Chapter Text
“Marry me.”
“Shauna -”
“Why not?” she’s bordering on desperate, can feel it as her heart pounds against her rib cage, wonders if it’ll just stop beating all together. “We already said forever… we already promised it. Remember? We’ve known this was forever since we were like seven. That day in your parents backyard.”
It’s hard - to picture a life that’s different from this. This ‘so very secret, but so wildly in love’ version of a life that she’s been floundering through since Jackie kissed her four years ago. She doesn’t know how they’ll get past this, doesn’t see how she’ll be able to go back to who they were to each other when they were kids who had never crossed these lines (lines that were probably blurred for longer than they’ll ever be able to admit). She pictures sharing a bed with Jackie, thinks of not being able to take her into her arms and physically feels the ache stretching through heavy limbs.
Jackie exhales roughly, bites her bottom lip, “Shauna, we’re only twenty one. We’re not even - no one even knows about us and you just wanna suddenly be engaged? It’s not even legal for us to get married. Like, come on, you have to see,” she reaches out from where she’s sitting on the edge of the bed next to Shauna, warm hands wrap gently around Shauna’s cold ones. “You have to know this is crazy.”
Shauna can’t look anywhere but at the carpet below them, she shakes her head a few times and pauses, asks, “How is it crazy?” before she leans forward so their hands are trapped in her lap. “I love you. And I already know I’m in this forever, right? What does it matter if no one knows? Why does that have to matter?”
She feels Jackie’s grip tighten, just slightly, hears the shaky inhale, the telltale sign that Jackie is edging on the verge of panic. “This isn’t .. Shauna, you know I love you -“
“If you did you’d be saying yes.”
She knows that she’s being a brat, feels it in her bones, disregards it quickly as Jackie pulls her hands away and severs the contact between them.
“Shauna, c’mon, that’s not fair,” she makes a face as she answers - it’s a look Shauna’s seen a hundred times before. “Like, how are you even saying that? After all these years?”
“All these years,” Shauna echoes with a scoff as she moves to her feet, paces a few steps toward the window while she attempts to maintain some semblance of control. This was supposed to be an easy yes. This was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives, she’d imagined it forty different ways and it never ended with anything other than a soft and certain ‘yes’ followed by cheap champagne and celebrations. “All these years. Did they even matter to you?”
Jackie’s suddenly behind her, her presence has always been soothing and tonight’s the first night it’s ever felt like too much. “Are you actually asking me that right now?” The way she asks is unsure, voice low, and Shauna’s never been able to not know when Jackie’s feeling vulnerable, when her own words pierce holes through a thinly veiled shield that only ever comes down when they’re alone.
She breathes a few times. In and out. “You don’t - this - you were supposed to say yes,” she says as her shoulders hunch forward. She swallows back the pain crawling up the back of her throat. “I just thought…”
“ Shipman ,” she feels Jackie reach for her with shaky hands, feels her own heart fall out of rhythm, “C’mere.”
She knows Jackie’s eyes in every circumstance. She’s watched every single emotion cross that face for the last fourteen years. She’s even been witness to the ones she didn’t think she’d ever get to see (things like love and lust and desire), but the one thing she doesn’t want to see is the way she knows she’s breaking Jackie’s heart.
“Shauna,” Jackie’s voice gets a little more firm, a little louder.
Shauna breathes, manages, “You should go,” and crosses her arms like it’s some sort of protection from this.
“Go?” Jackie’s sounds shocked, and Shauna finally looks over her shoulder. “Go? Shauna, this can’t be… can we sleep on this? Come on, lay with me, talk to me. Don’t shut me out.”
Jackie’s pulling harder on Shauna’s sleeve - an oversized flannel that she’s stolen on more than one account. Her eyes are full of unshed tears and Shauna almost takes it all back, but instead says, “I’m not shutting you out -”
“You are . This isn’t you. This isn’t us. We - we love each other.”
“ I love you , Jackie. But you were never going to get there were you? We were never gonna really be together. Not the way I want,” Shauna sits on the bed again, follows Jackie like she always has, lays back and lets Jackie rest her head on her chest like this isn’t what’s happening to them - like this isn’t the end of everything she’s known.
“You know my parents. You know this town. I can’t do this here, but just give me a few more years,” she nuzzles her head further into the side of Shauna’s neck and it’s nowhere near as comforting as it would’ve been an hour ago. “A few more years and I can get some money, I can - we can get out of Wiskayok and it’ll be better, just like give me a chance, baby.”
Shauna stills at the nickname, breath catching in her throat. She bites her lip to keep in a ragged outburst that’s on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she closes her eyes and gathers herself, “It’s been four years of this. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s any different from when we were seniors in high school and I’ve been trying. Me. I’ve been trying.”
“I have too -”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve been going on dates, seeing these guys. You had a fucking boyfriend for a year .. while we were together! Like that hasn’t broken my heart every. Single. Time. Jackie.”
“My mom - ” she starts as she sits up, it’s a fight they’ve had probably hundreds of times already.
“I’m so fucking sick of that being your excuse,” Shauna interrupts quickly, heels of her hands moving up to her eyes.
“Excuse?” Jackie repeats. “She made me go on those dates. She invited Eric for dinners and sent me to his family for Christmas. I hated every second that I wasn’t with you, but she’s so fucking worried I’m not gonna be married with two point five kids by the time I’m twenty five. It’s why I know once we get out of here, once I’m away from her I know it’ll be different. We will be different,” she reasons and Shauna wants so badly to give in, to let this go like every other time before it.
