A/N: I'm a horrible, horrible person, I know… I should be spanked for making you guys wait so long…
Okay, here's the thing that I want you guys to get in this chapter – I want Jackie to FINALLY get the support that she deserves. And I know that's probably stupid of telling you guys what the chapter is about before you read it, but that's the point that I wanted to make here. I've always felt that Jackie kinda got shafted in the emotional support department, and I wanted to correct that in my story. Our girl deserves a kickass support system, doncha think?
Disclaimer: PUHLEASE, people…
Chapter 9: Compassion & Comfort
The Taylor family, while being incredibly wealthy, were not the snobs that most would assume them to be. They were, in fact, one of the most down-to-earth people that you could ever meet. And this was strange, considering that Barbara Taylor, Melissa and Nate's mother, came from old money, and many thought she had married beneath her station when she married Jeremiah Taylor.
And then they actually met Jeremiah Taylor, and wondered why the hell she didn't marry him sooner.
Jerry Taylor was a charmer. But not those bullshit charmers that sold used cars – but the kind that made you feel as if you were the only person in the world that mattered to him. That whatever kind of hell you were going through, he was right there along with you, understood you, and supported you, come hell or high water. It was this distinctive quality that made him so successful in the music business – he was able to garner the respect and trust of the most volatile of artists, and in turn, made them create some of their best work.
And while it was true that it was his charm that got him a date with the gorgeous and incredibly wealthy Barbara Campbell, it was his honesty and integrity that she fell in love with. When he said he'd pick her up at seven, he was at her door at six fifty nine. When he said he would call her after a show, he'd call, no matter the late hour.
As he was fond of telling her, "If I don't stay on my toes with you, I do believe that your father would hire someone to break them for me."
Even surrounded by equally copious amounts of drugs and women, Jerry Taylor never dabbled in either. He had grown up in a lower middle-class section of Queens, and he had seen what having too much both did to people, to families. His father, who worked 35 years as a city bus driver, would tell him stories of seeing women sell their bodies, and sometimes their children, for a quick fix. As his father would say, "It was no way to live."
It was also the love of his parents – married 54 years in August – that had really sold what he wanted from a woman. Jerry wanted the laughter, the tears, the unity that only a soul mate could provide for him.
He found it in Barbara Campbell.
And while their impromptu marriage in City Hall – due to the fact that Barbara was already three months pregnant with Nathan – raised a lot of eyebrows, those who knew the couple knew that they were it for each other. They were in it for the long haul.
And even after 23 years of marriage, and 25 years of being together, Jerry and Barbara had been known to get caught making out on the living room couch like a couple of teenagers.
And this is what Jeremiah and Barbara Taylor wanted for their children.
The love. The laughter. The passion that could only be inspired by the other.
And, as much as they wished it to be untrue, they knew that this is not what Nate would find with Jackie Burkhart.
And the blame wasn't on the poor girl, or on their son.
They just weren't meant to be.
It certainly wasn't for lack of trying on Nathan's part.
Jerry saw his son became further and further enamored of Jackie Burkhart, and in all honesty, he couldn't blame him. Jackie was truly sensational, and he could see what his son saw in her. She was incredibly beautiful, smart, witty, and charming. If Jerry didn't have such a great read on people, he would've begged Nate to marry the girl as quickly as possible.
But – Jerry did have a good read on people. And the feelings that he could see were beginning to burn in his son's eyes, weren't even flickering in Jackie's.
And he could see that Jackie was desperate to inflame them.
She had never in her life wanted anything more than to fall in love with Nathan. For in Nathan – Jackie got what she thought she always wanted – rich, attentive, and desperate to please. He was funny, intelligent, came from a great family. He was a great dancer, kissed well…
But nothing.
Her heart still belonged to someone else.
And she hated it.
Loving Hyde hurt.
A lot.
She couldn't understand it. She couldn't understand why the man of her teenaged dreams was falling in love with her, and she didn't feel anything for him but a friendly affection. It drove Jackie up the wall, because she knew – and there was no one that knew him better than she did, nobody – that Hyde was back in Point Place fucking anything that walked.
And here she was, about to begin her second year at a great school after a great New York summer, in the best city, with a guy that most girls would die for.
And yet – Hyde still haunted her dreams. And at times, some of her waking hours.
God, she missed him so much…
But she refused to give in to her need. Because no matter what her heart and soul wanted, her mind wanted peace. She wanted a guy to love her, love her. And not be afraid of it. Not be so desperate to hide behind sunglasses, and burns, and fucking zen. To willingly admit that he wanted her, and needed her. A guy that wasn't so crippled by insecurity that he couldn't trust her with her puppy love ex-boyfriend. A guy that'd fight for her.
In other words…the exact opposite of Steven James Hyde.
And Nathan was it.
He was everything that Hyde wasn't – attentive, openly loving. She always knew where she stood with him.
And that was always first.
So what if there wasn't a day that went by that she still didn't ache for Hyde? So what if there were times when she kissed Nate, and desperately wished it was Hyde's lips that she was tasting? So what if there were so many things that were going right in her life, and Hyde was still the first person she wanted to tell them to?
They were done.
As fall came to New York – as the anniversary of Sam's arrival to the Forman doorstep neared – Jackie threw herself into becoming the perfect girlfriend for Nate. She would dote over him, and smother him – and to the unobservant, she looked like a girl completely in love with her boyfriend.
