again. Where is she? The dishes can’t take that long.
“So I can start inviting you both to my parties again?” Lottie asks.
Shauna grimaces. Lottie’s parties were her nightmare in high school. She watched Jackie and Jeff for most of them until eventually she couldn’t take it anymore and started fucking Jeff at them.
“Sure,” she says. Lottie doesn’t acknowledge her lack of enthusiasm and smiles.
Jackie finally comes back in. She smiles at all of them and pulls out her pajamas. They’re the same ones she wore in Paris, and Shauna’s instantly aware that there's going to be a lot of Jackie’s bare skin in the bed with her. She looks at the wall as she changes.
Jackie crawls in next to Shauna. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Your dramatic reconciliation,” Tai says bluntly.
“It’s not that dramatic,” Jackie says.
“You guys are always dramatic,” Van says, which Shauna opens her mouth to refute, but Jackie’s already made an exaggerated sound of disapproval that would ruin her point.
“We’re being mature about it,” Jackie says. She’s closer to the wall, so she has to hook her head over Shauna’s shoulder to talk to the others on the floor. Shauna’s skin burns there. “You should try it sometime.”
“I’m the perfect picture of maturity,” Van says. Tai shakes her head at them.
“We should sleep,” Lottie says. They all grumble in agreement, and Jackie fumbles with the light until it turns off.
As soon as they’re shrouded in darkness, she moves closer to Shauna. She stops breathing. If Jackie tries something right now, she doesn’t know if she’ll have the willpower to say no, but she also doesn’t want to have her first kiss in over two years with Jackie while their former teammates are less than a foot away.
Jackie simply wraps an arm around Shauna’s waist and presses them together. The contact’s still enough to make Shauna shiver, but she doesn’t do anything else.
It’s also soothing. Shauna’s almost asleep when the floorboards creak.
“Jackie, your bed’s big enough,” Lottie whispers. “Let me in.”
“Huh?” Jackie sounds just as drowsy as Shauna. “Okay.” She pulls herself and Shauna closer to the wall. Lottie climbs in, the smell of her lemon shampoo in Shauna’s face.
“Move your legs up,” Van says. Shauna does mindlessly, and so do Jackie and Lottie, though it seems to take more effort for Lottie with her height. Van lays down at the foot of the bed, Tai right next to her.
Once they’re all settled, Shauna finally sleeps.
Tai, Van, and Lottie leave before the sun fully rises. Shauna blinks half-awake, watching them pack their bags and feeling a strange emptiness where their bodies used to lay next to hers. Tai kisses Van’s cheek as they double check that they have their passports. Shauna becomes very aware of Jackie’s arm, still across her waist.
She’s still completely pressed to Shauna, like an inch of space between them is deadly. Shauna blinks into the warmth for what she thinks is a second, but the next time she opens her eyes, the other girls are gone.
Jackie and Shauna make it to breakfast before everyone else, so Jackie starts making pancakes for everyone. Shauna helps, which means she helps add the chocolate chips to the batter and is allowed to try to flip one before it burns.
“Remember when you tried to make eggs for Mother’s Day and called me screaming about the fire alarm going off?” she asks Shauna.
“Yeah, and my mom had to leave her shift early. She was so mad.” Shauna was banned from the kitchen for a year after that, relegated to TV dinners.
Jackie’s laughter must wake the others up, because they come crawling out of Diana’s room, and Kelsey sits upright on the couch. She won’t look Jackie straight in the eyes, probably thinking her supposed interest in women is contagious, but at least she hasn’t made any comments yet.
“What do you want to do today?” Jackie asks Shauna as they eat, and Shauna’s so taken aback by the question, something she can’t remember Jackie ever saying, that she waits for too long.
Michelle says, “We should see Buckingham Palace!” and everyone else nods in agreement, though Jackie seems disappointed and Shauna is too, despite herself.
They take the tube, and though Jackie makes an obvious move to sit next to Shauna, Kelsey and Amber flank her on either side.
“Did you know Jackie was like that?” Kelsey hisses.
“Like what?” Shauna prays that if she plays dumb the conversation will end.
“Like…” Kelsey trails off, giving her a look.
“A lesbian?” Amber says, rolling her eyes. “It’s not the 1800s anymore Kelsey, you can calm down.”
“I’m asking Shauna if she knew since they were friends in high school. I’d feel a little weird about it, that's all.”
