"Hey, Shane?"
A gentle movement came from somewhere near her upper left shoulder. Shane shifted in her spot and leaned back further into her seat, sinking into it so that she could look down at the raven haired beauty better. "Yeah, Jen?" she mumbled in her low, husky voice as a smile slowly twitched on the corners of her mouth despite herself.
"Do you think we're someone's wish?"
The question posed by the petite woman sitting by her side on a plane back to L.A. caused Shane's eyebrows to furrow towards the center, creases forming on the bridge of her nose in curiosity. Yet that smile that had been fighting her indifference finally came through, a certain light reaching her eyes in amusement.
"What do you mean?"
This caused an exasperated, almost embarrassed giggle from Jenny. "We're in an airplane," she replied as if that explained everything, though Shane was still as confused as ever. Her hand moved almost cautiously out to grasp Shane's hand, her slender fingers mingling with the other woman's in an intricate little danced witnessed only by the couple before meeting somewhere in the middle and surrendering to entwine.
"Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?" Jenny whispered in a sing song voice into her best friend's ear, a sweet smile spreading like wildfire to expose her pearly whites, which came down to tug gently on her lower lip just a few seconds later. It tickled Shane's ear and coaxed a gentle chuckle from her, before she leaned over to press her lips to Jenny's temple. She didn't say anything for a moment, leaving Jenny Schecter to her thoughts.
She knew that the falling out between Shane and her friends after her accident had been tough on Shane, but Jenny had been the one to arrange all of this. They had flown out to New York to visit Tina and Bette… well, it was really more for Shane's sake than hers.
Jenny knew that no one liked her very much, but after going through recovery, she realized that she didn't need anyone's approval. At first, she didn't even think that she needed anyone's company. Shane had been by her bedside when she was asleep, the doctors explained, but Jenny could never wake up fast enough to catch her. She contemplated staying up all night once, but then again, Jenny didn't know the face behind her mysterious visitor who left her flowers...
Not until Shane left behind her sweater. Jenny would've recognized it anywhere. After living with someone for so long and doing the laundry enough, you learned to recognize articles of clothing on the spot and that old, musky sweater was one of them. She remembered it vaguely from one night when they got high together, passing puffs on the bong until Jenny got emotional because of Shane's sweet words about being her best friend. Even in her high state, those words still meant more to Jenny than she would ever know.
Even while being hooked up to the IVs and sporting a large bandage on her head from hitting the side of the pool on the way down, Jenny had still managed to take it into her hands. She wasn't sure how many times she ran her fingertips over the material, as if that would somehow cure her. It was but a ridiculous placebo for an idealistic mind.
Still, she felt like Shane's presence, however indirect, helped the process somehow. A lot of people might think that Shane put her there. That somehow Shane's sharp words in rebuttal to her inexcusable behavior or the cheating with her ex had taken a hold of her and led her to the edge. But it was Jenny's love for Shane, that incredibly fucking painful and limitless little thing called love.
Maybe somewhere along the way, Jenny had too much of it. So much that her heart gave out on her and burst. So much that it was unbearable for her to function properly or watch Shane gave the rest away, simply because Jenny was too full...
Too much of a good thing, too much of everything that she ever wanted, until the dream became a reality and Jenny just didn't know how to live in this world that way.
Yes, Shane hurt her. But Jenny had hidden Molly's letter from her, robbing her of that closure from her past out of the fear that it would be theirs. Jenny had almost envied Molly's heartfelt words for a long time, until it hit her one afternoon while she was poking at the hospital's jello: I'm a writer, dammit. I'm a fucking writer!
It had taken a bit of persuading to convince the nurses to give her a notepad and a pen. While her case had been labeled an accident and not a suicide, she looked so lonely some days that they didn't think she would make it. They half-expect her to give up one morning.
