InsaneJournal

Shane was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and has three brothers -- two older, one younger; her father took off when she was little, and her flaky, social-worker mother Gail struggled with jobs and mostly abusive relationships to make ends meet. Gail must have been a looker in the 70s, and by the way she dressed, it was easy to see she thought she was STILL a looker and it was STILL the seventies. She wasn't. Maybe Gail and her cheap perfume, her burned, white-blonde hair, her too-tight-for-her-chunky-body outfits, and her "makeovers" were the reasons that her only daughter Shane was such a tomboy. All Shane wore were jeans and T-shirts, wifebeaters and sweatpants. She didn't even own a skirt.

In high school, Shane struggled with learning disabilities and like anyone with a disability, compensated in other ways -- she was charming and knew how to talk to people. She never lied and she was never shady. Still, she charmed and bartered with fellow students until they did her homework for her. She was a talented athlete, so her coaches bent over backwards to make sure she passed. A few of her teachers really pulled for her too and why? Because she was just the sort of girl that people were instantly and inexplicably fond of. Some people have the X-Factor, and some don't. She always did.

Once she graduated high school, Shane attended West Falls University in Baltimore, Maryland on scholarship for softball. She met Jesus Vaquero [PB: Jake Gyllenhall] there. He was a seemingly shy, quiet kid with an impressive IQ, and the two forged/found an unlikely, volatile, and profound relationship.

Jesus had a small, occasional writing gig for The New Republic and gave a shit about school. It motivated Shane to try to throw herself into her schoolwork as well, and try when she'd given up for so long. Eventually, they both transferred to NYU.

To this day, Shane doesn't know how media mogul [with the wealth and reach of Howard Hughes] Rex Kolter [PB: Clive Owen] found her, but he did in fact, seek her out and approached her with a job offer -- he needed to learn Portuguese for some business dealings in Brazil. "If you were a whore, what would you charge?" he asked her. Shane told him she wouldn't want money, just favors. This impressed him. He rented her an apartment like she asked for -- it wasn't the cheap place she expected, but a million dollar place. Her first day of work was actually an evening -- he picked her up in a limo and took her to Fifth Avenue boutiques that opened after hours just because of his name alone. He tended to her personally, and was terribly critical and attentive to her body. She and Jesus were having an emotional and physical dryspell, and had been for a couple months. The following days of work were more like dates. They enjoyed each other's company and then she loathed him. Shane never had attention from anyone classy and rich, like he was. She never had the attention of an older man. She never let anyone take liberties when they touched her (a hand-graze on her ass while he eased her through a door he was holding, for instance). She never thought she'd kiss back. He forced it on her. It took her 20 seconds to kiss back, but she did.

When she came back to the dorms, she found Jesus. She did a horrible thing, but she would never lie, not to him and not to anyone. Shane told him what she'd done. She told him didn't know why. She didn't love Rex, she didn't even like him. She loved Jesus. She wanted to marry Jesus. She was wearing his goddamn ring. He was the one who brought her orange juice. He's the one whose palm she kissed. He didn't forgive her.

Coincidence had it that the following day, Shane's suitemate and best girlfriend, took an EPT test and told Shane she was pregnant. She told Shane Jesus was the father.

Shane told the campus police where Jesus kept his weed, and got him kicked out of school. That was only the beginning. For months, she lashed out, and lashed out heavy and hard, until he was sinking to his knees, wrapping his arms around her legs, and begging her to let this stop. Anthony Grayson, who had seen Shane and Jesus' relationship unfold, was fiercely protective over Shane, and thought Jesus was an asshole. One night when Shane and Anthony were in the apartment Rex got her, Jesus came by. ADD Ant Jesus in a fit of rage, and stabbed him in the shoulder.

Jesus almost died in Shane's apartment that night. He made her promise not to leave him since he was afraid of hospitals, and she kept that promise. And when he got released from the hospital, she went home with him to the crackden motel he was staying in. She nursed his wounds. She bought his painkillers. She helped him shower. They wound up making out, dried each other off, and slept in the same bed. They didn't have to have a talk, they were just back together.

When Jesus healed up, they got an apartment together, and found a couple roommates. A shady character Maddox Maddon offered Jesus a job as an 'errand boy.' Shane didn't want him to take it, and swore to him she'd start stripping if he did. Jesus called her bluff and took the job. She called upon Rex Kolter, and asked him to make her a stripper. It amused him. He told her she'd make an awful stripper, and gave her a job at one of his clubs.

Jesus hated it. Shane hated it. They hated each other, and had countless, bitter fights, and for months.

