Something Old, Something New

Jackie’s POV

The airport is surprisingly empty today, considering that it is a Friday, smack in the middle of summer. During this time, most New Yorkers tend to retreat to places with more predictable weather and relative coolness. Jackie would be lying if she ever said New York had nice weather. That it was either always relatively warm with the sun’s glorious rays shining upon their skin. Or that it was always rainy, a layer of water cleansing the earth and filling the air with a musty, humid scent. But instead, when it rains, the best way to describe it is “God Pissing.” At least, that’s how Jan describes it. She’s right like she is about most things. Today, God is most definitely pissing. 

Jackie glances at her watch. Jan was supposed to be here four minutes ago, normally the energetic blonde is always punctual. But looking at the rain, she doesn’t blame her for being late. Jackie is lucky to live relatively close to the airport, Jackie on the contrary lives a good hour and a half away from the airport. Jackie remembers the long car rides navigating through New York’s twist and turns with nothing but a frustrated Jan and a GPS. Jackie got motion-sickness incredibly easily so Jackie always played violin covers on their way there. She wonders for a second if Jan is in the backseat of a cab driven by a disgruntled taxi driver, hunched over in the backseat clutching her stomach with beads of cold sweat running down her face. The image sends pangs through Jackie’s heart and even though she knows she’s not supposed, she wishes she were the taxi driver. She wishes she was there, listening to Mozart as Jackie’s careful driving and the soft pitter-pattering of rain against the window lulls Jan to sleep.

Jackie wishes for a lot of things. But she never really seems to get them. Either way, she doesn’t deserve for them to happen. So she just sits there, blasting the “Legally Blonde” soundtrack on repeat, patiently waiting for the exuberant, cheer leader-like angel to arrive at the airport. She gets up to “The Harvard Variations” before an equally melodic voice fills the airport.

“Jackie? Jackie? JAQUELINE COX!” There’s Jan, stumbling around the airport, completely drenched in rain, lugging behind her a comedically sparkly purple luggage. 

Jan’s POV

For lack of a better term, Jan’s morning has been shit. She woke up around twenty minutes after her alarm sounded off and thanked the gods that she had pre-packed the night before. She throws on some ratty old cast T-Shirt and a pair of sweatpants before tying her hair in a gravity-defying bun and running out the door. Halfway down the stairs Jan realizes that she has forgotten her passport, phone charger, and contact lenses. She then proceeds to run back up the stairs, only to realize that she has locked herself out. Luckily Jan left a spare key with her elderly Czech landlady and rushes up yet another three floors to get the key. Having retrieved the key she hurries back into her apartment and grabs everything she needs before rushing out the door. 

And the second she sets foot outside her apartment complex is when God decides he is going to rain down on New York City like the second coming of the Genesis flood. Once again grateful that her luggage is completely waterproof, Jan waits in the rain without an umbrella for a grand total of ten minutes before her apologetic Uber driver picks her up. This driver, however, must not have had much experience as a chauffeur because he proceeds to HIT EVERY FUCKING BUMP IN NEW YORK CITY while rambling about how the patriarchy is a fad as Jan tries not to throw up. And as the cherry on top to this hellish morning, he drops her approximately a five-minute walk or two minutes sprint away from the entrance of the airport. So Jan runs, hauling behind her an overpacked luggage through the rain receiving odd looks from strangers. 

And when she finally gets to the airport Jackie is nowhere to be seen, and Jackie, almost driven mad with panic and on the verge of tears begins to scream her name until she receives a gentle, familiar tap on the shoulder. 

“Jan?” There Jackie shows up, eyes wide with concern, and an amused smile set on her face and Jan collapses into her arms. She’s safe. Jackie’s got her. And she doesn’t have to deal with anymore shitty Uber drivers. 

“I’m sorry, I’m late. It’s been a little bit of a rough morning.” Jackie laughs as she tucks a stray hair behind Jan’s ear and something blooms inside Jan’s chest and honestly, Jan is too tired to stop it. 

“I can tell, you look like someone dragged you through the ocean.”

“My Uber driver did. Also, he kept going on and on about how the patriarchy doesn’t exist.” Jan laughs humourlessly, trying to convince Jackie that she is indeed okay and she doesn’t want to strangle anyone. 

“Boys really are taking over-compensation to extreme levels these days.” Jan laughs and a proud smile lights up Jackie’s face. Jackie loves it when Jan smiles, especially when she’s the reason behind it.

“Am I late? Did we miss our flight?”

“Oh no, we have like an hour before it boards.” 

“Oh, that’s good.”

“Why didn’t you just call me, I would’ve driven you.” Jan lowers her head down to the floor. 

“I didn’t want to bother you, you’re already doing this for me.”