“I knew,” Shauna says. She didn’t realize she was going to say it until she did, and she’s now aware that Jackie’s looking at them from where she’s hanging onto one of the train’s poles. Whatever, Jackie should know that she wasn’t very covert when she asked them to make out every weekend. “I don’t care. I like girls, too.”
Kelsey’s mouth twists in displeasure. “Seriously?”
Shauna glances back at Jackie. She’s turned to talk to Michelle, but she’s smiling widely, which seems deeply inappropriate since all Shauna can catch of their conversation is Michelle saying “my mom keeps getting mad about international phone bills.”
“That’s great, Shauna,” Amber says with much more enthusiasm than she usually has, glaring at Kelsey.
Shauna shrugs and says, “It’s not a big deal.” She came to terms with it a long time ago (when she kissed a girl in college who wasn’t Jackie and everything sort of clicked). They have less than a month left in Europe—she can deal with Kelsey being bitchy for a few more weeks.
They reach their stop and Shauna hasn’t even left the train before Jackie’s by her side again.
“Hey,” she says. She’s still smiling.
“Jackie, I need help,” Michelle says, squinting at the map in her hands.
Jackie sighs. “Ask Diana.”
“You have to learn to read a map by yourself one day, Michelle,” Diana says, grabbing it from her. Jackie gives Shauna an exasperated look and joins them.
The three of them successfully lead them to the palace. They enter the gardens first. A lot of it is beginning to wither, but a few flowers linger.
Jackie’s back next to Shauna, studying the trees.
“So…” she says, and Shauna’s heart rate spikes. It was easy to talk about her sexuality with Amber and Kelsey, knowing they’re going to be going their separate ways in a month. She’s known Jackie for years.
“When did Tai and Van come out?” Shauna asks, the first thing she can think of since sexuality is already on her mind, and apparently she’s still stuck on how they held hands like it didn’t even matter yesterday.
“Oh.” Jackie’s face creases in confusion. “The end of freshman year of college, I think? Just to the team and their other friends. I think they were sick of hiding it, but trying to see if it would last doing long distance since Van is at NYU and Tai’s at Howard.” She looks at Shauna. “You knew about them?”
“Yeah. You didn’t?”
“No, I did. Sometimes when I went to practice early I’d see them. I just didn’t know you did. I wondered, because the only person who didn’t when they told us was Mari.”
Shauna laughs. “They weren’t the most subtle about it.”
Jackie smiles. “I know. I don’t think any of us were back then.”
There’s Jackie’s uncanny ability to make conversations go in her favor again. Shauna should have known she could only temporarily divert her attention.
“Yeah,” she says, trying to make her voice light.
“Shauna.” Jackie stops, so Shauna stops too, out of habit. Jackie glances around, but the rest of their group has gone further up, closer to the palace. The two of them are hidden under a shady part of a tree. “You said you knew about me in high school. On the train.”
“I did,” she agrees, though it’s hard to get the words out. “Like you said, we weren’t subtle.”
“We weren’t?” Jackie looks at her for a long time, long enough that Shauna’s eyes slide to the side to avoid hers. She comes face to face with empty space instead of their friend’s backs.
“They’re gone,” she says.
Jackie spins and curses. “They forgot about us.” Shauna thinks it’s more they forgot about them for a while, but Jackie continues, “We gotta run.”
“Really?” Shauna’s body is still sluggish from the pounds of food they ate last night.
Jackie flashes a smile. “What, are you too mature to race me now, Shipman?”
“No.” Shauna tenses and tries to get a headstart, but Jackie sees it coming and takes off as soon as she says it.
“Shit,” Shauna mutters, sprinting a second later.
They weave through the other tourists, with English, French, Spanish, Mandarin and more floating between them before a new language comes in a second later. But Shauna’s more focused on the way Jackie’s laughing through her labored breaths as she runs.
Her muscles stretch in a way they haven’t in a long time. She’s run in the past two years, sure, to make it to class or an early bus, but not with Jackie. They haven’t been forced to brutally match each other’s paces, even if one of them is sick and the other is hungover, because that’s how they get the ball into the goal.
Shauna looks at Jackie as she sprints, at how her chest falls up and down with each step and her thighs reach out in a stride and has to bite her cheek to stop from saying something embarrassing.
She’s so focused she doesn’t realize that she’s about to run into Amber until she hears her yelling, “Shauna, slow down!” and she catches her with her arms, almost taking both of them down.
Her body snaps back, all of the adrenaline gone, though when she glances at Jackie, who’s still laughing, the tug in her chest doesn’t subside.
