Chapter Text
Fate is a concept thought up by the foolish and divine , Shauna Shipman thought to herself as she swayed through the New York University campus.
Only those truly entitled could so perfectly predict their future that they would be able to predefine their entire lives. Love, marriage, jobs, children. After all, what worries are there if everything is already decided?
Shauna was so deeply lost in thought that she almost walked directly into a lamppost, only narrowly avoiding it with a high-pitched giggle - extremely unusual to hear coming from her.
“Sorry, Mr Lamppost!” she stage-whispered, rather cheerily.
An ungodly amount of alcohol coursed through her system, affecting her in ways that she knew were only damaging her mind - yet she found that she couldn’t bring herself to care. Not after the last four months of her life; not after perfect Jackie Taylor had broken her brain, rewritten her belief system and became the altar at which she prayed.
The danger of it all was something that Shauna almost welcomed at this point - that chance that maybe this was it, the adrenaline that came with doing something so blindly stupid that it could only be thought up by an addled mind. Still, despite her brain moving at sixteen thousand miles a minute, she knew where she was going. There was a party, and she’d be damned if she wasn’t there. It was stupid, but she knew that the only way to forget was to constantly be in a state of forgetting, that any pause in her life would give her time to consider the situation that she had somehow found herself in.
She paused as she drew near to the house. The loud punk music almost felt like a warm welcome. She could just turn around and go home, rethink her choices. It was a tempting thought, at least until she heard a high-pitched voice from behind her that made her body go warm and her blood run cold.
“Shauna?” a sad, desperate voice almost whispered from behind her. She’d recognize that voice anywhere: Jackie.
There was only one thing to do. Oh fuck, Shauna panicked. Shauna pretended to not hear Jackie and pushed into the party, ignoring the hurt noise from behind that threatened to eat her soul alive. She immediately found herself tangled in a mass of bodies and limbs. The further she could get from Jackie, the better, so she grabbed a drink and immediately headed to the bathroom. She waded through throngs of people, slapping drifting hands away.
Shauna quickly cracked the door open and slipped in, closing it. She rested her head against the cold wood, sighing. Finally, she had a moment to think, to work out how she was going to avoid Jackie for the rest of the night, and to work out what the fuck she was going to do now. Or at least, she would have, if she hadn’t heard a rasping cough from behind her.
She spun around, clutching her drink close to her chest, almost as if she was defending it, only to see Nat standing in front of her. The small, dirty blonde woman looked how Shauna felt- disheveled, broken, and drunk beyond belief. Unlike Shauna though, she looked like she’d recently finished crying, not that Shauna was about to bring that up to a person that she was fairly confident could make her life hell.
“Fucking figures, huh, Shipman? Trying to avoid your woman again?” Nat scoffed.
“I’m- I’m not avoiding my fucking woman, Natalie. I don’t HAVE a woman,” Shauna’s voice cracked as she answered. She wasn’t even convincing herself.
“Sure you don’t. That’s why you’ve basically been running from Jackie for two months now, every time she comes near you. It's why we've all been trying to pick up the pieces."
Natalie moved closer to Shauna, who backed away slightly. Despite her small size, Shauna knew that Natalie meant business, and getting on the wrong side of her was a bad idea.
“Did you know she’s in love with you? It's all she fucking talks about and I'll be honest, I'm starting to get sick of hearing about it,” Nat spat out.
“She-She’s what ?” Shauna gaped. Natalie, however, pushed past Shauna roughly and stormed out without responding, disappearing into the party and becoming one with the noise.
Shauna’s mind couldn’t stop racing, couldn’t stop thinking about what Nat had said. The alcohol wasn’t helping - the world spun around her, moving almost as quickly as her thoughts.
A rational person might have taken a minute to center themselves, but Shauna Shipman was smart, not rational, especially when it came to Jackie Taylor. So, instead of centering herself, she pushed open the bathroom door and hastily stumbled through the throngs of people in the hope of finding Nat, in the hope of questioning her more.
