SOUNDTRACK SERIES vol 2 [oneshots compilation]

A Million Other Things - Pronoun (aka The Songs That Guided Me To You parts 3-4)

Most of her time the past few months was spent avoiding the tastes and smells that she had associated with Mina. Granted, they were together for only a little over two years, but there were a lot of things that still hit so hard for the blonde.

For example, there's the issue of the orange gin that Mina always asks for at the bar. A pinch of sugar, please, the brunette would cutely ask the bartender, her soft eyes disappearing with the smile she always gives when she's soliciting for anything. No one ever really gets to say no to her crinkly eyes and saccharine smile; from the orange peels that she always requests, to Lisa not going to work just so they could spend more time in her bed, cuddling while the windows outside are hammered with harsh rains that flow into a certain hum when listened to it after a prolonged period. The way Mina eases inside her hug as a little spoon was always enough to make her think: this is worth it. Missing work is worth it. Pretty much anything with Mina is worth it.

Lisa stopped ordering orange gins five months ago, the same week Mina left her. She tried it again a few weeks in but she ended up choking on the taste of gin in her mouth and wondered why she ever went for gin anyway.

Lisa has always been a whiskey girl.

She didn't exactly remember when she stopped ordering whiskey and switched to gins; it may have been somewhere between the 24th crinkly-eyed smile Mina gave her and the pleading I love yous in the way Lisa's eyes return the brunette's grins, the ones which Lisa always kind of felt scared to say out loud then but were evident in her lovesick look anyway.

Tonight, as she looks around the hazy dark room cramped with heads bobbing to the techno music, she wants to throw up as she realises the place is a land mine of triggers: the smell of orange gins, the sweat interlaced with flowery perfume, the air thick of sweeter smelling cigarette smoke. The blonde knows she made a mistake of even considering being in this lesbian club and being wrapped around with this kind of haze.

She closes her eyes for a moment and tries to let the sounds overtake her, but it's too much, too soon.

The stench – the same smell of sweat and sweet perfume and the whiff of various women whose lips blew the smoke inside this lesbian club–were the same ones she would find in Mina's hair when she got to their bed at 11 pm and mumbled something like she went on over time; the same smell she brought home while she kissed Lisa and said I love you in this impassive mechanical way like a habit to get her way against anything that may ensue.

It's the one thing Lisa held on to for the longest time: when Mina says I love you. And for a while, she believed that, despite the sound of it seeming less and less heartfelt as time went on; despite Mina's uncaring eyes and passive smiles and often cold ways of treating her; despite thinking things are still going to be okay in their last year of being together but already feeling Mina has emotionally checked out.

Lisa doesn't need to deal with this today.

She looks around and wonders how she even lasted 20 minutes in this club. Her eyes wander to Jisoo and Rosie dancing closely near the podium, lost in their own little world as their bodies grind intimately, perhaps even thankful for that small private space they were afforded. They don't need to know her turmoil, Lisa decides, as she drinks the last of the whiskey she ordered.