Tuesday was Lisa's day off work, which was lucky, because she had a lot of energy and thoughts she needed to burn off before she spent any part of today doing anything productive. Rosé had headed off not long after Lisa had arrived home last night to cover a few hours at the hospital due to a colleague having to head up to the maternity ward where his wife was giving birth early.
Which meant that Lisa could turn up her music as loud as she wanted without bothering Rosé.
Which also meant that Lisa spent half an hour ducking and weaving around the new boxing bag, landing punch after punch, and if she happened to occasionally picture Jeongyeon's face on the bag as she threw her fists around, what of it? It's not like she was going to do it for real.
Once her arms felt like they were too jellied out to punch the bag anymore, she hit the stair climber, and then, she ran. She ran, and ran, and ran, until the sweat was pouring down her face, her feet pounding the treadmill to the beat of whatever song happened to blast out of her iPod sound deck. Currently she was listening to Halestorm, which Rosé must've put on there, which is perhaps why she didn't hear Rosé shouting her name until the song ended.
Startled, Lisa jumped and set her feet on the side of the treadmill, turning around to look at Rosé, who turned the music down and rolled her eyes.
"Can you hear me? Or have you gone deaf from the volume you've had this at?" Rosé asked.
"Sorry, I was just in the zone, you know?" Lisa replied, waving her arm vaguely at the machines around her.
"It's 11am," Rosé stated flatly. "I've been home for over an hour, and I know you like to start early, and," she added, her voice rising, "I know you run when you're either pissed off or upset." Rosé folded her arms. "Which is it?"
Lisa blew out a breath and hopped off the treadmill, grabbed her gym towel, and wiped her face and arms with it before looking up and meeting Rosé's eyes.
"Can we go get pancakes?" she asked in a hopeful voice.
"Sure."
-----
After Lisa had a very hot shower, she and Rosé headed out and down the block until they arrived at one of Hyori's diners, the one at which Lisa had suggested they specialize in serving all-day breakfasts due to the amount of small offices that seemed to be taking up residence in the flats all around them. It had seemed to work, because the diner did a roaring trade. It turned out that essentially everybody loved pancakes, fried food, and waffles no matter what time of day it was.
As they entered, Lisa waved at the waitress Grace, who was standing behind the bar and gossiping with William, one of the chefs. William was hopelessly in love with Grace, who either hadn't noticed or was happy to continue flirting with him without taking it to the next level. Rosé thought that Grace was stringing him along, but privately, Lisa thought that she was just actually very shy. Grace waved back and indicated the corner booth next to the window overlooking the street, which was Rosé's favorite spot.
Lisa slid into the booth, grinning at Rosé who insisted on wiping the table free of the almost invisible crumbs that nobody but Rosé would've noticed. Maybe Jennie would've. Damn. Not right now.
Grace came over to take their order (two maple-syrup covered waffles for Rosé, two large stacks of maple-syrup covered pancakes for Lisa, along with a large Oreo milkshake, and a waffle with chocolate ice cream for dessert). Rosé, long-since used to Lisa's voracious appetite, didn't even pretend to be shocked or nauseated any more.
What she did do, though, while Lisa was drinking her Oreo milkshake like it was about to be taken away from her, was get straight to the point.
"What was all that running for?"
Lisa looked up, sipped her milkshake a little slower, and then sighed deeply into her pancakes. Cutting some of them up into very large bite-sized pieces, she stalled a little, knowing Rosé would wait her out. And she did.
A minute later, Lisa opened her mouth.
"It's Jennie."
"I figured as much. It doesn't take super-vision to notice the way you were looking at her on Friday night," Rosé remarked, scooping some syrup up with a piece of waffle, before popping it into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. "Or the way she was looking at you, to be honest. You two were really adorable, sneaking looks at each other every ten seconds. Lisa," she said, putting her fork down at the sight of Lisa's distressed face. "Okay. What about Jennie?"
Lisa figured that at this point, considering that they'd gone on a public date last night where anyone could've seen them, even if she didn't think anyone had, and given that Rosé seemed to have noticed her rather obvious mooning over Jennie on Friday, it would be okay to talk to Rosé. Rosé was her sister, and she trusted her to keep her mouth shut.
"She kissed me-" she burst out.
"I see," Rosé said, drawing out the second word with a smirk. "That's great! ...that's... not great? You don't seem very happy about it."