As she pushed through the crowd, she saw familiar faces in her blurring vision. Lottie, her roommate and Natalie’s….something, said something to her that she simply couldn’t quite make out. Van stood next to their girlfriend Tai, looking at her with a furrowed brow, worry written all over their face. Shauna thought she saw a shock of dirty blonde hair outside, standing in the garden, staring at the night sky, or at least what was visible of the night sky in New York City.
In desperation, she pushed past the people in her way, moving faster, faster, ignoring the confused looks on their faces. She had to find Natalie, she had to know what she was talking about.
When she finally stepped outside, Shauna realized two things. First, there was nobody there. Second, the ground was closer to her face than it usually was, and it was getting closer at an alarming rate.
A sharp pain pierced through her head as she hit the ground. Rolling over, she watched the stars rapidly fade as a black veil overtook her vision. But before it could completely overtake her, a familiar face swam into view - her favourite face.
“Jax.”
Maybe fate isn’t such bullshit after all. Maybe this was always how it was supposed to end for me, Shauna thought to herself in a haze, before everything became still and peaceful.
Of course, it was only peaceful to the now-unconscious woman on the ground. To everybody else, the party was interrupted by an ear-piercing scream.
Two Months Earlier
Shauna was awoken by the sound of a scream that filled the apartment, possibly even the world. She rolled over, bleary-eyes glancing at her nightstand where the alarm clock cheerfully informed her that it was 10:04 on a Saturday morning. Her head pounded, the aftermath of a night spent throwing back shots on an empty stomach making its presence known.
As she tried to summon the energy to move her body, Shauna ran through her mental list of common apartment noises. It didn’t sound like a typical Jackie yell, one that demanded attention, so that ruled her best friend out. Both Lottie, her other roommate, and Natalie (who basically lived there) weren’t screamers.
Well, they were, but not like that, Shauna thought to herself, shuddering as she thought about the breathy moans she’s heard night after night coming from Lottie’s room.
So, it wasn’t any of her roommates then.
In that case, I won’t have to feel guilty about stabbing them to death, Shauna thought to herself, only half-joking. She groaned as she pulled herself out of bed, hair cascading around her ears. Dimly, Shauna noticed that she was still dressed in the same clothes she went out in last night, a pair of dark jeans and a flannel covering a drink-stained white shirt.
Shauna pulled her bedroom door open forcefully. The girl standing in the common area spun around, shooting her a startled look. There was something almost familiar about the way she was dressed, about the way she looked, but Shauna couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“Oh shit, did I wake you up?” the girl said apologetically,
It was clear to Shauna that the girl had no idea how loud she had been, nor that there were even other people in the apartment.
“Yes.”
The girl shrank at the sound of Shauna’s growl. For a moment, it felt to Shauna as though the girl was prey, and she, the predator. She moved in for the kill, to kick the girl out so she could rest in peace. But before she could make her move, another bedroom door opened, revealing a bewildered looking Jackie Taylor.
If Shauna had been asked, years ago, to describe Jacqueline Taylor, she’d have called her some not-so-charitable things. Her best friend in the world. A bitch. Self-absorbed. The best person she knows. Boy-obsessed, though that last one came with a tinge of irony. That changed when they were both seventeen.
Jackie had shown up at Shauna’s house, sobbing profusely. She could barely bring herself to look at Shauna, let alone talk. Then Jackie told her what had happened.
Three Years Earlier
Shauna groaned, ripped from her umpteenth rewatch of Return Of The Jedi by a series of loud and frantic knocks at her door. She checked her phone - 11PM. Who the fuck was knocking on her door this late?
The pounding on the door wasn’t letting up. The door was rattling under the strength of whoever was trying to get her attention, and Shauna got up off the couch and moved towards it.
“Fuck, alright, I’m coming,” Shauna yelled, grateful that her mother was working a late shift tonight.
She swung open the door, prepared to give the person on the other side a piece of her mind, only for her words to catch in her throat as she saw Jackie standing there, tears streaking down her face. Her breathing was heavy, her eyes bloodshot, and Shauna caught her as she collapsed into her arms with a heaving sob.
