Good Together

Chapter 4: Always Apologize With Homemade Pie

Having not planned on staying in Polis for long, all of Jennie’s clothes that she’d brought with her were dirty, so she’d been forced to wear old jeans and a shirt she hadn’t worn since she’d left the town. After looking at her appearance in the mirror, Jennie had opted to only put on a light layer of make-up. She was surprised to see how much she looked like the way she had before she left, even now five years older. The biggest teller of change though, was the large diamond ring on her left hand.

It felt heavy. Out of place. The Jennie she was dressed as had once worn a diamond ring as well, but a much smaller one. One that had never felt like a weight on her hand. Jennie chalked the difference up to the physical weight of the ring. She’d get used to it, surely.

Jennie didn’t wait for the pies to cool before wrapping one up to take to the police station. Even if the town weren’t so small, Jennie would know the way to the police station like the back of her hand. Growing up, she was there way too often. She couldn’t even count the times she, Jackson, Goran and Lisa had gotten caught tipping cows, drinking underage in public and conducting several crimes.

Jennie was had a face well known by the police department, and everyone chuckled as she entered.

“Jennie Kim, walking into the police station of her own volition?” Officer Gustus scoffed. “Have we entered some kind of alternate universe?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Jennie rolled her eyes. “Is Peniel here?” She was still a bit shocked that Peniel was the new sheriff, but she supposed it did make sense. His mother, Indra, had been the town’s sheriff for years and Peniel had always expressed interest in following in her footsteps, even if he did have a habit of following Jennie and the rest of their friends into illegal situations.

“Should be in his office,” Officer Gustus gestured to the office in the back of the station.

“Thanks,” Jennie nodded before walking towards the back.

She knocked on the half-open door and Peniel signaled to her to enter, his eyes never the paper he was leaving until Jennie cleared her throat. When he did look up, Peniel looked at Jennie in shock, clearly expecting a co-worker to have interrupted his work and not Jennie.

“Jennie?” Peniel questioned in confusion.

“Hi,” Jennie responded, awkwardly standing in the doorway. When there was a moment of awkward silence, Jennie suddenly remembered the pie she was holding. “I brought pie,” she spoke, holding up the pastry.

“What are you doing here Jennie?” Peniel asked tersely.

Peniel was always the most soft-spoken and calmest in their group of friends. Jennie and Jackson were the ones most likely to take the lead, but always butt heads. Lisa was the strategist, when she took the lead for whatever prank they were pulling, everyone followed her without question, even if Jennie and Jackson were the more outspoken ones. Goran was the voice of reason, always trying to reign the others in and get them to curb their loose morals. Often times it seemed as if Peniel didn’t really have a role to play in the dynamic of their friend group, but they never would have been complete without him.

Peniel was always the one to talk Jackson off a ledge. He was the one to convince Lisa to step in between Jackson and Jennie. He was the one to talk Goran into easing back a bit and having fun. He was the one who Jennie could share her passion for art with. In many ways, Peniel was the glue that kept them all together, even if no one acknowledged it.

Even if she hadn’t already known how badly she’d fucked up, Peniel’s tone would have sold it to Jennie.

“I’m an asshole,” Jennie sighed. Without waiting for Peniel to respond, Jennie entered his office and sat in the seat across from him, setting the pie down on his desk where it wouldn’t sit on any important documents. “I’m not even going to use the fact that I was drunk as an excuse, because it’s not. There is no excuse for the way I treated you at Grounders. I can’t even believe I said what I did. I don’t believe it. I don’t know anything about your relationship with Hyeri, but I do know that you’d never be anything but respectful to her. I know that, because I know you.” She pleaded with her eyes, hoping her old friend would forgive her.

“You’ve been gone for five years, I don’t know why you think you know me when I hardly recognize you.”

“I may have changed, but you haven’t,” Jennie insisted. “You always said you wanted to become sheriff, and now you have. You always said you wanted to find a drop-dead gorgeous girl and marry the hell out of her and you have. I’m just sorry that I lashed out at you the way I did.”

