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Jeff drums his fingers on the steering wheel, frustration mounting as he peers out the window yet again to see if there’s been any movement from the house.
Nope.
Grumbling out a sigh, he drops his hand down on the horn and presses firmly, holding for a few seconds before sticking his head out of the window and hollering Jackie’s name into the air.
He doesn’t know why he’s surprised, at this point. They’ve been dating for almost two years now and Jeff’s pretty sure Jackie’s never turned up at the time she said she would once in their relationship, and she’s always even later when Shauna’s tagging along, which she is tonight. He guesses he might still be waiting another ten, fifteen minutes before the two of them finally descend from the house, guaranteed to be strolling towards his car slowly like they’ve got all the time in the world.
Thankfully, this time it only takes another seven minutes until they’re finally getting into the car, and you know what, Jeff will take the small victories as they come. Jackie gives him a sweet smile as she slides into the passenger seat, leaning over the center console to press a kiss onto his cheek.
“Thanks for waiting, babe.”
Jeff could mention that he’s pretty sure he didn’t really have a choice in the matter, considering the fallout he’d have to deal with if he’d just driven off and left them there, but he decides against it. After all, there’s not really any point in small victories when you immediately surrender the trophy back up to the person who gave it to you.
“Of course, babe,” he says, reaching for the gear stick as he goes to start the car. Looking up at the rearview mirror to check he’s good to go, he catches his first glimpse of Shauna, sitting in the backseat with her arms crossed over her chest looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. “You alright back there, Shauna?”
Wrong thing to say.
Somehow, and he didn’t even know it was possible, Shauna’s face darkens and she adopts an expression that’s even more murderous. “I’m fine,” she bites out.
Oops.
Now, there’s a lot of things that Jeff doesn’t know or understand particularly well. There’s math, for one. Laundry, for a second. Why Jackie spends so much time in the morning putting on makeup when her express goal is to look like she doesn’t have any on -- that’s three.
But if there’s one thing that Jeff does know, it’s that Shauna really, really does not like him.
He’s not sure why, if he’s being honest -- he’s pretty sure he’s never done or said anything that could have pissed her off, mostly because he puts in an active effort not to. He’s pretty sure that if Jackie knew how Shauna really felt about him, it would be relationship suicide. It’s been made clear to him on no less than five occasions in the past two months alone that, if the three of them were ever caught in a burning house with the chance to save only one person kind of situation, he would have to find his own way out.
He doesn’t mind it, really. Sure, their friendship is a little odd sometimes -- he’s pretty sure his sisters were never this close to any of their best friends -- but, Jackie loves Shauna. She makes her happy, and that’s all he can really ask for, right?
It would just be a lot easier if Shauna didn’t seem like she was actively hoping he would fall off the face of the earth at any minute.
And the thing is, he likes Shauna. She’s funny, and smart, and she’s great at unraveling Jackie and talking her down from disaster when she gets too tightly wound, which is pretty much every day, which is great because it means that he doesn’t have to try and inevitably fail at doing so. He thinks that they could actually get along pretty well if she would just give him a shot, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen any time soon.
“I’m so excited for tonight,” Jackie says, leaning over to fiddle with the radio. “This is gonna be the best party in like, months. Right, Shauna?”
Shauna lets out a noncommittal grunt. “Yeah, sure.”
Out of the side of his eye, he can see Jackie’s brow furrow. “Shauna, what’s wrong?” she asks, top teeth sinking into her bottom lip the way it always does when she’s anxious. Jeff might not be the most tuned-in boyfriend in the world, but he does pay enough attention to at least know Jackie’s nervous tics. “I thought you were excited for tonight?”
Through the rearview mirror, Jeff watches as Shauna sighs, before rearranging her face into something that sort of resembles a smile. Just barely. “I am, Jax, sorry. I’m just tired, I guess.”
He shifts his gaze to Jackie, who looks unconvinced, face pensive like she can tell there’s something else there. Nonetheless, she doesn’t press, even though he can tell she wants to, and instead just rolls her eyes and turns in her seat to face Shauna.