Shauna hadn’t seen Jackie like this for years. So openly emotional. Briefly, she wondered if Jackie had just had another fight with Jeff - they had them often enough that she was getting sick of hearing about it.
But Jackie couldn’t even speak through her tears, and Shauna quickly realized this was something more serious than just another stupid fight with Jeff.Jackie was clinging onto her like she was the only thing keeping her afloat, and Shauna could feel her shirt starting to soak with tears, but she had more important things to worry about right now.
Pulling Jackie inside and guiding her to the couch, Shauna held Jackie as she sobbed for what felt like forever. When the tears finally started to subside, and Jackie looked up at her with her big hazel eyes, Shauna asked the question she’d been asking herself since she’d opened the door to find Jackie there.
“Jackie, what happened?” Shauna asked softly. She hadn’t seen Jackie break down like this in years.
Jackie opened her mouth, only for a broken sound to come out. She shook her head.
“It’s nothing - it’s just… Jeff, y’know?”
Jeff. Shauna didn’t like him. He was so stupid, so arrogant. He didn’t deserve Jackie. If he’d hurt her…
“What did he do, Jax?”
“W-well we’re not together anymore,” Jackie laughed nervously.
Shauna had to choke down an ill-timed smile, hearing that. She didn’t exactly disguise her disdain for Jeff Sadecki, but Jackie had somehow remained blind to it for the entirety of their relationship.
“What happened?”
“Well,” Jackie forced a pained smile. “I think I’m gay, for starters.”
Shauna’s mouth dropped open involuntarily, and she forced it shut before Jackie noticed.
“Shit, Jackie. I mean…. Shit.”
Jackie looked up at her through her lashes, and Shauna felt something inside her clench. Jackie looked nervous, yet also… amused? Shauna shook the feeling off, trying to focus on asking neutral questions.
“How long have you known?”
“I think I’ve always known, y’know. Me and Jeff… well he’s never…. He doesn’t….”
“Turn you on?” Shauna finished.
“Yeah.”
“Wait, so how did Jeff find out?”
“I mean, I told him.”
“You told him?”
“Well…. he’d already kinda worked it out when he saw me leaving the bathroom with a girl.” Jackie said, looking anywhere but at Shauna. “I think he already had his suspicions.”
Shauna felt like she wanted to throw up. She couldn’t work out why hearing Jackie had done stuff with a girl made her stomach twist the way that it did.
“How did he take it?”
“Not well,” Jackie rolled up her sleeve to reveal marks where somebody had gripped her arm tight enough to bruise. “He told me that he was going to tell the entire school, and my parents. I’m….” Jackie trailed off, gulping down her fear.
A flash of white hot rage sparked in Shauna’s gut. She wanted to kill Jeff, slowly. She wanted to see him beg for mercy, she wanted to see the terror in his eyes as the life drained from his eyes. She wanted him to pay for what he’d done to Jackie. What he’d done to her Jackie.
Almost as if she was reading Shauna’s mind, Jackie shook her head.
“Shauna, I know that look. Don’t. He’s just not worth it.”
“Not worth it? Jackie, he’s a fucking dick! Nobody gets to talk to you like that!” Shauna was fired up, ready to go find Jeff right then and there.
“I know, Shauna. Just…. I need you right now. Please?”
Jackie reached for her hand, and Shauna could feel her shaking. She swallowed down her anger, for Jackie’s sake more than her own. Jackie needed her. Shauna wrapped her arms around her best friend in a tight hug, who relaxed at her touch. They stayed like that for a moment, both just enjoying holding the other, before they pulled apart.
“I’m scared, Shauna. My parents aren’t exactly… good about this sort of stuff.”
“Jax, look at me.” Jackie looked up, her eyes meeting Shauna’s.
“You can stay here as long as you need. My mom loves you. I love you. At least stay the night, okay?”
Jackie nodded slowly, a small smile playing across her features
“Thanks Shauna.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jackie. You’re my best friend, nothing is going to change that.” Shauna said fiercely.
“I’m not changing the movie, though.” Shauna smiled.
“Hey, I love those angry teddy bears, you know that.”