“We never really knew Hyeri, none of us did,” Peniel spoke, his face softening as he spoke his wife’s name. “Growing up she was just Bell’s illegitimate half-sister. She’s so much more than that though. She’s witty, smart and strong as hell in every sense of the word. It was her first week at the community college and her car broke down with a flat on the way back to Polis. I had the night shift and found her. She refused my help, saying she could change the tire herself. And she did.”

At the mention of a broken down car, Jennie’s stomach flipped. She saw the flicker of pain she felt echoed in Peniel’s eye. She knew she was forgiven simply by the fact that he was sharing information with her, but the look they shared proved that he couldn’t hate her forever, not when they bore a guilt together that had changed both their lives forever.

“I told her to make sure she brought the car to the mechanics the next day, just in case. She tried to wave me off, but when I stopped by the repair shop the next day, she was there. This was after Lisa quit, so only Tim was there, not even his dad, and he was arguing with her over the price of a tire. I called him out on the unfair price and he relented,” Peniel continued to explain.

Jennie briefly registered the fact that Lisa had quit her good job at the mechanics, but quickly forgot about it in favor of paying attention to her friend.

“I’m not sure why, but Hyeri let me take her out to dinner that night. She got pregnant a few months later, it wasn’t planned, but neither of us cared. We got married a few weeks after Goran was born.” He paused and Jennie felt her face paling.

“W-Goran?” she stuttered.

He nodded slowly. “He’s three now, and it’s crazy how much he takes after his namesake. He’s such a serious little dude. You’ll have to teach him how to play chess someday.”

Jennie’s heart started to race. She felt her eyes prickling and suddenly it was hard to breathe. She knew that coming back to Polis would result in her being forced to reckon with her past, but she wasn’t ready. She would never be ready to deal with the death of her oldest friend, the boy who she’d practically known since in utero.

Sensing Jennie’s discomfort, Peniel reached forward and placed a hand on top of hers. “It’s okay to remember Jennie. You’re allowed to remember him, you’re allowed to mourn for him. But stop placing blame for his death. You called Lisa out for killing him, but we both know that isn’t true. And we both know that you blame yourself. Don’t.”

“It was a mistake to come back here,” Jennie took a deep breath to hold back her tears. “To come back here to Polis, I mean. I should have just forced Lisa into signing the papers another way, sent her more copies of them or something.”

Something flashed across Peniel’s face, but Jennie couldn’t quite place what it was. It wasn’t sympathy or even anger, it was something else. Almost like a look of recognition, but Jennie had no idea what it meant.

“Maybe coming home was exactly what you needed,” Peniel remarked.

“New York is my home now. I’ve lived there five years now.”

“Home doesn’t have to be a place Jennie,” Peniel arched an eyebrow. “Hyeri and our boys are my home. We could live anywhere, and they’d be my home.”

Jennie understood what Peniel was saying; home wasn’t always a place, but could be a family, a person or a feeling. As much as Jennie wanted to immediately connect with what Peniel was saying, to believe that Connor was her home, she couldn’t. She didn’t have that tether to him, that feeling of complete comfort. If home was comfort and love, then Jennie was homeless.





They’d been married a month when Jennie decided to make an apple pie. Thanksgiving was just around the corner and she was feeling festive. She knew that her mom would have pies for them the next week when she hosted the couple and Rosé for the holiday, but Jennie felt the need to prove that she could continue on the tradition of making apple pies, using the recipe that had been passed down in her family for generations.

There was no written record of the recipe, but Jennie had seen her mom make the pie dozens of times before, she’d even helped her on occasion. Lisa offered to help her peel the apples, but Jennie waved her off, she could do it on her own.

She had just finished peeling the tenth apple when Lisa returned to their kitchen and wrapped her arms around her wife from behind.

“I have to go to work,” she sighed as she kissed Jennie’s neck. Lisa had a good job down at the auto body shop. She’d been working there since she was sixteen, but ever since she’d graduated high school, she’d been given more responsibilities at the shop, working full-time. The pay was good and between her salary and Jennie’s small salary as the assistant art teacher at the middle school, they were able to pay their bills and even open up a small savings account.