She lets her hands fall beside her, stares at the ceiling fan above them, wonders if she knew this was how they’d turn out if she’d have gone along with any of it. Maybe, she should’ve told Jackie she didn’t like girls like that when she kissed her that night in the hotel room. Maybe if she had they wouldn’t be here now - they’d just be two twenty one year old best friends finishing college with some weird unexplained tension between them that never breaks free of its chains. Shauna wonders why they couldn’t have been those friends, why they just had to be these friends that don’t know how to not have this much of each other.
Why couldn’t they have just loved each other less?
There might’ve been lines between them long ago, but Shauna’s never known where they were.
Time passes, marked only by the sounds of kids running through the neighborhood, carefree and loud in the way they only are on summer nights. Jackie’s chest rises and falls slowly, almost lulling them into a false sense of security that this could be any other Friday.
Shauna lets her arm wrap around Jackie’s back for the first time and feels the way she relaxes into the touch. Jackie feels like home, touching her is as commonplace as waking up in the morning. The way they’re intertwined feels a little bit like breathing and a lot like every molecule of air that races through her lungs. She’s known Jackie for longer than she ever didn’t and that thought bounces around in her brain like that game Pong she used to play on her dad’s old Atari.
“I wish I could take it all back,” she hears herself say and she doesn’t know if she meant to say it. It feels sort of out of body, like she heard her own voice but made no conscious move to form the words. (She can’t say she isn’t a little relieved). Jackie looks up, Shauna can just barely see her. “I wanna take it all back.”
There’s a long silence that lingers, Jackie finally says, “You don’t mean that,” but they both know she’s not as confident about it as she’s trying to appear.
But, that’s the story of Jackie Taylor, always giving off an air of confidence that’s left Shauna sitting in the background. She realizes she’s always felt like some last minute extra that was casted to make Jackie’s life look a little fuller from the outside. Like, of course the most popular girl at Wiskayok High had the handsome jock boyfriend. Of course she had a best friend that was never going to eclipse all the light she radiated into the world.
Her lip feels chewed through from the constant biting, and she thinks about how quickly she could leave Wiskayok so that when Jackie wakes tomorrow she’ll already be a fading memory - a break up she thinks back on fondly when she’s married off to whoever Mrs. Taylor chooses. She wipes at a rogue tear that finds its way down her cheek and turns her head, “I do mean that, Jac. Because I don’t know how we’re gonna come back from this. We aren’t just gonna be some shitty breakup. How do you expect to go back to just being best friends after this?” she asks, but she doesn’t really want to know the answer.
Shauna’s the one breaking them both, and she hates herself for it. She wishes she could crawl out of her own skin, just live inside Jackie’s and let that be enough for them both.
“We aren’t - this isn’t a break up, Shauna,” Jackie scoots closer again, her panic finally starting to make waves. “We can just… can’t we just go back to two hours ago? We can go to dinner, that diner up the street that you love even though it’s so stu-” she trips on her words, a sob breaks her sentence and Shauna does finally sit up and grab the hand Jackie has next to her leg.
“This,” Shauna says around a breath as she nods between them, “is a break up. This is … I’m not sure where we go from here but.. I just … I have to figure out who I am without you. I’m not sure I’ve ever known, and if we’re ever gonna try to be friends again then …” she squeezes the hand in hers, trying to cut her love off at the pass. She tries to figure out what’s friendship and what’s not at this point. Would she be holding Jackie’s hand if they were just friends? Would she hug her if she was crying the way she is right now? “Fuck, come here,” she eventually grits out, wraps her arms tightly around Jackie’s neck and it breaks her just a little the way Jackie’s so quick to crawl into her lap.
“We don’t have to,” Jackie barely gets out, but Shauna knows exactly what she says anyway.
“We do have to, okay?” she lets herself take one second, one brief moment to feel Jackie in her arms, to smell the same dumb Herbal Essences shampoo she’s been using since they were kids having sleepovers. Her heart hurts when she thinks of how her mom still buys the brand and keeps it in the hall closet. “I just - I can’t do this anymore, so we have to.”
“Why are you giving me an ultimatum? How is this fair when this isn’t what I want?”
“None of this has been fair,” she answers, trying not to garble the words in her own tears threatening to escape. “You swore that we’d tell your parents, that we’d tell our friends. You said six months into this that you’d stop seeing these douchebag guys your mom kept setting you up with. You told me after a year that once we got settled into our classes and routine. After two years it was I’ll break up with Eric and maybe over the summer. Then after graduation. All of that has come and gone, Jac, and I’m just left here with the parts of you that you’re willing to give me on the weekends. I can’t be your secret anymore. If you can’t do this,” Shauna squeezes Jackie a little tighter, “then it just must be me . I’m not enough to do this for.” Jackie winces, tucks herself deeper into this cocoon that they’ve made - some lame attempt at trying to break the fall that’s going to separate them in ways they may never fully recover from.
Minutes crawl by, it could be an hour for all they know. The front door opens, closes, Shauna hears her mom yell goodbye and listens to the car leave the driveway. This attic used to be their safe space, it was their bubble away from the world and Shauna knows her mom kept it that way for them. She knows her mom has always been more perceptive than she’d been given credit for. But, all she can see now as she glances around are the remnants of a relationship that’s going to haunt her for the rest of her fucking life. This will always be the scene of the crime. It was where they counted nights spent together (their highest streak had been eight nights thanks to senior trip and graduation), days where they discovered each other, and afternoons laughing through homework and Yellowjackets stories.
Shauna debates what she’ll tell her mom tomorrow. How will she explain that Jackie just won’t be around anymore and it’s going to hurt like a drug withdrawal? And by the way she’s wondering if there’s some kind of facility she could be checked into for this kind of dependence?
