Glimpse of Us | Jenlisa [COMPLETED]

Chapter 2

"An order of pancakes with extra strawberry jam for the birthday girl."

Lisa places the plate in front of the little girl, the small stack of perfectly done pancakes wafting their smell through the kitchen. Cinnamon and strawberry, powdered sugar and butter. Lisa will sometimes make pancakes for herself, even if she's not that fond of the sugar, simply because the smell reminds her of home.

"It's not my birthday anymore, mommy. That was yesterday."

"Well, since I didn't make you pancakes yesterday morning we can pretend, okay?"

Ella smiles, her tongue poking through the hole where her tooth hasn't finished coming in yet.

"Okay." She digs in with a grin that will have Lisa in a good mood the rest of the day.

Ella gets through a pancake and a half before she slows down, becoming pensive. It's odd for a child that often eats everything in her plate, it makes Lisa frown.

"Everything okay?" she asks, pushing away a few dark curls from her small forehead.

"I didn't get what I wanted for my birthday," Ella says quietly.

"Oh." Ella got so many presents last night, from their friends and her grandmother and Sungho. From her classmates too, Friday night when Jennie took them to Chuck E. Cheeses. She got presents from herself and Jennie and even Kai as well. She is such a loved little girl, what could they possibly have missed? "And what's that?" Lisa asks.

Ella shrugs. "S'okay. I can ask again for Christmas."

"Christmas is a long while away," Lisa mentions, trying to get the petition out of her daughter. She's been known to spoil her rotten, and if it's something she wants this bad, Lisa isn't opposed to finding a way to get it for her.

"I know," Ella says, sighing.

"What did you ask for?" Lisa asks again, smiling at her daughter's expression.

Ella looks up at her, biting her lip with indecision. Ella is usually so open with her, Lisa gets an inkling of what she might say. A stirring of dread twists her stomach.

"For you and mama to love each other again." The words are so innocent, so sad, and they break Lisa in half. They bring her back to a year and a half ago, when she and Jennie decided it was over, they bring her back to 8 months after that, when they finally signed the papers. The cold of the room and the stiffness of her suit and the tears that she hastily wiped away and saw Jennie do the same. The constant 'we're doing something wrong' that circled her mind with every signature she laid down, finalizing their life together.

They remind her of every cold lonely night she spent hugging herself in a big empty bed, the love of her life now her ex-wife, and her daughter spending her alloted time of the week away from Lisa.

The words break her because love was never the problem.

"Baby, I love your mom," she tells Ella, giving her the truth but hoping to avoid confusing her. She never wants their daughter to think her parents hate each other. "And your mom loves me too." Lisa knows. From the last time Jisoo took Jennie out and she got drunk and called her, just after Lisa had put Ella to bed, she knows. It was five months ago and Lisa still remembers every word. 'I love you. How did we get here?'

Lisa will always love Jennie, if not for her, for giving her Ella.

You can't be as madly in love as Lisa was, share your life with someone, raise a child with them, and then not love them anymore one day. But loving is not the same as being in love, and she and Jennie decided that they wouldn't explain to their daughter that love faded. They wouldn't do that to her.