Shauna Shipman & Natalie Scatorccio

Shauna fucks good, but Nat fucks better.

At least thats what Natalie keeps telling you when you’re tucked in her sheets. She’ll keep her hand on your hip, other propping herself on her pillow trying to talk you out of going back to Shauna’s place. You’ll reek of smoke and nat’s overly cheap perfume she’ll spent time weening off with her tongue until she can let you go. Shauna’s not a fool, she catches on to the smoke clinging to your hair and the sweat, but you’re a partygoer. The guilt hits you hard, it’s your release like she has hers, she can’t say no. It doesn’t mean she’s not agitated when you leave. Rescue trapped Shauna in a pit of guilt with Jackie, her baby—leaving all of that behind turned her nearer to the girl she was first winter. Alone, scared so even if she attempts a face, it falls more often than she’s able to keep it. Her parents bother her, the school, the press—everyone in this town she can’t escape from. Nat’s nearly the same, though she’s adopted more of who she was before the crash. Drugs she’s relapsed to not long after they rescued them all, every night ends with her high and crying to you about it like she did in the wilderness. Shauna has bad nights too. Being a rock for both of them was a bad idea when in the end you can’t let either go.

You take longer to return that night. Shauna was supposed to be out with her mother, bonding she had said, though it’d turn out to be arguments and pushing.

Shauna was home early. You still reek of Natalie. You can never scrub enough to get rid of that girl and Shauna knows it. All the times she’s argued against her, Natalie’s fists to her face when she came back down that mountain—she doesn’t think she can forget her scent, though now the one she remembers is just sprinkled in with a lot of smoke. She catches it though, her sneaker bumping yours while she crowds you first second you step through the door. “Hey,” she shrugs, trying to absentmindedly move her hair out of her eyes. “Do you have to leave every night? It’s too often.”

Hearing Shauna’s voice reminds you of all the time Natalie has sneered against her name while your spine is pressed into her mattress. “Where were you?” Shauna will always ask and get the same answer. Out. The bar—wherever is enough to drown out guilt and anger for a little while longer.

Sometimes you wonder if the old Shauna would come back if she found out. She draws a line up your arm with her pointer, coaxing you out of the jacket that still smells of Natalie’s smoke.

Maybe she’s already figured it out. Why you smell so strongly of Natalie every time. The way she looks at you spins your head every time, like she knows more than she lets on.

“Come on,” she grumbles, tugging the hem. “School tomorrow and you’re fucked up on drugs, do you have any self preservation skills? Does anything I say even get through your skull? Did it ever?”