Jackie called Shauna at four in the morning. Shauna, sleepy eyed and groggy, picked up her ringing device with a blaring ringtone, and answered without checking the caller ID, a slow pull of exhaustion in her voice. Jackie had been slurring her words, giggling in fits of laughter, blushing over the line, so incredibly happy to hear Shauna’s voice and listen to the curving way she pronounced syllables. After incoherent mumbling and a moment where Shauna nearly fell back into sleep again, Jackie had confessed that she needed a ride home. Shauna had classes in the morning, early seven AM classes.
But she found that she muttered a soft ‘okay’ to her best friend, tugging herself out of bed, kicking her legs over the edge. She abandoned the warmth of her covers, fumbled in the pitch darkness for her converse, which she left unlaced once she slipped into them. She wore a baggy band t-shirt and sweats, a complete turn off to everyone who saw her appear at the party- who happened to be dressed in much nicer, sexier attire.
Jackie found Shauna before Shauna had the chance to find her. She fell into her arms, a drunken mess and a pouty expression attached to her face. She gently pushed Jackie into her car, tender hands and a raspy voice. Halfway on the way to her on campus dorm, Jackie whined that instead of wanting to go back into a room with a grumpy roommate, she desired to go back to Shauna’s house and sleep in her bed.
When a sober Jackie tried to get her way, she pleaded and offered sweet nothings, but dropped the topic if the other person wasn’t budging. A drunk Jackie, however, was persistent as hell. She didn’t let up until she got her way, which is why Shauna decided it was the wise decision to drive her back to her place rather than the former.
The sky was still sleeping while she turned her key into the lock of her front door, and Jackie nearly toppled into the entrance if it hadn’t been for Shauna’s grounding hands holding her waist still.
Shauna led her back into her room, fingertips softly intertwined, and Jackie flopped onto the comfortability of Shauna’s mattress, primed hair bouncing in the process. She sifted through her closet, picking out a set of pajamas for her as quickly as she could. She was exhausted, and she wanted to turn her lamp light off as soon as possible. But with the way Jackie struggled to kick her shoes off, Shauna figured they were far from a good night’s rest.
Sighing, Shauna drops a pile of clothes onto the carpet of her floor and slides down the edge of her bed where Jackie’s legs hung, sneakers tied into place.
“Was the party fun at least?” She starts mindless conversation out of curiosity while she unlaces her shoes delicately, taking account of each heavy knot.
Jackie hums, lips sealed, eyes staring at Shauna’s desk off to the side. “It was okay,” She twirls a strand of her honey blonde hair in her fingers, “I wish you were there.”
“I don’t like sorority parties,” She chides her quietly, “You know that.” Shauna pulls Jackie’s left shoe off, switching to start on her right.
“I know…” She murmurs under her breath, “I still wish you were there.”
Shauna finishes untightening the laces, an aching hitch in her throat she couldn’t swallow.
“I’m here now.”
“But it’s not the same,” Jackie squirms as Shauna stands to her tired feet, an alcoholic flush to her complexion. “There were a lot of people hitting on me. And I mean, a lot.” Shauna scoffs a smile, shaking her head.
“Is that your humility or the booze talking?”
“No!” She squeaks, “I don’t mean it in a cocky way, it was just surprising.” Jackie draws it out slowly, and Shauna puts a questioning hand on her hip.
“It surprises you that people wanna sleep with you?”
Because of course they did. Who didn’t want a chance with the one and only Jackie Taylor?
“If you would let me finish thinking,” Jackie rambles nonsensically, a typical trigger to her tipsiness, “It surprised me because it wasn’t boys flirting with me. They were girls.”
Oh.
Shauna’s heart stammers in her chest, and she hears the repeated slamming of her blood rushing through her veins and pumping into her arteries. She purses her lips together thickly, her tongue suddenly feeling like heavy lead weighing in her mouth.
“Congratulations.” Shauna resents in quiet awkwardness only she can feel, “Both teams want you.”
“Thanks, I think?” Jackie shifts in her position, the clothes clinging to her skin uncomfortably and all she wants to do is tear them off her body. “But I’m not, like,” She scrunches up her nose, “…Gay.”
And didn’t Shauna know it.
“It’s a good thing you’re not obligated to hook up with them, then.” Shauna crawls over the duvet of her bed, letting her head fall into the squishiness of her pillow. She faces the ceiling, and her chin dips down into her chest when she feels Jackie climb up the bed, wobbly knees. She lays down next to Shauna, Jackie’s leg falling over Shauna’s knee, the intoxicating smell of her shampoo wafting under Shauna’s nose as she digs her head into her shoulder. Jackie lays there, biting her lip in contemplation. Shauna’s heart bleeds into her ribcage, the burning trail Jackie marks upon her skin every time she touches her in the slightest.
“What’s it like?” Jackie watches the pattern of the ceiling they lay under, the same way Shauna does. She lays there in thought, while Shauna lays there in avoidance.
“What’s what like?” Shauna returns, voice soft.
Jackie’s head spins with alcohol, her eyelids are burdened with something she can’t pinpoint. All she knows is that she loves the feeling of Shauna’s sweet voice in her ears, it’s enthralling to hear it paired with the hotness of her breathing.
“Hooking up with girls.”
Shauna’s stomach lurches in a halt.