It wasn't the fact that she often cried herself to sleep from the migraines or the dark circles under her eyes. It wasn't how she went days without saying a single word. It was a hollowness in her eyes, one that only went away when she caught sight of a new bouquet of flowers by her bedside, often followed by a sudden wave of goosebumps on her alabaster skin. She never saw it coming and she could never tell how long it would linger until the sensation went away, just like her relationships.
She was the pale one. She was the one who looked like a ghost walking among the living. Yet Jenny was always so deeply affected by Shane's gifts, even when she didn't know whom they had been from. It was just like she could imagine every single step that it took to get there and the care to leave them in a perfect place where she would be able to see them when she awoke.
It could have been mere coincidences. It could have been another irrational collision between her far-fetched expectations and reality. Maybe Jenny was expecting too much from a stranger. But after peering over the fence of her neighbor's yard that one time that set the next six years of her life in motion, Jenny Schecter knew better. There were no coincidences.
There was only life; a jumble of puzzles pieces that didn't always fit together perfectly.
And once Jenny realized that, once she was able to save herself from the darkness in her own mind, the nurses started to come around. She was given what she wanted, though she was sure that she was being watched… there was always someone making themselves busy in her room, not that they were very good at being subtle about it. Jenny could see right through the act, often rolling her eyes, but it was better than being alone. For a long time, she hadn't trusted herself to be alone. She always felt this overwhelming need to be something of someone, but now it was just her and the steady beeping of the monitors.
And the best part of all? She was okay. Jenny was perfectly okay on her own. The doctors who were running tests on her were scrutinizing her, but if she felt like telling them something, she didn't have to hold herself back like she had with the girls at the planet.
Fuck off was fuck off and hell wasn't the deli across the street. She had been called a lot of things in her life, yet people never wanted to hear the truth. When she was brutally honest, she was a bitch, and when she just told them what they wanted to hear, Jenny was a liar. She was tired of it, all of it.
Now that it was just her and a blank pad of paper, Jenny could finally say what she wanted. No editors or publishers or movie producers with horrible ties. Yet a part of her was afraid of putting herself down on paper like that. She was afraid of being as vulnerable as the day Shane found her bleeding on the bathroom floor or the fight in the hallway when she admitted what she felt.
People could say a lot of things about Jenny Schecter, but Shane had seen two things: her heart in the purest form and that she bled the same as everyone else. Everything that came after that didn't matter. Not all of the mistakes, all those words left unsaid, or those words said too much. No, none of it.
"I could really use a wish right now," Shane finally spoke, interrupting Jenny's thoughts by whispering back after she smoothed her raven tresses behind her ear. Jenny's eyes glistened and glazed over slightly for a moment, before she quickly blinked back the moisture as she felt something pressing uncomfortably and almost painfully against her side. Something must have gotten wedged between their slender bodies, she realized.
Reaching between them, Shane watched her closely with an unreadable expression as Jenny pulled out a small hardcover book. Turning it to read the cover as her slim fingers grasped the spine, Jenny seemed to smile through the crinkles forming on the corners of her eyes. "Mmm, you brought this?" she asked breathlessly, clearly impressed and maybe even smitten by Shane's actions.
She felt the androgynous woman slip an arm around her shoulders with one of those charming grins on her lips, causing Jenny to sheepishly wipe at her eyes. "Of course I did… I never leave it behind," Shane answered reassuringly in her ever so calm and collected tone, not sure why Jenny was so surprised. It was the one true testament of her worth and love not just from, but towards someone else. Shane never had something like that before, and after Jenny left a rough draft for her to read on her bedside at the hospital when she stopped by to leave her flowers again, she had finally stayed.
Shane finally realized that she couldn't run from all the good things in her life, because in an instant, it could all be gone. She read it from cover to cover after Jenny published it, a countless amount of times. Of course, it felt good to know that she was the only one with a copy. And Jenny felt good to know that she was the only one with Shane's heart.
"Shane?" she murmured against the fabric of Shane's shirt after a moment, waiting to be acknowledge by the other woman in a rather childish, shy fashion. When their eyes met, Jenny lifted her head, licking her lips and smiling. "You're my wish."