“Shauna?” Jackie’s voice is hoarse, and the abrupt break in the silence makes Shauna jump but she nods for her to continue. “I just need you to know that literally none of this is about you not being enough,” she lifts her head up, eyes especially clear as she stares into Shauna’s brown ones.
She says nothing further, just extracts herself from a bed that’s been as much hers as it is Shauna’s for the last four years. They’ve spent every single weekend home from college reuniting like some fucking return from the war and the absent part of Shauna’s brain thinks she’s going to need new sheets because these are so tainted by the girl in front of her.
She fucking hates Mrs Taylor because every part of what just came out of Jackie’s mouth speaks to how much her mother’s influence still matters and it’s been the stepping stone to how much Jackie’s been unable to accept who she is. Who she’s always been. Jackie’s entire personality is laced with her inability to come to terms with her love for Shauna and what it means .
It all makes her so unbelievably fucking sad . Jackie deserves to be loved for so many reasons, but Shauna has spent months knowing she can’t be the one that does it. Jackie might deserve love, but Shauna is finally learning that she deserves it too and from someone that is able to give it in the way she so desperately needs it.
The walk to the driveway is quiet and awkward, she doesn’t know what version of them they’re supposed to be. Jackie’s hand swings between their bodies and it’s foreign to not reach for it - it’s starting to set in, exactly how much of a forced disconnection this is going to be. It feels like pulling Christmas lights from the garage after a year away, the idea of untangling them has always made her wonder if the effort of putting them up is even worth it.
Was any of this even worth it?
Jackie clears her throat, stops at the edge of the driveway, glancing up at Shauna with eyes that hold some kind of devastation even Shauna’s not privy to. “I, uh…” she stops and wipes at a falling tear, “I don’t know how to do this with you.”
“I don’t think there’s a rule book on break ups,” Shauna says quietly, stepping closer because this suddenly feels more real than it did up in her room. “I lo-”
“Don’t. Please don’t, okay? You know I do too, Shauna.”
“Yeah,” is all she can say back as she lets her eyes glance down the road at streetlights and fireflies lighting up her neighbors yards. They spent so many summers running down this pavement, catching those fireflies, dropping their bikes to pick honeysuckles from the chain link fences a few houses over. There were so many nights eating ice cream on her front step after Shauna’s mom scraped together some change from the bottom of her purse. There were so many movie nights on the couch in the living room, popcorn and a rental from Blockbuster, and later so many movies gone unwatched as they huddled together in her twin bed that they hardly still fit into.
“Can I have this?” Jackie asks through a few sniffles, fingers dragging along the cuff of her flannel and Shauna takes it off to hand over. It was her favorite. Jackie takes it gratefully, her knees look a little wobbly as she wraps it around herself. “I guess, um -”
They’re trying to prolong the inevitable, and just like every time before Shauna knows it’s going to be her that makes the final cut. “Bye, Jackie,” she says it slowly, rests her hands on Jackie’s waist and places a kiss on her forehead where her bangs are already swept away. Jackie turns quickly when it’s done, looks too small in a flannel that was already a little big on Shauna, and with her head hanging she heads for a bike she still rides when they’re home. She doesn’t say another word, just rides off into the distance and for the first time in her life Shauna wonders if she’ll ever see her again.
_____________________________
The driveway is where her mom finds her when she returns later. Shauna has her knees drawn up into her chest, head buried against them, and she wonders if there are even any more tears to cry.
There are, somehow, more tears to be cried and they make themselves known as soon as her mom jumps out of the car and opens her mouth. “Shauna? Hon, what’s wrong?”
“Jackie, she -” she can’t really form words that make any sense, and sentences feel physically impossible as a sob escapes. Her mom’s face twists into something like she knows though, so maybe she was right that she really did know more than she’d ever let on.
“It’s okay, babe, come on, let’s go in,” she reaches out and helps Shauna stand on shaky legs. It’s like she didn’t realize how much she needed her mom until this moment. It won’t be the first time, or the last, that she thinks of how grateful she is for a mom like this that sits her on the couch and fetches a pint of ice cream before putting a blanket over both of them. She hands Shauna a spoon and leaves the living room dark around them except for the glow of the tv playing infomercials somewhere in the background. It feels easier somehow, to not have the light amplifying all of her pain into the open space of their living room.
They sit quietly as Shauna alternates between crying into her ice cream pint and shoveling small spoonfuls into her mouth. Finally, she blows out a breath, places the ice cream on the coffee table and stares at the wall, says, “Aren’t you gonna like - ask what happened?”
Angie sighs, lays a hand on Shauna’s leg. “If you wanna tell me, I’m here, Shauna. Whenever you’re ready. And if you don’t wanna talk tonight then we can sit here and watch this really great advertisement for,” she glances over, squints a little at the screen, “the smooth 70s compilation? I’m not gonna act like I don’t love Fleetwood Mac, but if I have to hear ‘Summer Breeze’ one more time in my life I might just -”
“Okay, okay,” Shauna stops her with a teary laugh, places her hand over her mom’s and lets her head fall back against the couch. “I don’t know where to start,” she finally says after a long pause.
“How bout at the beginning, kid?” her mom turns so she’s facing Shauna on the couch with a leg tucked beneath her. She leans her head against the back of the couch until they’re in each other’s line of vision, and Shauna’s maybe never loved her mom more than in this moment when she turns her own head, looks and sees nothing but love and acceptance shining back.
“Jackie and I - we’ve -” she stumbles a few times, realizing this will be the first time she’s ever actually told anyone out loud what they were to each other. “We’ve sort of been like .. together,” she mumbles, feels a little lightheaded, and closes her eyes to avoid the judgment Jackie was always so certain would follow those words.