Jennie spent the afternoon working on the pie. Cate could whip up a homemade apple pie and make fresh whipped cream in less than two hours, but it took Jennie all afternoon. It was almost dinnertime by the time the pie was in the oven. She swore as she remembered that she still had to make dinner.

It wasn’t because she was the more traditionally feminine one that Jennie usually made dinner. It was just what her schedule allowed. She was always home from work before Lisa was. Lisa usually worked five days a week, having off Sundays and Mondays and always made dinner the days she was off. Today was Saturday though, and Jennie still hadn’t prepared anything.

She was only eighteen and Lisa was not yet nineteen. They were in those in-between few months when they were still the same age. Neither of them had the most exquisite taste buds, but Jennie still tried to make their dinners more exciting than just pasta, and so did Lisa. Realizing that Lisa would be home in less than an hour though, Jennie relented and put some spaghetti in a pot and opened a can of pre-made tomato sauce.

When Lisa arrived back home after work, covered in grease from the truck engine she’d been preparing, the smell of a fresh baked pie was the first thing she noticed. She smiled at the smell as she opened the door, not having to unlock it as it never was locked.

“Holy fuck that smells delicious,” Lisa announced her presence to her wife who was straining pasta in the sink.

“Hey babe,” the blonde grinned. She moved the now-empty pot back to the stove and approached Lisa. She pecked her lips, carefully avoiding touching the brunette anywhere else. “You’re gross. Go clean up then we’ll eat dinner so that we can get to dessert.”

“What kind of dessert are we talking?” Lisa smirked as she turned around.

Jennie slapped Lisa’s butt as she walked away, “Right now, just apple pie. But if you’re lucky, then maybe we’ll talk about something else.”

“By something else you mean sex, right?” Lisa laughed, turning to walk backwards into the bathroom, eyes trained on her wife.

“Yes,” Jennie rolled her eyes. “I mean sex.”

“Just checking,” Lisa winked.

Once Lisa was cleaned up, the couple sat down and ate their dinner.

“If I’d made meatballs, we coulda done the whole Lady and the Tramp scene. I coulda nudged you my meatball, then we’d eat the same noodle and we’d end up kissing,” Jennie grinned, a bit of sauce still on the corner of her mouth.

“Or I could just kiss you because you’re my wife. I get to kiss you anytime I want,” the brunette laughed. She leaned across the small table and licked the sauce off Jennie’s mouth, before kissing her lips.

While Lisa cleaned their dishes, Jennie cut the pie and squirted canned whipped cream onto the slices. They then sat back down at the table, forks raised.

“It’s a little burnt,” Jennie huffed.

“Not really,” Lisa insisted. “Just crispy.” Lisa was right. The pie wasn’t burnt, but it was a bit overcooked.

“Alright, you take a bite first, I wanna know what you think,” a large smile spread across the blonde’s face.

Lisa nodded and took a large forkful of the pie, stuffing it in her mouth. She kept her expression controlled as she chewed and smiled. “It’s good,” she offered with a weak, fake smile. It wasn’t. It was terrible. Lisa had to forcibly try and not cough it up. There was way too much cinnamon in the apple mixture and the crust tasted like pure dough, despite the fact that it was overcooked.

“Oh my god it’s horrible, isn’t it?” Jennie’s face dropped, seeing right through Lisa’s fake smile.

“It’s not horrible!” Lisa insisted.

Needing to taste it for herself, Jennie put a forkful in her mouth. She started to chew, but had to spit it up into the napkin she was holding. “It’s horrible,” Jennie coughed.

Lisa watched as Jennie’s eyes started to tear up and immediately stood up, walking around the table so that she could wrap her arms around the girl before the tears fell.

“I just wanted to make a pie,” Jennie cried. “I didn’t think it would be that hard. I just wanted it to be like my mom’s.”

Lisa stroked Jennie’s hair and held her as she cried, offering her reassuring words until Jennie stopped crying and began hiccuping.