Jackie knew Shauna was bisexual. She was her best friend, it wasn’t easy to hide something as obvious as her attraction towards women. Well, hiding her feelings for Jackie wasn't easy, either, but she never seemed to notice the plain obvious. The thing was that they had never talked about Shauna’s bisexuality. Jackie acknowledged it, sometimes she said passing comments about how she could get any guy- or any girl- she wanted; she always added the last part frantically as an extension to her original sentence, like the thought of it had her tongue tied. For Jackie to bluntly ask her something so open and vulnerable, while also being under the influence, churned the small intestines inside of Shauna’s body.
“What makes you ask?” She plays it cool, or she tries to. Her words come off curious, but she’s breaking apart on the inside. If she had tiny people in her head, they would be running around, scrambling for the emergency exit, pushing their hands through their hair while simultaneously screaming.
Jackie shrugs her shoulders loosely, and she pinches the jutting pocket of Shauna’s sweatpants. She plays with the material, bunching it up between her fingertips.
“I don’t know,” She says calmly, only a trace of sobriety hinting in her words, “I guess I’m curious.”
“You went from telling me you’re not gay to being curious about being gay?”
Jackie blows a scoff from her mouth, eyes squinted and twinkling with a mixture of annoyance and amusement.
“Can’t I change my mind?” Shauna rolls her eyes. Obviously she could, no one was stopping her from that. But asking Shauna what it was like to be with a woman? It felt like a kick to her throat.
“You had an entire three hours to change your mind.” She references the party, and she feels Jackie shift onto her side, pulling her body forward to fully look at her best friend.
“But those girls weren’t pretty,” The words stumble out from her lips sluggishly, and Shauna feels herself descending into another eye roll.
“If you found none of those girls pretty, you’re probably not gay, Jackie.”
“I’m not curious about being gay,” She defends, although she’s not offended by the assumption. “I’m just curious about what it’s like to be with a girl like that.” She chews on her thoughts, and Shauna keeps her stare fixated on the ceiling. The length of their arms brushed, and it made the hair on the back of Shauna’s neck poke out. It was such a simple thing, she knew she wasn’t going to risk turning on her side and melting into Jackie’s eyes.
“And I’ll have you know, I find plenty of girls pretty.” She nods her head animatedly, lips puckered to match her attitude. “I find you pretty.”
A match strikes against Shauna’s body, and she goes up in flames from head to toe.
“That doesn’t count,” Shauna whispers. She hopes the shakiness in her throat doesn’t betray how she’s feeling. “I’m your best friend, you kind of have to think that.”
“That’s not true,” She says, tucking her hand underneath her head for comfort. “I find Tai and Van pretty. Or Nat and Lottie. Even Misty.” The expression on her face tells Shauna she’s not done talking. “But I think you’re the prettiest.” She leans in closer, lips brushing against the expanse of her ear, “Just don’t tell them I said that.” She whispers it as a dirty secret, and Shauna clenches her jaw rigidly, feeling the softness of her breath hit the side of her cheek.
“Thanks, Jax.” It’s all she musters the strength to say. If she said too much, she would be reaching a point of no return.
“This is the part where you say I’m pretty, too.” Jackie sits up, smiles welcomingly and voice playfully expecting a compliment. Shauna smiles at the sight of her very drunk best friend, and she shakes her head.
“You’re very pretty, Jackie.”
Satisfied, she lays back down next to Shauna, closer this time. She wraps her arm around the midriff of her waist, nuzzling her warm face into the crevice of Shauna’s delightful neck that smells like sandalwood and trees.
“Will you tell me now?” She murmurs, words muffling into the neckline of Shauna’s shirt.
“Tell you what?” She replies, spooning her indecisively, her hand coming up to run circles over the small of her back.
“What it’s like!” She exclaims, “To hook up with a girl!”
Shit, she was still stuck on this?
The shapes she’s drawing into her clothed skin stop. Her breathing freezes in reluctance, and she wishes she was dealing with a sober Jackie instead of an insistent drunk one. The only way out of this, unfortunately, was through. She sighs, turning her head to Jackie, who looks up at her now with eagerly waiting eyes.
“Why do you wanna know so badly?”
“Because… I can’t really kiss a girl while being straight, can I?”
“Sure you can.”
Jackie’s eyebrows knit together. For some reason she hadn’t thought about it like that, but the comical head shake that follows tells Shauna that she didn’t like thinking about it like that.
“Maybe I’d rather hear about it than actually do it.” She slurs, “Ever thought of that, Shipman?”
The words don’t make sense, but to Jackie they do. Shauna inhales a breath, preparing her lungs for the tornado of fireworks to come.
“It’s not like being with a boy.” She starts with, eyes transfixed to the ceiling the same way glue sticks to paper. “Girls are softer. They kiss better.” Jackie snorts into the skin on Shauna’s neck, and she feels the warmth transfer into her.
“How could you know that?”
“Because I’ve kissed boys and girls. Have you?” They make eye contact, and Jackie loses her ability of free speech. She frowns, guilty, her lips downturning as she mutters a sad and drawn out ‘no’.
“They just… they know what they’re doing.” She continues, and Jackie keeps her head tilted upwards to watch Shauna talk. “Boys don’t. They don’t know how to touch you because it’s too complex for them to understand. But girls just know.” She tucks her arm above her head, elevating her position.
“Why do you think they know?”
So many questions dripped with intrigue for a girl who was ‘just curious’. Shauna glances down at her, noticing the thin strand of hair that puffed out against her forehead messily.
“Boys don’t have the same anatomy we do.” She tries to break it down in the dumbest way she could imagine; the only way Jackie’s wasted brain could comprehend.
“Girls know what to do because they know what feels good for them. Boys think they know what they’re doing, but girls know they know what they’re doing. It’s hard to explain,” She clears her throat, dislodging the lump. “You have to experience it to get it.”
