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Jackie’s arms are full of mismatched clothes she’s able to scrounge together from her dressers quickly as her mother screams at her from the kitchen, a screechy mourning sound that reminds her of a wolf howling at the harvest moon and the gaping ache left between them- something she has never particular been able to cure on her own. It echoes along the walls, reverberating through the hallway as they scramble around Jackie’s room desperately, tripping over their own feet as they toss her things chaotically into the open duffels laid out on the floor with a frazzled intensity that feels inhuman.
“Jacqueline!” Her mother sobs out between pinched wails, the words punctuated by a low murmur that she knows belongs to her father, the unemotional man no doubt holding onto her frail mother in his uncomforting arms with a rigid stoicness, “What have you done?”
Jackie’s hands falter briefly, the horrified cry piercing through her chest at the sheer grief hanging off the accusation, her fingers threatening to shake with raw remorse as they dig themselves further into her ribs. What has she done? Was any of this worth the pain of ripping their family apart at the unfurling seams, a clear ending to who they all choose to be from this moment on? Her brain hesitates, just long enough that her heart begins to pound against her chest and just deep enough for her uncertain mind to begin falling into hopeless despair, until chipped black nail-polished hands reach over and tangle themselves within hers, holding her steady amidst the waves of emotion threatening to drag her under.
“Jax,” Natalie says firmly, her eyes and hands and words unbreakable amongst the merciless storm swirling overwhelmingly around them, the mere presence of the blonde more anchoring to Jackie than anything has ever felt in her mother’s plastic life when her raspy voice curls back around her tenderly, “Keep packing. We gotta go.”
Jackie nods dumbly, shoving her clothes into the bags messily and grabbing at anything in the room that might provide some familiar comfort she knows will be scarce in the coming days: her Yellowjackets letterman that she knows Nat likes to steal when she goes outside to smoke her cigs, the scribbled journal that she buried underneath her pillow filled with dreams of cerulean eyes and cigarette smoke lingering around the nape of her neck, the stuffed brown carnival bear that Nat had won her for her birthday last month before this sudden reckoning destroyed absolutely everything she once cared about. She shoves the memories in, as much as she can, zipping them up and slinging one bag over her shoulder as Nat carries the other, their footsteps thundering down the stairs and pounding throughout the house as they rush towards the front door- the noise so deafeningly overwhelming around her that it hammers incessantly against her skull.
“Jacqueline!” Her mother howls, the tone shifting from hysterical to hateful as her teeth sharpen into multilayer fangs, “Don’t you dare come back here ever again if you’re still a fucking dyke.”
Jackie’s eyes water instantly, the slur stabbing into her with the same ferocity as a mutilating slaughter from a butcher’s unforgiving knife; her heart tearing itself into red, fleshy ribbons as Nat grabs roughly onto her hand and bursts through the front door, yanking her along behind her as they run to the parked truck sitting idly on the quiet neighborhood street.
Nat slings her duffel bag into the bed of the truck, taking Jackie’s bag from her shoulder and repeating the action frantically as Jackie scrambles into the front, the echoes of her mother’s horrendous words pounding against her back like a battalion of bullets that would hurt less than this. Don’t you dare come back if you’re still a fucking dyke. Nat flings herself manically into the driver’s seat, igniting the engine and revving the gas all the way until the tires screech over the pavement, peeling off with a grungy cloud of smoke as the screams of her mother get further and further away, the inescapable curse still curling into the crooked cracks of her scattered mind. The words linger, the sheer atrocity of her mother’s disgust and her father’s silence carving into her head like funeral bells that slam against the edges of her skull.
Don’t come back. Don’t come back.
“Where’re we gonna go?” Jackie mumbles half-dazedly, the pain pounding harder with each second that passes by them in slow, honeyed oozingness, her eyes closing in mild defeat as the weight of the world slowly creeps in around her.
Where else is there left to go?
“I know a place,” Natalie whispers back gently, reaching her hand over to Jackie's and tangling them together, squeezing her fingers in a meaningful attempt at comfort that Jackie knows is all the blonde can offer her at the moment. She looks over: at the beached hair that falls in choppy waves across Nat’s tense, rigid shoulders, her eye makeup smudged in the dark as those unmistakable steel-blue orbs look unwaveringly back across the truck at her, filled with a devotion that should be reserved for the holiness of churches and sanctums- not the aching emptiness of abandonment and hatred.
If this is all Jackie will ever have: this beauty and bliss and belief in something bigger than themselves; well, she’s been to enough churches and temples to know that is all that faith truly is.
And for now, it is enough.