“Well, you better wake up then, Shipman.” She leans over and prods at Shauna’s thigh. “Because Lottie’s finally letting us use the hot tub, and no way am I gonna sit in there and be hotboxed by her and Natalie alone.”
Shauna’s face splits into something closer to a genuine smile then, as does Jackie’s, and she rolls her eyes dramatically and says, “Fine , I guess that would be cruel of me.”
“Exactly, it would be.”
See, this is the thing that Jeff doesn’t get about Jackie and Shauna. They’re best friends, they really are, and he’s pretty sure they know everything there is to know about the other, but there seems to be so much that goes left unsaid between the two of them.
Like, sometimes Shauna will go quiet, and Jackie will push her for the reason behind it, and even when they all know that what she says is a lie, Jackie will just like, accept it. Pretend it isn’t, or whatever. For one, he doesn’t get why Shauna doesn’t just actually tell her whatever it is that’s bothering her, but what really confuses him is the way that Jackie just lets it happen.
Whenever Jackie thinks that he’s keeping something from her, even when he usually isn’t, she’s like a bulldog, harassing him to give it up until half the time he ends up making something up just to get her to finally leave the issue alone.
But with Shauna, Jackie’s more… careful.
She’s hesitant to push, to ask too much, as if she thinks one day she’s going to go too far and ruin something, even though he’s pretty sure that it wouldn’t be possible to damage whatever the two of them have going on. Every step she takes with Shauna feels more carefully planned, more calculated, than any other move she makes in her life.
Like he said, Jeff doesn’t get it. But he doesn’t get most things about female friendships, so he doesn’t dwell too long on it.
When they finally pull up to the Matthews house, Jeff barely manages to get the car into park before Jackie’s jumping out and dragging Shauna out of the backseat. By the time he’s all parked up and stepping out himself, they’re already halfway up Lottie’s massive driveway, laughing about something or other while he trudges behind them, six-pack in hand.
He can’t help but smile. He doesn’t mind, really, when they leave him behind like this -- sure, it’s kinda annoying the way that Jackie clearly sees him as an afterthought when Shauna’s around, but it’s not like he didn’t come into this relationship knowing he’d always be second priority, and it’s nice to watch them on their own together, observe the way they look when there’s nobody else around to see them.
Jackie always looks lighter, almost. More free. Maybe it hurts a little bit that he can’t give that to her, but he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and chooses instead just to be grateful that someone else can.
He catches up by the time they reach the door, though, because he knows Jackie’s big on entrances, and she’ll be annoyed if he isn’t there to walk in with her. She has a lot of little idiosyncrasies like that that he’s learned to go along with, because it’s easier than fighting against them, and besides, it’s not like he doesn’t enjoy the feeling of walking into a room with Jackie Taylor on his arm.
He slips his hand around her waist and holds her flush against his side, relishing in the way she smiles up at him when he does, like he’s made the right choice. He presses a kiss to the side of her head and ignores the way Shauna rolls her eyes at them before she opens the door, where Lottie is waiting to greet them.
She tugs Shauna into a full-body hug, clearly already a little wasted if the smell wafting off of her is any indicator, and presses a sloppy kiss to her cheek before moving over to Jackie. “You guys made it!”
“Of course we did!” Jackie untucks herself from Jeff’s side and squeezes into the embrace between Shauna and Lottie, sliding her jacket off her shoulders and passing it into Jeff’s hands as she does. “Tonight’s gonna be great, we wouldn’t miss it for the world, Lot.”
“Come in, come in,” she says, ushering them away from the door and through the winding hallway into the kitchen, where there’s already a crowd of people practically spilling out of the door. Jeff lingers awkwardly behind, looking for somewhere to hang Jackie’s coat, finally deciding on just leaving it on the banister before sloping in after the girls.
The three of them are chatting animatedly, although Shauna’s a little more withdrawn than Jackie and Lottie, hanging back a little as she peruses the selection of drinks Lottie’s set up on the kitchen island. She always looks so deep in thought, even during the most mundane moments, and sometimes Jeff would just love to pry open her brain and see what the hell she’s always thinking so hard about, although he thinks Jackie would probably take issue to that.