“You mean the Ewoks?”
“Yeah, the Ewaks.”
Shauna just laughed as she hit play on the movie again, pulling Jackie in closer, so she could wrap her arms around her. Jackie leaned her head on Shauna’s shoulder, who stroked her hair as the camera panned across the desert planet of Tatooine. Shauna could feel Jackie’s heartbeat slowing, could feel her breath steadying as she laid there, and as the Rebellion staged a final fight against the Empire.
When Shauna’s mother returned, an hour or so later, she found Jackie and Shauna asleep, bodies entwined, the TV still on. She smiled at the sight in front of her. Shauna hadn’t mentioned Jackie was coming over, but Deborah was sure she’d explain the situation in the morning. She turned the TV off and laid a blanket across the two peaceful looking girls.
For the rest of high school, Jackie and Shauna had essentially lived together. Shauna’s mother, Debra, already saw Jackie as part of the family, and she couldn’t believe her ears when Jackie told her how her parents had reacted. The situation only helped to influence the pair’s already easy decision to go to college in New York, a proverbial mecca for gay people compared to their hometown. Lottie asked if they wanted to move in with her their sophomore year and they both jumped at the chance, which is how Shauna found herself standing between a red-faced Jackie and some random girl in their kitchen on a Saturday morning, hangover threatening to burst her brain.
As it turns out, the screaming girl had thought she’d seen a spider (she hadn’t, it had simply been a large mass of black string,) and had decided that the correct course of action was to wake up the entire eastern seaboard. Jackie didn’t seem particularly surprised by her presence in the apartment, which led Shauna to one conclusion (the correct one, judging by the fact Jackie had been avoiding her gaze) - that this girl was the reason that her best friend had vanished from the bar last night.
Jackie rushed her now-unwelcome guest out of the apartment, her face turning dark red as she spun around and saw Shauna standing there with a wry smile on her face.
“So THAT’S where you disappeared to last night, huh? You told me that you were tired!”
“I was tired, Shipman… Tired of not being fucked by Sally,” Jackie replied with a goofy smile of her own, her eyes never leaving Shauna’s.
“Sally, huh? Should I expect to see Sally around here more regularly?” Shauna asked nonchalantly, trying desperately to conceal the heat and anger rising in her chest.
Jackie scoffed at that. “You’re never going to see Sarah again, most likely.”
“Sarah? I thought her name was Sally.”
“I’ll be totally honest, I didn’t quite have time to catch her name last night… on account of all of the orgasms,” she replied, giving her an over-the-top eyebrow wiggle.
Shauna pushed down a sudden urge to strange Jackie at that.
“Jackie! Your hook-up woke me up screaming at a ball of string and you didn’t even get her fucking name?”
“I don’t think I could tell you the names of half the people I’ve slept with, Shauna, I’ll level with you here.”
Well, there was Susie with the black hair. Liz. Nicole. Britta. Susie with the pink hair, Shauna thought to herself. Even if Jackie couldn’t, she could remember the names of every girl who had crossed the threshold of Jackie’s bedroom. Just thinking about them made Shauna’s heart race. A burning feeling spread through her chest, up to her face.
Before Shauna could open her mouth to reply, Jackie moved towards the bathroom, and slid in, yelling as she did.
“Well, now that I’m up, I’ll take the bathroom first!”
“You absolute bitch!”
The last Shauna saw of Jackie was a grin as she shut the door and clicked the lock.
Suddenly, Shauna found herself alone in the common area of the apartment with her thoughts running a thousand miles a minute. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard it felt like it was making an attempt to leave and start a new life far away from its owner.
Breathing out as if she’d been underwater for minutes, Shauna felt the rage leaving her body. She didn’t really understand where any of it had come from, nor was she particularly interested in trying to unpack it while it felt like a drum was being beaten inside her head.
There was something… familiar about that girl, Shauna thought to herself as she stood staring at the now-locked bathroom door. She was absolutely certain that she’d never met Jackie’s most recent hook-up before, regardless of whether her name was Sally or Sarah, but some small voice in the back of her mind was telling her that she knew her from somewhere.