She watches Nat pound on the apartment door with her closed fist about two hours later when they finally arrive at a shitty building in Brooklyn, the murmuring of the city encasing them with an anonymity that Jackie feels oddly at ease within.
Nat hadn’t said much about where they were going; her fingers drumming incessantly on the steering wheel as she muttered low half-whispers under her breath gave Jackie enough of an indication that it wasn’t something she was necessarily ready to talk in depth about yet. Jackie hadn’t pried, too tired from her own emotional rampage to coax out the information she knew Nat would confide to her in her own time, on her own terms.
Nat continues the repetition of knocking relentlessly, her pounding becoming louder and louder until the door swings open and a towering man stands before them, a scowl tugging his plush pink lip upwards. He looks vaguely familiar: with his unruly brown mullet that curls up at the ends and the worn sweats hanging low enough on his hips that Jackie can see the edges of his underwear peaking out-the same brand of boxers she knows Nat wears on certain occasions. The gold cross necklace he is wearing hangs down from his exposed collarbones, landing on a white tank that seems to frame the muscled tone of his golden arms and shoulders, cerulean blue eyes looking back at them both beneath furrowed brown brows pinched together in irritation.
“Whatd’ya want?” His Italian-Jersey accent is thick, an eerily similar twang to how Nat’s words become when she’s upset, the slurred morphing of the vowels oozing together as the brooding man looks contemplatively at both of them. She can’t place exactly where she recognizes him from, turning her head to question as much, when Jackie watches her girlfriend’s eyes soften into melted puddles of fondness that make her suddenly look like a young, untouched version of herself.
“Hey, Nicky.” Nat says softly, an air of reverence lingering over her words as she tilts her head, the lifted edge of her crooked smile peaking out despite her stoic demeanor. She looks so utterly Natalie, the real one that Jackie only sees glimpses of beneath tattered bedroom sheets and in between the raspy drags of her cigarettes, that it makes Jackie’s entire chest tighten with abrupt understanding. Mirrored blue eyes widen as the man looks Nat up and down slowly, the wrinkles in his face smoothing until Jackie can see the obvious resemblance: sharp, high cheekbones and deep, soulful blue eyes carved from a sensitivity that is more fragile than either would admit.
“Is that you, Teeny?” He asks softly in response, the twinge of his accent getting thicker as he swallows thickly around the question, the clear shock erupting across his face as Nat shifts nervously on her feet.
“Yeah,” Nat’s voice cracks, the sound foreign and fragile in Jackie’s chest, “It’s me.” Jackie watches the man’s face erupt with joy, the edges of his wide smile pinched with a melancholic sadness as he takes a step back, inspecting all of Natalie with a pride that could only be born from the bond of blood and brotherhood.
“Jesus, kid!” He laughs throatily, the sound thick with veiled emotion as he reaches out and yanks Natalie into his broad chest, his hand coming up to caress the back of Nat’s head tenderly as he holds her with a desperation Jackie can easily empathize with, Nat’s arms slowly reaching up to wrap back around his lithe, slim waist hesitantly. She watches the siblings hug for the first time in years standing in the doorway, Natalie’s body stiffening slightly when her brother pulls away to look back at her with undiluted awe, his massive hand coming up to palm her cheek in a way that is deeply intimate in a completely different way than she’s ever seen before, “You’re growin’ like a fuck’n weed.”
“Passed your mark on the door last month,” Nat admits shyly, her face contorting from her charming ease into a tightened realization as the words leave her mouth, the image of the faded markings on Nat’s doorway creeping into Jackie’s mind with sudden clarity. She feels the sudden shift underlying the interaction, her hand coming out to grasp onto Natalie’s in the same way the blonde had reached for her earlier on in the truck; a silent attempt at reminding her that she isn’t alone, even when the reminder of her loneliness is suddenly standing in front of her again. She curls her fingers into Nat's, taking a step closer so that she remembers doesn’t have to be on her own anymore, ever again.
“Teeny...” the man’s words falter, his expression crumbling into an expression of utter despair as he senses Nat’s hesitation, as if Nat’s slight flinching has only reopened the wound that has scabbed over just enough to not hurt any longer. Nat nods dismissively, Jackie watching as she hardens her features back into the emotionless mask of indifference she wears around the world and bites down on her lip hard, her lip curling up slightly at the edge.
“I know, Nicky,” Nat swallows thickly, shaking her head as the man- Nat’s fucking older brother- attempts to explain whatever it is Nat doesn’t want to hear, “You don’t have to say anything.”
Nicky looks dejectedly back at her, unintentionally rocketing himself worlds away from the girl that Jackie knows is barely teetering on the edge of composure; her hand twitching within Jackie’s hold with the restlessness of repressed emotions that bite dangerously at the bottom of her heels, chasing them to this doorstep as Nat’s brother slowly over to her, floating through the space as if suddenly remembering her presence.