He watches as she deliberates over the sea of bottles in front of her before finally settling on a bottle of Smirnoff, pouring a generous measure into a solo cup and topping it off with some cranberry juice. Instead of drinking it, however, she turns to Jackie and says something in her ear, and then places the cup in her hands before reaching over to grab the bottle of Malibu to make her own drink. Jackie beams back at her as she sips at her drink, cheeks tinged just the slightest bit pink.
It’s things like this, Jeff thinks, that he’ll never quite understand about the two of them, that makes him think it’s probably not even worth trying. The way that they’re both so finely tuned to the other, how their first port of call is always to do something for the other before themselves. They’re so in sync with each other that everything they do is like just another cog in a well-oiled machine, each action so perfectly practiced it’s like they could do it in their sleep, and they don’t even seem to recognise that they’re doing it.
“Hey, Shauna,” he says, deciding to test something out. She meets his eye like it’s a chore to even do so. “Can you pass me a beer?”
She scoffs, and moves away from the island to shift closer to Jackie. “They’re right there, dude, get one yourself.”
Yeah, that pretty much tracks.
Before he can think too much on it, he hears a scuffle behind him, and then he’s being hoisted up into the air by Randy and some of the other guys from the baseball team, and the intricacies of Jackie and Shauna’s friendship slip from his mind.
“Babe, I’m gonna go hang out with the guys, I’ll see you later!” He has to pretty much yell over the music spilling out of Lottie’s expensive-ass sound system, but Jackie just rolls her eyes and nods, before turning back to her conversation.
Things get pretty hazy after that, both metaphorically and literally.
He finds himself in the basement sharing a joint with one of the guys from the team, watching as three of their friends attempt to hold Randy up in proper position for a keg stand. It’s been a while since he last saw Jackie -- he’s pretty sure he last saw her and Shauna in the living room, swaying to a Boyz II Men song while engaging in a spirited debate with -- he wants to say Van? -- about something or other.
He can’t quite remember how he ended up down here, although he thinks a game of beer pong might have been what enticed him to the basement, but he’s not complaining. Periodically, he bellows out words of encouragement to Randy, unable to hold back his laughter every time he somehow manages to slip out of the guys’ grasp, and yet impressed with his best friend’s unwavering dedication to finally mastering the art of the keg stand.
“Dude,” Justin says, nudging at Jeff’s leg. “Your girl’s here.”
He looks up just in time to see Jackie floating over to him, eyes a little glassy and smile wide. “Hey, babe,” he says as she plops herself down onto his lap, plucking the joint from his fingers and taking a long drag.
Of course, wherever Jackie is, Shauna’s not far behind. She squeezes herself in beside them and Justin, and although she kinda still looks like she’d rather be anywhere on earth but with them, Jeff can tell that she’s pretty drunk, too, if the faraway look in her eyes is any indicator.
“Hey, you,” Jackie says, nestling into him and nosing at his neck. She’s always like this when she’s drunk, overly affectionate and cuddly, which is pretty nice. “I missed you.”
He pulls her closer, taking the joint from her and passing it over to Justin before pressing a brief kiss to her lips. “Missed you too, babe. Where’ve you guys been?”
She lets out a little mmph as she readjusts herself, turning to her front so that she’s facing Shauna, head rested against Jeff’s chest. She kicks her feet out onto Shauna’s lap and reaches over to take a strand of her hair, gently twirling it between her fingers; almost absentmindedly, Shauna wraps hers around Jackie’s ankle, playing with the little silver anklet resting against it. “Lot was showing us the new TV her dad bought her. It’s so cool, isn’t it Shauna?”
“Yeah, it’s huge.” Shauna’s voice is faraway, like she’s not even in the same room as them. Jeff watches as her hand trails down to the laces of Jackie’s tennis shoes, finger tracing over them like she doesn’t even realise she’s doing it.