“And? The sky is blue, the grass is green. The world is round,” Shauna blinks her eyes open quickly, stares at her mom listing off facts that she feels like she’s always known. “Is this what has you all worked up? Did you think I wouldn’t be okay with this? Because, and I hate to break this to you, babe, but this isn’t really a surprise?”
“Wait. No. Wait - what?”
“You two have been inseparable since you were little,” Angie tells her, “I’ve thought about seeing if I could deduct her from my taxes, but we both know how the Taylors are.”
Shauna snorts at her mom’s weird sense of humor, feels a weight lift off her chest for the first time all night. “Just because we were inseparable -”
“Something changed your senior year. For a while I didn’t know what it was,” her mom pauses, scoots a little bit closer and taps Shauna’s arm to get her to focus. “You cried like you lost a family member when we left Rutgers because she had orientation. And watching you two that first weekend she was home, which by the way was only like three days later, was like watching two people that didn’t know how to be anything but right next to each other.”
It’s weird, she thinks, to hear about her relationship and see it through someone else’s eyes. They’d been so careful for all these years, but it was so plainly visible to her own mother.
“I don’t think anyone else saw it, Shauna,” her mom says, like she’s living somewhere in the recesses of Shauna’s own mind. “But you’re my kid.” Shauna nods, bites at her lip and looks away nervously. “I also maybe saw Jackie kiss you in the hallway upstairs one night when you two got back from a party. And I mean, did you actually think you two were that slick? You used to spring apart on this couch like you were both struck by lightning when I’d come in to see where you guys wanted takeout from on Friday nights.”
Shauna laughs, she can’t help it. She giggles and wipes at tired, wet eyes as her mom smiles back, because they really did think they weren’t obvious; and maybe they weren’t to the world, but the majority of their relationship took place inside this very house and so can they really blame her mom for being observant about something going on under her own roof? “I think we really did think you didn’t know.”
“I could tell,” Angie bites back, poking at Shauna’s side a few times to squeak out another smile. “But,” she stops for a beat and her face is lit blue from the light of the tv still glowing. Shauna turns finally so they’re facing each other again, waits. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say you’re not just sitting in our driveway crying because you finally wanted to tell me four years after the fact.”
She shakes her head, wishes she could play the whole night on some weird projector from her brain so she wouldn’t have to explain it out loud because it’s going to be like another permanent gash on her already wounded heart.
“Did something happen with her parents?” it’s that moment that convinces Shauna that her own mother truly is something of a mind reader. She nods and cringes because this really does feel like it’s always Mrs. Taylor’s fault somehow. “Did they.. find out?” her mom tries again, sitting up straighter and asking more slowly like it’ll be less hurtful if she gives Shauna time to adjust.
“No.”
Her mom exhales heavily, lets her body fall back against the couch. “If you told me yes, I think I’d be headed over there right now to get our girl,” the ‘our girl’ comments hits Shauna like a ton of bricks. She’s not the only one losing Jackie, and she isn’t going to be the only thing that Jackie loses. “I’m sure you know this, but Marge wouldn’t exactly be the kind of mother that’s sitting on the couch eating ice cream with her kid when she tells her that she’s gay -”
“Oh, my god.”
“What?”
“Did I just - was this like - I wasn’t .. um, did I just like.. come out to you?”
Her mom bites back a smirk, but Shauna can see it peeking through anyway. “ Shauna .”
Shauna glances away, wishes she was up in her room and away from this conversation that she didn’t ever even plan on having with anyone. Her goal was to just pack this away, write ten pages worth of sadness into her journal with Fiona Apple in her headphones, cry herself to sleep, and go about her business like none of this ever happened.
“Hon, did you really think you were going to tell me you’ve been sleeping with Jackie Taylor for the last four years,” Shauna feels her cheeks reddening by the second, “in my attic , by the way, and then think I was supposed to not assume you were .. maybe not into guys?”
“I’m not not into guys.”
“Okay, that’s fine too,” Angie concedes, hands up in surrender. “I was a teenager in the seventies, babe, whatever you’re into I can guarantee it’s not as crazy as some of the things I walked into at some of the house parties back then.”
Angie Shipman’s always been a little bit of a free spirit, nothing too crazy, it’s not like Shauna was allowed to freely smoke weed and come home drunk (she’s done both and been grounded appropriately), but she’s the kind of free that represents anarchy and dangerous ideas to a family like Jackie’s. And now that she’s sharing about her own teen years Shauna finds herself wondering if her mom was a little bit of a hippie - she pictures the woman in front of her in bell bottom jeans with a joint in her hands and fends off another case of the giggles.
“I don’t need to know about your wild teen years.”
“Don’t you think it’s only fair? Since your wild teen years are occurring right up the stairs -“
“Okay! Okay. When did this become ‘make fun of Shauna’ night? You’re supposed to be comforting me, don’t you think?” she frowns on purpose, bites her cheek to keep from smiling.
“What is happening with your face right now?”
“I’m sad. See?” she frowns deeper, furrows her brow until her mom just shakes her head, clearly amused.
“All I was trying to say,” Angie starts, clearing her throat and sitting up a little straighter as she becomes more serious, “was that I didn’t think there needed to be some big ‘coming out’ thing here. If you’re gay, I love you. If you’re straight, I love you. I love you, kid. Whatever you are. Whoever you are.”
Shauna looks away, eyes welling up again. It means more than she can say so she settles for, “Thanks, mom,” and hopes it holds as much weight as she means.