“I’m Nicolas Scatorccio,” Nat’s brother holds out his hand to Jackie politely, giving a courteous grin that Jackie can’t help but see the remnants of Nat in when he drawls out with his accented voice, “Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Jackie,” she swallows thickly, reaching out her hand to officially meet the only family member of Nat who’s wanted to meet her since knowing about her, “Nice to meet you, too.” Nicky’s eyes inspect her curiously, an undertone of something protective and instinctual brighten at the edges of his iris when he drops her hand, shoving both of his fists deeply into his cotton pockets as if understanding that even though he wants to- it is not his place to be overbearing.
“Uh,” Nat clears her throat, shrugging her shoulders to emphasize the bags that are clearly dangling over their backs, “Nicky, I don’t wanna put you out,” she looks over at Jackie, eyes rimmed with a hopefulness that Jackie hasn’t seen on her throughout the entire ordeal they’ve been through today, before looking back at her brother with that same earnest hope that Jackie wishes could preserve forever, “But we didn’t know where else to go.”
“You’re not puttin’ me out, Teeny,” Nicky shakes his head, finding a sense of purposeful direction and following it, “C’mon in.”
The apartment is cozy; simple and neat in a way that Nicky never was when he lived with them in the trailer. Natalie viscerally remembers the half-dirty, half-clean piles of clothes strewn around his bedroom floor, his bed always a disheveled mess with Playboys shoved in between his sheets that he used as a decoy to the Playgirls he secretly favored. His walls were covered in more band posters than hers were back then: metal bands and old rock stars staring back from every free inch until he began sticking them to the ceiling just to add to his endless collection. Nat remembers the beating he took for doing that when he was fourteen, his eye bruised and swollen despite the cheeky smile he gave when he noticed her shaking from absolute terror in the hallway, winking with a casualty that she always found heroic.
Now though, there is a single poster hanging in the living room he leads them into, a frayed image of a band she doesn’t recognize named Mazzy Star hung above one neat, folded blanket thrown over the back cushions of his pull-out couch. A lifetime away from the sporadic boy she once knew him as.
He gestures for them to sit, Nat and Jackie plopping exhaustedly onto the sofa as he settles himself into the tiny recliner across from them, his eyes floating between them curiously as if he is deciphering what has brought the two of them together at his doorstep
“So,” Nicky looks up at her, eyes carefully inspecting all the differences she knows he must notice on her as much as she notices his, “What the fuck happened?”
His voice, despite the slight change in cantation he uses when directing his question to Jackie, is still as thick and laced with their grandfather’s hard Italian drawl as ever. The gold cross on his chest is the same one she remembers him wearing his entire life, a family heirloom that he received as a gift on his tenth birthday from their Nonno, a handful of months before the man died and all of the Christmas mass and Sunday dinners and family soccer games the Scatorccio’s once went to religiously suddenly stopped. Back when they were a family that actually meant something to each other.
But none of that aches as much as seeing him this closely and recognizing the same fond, assurance nestled within his mirrored blue eyes that he always gave her when she was younger: a look of pure protection that always gave her an undoubted sense of safety- written between every grin and wink he sent her way after their father had beat in his teeth or smashed his face enough that it was more bruise than Nicky at some points. It makes it that much harder to see her brother now. He’s so similar to how she once remembers: his beautiful smile and cheeky facial expressions and genuine earnestness so achingly familiar that it almost makes her sick with memories; sick with the knowledge that all of the things she once revered about her family and herself seemed to disappear completely the minute he did too.
“I…” Jackie stutters, Nat’s attention distracted long enough that the honey blonde seems to take the initiation between the two of them, “I uh, got kicked out of my house.” Nicky’s eyes narrow, his chin tilting slowly as he looks over Jackie suspiciously. Nat can’t exactly blame him, since she herself held the same guarded apprehension towards the blonde until only about six months ago when things suddenly changed; but instinct has her leaning forward protectively, shoulders squared at her brother as she narrows her eyes slightly back, warning.
“For what?” Nicky asks casually, and Nat feels Jackie stiffen beneath her touch, her body curling in slightly. The blonde wrings her hands nervously in her lap, the fresh wound of her mother’s cruelty still hanging over Jackie’s shoulder like a haunted presence she is unable to fully escape from- a wound that is nowhere near scabbed up enough to start poking at again.
“‘Cause my mom said I was a dyke.”