Justin passes the joint back over to Jeff, but before he can even take a hit, Jackie’s snatching it out of his hands again. “Shauna, Shauna, c’mere,” she says, beckoning her closer. Shauna looks up, a little bewildered, but does as she’s told, shifting up onto her knees and wriggling closer to them.
“What?” she asks, sounding maybe a little apprehensive, but she’s smiling softly at Jackie the same way she always does when they’re drunk, like she’s not quite with it enough to hold it back.
“We’ll shotgun it.”
Before Shauna has the chance to argue, Jackie takes a long hit, and then leans forward and cradles Shauna’s face in her hands. Shauna’s lips open just a smidge, as if on autopilot, as if they’ve done this a million times before, and then Jackie’s exhaling right into her mouth and Shauna’s breathing it right back in, and they’re so close, and--
Jesus.
Now, Jeff’s a simple guy.
He tries not to objectify women, mainly because he thinks Jackie would probably crucify him if he did. He respects them, he really does, and he’s even tried to cut down on his porn consumption since they got together because he knows she doesn’t like it, even though that’s kinda difficult sometimes considering the closest she’s ever gotten to him was a quick handjob in his car that one time.
He really, really tries to be as respectful as he can be, because he knows that he wouldn’t like it if someone else was thinking those things about Jackie, or one of his sisters or something.
But like. Come on.
He’s so engrossed in the sight, in watching just how close the two of them get without ever actually touching lips, that he doesn’t really have time to even consider whether or not this is normal, whether or not he’s ever seen any of the other girls do this with each other. It doesn’t even really strike him as anything particularly unusual, or as something he maybe should think a little deeper about -- Jackie and Shauna are so close, so inextricably entwined, that watching the two of them like this doesn’t really feel like they’re crossing any other boundary that they don’t usually.
When they finally pull apart, Shauna’s eyes are wide, pupils almost completely blown, and Jeff thinks he might see her hands shake a little, although he puts that down to the weed. She lets out a shaky laugh and wipes at her mouth, taking the joint from Jackie’s hands and taking an actual drag before passing it back off to Justin, who is gawking up at Jeff like he’s just witnessed the moon landing or something equally as life-changing.
“Dude,” is all he says, and all Jeff can do is nod.
Later, when Jackie and Shauna have both vacated the basement and left him and the guys to go and do whatever it is they do, Jeff finds himself cornered by Justin, Randy, and a handful of the other guys all barraging questions at him like there’s no tomorrow.
“Come on, dude, you’re really telling me they’ve never?”
“Yeah, I mean, come on, bro, we all saw that shotgun.”
Jeff snorts out a laugh. “I mean, damn guys, I don’t know what to tell you, they’re just friends.”
Randy guffaws. “Dude, you’re like, my best friend, and if you ever got that close to me I’d call the cops.”
He grins lazily. “I mean, girls are different with that shit, you know that.”
Justin laughs, tipping his bottle up to get the last dregs of beer from it before reaching over to grab another. “Yeah, lezzy girls, maybe.”
Jeff leans over and thumps him in the shoulder. “Hey, don’t call my girlfriend lezzy.”
“Tell her not to act so lezzy, then.” There’s a moment of silence as they all take drinks from their beer, before Justin speaks again. “I mean, shit, I’m not complaining. It was hot as hell.”
And, well. Jeff can’t exactly argue with that, can he?
The conversation is quickly forgotten, soon shifting into something completely unrelated as one of the other guys on the team regales them with the story of his last hookup, but it does get Jeff thinking.
Is there something weird going on between Jackie and Shauna?
He’s never really considered it before, not seriously anyway. Sure, he’d be blind to miss how close they are, and he’s always known that their friendship is a little different from how they are with all of their other friends, but he’d never really thought about whether there might secretly be something else going on. Something other than friendship, that is.