Shauna headed back towards her bedroom, where she could pass out and become useless for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, just as soon as Shauna went to open her door, another door in the apartment banged open.
“Just the bitch I was looking for!” Natalie yelled. Shauna’s already terrible headache pulsed, like it was making an attempt to break out of the confines of her skull. Before Shauna could even open her mouth, she felt a small but firm hand grip her arm and start to pull her towards the front door.
“Come on, we’re going out,” Nat told her.
Shauna didn’t have the energy to argue.
Shauna quite liked Natalie Scatorccio. She wasn’t in school like the rest of her roommates, but she still saw her often. This was mainly due to the fact that Lottie and Nat had been in what could only be defined as a ‘situationship’ (Shauna loathed the word, but it was accurate) for over a year and a half now. Initially, she didn’t really think Nat would have been Lottie’s type, but the more Shauna had gotten to know Lottie, the more she’d realized that the punk girl was exactly the type of person that Lottie loved.
They’d met for the first time at the bar Natalie worked at. The filthy-looking gay bar wasn’t normally the type of place they would go, but Lottie had insisted that she had a good feeling about it. Jackie had pouted, but not complained, and when they got inside it was like Lottie was magnetically drawn to the bartender. The pair had been sleeping together ever since that night.
Although, the phrase “sleeping together” wasn’t fully indicative of what they were actually doing - Whenever Nat stayed over there was enough noise coming from Lottie’s room that Shauna had started using her pillow as make-shift ear muffs. Just yesterday, she’d picked up some… suspiciously-shaped packages for Lottie from the mailroom that she suspected were not going to improve the situation.
She really needed to buy some earplugs.
“You’ve looked better, Shauna, I’m not going to lie to you,” Nat said to her as they left the apartment.
“I mean, I wasn’t exactly planning on being seen in public today.”
“You know we’ve got another party tonight, right?”
“Fuck, I forgot,” Shauna said with a grimace.
“That’s why we’re going to get shit for everybody.”
“Lot’s paying though,” Natalie said quickly when she saw the look of concern etched across Shauna’s face. “Perks of having a rich family, I guess.”
The pair continued walking a well-worn route to a bodega just down the street from the apartment. Shauna considered whether or not she could get out of attending the party.
“Sorry, more drinking? I think I’m going to actually die.”
“Look, it’s one last party and then you can do whatever you usually do, rot in bed or whatever. Van and Tai are coming, it’s a whole thing, it’ll be great.”
Shauna perked up at that. It’d been a while since she’d seen her former soccer teammates, and they were always incredibly fun to be around. She loved those two almost as much as she loved Jackie, and they were so adorably in love that they made any room they were in light up the second that they walked in.
The pair shopped in almost dead silence, Natalie clearly deep in thought about something. Shauna was just thankful for the opportunity to not be alone, despite the fact her headache was still causing her a frankly ridiculous amount of pain. As much as she loved her own company, as much as she enjoyed just sitting alone with a book and falling into whatever world the author had created, her mind was a traitor to itself. She battled with constant self-doubt and anxiety whenever she thought too deeply about a situation. Had Nat not grabbed her when she did, Shauna was sure she’d be doing exactly that.
It wasn’t till they’d both walked back to the apartment complex, several bags in each of their arms, that the other shoe dropped, and Natalie finally revealed the real reason that she’d forced Shauna to go on this mission with her.
Something that enamored Natalie to Shauna was the fact that she was a smoker, and whenever she’d leave the apartment for a smoke she’d share her tobacco with Shauna without complaint. Shauna knew she shouldn’t, knew it wasn’t healthy for her, but it helped her relax.
“I gotta ask, are you okay?” Nat said, holding out a cigarette to Shauna. “You look like you need this.”
As she leaned in to light the cigarette, Nat looked at Shauna with an intensity in her eyes reserved for moments when she was worried one of her friends might be about to do something extremely stupid.
“I’m fine, Nat.”
Despite the protest, Shauna took a healthy drag from the cigarette, feeling her nerves calm as she did.
“You sure? I saw the way you were looking at Jack last night when she was leaving.”