The slur is sharp and accusing on Jackie’s bitter tongue, the same cadence that her mother had flung the words at them with as they rushed out the front door towards something vaguely resembling safety- somewhere they could breathe freely without fearing that the world was going to collapse in on them, just waiting to swallow them whole.
It had cost the entirety of their old lives: comfort, stability, ease.
“Well,” Nicky chuckles sardonically, though not particularly in a cruel way, his head tilting to the side lazily as if he already knows the answer to his poised question, “Are ya?”
“We both are,” Nat reaches over for Jackie’s hand, answering surely enough for the both of them as Nicky’s eyes flicker back over to her, her chin dipping silently in challenge as she adds on, “Since we’re together.” pNicky’s smile curls up loosely at the end, the same mischievous smirk he would always give her when they were children and they had the same, beautifully naughty idea.
“Three of a kind,” Nicky shakes his head with a low, disbelieving scoff before looking up at her seriously, his face pinching slightly into one of true concern when he asks softly, “Does dad know?” Nat’s stomach drops, the realization of why Nicky didn’t show up to their father’s funeral hitting her like a bolt of lightning straight to the chest.
“Nicky,” Nat’s heart stutters in her rib cage, her face crumbling when she looks back over to her brother defeatedly, “Dad’s dead.” It flashes over her brother's face for a brief moment: the grief and the loss of whatever semblance of hope he might have held that they could become something better than what they dissolved into, that there could be some kind of warped closure to be had after a childhood left full of uncertainty. She had felt the same thing- in a different, more fucked up way perhaps he would ever know- when the gun had gone off in his hand and she saw the inside of his head splattered across the side of their trailer.
And then, as quickly as it happened, it disappears.
“Good riddance,” he mumbles instead, leaning back into his recliner as he inhales deeply, swallowing down whatever emotion had momentarily stunned him, “Bastard prolly rollin’ in his fuckin’ grave if he knew both his kids turned out queer.”
He probably is, considering the argument that they had gotten into before he died. Not that it matters much what he thinks anymore. Or really any of that matters anymore, anyways.
“Ma won’t let her stay with me,” Nat scuffs her toe against the carpet, averting her gaze away as she gives a listless shrug of her shoulders, “Said that she didn’t want that kind of sin in her house.”
But she had no issue letting her father slap her and Nicky around since they were old enough to walk. Her brother seems to be thinking the same thing, if his look of cautious concern is anything to go by.
“Figures,” Nicky scoffs, sighing deeply before standing and looking at the both of them for a moment, his gaze softening. Nat’s heart aches suddenly with how much she has missed him, with how much she wishes he had been with her during the last four years instead or burrowed away in Brooklyn, hiding away from them and from her.
“Go ‘head and set up in the spare room, Jack,” Nicky’s nickname for her girlfriend rolls off his tongue naturally, an ease that makes something in her even more devastated by his elongated absence that suddenly feels so punctuated with all the hurt that has now reared its ugly head between them, “Teeny’ll be in ‘n a sec.” Jackie nods slowly, glancing wordlessly at Nat for confirmation before she gives her a reassuring nod, the blonde hesitating momentarily before leaving them together in the empty living room.
“Jesus Christ. Look at ya, Nat,” Nicky speaks first, his eyes softening with clear adoration when he looks the entirety of her up and down with unabashed awe, her scuffed knees and choppy bags suddenly feeling less like a hazard and more like something that just is without judgement, “You’ve grown like a foot since I last saw you,” her brother smiles widely, proud and strong back at her when his eyes flicker up, “Dyed your hair blonde, too.”
“I did it before his funeral,” Nat confesses, shrugging idly as she swallows down the guilt that always follows the conversation of the hair change she made impulsively in Jackie’s bathroom, “I…”
She shakes her head, suddenly tasting the bitter resentment return to her once more, Nicky’s mouth twitching down slightly as if he senses the lingering pain that clamps her mouth shut, “It doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t know there was a funeral,” Nicky whispers softly after a moment m, his gaze filled with a miasma of guilt and anger that burns within his iris as he swallows thickly around the contemplative words pushed around the expanse of his now tightened frown, “Ma never told me.”
Nat shrugs. She figured it was the case when she was tasked with waking her mother up for the funeral, the woman still drunk from the night before when she came home smelling like Jack and something stronger than just cigarette smoke sticking to her hair. If Nicky was there he would’ve sat with Nat in her bedroom, playing cards with her and playing her the new music he found for his Walkman. He would have made it easier than what it was, than what it inevitably became when she was standing at the edge of her father’s coffin with no one else beside her.
He could have made a lot of things easier for her, if she admits it to herself.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Teeny,” Nicky says instead, as if he still has the ability to look over at her and read what is swirling in her mind, “You shouldn’t’ve had to deal with that alone.”
