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The thing is - and Donna will defend this stance with most of her life - Eric was not always like this.
When they were kids, and when they were younger teens, and for just a little while when they were actually dating, he was nice. He was still a guy, still made shitty jokes and laughed at himself and left the window open even when it was cold, but he was her best friend. Her buddy. The one who she could play basketball with, who wouldn’t dismiss her as the girl, who she’d confide in once in a while.
And the feelings, if there were any feelings to begin with and she wasn’t just being dragged along by what everyone said she was supposed to feel (which was totally within the realm of possibility; she’s not as sturdy as everyone thinks she is), disappeared over time. She thinks that it’d be weirder if the feelings didn’t disappear after seeing her sweet, funny dumbass of a best friend turn into a slobbering creep whose perfect future saw her as the housewife, a docile little thing. No amount of kissing and mediocre romantic gestures could make up for that, the loss of someone she did love, even if it wasn’t in the right way.
She thinks, whenever she’s left to ruminate over whether or not she should’ve dumped him for like the fifth time, that she has never known how to love someone in the right way.
“‘Least he likes you,” Jackie says, painting her own nails and staring at her hands, on one of those nights after one of their many, many breakups that will inevitably end in Eric crawling back and Donna - for some reason - apologizing instead. “Enough to keep coming back for you.”
“I wish he wouldn’t,” Donna grumbles, gripping one of Jackie’s frilly little pillows in her hands until she’s scared she’ll tear it. She doesn’t understand the appeal of the things - they’re too small to comfortably sleep on, and the little tassels would probably get in your mouth or your nose when you slept, right?
She brought this up to Jackie, once, and Jackie had laughed for way longer than the comment warranted, and Donna hadn’t minded. Jackie’s laugh is different, when the boys aren’t around, less of a trill and more of a cackle, like she’s the witch in a movie. It’s loud. It’s nice. Donna thinks she would be completely, one hundred percent fine with it if Jackie laughed like that all the time.
“Then why don’tcha just stop taking him back?” Jackie kicks her legs back and forth as she’s talking, taking up all of her bed, leaving Donna to sit below her on the clearly never-used beanbag. Donna thinks this is something Jackie does on purpose - if they were both going to paint each other’s nails, as was the purported reason for this visit, there would’ve been more than enough room on the bed for both of them to sit next to each other if Jackie had sat up.
But then again it’s not like she can ask that. Then Jackie would look at her, eyebrows raised so high they’d disappear, and she’d say so that’s why things never work out with Eric and then she’d say sorry, Donna, but I’m not like that and either she’d cut Donna out of her life entirely (not impossible) or just act very tense and awkward around her (significantly more likely and somehow almost as bad) and she doesn’t want either of those things to happen.
Sometimes she thinks that Jackie is her only friend, and that knowledge exhausts her.
“He lives next door, Jackie. We’ve known each other since we were kids. Our dads work together. It’s not that easy.”
“Big bad feminist Donna’s afraid of a little awkwardness between neighbors? Ha!” Jackie laughs again, and it’s her big-hearted cackle, and Donna can’t help but crack a smile despite herself. “You talk big, Donna. I don’t think your heart’s in it.”
“In what? Bettering society? I’m trying my best.”
“In Eric.” Jackie draws out the name languidly, a little mockingly. “Sometimes people aren’t who you thought they were. You thought he was some kind of knight in shining armor-”
“He was not,” because here Donna has to interject, because she never thought that and she does have some dignity left.
“-and it turned out he was just like the rest of them. Am I right? Or am I right?”
Well.
She’s not wrong.
“Come on, it’s got to be one of the two,” Jackie says, when Donna doesn’t immediately rebuff her. And maybe it’s exactly because she doesn’t respond - because she doesn’t shoot Jackie down or respond with a barbed quip or anything, just looks at her own hands and thinks about how she and Eric used to have a secret handshake when they were little kids that lasted, at one point, nine and a half minutes, and how the last time she tried to initiate it he just swung her hand up to his weirdly dry and prickly lips and kissed it and then laughed, and she didn’t know if he’d forgotten the handshake or if he just didn’t care, and she didn’t ask because the answer would hurt too much - that Jackie hops off her bed, fingers still carefully splayed out in front of her.
“It’s fine, Jackie,” Donna says, clearly too late, because Jackie plops down next to her and, in her usual cartoon-character way, her movements always a little bit more elaborate than they need to be, she leans her head on Donna’s shoulder.
“There, there,” she says, hands still in front of her. It’s not a very comfortable position for either of them. When Donna doesn’t say anything else, Jackie sort of vibrates a little, like she’s trying to do some motion but stopping herself from it. “If my hands were dry, I’d be patting your back. Or rubbing circles on your back. But then I’d get nail polish on your dumb lumberjack clothes.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m mostly just doing it because then I’d have to start all over again.” Jackie bumps Donna’s shoulder with her own, and the sensation is strangely warm, and Jackie’s hair smells so nice - like high-end shampoo and flowers, when was she around flowers? “I’m a very selfish person, Donna.”