“Jan, I would rather drive an extra hour than have you show up to the airport looking like a wet cat.” Jan lets out a wet laugh and Jackie reaches into her faithful star trek luggage and pulls out a green towel. “Dry yourself off before I have to explain to your parents why you have hypothermia.” 

“That wouldn’t be a good first impression would it.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” 

Jan spends the next hour drying her hair off and walking through customs with Jackie. The pair get strange looks which are understandable considering Jackie is now the human form of a drowned rat. But it’s nice. She and Jackie walk through stores, sharing secret giggles when they see a hipster or someone particularly obnoxious looking. Almost as if they have slipped back into their old rhythm, the two of them living in a secret world that no one else can see and no one else can share. As if they are in some protective bubble in which the world cannot harm them no matter what it throws at them. They are invincible, impenetrable, and safe. 

At least, they used to be. 

When the air hostess calls their flight number and by now, Jan is less completely drenched and more slightly damp. Just dry enough for her to enter the plane and completely freeze in the air conditioning for a grand total of eleven hours. Jan doesn’t like planes. Never has. One of her greatest fears is that she’ll be in a plane crash but she won’t die on impact and instead be stranded on an island with a severely damaged body and have to amputate her limbs and -

“Hey,” Jackie says with a slight chuckle in her voice. “You’re going to be okay.” 

“Yeah, I know. You know how much I hate flights.” 

“Yeah, I do. But the likelihood of you being stranded alone on an island is very unlikely.” Jackie smiles.

“Thanks for doing this for me.” Jackie smiles sadly as she takes Jan’s hand in her own. 

“You were right. I owe you.”

There’s a comfortable silence between the two as their eyes meet and for a second, just a second, Jackie lets herself pretend. She lets herself pretend that she is going to her sister’s wedding with her girlfriend who she has dated for a year and a half and they are meeting her for the first time. She lets herself pretend that she is in love with Jackie and Jackie is in love with her too. She lets herself pretend that the tension between them is not sorrowful and awkward, but rather sexually-charged as it used to be. That when she looks at those plump, watermelon colored lips that taste like pomegranate chapstick, she can kiss them whenever she likes. That when she sees Jackie’s face, so angular and sculpted, she does not feel a pain run through her chest. She can pretend she lives in a world where that the longing, the ache, and the heartbreak never happened and the past two months never happened. 

She pretends that she lives in a perfect utopia, just fantastical enough to be out of reality. Because deep down, Jan knows, that may be in another lifetime, that could’ve been her reality. A reality where instead of a misogynistic uber driver, she sat in the front seat next to Jackie listening to Canon in D, with their finger interlacing and Jackie cursing other people driving. She pretends that the rain pouring down the earth can wash away everything. It can wash away all the tears, all the regret, all the hurt. And her and Jackie can start again, fresh, new and untainted. 

But Jan is a Gemini. She has never been realistic, has she. So she has to let go. She has to break herself out of whatever capsule of time she has hidden in. She has to stop pretending. 

Jackie’s POV

Jan is staring at her with an unreadable expression on her face, so Jackie lets go of Jan’s hands and waves them in front of Jackie’s face. 

“Hello? Earth to Jackie?” Jackie Jan a couple of times before shaking her head as if waking out of a daydream.

“Sorry, I got distracted.”

“It’s cool, don’t worry about it,” 

“So,” Jan says suggestively. “We need to lay down some ground rules.”

Jackie winces. This is the part she’s been dreading.

“Okay, hit me with your best shot.” Jan takes a deep, trembling breath in.

“We need to do a lot of PDA.”

“What? Why?” Jackie says, caught off guard. Jan tries to hide her frown with a smile, But Jackie can see that she’s hurt. 

“What, you don’t want to kiss me anymore,” Jan says jokingly with a smile that didn’t meet her eyes. 

Jan’s POV

Of course, Jackie doesn’t want to kiss her. 

Jackie’s POV

Jan doesn’t know how badly Jackie wanted to kiss her. She doesn’t know how badly Jackie wants their lips to collide and for Jackie to kiss away all the pain that she has caused Jan. She wants to drink Jan in the way a dying man drinks water, to taste her the way a starving man tastes food.  She wants to take each piece of Jan’s broken heart and glue them back together until Jackie is whole and happy again. She wants to lavish every inch of Jan’s skin with love until Jan realizes that she was the precious, invaluable being in the world. The two months they had spent apart, Jackie had spent almost every single night dreaming about Jan’s lips. Their light rosy hue and the thickness of the gloss she always so generously applied. She misses the way their lips knew each other, the way they move in perfect, synchronized harmony. She misses the familiarity that came with knowing and loving Jan. 