Nat doesn’t respond, her hands curling in on themselves as she tries to quell the sudden urge to cry burning the edges of her eyelids. She shouldn’t have been alone. And she wasn’t- not really. She had Jackie.
Jackie, who had held her in her arms the night after her father foolishly shot himself in the head while screaming at her for sneaking a girl into her room, slurs and taunts of dyke, whore, faggot, slut echoing in her head as the last words she would ever hear her father say before he died with a heart full of hate and a head full of bullet. Jackie, who had helped her quietly paint the entirety of her scalp a blinding white without so much as a critique or criticism, simply letting Nat’s cheek fall gently against her knee as she worked diligently on painting every space on the roots. Jackie, who had confessed her love, not because it was easy but because it hurt too much to have to hide it away from each other for any longer- to not confess that losing Nat would mean losing a bigger piece of herself than she could live without.
She doesn’t say any of that though. Because even though Jackie was there for her throughout, Nicky should’ve been there too.
“How’s Ma?” Nicky asks gently. Nat shrugs casually from across the room as the emotion tugs roughly on her chest, trying to keep her face neutral despite the vitriol that she feels curling up her lip slightly.
“You know,” she scoffs with a sardonic chuckle, shrugging her shoulders lackadaisically, “Too drunk to remember what day it is.”
“Still?” Nicky’s voice is hesitant, Nat’s jaw clenching down harder to keep her tongue from hissing something hateful at her brother’s helpless look of defeat.
“Worse since Dad.”
Nicky swallows thickly, nodding his head slowly as he inhales deeply through his nose, steadying himself before asking the question she knows he has been waiting to ask.
“You takin’ care of yourself then?” Nicky questions softly, the double-edged insinuation clear in his voice. Nat knows what he is asking: if the tendency of fending for themselves has become the way she has survived the perils of their home, or if she’s found other ways to chase away the anguish that clings to the Scatorccio’s just as surely as the crosses dangling around their necks.
Nat shrugs, swallowing thickly, “Enough.”
“Teeny…” Nicky begins, Nat standing rapidly from the couch and shaking her head as the words tumble from her mouth helplessly, the anguish and abandonment unable to be withheld in her chest for any longer than it already has been.
“I know why you left, Nicky,” Nat finally lets the words flow out of her, her hands curling as she tries to grasp back onto the composure that is slowly becoming less and less obtainable in the whirlpool of her emotions, “But…” her voice cracks, her eyes pleading when she finally gets the courage to look up at him, “Why’d you have to leave me too?”
Her hands shake helplessly at her sides, the question that had kept her up for nights on end finally asked to the only person who could ever answer it for her- the only person she had ever wished to know what she did wrong that caused them to leave her so easily.
“Natty…” Nicky sighs, his shoulders slumping.
“You don’t get to call me that,” Nat bites roughly, her chest rumbling when Nicky’s eyes widen in shock that makes her face burn with shame, “Not when you’ve been gone the past four years with not even a goddamn phone call.”
“Nat…”
“Just forget it,” Nat wipes at the tears that fall helplessly onto her cheeks, no longer able to keep the hurt contained despite her jaw clenching and her eyes darting away from Nicky quickly, “I gotta go check on Jackie.”
Jackie tries not to eavesdrop on Nat and Nicky’s tense conversation, her focus roaming towards the muffled voices on the other side of the door until she untangles the headphones from her iPod shoved into her bag, placing the buds into her ears as she lies back against the bed frame.
Her songs shuffle randomly in the background of her head, the noise merely a distraction from the incessant thoughts of her mother that she can’t quite escape, despite being physically separated by miles and memories. She knew that her day of reckoning would come sooner rather than later- it was merely a matter of time, especially once she started realizing that the unexpected closeness growing between her and Nat was something different than any other friendship she had before.
She knew it the minute she wanted to know what Nat’s lips tasted like under her tongue.
And yet, it made no difference when her fate came. The harrowing taunts of her mother and the unforgiving silence of her father was still as soul-crushing as she expected it to be, still as devastating as she feared from the first time she learned what the feeling caged in her ribs was really called.
She had every reason to feel alone and abandoned because, by them, she was.
But Nat hadn’t. Nat had never wavered from looking at her and telling her that she was going to be okay, that she was going to eventually be safe enough to not feel ashamed of who she loved or who she was. Nat had been the one to bring her here, to find somewhere she could be safe in the world, even if that only meant being with her for the night.
Nat, as if conjured by her thoughts, bursts through the door- her cheeks flushed and her eyes glassy, something raw biting at her that Jackie knows is a culmination of all the emotions she had swallowed down on her behalf to get them here.
