Journey

Chapter 8

Early August 2015

Jennie quietly hovers at the threshold to their narrow, and frankly overcrowded, bedroom. There is a plate on her right hand paired with a fork on her dominant left and she scrapes along the porcelain for what seem like the remnants of what used to be scrambled eggs. Once she considers the plate sufficiently clean she skewers stray bits of bright red, sticky squares and 'hmmms' when she savors the morsel that lands on her tongue.

The twenty two year old scrutinizes the space they have grown to call theirs and reflects on how

this is the new reality of her life. Jennie's eyes land on the half built crib in the corner and her lips curl up when she reminisces on the journey it has taken over the last few weeks. Lisa was steadfast in her refusal to buy a crib online because she insisted furniture was known to be damaged or just outright destroyed during shipping and she would not put their baby on a crib that was less than faultlessly reliable and structurally sound. Jennie conceded and they embarked on the month long process to find a crib they both agreed on.

On a random Tuesday, while being dragged through endless baby shops after having had a particularly hard day at the gallery, Jennie decided she was done aimlessly walking around and decided to play the cards she'd been saving for an instance where she absolutely needed them. Soon after getting home Jennie "accidentally" wore a particularly revealing chemise and also just happened to walk around the apartment in it while Lisa punctiliously went over files for a case she was working. A few hours later, atop the mess of wrinkled papers that now stuck to their damp and spent bodies, Lisa happily agreed to go with the crib Jennie had fallen in love with about twenty stores ago. To Jennie's dismay, nothing was ever that simple with Lisa.

When they arrived and learned it would've been a few extra hundred dollars to have the crib delivered and assembled Lisa stoutly refused the additional cost. She swore the crib could fit in the back of Rose's truck and that between the two of them they could wrangle it to their third story walk-up. Just as Jennie suspected and warned, they couldn't. That next Saturday Rose and Lisa found themselves in the middle of the suffocating July heat, dripping sweat all over a scorching

New York sidewalk, and holding an oversized box that weighed almost as much as either of them. It took close to twenty failed attempts before they shamefully admitted it would require a skilled hand to get this up their awkwardly built stairs. Jennie figured an engineer would have solid ideas on how to solve their conundrum and, despite the fierce objection of the twosome, Jisoo and her delectably smug smirk walked up to Rose's truck about forty five minutes later. A significant amount of screaming and thousands of hurled insults later the crib made its way into Jennie and Lisa's apartment. Having made a career out of putting things together, Jisoo was confident she could build that crib in about twenty minutes but as soon as the offer left her lips Lisa declined it. Lisa assured everyone she didn't need the help. Twenty days and a half built crib later that statement was proven to be clearly false. The thing that vindicated Lisa was that she (probably) hadn't failed to put the crib together because she wasn't capable of doing it, but because she kept falling asleep while attempting to do it. Jennie had made it clear she could construct it herself but Lisa had vehemently disallowed that, so this is where they found themselves, chunks of built crib along with random pieces of it taking up what used to be the corner where Lisa's dresser stood. Jennie eyes some of the long pieces resting against the window to her left and distinctly remembers having sex on that particular sill more than once. That seemed like a distant version of them now.

Jennie wishes that was the end of her problems with the crib, but it wasn't. The crib made their room uncomfortably full which is why Jennie insisted it shouldn't have even been taking up space in there to begin with. They had cleared the studio to give the baby a perfectly good nursery but Lisa argued the baby should sleep with them. At least for the first few months. That's what she promised.