BLISS LANE [BOOK II] | JENLISA

FOURTEEN

LISA

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2018

I'D NEVER BEEN the best reader-no matter how much time Jennie spent teaching me-yet reading that manuscript, I absorbed the words through my fingers as well as my eyes.

The story leapt from the pages, latching sharp fangs into my heart. Every emotion and carefully fabricated lie ripped apart my life, dousing me in blistering honesty, pouring its black and white truth into the wounds it left behind.

It wasn't just words that sliced me, but Jennie's voice. Her vibrant honesty. Her fierce tenacity reading aloud the secrets she'd written.

...that was what she did to me, you see? She made my entire life a jewellery box of special, sad, hard, happy, incredible moments that I want to wear each and every day.

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I can honestly say Lisa is my favourite word.

I love every history attached to it.

I love every pain lashed to it.

I love the girl it belongs to.

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To me, Lisa was magical.

She might not have been able to read and write, but she was the smartest person I knew.

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I wish I could paint a better picture of how much I looked up to her.

How much I worshipped her.

How much I loved her even then.

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Amazing what love can make someone do, right?

In my toddler brain, I associated her calling me Ribbon with her admittance of loving me. She'd accepted me as her own. She no longer needed to remind herself that I wasn't born to be her.

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Sometimes, and don't judge me for this, but sometimes, I would do something naughty just to have her yell at me. I know it was wrong, but when Lisa yelled, she drenched it with passion.

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How many times do you think a person can survive a broken heart?

Any ideas?

I would like to know because Lisa has successfully broken mine, repaired it, shattered mine, fixed it, crushed mine, and somehow glued it back together again and again.

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I was jealous that she was close to another when I was supposed to be the only one. I was angry that she turned to another for comfort and didn't come to me. But most of all, I was in shattered pieces because I wasn't enough anymore.