Arcade Lover

Chapter 18

"Jennie?" The platinum blondie waves over the latter's dead eyes. Before she could detect the tension in the air, she pulls the still dazed brunette over to one side of the store, Jennie's eyes gluing intensely to the blonde's. Her mind was flooding.

"That girl right there is whoever you term 'bookstore hottie'. I told you you'd find her so attractive if you saw her." She whispers, eyeing glistening between her best friend and the blonde. But Jennie was too enraged on the inside, confused. She felt stray, betrayal fills her in on most part. Lisa's eyes were mirroring back the same amount of confusion.

"Do you want to meet her? Say hi?" Clueless, Rosé speaks.

Everything breaks inside of Jennie.

Speechless, the brunette drops the hoodie in Rosé's arms, remaining stinging eye contact with Lisa before breaking past her friend and heading out the door like she hadn't seen anything this hurtful. She hyperventilates the second she gets out, her legs going so fast she had no clue where it was taking her to.

So she was right, Lisa had been meeting with Rosé all along. She had been meddling with outside affairs. Jennie wasn't special. Lisa had a secret spot with someone else. And not just anyone, but her best friend. If an arcade had been her and the blonde's, a bookstore had been theirs. Rosé has a crush on Lisa.

Everything starts falling in place.

Lisa lied about staying back in school.

Jennie's ears were muffled at this point, her heart inflamed and shattered. Her eyes wet with tears yet the back of them felt vaporised, like a desert. It was pinching at her as she was reaching an escalator. But her feet abruptly breaks her momentum apart before she could adjust to the escalator's descending speed.

At least if she were to escape from her girlfriend and her best friend in such an unexpected situation, which she was not sure they were anymore, she wouldn't want to trip and roll off a damn escalator in humiliation and possibly end up gracelessly in the hospital.

But before she could take a step further onto the running machine, heavy footsteps near her, and she feels a desperate, solid tug on her hand before she was harshly being turned around.

It was Lisa. Lisa who looked half as pained and disheveled as herself, despairing, hopeless. Wretched. No matter how crushed the brunette was, she could still tell this apart— the difference in their eyes from the last time they met. Lisa, whose eyes begged with a million emotions. Jennie's fingers tingle at the familiar touch of the blonde's fingers still holding on. She wants to turn back time.

But at the corner of her eyes, Rosé's tiny approaching figure breaks the sensation.

"Jennie... can we please find somewhere to talk? Please?" Lisa pleads, she was on the verge of losing it.

She blinks profusely to process how she should arrange her words, afraid one mistake and the brunette runs.

"Listen, I've been sitting and standing and staring and spacing out and I've just been spending all week thinking about what went wrong, or what I did wrong or if I even did do anything wrong... but I can't seem to figure anything out. Not at all. I've been texting you all week but you never even read my messages. It's suffocating how I have the urge of going over to your house and find you but I respect that you wanted space for us so I resisted. Babe... please just give us a chance to talk things out. Help me understand everything, please."

The brunette stares into Lisa's broken orbs, she was so so dizzy. Her heart breaks, and her brain was telling her to leave, Jennie, leave, but she was not letting go of Lisa's grip. She couldn't.