They sit there in the darkness, infomercials changing as the minutes pass. This is more than she could’ve hoped for, even if this wasn’t exactly where she thought this conversation might go. Shauna’s not gonna act like it doesn’t make her want to call Jackie - to rub in her face that she finally did tell someone and their worst case scenario didn’t come to be. Not by a long shot.
And she wonders if they could just live in this house, the three of them, and they could be their own family, they don’t need the Taylors and their antiquated views on what counts as love.
Her thoughts are interrupted by hands on her jaw turning her head gently. “I wish you felt okay to come to me about this before,” her mom tells her quietly, sincerity bleeding from her eyes in a way that makes Shauna’s chest break open. “I’m sorry if I made you feel like you couldn’t.”
“It wasn’t that.”
“I’m not Mrs. Taylor -”
“I know that.”
“Good,” she lands on with a squeeze to Shauna’s hand that’s wrapped up in a fist in her lap, knuckles white from squeezing a little too hard. “I really do love you, you know?” she nods a few times, lets a few tears leak onto jeans that have already seen their share tonight. “I love Jackie too, and I just think .. I think she’s lost, but I have never for one second thought she didn’t love you with every bit of her that knows how to. Her family isn’t exactly the best example of what love is. Or what love should be.”
“Yeah…”
“I’m not excusing her for whatever happened between you two, which you can tell me about whenever you feel ready since tonight’s already been a lot for you. But I do want you to remember,” she stands, looking down at Shauna and she feels five years old again. “The most she does know about love is from the time she’s spent here with us. I know you’ve spent time at her house, and I know her family has invited you to dinner and events, but you don’t - you’re still a kid -”
“I’m twenty one -”
“You’re a kid , Shauna. You haven’t seen her family the way I have over the years. I know that family - I came from that family.”
“Grandma wasn’t …” Shauna stops and thinks, digs through her memory of her grandparents, but her grandfather was dead by the time she was born and her grandmother passed when she was eight years old. She was too young to really take it in the way she’s trying to now. Her mom’s eyes are darker than she can remember seeing them, guarded. “You never told me that.”
Angie takes a few steps back, leans against the half wall that leads into their kitchen and crosses her arms. “And I probably never would have,” she tells Shauna with a shrug. “It’s not something you needed to know,” she takes a deep breath and loses herself in a memory, “Your grandparents had money, they threw it at me and expected a lot from me, but they also weren’t around much. They hated when I started dating your father, told me I couldn’t continue to live there if I wanted to keep seeing him and so I left. And then suddenly I was nineteen and pregnant. And then your dad was in and out of the picture. And I could’ve gone back - we could’ve gone back. But,” she licks her lips a few times and Shauna sees a kid that’s still hurting buried deep inside. “My house growing up wasn’t happy , Shauna. And I swore, the minute I saw your little face, all 6 pounds of you, that I would never make you feel that way. That whatever house we had, even if we struggled, and boy did we struggle, but it would be somewhere you felt loved and happy. I wanted our house to be safe.”
“Mom,” Shauna aches to reach for her mom but she holds up a hand and smiles sadly, finally looking at her daughter.
“Then you went and met Jackie Taylor. That little girl with the big eyes and an even bigger heart. I remember meeting her mother at the parent teacher meeting when you started first grade. And I just knew ,” she runs a ragged hand through her wavy, dark hair, pushing it back out of her face. “And my heart has been breaking for her ever since.”
There’s a part of Shauna, hidden deep inside, that snarls at the fact that her mom was strong enough to leave her own family for her father, and Jackie can’t find it in her to turn away from hers for Shauna who’s been there her entire life. But the overwhelming majority of Shauna just hurts for the two women in her life that have lived through something she’ll never know.
Angie moves to stand behind the couch, leans over to place a kiss against Shauna’s temple, and rests her forearms against the frame. “You are my daughter, Shauna. I am on your side, always will be. And you deserve all the good things in the world. But, I need you to understand that Jackie didn’t make whatever decision she made today lightly. And, I also need you to understand that I’m going to be there for her too if she ever needs me.”
Shauna looks over, a little surprised at the admission, but also a little more at ease knowing Jackie still has someone. She can’t figure out how to just not care, as much as she wishes she could. Angie runs a hand through Shauna’s long ponytail, walks upstairs and leaves Shauna to sit with that.
________________________
A week passes. And then another. Time drags and Shauna doesn’t know what to do if Jackie isn’t taking up all of her free time. She tries reading, but the books aren’t as interesting. She goes for runs in the mornings but the entire fucking town of Wiskayok is full of old memories and streets that she could potentially run into Jackie on. And she’d rather die than have some awkward run in where they wave stilted hellos like they don’t know everything there is to know about each other.
There’s movie rentals that take up a few hours, kicking a soccer ball around in the yard takes up about twenty minutes of a random Wednesday afternoon - if she thought she didn’t really like soccer before it’s even less fun to do alone. The tears come in waves, and she puts on a happy face when her mom has nights off from the diner. They both know she’s not exactly doing okay, but she seems to be letting Shauna come to her in her own time.
(Jackie would’ve already pried it out of her.)
She doesn’t call Tai or Lottie, even though she does come close a few times before letting the phone fall back on the receiver. No one knew they were together, so no one can know they’ve fallen apart. There’s no one that’s going to understand this baseline level of absolute anguish that’s gnawing at the gaping hole Jackie’s left behind.
No one but the woman living in this house with her.
She hasn’t needed her mom to really be a mother in so long, she’s long past the age of needing real guidance, but it feels really full circle somehow that the only person in this world that knows and can comfort her is the woman who brought her into the world to begin with.
It’s just past ten at night when she creeps down the steps and pads down the hall towards her mom’s room hoping for some company. It’s Thursday, Nick at Nite finally started their Block Party Summer, and it’s Brady Bunch night - Jackie always hated the Brady Bunch, complained about how much she couldn’t stand Marcia.