"No, I was, I mean, I am, I- I mean," and here Lisa cursed in such a way to make even Rosé raise her eyebrows. "Okay. You can't tell anyone this, I mean it. Technically we've kissed twice. You know when I told you I spilled my coffee on her after she came to the bookstore? I was all in a muddle because she'd come in and she'd been slightly flirty, I guess, and I wasn't sure what she meant. So I was all flustered and then I tipped the coffee."
Rosé nodded, and didn't even try to interrupt, for which Lisa was grateful.
"After I did that, she came back to the house. I told you most of it, but actually, she was there for longer than I told all you guys. Like, I sent her upstairs to change into some of my clothes and she came back downstairs looking like a regular- well I mean, she's anything but regular, have you seen her face?"
Rosé smiled slightly, and waved at Lisa to continue her story. "I think the whole world has seen that she's not exactly off-the-rack material, Lisa."
"But that's exactly it, Rosé. She is. She came down the stairs without her shoes on, with barely any makeup still on, and she looked just like any one of us would if we were going to slob out on the sofa watching Netflix all afternoon. She looked... adorable. I mean, she's just a normal person with an abnormal family and a job where everyone stares at her, and judges her."
"Her father is so fucked-up," Rosé commented.
"He is. And she got hurt by association. I mean, anyway, she came down the stairs like that and she was all curled up on the sofa and I just... um, I haven't felt like that in a long- I mean, it was just... nice, you know? Like obviously she wasn't giving much away because I was this total klutz who spilled a huge cup of very hot coffee over her really expensive dress and she was in a stranger's house but... but she was- she was so nice. And then on her way out she kissed me."
Rosé dropped the napkin on her plate, leaned back in the booth, and folded her arms. "She kissed you in our house? Before games night and the interviews at the hotel and everything else?"
"Yup. I mean, I haven't told anyone that, she asked me not to. So don't tell anyone, even Jisoo. But then she called and that whole hotel thing happened and she was really sweet about everything and she was so nice and just gave me her phone number without even having me checked with her security team and-" Lisa paused to take a breath. "She said she just wanted to spend more time with me, get to know me better. And I would've thought it was just as a friend if it wasn't for the fact she'd kissed me in the hallway."
"But?"
"But then before we got to Hanbin's place, she was kind of... flirty. And then at games night, she was so... I don't even know," Lisa said, shaking her hands out and then passing them both over her face. "You said she was looking at me?"
"Let me put it to you this way," Rosé said in a confidential tone that was laced with humor. "Jisoo and I placed a bet with each other over who would kiss who first. I guess Jisoo won, technically, if Jennie kissed you in the hallway. But the point is," Rosé took one of Lisa's hands in hers and squeezed it gently but firmly, her touch grounding Lisa in the way that Rosé had always been able to do ever since they'd met, "I was her partner in Articulate. But I'm pretty sure that half the answers she couldn't get were more to do with the fact that she was distracted than the thought that she didn't know the answers."
Lisa inhaled and held her breath before blowing it out in an attempt to calm herself further. "You mean she was distracted... by me?"
"For sure. She looks at you the same way that I used to look at Jisoo before I had the courage to ask her out. Or, not the same way. It was somehow... more. She stumbled over her words and I don't think it was the fault of the excellent scotch she brought."
Lisa hid her face in her hands. "And then yesterday we went on a date, and she was so open and beautiful, and so vulnerable, Rosé, you know how much of a sucker I am for an honest woman with a soft heart, and it was all going so well, and in the car we... until we got back to her hotel and some super-rude woman called Jeongyeon, I think she was Jennie's ex, ambushed us in the lobby and kissed Jennie right on the mouth, and Jennie sent me away so she could deal with her."
Rosé was silent for so long that Lisa looked at her from between her fingers, before grabbing her milkshake and dredging the crumbs of Oreos out of the bottom with her straw.
"To be fair," Rosé began, leaning forward to tap the bottom of the milkshake jug to make sure that she had all of Lisa's attention, "if an ex of mine had shown up out of the blue and thrown a bucket of freezing water over my date and I, I would want to get that dealt with as well. There's obviously something more going on there than what it looks like on the surface, and I know you like Jennie- yes, I know you like her," Rosé added at Lisa's sad face, "but I think you should let her sort this out. I obviously don't know Jennie very well and I don't know who Jeongyeon is, but if Jennie needs to sort it out, then she needs to sort it out. And... you need to let her."
Lisa stared despondently at the rest of her pancakes, pushing the waffles away from her. "I'm not hungry anymore."
The look on Rosé's face was sympathetic. "I'm sorry, Lisa. I know it's not what you wanted to hear."
