Love's a fragile little flame || Jenlisa Adaption

Chapter 6

For all Jennie's talk about getting back to her normal life, after Boston, it sure doesn't feel that way.

Ostensibly, yeah, things are as they were before. She's back home in LA, back to her routine, back to making music.

It just doesn't feel normal to her. Not like it used to.

Not anymore.

She finds herself longing for her old normal; for waking up to body-warmed sheets, for quiet conversations at the end of the day, for the soft comfort of sharing her life with someone.

Not just someone — with Lisa.

She still tells herself it's for the best.

She's less and less convinced she believes it.

*

Somehow days turn into weeks, turn into months.

Time's funny like that.

Jennie reinstalls Instagram and it seems like Lisa's getting back to normal too. She's published a few feed posts since Jennie's social media hiatus — a boomerang at a friend's birthday party, a step-and-repeat pic from a fashion line launch, and a silly selfie where she's standing in front of a pool, squinting into the sun.

It makes Jennie happy to see her happy.

They text, sometimes.

A couple of weeks after Lisa initially broke their unspoken silence, Jennie sees a corgi wearing a sweater and has to send her a pic.

That message sparks a tentative correspondence where they text whenever something makes one think of the other. Lisa sends Jennie photos of latte art and memes of grumpy cats ("i swear this is literally you jen") and, one time, a video of herself in the car dancing to one of Jennie's songs on the radio.

It gets to a point that whenever Jennie's phone vibrates her pulse speeds up in the hopes that it's from Lisa.

(She doesn't bother trying to convince herself that that isn't pathetic.)

*

Jennie's body misses her old normal too.

She misses touching Lisa and being touched by her. She misses the anticipation that would build between them throughout the day; how, even when the waiting felt like torture, she knew she'd be completely satisfied before they called it a night.

Satisfaction is hard to come by, these days. She can take the edge off, but that's about it.

She tries not to think of Lisa when she touches herself, but in the end, it's unavoidable. It's her face she sees, when she gets close; her voice she hears urging her on, telling her what to do, how she looks, how she sounds.

It's her name on Jennie's lips when she comes.

In her weaker moments — when, try as she might, Jennie just can't get there — she thinks of calling her. She knows if she could just hear her voice...

But that would be stupid.

And unfair.

(And, sometimes, just thinking about making that call is enough.)

*

A couple of months after shooting wraps the Untitled Julliard Project gets an official name.

Jennie doesn't find 'The Last Note' to be particularly inspired, as far as titles go, but she guesses it works thematically. And it probably tested well or whatever.

Besides, there isn't much time for second-guessing. Post-production is expedited because studio execs want the movie in theaters this spring, ahead of summer action flicks and superhero blockbusters.