“I don’t think you are.” And she doesn’t.
For all the postulating and the snippy comments and the rivalry egged on in no small part by the boys, Donna thinks that Jackie is maybe the only person in the world she trusts.
“You’re staying over here tonight, right?” Jackie doesn’t really say it like a question, more like a confirmation. Like there’s no way Donna will say anything other than what Jackie knows she’ll say. “It’s late, and you don’t wanna see him, right? Everyone would know it if my car drove up to the driveway in your sleepy little house.”
“I guess. If that’s okay.” The words come out strange, clunky. How do you respond to something like that?
“Of course it is.” Jackie’s voice softens, and she turns to look right at her, and something picks up in Donna’s chest. She wouldn’t be able to tell you what it is, wouldn’t want to, because it would be infinitely, infinitely easier if she could love Eric in the way she’s supposed to and call Jackie shallow and vapid and plant herself on a pedestal that puts her above Jackie but below the boys and do what she’s supposed to, but those are all a load of hypotheticals.
The truth, when she’s willing to admit it, is that Jackie is playing all of them like a fiddle and she’s just along for the ride. The truth is that she will never be able to love Eric with the same fervor he loves her and she will never be able to be what he wants and she will never get her basketball buddy back and she is staring right into Jackie’s eyes, which have always been so much bigger than you’d expect, so full of everything, and her breath comes quick and jagged in her chest.
“I think they’re dry now,” Jackie says, waggling her hands a little to show off. Donna shrugs.
“Great.”
“You want me to do yours?” And when Donna doesn’t answer, Jackie puts her hands around Donna’s back, pressed flat on her shoulder blades like they’re about to dance - clearly the polish hasn’t dried all the way, yet - and they both just kind of stare at each other like that.
How do you respond to something like that?
“Uh. Sure.” Tongue sitting thick and heavy like a foreign object in her mouth. Every atom of her body buzzing. These are the things that you’re supposed to feel for somebody.
These are things she hasn’t felt for Eric in a very long time, if she ever did, and this terrifies her, and she is not a person who is easily terrified.
“Okay,” Jackie says, but she doesn’t move or anything. She’d said it before, her dad isn’t home, and based on the state of the house it looked like he hadn’t been home in a while, and they’re both just sort of…sitting there, and Donna will not be the one to make the first move. She will not be the one to ruin two friendships in the span of a few years with her feelings, whatever they are.
“I bite my nails,” Donna blurts out, for lack of anything else to say. Jackie breaks away, spell apparently broken if it was there to begin with. It probably wasn’t. Donna’s probably imagining things. “So I don’t know if they’ll be any good. To paint.”
“They can’t be that bad,” Jackie says, and picks up one of Donna’s hands like it’s nothing, like it’s not sending her world spinning on its axis. Jackie winces. “Jeez, Donna! Do you eat your hands?”
“They’re not that bad!” Donna snaps, and pulls back her hand, trying to ignore the warm pinpricks in her palm where Jackie had touched it.
“Oh, no, they are,” Jackie tuts, shaking her head slowly. “Really terrible. The worst hands I have ever seen in my entire life.” She looks Donna in the eye, then, as if to make sure she’s still following the joke. To make sure she’s not taking it too seriously.
She shouldn’t be this nice. She shouldn’t be doing this. It’s too much - it’s easy enough to ignore this when she’s being petty and snippy and mocking, it’s so much harder when she lets on that she actually cares.
“You’re lucky you have me,” Jackie continues. “Have you ever done this before?”
“Painted my nails?”
“No, silly, kissed a girl.” The world stops. Then Jackie laughs. “Painted your nails! That’s what I meant. Aw, you should’ve seen your face!”
“Ha, yeah…” Donna laughs, too, and it sits weirdly in her throat. She can’t quite get it out. “But no.”
“Mm, figures.” Jackie takes her hand again, looks closer at it. Donna thinks, unbidden, of the failed handshake attempt, of what Jackie’s lips would feel like on-
Nope.
“I’m out of yellow. Guessing you wouldn’t want pink, huh?” Jackie stands up, and Donna feels her absence like a physical thing, palpable and very very strange. “I think most of the caps are caked on…”
“Uh-huh.” Donna just lets her keep talking, digs her hands into the sleeves of her flannel and tries to steady her breathing while Jackie’s distracted. There isn’t really anything else to do.
“Do you have anything planned tomorrow? I should go to the mall. Restock.”
“I have school.”
“School-schmool. Other than that.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“I know.” Jackie turns around, holding a little tiny purple bottle, and Donna belatedly realizes that for Jackie to paint her nails she will need to be holding her nails- her fingers- whatever. That it will be a prolonged and intimate act, and they’ll be very close again, and that Jackie has to know this.
Well. It’s not like it’d matter to Jackie. Because of course it wouldn’t. Because it shouldn’t matter to Donna, either, but of course it does.
“Okay. Hold it out.” Jackie sits down again, leaning forward a little. Donna’s mouth feels dry.