“You okay?” She asks softly, Nat’s lips twitching into a frown as the blonde scoffs, rolling her eyes in a desperate attempt to appear unbothered. Jackie knows better.
“I should be asking you that,” Nat retorts simply, walking across the room to collapse into Jackie’s outstretched arms, Jackie rolling her eyes affectionately as the blonde nuzzles into her neck, breathing in deeply before her body relaxes further into Jackie’s arms.
“I’d rather focus on you than my own shit, truthfully,” Jackie chuckles sardonically, Nat’s lips curling into a grin that she can feel pressed against her skin; the relief of being the one not completely crumbling into despair giving Jackie the tiniest boost of confidence.
“You never told me about him,” Jackie tests gently, her voice soft and open when she pulls her face away just enough to look down at Nat’s furrowed brow, “I didn’t even know you had a brother.”
Nat never spoke about Nicky like he was alive. Even in the brief confessions Nat had told her about what it was like growing up with him before her dad died, Jackie was never under the impression that her brother was somewhere alive and well- just out of reach. She thinks maybe he had been dead to Nat, that the blonde never had any intention of reaching back out until they had no other safe haven to turn to.
“He left when I was thirteen,” Nat murmurs into her collar, Jackie’s hand coming up to trace her shoulder soothingly as the blonde swallows thickly around the words, “After my dad beat the living shit out of him.”
“For what?” Jackie asks, although she already has a suspicion. Nat grabs tighter onto her, her fingers curling around the material of Jackie’s hoodie as she shrugs, helpless to the truth.
“Being gay, I guess."
“Oh,” Jackie swallows softly, and Nat nods, neither of them particularly having anything comforting to say when the reality of the cruelty of the world is so undeniable. Jackie’s parents hadn’t beaten her- but the wounds left from their rejection were no less painful.
“Nicky told ‘em that he was leavin’ the next morning. Packed up all his shit and got the first bus out of town,” Nat makes a soft sound, like a whimper before burying her face deeper into Jackie’s safe embrace, “I asked him to take me too but he said he couldn’t.”
“Why?” Jackie can’t help but ask, her chest clenching at the thought of Nat leaving, at the chance that they wouldn’t have ever found something worth believing in without each other. She tried to quell the fear that Nat’s desire to run is still present and gnawing at her heels now that they have gotten far enough away from Wiskayok that there isn’t anything tying them together beyond the single decision to remain tethered.
“I dunno,” Nat murmurs dejectedly, “Guess he didn’t want his baby sister taggin’ along.”
“No,” Jackie furrows her brows, pressing her lips to Nat’s hairline gently, “I meant: did you really wanna leave Wiskayok?”
Did you really want to leave me?
“Jax,” Nat tilts her head up, sensing Jackie’s hesitancy and meeting their eyes when she nudged Jackie’s chin upwards, blue and hazel connecting under the half-light of the moon shining through the window, “That was so long ago. Way before I met you.”
“But you still wanted to leave?” Jackie can’t help the feeling of sadness she feels in spite of it, the lingering grief that they could have lived a whole life without each other had they not found each other in this one.
“I wanted to be free from my shitty home,” Nat corrects, her eyes anchoring into Jackie’s as she shakes her head lowly, emphasizing every one of her carefully chosen words, “I wanted to be able to fuckin’ breathe without it hurting.”
“And now?” Jackie asks, desperate and hopeful in spite of herself.
“Now,” Nat tangles their hands together, curling their fingers in between the others as she brings them up to her lips, placing a tender kiss on the back of her palm conveying all the words Jackie knows she is still too shy to say aloud, “I’m with you. What else would I want?”
“You’re not just saying that?” Jackie whispers, needing to hear it one more time as Nat shakes her head, a small smile curling up at the edges when she realizes what Jackie is really asking.
“No, baby,” Nat assures her, grinning lazily back at her with the same look of something Jackie had always known was dangerous- the look of pure adoration that Jackie had never been able to not bloom under whenever Nat directed it to her, the one that had solidified her fate all those months ago when she realized it wasn’t just Nat’s affection she craved, “All I wanted as a kid was a way out of my old life. And now I get to build one with you.”
“Where would you have gone?” Jackie asks, letting her hand come up to brush delicately through her hair, letting the blonde tendrils tangle around her fingers and wrists like water flowing over the streams.
“Dunno,” Nat shrugs, picking at the loose thread on Jackie’s shirt before looking back up at her, curling her lips up further, “Why? Have any ideas about where we should go next?”
“I don’t think I can think about anything else right now other than the fact I need a goddamn cigarette,” Jackie retorts back instead, Nat’s face brightening when she leans her head back and lets out a laugh- a real laugh- for the first time all day.