Jackie frowns. The prospect of not grasping this lecture intellectually bothers her greatly, and her eyes have a disappointed glint inside of her hazel hues.
“How can I experience it?”
Shauna blinks in confusion. “You kiss a girl.” She couldn’t understand why it mattered. “How else?”
Jackie pulls out all stops on her pout, but it transforms into an expression of misunderstanding, too.
“Can you help me experience it?”
Shauna’s tongue falls numb. What were the implications behind that? What were the intentions, especially? Shauna understood experimenting, she partook in it all the time. She could get behind the idea of trying something new, exciting and exhilarating, but what she couldn’t get behind was her best friend- whom she’s been harboring secret feelings for- asking her, drunk, to help her carry out her first girl kiss. It made her head spin with madness, her cheeks ran red and hot.
“What?” She shakes her head immediately, she couldn’t let her emotions translate to her face. “No.”
Jackie’s pout grows stronger. God, how could she perfect that face even more while inebriated?
“Why not?”
“Because..” Shauna scrambles for an explanation, an excuse to quiet the dying need to do just what Jackie wants. “Because we’re best friends. Best friends don’t, like… I don’t know, experience that stuff with each other.” She sounds like she has no idea what she’s talking about, and she’s just rejecting Jackie for the fun of it. “If you wanted to experience it Jackie, you could’ve asked one of the girls at that party.”
“But Shauna,” She practically whines out her name, pulling out of her arms to exaggerate her truth, “I told you those girls weren’t pretty!”
“There are lots of pretty girls out there, Jax.” She shuts down her begging. No, absolutely no way, and no how would Shauna be willing to sacrifice this part of her into Jackie’s tempting hands. She could deal with pining from afar, yearning for an outcome that would never be. But having the opportunity to kiss her, to hold her waist steady and grab at her hair without actually having her? That had to be a notion similar to medieval torture.
“I can help you find a few.”
Jackie sighs, loudly and in an outward motion that heaves her entire body closer to Shauna’s. Her head hangs in the crevice of her shoulder, nose brushing into the corner of her cotton shirt.
“No girl is ever as pretty as you.”
She says it with soft defeat, and it stirs unwanted feelings inside of Shauna that she had been pushing down for half of her life. She survived high-school crushing on her best friend, she figured once they graduated and ventured off into separate colleges, meeting new people, enjoying different sides of the world, things would change. She wouldn’t have to deal with the excruciating burden of butterflies fluttering every time Jackie smiled at her, or the erupting volcano in her chest whenever their skin brushed unintentionally.
She was miserably wrong in her calculations, because here she lies with Jackie, talking about her delusions of grandeur, her drunk ramblings, and Shauna’s pounding blood circulating her body. Nothing had changed between them like she fantasized, if anything things only grew. The distance between them attending different schools didn’t cause a rift in their friendship like Shauna had secretly hoped it would- if only to escape the shackles of being in love with her best friend- instead it drew Jackie closer to her. She wanted her around even more to make up for the lack of not having her everyday, she refused to settle for less when it came to Shauna.
“Well, good thing you like boys.” It feels foreign, the way her rebuttal sticks to the roof of her mouth. It feels like a glob of peanut butter, or a stick of butter.
“That’s not a good thing like you think it is!” She huffs a breath in frustration, writhing out of Shauna’s light grip to toss herself over to a separate half of the bed.
“Boys aren’t pretty, either.”
Shauna snorts in agreement. She believed that, she saw more of that than anything.
“Boys aren’t supposed to be pretty.” She counters, “They’re supposed to be hot, mostly. If they’re lucky.” She thought Jackie was knowledgeable enough on this- after transitioning from high-school to college she bumped up in rankings from a novice to a professional on the art of men.
“Then that’s not fair,” Jackie sounds like a sore loser who just lost her first away game. She tells Shauna these things as if she’s in control of them, as if she has a universal remote to what made life reasonable and what made life unbearable. “I want a boy as pretty as you.”
She feels a fluster of heat travel from her chest to the ground beneath her faint dark circles. She didn’t know if she should be flattered or concerned that Jackie was still incredibly drunk, talking like this in a ‘no big deal’ manner.
“I wish I had a twin brother for you.” She says it in the same way leaves shake before they shed from a tree branch, and the anguish she tries to pass off casually doesn’t work out too well in her favor.
“Ewww…” Jackie draws out, flipping back over to look at Shauna, “I don’t. You would still be prettier than him.”
Shauna was stuck between a rock and an objectively hard place. Her best friend was drunk, she spoke gibberish of sexuality, women, boys lacking attractiveness, and somehow, in the middle of all of her spiels and her whining, she managed to circle the conversation back to Shauna every single time. She had been trying to steer Jackie away from mentioning her name, but the more she spoke, the more she was inclined to bring her up.
“I told you what hooking up with a girl was like,” She sits up, and Jackie’s eyes follow her. “Will you go to bed now?”
Jackie considers her words, realizing the ball is in her court. She bites her bottom lip, hair mused around her head, forming the picturistic realism of an angel. She watches the way Shauna turns her body to fully face her, the thickness of her brown locks swaying with her movements. Shauna really was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. She knew she was the prettiest girl she would ever see.
“I don’t wanna go to bed yet.”
