the blind side of love | chaennie

three

"It was just a thought." She shrugged it away as if it wasn't important. After a moment, she sighed. "Should we head back?"

"I guess." Kai yawned and stood up. "Should we call Jisoo? Maybe she'd like a ride back to the hotel."

"I'm sure she's having a blast all on her own," Jennie answered, somewhat distracted by the tables of artwork along the way. She glanced at him briefly and smiled. "Unless you miss her..."

"Will you quit it with that? I do not have feelings for Jisoo."

"Mmhmm." She would have argued further, but then she saw it: a charcoal sketch drawn on simple canvas paper. She halted in her steps and stared at it for a long moment, unsure why she'd even stopped, unsure why she couldn't just keep walking.

"Uh, you okay?"

She walked a few feet, and finally turned to Kai and said, "Could you get that picture for me?"

Kai glanced back at the item in question. "What am I, your slave?"

"Kai," Jennie said, her voice edging toward annoyance. "I know Clark Kent could pull it off with a simple pair of glasses, but I don't wanna push it."

"Fine, fine."

Jennie watched him from several feet away. She rolled her eyes again at the sight of him flirting with the brunette behind the table. It took him far longer than necessary to get the picture and walk over to her, but once he did, she was too pleased with the purchase to mind.
"Here's your picture, your highness."

"Hitting on the artist were you?" Jennie asked, distracted at once by the picture he'd handed her. She stared at it and smiled. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yeah, beautiful," he said flatly, and they resumed their walk. "Actually, that wasn't the artist. That was the artist's friend. The artist's very cute friend who just gave me her number. Although, admittedly, she did make me work for it." He held up a business card for emphasis and flipped it over to the other side to illustrate a phone number written in green ink.

"Very impressive."


Kai pocketed the card and smiled smugly. "One day you too could be this smooth."

Jennie didn't glance at him as they walked. "I'm not sure smoothness is the problem," and a trace of bitterness seeped through the words before she could help herself. She looked around, eyes narrowed. "Where the hell is my driver? I told him to wait."

"Jennie, you know I'm just teasing, right?" Kai asked, suddenly serious. "I know it's tough for you."

She didn't answer, stared down at the drawing in her hand instead and sighed. "You're not going to find anyone to love if you don't let anyone get close to you."

"I let you get close to me."


"Yes, but much to my dismay, I don't seem to be your type."

"And therein lies the rub."

~*~

"I'm sorry I'm late," Roseanne anxiously said before Lisa could open her mouth. "It's all Shakespeare's fault. But look, I brought you fine New York cuisine." She handed over the two hotdogs she'd bought from a street vendor.

"How touching." Lisa accepted Roseanne's offerings and placed them down on the wooden foldout table. She was, in fact, starving. For hours she'd sat behind the carefully arranged pieces of Roseanne's artwork, inhaling car exhaust and stupidity. For hours she'd listened to the sounds of beeping horns and angry, frustrated souls battling it out in the war zone of New York City traffic. She'd listened to a thousand out-of-context conversations, answered hundreds of questions – most of them having nothing to do with the art on display – and pointed dozens of people in the wrong direction. She was exhausted. "But Shakespeare's been dead too long to be your scapegoat, and I think I deserve better than hotdogs."