Holiday Wine, with You and Me [Chaennie ]

Part 3 : The Game Start Now

Jennie Kim has rarely witnessed a crueler thing than Rosie Park taking off both her jacket and her sweater — leaving her only in that cursed sleeveless top — before gathering up all their grocery bags with an entirely too satisfied sounding grunt and carrying them inside the house.

It's an excruciatingly casual show of strength and beauty. Rosie is briefly, perfectly framed by the warm yellow light pouring from the doorway where she pauses, somehow managing to balance all of her bags on one arm as she raises the other to touch her fingers to what Jennie now realizes isn't a home security device, but a small, new-looking white ceramic mezuzah. The light itself takes on an almost reverent quality, turning Rosie's hair and skin a glinting gold, casting stark shadows into the dips between her more prominent muscles and highlighting the soft hair on her forearms. Jennie thinks she sees a faint dusting of freckles there.

But not. Like. Jennie isn't watching her, or anything.

She is actually quite studiously not looking at Rosie as she follows her into the house, so Lisa has no reason to suggestively quirk one eyebrow as if she's caught Jennie doing exactly that. Or to saunter up to them smiling like the cat who got the canary and remark, "You two were out for a while! Did you decide to go and have fun without us?"

Jennie narrows her eyes at her, now flat-out suspicious. Lisa blinks innocently back.

"We stopped to stock up." Rosie has hopped up on the kitchen island and is enthusiastically digging into the grocery bags surrounding her, looking like a child on Christmas morning. "You know, since we're snowed in and all."

"Did you buy out Whole Foods' entire inventory?" Lisa demands, holding up a large tin of Iranian saffron in one hand and the box with the Bamix Gold Crown blender in the other. "This is a little excessive, even for you."

Jennie delicately plucks the items from her hands. "You are aware I am a literal billionaire."

"Are you, really?" Rosie asks, her enthusiastic interest entirely too much for Jennie to handle after the kind of day she's had. Jennie needs those layers she so carefully picked out, but Rosie hasn't given her the bags from the boutique since pronouncing them a gift.

"Observe the irony that is you buying me clothes," Jennie says with a pointed eyebrow to the bags in question, hoping Rosie can take a hint.

Lisa's eyes bounce between the both of them. She's wearing the exact same expression she does on the nights Jennie will have a few too many drinks and try to explain to her best friend the intricate psycho-sociological model she's constructed to prove that, deep down, Julia is right about Jennie's character flaws and the ways in which she's failed both as a daughter and as a businesswoman. "You... bought her clothes ?" Lisa blinks.

Rosie shrugs, sniffing at a net of Jerusalem artichokes. "Just some underwear. Hey, are these truffles?"

Jennie observes sharply as Lisa chokes on air, looking entirely too thrilled for someone who is unable to breathe.

Jennie is tired.

Lisa is a little shit.

Rosie reaches behind her back, takes the brightly colored bags that contain the physical manifestation of Jennie's latest coping mechanism and holds them out for Jennie to take. "They're a gift," she informs a still faintly wheezing Lisa, as if that will clarify the matter.

Jennie holds out a hand to take them from her, then hesitates. "You sure you don't have a tree somewhere you want to put these under?"

Why is she arguing? Take your layers and run, Jennie.