Shauna glances at the alarm clock situated on her nightstand. It reads 5:15 AM in bloody red, and then she looks back over to the clothes she left littered on the floor, the outfit she meant for Jackie to have put on a good half hour ago. Shauna knows Jackie as well as the linings on the back of her hand, and she knew determination in her voice when she hears it. She was planning on putting up a fight tonight- she wasn’t going to fall into a tricking slumber so fast.
“What will it take to get you to sleep?” She asks, but the moment she turns back around to Jackie, she understands the mistake she’s made. A mischievous, heavy look dances on Jackie’s face. She’s not smiling, but her eyebrows are raised tersely, and she wore such a dangerous aspect to her expression that told Shauna she was going to be the cause of her death.
“Kiss me.”
Shauna has to clamp her teeth down into the side of her torn up cheek to prevent her jaw from dropping, slacking into an agape shape of shock.
“How drunk are you?”
Jackie flops onto her back, grunting in frustration. “I’m barely drunk!” She lies, but she doesn’t believe she’s lying. Deep down, she really thinks she’s sober enough to recite the alphabet backwards in front of a police officer.
“Is it a crime now to want to kiss your best friend?”
Yes, on so many fucking levels. Shauna feels her thoughts ring into her ears, waterfall into the scoop of her tongue. How exactly had they gotten here? Jackie came tripping into Shauna’s room, telling her how many people wanted her tonight, insisting she wasn’t gay and that’s what made it a unique experience. Now they were sitting in the same bed, and Jackie was gathering the bravery to become the thief of Shauna’s next kiss.
“No, it’s not.” She blinks away the tiredness in her eyes. “But you don’t actually want to kiss me, Jackie. You just want to experience something you haven’t before.” She stands to her feet, “Which I told you, you could’ve done that tonight.”
“And I told you that those girls weren’t. pretty.” She’s propped into a sitting position against Shauna’s headboard, lips twisted.
“Really, Shipman, we’re not even going in circles at this point, it’s more like squares.”
Shauna sighs loudly. She looks around the decorations in her room, blanking out her sight to think about the cause and effect of kissing Jackie, and the negatives outweigh the positives. She thought about the consequences that came with it if she didn’t and the only thing sitting in the forefront of her mind was the fact that she had a midterm to take in three hours, and if she got zero sleep tonight there was no way she was going to be passing.
She looks at Jackie one last time, tongue poking into the inside of her cheek. She runs her hand through her unbrushed hair, wishing she had a better gauge on this situation instead of the rickety footing she acquired.
“If I kiss you will you go to sleep?”
Jackie nods immediately.
“I swear.”
She didn’t really understand what ran through her bones that prompted this conversation to happen. The women she took drinks from that night were generous and kind, everything the men she ran into weren’t. They saw her from across the bar on separate occasions, different types of smiles on their faces with varying intentions, and the furthest she took it was the acceptance of a bought shot or a purchased gin and tonic. Whatever those ladies gave her got her immensely drunk, and when she talked to Shauna, she had no control of the flow of words that came pouring out of her mouth. On a daily basis, she was conscious enough to restrain herself from any embarrassing, desperate sounding remarks, and the word vomit she spat out to Shauna tonight deterred all her previous progress.
Shauna does the best thing she can do at the moment, and she gives in. She caves, waving Jackie over with a roll of her eyes. She sits in front of her, calves tucked underneath her thighs, and she looked the definition of prim and proper, besides the frizziness of her volumized hair.
She leans down, and she does it without hesitation. She gets it over with, she doesn’t dwell in it, she doesn’t push it any further. The last thing she wants to do is take advantage of this moment where she wants to believe Jackie is beyond coherency. She sweeps their lips together in gentleness, the same way a paintbrush drips with color, falling across a snowy alabaster backdrop. It’s short and leaves Shauna breathless. They kiss for no longer than half a second, but it leaves the outline of her lips tingling with crackling electricity nonetheless.
As she pulls herself out of it, she sees the disconnection surprise Jackie, her eyelids fluttering open. She had been wanting to touch the side of Shauna’s face with her soft, open palm, but she was unaware of one component- the element of surprise.
Jackie frowns, again. That had to be the sixth time tonight she’s worn a lethal pout of heartbreak on her face.
“What was that?” She wonders, eyes unsatisfied and left cold.
“That was the kiss you wanted.” She crossed her arms over her chest, she wasn’t going to budge, she refused to fold any more than she already had for her. If this were an image, she would be bent over backwards trying to reach for something behind her that Jackie had been desperately pawing at.
“You’re calling that a kiss?!” She still sits there, perfect, pretty and ready. “If that’s your version of a kiss, you’re so a liar, Shipman! Boys have kissed me way better than that!” She stares daggers into her eyes.
It wasn’t a kiss, it fell under the umbrella term of kissing. What really happened was a chaste touching of their lips momentarily, not lasting nearly long enough for either of them to revel in what it actually felt like. But that was the whole point, that was what Shauna wanted it to be. She didn’t want to give her a real kiss, because a real kiss would lead to exploring the depth of her very real feelings, and that would unscrew the cork to a can of worms she didn’t have the space to deal with.
“How are girls supposed to be better kissers if that’s how you’re kissing?” It’s her turn to cross her arms dramatically now.
“I don’t represent the entire female population, Jackie.”
“Thank God you don’t,” She mutters under her breath in a sickening tone of too much alcohol all at once, “You’re terrible representation.”
“Jackie, I kissed you like you asked me to. Can you please get in your pajamas now?”
Jackie scowls at her, eyebrows tight and lips pressed thinly.
“I want a longer kiss.”
“What??” Shauna felt like she was going to lose her mind. “You can’t change the terms and conditions halfway through the agreement!”