"No, no, you're right actually. And she's going to be out of the country now anyway. I think it's probably for the best that we... give this some time. And let her work it out, as you said."
"Are you okay?" Rosé asked, her forehead wrinkling in concern.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll be okay. All I've got to do now is not to think about Jennie," she said flatly, forcing a smile she didn't feel to her face. It looked more like a grimace.
"Lisa-"
"It's okay, Rosé. I know you're right. I'm just sad and want to go home, okay?" and with that, Lisa waved Grace over for the check.
-----
Four days passed with Lisa in the biggest funk she'd been in for a while. Despite the conversation with Rosé about giving Jennie some space to deal with the whole Jeongyeon situation, and despite not having known Jennie for very long at all, Lisa was still upset. Every morning, she got up and ran ten miles on the treadmill before going to work. Wednesday had been unexpectedly quiet, and she'd sent Hanbin home early, before spending the day building a new display cabinet for Pride.
She tried really hard not to think about Jennie. She knew she was in Tokyo at the moment, and the time zone difference was ridiculous to the point that she wasn't expecting to hear from her at all. Lisa really wanted to text her, really wanted to hear her voice, but she wanted Jennie to be the one to reach out, if she was so inclined.
Jennie didn't contact her. Lisa tried not to take that as a comment on her personality, company, or even on her kissing skills. She felt like she'd genuinely connected with Jennie, and truly connecting with people wasn't something Lisa did very often. She was open and honest, sure, but there was always that part of her that held herself back, not wanting to get her heart broken. She knew she was a sensitive old soul at heart, eager to please and therefore easy to take advantage of, and she just... didn't want to risk it. Not for just anyone.
But then, of all the bookshops in the entire city of New York, Jennie had walked straight into hers. And then Lisa had walked straight into her. And the way her heart pounded every time she thought of Jennie, sometimes she felt like she was still crashing into her.
It wasn't until 11pm on Friday night that anything happened.
Lisa was in the bath; Rosé had suggested it to her, thinking it would relax her. So, she'd lit several candles, switched the radio to a classical music station on a low volume, and poured herself a large glass of wine. Her phone was face-down on the side, and her nose in a book that was becoming more and more wrinkly the longer she spent soaking herself. Every now and again, she topped up the hot water, loving the way that her muscles felt like they were getting heavier and heavier.
It was one of the things she and Rosé had indulged in after a few years of living together. Rosé's bathroom had a huge double shower, but Lisa got the bath. It was quite deep, longer than average, and certainly big enough for two people to easily sit with one at each end. Tonight though, Lisa was stretched out and alone.
That is, until her cell started to ring. She dropped her book on the bath tray, annoyed at whoever it was calling so late. Wiping her hand on a small towel, she looked at the display.
Jennie.
Lisa choked on air, and she watched the cell ring in her hand for a few seconds. Suddenly, Lisa remembered that Jennie would be calling from Tokyo, and answered the call.
"Hello?" Oh, smooth. As if you couldn't see her name on your screen.
"Hi, Lisa?" Jennie's voice asked, sounding very far away and as if she was at the end of a long tunnel.
"Yeah, it's me. Hi, Jennie," Lisa replied, feeling her heart thud heavily in her chest. Perhaps having a conversation with Jennie while she was in a very hot bath wasn't the best idea.
There was silence on the other end, and Lisa didn't want to fill the silence, so she shifted in the bath, the water sloshing everywhere, and waited until Jennie spoke again.
"Are you in the bath?" Jennie asked, in a tone that suggested that she quite liked the idea.
Lisa wasn't in the mood and her voice came out sharper than she intended. "Yes, but really, Je-"
"I- um," Jennie faltered at the sound of Lisa's voice. "Lisa, I'm so sorry for what happened the other night with Jeongyeon. I had no idea she was going to be there," Jennie said very quickly, as if she was afraid Lisa was going to hang up on her. As if that was something Lisa would do. And then she realized that Jennie didn't really know her very well at all, the treacherous yet tacking itself onto the end of the sentence without Lisa's permission, and she felt annoyed at herself for it.
Jennie, obviously not liking the silence, suddenly started to speak again. The line was so quiet that Lisa struggled to hear her, pressing the phone close to hear ear. "She wanted to rekindle things. I have no interest in that, Lisa, really. The relationship fell apart for a reason and that reason hasn't changed. She's still a friend, but-" and now the line went so quiet that she couldn't hear Jennie speaking at all.
"Jennie? Are you there? The line is awful," Lisa almost shouted.
"-after you left."