And she didn’t just miss kissing her, because Jan had been very, very good at kissing. She misses everything about Jan. The way her body wash is so strongly scented that she never needs perfume. The way her eyes catch the light in the right angle sometimes and it looks like the universe was reflected in them. The look of wonder in Jan’s eyes when she saw snow for the first time in New York. The pink flush that colors her cheeks whenever Jackie told her she was beautiful. She would be lying if she said she didn’t miss any of it with every inch of her breaking heart. 

But she can’t tell Jan that. So she stays silent and she can see sadness flash through Jan’s eyes. 

“I was very affectionate with my last ex back in Hawaii. So if I’m not sucking your face off at any given time, they’ll think something is off.” 

“I am going to eat so much fucking garlic.” Jan smiles, and this time it does meet her eyes, and a weight is lifted from Jackie’s chest. 

“And I’m going to eat a shit ton of crab.”

“Do that, and I’ll spend your sister’s wedding in the ER cos my throat is closing up.”

“Fine.”

“Second rule. We cannot tell any of our mutual friends about this.”

“Oh absolutely.” Jackie bites her lip as she thinks of the way their mutual friends had sided with Jan instead of Jackie, but honestly, it was a valid reaction. Jackie knew she had hurt Jan and Jackie knew that she most definitely did not deserve sympathy.

“I mean, you can, but I don’t think you want to.”

“No, I don’t want to face Lagoona’s wrath.” Jan laughs once again. When she laughs, Jackie can almost pretend that what happened between them never happened. There is a lightness that replaces the agony and Jackie can almost comprehend forgiving herself in those instances. 

“Yeah, you really don’t.”

“Okay, third rule.”

“I’m listening.”

“You have to walk me down the aisle.”

“Done.”

“Wait, you really have no problem with that?”

“No, why would I?”

“It’s just…” Jan looks down and furrows her brow. “You never wanted to get married. This won’t be too much for you?”

It is at this moment that Jackie begins to realize how much she has actually hurt Jan. Jackie has hurt this poor soul so much that she thinks Jackie wouldn’t spend the rest of their lives together if she could. Jackie was to physically stop herself from crying because this beautiful woman in front of her biting her lips thinks that Jackie won’t walk her down the aisle because of her commitment issues. 

Jackie tilts Jan’s head up to meet Jackie’s eyes.

“Of course, I’ll walk you down the aisle.”

Jan lights up again but all Jackie can see is the fear of rejection that was burning in her eyes. It may be gone, but a second is enough to make Jackie regret every decision she has made. 

“Oh, and one more thing.” Jan smiles. “This is the fun part. We need to get our story straight.”

“Jan, there is nothing about us that is straight.” 

“Hahahaha, very funny,” Jan says, hiding a smile. “We need to make sure that whatever questions they ask us, we have the same answers.”

“Like, the “How did you meet?”, “Where do you live?” kind of questions?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh easy, we just pretend we never broke up.” Woah. That was blunt. 

Jan’s POV 

Woah, that was blunt. Nonetheless, a practical solution. But Jan is doing a bad job of pretending the things Jackie is saying don’t hurt. Because they do. They hurt a lot, even though Jan knows Jackie would never intentionally hurt her and it’s just the by-product of Jackie’s nervous brain. But still, it hurts. It hurts that Jackie can pretend to be in love with her so easily, pretend to be in a happy relationship so easily. It makes Jan wonder, was she pretending the whole time? Was any of it real? But now is not the time to be sensitive or to be hurt. She needs to make sure her sister has the best wedding she possibly can and if it means that Jan’s broken heart cracks, even more, she’ll do it. 

“Jackie?” Jan says, treading lightly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way-”

“It’s okay. You’re doing this for me, you shouldn’t have to apologize for saying what you think.”

“I-” Jan takes a deep breath and with a trembling voice, she begins to speak again. “Do remember how we met?”

“Of course.”

---

May 13th, 2018

Jackie’s POV

The bar is crowded. Well, it’s a gay bar on a Friday night, of course, it’s crowded. Jackie laughs to herself. The odds of her finding a cute, emotionally available bottom in this sea of drunk twinks and pillow princesses. She’s been single for about a month now, her last boyfriend finalizing the fact that she, at age 27, was most definitely a lesbian. But before him, was a long string of one night stands of both men and women none emotionally satisfying her. Jackie has had of the confusion and she just wants to settle down with a nice cat lesbian and fuck while they rewatch the L word for the fifth time. She wants someone to love, even if they don’t love her back. Maybe, she’ll grow to regret that sentiment, maybe she won’t. But either way, she wants someone in her life to love. She wants to get drunk on their taste, to become dizzy with love whenever they enter the room, all the good and bad. Jackie wants it all. 