“I guess I’m not getting into my pajamas then.”
For a drunk person, she was abnormally good at being vindictive and conniving. Shauna sighs, there was no leveling with her at this point. She waits it out for a second longer, hoping to see Jackie look into her eyes and tell her that she’s changed her mind, but she never does. She stays with her head held high, and she doesn’t spare her a look of consideration.
“Fine.” She was letting go of her control over this once again. “I’ll give you a real kiss. But after that, you’re going to bed.” Jackie nods, giddy and starry eyed with anticipation. She was having too much fun with this, Shauna had an inkling that she would never recognize her flippant experimentation was inherently bounding Shauna to be collateral damage. She takes a seat next to Jackie on the bed, bodies facing each other.
Shauna swallows thickly while Jackie places her hands atop her knees, and she feels trickles of sweat haunt the inner corners of her palms. They sit there, Jackie with a crazy smile of excitement merely because she got her way, and Shauna, who was more than sure that she would never be able to sleep in the same bed as her best friend again after what would conspire between them.
“Are you sure you want me to do this?” She asks, voice tilting. “You know real kisses involve, like… tongue, right?”
Jackie rolls her eyes.
“Yes, Shauna. I’ve had more than enough tongues in my mouth.”
She was definitely still drunk out of her mind.
“I was just asking ‘cause-” She cuts herself off, sighing heavily. “Just don’t freak out on me when you realize it’s gross and you don’t like it.”
Jackie doesn’t deny her suspicions, she simply offers a widespread smile that reaches the heart of her eyes and ignites an upwards pull in her slightly rosy cheeks.
“I won’t!” She says pointedly, and it causes Shauna to expel a sigh of grievance out of her lungs.
“Okay.” She says to no one in particular except for herself, and she rests her hands on her thighs.
Moving closer is awkward, it doesn’t come naturally to them the way it should. Jackie’s clumsy and keeps her hands to herself while Shauna debates internally whether to tilt her head to the left or to the right, all the while the knowledge of this being her best friend hangs over her consciousness. The knowledge that this is something she’s been dying for since she recalibrated her sexuality all those years ago suffocates her, and she wishes the circumstances were different. She wishes this wasn’t just a game to Jackie, that she wasn’t consumed by alcohol, mind hazy and blurred in time. She wishes this is something Jackie actually wanted instead of something she was only curious about. She wishes Jackie wasn’t so adamant, because if she hadn’t been, they would have been able to go their entire lives being best friends while unrequited feelings lingered in the far distance.
But after this, after this boundary line was scuffed up like chalk on a sidewalk after a rainy day, she wasn’t entirely sure if they were going to be okay.
The gap between them is nonexistent now. Their lips lay centimeters apart, and Shauna closed her eyes awhile back. She can’t watch herself destroy the one thing she’s wanted in her life, so she screws her vision into black and pretends that this isn’t going to be the beginning of an ending. The tips of their noses brush absentmindedly, and Jackie had closed her eyes long before Shauna did, but for different reasons. She anticipated the newborn feeling, she wanted it to take hold of her like a curse.
Shauna exhales a final breath, her last testament.
She kisses her softly, the same way she did originally before complaints overshadowed her, except this time she holds it significantly longer. When she moves her mouth slowly, Jackie follows behind her in a trailing effort, intending to match her pace as best she could. With deliberate amounts of patience, Shauna runs her tongue in between Jackie’s lips, asking for careful permission to pry her open. She complies in uncertainty, and Shauna’s vigilantly mindful with the way she dips her tongue into the cavern of her mouth. She doesn’t rush into her, she doesn’t force her lips apart, and she certainly doesn’t do anything to indicate she wants more than what they share.
Shauna’s attentive to her movements, ensuring that there’s no realm of possibilities where things could go wrong. In fact, she’s so focused on carving it into a good kiss that when Jackie’s tongue hesitantly pokes out to meet hers, she inhales a stiff breath. What comes next is Jackie’s hand running over the length of her thigh, digging her fingernails into the thin fabric of her sweatpants to grope something real.
She decides the kiss is concluded when Jackie tries to reach her hand around towards the back of her neck. A blush ruins her face when she feels the deftness of her fingertips brush the vulnerable part of her body, and the painful butterflies crowding up to her esophagus causes her to pull away in a finished movement.
Shauna creates reasonable distance between them, and she catches her breath, sprinting after it on the path of a marathon. Jackie’s eyelids flutter open long after she’s pulled apart, and a newfound darkness stares back at her desperately.
Shauna wipes her mouth with the back of her knuckles, her face stinging from the loss of contact. She licks her drying lips, clearing her throat to break the icey silence between them, seeing as Jackie is finding it hard to muster the sobering strength for words.
She doesn’t know if she wants Jackie to say something, or if she preferred her to never utter a word in her vicinity again. She maintains eye contact with her as best she can, but with the way Jackie’s lips are beautifully swollen and the color in her face has fallen back to normal, she feels like a shy girl turning away from her school crush in the hallways.
“Shauna, I-”
“I know you’re not gay.” She finishes for her, cutting her off. She didn’t need the hurtful clarification, the reminder that all of this was just a mirage of somebody she wasn’t at her core.
“I’m not gonna…” She bites her lip, looking away. “I’m not gonna hold it against you. I know a kiss doesn’t make you gay. So,” She releases her bottom lip from her teeth. “Don’t worry.”
It’s getting harder to face Jackie so openly when she’s incredibly keen on not responding to the words she says. She sits there, a distinctive look on her face, and if Shauna squinted the right amount, it looked to be that kissing Shauna had… sobered Jackie up?