"What? Jennie, I really can't hear you very well," Lisa said, clutching the phone tightly in her hand.
There was more silence, and then, "...Jeongyeon," Jennie said, her voice now sounding loud and clear, as if she'd moved. "She stayed for an hour after you left. Lisa, there's some history there that's-"
"That's great, Jennie. Is this you telling me you worked it out with her?" Lisa asked flatly, feeling childish, but sadder and more hurt than she thought she had a right to after such a short time knowing the beautiful brunette.
"No, no!" Jennie exclaimed, panic edging her tone. "She had some... she wanted to try to work things out-"
"Well," Lisa interrupted sullenly, feeling irritated. The last thing she really wanted to be talking about right now was the damned Jeongyeon. "I'm not sure exactly what you want me to say to that," Lisa said, pinching the bridge of her nose as if that would help. "I spoke to Rosé, she said I needed to give you some time. I agree with her, so... so, Jennie, I'm sorry, but I think I should go."
"I'm... Lisa, I'm sorry," Jennie's regretful voice sounded so close now, as if she was holding her cell as tightly as Lisa was holding hers. Lisa could almost picture her, dark hair falling across her face, her mouth downturned, cat eyes sad.
"It's okay," Lisa murmured, and Jennie scoffed in her ear, knowing a lie when she heard it. "Alright, it's not okay. I'm upset and hurt, Jennie. We had such a great time the other night, and this... it sucks. I'm sorry if I sound like a petulant child, but it does. Suck, I mean." Lisa heaved a huge sigh. "And I just... I know you felt it too." Lisa did, too. So much.
"I did," Jennie's voice sounded thick, as if she was holding back tears. "I do. I just needed to, need to... deal with her."
"Take your time, Jennie," Lisa said, hating herself just a little bit by now. Why she was encouraging that, she had no idea. "Just... sort it out. And then maybe... maybe some time, we can talk about it."
"Okay..." Jennie said slowly, her voice wavering, but clearly sensing Lisa wasn't receptive to her right now. "Oh, Lisa, I really am sorry." And the worst thing was, Lisa knew she was. "I wanted-"
"I know, Jennie. Just... take care, okay?"
"...You too, darling," Jennie whispered, and then the call ended abruptly, as if Jennie couldn't bear it any longer.
Lisa felt like the only way that call could've gone worse was if Jeongyeon herself had joined in. She didn't think she'd handled it well at all. In fact, despite her upset, she was annoyed at herself for being so immature. Jennie hadn't given her any real indication either in the hotel or on the phone that she also wanted to work things out with Jeongyeon. She felt a little guilty that she hadn't really given Jennie a chance to explain herself.
But right now, she really didn't care. Jeongyeon had been rude to her, ambushed Jennie, and interrupted what she was sure would've been an even lovelier night than the evening she'd already spent with Jennie. Lisa flipped her phone across the room, and sank underneath the bubbles.
-----
The next month was... difficult, and what was worse was that it seemed to last forever. Pride was fast approaching, so Lisa was kept very busy. She ran a few workshops through the bookstore, organised the tickets for the parade for their group, went to game nights and tried to pretend everything was normal.
By the end of their first game night, their whole group of friends knew almost as much as Rosé did, bar the gentle kiss Jennie had given her in the house and the rather less gentle kissing they'd done in the car. They did, however, know that she like liked Jennie, in Hanbin's words. Even Mino had noticed the way she and Jennie had looked at each other. Her despondency translated to everyone making as much effort as they could to help her drown her sorrows, which was great on the actual day, but so much worse the next day as her feelings and her nausea hit her like dually evil sledgehammers.
Even worse than the hangovers were the photos on the fronts of the gossip magazines that seemed to follow Lisa everywhere she went. Photos of Jennie on the set of the TV show it turned out she was guest-starring in for a season. It was a popular TV show about a cruise-ship running aground on an island, and the passengers being picked off one by one by a murderer. She looked beautiful in the washed-out clothes they had her wearing, dirt streaked across her face and forearms, and Lisa was constantly reminded of the way Jennie had looked at the bottom of her stairs, standing barefoot and vulnerable.
If Jennie was ever on the front cover of any of the magazines sold in the stall near Candlelight Bookstore, Rosé had taken to buying all the copies to make sure that Lisa never saw them. Lisa appreciated her efforts, but it still made her sad. She wasn't, she felt, horrible enough to hope Jennie was just as sad, but... sometimes, she kind of was.
-----
A week after the phone call, she received a text from Jennie that said nothing but bottled water. Lisa had frowned at her cell and then ignored it, not wanting to start a conversation while she had no idea whether things with Jeongyeon, whatever they were, had been resolved.