Yes, the irony has been acknowledged.
But, instead of finding her mom with a magazine between unmanicured hands, she hears her talking softly, almost like she doesn’t want to be heard.
“Time, babe. It’s just going to take time, but I promise this’ll get easier.”
Babe. Shauna would know if her mom had some weird secret boyfriend. And there’s not. So there’s only one other person she could be on the phone with.
“Jackie, take a few deep breaths for me. There we go. Couple more…” There’s a pause, Shauna wonders if they’ve hung up and then she hears, “I know this is hard. You girls have been attached at the hip since you were seven. It was never going to be easy to try to figure out how to separate. I think I just always hoped you’d never have to learn how to.”
Yeah, Shauna hoped that too. In fact, she tried to make it so they’d truly never have to separate for the rest of their lives -
And was turned down.
“No, she hasn’t told me everything. I’m just .. going to let her -“ Pause. A laugh. “I don’t think me making demands will make her tell me. That might be a thing with you two, but it doesn’t work from a mother to kid standpoint, Jac. Word of advice for the future - pulling that crap as a parent usually makes them pull away, not come closer.”
She’s always been vaguely aware that her mother and Jackie have a relationship completely independent of her. It never phased her to come home to Jackie sitting on the couch with her mom, a bowl of popcorn between them, conversation just hitting its stride. She used to love that if she slept in on Sunday mornings Jackie never felt weird going downstairs to share eggs and toast without having to feel like a guest.
It always made her life so much easier for her best friend to be close with her mom, but she’s never really gotten to witness it from an outsider’s perspective. All those mornings sharing coffee were without her. And all those afternoons waiting for Shauna to come home from meetings for the school newspaper were time Jackie and Ang had to themselves.
And now Shauna finally understands why they’ve always gotten along so well, but still this ugly portion of her crawls up her throat that just wants Jackie to let her have one thing for herself. Why can’t she just have her own mother to herself? Everything in her fucking life seems to belong to Jackie and -
“Has everything been okay at home?” it stops her train of thought, forces her brain to slow down and focus, forces the snake to slither back down into the dark recesses of a twisted mind that she sometimes can’t control. “Please promise me if it’s ever not - if you ever need somewhere to go that you will call me.”
What Shauna wouldn’t give to be able to hear the other half of this conversation. She might still be mad at the girl on the other end of that phone call, but she’d never want Jackie to be struggling at home when she knows first hand how shitty Margaret Taylor can be.
It pains her when she remembers that woman is why she’s sitting here sharing her mom with a girl that’s no longer in her life.
“You will always have me, kiddo. If it means we lay tape through the midpoint of this house and you both get half .. you just say the word.”
Shauna already knows Jackie’s laughing. Her heart lurches at the thought, and she aches to see Jackie’s nose all scrunched up, head thrown back - signs she’s really, truly laughing at something without caring what anyone around them might think. It was always Shauna’s biggest accomplishment to get her to laugh like that.
And okay, yeah, her curiosity finally wins out, and she remembers she actually can hear the other part of this.
She tiptoes down to the kitchen, careful not to alert her mom to her movement, and picks up the phone hanging on the wall. In one swift motion, Shauna throws her right hand over the mouthpiece at the bottom and gingerly moves it up toward her left ear, just close enough to really hear.
“Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?” Jackie’s voice is raspier than usual, like she’s been crying for days rather than just the length of this call.
(Just like she has.)
Angie pauses and Shauna freezes in the kitchen, like if she doesn’t move she won’t be heard. It’s a ridiculous notion and she exhales when she finally hears an answer across the line. “I think.. I’d be really, truly surprised if you guys didn’t find your way back to each other. Eventually.”
Jackie sighs a little, Shauna can just picture the tangled cord across her lap, stretched out from all the days and nights they’ve spent on the phone over the years. “You don’t even really know what happened. Or what’s been happening -“
“She did tell me a little bit,” Angie tells her, “after you left that night.”
It sounds like a panicked inhale. “Oh?” Jackie finally gets out, voice a little tight around the edges. Shauna’s heart is pounding so fast she swears they’ll be able to hear it.
“For what it’s worth, if I had my choice on who ended up with my daughter - Jackie, babe,” Shauna hears a whimper in response, “I would want someone that loves her, that treats her like she put the moon and stars in the sky. I would want someone that makes her happy, that’s all most of us parents want for our kids.”
There’s silence that follows that has Shauna glancing around the dimly lit kitchen, blinking a few times before roughly running a hand over her face. She’s seconds away from hanging up, assuming they’re done, when she hears Jackie again. “That’s all I want for her too,” she says quietly, almost painfully.
She’s four seconds away from busting into this little chat between her mother and ex girlfriend - four seconds away from screaming ‘ you made me happy!’ and ‘you were who I was supposed to end up with - why wasn’t I enough?’
Angie clears her throat a few times, says, “Jac, if you could talk to her right now, what would you say?” and Shauna knows she’s fucked.
Her mom always fucking knows.
Of course she does.
“That I love her,” Jackie says, immediately, words pouring out and Shauna almost feels bad because this is supposed to be a private moment. “And that I’m just so fucking sorry I couldn’t be what she needed because I don’t think I’m ever gonna love anyone - ” she stops like she’s reconsidering how much to reveal, even though it’s crystal clear that Shauna’s mom is at least a little in the know about something more than friendship existing between them. “I really really do love her, you know? And I just feel like shit that I let my mom - but she doesn’t.. Shauna doesn’t get it. I just needed more time before I could tell her to fuck off. It sounds like it should be so easy -”
“It’s not,” her mom replies, voice a little more firm, like she’s maybe talking to Shauna over the line. “It’s never easy to cut people out like that. Not when they’ve raised you, provided for you.”
