Holiday Wine, with You and Me [Chaennie ]

Part 4: Spinning All The Way To The Ground

Jennie watches as the bread rolls she has prepared begin expanding in the oven.

They're rising too fast, flowing into one another, a mountain of bread dough taking up the full sheet. What had she been thinking? She watches as it presses up against the glass, begins panicking when it starts squeezing through the seams of the oven door until it bursts open and dough is spilling out all over the kitchen floor, fat and pale and glistening.

It doesn't stop expanding. With horror, Jennie realizes it's going to envelop the whole house and everyone in it, and it's because of her one, stupid mistake.

There's only one thing to do: she's going to need to eat it all, before everyone finds out what she's done.

Jennie is shoving it down her throat, without chewing, drawing it into herself until she feels ill. She's not fast enough, she can't keep up, and she can hear them coming; they're all going to know it was her, and no one will ever take Jennie Kim seriously again.

But it's only Rosie who walks into the kitchen. She looks at Jennie, looks at the mess she's made. Then she grabs a handful, takes a big, happy bite, and smiles.

"Jennie." Rosie is pressing on her shoulder, but she's also pressing on her mind, it's very uncomfortable. "Jennie, shh, you're okay."

With reluctant effort, Jennie blinks awake.

"You were having a nightmare. Breathe with me for a minute?"

Jennie realizes she's hyperventilating, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. Rosie is on the floor next to Jennie's bed, her hair a halo in the silver light coming from the window. It's a cloudless night. Jennie wonders absently if that means she will actually be able to escape this town today.

"Hey." Rosie's hand squeezes around her shoulder, then moves to cradle her jaw. She tilts Jennie's face until she's caught her eyes, and Jennie sighs at the tenderness of her touch. "That's it." Rosie's smile is grateful. "You're fine."

"I'm sorry," Jennie says, eyeing the diffident goddess kneeling by her bed. "Did I startle you?"

But Rosie is smiling, looking a little relieved. A careful thumb strokes Jennie's cheek, but as Jennie watches her, Rosie seems to become aware of what she's doing and removes her hand.

Jennie realizes too late that she's leaning forward in an unconscious effort to prolong the touch, and disastrously, Rosie appears to have noticed it too. Her hand hesitates.

Jennie is still a little drunk, but she's never bought into the excuse that alcohol makes people act wildly out of character. Julia has never had a drink too many and confessed to harboring warm feelings for her only daughter. None of the men she does business with have gotten caught at strip clubs buying scholarships for the dancers — at least not without expecting something in return. No far-right member of the European parliament has ever gone on a hedonistic rampage through Brussels swearing drunken oaths to uphold equal rights for all.

So when Rosie asks her, all patient and kind, hand still hovering by her face so close Jennie can feel its warmth, "Do you want me to lie here with you for a while?" Jennie can blame absolutely no one but herself when she says, after only a nanosecond of hesitation, "Please."

The mattress dips below Rosie's weight as she slides in between the sheets and stretches out next to her.

Jennie doesn't know where to put any of her limbs. Their knees knock together, and Jennie feels stiff trying to keep her body from careening into Rosie's, unbalanced by what she can't divine as simply gravity or the ever mounting magnetism between them.

A stray lock of hair has fallen over her face, but she's afraid to move it, because that would very definitely mean having to move the arm that's currently wedged snugly between Rosie's breast and her own. Rosie fixes it for her, her finger grazing the shell of her ear as she tucks the hair behind it. It's intimate and tender and Jennie feels it all over, but particularly in the hidden, humid places that Rosie will never touch.