“Go get one,” Nat tilts her chin towards her bag, raising a challenging brow back at Jackie as she shares in the blonde’s delighted laughter.
“I’m not smoking your shitty Marlboros.”
“Oh, no?” Nat chuckles, rolling across the bed to grab at her pack listlessly before glancing teasingly over her shoulder, “Well it’s refreshing to see that you’re still too good for my reds.”
“I think it’s gonna take a lot more for me to willingly smoke one of those,” Jackie counters, scrunching her nose up when Nat rolls back over to her, nuzzling further into her shoulder affectionately.
“We’re free, Jax,” Nat whispers delicately under her breath, tilting her chin up enough that Jackie can see the full expanse of her hope swirling around in her unwavering blue eyes.
“Yeah,” Jackie kisses her forehead, letting herself believe it for the first time, “We are.”
Jackie opts to go walk down the block for her own pack of elitist Newport’s at the gas station huddled on the corner, Nat offering originally to go get them for her until the blonde confessed she needed the fresh air and the walk to let her thoughts settle down after their day.
Nat knows that feeling. It’s how she ends up on the fire escape of Nicky’s building; her brother walking out as she’s lounging against the railing, leg dangling between the gaps of the escape as her smoke curls around the crown of her head, a Marlboro red hanging limply from the edge of her fingertips.
“You shouldn’t smoke, ya know.”
“Being bored as shit will get you looking for ways to pass the time,” Nat looks up at her brother, raising a brow as he sits down easily next to her, “Plus, you left a carton in your room after you left. Figured they shouldn’t go to waste.”
Nicky chuckles lazily, pulling his own worn-down carton from his sweats. Nat holds out her lighter to him- a peace offering in the only way she knows how to give- her brother hesitating for a single moment before he reaches across and takes it gently from her hand, flicking the flame to life as he lights the end of his cherried cig. They sit in silence, both of them looking upwards to the city-esque skyline, their smoke tangling and dancing amongst the air together as the horns and commotion of the city lived in around them
“I miss seein’ stars,” Nicky tilts his head, looking over at Nat with an expression of tender remembrance, “You don’t think of shit like that when you’re in the park, but…” he shrugs.
“Maybe,” Nat blows the smoke out of her mouth, the familiar feeling of her chest loosening with the action, her fingers flicking the ash from the end of her cig with a quick toss over the edge, “Or maybe you think you see things that aren’t there, just to believe they could be.”
“Teeny,” Nicky whispers, his voice soft and hopeful when he swallows thickly, “I never meant to leave you behind. I…I went away ‘cause it woulda killed me to stay there. It was just a matter of time.”
Of course she knows that. Of course she saw the beatings he would take that left him bloodied and bruised no matter how hard he fought back against their father’s abusive hands.
But it doesn’t ease the ache left in her that he did, that he knew how dangerous her father was and still chose to let her remain behind.
“You didn’t think that it was the same for me too?” Nat whispers thickly, trying her hardest to keep her voice even and steady despite the emotion cracking through, “Nicky, I was in that house with you. I’m the only other person who knows what it was like.”
“I didn’t think you needed me,” Nicky confesses, shame and guilt curdled on his face when he pinches his brows and frowns deeply, his handsome face contorting with the emotion, “I couldn’t see past myself back then to think about what my baby sister was goin’ through.”
“I thought I was all alone,” Nat says, her throat threatening to close as she tells him the things he needs to know if she is to forgive him and his choices, an offering of truth equally on both sides, “I thought nobody would love me anymore.”
I thought you didn’t love me anymore. She knows her brother understands, his entire face crumbling into despair as she forces herself to remain unflinching. They have to go through this, if there is any choice for them to understand each other going forward.
“I shoulda been there, Teeny,” Nicky says lowly.
“You were my brother,” Nat swallows, the words sharp and accusing when she cuts through the night with them, “Didn’t you ever think of that before you went?”
“Of course I did,” Nicky sighs, swallowing thickly around the shame that is clearly suffocating his pained expression, “When I left, I was done with ‘em,” Nicky says the words slowly, a seriousness that she remembers he would always use when talking about one day leaving, “They were dead to me for being so shitty to us.”
Nat scoffs at his self-righteousness, turning away and feeling her bottom lip tremble at his calloused words. Nicky reaches across to her, lifting her chin with the back of his knuckles to get her to look at him. Nat’s eyes float upwards, a slow, unsure movement that Nicky blinks once at before continuing, “And I swore to myself I’d go back for you.”