“They’re such assholes. You cut yours off and your life is so much better and I keep trying to remind myself of you and how happy you and Shauna are but I just can’t make the words come out when I see my mom’s face sitting across from me at the dinner table.”
“Listen to me. For as much as I love my life here in Wiskayok, as much as I love Shauna, it was anything but easy. I had three jobs for a while when you guys were little. Jobs that meant I wasn’t at your soccer games, I wasn’t at the PTA meetings, and I couldn’t chaperone the field trips. If I’d gone back to my parents house - I would’ve had the time - it’s one of my biggest regrets. Every choice comes with sacrifices, it’s just a matter of which ones you’re willing to make. But cutting off family? It’s not as cut and dry as people like Shauna want it to be, even when they’re ‘assholes’ and don’t treat us like family is supposed to. Maybe even especially then,” Angie stops for a beat, Shauna feels a little bit like the asshole here, and is suddenly thankful she’s on the line, maybe she needed to hear this as much as Jackie does.
“It leaves us thinking maybe there’s something we can change, something we can do different in the future to make them love us the way other families do - love from your family is supposed to be unconditional,” Angie pauses again, Shauna hears a shaky breath over the line, unsure whose mouth it leaves, “But even when it’s not - it’s really fucking hard to leave behind the people we came from. It’s really hard to accept that maybe the love from our own families actually does come with terms and conditions. And for people like you and me, kid, it’s hard to accept that maybe our family sees us as a disappointment.”
“I think,” Jackie says, voice wobbly but tone cold, “that I’m not who my mom would’ve chosen as a daughter.”
“It doesn’t mean you’re not worth choosing,” Shauna’s mom shoots back, firm and solid. “Maybe .. she’s not who you would’ve chosen as a mother.”
Jackie lets out a watery laugh, “Duh.”
Shauna hangs up then, unable to listen any further to a pain she’ll never understand.
________________________________
“Still awake?” her mom’s voice wades through the stale air of Shauna’s attic bedroom. Her head pokes around the doorway, questioning smile on her face. Shauna nods, sits up on her bed while her mom pulls over a desk chair. “Did you hear what you wanted tonight?”
“I didn’t -” Angie shoots her a look of ‘cut the bullshit’ and she stops trying to make a losing argument. Instead, she goes for the truth, “I wasn’t trying to like, hear some grand confession. I really - I just wanted to hear her voice.”
Her mom softens at the admission, shoulders sagging. “Honesty hour tonight?”
“I guess there’s no point in lying to you. You already know everything anyway.”
“Magical powers bestowed upon you the minute you birth a kid. You’ll see one day,” Shauna’s head shoots up, eyes widening, and her mom backtracks. “Or maybe you won’t. Again. Whatever makes you happy. But, just so we’re clear,” she quirks an eyebrow up at Shauna for good measure, “what you did tonight, regardless of your reasoning, wasn’t okay.”
“Yeah, I know.”
It’s easier now, to wrap her head around why Jackie couldn’t just say yes, why they couldn’t just be who Shauna wanted them to be. But, it’s been hard too, to watch Tai and Van live their lives so fully in New York like she always thought they would when they finished college. Why couldn’t she just be content to play ‘roommate’ with Jackie and live their lives like Jackie was so content to do?
“Whatcha thinking?” Angie asks, crossing one leg over the other, hands in her lap.
Honesty hour. “That I wish I could’ve just been okay with like, pretending we were just friends for the rest of my life so I could’ve just kept her.”
“Shauna,” her mom stands and moves so she’s mirroring Shauna’s position on the bed, back against the wall, “Just because I can understand why Jackie couldn’t doesn’t mean I want you to hide yourself in the shadows for her.”
Shauna looks over, suddenly angry again, “Why not? It’s what I’ve spent the last fourteen years doing anyway. It’s the only way our friendship, relationship, whatever the fuck it is, manages to function.”
Her mom squints a little like she’s figuring something out, she leans in and her face does something that has Shauna on the defensive already. “Have you been drinking?”
“I had a few,” she bites back, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m twenty one. You can’t exactly tell me no.”
“No. I can’t, you’re right,” she sighs, says, “You’re hurting. But, this is how your father dealt with his pain and I’m not gonna watch someone else I love go down this road. I know I’m supposed to be the ‘cool’ mom, the one you can come to, but damn it, Shauna, not with this. I’ve been trying to look past it, let you do this the way you need to, but you’re hurting,” she reaches out for Shauna’s hand and Shauna can’t bear to look her in the eye. “I need you to talk to me if you’re not okay.”
Shauna considers telling her to fuck off, considers storming out of the attic, considers shutting down entirely, numbing out everything with more vodka until she can’t feel any of what’s being stirred up at her mom’s request.
Instead, all she says is, “I’m not okay,” and breaks into a million pieces, shattering right before Angie Shipman’s eyes. She disintegrates into pieces that are never to be put back together in the right order. It’s an ugly cry, one that makes her shoulders heave and tremble, and she feels little relief when she’s tugged into her mom’s chest, arms tightening their hold as her sobs grow louder. She cries until she feels like a little kid that can’t catch her breath.
“Babe, Shauna, hey, just big deep breaths,” her mom echoes an earlier conversation with Jackie and it’s not the first time Shauna almost gets in a car to go to Jackie’s house. She feels hands on her shoulders until she’s held back at arms length, finds her mom with red rimmed eyes like her own pain is physically bleeding out of her into the air around them. “You are gonna get through this. But, like I told Jackie,” Shauna stills at the name, notices Angie wince a little at the reaction before continuing, “It’s gonna take time. And it’s really gonna fucking hurt. It’s called heartache for a reason.”