But she wasn't.
And Barbara Taylor knew it.
She loved Jackie. God, Jackie was wonderful. The Jackie of Point Place, Wisconsin was slowly coming back, and that bitchy persona that had dominated her high school years began to make its appearance. And to a born and bred New Yorker such as Barbara, she was delighted to see the woman that her son was falling in love with have such fire. Jackie had spine, and spunk, and Barbara loved it.
But Jackie also had a heart that was being put back together after being shattered to pieces. And no matter how much that bitchy cheerleader personality would sometimes come out, it didn't negate the fact that Jackie was still not the Jackie of old.
Hyde and Donna had made certain of that.
It's such a shame, Barbara thought, as she watched Jackie joke around with Nathan in her kitchen one evening. She knew that while Jackie was great, she didn't love her baby boy like she should. Definitely not the way that Nathan deserved.
Barbara truly wished that she could hate Jackie. Wished that she couldn't see Jackie's struggle to fall in love with her son. Wished that that motherly intuition that screamed out that Jackie didn't love Nate that way she should. That she loved him as a friend, and a friend only.
Hoping that she was wrong, but knowing she wasn't, Barbara had taken Jackie under her wing, of sorts. In Jackie, Barbara had seen sparks of herself when she was Jackie's age. But Jackie wasn't like her completely. Barbara didn't have walls built miles high barely into her twenties. Her eyes hadn't been as sad, her heart hadn't been as heavy, and her loneliness hadn't been so desperate.
But Barbara recognized in Jackie what her daughter had – here was a girl that needed something to hold onto. Something tangible, something real.
So, regardless of the fact that Jackie didn't love Nathan the way Barbara felt she should, she knew that in some ways, Jackie needed this. She needed to be loved like this, cared for like this. Because despite the fact that Jackie only rarely mentioned Point Place, Barbara knew that Jackie had never known love as simple as this. As straightforward. As uncomplicated. And even though the tiny girl had only been in their lives for a short time, every member of the Taylor household had been enchanted by her.
And they thought of her as their own.
Nate was happy that his parents loved Jackie. He, himself, wasn't as oblivious as they thought he was – he knew that Jackie wasn't even close to falling in love with him. He knew that Jackie had dealt with a lot of shit back in the boonies of Wisconsin, and she was still dealing with it. He didn't have to be a Nobel prize winner to realize that whatever made Jackie move miles and miles away from home had to be some fucked up shit. No one goes that far away from home so relatively quickly unless home doesn't feel like home anymore. And Jackie, the few times she had talked about Point Place, would always have this look in her eyes and this tone to her voice. It was as if whatever fucked up shit that had happened before her coming to New York had killed a vital part of her inside.
Nate would give his right arm to know what asshole put that look in her eyes, that tone to her voice.
He got a part of his answer on September 25th, 1980.
It was just a regular day. Nothing major happened that Thursday – he went to classes, had some coffee with Jackie and Melissa before he went to meet with some of his friends for a game of football in Central Park, and then headed back home for dinner with his family and Jackie.
It was just a boring, regular day.
Until Nate walked into the Taylor penthouse, and overheard a conversation that explained…well. It explained everything.
He was heading to the back towards the kitchen, when he heard Jackie.
Crying.
"Hey, Jackie, it's okay… I know that this is how I felt when Billie Holiday died…" he heard his mother say.
What are they talking about? He wondered.
Jackie didn't even really understand why she was crying. All she knew is that when she heard "John Bonham, Led Zeppelin drummer, dead at 32," the part of her that still ached for her Steven, broke inside. Hyde adored Led Zeppelin – he had every album, knew every word to every song. He had tried, with some success, at getting her to like them, and she had to admit that she liked some of their softer, slower songs.
Bonham had provided the beat to the music that she and Steven had listened to, smoked to.
Made love to.
And now Bonham was gone, and with his death, Jackie felt like a piece of her was dying, too. The piece that was still holding on to a thread of hope that Hyde would come after her, and love her the way she needed him to.
She couldn't explain it – but it was as if Bonham's death represented everything that she had thought she had said goodbye to – Point Place, Donna.
Steven.
But they were still there, entrenched in her heart.
And it was this realization – that she would carry them and their betrayal forever – that made Jackie break down to wailing sobs.
Barbara didn't think that the news on John Bonham's death would affect Jackie so greatly. But she was a smart enough woman to realize that there was more to Jackie's tears than grief over the fallen drummer.
There was something deeper meaning to Jackie's tears.
"Jackie…is there something else?"
She hadn't meant to say anything. She didn't want Mrs. Taylor to think that she was leading her boy on, that she was some gold digger, only out for a portion of the family coffers.
She cared about Nathan. Deeply and truly. She would never deny that.
But it was the soft look on Mrs. Taylor's face, the intense compassion in her eyes – the compassion that Jackie had only really seen in the eyes of the Formans – that broke her down. Because – save for a depressingly small few – had ever looked at Jackie like that. It was an incredibly small number of people that had given Jackie what Mrs. Taylor was so openly offering.
Comfort.
Jackie hadn't known she was starving for it until Mrs. Taylor had looked at her with those empathetic eyes of hers.
And Jackie broke.
And told her about Steven.