Love Galore (Chaennie)

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

They rebuild slowly.

They'll grab coffee, sometimes lunch, maybe the occasional dinner. Usually somebody else is there, Alice or Jisoo or Lisa. Always in public. They don't discuss it - don't really need to - but they both know that they're not ready to spend time together alone in private. But bit by bit, Jennie and Rosie restore their friendship, letting last year's heartaches fade and heal.

Rosie moves out of Scooter's basement and onto Alice's couch. She's there for a month until Alice's gruff landlord comes through for them and finds Rosie a studio apartment in the neighborhood owned by an equally gruff friend of his. Rosie gets a good deal on it and finally finds herself living alone for the first time in a long time, but Alice is just around the corner.

Alice helps her move into her new place. In the midst of taking out dishware from a cardboard box and stacking them in kitchen cabinets, she asks with feigned casualness, "So... how are things with Jennie going?"

Rosie's unpacking her clothes, which go on an open freestanding closet in lieu of a real closet in this tiny space.

"Good!" Rosie's answers cheerily. "We just had lunch the other day. You know, I don't care what anybody else says, Katz's still has the best pastrami. Hey, pickles count as a serving of vegetables, right? Jennie says they don't but I think that's crazy. Of course they're vegetables."

Alice scrunches her nose as she contemplates the question. "I think cucumbers are technically fruits? But your diet's probably already in trouble if you're trying to classify pickles as a vegetable serving, so you should listen to Jennie." Remembering that this isn't the point of the conversation, Alice shakes her head. Fix Rosie's love life first, then her diet. "No, wait, we're talking about Jennie right now. What's going on with you two?"

Rosie shrugs. "Nothing. Things are going well though. We're both happy with where we are. We talk, we hang out, it's all good."

"Yeah, but don't you want to..." Alice clears her throat, searching for a euphemism she would be comfortable with. "...do extra-friendly things with her?"

"Well, of course I do," Rosie answers in exasperation, as if it's perfectly obvious, as if she hasn't spent the past month being platonic buddies with Jennie. "But she said she wanted to hit pause on the romance and I have to respect that. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with taking things slow."

"So you are planning on asking her out at some point?"

Busy shaking loose a sweater from her suitcase, Rosie answers nonchalantly, "Sure, when we're both ready."

"You mean when Jennie's ready."

Rosie deposits her sweater back in her suitcase, stopping her unpacking to give Alice her full attention.

"Al, I hurt her. I hurt her a lot. Giving her some time is the least that I could do."

But because this is her baby sister, Alice's going to take Rosie's side, whether she wants it or not. "But you didn't mean to hurt her."

"I don't think that matters. Damage is damage. I'm just happy that she still wants me in her life after all that. So, yeah, I'm going to let her set the pace here."

Alice huffs. It's not that she disagrees. She's just impatient waiting for her sister's happy ending. "Your endless mutual respect for each other is going to be the death of your relationship. No, sorry, the death of your non-relationship."

"It won't get that far. I promise. This is nothing at all like last year. Besides..." Rosie picks up her sweater again, lowly muttering this next part that she knows Alice won't like. "I, um, I just want to make sure my last relationship is really dead and buried before anything happens with Jennie. She deserves a new start with me that doesn't come with all this baggage."