Nicky admits, “I meant it, Teeny, I did. But then a year went by…and another…and I thought you maybe forgot about me.” He swallows, brushing her hair away from her face as he looks tenderly back at her, as if it is aching to remember the promise he left unfulfilled. Nat blinks too, flashes of memories of the two of them huddled together in an eerily similar way that they are now, two young children pressed together in a childish effort to keep the scary, unforgiving world from swallowing them whole. It had always been the two of them, together.
When had Nicky forgotten that?
“I thought that if you really needed me, you’d find your way here,” Nicky swallows guiltily, his head shaking lowly as the words now reveal how unfortunately wrong he was to think Nat wouldn’t wish he came back for her every day he didn’t, “I didn’t know…I didn’t think you’d ever believe I didn’t want you here with me.”
“Of course I’d want you, Nicky,” Nat whispers back against the night, finally looking up fully at her brother’s face and facing the grief that has been carved out of both their chests, their hearts each craving the familiar beat of the other even after all these years spent away from one another living in two different worlds, “You’re my fuckin’ big brother.”
She sees his acceptance the moment it blooms across his face, an oath and a promise that is stronger than any of their failures or faults they have struggled to overcome up until this moment.
“Yeah,” Nicky wraps his arm around her, pulling her in and kissing the top of her head like he always would when they were kids; Nat’s chest loosening the minute his rumbling voice is pressed firmly against her forehead, a protector’s oath through and through when he says, “I am. And I always will be.”
“I ain’t leavin’ again, Teeny,” he promises lowly to her, his whispered voice hidden by the soft hum of cars, “You hear? No matter what.”
She does hear, and she knows what it means when he offers it. This promise is between them. No witness to hold them accountable, no other proof that he had promised her this other than through their own honor. She knows what it means to give someone a promise with nothing but faith and love to cement it in the world.
“No matter what,” Nat agrees, and it is sealed. They lean against each other another moment after that, the two of them puffing and promising until Nicky finally lifts his chin, glancing over his shoulder before nudging Nat playfully.
“So…” Nicky’s lips curl up when she looks over at him, his eyebrow raising teasingly, “Jackie Taylor, huh?” Nat laughs softly at her brother’s wicked grin, her cheeks blushing despite the night hiding the redness from showing too brightly.
“Yeah,” she admits lowly, letting out a steady breath of smoke unfurl from her mouth with a chuckle, “What about her?”
“I just remember you sayin’ what a stuck up prissy girl she was,” Nicky winks playfully, taking another deep draw of his cigarette, “Back in middle school when you were on the same team’n shit.”
“Yeah, well,” Nat shrugs good naturedly, thinking about how she hadn’t thought of Jackie as anything but a nuisance until the beginning of last year; back when Shauna had left her a crying, blubbering mess in the school parking lot and she had seen who the blonde really was behind the prissy, golden-girl aura she always conducted so effortlessly. Things had changed since then. And some things, as Nat can admit, did not.
“She’s still pretty prissy.”
Nicky laughs; the same deep, throaty sound she remembers him growing into before he left, the edges of her lips curling up in a proud smile that always crept its way onto her face whenever she made her brother smile or laugh in this genuine way.
“She treat you good?” Nicky asks after his laughter settles. Nat pretends to think, her lips still tingling from Jackie’s kiss she had given her before going, the feeling of warmth that she had slowly allowed herself to embrace sweeping through her chest and grounding her in the only way she’s ever felt truly comforrable in.
“Yeah,” Nat nods softly, letting the warmth sink even deeper into her, her eyes glancing out to the city and all of the possibilities it holds for her, for them, now that they get to decide what their lives look like, “She does.”
“Good,” Nicky nods finally, looking every bit the gooden brother she always knew him to be, his hand reaching out to connect them together again, his smile wide and beautiful when be says simply “I always wanted another sister.”
Jackie looks up, watching as the siblings pass a cigarette back and forth between them, the soft sound of laughter tinkling down the fire escape as she lets the feeling of warmth in her chest settle comfortably over her. She can’t remember the last time her parents laughed so effortlessly amongst each other, or the last time she walked down the street and didn’t care that people knew that the person she was going home to was a woman, or the last night she had where she didn’t completely dread the next morning’s possibility of her secret finally being revealed without her consent.
It’s undeniably freeing, knowing she doesn’t have to live any of that ever again, if she doesn’t want to. That she can find somewhere in this anonymous city for her and Nat to be together, choosing whatever they want the day to be like or what they want their day to become- and choosing, above anything else, love.
She thinks that if this is the life she gets to inherit by abandoning her previous one, then maybe, it was worth the pain of trading away the old one. That if having Nat by her side means she gets to choose to love every day for the rest of her life, then she might be the luckiest person she knows.