It’s called heartache for a reason.
Yeah, that doesn’t really help, but she wipes a wet hand under her nose anyway and tries really fucking hard to collect all the bits of her scattered across the room. None of these days really feel worth it without Jackie, nothing really seems to matter. The only person she wants to talk to is the same exact person that she can’t go to right now. She runs a hand through her hair falling out of her messy ponytail, “Is.. Jackie.. Is she -”
Angie just shakes her head, eyes downcast, “I don’t think she’s doing any better than you.”
That doesn’t make Shauna feel better. At least she’s sitting here on a Thursday night with her mom to cry to, but who does Jackie have? Who’s going to help get the mascara from under her eyes when she’s done crying? Who’s going to get her an extra glass of water because she always says she feels dehydrated from the water loss?
Honesty hour. “I proposed.”
There it is. Out in the open. Her cheeks heat up at her mom’s raised eyebrows and stunned look that she tries really hard to school before opening her mouth. “You .. you proposed. Like, as in - marriage?”
“As in marriage,” she confirms.
“You proposed,” she repeats, fingers tapping an absent beat on a wrinkled comforter below them. “So,” she takes a deep breath, purses her lips, and Shauna’s maybe more nervous now than the night of the proposal. “You asked your girlfriend to marry you.. Before anyone even actually knows you’re together?”
Her heart’s still tripping over the word girlfriend. “I just thought -”
“Did you .. actually think?” Shauna frowns at the question. “Have you guys ever even really talked about this or was this out of left field for her? Look,” Shauna looks away instead, stubborn nature making it so her mom ends up talking to the side of her head. “I hate to be the one to say this, and I hope to god that in our lifetime this changes - but right now, marriage isn’t even something that’s legal -”
She’s so fucking sick of hearing it. Jackie already played that card. It wasn’t even the point really, and now to have her own mother throw it in her face like she hadn’t thought of that. Like she’s the stupid one that didn’t think about the fact that sure, the law wouldn’t recognize them, but what’s a piece of paper anyway. That stupid notarized piece of paper didn’t stop her dad from leaving.
“Jackie already reminded me of that, don’t worry,” she says, bitter, “It wasn’t about it being legal .”
Angie sighs in response, making it clear that this conversation is probably frustrating to her. It’s all been frustrating for Shauna. All of it. “Okay, I’ve clearly hit a sore spot. It’s not that it has to be legal for it to count. I only said that to point out that if it’s something that’s symbolic for you guys why did it have to be right this second? You’re both still so young.. Why the rush?”
“I mean you were like eighteen when you moved out, pregnant with me at nineteen, I’m twenty one -” she stops, sees her mom still attempting to make sense of literally anything that’s coming out of her mouth. “We already said forever , mom. We said it when we were seven-years-old. Why is it so fucking crazy to both of you that I just wanted to do something that made things, more like, permanent.”
“It’s not crazy,” her mom reassures, adjusting so she has her legs crossed at the ankles. “It’s not crazy. It just must’ve been a lot for someone that’s still struggling to figure out if she can walk away from the only family she has. I just think it might’ve gone over better if you guys had a few years of real life under your belts -”
“Real life,” Shauna scoffs. “I’ve spent the last four years watching Jackie with other guys. We only even get to pretend we’re really together on the weekends when we’re both home and we’re here tucked away in this stupid fucking room. It feels like she’s not even really mine and it’s like - she’s been telling me since she first kissed me that it would be real someday. That we’d get to live in the city, together . And then the years just piled up and we’re still hiding away like this is wrong somehow. And how? How can it really be wrong when I love her as much as I do, mom? We’re supposed to be together,” Shauna says it with conviction, it’s the thing she’s most sure of in this world.
“She knows that, Shauna.”
“It’s just - it hasn’t been enough. And I just.. I pushed. I pushed to try to get her to do what she’s been promising me for all these years because I thought that finally .. I thought if I made her make a choice that she’d -” she cuts herself off because she’s having trouble digging through the pain that’s pervaded her life for so long.
“Choose you?” Angie finishes. Shauna nods, head hanging low. “You can’t - babe, giving someone an ultimatum - pushing her before she was ready -”
“She was never going to be ready.”
“Did she tell you that?” She takes that in, is able to turn it over in her mind in a way that she couldn’t at the height of her emotions with Jackie sitting on her bed, with Jackie crawling into her lap begging for more time. Begging for more.
“She asked for a few more years,” she says, “She asked for time to get settled, make more money.”
“So, what if you’d stayed together, what if you’d waited…” her mom says it so logically.
She says it like it’s the most obvious conclusion in the world and all Shauna can think to ask is, “If I already know she’s it for me, why would I wait?” in a way that has her mom reaching out to place a hand on her cheek, she tilts her head a little as they look at each other.
“Kid, you’ve always had such big feelings,” Angie tells her quietly, “You get that from me and your dad. I guess we kind of doomed ya from the start, huh?” Shauna nods, closes her eyes, tries to imagine a world where Jackie said yes. Angie stands, nods for Shauna to lay down as she pulls the blankets up over her like she’s five, still scared of the monsters under her bed. It’s different monsters now, but it’s still her mom standing over her trying to chase them away. “You’re not wrong. You just want all the big things from a girl that can barely handle the little ones in the life she was given. Give it time, Shauna. Give her time.”
It’s all the advice her mom seems to have, and it’s the only thing Shauna doesn’t have any more of when it comes to Jackie Taylor.