Two days after that, she received another message. This one read, bars of soap. Definitely not liquid soap. Lisa ignored that message too.
Two weeks after Jennie had called, Rosé set her up on a date with a friend of Jisoo's called Seulgi. Lisa wasn't very interested in going out on a blind date, but went anyway, obliging Rosé and making it look like she was trying. She had spent the evening being talked at by Seulgi, who was beautiful, but rather vapid, on the merits of being a social media influencer. Lisa wasn't quite sure what that was, but nodded politely regardless.
The next date Rosé sent her on, Lisa gamely giving it her best shot, was with a doctor she worked with at the hospital, Maria. She was funny, witty, smart, and chivalrous. But when they'd sat down at the table in the restaurant to order, and Lisa had ordered the largest fillet steak they had, rare, Maria stated testily that meat was murder and then proceeded to lecture Lisa on slaughterhouses. Hiding in the bathroom to get away from Maria, she glanced at her cell to find another message from Jennie, sent an hour ago.
Jennie: large amounts of high-proof alcohol
Lisa frowned at the message for a few moments before she suddenly understood what Jennie was doing. She was listing things that she would hoard in her bunker in the case of a zombie apocalypse. Despite herself, Lisa felt her face break into the biggest smile for the last few weeks. Jennie was a massive geek, and she kind of loved it. The short time they'd spent watching the Walking Dead sailed straight back into the forefront of her mind, and she only hesitated a moment before bringing up the keyboard.
Lisa: a whole room of medical supplies
To her surprise, her phone indicated that her message had been read immediately, as if Jennie had been waiting with the message app open, watching for a response. The three dots appeared straight away underneath Lisa's message.
Jennie: :)
Jennie: a library full of do-it-yourself books, medical textbooks, and photo albums
Lisa: photo albums, eh?
Jennie: we should never forget the people who are important to us
And just like that, the tiny amount of progress that Lisa's treacherous little heart had made was erased.
-----
Hanbin set Lisa up on a date with one of Hayi's friends who was visiting the city, but by the time she got there, her date, Danielle, was already having a drinking challenge with someone else, and Lisa turned around and headed straight back home without even saying hello.
Jennie: duct tape
-----
On the day that Rosé set her up on a blind date with another doctor friend of hers, Jennie sent her another message.
Jennie: MREs. Loads of them. A whole room of them, in fact. They may taste disgusting after a while, but at least we wouldn't have to worry about food for a long time
Lisa sent her regrets to her date before she'd even left home.
-----
Once Pride had come and gone with far too much alcohol being drunk by all concerned, Lisa was nursing her raging hangover by spending the next day in bed surrounded only by bottles of water, empty Chinese takeout boxes, and the remains of a fried breakfast from Hyori's diner that Rosé had very kindly gone to fetch for her. Her pillows had sticky, multicoloured, glittery patches splodged on them from the rainbows that had been painted on Lisa's face, and that she'd forgotten to remove before she'd fallen into bed. By the middle of the evening, she was beginning to feel more like herself, and had even cracked the curtains and the window to let some light into her by now very stuffy bedroom.
She forced herself to the bathroom at 8pm, had a cool shower, and marveled at the terrible state her skin was in before dragging her duvet downstairs and curling up on the sofa and turning on the TV, figuring a quiet hour of nature shows would help in some impossible way.
It was not to be, though. Just as she was settling down, the doorbell rang. Lisa pulled the duvet over her head and tried to ignore it, but whoever it was persisted. She hadn't ordered any more Chinese food; by the third time the delivery guy had come to her house that day, he had started giving her updates about her improved appearance and then asked her out. Lisa had resolved to order her takeout from a different place next time.
There were a few moments of silence from the doorbell, and then it rang again. Lisa turned the TV up a little more, hoping that if she just ignored them, they would eventually go away. The next minute, the buzzer rang continuously as if someone was leaning on it, and Lisa flung the duvet off herself and stomped across the room and down the stairs.
"You'd better have a damn good reason for this!" she growled menacingly through the door as she twisted all the locks. Yanking the door open, she saw someone walking down the steps of her stoop towards the street with their hood up. "Well?" she called out to the person's retreating back.
Whoever they were turned around at the sound of Lisa's voice, huge sunglasses shielding half of their face. The long, silky dark hair hung loose, falling out of their hood, somewhat hid the sharp jawline Lisa knew so well, and Lisa felt her heart give a painful thud.
"Jennie?"