She’s never been in love. Not with the men or the women in her life. Not because they were bad people, simply because they lacked the spark that Jackie needed. The people had dated were people who were content and sated with monotony and repetition. Jackie is a Aries , she gets bored easily. She needs someone who can keep her on her toes, keep her chasing, and keep her in love. 

“Jackie?” The bartender, Alexandria, or Alex as Jackie likes to call her, hands her a disgustingly pink drink. 

“Alex.” Jackie stares at her dumbly. “As much as I appreciate the free drink, you know me. I either chug whiskey or nothing else.” 

“It’s called ‘The Cherry Popper,’ that guy at the end of the bar ordered it for you.”

“Who the fuck thought that ‘The Cherry Popper’ would make a good drink name?”

“That guy at the end of the bar apparently cos he just made it up and told me to make a drink based on it. Said to make it pink.”

“Ah, misogyny has managed to find it’s way into even gay bars.”

“I know.” Alex sighs and looks back at the man who is staring at Jackie with a predatory gaze. “You want me to shoo him off?” 

“No, I’ll thank him for the drink.”

“Just shout for me if anything goes sideways, okay?”

“Love you, Alex.”

“Right back at ya.”

Jackie braces herself for an awkward moment as she walks down to the end of the bar. He is a grown man wearing a Gap T-shirt proudly and khakis. His beard is wild and ungroomed and in short, unsightly. Everything about him, from his manspreading to cocky smirk on his face is off-putting. 

“Hi,” Jackie says awkwardly.

“Hello, sugar. What’s a pretty girl like you, doing in a place like this.” Oh God, he paired possibly the most annoying voice with the most annoying phrase. He has one of those annoyingly southern accents that just drag and crack at the wrong places. 

“Um, I’m looking for someone.”

“Well, you found someone, they just bought you a drink.”  

“Haha,” Jackie laughs as she scans the room for an out. “Thank you.”

“So, do you got anything to do tonight?” He says in a drunken drawl. 

“Look, dude. I appreciate the offer, but you’re not my type.” He laughs cockily. 

“I’m every woman’s type.”

“Well, I’m a lesbian,” Jackie says, now frustrated and tired of being niceties. 

“I’ve never met a woman who didn’t give me a shot to shake things up.”

“Now you have.” Jackie turns to walk away and suddenly the man grabs her wrist and fear shoots through her body. 

“Excuse me, sir.”

The voice comes from a woman. A distractingly beautiful woman wearing jeans that leave little to the imagination and a top that leaves even less. She has skin the color of vanilla ice cream melting in the warmth of the sun, eyes like dark pools of rich chocolate and lips painted cherry red. She has a soft jaw and a kind, gently smile. The kind of smile that people go to dentists and plastic surgeons to try and replicate. A smile that’s different. Jackie has never been religious despite growing up in a semi-religious family, but now she thinks that she believes in angels. Because if angels are real, this woman is one. She is radiant with a natural kind of ease that can only be some kind of divine gift. 

“Hey, sugar. You care to join?” The gross pervert still holds her wrist in a tight grip. 

“I’m Jackie, this is my girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Jackie thinks his grip on her will loosen but instead it tightens and begins to hurt. 

“Ow, ow. You’re hurting me.” Jackie winces. 

“Stop whining, I bet you like it.” He says and now Jackie is genuinely scared. She locks eyes with the woman silently pleading that she do something. Maybe threaten to call security, or to assert her authority, anything at this point to get him to leave. 

What she did not expect was for her to grab his hand, twist them behind his back, and force him onto his knees. But Jackie’s not complaining, he’s let go of her wrist and she can feel blood flow back into her hand. For such a small woman, she is clearly causing him a significant amount of pain, not something that Jackie minds of course. 

“If you ever disrespect Marie or any woman ever again, I will chop off your dick and feed it to my cat, who is more of a man than you. Now get the fuck out of here before I change my mind. 

He scurries off to the exit as Alex laughs while polishing a glass from afar. The woman takes Jackie’s hand in her own and she notices how soft her skin is.   

“Hey, I’m Jan.” 

“Jan.” The woman blushes.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m Jackie.”

“Yeah, sorry about the ‘Marie’ thing, I’ve been watching too much Marie Condo.” 

“Oh absolutely.”

Present-day

“Of course I remember how we met. I kicked some weird perv’s ass for you.” Jackie smiles. Yes, Jan did. She remembers the gratitude she had felt. She remembers the night that came after and the many many many nights after that. 

“Would you do it again?” She asks despite herself. And without missing a beat, Jan replies. 

“Of course, I would. Any excuse to kick weird perverts.” 

And without knowing it, Jackie has just completely fallen heads over heels in love with Jan yet again.