READY FOR LOVE | JENLISA

Chapter 23

Lisa

"Have a good weekend, class." Professor Choi dismisses us.

"Ready to get this wild Friday night started?" I ask Jennie, slinging on my backpack.

"I don't know. You think you can handle it?" she teases.

"Try me, Finch." I smirk.

A small blush blossoms on her cheeks. "Don't worry, I'm sure you've had much wilder nights."

"That may be true." I muse. I place my hand on her desk, leaning in to be eye level with her, inches away from her face. "So I guess I'm down for anything." I say, giving her a wink, my voice low and playful. Her cheeks turn red and she pulls her gaze away from mine, quickly stuffing the rest of her belongings into her backpack. I can't help but chuckle, pulling away and leaning back against my desk to give her some space.

"Ready?" I ask as soon as she's finished packing her things. She nods, still clearly bashful from my forward flirting.

We walk out of the Language Arts building and into the late summer heat. Jennie's dressed in her usual T-shirt and jeans combo, the colour of her shirt today as yellow as the sun. I have to admit, yellow looks good on her. The colour really compliments her caramel hair and eyes.

"What?" I hear her ask, her voice shy, and I realise that she's looking at me.

Damn. She must have caught me staring.

"Yellow's your colour." I admit honestly, causing her to blush once more. "I know powder blue is your favourite colour, but yellow looks really good on you."

Her brows furrow and she briefly stops in her tracks. "How do you know that's my favourite colour?" she asks, doing that adorable little head tilt thing.

"It's kind of obvious, Finch. Your backpack, your room, just the little things." I list.

Her head jerks back in surprise, an emotion washing over her face that I can't quite decipher. After a moment, a soft smile starts to tug at her lips and she bows her head to hide it from me, brushing past me to lead us to the library.

We jog up the stairs to the library, and I make sure to grab the door for her. The library is fairly empty, given it's a Friday and pretty much everyone wants to get the hell out of here after their classes are over. Normally that would be me, but Jennie offered to have our first study session and I didn't have the heart to tell her no. She's already accommodating me enough, working around my crazy football training schedule.

Jennie leads us to a back table, walking confidently, like she's been here a million times before. I've only been here once, maybe twice in my whole college career. She takes a seat across from me at the table, pulling out her books. "Do you want to start with the lab material first or lecture?"

"Lab is fine." I say, hoping that I can remember some of the material from Wednesday so I don't look like a complete moron.

"Okay." she says, grabbing her lab manual and flipping the pages to this week's lesson. "I'll let you study the figures for a few minutes and then quiz you over them." I nod, getting to work. For about ten minutes she lets me look over the material, bones of the hand and arm, as well as muscles of the arm. She uses Post-it notes to hide the answers from me, pointing at the figures and having me name what she's pointing to. She starts out easy and then gets more difficult.

"Triquetrum."

Shit, where is that again?

I look at the figure, blanking out. I look down at my own hand, thinking maybe somehow that will help. When I don't know it, I take a wild guess.

"Not quite." Jennie says, correcting me. "Abductor pollicis longus."

The what now?

I look at my arm, trying to envision where the hell it would be. When I come up short, I look up at her helplessly. "I have no clue."

She bites the inside of her cheek, looking pensive as her eyes shift from mine to my arm. "Can we try something?" she asks.

"Is this where our Friday night starts to get wild?" I tease with a grin.

She shoots me a bland look, but I can tell that she's biting back a laugh. Grabbing some highlighters and a pen, she stands from her chair and walks over to my side of the table. She takes the seat next to me, pulling her chair closer to mine, and tucks one leg under her.

I'm suddenly hyperaware of her presence, how close she is to me. I get a whiff of her vanilla perfume when her shoulder brushes against mine and she loops her arm through mine, using both of her hands to position my arm. When she has my hand flat on the table, she grabs a highlighter and starts drawing and writing on my hand.

She looks up at me through her long lashes, her face so close to mine that I can almost feel her breath on my skin. "Is this okay?" she asks, her voice small and almost nervous.

"More than okay."

She gets back to drawing on my hand and eventually moves up my arm. When she's finished with the bones, she flips my arm over to start on my forearm. The pink highlighter starts at my wrist, slowly traveling upwards, but then she stops.

I look down to see that she's stopped at the small, dark, risen circular scar on my arm, and my blood instantly turns cold. I have similar scars all scattered up my arm. They're from one of my mom's ex-boyfriends. He was a druggie and a drunk who didn't like it very much that my mom had a kid. He despised me, and whenever I would act up, or when he was just angry in general, he would grab me by the back of my shirt, hold me down, and stub his cigarettes out on my arm. Just thinking of the pain, my hand involuntarily clinches into a fist.

Jennie stares for a moment, a flash of sadness and knowing passing her eyes. Normally, whenever I catch someone staring at my scars, I would get angry, but with her I feel... ashamed. Having such kind, innocent eyes looking at me like that, I don't want my cruel past to tarnish her image of me.

I'm used to people staring at them, asking about them, and every time I would snap or immediately shut them down. It's not like they care. They just want to know the sob story behind them to take me down. Rub it in my face and belittle everything that I've fought to overcome my past to get to where I am today.

But with her... somehow, deep down, I find myself wanting her to ask, to care, even though I don't want her to know the truth.

Jennie blinks slowly a few times, composing herself before running the highlighter up and over the scar, like it's not even there, passing all the others just the same.

When she's finished labelling my arm she silently stands and moves back to her seat across from me.

"Alright, let's get started." she says, and just like that, it's like my scars are forgotten.

Weirdly enough, I can't tell if I'm more relieved or disappointed that she didn't ask about them.

What the hell, Lisa? I scold myself. She doesn't need to know or even want to know about your shit. Stop thinking about it and focus!