“I beat you,” Shauna says, very eloquently, and not at all out of breath.
“You’re out of shape,” Jackie accuses.
Shauna shakes her head, but Jackie’s nodding, a smug look on her face.
“Jackie did win,” Amber says.
“Fuck off,” Shauna says. “If you guys didn’t leave without us, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“If you join the Brown soccer team, you’ll get another shot at beating me,” Jackie says.
“Pass,” Shauna says.
Jackie shrugs, and not in the passive aggressive way she did in high school when she was trying to make Shauna feel stupid and sway her onto her side. It’s like she doesn’t actually mind that Shauna doesn’t want to do something she does. Shauna’s heart still pounds erratically, beyond what a short sprint should do, and she’s still having difficulty breathing, and it’s hard to keep her eyes off Jackie.
“Let’s go inside the palace,” Diana says. She pulls Jackie to her side immediately, which breaks Shauna’s concentration and brings her back to where she’s still standing by Amber, who’s looking at her, eyes narrowed.
“Do you think it’ll be better than Versailles?” Shauna asks quickly.
Amber’s discerning look falls away. “Nothing can be better than Versailles.”
They spend the entire day as a group, and Shauna does have a good time; they caught London on a day where it isn’t raining, and it’s nice to be in a city where she can talk to shopkeepers without being glared at for not being fluent in French.
But there’s tension between her and Jackie the entire time. They can’t seem to decide if they want to avoid each other or not. One minute they’re glued side by side, and the next Shauna will find some excuse to slip away because she feels so suffocated, or Jackie will jump into Michelle and Diana’s conversation for reasons Shauna is not sure about.
They stay out until dinner, but they’re all in agreement that the food coma from fake Thanksgiving on top of the walking drained them too much to go out that night, so they head back to the apartment. The climb up the stairs makes Shauna’s knees ache, but she refuses to agree with Jackie about being out of shape and decides it’s just because she’s tired.
Diana fights with the lock again. “The goddamn door!”
“Can I share your bed this time?” Michelle whines. “I can’t take the floor again.”
“I’m getting the couch today,” Amber says, which makes Kelsey scowl. “Oh, stop it, you can handle the floor for one night.”
Shauna likes this karma for Kelsey and does a poor job of hiding her smile. Jackie has obvious glee on her face, too, teeth showing through her grin, because Kelsey looks at her and obviously decides she’s not willing to share a bed with a girl who likes other girls, and gives up with a broken nod. Shauna’s too fixated on how Jackie’s lips stretch into the smile and misses Diana opening the door until Michelle shoves her forward, beelining for Diana’s bedroom.
Jackie heads towards her own room, but she pauses halfway there to look back at Shauna. When she sees her a step behind her, her face settles.
“We can share the bed again,” she offers.
“Okay,” Shauna says, heart pulsing.
They get dressed, and Shauna shakes as she puts on her pajamas. They feel juvenile now in comparison to Jackie’s set, and she feels the old insecurity flare in her, but Jackie looks at her with such an intense look that it’s gone quickly and replaced by need. To get closer, to figure out what will happen, to make sure that even as much as she wants this, she doesn’t lose herself in it.
Jackie’s changed clothes, and she takes Shauna’s hand. This time, their fingers lace together, and she pulls her next to her on the bed. They fall down, the hard mattress barely giving in as they lay across it, eye to eye.
“Um,” Shauna says.
Jackie leans towards her, and this is high school again, but this is the best part of high school again. This is the part of it that replays in Shauna’s dreams and unconscious and sometimes even conscious thoughts. Jackie’s going to kiss her and it’s going to be—
“You want this, right?” Jackie asks, interrupting the script. She’s biting her bottom lip and all Shauna can think is she wishes she were biting hers right now instead. Her hand squeezes Shauna’s, and Shauna just wants her to place it somewhere else.
Jackie keeps looking at her, and Shauna realizes she hasn’t responded yet. “Yes.” It’s short and clipped, but it gets the point across.
“Good,” Jackie says. “Me too.” And that’s when she kisses Shauna.
The words are almost as good as the kiss. Jackie never usually said anything other than the original prelude of an excuse for making out, but now she’s admitting she’s been craving this like Shauna has. They’re on even ground.
And with that, Shauna lets herself get a little lost. She takes the hand that’s not in Jackie’s and threads it through her hair. She tugs it just enough so that their mouths slot a little easier together. Jackie lets out a sound of approval and moves her mouth harder, her free hand moving to reach for Shauna’s stomach.
