in every universe (one shot-s) | JENLISA

the type of night you never had before

Her head was throbbing. After almost two hours of attempting to teach five football players the concepts of Intro to Chemistry, Lisa felt like no progress had been made. She massaged her temples as she went to explain for the fifteenth time that for stoichiometry to work the units had to cross out, which lead to a discussion on numerators and denominators, which lead to Lisa realizing that somehow the men, no, boys in front of her didn't understand basic fractions and how in the world were they really at a prestigious state school on a full ride.

Lisa's frustration was momentarily broken by the buzzing of her phone on the table. She flipped it over to reveal an alert.

Message from: Jennie.

Lisa's stomach did a small flip. One that she immediately ignored, trying to get her body back under her control before she opened the text.

I'm making my Dunkin' run. Any requests?

The thought of a coffee was enough to make her want to moan. Lisa was so tired and caffeine might relieve the dull ache behind her eyes.

Please. Large black iced coffee, three sugars

Immediately after, Lisa shot off a second message.

I'll venmo you

Jennie simply liked the message, and Lisa put her phone back on the table. She had ten minutes left in this tutoring session before her dinner break. She focused herself enough to lay out practice problems for the athletes to attempt before their next session on Monday.

Attempt was a term Lisa used lightly; she knew they would maybe read two of the problems, throw some chicken scratch down next to one.

On Monday, she would have to repeat the professor's lecture. She would try to provide easy techniques to work through enough problems that these guys would keep their GPA up and remain on the football team. Lisa would put in way too much effort for these idiots who only were in the same spot as her because they could catch a ball well.

It's not that she hated her job; working as a tutor for the University Athletic Association she got paid more than she should to teach subjects she actually liked. As an Exercise Physiology senior, Lisa mostly helped the freshman get through their state mandated science classes, basic chemistry or biology. Every now and again, she would tutor an anatomy student.

And then there was Jennie.

Jennie Kim. Sophomore star of the Field Hockey team, Exercise Physiology major, and glorified flirt.

A year and a half ago, she found herself assigned to private sessions with her after she got a D on her first anatomy exam.

Jennie swore she didn't actually need tutoring, that her bad grade was simply the result of her spending the weekend tailgating (what did the professors expect making an exam the Monday following the first home game of the football season?) Lisa quickly figured out that was actually true. That Jennie really was smart, brilliant even, when she applied herself.

When she actually sat down and did her work instead of spending her time at frat houses and sorority date functions or at field hockey practice or gallivanting with Jisoo and Rosé and Irene at hours way too late in the evening.

The two hours a week Lisa was supposed to spend coaching Jennie to pass her classes weren't really necessary, but when the Athletic Association mandates tutoring, there's little one can do to get out of it. In truth, Lisa hadn't minded getting a semester's paycheck to look over Jennie's work every once in a while. It was better than the seven other sessions she ran each week trying to get clueless baseball and basketball and every other type of ball players to put in some sort of effort to pass their classes.