She didn’t know how that was possible, but she didn’t read into it too much either to avoid the never ending guilt of damaged hopes and fears of the future.
Jackie shakes her head slowly. That wasn’t what was on her mind, it was something else completely.
“I think… I think you’re right.” Her eyes are glassy and wanting. “I think girls are better at kissing.”
Shauna’s heart explodes into tears inside of her chest.
“Oh.” She whispers.
It happens so fast, Shauna doesn’t remember what came before it. She doesn’t recall the look on Jackie’s face, the moment she realized she wanted more than just one kiss. She springs forward, her hand grabbing the back of Shauna’s neck the way she intended to all along. Jackie’s the one that does it, she’s the one that smashes their lips together. She does it, and she scratches her fingernails into the skin of Shauna’s neck. She pushes her down into the mattress, and Shauna lands back into a pillow with a thudding oomph that sounds from her body.
The next thing she knows is the warm feeling of Jackie’s body on top of her, Jackie straddling her waist, mouth hot and greedy against Shauna’s. She doesn’t have much of a say in the matter, she doesn’t let up long enough for Shauna to protest. She re-initiates their unfinished kiss, and Shauna does everything to follow her lead. She arches off the mattress, flushing herself closer to Jackie’s body. She brings her arm around her waist to hold her incredibly closer, and she falls into such a Jackie induced haze she can’t remember her own name.
All she knows is what she feels, and what she feels is Jackie. Jackie on top of her. Jackie touching her. Jackie’s hand clinging to the back of her neck, a lifeline supporting her. Jackie kissing her intensely. Jackie’s heavy breaths getting exhaled into Shauna’s mouth. She knows it’s wrong to enjoy it as much as she is, but she can’t help it.
Not only is she making out with Jackie, but Jackie’s initiating everything. What started out as an innocent kiss (or was it ever innocent to begin with on Jackie’s part?) turned into a feast of two starving girls, and they ravaged each other accordingly.
It’s true what Shauna said, about girls being better at virtually everything. The conversation began because of Jackie’s tendency to blurt out inappropriate things while she was drunk, but as their words progressed into different topics, a wave of jarring curiosity hit her so strongly she couldn’t ignore it. When Shauna reiterated her experience with women, Jackie found it hard to believe. She couldn’t imagine the perfection Shauna was describing, the kind where she didn’t have to direct the person she was with on where to touch her and how to do it. But when Shauna kissed her, really kissed her, all the lost fragments fell into place.
Girls were better kissers. Jackie had kissed over a handful of boys since coming into college, and they were all rough lips, stubbly chins, scratchy beards, uncomfortable peach fuzz, chapped skin, the list could go from here to Rome.
But Shauna…
Shauna was soft. It was exactly how she said: girls were softer. She was delicate in the way she kissed, she had no sense of urgency and no need to overdo anything. She didn’t kiss her like she was trying to get from point A to point B, she kissed her like she was trying to savor every second of it, holding it in her mouth until she was forced to swallow the moment down. Her lips were velvet to the touch, Jackie was convinced they had never peeled with dry cracks in their lifetime. Her hands were gentle, she didn’t grope her with vigor or try to coincidentally wander herself under her shirt. She didn’t push into her bra, she didn’t even dare to spare her chest a singular look. Not only that, she smelt divine. Her perfume was one thing, but Jackie was enveloped in every smell of hers. The expensive shampoo she used for her hair that had a hint of ocean breeze, the body wash embedded into her skin that was like a sweet version of champagne, and her mouth had such a natural taste. She wore lipstick on nights in the town, chapstick during regular days, but nothing before bedtime. It astounded Jackie that even her lips tasted heavenly.
It was everything she wanted a ‘pretty boy’ to be, except there was no pretty boy, and it was just Shauna, her best friend in the entire world. Shauna, whom she was kissing like crazy, to the point where she wanted to drag her teeth across the pulse point of her neck and kiss her there to see if her body would shiver in response. Shauna, whose hands held Jackie’s waist protectively, squeezing her sides to contain the needy feeling to touch her more. Shauna, the girl she loved more than anyone else in her life- she kissed her like there was no tomorrow, and she made her feel the best she’s ever experienced.
What the hell was she thinking, crawling into her best friend’s bed, begging her all these years to help her find the one, to help her locate Mr. Right when Shauna was sitting in front of her from day one?
“We should stop,” Shauna manages to pull away briefly, gasping for air and more of Jackie.
They had already gotten too carried away. This was beyond a real kiss, this was past the real thing. This wasn’t just a placeholder for the real thing, this was the real thing. She didn’t know if Jackie understood that, but by the way she firmly continues to sit on top of Shauna unmoving, she figures there’s something to be said in the middle of it.
“Why?” She breathes out, chest heaving, pupils blown in desire.
“Because you’re drunk,” She protests, hopefully that reasoning was the cherry on top to an already poorly made sundae. “And because you’re… you’re straight.”
It feels stupid to say something like that when Jackie is straddling her waist, inches apart from her face, eyes pleading to kiss her again. Denying what was in front of her was easier than accepting the truth that Jackie was just using her as a vessel for experience and nothing more. There were no strings attached, there were no romantic feelings involved, everything between them was still strictly platonic and Shauna tried her hardest to not let that kill her.
“I don’t know, Shauna.” Jackie whispers, throat bobbing as she swallows softly. “You’re making me feel pretty not straight right now.”
