Choosing you | LisRene AU [BOOK 2]

11

"Fuck." Lisa heard the word uttered quietly near her ear, and it caused her to stir a little before realizing that she was tangled up with Irene. Her eyes fluttered open slowly and her gaze settled on Irene, whose eyes were squeezed shut.

"You okay?"

"My head kinda hurts," Irene murmured. "Plus, it's early." Lisa hummed thoughtfully, and then placed a soft kiss on Irene's forehead before carefully pulling away from the brunette and climbing out of the bed. "Where are you going?"

"To get you water and a painkiller," Lisa answered obviously, stepping out of the room and going into the kitchen to gather the said items. When she brought them back into the bedroom, Irene was sitting up against the headboard.

"Thank you," Irene breathed out. She took the water and sipped it first, before popping the pill into her mouth and taking another drink to wash it down. "I'm so sorry about last night, Lisa. I just opened up the fridge and there was beer there..."

"It's okay, baby," Lisa promised. "You were upset. I probably would've done the same thing. I'm not mad at you for drinking a little too much after your insane mother lost you your job."

Irene smiled gratefully at her and took another drink from her water. "Well, thanks for getting me to bed."

"Of course," Lisa returned, sitting down on the edge of the bed, almost on top of Irene's legs. They sat there quietly for a few minutes.

"How was dinner with your mom yesterday? Did you talk about your dad?"

"A bit," Lisa answered, pulling her gaze away from her girlfriend as she thought about her conversation with her mom. "It's his last week here. I told her that I don't think I'll be okay with having a relationship with him until I've had more time to get over what he's done. And that I wouldn't mind having a relationship with Haruto, except that his mom probably won't want me to. When he's older, maybe."

Irene nodded. "I bet she'd let you if you asked. Plus, Haruto really likes you, and I'm sure he's going to pester both his parents to get to see you more often."

Lisa met her gaze and smiled softly. "That would be cool. It's weird... but also kind of awesome to know that I have a brother." Irene smiled as well, and Lisa look away again. "I told my mom about New York."

Irene blinked, looking completely caught off guard. "What?"

"I told her that it's up in the air," Lisa continued, avoiding her girlfriend's gaze at all costs. "She wasn't very happy. She doesn't want me to go just because you want to."

"I – wait, did you make it sound like that? I never said that I wanted you to go because I wanted to go," Irene stated.

"I know, but you do want to go," Lisa countered, "and you do want me to go, so you basically did say that."

"What do you want me to say right now?" Irene asked, crossing her arms and pulling her legs up to cross them. "Do you want me to say that I want to go to New York City? Then fine, I want to go."

"I know that, Irene," Lisa insisted, standing. "And I want you to have what you want, but I just want to make sure that before I decide to change something that major in my life, I also want it. This is hard for me, okay?"

Irene bit down on her lip for a moment. "I know that, that's why I haven't brought it up. I didn't think you were talking about it to anyone."

"So what, you thought that I was just going to ignore it and hope that it went away?"

"I don't know, Lisa, I guess so? You haven't said a thing about it, and every time someone else does, you get frustrated or you ignore it."

"How many times has it even been brought up?" Lisa asked incredulously. "I've been thinking about this a lot, Irene. I wouldn't just toss something like this aside, it's clearly important to all of our friends and to you, so it's important to me, too. I have talked about it with people other than you, yes, because I already know what you want. What I'm trying to figure out is what I want. Because I want you to be happy and to get what you want out of life, and I know that you're a few years ahead of me in life and maybe that's why it's easier for you to decide that you want to do this –"