Need You To Need Me | Jenlisa

XXXI.

If going to school before was considered, let's say, tolerable, ever since Jennie and the girls had fallen out, it was torture.

What bothered Jennie more was that she was not alone, even though she wanted to. She was always surrounded by people. People from class, people from the various clubs she attended. People she didn't care about.

The ones she actually cared about, seemed like they wanted nothing to do with her. One in particular.

Sometimes she called Jisoo but, the older girl almost every time ended up hanging up the phone on her, throwing an excuse about how she was too busy with her new girlfriend.

She had eaten lunch with Rosé a couple of times but it had been like eating alone. The blonde seemed completely absent and with her head deep in her thoughts. Every time Jennie talked, she was met with short nods and forced smiles.

That's when it all came back to her. The sense of abandonment and loneliness that had characterized a big part of her life was threatening to crush her once again. Jennie had always been good at managing it. Whatever "it" meant, she always thought she had a pretty good control over it. She had always had the girls with her, after all. Even though she didn't actually talk with them about whatever was bothering her, just knowing that they were there for her in ways nobody, not even her parents, was, was enough to reassure her.

Carrying pain is never easy. It's a one-day-at-a-time kind of process. You live the bad days in hope of better ones, and the good ones in fear of worst ones. A vicious circle that has you standing at the top of a mountain one moment and want to jump off of it the next. Waking up, you never know which one it'll be that day.

Making her way down the long hallway that lead to her home room, she remembered one of the few times she had tried talking to someone about this.

"Lili, are you always happy?"

Lisa and Jennie were laying on a towel in the middle of Jennie's garden.

The younger girl, hearing the question, turned to her right where she found a serene looking, fifteen year old Jennie already staring back at her. She gave her a toothy smile before she re turned her gaze to the sky.

"Always is a big word. I don't believe happiness can be a forever state. It's more in moments, I guess"

"Right now, for example" Lisa said, her eyes never leaving the moving clouds "I'm happy."
Jennie remembers envying Lisa. She envied the look in her eyes, the way they sparkled. Hers never did that. Not that she was aware of, at least.

"Why?" Jennie pronounced the words with genuine curiosity. What was so great about laying on an empty garden outside of an even emptier house.

"Well, Miss Kim" Lisa jokingly said before standing up and brushing the grass out of her already green stained jeans " because I'm with you".

Before moving, she extended her hand out for Jennie to take. Once the latter did, not before shooting a confused look at the younger girl, Lisa quickly grabbed both the other girl's hands and started spinning the other girl around.

They were moving so quickly, Jennie could barely make out Lisa's face which was all one with the background. What she could make out, was Lisa's laughter, which was the only sound filling the air. If she hadn't suffered from motion sickness, Jennie would have found the scene hilarious.

When Lisa finally decided to slow down the pace, Jennie didn't even have the breath to say a word that she collapsed into the towel, her whole word spiraling.