Shauna’s cheeks turn a blazing red, fire embers licking into her skin. Her mouth stutters open to say something, her jaw cracks in her lack of response. She wants to spit words out, if only to stop herself from looking like a red faced idiot in front of Jackie. She doesn’t have much time to cough up a reply, because the next thing Shauna knows is the way Jackie curls her body forward into her. She nudges her nose against the sleekness of Shauna’s neck, and her nostrils flare extensively as she inhales a breath so large her eyes roll into the back of her head.
She drowns herself in Shauna’s scent, she gorges herself on the way she smells. Her lips absently brush into the skin of Shauna’s neck for a moment or two, and she digs her nose further into the forest of her. She pushes her nose underneath the shell of her ear, and there’s a fading hint of hazelnut washed up there, stuck, frozen in time.
Boys never smell good like this. Jackie turns the thought over in her head, but judging from the way Shauna flexes beneath her tensely, she realizes that it wasn’t a passing thought she met, but a short sentence she said out loud, hot in the channel of Shauna’s ear.
“Shauna?” She hums her name, breathes it out like a weeping prayer. Shauna mimics the sound of a response, unmoving. Her arms lay stiff at her sides, she doesn’t allow her hands to explore or touch a path up any part of Jackie’s skin. She knows better, she wants to do better to avoid collapsing into Jackie like this in the future when they both knew no strings were ever going to be attached to her empty words and pointless admissions.
“Is it normal to want to kiss your best friend?”
No. From Shauna’s endless experience, no, nothing about desiring Jackie was ever normal for her. It was painful and never ending, to wish upon a star for the singular chance at romantic freedom with her, only to be crushed, obliterated by another detailed phone call of what guy of the month had piqued Jackie’s interest this week. She doesn’t always remember it being this hard to hold herself upright around her best friend, to rein in her feelings and set them aside instead of indulging in what could never be. Jackie’s question was presumptuous, she was a presumptive drunk. But she sounded so heavy with something unidentifiable when she asked, it made Shauna’s heart catch in her throat.
“No.” She whispers, and the tip of Jackie’s nose wedges itself further into any slight of her skin she can find. If she brought herself any closer, their heartbeats would be connecting through their chests, beating to the same rhythm of each other’s breathing.
“Do you think..” Her murky voice drips with insecurity and hesitation. “Do you think it’s weird I want to kiss you again?”
Shauna couldn’t differentiate if it was selfishness or pride that made her draw conclusions for a response. She didn’t want to stop touching her, but she knew once the alcohol wore off and her sobriety kicked in, she would be a mess of apologies and blubbering excuses, reminding her once more that she wasn’t gay, that she wasn’t into girls like that, that she wasn’t into Shauna like that. She had said in the heat of the moment minutes prior that she didn’t feel straight, but she knew that feeling would pass. Like all things with Jackie did, they passed, or they vanished into a dissolving solution. She had a tendency to say things she meant in that very second, and then when she looked back on it, it would be with a face of regret and a sigh in her chest.
“No.” She murmurs thickly. She tries to get a wagering glance at the ceiling, to count the patterns she saw to calm herself, but with the angle Jackie holds herself in Shauna’s arms, all she can see is the fading blonde of Jackie’s hair.
“Can we kiss again?” She doesn’t stumble over herself in doubt or second thoughts like any average drunk person would. She asks her softly, an ounce of confidence dousing her sentence, however it wasn’t enough. Shauna sweeps her eyes over her room, searching for a non-incriminating lie that could get her out from under Jackie and away from the root of her feelings. She settles on the alarm clock that reminds her strongly of the test she has to take in a couple of hours, and she looks back up to the ceiling in an attempt to formulate a sensical thought.
“I have class in an hour.” It was a lie, and not a great one. Judging by the way Jackie shifts in her arms and pulls herself upwards, she doesn’t entirely buy into her reasonings.
“We can’t kiss for an hour?”
There were a lot of things Jackie and Shauna could do under the sixty minute timer. There were a lot of things Shauna would do for Jackie within a limited time frame, things she usually accomplished because she just happened to love her a crazy amount to waste minutes on her. When they were in high-school, anytime they had a sleepover, they were always late for school the next morning. Shauna struggled to loosen herself out of Jackie’s warm embrace underneath the thin covers, and Jackie would hold her tighter if she felt the thought cross Shauna’s mind. Their mornings were a constant of ‘five more minutes?’ ‘we won’t be late, I promise’, and then proceeded to run twenty minutes late because their version of five minutes had turned into seven which inevitably dragged into ten, and they fell so behind they hopped into Shauna’s car in nothing but comfortable pajamas. Shauna would waste her last second of free time on Jackie, she always promised her she would no matter what circumstances. So to see Shauna’s eyes refuse to look at her, to feel the stillness of her body underneath Jackie, it only made sense to point to the notion that something could be wrong.
Of course Shauna wanted to kiss Jackie for the hour she had left. In fact, she had two hours left, and she would happily spend those a hundred and twenty minutes doing nothing but kiss Jackie. But their circumstances were so overbearingly different, Shauna had more at stake to lose than Jackie did. If she lost her way in the labyrinth of Jackie’s lips, she would never be able to turn back. Things would blur in similarities, left would become right, up would turn down, and Shauna wouldn’t be able to map her way into reality. She wouldn’t be able to control herself, to pull herself away like she already had twice. She didn’t think she had it in her to do it a third time.
“Do you not want to kiss me?” Her face falls sadly with Shauna’s lack of response. She wears heartbreak in her eyes, and Shauna feels her legs start to twist in an attempt to climb off of her.
