OUR PLAYLIST | JENLISA

THIRTY

Jennie

Playlist: Holocene | Bon Iver
***

The dip of the bed jostled me from my sleep. Somewhere in my misery I’d drifted off. Familiar hands wrapped themselves around my waist from behind and pulled me in.

Lisa…

Her hair brushed the side of my neck and then in a husky voice, “I’m sorry.”

None of it mattered suddenly. None of it. The change in my brain was so fast it gave me whiplash. All my plans disintegrated. My mind flipped in a single heartbeat. I rolled over in the circle of her arms and kissed her. Even if there hadn’t been an apology, I’d have kissed her. She was forgiven, and I immediately became whole again.

She held my cheeks in her warm hands. “Jennie, I’m so sorry. I should have told you everything. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

“I’m sorry too,” I whispered. “I missed you so much. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have trusted you, I just got so in my head…”

“It was my fault,” she said. “I was just afraid you’d think less of me or wouldn’t be able to handle it, and I thought I was protecting you. It was stupid.”

She put her forehead to mine. “You didn’t put the chain on,” she whispered.

I shook my head. No, I hadn’t put the chain on. I couldn’t speak to her, but I couldn’t lock her out, even though I didn’t think she would come home. Not after the way I made her leave.

But Lisa never did have self-preservation instincts when it came to me, did she?

She brushed the hair off my forehead in the dimness. “Don’t ever take yourself from me again. Promise me. Please.”

Her beautiful deep voice sounded like suffering. The room was dim. The only light came from the glow of my alarm clock on my nightstand. But I could see the dark circles under her lids and the hollow look in her eyes and my heart broke a thousand times in a single beat and I knew instantly that I would never have been able to break up with her when she left for her tour. Never. Her plane would have still been sitting on the tarmac and I’d have been calling her, begging her to take me back. Fourteen months of being separated was nothing compared to nothing at all.

“Lisa, I don’t want to break up when you go on tour. I can’t.”

“I love you.”

The words sucked the air right out of my lungs and I blinked into the darkness.

“I love you, Jennie.”

“I love you too,” I breathed.

She let out a noise that sounded like a mixture of joy and relief, and I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her cheek.

She held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. “Jennie, come with me on my tour. Please.”

I laughed into her neck from happiness. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

I nodded. It was crazy. It was so not the kind of spontaneous thing I did. But it wasn’t even a question. I had to.

I wanted so much to be me again. I’d promised myself I would chase joy, climb out of my in-between, live a life of happiness that was worth living—and the only life I wanted to live was with her.

“I’ll pay your mortgage,” she said into my hair, a grin in her voice. “I’ll give you as much as you need.”

I pulled away so I could look at her. “No, I can’t let you do that. Maybe I can rent it?”

“It needs too many repairs to rent,” she said, her hands on my face. “Why don’t you sell it?”

Sell it?

“When we get back we can buy a new place,” she said. “Something better. Close to Jisoo and Haein.”

I smiled at her. “You want to live with me?”

Her eyes moved back and forth between mine. “I want everything with you.”

Screw it. If I was going to do this thing, I was going to do it. And I wanted to start over. I wanted to start over with her.

I nodded. “Okay. Let’s do everything. Let’s do it all.”

She paused and beamed at me. And then she smothered me with kisses. My mouth, my cheeks, my neck, telling me over and over and over again that she loved me, and I laughed and clutched her.

Every time she said it, the words filled me up. They wrapped themselves around me like warm, strong arms and made me feel safe and cherished, pushing out every doubt that her past and her fame had made me feel.

She loved me.

And I loved her back.

This was why we could weather her fame. Why I could trust her, always, no matter what came up. She belonged to me and we were in it together. How could I ever question it?

We were in love.