Shane wound up being popular at the strip joint, if only for her ass, attitude, and conversation. She was one of the girls one of Maddox's musician friends picked out personally to work at Maddox's apartment. Maddox and Shane disliked each other intensely, but when she showed up at his place, he told her to make Jesus happy or stay the fuck away from him, that he had a hard night.

Jesus showed, broody as hell. When he saw her, he paid her for a lapdance, and told her to do it right there, in front of everyone in the smoke-filled room. He told her he wanted her to make him want to fuck her more than he ever had before, and then he wanted her to walk away. He wanted her to hurt him.

It was a bad lapdance. He was like a dead fish, and she didn't want to be doing it anyway. In fact, she got another guy in the crowd involved, and five minutes later, Jesus' jealousy peaked, and he grabbed her and kissed her, and wouldn't stop kissing her.

They took a slew of vodka up to the roof. Vodka was their drink of choice, and roofs were their place of choice. Nothing ever touched them on roofs. They were together for one night, and it was lovely. In the morning, it went to hell. She broke down and cried just outside the apartment building, shoulders shivering and quaking. She told him she'd seen her father. She hated stripping. She couldn't do this.

Jesus rarely sacrifices, but when he does, it was because it was absolutely necessary. He promised her they'd get out of town for a while. They'd go to her hometown, and it would make her feel better like it always had.

Shane told him she quit school on the busride down to North Carolina. Once they got there, they decided they'd leave New York, they'd just stay in the South. They planned out their life, and they decided they'd get married. Jesus wanted to stay. Shane said they had to do it the right way -- he had to take care of Madden, and they had to give their roommates some notice.

They never went back to Wilmington.

Jesus stayed with the job, and Shane stayed with hers. Finally, he gave her what she needed, because clinically depressed Shane was going mad -- he asked her to quit. And then he told her the reason he wouldn't give up his job for Madden was because he was making her pay for when she kissed Rex Kolter, and that he was still making her pay.

Later, in a conversation, Shane asked Jesus what his last words to her would be, if he could only say one thing and then he'd become a mute. He told her he'd tell her he loved her, and missed her. They screwed. He got up to take a shower, and she packed a bag and left.

Shane knew he wouldn't ever forgive her, not like this. She went to Rex and asked him to marry her. He laughed at the prospect and asked her why, but Shane would never tell him. It was the act of giving up the only thing she wanted -- to be married to Jesus -- and bind herself with her mistake as penance until Jesus forgave her. Rex did tell her he'd marry her for curiosity's sake. It took a week to plan, the press was all over it, and it was in Saint Patrick's Cathedral.

To Shane, the marriage was penance, and to Rex it was a joke. What it wound up being was a very healthy, happy marriage. They didn't love each other, but they liked each other a lot and were concerned about each other's well-being. He slept around, she didn't care, and they always ate dinner together. He made her go back to NYU, and packed her days with lessons and fittings to make her fit for being his wife. She started seeing a shrink. She wrote Jesus every week, waiting for him to forgive her. And then she started to believe what the shrink said, about the relationship being unhealthy, and stopped writing. Months later, Shane contacted him for the first time, and asked him to meet her in the park. It was part of her recovery she said, to make amends and to explain why their relationship wasn't healthy. Jesus told her it was bullshit, told her she'd turned into a spoiled brat, and begged her to come back. He kissed her, and she didn't kiss him back. He asked her to meet him again, and although she was supposed to say no, and be firm about no, she said yes. Yes, yes, yes.

The affair was inevitable. She met him at his new apartment, movie theaters, in the bathroom at charity events. Jesus had a new girlfriend, and then he had a boyfriend, but he never stopped seeing or screwing Shane. It was Shane in fact, who was ready to leave Rex; Jesus said he wasn't ready to get married. Jesus' manic depression got worse, and his parents visited to make sure he was taking his pills. They left the responsibility in Shane's hands. She didn't want Jesus to get healthy, because he might leave her if he was. She didn't want him to change because she loved who he was. So every time he tried to take a pill, she took it from him and popped it into her mouth, instead.

The two wound up in a terrible fight at Jesus' apartment, with paparazzi covering her affair outside. Jesus exploded, broke a window, and threw chunks of glass out at the crowd. Someone called the police. They were both taken to a mental hospital.

Rex still visited Shane -- he told her she had to use her time wisely, and brought her an encyclopedia once a week. She asked for the divorce and he told her he'd take care of it. Since then, Jesus and Shane have gotten out of the hospital. They packed up their stuff, they left New York for good, and road trip to Vegas, where they FINALLY plan to get married. On the way there, she had an abortion and their families finally met in Jesus' hometown in Iowa.

So Shane was the unlikely one to graduate college, and Jesus, the genius with an intense work ethic, did not. She's going to bartending school, and will maybe get her real estate license after that. She hasn't seen Anthony Grayson since the stabbing.