“You know what? It’s fine. It’d look weird anyway.” Donna thinks that if she lets Jackie this close - if Jackie strokes her fingers with the feather-light brush and breathes the same air as her and sticks her tongue out a little like she does when she’s focusing on something - she’ll explode. “Me, with my nails all done up. Like putting makeup on a cat.” She’ll just explode, for lack of a more poetic description. What else is there?
Exploding.
“If you’re sure.” Jackie puts the bottle away, and she doesn’t look hurt exactly - at least not in the way she usually does when she’s really upset, when she scrunches up her face and her voice gets really high and she stomps her foot - but there’s something disappointed in her expression that makes Donna’s heart ache.
“Yeah.”
“Guess there’s not much else to do then, huh?” Jackie goes back to looking right at her. Donna licks her lips. “Usually when I’m hosting sleepovers we talk about boys, but that’s out of the question.” She makes an “X” motion with her arms. “None of that! It’s just Donna and Jackie, against the world.”
“You think we’d make it? Us against the world.” It’s such a cheesy line. If Eric said it to her, Donna’s certain she’d laugh at him for it.
But Donna isn’t Eric, and Jackie isn’t Donna, and they’re sitting on Jackie’s overwhelmingly pink floor and Donna thinks she might be in love with a girl and what is there to say, really?
“I think so.” Jackie says it lightly, like she’s not entirely sure of the answer, which is strange. Usually she’s certain of everything. “You with your brains, me with my money and my good looks and my…”
There she is, Donna thinks, and laughs a little.
“I’d like to get out of Wisconsin one of these days,” Jackie continues, unbidden, and she puts her finger to her chin like she’s really, intensely considering it. A tiny fleck of nail polish comes off on her neck. Donna doesn’t say anything about it. “I mean, we go on vacation all the time, but that’s just for a week or whatever. I want to leave, you know?”
“I know.” Oh, how she knows. There’s a whole world beyond this little cul-de-sac and Jackie’s house a few miles away, beyond the mall and the small-mindedness of everyone here, beyond Eric-
“This summer, we should just run away and never look back. I’d take my inheritance. You’d…I don’t know, get a job hauling logs? Or work at a radio station, there’s got to be a radio station wherever we go. I mean, it’s not like we’d be running away to the middle of nowhere.”
“You’d want that?” Donna’s chest constricts, sharp and strange. A radio station. Just like that. No jealous looks or snide, undercutting commentary or doubt layered underneath chauvinistic assumptions about what a girl could possibly do at a radio station.
“Hmm, I’d miss Eric’s basement, and Michael and Steven and Fez, but I can’t stay here forever. I’m meant for something bigger. Aren’t you?”
“I think so.” And it’s just fanciful talk, of course it is, they’re teenagers talking about this on a school night, but the thought of it - her and Jackie on the open road, free of everything else - is so open, so full of possibility, that she can’t stop herself from smiling.
“I knew you’d say that.” Jackie scoots closer, then, cups Donna’s cheek in her right hand, traces her thumb down Donna’s jawline, and it is the tenderest thing she has ever experienced. “You’re really pretty, you know that?”
“I wouldn’t, considering how often the boys say it and you don’t.” It’s meant to come out as a joke, something dry and snarky, but something cracks in her voice instead. “Well. Hot. If any of them said the word pretty they’d never hear the end of it.”
“Mm. I mean, your fashion sense is atrocious, but you’ve got a nice jaw, and you’re so tall…”
“It shouldn’t- that doesn’t matter.” Unfortunately, her blood apparently didn’t get the message, because her face is heating up at the compliment anyway, and her heart is beating really really fast again, and Jackie is looking at her, and Jackie is leaning closer, and it is a very very tentative thing, but Donna isn’t stopping her and soon she’s leaning in too, and then Jackie’s lips brush hers and-
Oh.
This is it, isn’t it? This is what she’s been missing. It’s a clumsy and awkward thing, the two of them smiling against each other’s mouths, Jackie’s shimmering lip gloss a little slimy and somehow the most wonderful feeling in the world. She’s so soft. So strangely tender. It’s like the world is spinning around and around and the two of them are caught in it.
“Wow,” Jackie says, once they break apart, cheeks dusted pink. She’s smiling, too. Donna doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t want to endanger this moment.
“Wow,” Donna echoes, and then she thinks about how the thing she said before their first kiss was that doesn’t matter. She’s certain that if Jackie ever acknowledges that this happened - which she isn’t sure she will - she will make fun of her for that forever.
“I’m a great kisser.” Jackie twirls her hair around her pointer finger, studying Donna intently. “You’re not close behind, though.”
“Thank you?”
“The car’s full.” Jackie glances out the window. Donna follows her gaze. “We could leave right now.”
“We could.” She knows they won’t. She knows they have school tomorrow, that this might just stay in Jackie’s bedroom forever, a sort of fever dream of a thing, but then again maybe it won’t, and maybe-
Maybe they can make it work.