“I never said that,” Shauna’s quick to dispel her grievances, digging her fingers into Jackie’s hips to ensure she doesn’t try to wriggle out and escape. “I..I do want to kiss you.” Her face turns twelve shades darker. She had never said it out loud in the confinements of her room, let alone to Jackie herself. “I just don’t think it’s a smart idea.” She rambled a jumble of feelings she found hard to express, and she sighs inwardly- she was never going to get this right. This wasn’t something she was exactly used to, saying no to Jackie, so it didn’t come to her as easily as it should’ve. Jackie’s lips downturn into a frown, and she folds her arms over her chest.
“Why not?”
Her head hurt. She really didn’t want to explain the complexity of feelings she had for her best friend, especially not now, at five in the morning. Was she really going to make her name it for what it was? Judging by the way Jackie sits on top of her expectantly, she isn’t budging at all.
“Because if I kiss you again, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
“Who said I wanted you to stop?”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Shauna squirms under her, and she decides that she’s had more than enough of Jackie for one night. She brings her body up into a sitting position, which pushes Jackie off of her waist and to the side of Shauna’s bed, grunting unexpectedly with the falling tumble.
“Shouldn’t a no be enough for you?”
That does it for Jackie, and every last shredding bit of drunk fight she had left in her was gone with the wind. Big mistake. Rejecting Jackie Taylor, her longtime best friend, and even longer love interest?
She hadn’t done it because she didn’t want Jackie, she did it because she wanted Jackie so bad her body ached with the need for her all over. Jackie simply didn’t get it, how far Shauna’s desperation for her went. She didn’t get it because she didn’t experience it on the same level as her if any at all, she didn’t have to sit there, heart hanging heavy in her throat as she watched Shauna make out with the second boy of this week.
Jackie took it as rejection, but it was so utterly far from that. It was the overwhelming realization of how much Shauna knew she wanted to kiss Jackie. Not just on her mouth, but everywhere else, places that she wanted to explore but would probably never have the chance to.
“You don’t have to be so mean about it.” Jackie whispers, pulling her knees into her chest. Shauna immediately sighs, regretting her actions not even a minute into the future. Jackie sat there, eyes sad and looking away, while her lips were thick and turned down in apparent disappointment with herself.
“Jackie-” She reaches out to touch her, and it’s a privilege that she’s denied. Shauna bites her lip anxiously, how was she going to come back from this? “Jackie, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it, then?” Jackie snaps, eyebrows furrowed.
“I’m sitting here, telling you how much I want to kiss you, and all you can do is sit there and tell me why you shouldn’t be kissing me.”
Shauna really was a fool of her own island, population 1.
“Jackie,” She successfully manages to latch her hand onto the tip of her knee. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.” She assures her, head spinning with everything she wants to say, but can’t. How was she going to offer Jackie comfort, while simultaneously holding herself back from her?
Jackie’s sulking in front of Shauna, the apples of her knees brushing underneath her chin. She looks too cute right now, hair messy and lips red. Shauna flips through the playbook in her brain— what could she say to fix this? What would suffice under Jackie’s definition of an apology?
“I’ll kiss you until I have to go to class. Will that make you feel better?” Jackie’s ears perk up, and Shauna’s heart drops to her stomach. Jackie sits there, unrelenting, head turned to the side, avoiding eye contact. If Jackie was anything, it would be a great pouter.
“No, because you don’t even want to.”
Shauna sighs, but she only has herself to blame for the returned stubbornness she’s receiving. Saved by some grand bell, Jackie’s fingertips come up to her temple, and she rubs at the crown of her head decisively. She groans, feeling a headache forming, and Shauna can tell it’s the liquor in her system.
“Pre-hangover already?” She teases, moving to get up, “I’ll get you some Advil.” She pads out of her room into the bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet to crack the bottle cap off. A tablet drops into the palm of her hand, then another, and she retreats back to her bedroom with a water bottle in hand.
Within the few seconds she was gone— hardly a minute, if she counted— Jackie assumed her starfish position smack dab in the center of Shauna’s bed, face buried into the pillow Shauna always slept on. There’s a trail of shed clothes, tracing back to the openness of Shauna’s closet, and she looks back to the culprit before realizing.
She doesn’t know how Jackie was quick enough, or why she didn’t settle for the prepared pajamas on the floor, but she wears Shauna’s flannel and a pair of her boxers. Despite her migraine, she filtered through her closet, drunk and needy, and plucked out Shauna’s clothes to wear despite her given state.
Shauna’s heart flutters in her chest, it grows tiny wings and flies away. The checkered flannel— Shauna’s— swallows her arms a bit loosely, when it’s a calmer fit on her as opposed to Jackie. She tip toes over, setting the items down onto her nightstand table for tomorrow when Jackie wakes up, and her body immediately turns into Shauna’s, flushing against her.
“Shauna,” She murmurs, and she can tell that Jackie’s heavily fighting sleep. She supposed all that kissing wore her out, or maybe it was the arguing and the pouting that really wore her down.
“Hm?” She hums in response, stroking her fingers over Jackie’s hair.
“Before you go to class,” She whispers, “Wake me up.” Shauna’s eyebrows tighten together, and then Jackie adds, “I want a kiss.”
She melts into a puddle, dripping to touch the floor of her bedroom.
“Okay, Jackie.” She says sheepishly, shy all of a sudden even though Jackie’s not looking at her. “I’ll wake you up for a kiss.”
“You promise?” Her eyes are still closed, and Shauna smiles.
“I promise.”
With that, she’s out like a light.