If Shauna was being totally honest, she couldn’t quite remember anything about last night. Well, apart from a series of bad decisions that Lottie had made for the group involving shots. Yet despite the gap in her memory, she knew exactly what Natalie was talking about, because it was a look she’d given Jackie a thousand times before. It was a look that hid a tangle of emotions that maybe a straight girl shouldn’t have towards her best friend of over a decade (another thing for Shauna to unpack one day, but probably not today).
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Shauna thrust the cigarette at Nat
“Listen, Shauna.” Natalie interrupted with a grimace. “I’m not going to tell you that you’ve got unresolved stuff to work through, because I mean, look at me….” She trailed off, taking a deep puff before continuing.
“But I’ve seen the way you look at Jackie. Lottie has seen the way you look at Jackie. Everybody has seen the way you look at Jackie. It’s not exactly subtle, and even if nothing comes out of it, you should probably talk to her.” Nat held out the cigarette as if it were an olive branch.
Shauna paused before taking the cigarette and taking another drag.
“I-I’ll try, I guess. I just need some time to figure myself out.”
“I don’t really think that we ever stop figuring ourselves out. Humans aren’t a puzzle to be solved, they’re not a riddle to answer. The best thing that you can do right now is work out what you want, who you want to be and who you actually are,” Natalie said, her eyes fixated on Shauna so tightly that it was like she was drilling into the girl's soul.
“Did you get that off the back of a cereal box or something?” Shauna asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Hey, I can be profound sometimes. It’s just rare.” Natalie grinned toothily, flipping her off as she did.
“You know, I can really tell that the world has gone weird when I’m taking advice from you.”
“Hey!” Nat punched Shauna in the arm, taking the last drag from the dying cigarette and stubbing out the butt under her shoe.
The pair turned towards the door of the complex to head back inside.
Shauna hesitated at the threshold of the door, turning towards Nat. “Totally random question that’s been bugging me all day - did the girl that Jackie went home with look familiar to you?”
Natalie barked out a laugh, but that quickly stopped when she saw the blank look Shauna was giving her. Her face morphed into an expression of disbelief.
“Are you fucking kidding, Shipman? She was the spitting image of you,” Natalie said.
Shauna tried to muster up the words to respond, but found that she couldn’t. All she could do was gape as her face flushed, speechless.
The moment Nat and Shauna stepped into the apartment, Lottie pounced on Nat with such vigor that you’d have been forgiven for believing the pair had been happily dating for years, not just fucking. They were doing everything a couple would do, so why they weren’t official was beyond Shauna’s understanding.
Jackie was nowhere to be seen and Shauna felt a pit opening in her stomach. She wasn’t particularly concerned, Jackie was an adult (by the legal definition of the word, anyway), and could take care of herself. Plus, she was probably just out getting cigs. Still, Shauna felt almost an irrational disappointment whenever Jackie wasn’t near her.
“Lot, where the fuck is this party tonight anyway?” Shauna asked as she threw herself onto the couch, wishing that she could sink into it and just sleep for the rest of her life. No such luck, it turned out.
“So, you remember Jean from my class?” Lottie said with a sharp-toothed grin.
“Vaguely, is she the one I’ve never seen with the same color hair twice?”
“The very same. Anyway, she just broke it off with her boyfriend after she found him cheating on her with her best friend and she’s not exactly in an amazing place right now, so she just wants to get as messed up as she can.”
“And she’s decided we’re the right people to get fucked up with?” Shauna replied with an eyebrow raised.
“Well, not us specifically,” Lottie replied cheerfully. Shauna rubbed her temples as her hangover once again made itself known. Lottie clearly was not suffering from the same problem; she couldn’t stop talking about how blitzed they were all going to get, “It’s an open invitation. Van and Tai are going to be here in six hours, we’re going to pre-game, then in a few more hours we’ll have forgotten our own names.”
Shauna laughed. “You’ve got this all planned out, huh?” she said.
At that moment, Jackie burst through the door, waving a carton of cigarettes.
