"What are we having for dinner?"
"What do you want?" Jennie makes an effort to sound cheerful, but after six hours of surgery with a plethora of complications, she's drained. She just wants to get home, curl up on a blanket with her kid and decompress. "We could order pizza," she suggests.
"Could we get McDonald's?" Charlie asks, gap toothed smile making an appearance.
"Okay," she says. "But we'd have to take it home, okay, baby? Kai's coming for dinner."
Jennie sees her face fall through the rear-view mirror, and her conversation with Jisoo jumps to the forefront of her mind.
"But I wanted to play," Charlie whines.
Jennie rubs between her eyebrows.
"I could take you after dance class on Wednesday, what do you say?"
"But I have to leave with mommy..." she says, in that slightly worried way she always does after the most minimal changes to her schedule.
"Uh, no, you're sleeping at the house with me," she explains, looking quickly over her shoulder. Charlie is sporting a confused little frown. "We could have another movie night..." Jennie singsongs.
"...okay." Charlie nods, smacking her lips like a frumpy old man who's decided something is acceptable. She reminds her of Jisoo, on moments like that. "If mommy is okay with it."
Jennie bites her lip.
"She is, I promise. And you can always call her-"
"I know," Charlie says. "But I just don't like mommy being alone. When I'm with mommy you have aunt Lisa and aunt Irene over, and Kai-" Charlie scrunches up her nose and Jennie chuckles despite herself, despite her hard day. Her daughter always cheers her up. "But mommy doesn't have no one over ever."
Her daughter can always break her heart, too.
She's every bit Jisoo's kid, biology be damned.
Jennie was heartbroken, for a good while. And then it was just anger. She was so angry at Jisoo for so long. She gave up on them. That anger has faded now, it's shrunken away until it's left her feeling empty.
Jennie is trying hard to not feel so empty these days.
"You can Skype mommy," Jennie offers, thinking of the awkward set-up. She and Jisoo have avoided interacting with each other for so long now that it only feels normal. "She could join in the movie night through her laptop."
"I guess," Charlie says.
"We'll figure something out," Jennie tells her, turning off the street and on to the drive-through. "So what do you want?"
_________________________
(September 3rd, 2023.)
Jennie dreads walking through the door.
It makes her sick, makes her stomach hurt and twist in the worst possible way, because getting home after a long shift and seeing her girls has always been the highlight of her day.
She takes a breath and opens the door.
She's immediately enveloped by a pair of small arms, and she smiles for the first time that day. Her backache from standing for hours on the OR goes ignored in favor of picking up her daughter.
"Hi." She kisses her cheek, and Charlie squeezes her. She drops her purse on the couch, looking around the quiet house. "Hey, where's mommy?"
YOU ARE READING
living on a fault line || Jensoo
Romance"It didn't feel real, you know? Logically, I knew it was over, I signed the divorce papers, I moved out. We share custody of Charlie but...it didn't feel real. And now with Kai. What happens if they get married? When Charlie has a mom and a dad and...
