She asks Lisa to go with her to her doctor's appointment a week later. She asks her if she'll come in with her and hold her hand when she finds out but Lisa swallows and shakes her head, promising that she'll be there in the waiting room when she gets out.
It doesn't work so well because, ten minutes into the appointment, the doctor steps out and says that Jennie's asking for her.
When Lisa steps inside and Jennie's laid on the examination table, sobbing with every single inch of her being, she doesn't even need to ask what's going on. She swipes a nervous hand over her eyes and worms her hand into Jennie's as she sits down, looking toward the doctor.
"Eight and a half weeks," he tells her softly, picking up on the mood easily. Lisa shudders out a breath and nods nervously.
She's never felt further away from Jennie, even as she's flashing her the most reassuring smile she can manage.
//
She gives Jennie a few days to work out what she wants to do but, while she does, they try to get back on better terms. They both move slowly.
Lisa feels strangely nervous about everything, terrified that Jennie's going to get scared and make the wrong decision. She doesn't want her to get rid of this baby for the wrong reasons. She doesn't want her to regret it. At the same time, she's not sure why she cares so much.
She's equal parts terrified and relieved when, a few days later, someone knocks on Minnie's front door at eleven o'clock at night and it turns out to be Jennie. Minnie excuses herself to bed and Lisa moves to the kitchen, too nervous to do anything else.
"Do you want a drink?" She gestures to the fridge.
Jennie shakes her head. "No, I'm-I'm good."
"Yeah?"
Jennie nods with certainty. "Yeah," she says. "I'm-I've decided what I'm going to do."
Lisa gulps and waits, hands clutched at the counter. She nods for her to continue.
Jennie laughs awkwardly but then her face drops into fear.
"I'm gonna keep it," she nods softly. "I'm gonna keep it," she repeats and it's obvious she hasn't said it out loud yet from the way her eyes go wide and watery. "I'm going to keep the..."
Lisa's eyes widen and she looks straight at Jennie. It feels like it's the first time she's looked at her properly in ages. It probably is. She feels full of respect and pride and they're two things she hasn't felt for Jennie in a while. It feels good.
"Yeah?" she asks quietly to make sure.
Jennie's head bobs adamantly as she nods. "Yeah," she says softly and then, before she knows it, Lisa's got her wrapped into a hug.
//
They're friends.
In a weird way, it's like they're the only friends each other has. No one else seems to get it. They don't know what to say or what to ask. Whenever she sees her friends, they kind of just sit there in silence, not sure how to act.
It's just too obscene to try.
With Jennie, she can just sit there in silence and they can avoid talking about their problems and the huge elephant in the room between them.
That's the only difficult thing: the feelings.
She catches Jennie looking at her sometimes. They'll be sitting in front of each other and she'll hear something and look up and find her - with a hand on her soon-to-be bloating stomach - watching her softly, in a way she's never been privy to before.
Lisa always opens her mouth to say something but Jennie cuts her off before she can try.
"You know the baby has eyelids and everything now..."
She always says something to do with the baby and it's completely distracting in a way that makes Lisa fill with a million different things. Her stomach buzzes with butterflies and her head goes fuzzy. It shuts her up completely.
It gives her a million more important things to worry about, and the fact that Jennie is staring at her is nothing in comparison.
//
Jennie asks her not to tell anyone. Lisa thinks that it's because she's not sure but Jennie explains, when they're eating breakfast one day, that she's only really scared about something bad happening and people judging her.
Lisa believes her completely and is quietly glad for whatever best friend protectiveness Minnie subjected Jennie to before she arrived at her house that day. It means that she has at least one person around her that knows why she's so jittery and weird all the time, who knows what's going through her head. It means that they can have the occasional, disconnected conversation about Jennie's struggles and Lisa can offload a little.
She just hates the way that everyone treats Jennie.
She almost hates it as much as she hates how everyone looks at her for talking to Jennie. They already looked at her like she was about to fall apart and now they look at her like she's an idiot for being her friend again.
//
Lisa has work - a photoshoot-the day of her twelve week check-up and she feels nervous all day, going through the motions until it's time to go home and wait for Jennie to drop by like she said she would. Minnie isn't home and Lisa's glad because once she's changed and showered, she sits on the couch and worries herself into a mess that doesn't let up until Jennie's pulling up outside.
"Look," she says quietly the minute that the door's closed. Lisa doesn't tell her that Minnie's not there because she's too hypnotized by the secretive hum of her voice, how excited and happy she sounds.
Instead, she takes what she's being handed and has to take a steady breath at what she sees.
It's a damn sonogram.
"It has a heartbeat," Jennie whispers hurriedly. Her finger presses to the picture. "There was a tiny flickering heartbeat, right there, and it was just-"
Lisa nods because she can remember going with her cousin to an appointment once. It was the weirdest thing ever but this doesn't feel weird. It feels like nothing she's ever felt before and she swallows away the need to sob as she clutches the sonogram in her hand.
She thinks she's doing okay until Jennie tells her that she can keep that one, that she has more. She takes it from Lisa's hand and steps over to the fridge, finding one of their alphabet magnets and fixing it there. Lisa has to fight everything in her that wants to step over there and take it back, to clutch it to her chest and sleep with it under her pillow.
When Jennie pulls her in for a hug and squeezes her tight, it gets a little harder to be okay. Especially when her cheek is rubbing into Lisa's shoulder and her fingertips are so firm into her skin that it hurts.
"I wish you'd been there," she whispers and when she tries to pull back, Lisa just clutches her closer. She doesn't want her to see the tears in her eyes.
"Me too," she whispers and she's pretty sure her voice betrays her. She laughs a little and excuses herself to the bathroom before Jennie can see.
It doesn't matter. Jennie still looks at her knowingly when she returns anyway.
//
Later that night, she goes into the kitchen and takes the picture from the fridge. She sits on the couch for an hour looking at it, convincing herself that she'll put it back in a minute and go to sleep.
Another hour later, she's still there, tracing the weird outline of the apparent tiny human being etched there and trying not to think of things she doesn't want to have buzzing around her head, making her heart feel bigger.
She gets to another hour later and gives up on all of it, holding the sonogram reverently between her fingers as she pulls the blanket around her and looks at it until it's burned into her eyelids.
"Lisa," Minnie tries, when she finds her like that the morning after.
Lisa shakes her head to quiet her and wordlessly puts the sonogram back on the fridge.
YOU ARE READING
Developments // Jenlisa
Romance"I'm in love with you," she whispers, her voice breaking. Jennie's face softens completely. "So much that I think it might kill me, except I don't even like you right now. I don't even know who you really are. I don't even think you do." She shrugs...