“Hey, Jax. Ten bucks says that Lottie and Nat will be fucking in some bathroom by midnight?” Shauna asked with a laugh.
“Midnight? Please. They’ll be fucking like rabbits by eight,” Jackie replied. As a reward, Lottie threw a cushion at her face.
Van and Tai arrived just under three hours later, beating out Lottie’s estimation by around five and a half minutes. The pair, as sickeningly in love as they had been since they were teenagers, almost immediately started telling stories of their college lives.
“So, the guy walked up to me and went ‘What’s a pretty lady like you doing in a place like this?’” Van told the huddled apartment through peals of laughter. “And Tai walked behind him and said -”
“I said ‘they’re not a lady, and they’re here to give me the time of my life’,” Tai continued. “He walked away after that, grumbling something about, ‘Not again,’ so I think we might have given him some stuff to chew on.”
It was then that Shauna felt a small tap on the shoulder from Jackie, who gestured in the direction of her bedroom. It was a ritual that they would get ready together before any party, before any excursion to a bar, and it was one that Shauna deeply valued. It was a time where she was guaranteed Jackie all to herself, which she knew was selfish, but she wanted her best friend to belong to her and to her alone, at least sometimes. If Natalie could have heard the possessive note in Shauna’s voice, she’d have never let it go, would have told her that there’s ‘absolutely no heterosexual explanation for feeling that way”, but Shauna didn’t care.
The pair made their exit, promising the room only that they wouldn’t be long, and that they’d be ready for the party in no time. As they slipped into Jackie’s room, Shauna threw herself onto the massive bed with a light bounce.
“God, this might be a mistake, Jack,” Shauna said.
“I mean, I’m really excited to go out with everyone but I haven’t felt this hungover in such a long time and drinking more surely isn’t going to make me feel any better, right?” she continued.
Jackie just pouted at her.
“Come on, Shauna. I’ll be with you the entire night,” Jackie told her as she pulled out her make-up bag, ready to help Shauna look less like a walking corpse.
“The entire night, huh?” Shauna raised her eyebrow. “You sure you’re not going to slip off with Sally again? Or was it Sarah, I forget?”
That earned her a playful smack from Jackie as she brought the brush to Shauna’s face. Shaunastiffened. The process of Jackie touching her face, applying make-up and cooing over how pretty she looked always made Shauna’s heart race and her chest tighten uncomfortably.
It was totally normal to feel like you were going to explode whenever your best friend touched you, right? Shauna thought to herself.
She’d felt like that for her entire life. Spending time with Jackie was just different to spending time with anybody else. Her heart fluttered, her breath hitched in her throat, and she’d kinda just assumed that this was common for best friends. Surely, Jackie felt the same way, right?
And if it was something more, if it was something deeper, Shauna ignored it. It would just make things too complicated, and Shauna didn’t like to do complicated - complicated caused problems, complicated caused her heart to ache, complicated broke people. Shauna just didn’t need complicated, so she tried not to dwell on the way she felt.
She was ripped out of her mental stupor by Jackie breaking the silence.
“Anyway, when are you going to bring back a guy? You haven’t been with anybody since the end of high school. You can’t just wait for Mr Perfect,” Jackie said. Shauna winced at the memory of Randy Walsh awkwardly fumbling at her body. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but he’d gotten the job done. Well, partially, at least.
“Hang on, what would you know about Mr Perfect, Mrs ‘I’ve slept with two dozen women since starting college’?” she playfully asked. Jackie blushed as she put the finishing touches on Shauna’s face.
“College is the perfect time to try to find yourself, that’s what they say,” Jackie replied, flipping Shauna off.
“You haven’t even gone on a date since we started here!”
“Maybe I’m just waiting for the right person,” Shauna said with a smile and a raised eyebrow.
Jackie spun around to face her.“Well, he’s not just going to fall into your lap, Shauna. You’re going to have to make some effort, y’know.”
Shauna’s brain burned with a question that had been weighing on her mind ever since her conversation with Nat - was Jackie consciously sleeping with girls who looked like her?
But instead of voicing it, she swallowed it down. she didn’t want to get into a potential argument, especially not with their entire friend group in the next room.