“It’ll be fine,” Lisa cooed, brushing through blonde locks with her fingers. “We don’t need pie anyway. What do you say we go splurge on some pumpkin flavored beers? Those are a thing, right?”

Jennie wiped her eyes and looked up at her wife, nodding.





Lisa didn’t read through the paperwork until after she’d signed it. She knew that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but despite everything, she trusted Jennie not to fuck her over.

Her trust was well-founded, something she realized after she finally did read through the paperwork. It was quite simple really. There wasn’t much for them to split in ownership, as they’d been living entirely separate lives for five years. The paperwork was simply the dissolution of their marriage. Lisa was to retain ownership of everything they co-owned in Polis, including the contents of their bank account.

Lisa knew that when Jennie had the paperwork drawn up that she didn’t know that their joint account contained much more money than it had when Jennie had left. Everything new there was what Lisa had earned, the same way everything Jennie had in her bank account was what she had earned in New York. There was no reason to split those assets, they already were.

With her house mostly packed up, Lisa was conducting business from Grounders, enjoying the time she had left in Polis. She’d be back, of course, it’s not as if Birmingham was terribly far away, but things would be different in Birmingham. She already spent a lot of time there with her business, but there would be no more days of hanging out at Grounders with Rosé during the day and staying to get drunk with the gang at night.

It was time though. She really should have been in Birmingham full time by now, but nostalgia had kept her by her roots. Or at least that’s what she’d told herself. She knew the truth. She’d been holding onto the hope that Jennie would come back. And now that she had, there was no reason for Lisa to stay. Not with what Jennie’s return meant.

“I guess I should get these papers to Jennie,” Lisa spoke, talking more to herself than to her sister who was doing the bar’s accounting beside her as she finished up her own company’s paperwork for the month.

“You probably should,” Rosé nodded, not looking up from her calculator.

“Okay, I’ll be back later,” Lisa stood up, shuffling her papers into a neat pile.

“Have fun,” the older woman waved, eyes still trained on the device.

Lisa waited an extra moment before walking out the door, hoping that maybe Rosé had some sage words of advice for her. When she didn’t, Lisa took the divorce papers that she’d stuffed in an envelope and walked out the door.

She’d planned on driving over to the Kim’s house, but stopped beside her car when she saw Jennie walking out of the police station. She knew by the way Jennie was holding herself and clenching her fists, that something was wrong.

Lisa watched as Jennie approached the ostentatious rental car and opened the door. Before Jennie could get in, however, Lisa yelled out to her. “Jennie!”

Jennie spun around, searching for the source of the announcement. Once her eyes found Lisa’s, Lisa hustled across the street and met Jennie beside her car.

“Here are your papers,” Lisa stated, handing the blonde the envelope. “I signed them, you can check.”

Jennie shook her head. “I believe you.” As if to prove her point she sealed the envelope.

Not wanting to linger around her now ex-wife, Lisa turned to leave.

“Wait,” Jennie spoke, causing the brunette to turn around with a sigh. “I’ve umm…I’ve sort of got a whole list of people that I need to apologize to. You’re on that list.”

“Oh yeah?” Lisa asked, folding her arms across her chest as she leaned against the nearby light pole. “Have you apologized to Linc and O yet, because I’m pretty sure they should be at the top of your list.”

“I was just talking to Peniel,” the blonde gestured to the police station behind her.

Lisa didn’t respond, she wasn’t really sure how to. This was all new to her. In the past, knowing how to respond to Jennie was almost second nature. She used to know Jennie better than she knew herself. She’d been able to anticipate everything she sad and did. Now she had no idea.

“I’m sorry Lisa,” Jennie sighed. “I was drunk and should have lashed out the way I did.”

“So you don’t think you’re better than the rest of us?” Lisa asked, honestly wondering what Jennie’s answer would be.

“I don’t…” Jennie paused. “We’re just different is all. We’re in different paths of life.”

Lisa glared at her, not believing how pretentious she was acting. She didn’t even offer the blonde a response.