I mean, he supposes it might explain some things. Like the way that Shauna always glares daggers at him every time he so much as holds Jackie’s hand, or the way that Jackie will cancel plans with him the second Shauna so much as hints that she might want to hang out that night. It would definitely explain why sometimes it feels like ninety percent of his and Jackie’s conversations seem to center completely around Shauna, and why every time he tries to go a little further with her she always seems to have some reason that means she can’t that night.
But like. He’s pretty sure there’s nothing going on there.
Sure, Jeff might not be the most observant guy in the world, and he probably doesn’t pay enough attention to the world around him as he should, but he’s pretty sure if his girlfriend was secretly like, in love with her best friend, he’d know about it.
Jesus. He is way too high to be thinking about all of this right now.
“I’m gonna go take a leak,” he says to nobody in particular, pulling himself up from the couch and walking over to the bathroom across the room. When he tries the handle, it’s already locked, so he reluctantly trudges back up the stairs to find a bathroom that isn’t being used.
Lottie’s house is like a maze, huge and confusing to navigate through even when he’s sober, but he knows for a fact there’s a little ensuite in one of her guest bedrooms upstairs that people usually miss when they’re looking for somewhere to either piss or hook up, and so he continues up the winding staircase, eyes squinted as he hunts for the right bedroom.
It takes him a minute, but after a while of walking up and down the halls, he thinks he’s finally found it, the door to the bedroom cracked just a little and the light on, like someone’s already been in there. He sighs but pushes through anyway, hopeful that they’ve already left, but instead of finding an empty bathroom like he’s looking for, he’s instead met with…
Oh.
Well, that answers that question, then.
The bathroom door is ajar, meaning he can see right into it from his spot by the bed. Jackie is perched on the sink, legs swinging absentmindedly, and although he can’t see the face of the person she’s currently attached at the mouth to, Jeff’s pretty sure it’s a safe bet to assume it’s Shauna.
Jackie’s hands are tangled in her hair, Shauna’s cradling her face, and the whole scene feels so intimate that for a minute, Jeff forgets that it’s his own girlfriend he’s walked in on and feels a little sorry for interrupting it. He stares silently as they continue on, completely unaware that he’s stood there watching them, completely wrapped up in their own little world of each other. He watches as Jackie’s ankles cross around Shauna’s back, tugging her somehow closer; her hands drift down to Shauna’s waist, fists grabbing at the material of her jacket, like she’s trying to meld their bodies together until they’re one person.
Obviously, he’s never actually seen what he and Jackie look like when they’re making out, but he’s pretty sure it’s not like this. Usually, when they’re kissing, he gets the distinct feeling that Jackie’s never quite all the way there -- like she’s always thinking about something else, whether that might be her upcoming trig test, or what she’s gonna wear to school the next day, or something else she hasn’t told him about. There’s always a part of her that’s holding back, like she can’t quite bring herself to fully commit to what they’re doing.
He doesn’t usually think much about it because, well, he’s a guy, and when he’s making out with his girlfriend he’s kinda thinking about other things, but now he’s wondering if this is where Jackie’s mind always seems to be drifting to.
Huh.
Like he said earlier, this kinda does explain a lot of things. What’s most surprising to Jeff is how much he isn’t really surprised by the sight of his girlfriend totally macking on her best friend, and how little it really seems to upset him. It kinda just… makes sense, he guesses.
He thinks he should probably say something, interrupt in some way, but for some fucked up reason that feels like it would be kinda wrong, like it would be cruel to let them know he’s here or something. And like, logically he knows it wouldn’t be, that really, they’re the cruel ones for doing this when he’s right downstairs, but watching them like this -- kissing so gently, holding each other with such reverence, like this is exactly where they’re meant to be -- it doesn’t feel particularly cruel on their part.
If anything, it just feels kinda… sad.
When he hears Jackie start to murmur something against Shauna’s lips, he decides that he’s probably seen enough, and backs out of the room. He’s gonna have to deal with this eventually, obviously, but tonight just… doesn’t have to be that night. He can give them tonight, at the least.
He shakes his head in an attempt to clear it, blinks a few times until his vision gets less blurry, and sets off in the search of another bathroom, deciding that this is definitely not a problem for tonight.