They finished getting ready quickly after that, both slipping out of the room to wolf-whistles and cheers from the group.
They arrived at the party a little after nine, each of them already buzzed. Hanging around with her friends was deadly for her sobriety, Shauna had learned that quickly, but she was just glad they were all together again.
The party was a blur. People kept coming up to Shauna who she could have sworn she had never met before in her life. She just nodded and smiled, hoping that no one caught onto the fact that she hadn’t actually said their name. Van and Tai quickly found a corner where they could make out.
Nat, Lottie, Shauna and Jackie stayed together, moving as a pack, downing shot after shot, making mistake after mistake. This was going to result in a pretty gnarly hangover tomorrow, Shauna knew that, but then what was college but an opportunity to make mistakes and memories?
Throughout the night, they danced and danced until it felt like their legs were going to give way. Even Van and Tai found the time to pull themselves apart from each other, their display of affection clearly not yet over and only on a brief pause. It had been too long, Shauna knew, since she had seen those two, and she vowed to try and see them more over the coming year. The night blurred on, and eventually Shauna found herself stumbling through the amassed crowd of people alone. She ended up in the kitchen, resting her face against the cold and hard countertop.
Jackie had gone outside to smoke, and Van and Tai had excused themselves back to the apartment, clearly looking to resume their tryst in a more private setting. She was pretty sure she’d just seen Nat and Lottie leaving too - and checking the time, Shauna confirmed that it was still just before midnight. Looked like she would have won that bet, had Jackie actually taken it. Shauna would have to tell her when Jackie finished her smoke.
She took a drink from her cup, savouring the burn as the alcohol hit her throat as she took in the scene. What she didn’t notice was the girl slowly making her way over in her peripheral vision.
“Hey,” said an unfamiliar voice, far too close to Shauna. She jumped, startled. “I’m Melissa, and you must be an angel.”
Shauna let out a laugh, raising her eyebrows. “Does that line normally work on women?”
“Depends, is it working on you?” Melissa replied with a cocksure grin.
Shauna was not proud to admit the answer to that question was yes. Maybe if she could have found any of her friends, what happened next wouldn’t have happened. Perhaps if she was slightly less drunk, what happened next wouldn’t have happened. But her friends weren’t there, and she was drunk.
Melissa grabbed Shauna’s hand, with a smile that caused Shauna’s heart to flutter in a way that until now she’d thought was reserved only for Jackie. Then again, maybe it wasn’t her heart. Maybe it was somewhere… lower.
Shauna let herself be led through the house and found herself standing in a bathroom, pushed against a wall, eyes wide and dark.
“Hey, you alright? We can stop if yo-” Melissa said before Shauna cut her off with a passionate kiss.
“Shut the fuck up and just kiss me,” Shauna panted.
God, why the fuck does this feel so good? Shauna found herself thinking. I’m not gay, am I?
She pushed that thought down as far as she could, not in the right headspace nor the right place to confront that possibility. She just wanted to keep kissing, as long as she could, as much as she could, to make the desire she had built up go away.
Unfortunately for both of them, a loud ping from Melissa’s phone interrupted them just as her hand crept to the strip of bare skin peeking out from under the hem of Shauna’s shirt. She wrenched her hand back and smiled sheepishly at Shauna.
“I’m sorry, I gotta get this,” she apologized. Melissa’s eyes widened at the message on her screen.“Oh shit, I gotta go. I’m sorry to kiss and run but my friend needs some help. Hang on-” Melissa paused before opening the door, pulling out a pen from her pocket and writing a number on Shauna’s hand.
“ Call me.” Melissa smiled as she walked away, leaving Shauna standing there in the bathroom, her brain working overtime to attempt to rationalize the way she was feeling, the fact that she undeniably enjoyed that, the fact that she was basically quivering with want. She could still feel the ghost of Melissa’s lips against hers, her fingers on her skin, and perhaps most damning of all - how soaked her underwear was.
Maybe Nat was right, Shauna thought to herself.
Maybe I do have some stuff to work through.