It stays there for a moment, right on top of the heat building inside of Shauna, and it’s nice, but then it starts to move slowly. Down. And they’ve never done this before, and Shauna has to kiss Jackie really hard so she doesn’t make an embarrassing noise.
Jackie lingers for a moment, hand sliding just below her naval. She pulls back, which Shauna doesn’t like, and then she starts to talk, which Shauna doesn’t want to do. “Is this oka–”
Shauna nods, frantically, and shoves her hand further down.
Shauna wakes up even more tangled with Jackie than the previous morning, less clothed, and with sunrays barely making their way through the windows. Jackie’s hair looks closer to brown than blonde in the low light.
She turns over to meet Shauna’s eyes, and Shauna’s not sure if she was waiting for her to wake up or if they did at the same time. Either seems equally likely.
She expects Jackie to say something, but she doesn’t. She lets Shauna loops her fingers through Jackie’s hair and smooth it down on her head. It’s a familiar gesture that Jackie would ask her to do before a pep rally, or after exiting a party bathroom and trying to look normal.
Shauna’s the first one to talk, surprisingly. “You’re really pretty.” Her cheeks color. It’s such a useless compliment that Jackie’s heard hundreds of times.
But Jackie ducks her head with a shy smile. “You are, too.”
Shauna’s still getting used to Jackie returning compliments and being obvious in her attention. Her chest flutters.
“I’ve always wanted this,” Jackie admits. “Even when I didn’t know it.”
“When did you know?” Shauna was so scared of this confrontation, but now she needs to know. She wants to know everything about Jackie, like how she thought she did before, but actually this time.
“Summer between senior year and college. I fucked Travis Martinez.” Shauna makes a face, and Jackie nods. “I know. It was so stupid, but he was there at a party and I was so mad at you and Jeff. It was…fine.” She sighs. “There weren’t sparks or fireworks and it didn’t feel like I was bound to him forever. It still felt like I was bound to you. And I guess that was what did it for me.”
Shauna digests it. She wants to punch Travis now, even though the more mature part of her brain knows that’s not reasonable. And also, he helped Jackie realize she cares about Shauna, so maybe she owes him more of a thank you.
“What was it for you?” Jackie asks. Shauna can hear the fake nonchalance in her voice. She knows Jackie cares from how her hand, which is on Shauna’s hip, digs in.
Shauna hesitates. Jackie’s nails bite, and she ends up saying, “I kissed another girl and I didn’t like it as much as when I was with you.”
Jackie’s face pinches. “What was she like?”
“Huh?” Shauna tries to think back. “Uh. She had brown hair. Green eyes.”
“No,” Jackie says through a laugh. “Where did you meet her? Why with her?”
“Oh. It was at a frat party my roommate and I went to. She came up to me first. I only tried with guys before that.”
“Why?” Jackie asks, pointed.
Shauna shifts a little. “I was scared, I guess.” Not of what it would mean to search for a girl to hook up with, but of what it would say about her and Jackie. It was always on her mind, no matter how much she didn’t want it to be.
“Hm. It is scary.”
Shauna looks at her, still laying there, hair across her pillow and pajama shirt revealing half of her stomach and says, “Not as much anymore.”
Jackie grins. Her tongue peeks out. “Yeah. This is good.”
“Yeah.”
“We should keep doing it.” She moves her hand to Shauna’s thigh, sliding it across her skin. It leaves a trail of goosebumps.
“I’m leaving today,” Shauna says. She glances at the clock on Jackie’s nightstand. “In five hours.”
“Well, we have five hours then,” Jackie says, leaning closer. Shauna doesn’t even care about the morning breath. She moves into her. “And we live two hours apart here, five minutes apart in Wiskayok, and an hour away at school. I have your email. I think that’s doable.”
“What’s doable?” Shauna asks, and her brain is chanting say it, say it, say it, Jackie, say it while also going danger, bad idea, terrible idea. But she dismisses the second voice easily for the first time in her life as soon as Jackie opens her mouth.
She says, “Dating,” like it’s simple, and not what she and Shauna have been working towards in the most zig-zagged, unproductive path on the planet.
And Shauna goes, “Yeah, okay,” like this has no possibility of being a terrible mistake that actually ruins them for good.
“Great,” Jackie says. “Glad that’s cleared up.”
Then she dips her head down and kisses Shauna like someone who knows her girlfriend will be leaving in five hours, but she’ll be able to see her again soon.