“There’s nothing wrong with that though,” Jennie spoke, clearly trying to cover her tracks. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to spend the rest of your life in Polis, that’s just not what I want.”

“You used to love Polis,” Lisa spoke, her voice softening unintentionally. Jennie had been the one who’d dreamed of raising their kids in Polis, going to high school football games with the rest of the town every weekend and living a simple life as an art teacher.

Lisa knew exactly when that all had changed. She even know why. But she never understood it. Jennie leaving was the one thing Lisa had never been able to fully understand.

“I don’t hate it here,” Jennie spoke. Her words sounded more honest than anything she’d said to Lisa since arriving back in Polis. “I just, New York is just…it’s my home now. I’m happy there.”

“Well I’m glad your happy then,” Lisa nodded. She was. All she’d ever wanted was for Jennie to have everything she ever wanted, and it seemed like she finally did. Even if those wants appeared to be nothing like what Lisa had known them to be for almost their entire lives.

“I’m sorry I accused you of killing Goran,” Jennie finally got to her apology. “And I’m sorry I’ve been a bitch to you, even if you did kind of deserve some of it. I was wrong to have accused you of killing Goran though. That was uncalled for.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“I don’t want to leave here and go back to New York hating you, or having you hate me,” Jennie’s words continued to be laced with an unprecedented tone of honesty. “It’s just not worth it. It’s not worth tainting all the good memories I have of being here. Of being with you.”

“And the brief amount of time you though you were attracted to girls?” Lisa responded with a snarky tone of voice.

“It wasn’t brief.”

“Three years dating, two years married, I guess that is a long time to be living a lie,” Lisa bit back. She couldn’t help her tone reflect the hurt she felt over Jennie lying. Lying about their relationship, lying about her feelings and the love she had felt for Lisa.

Lisa waited for Jennie to deny it, to say that it wasn’t all a lie. But she didn’t. Not with words anyway. She thought she saw a flicker or pain pass across Jennie’s face, and that’s all she needed. She knew there would be no winning Jennie back anymore. Too much time had passed. Jennie had moved on. That one fleeting look of regret though, was enough for Lisa to extend an olive branch.

“Look, I know I should probably tell you not to come, but I know how much you love the Catfish Festival,” Lisa sighed. She ran a greasy hand through her hair, not caring if it dirtied it. “And I know you’re going to hate yourself if you don’t fix what you fucked up with everyone else, even if you don’t care about me. You apologized to Peniel, yeah, but you hurt everyone.”

Lisa couldn’t look at Jennie’s face while she spoke, not wanting to see the truth of Jennie’s hate for her there. Instead she stared to the side of Jennie’s face, taking in the disgustingly flashy rental car behind her.

“The Catfish Festival is tomorrow, and you should come. Everyone will be there.”

Jennie appeared to be surprised by Lisa’s offer. “I don’t know if that’s the best idea. Nobody is going to want me there, considering what happened the last time I gate crashed an event.”

“As long as you apologize and aren’t an asshole at the fair, I don’t think they’ll mind seeing you,” Lisa offered. “We all loved you once upon a time. You used to love us too.”

“Yeah, I did,” Jennie nodded.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Lisa asked hopefully, not sure why it was that she was so hopeful. There was no reason for her to be. Was there?

“Maybe, yeah,” Jennie nodded.

Lisa nodded in response before turning to leave. She didn’t turn back as she walked back across the street to Grounders. She didn’t turn back until she was back inside the bar where she could watch the blonde without being seen. She looked through the windows and watched Jennie still standing outside the police station.

She watched as the blonde clenched the envelope tightly. She appeared to be wrestling with something, deep in thought. Jennie ran her fingers through her hair and even from across the street, Lisa could see the blonde’s hands shaking. She wondered what was going through Jennie’s mind, until Jennie approached the blue mailbox, opened it and shoved the envelope inside before walking briskly back to the car.

The flashy sports car passed right by the bar, and Lisa was able to see inside the window. She was able to see Jennie with one hand on the steering wheel, the other furiously wiping tears off her face.