That Night | JenLisa FF

Part 2

Jennie toweled off in the cramped bathroom, avoiding looking at herself in the mirror as she wrapped herself in the threadbare terrycloth. What had she done? She sat down on the counter and pulled her legs up to her chest. In all of her experience, sex had been at best something fun, but more often than not, a bargaining tool. It was a means to an end. The rich assholes she normally hung out with liked sex. It was a sure way to placate their egos or smooth over an argument.

But she was certain that Lisa hadn't viewed it so cavalierly. She knew that they hadn't fucked on the roof. They hadn't had sex. They made love - and it most definitely meant something. She bit into the towel that covered her knees and sobbed. This couldn't be happening. She couldn't have fucked this up too. Lisa was the only good and decent thing in her life, and she knew that she had ruined it like she ruined everything else.

She cried until she didn't have any more tears left. Lisa, her friend, the only person that knew her. But Lisa didn't know her. Lisa was blind to her faults. Lisa brushed away the bad things that people said about her – even when they were true. Lisa ignored the fact that she didn't come home a lot of nights. Lisa treated her like a person when even she knew that she was nothing more than trash.

Lisa would sit up nights talking to her on the stoop when she was late getting home from a party, her breath smelling of some stupid preppy jerk's cum. Lisa was sweet and honest and gentle. And she had repaid her letting her think that Jennie felt the same way that she did. But she didn't. It wasn't possible. Jennie knew the truth. She knew that she was blank inside, a huge aching void. She wasn't capable of loving anyone or anything. She survived, nothing more.

Somewhere along the line, Jennie decided she wasn't going to end up like her mother – living hand to mouth, scrounging every penny to keep her two children fed. Her mom had listened to her heart and ended up being abandoned when Jennie's father decided he was done playing house. Jennie vowed then and there to never make that mistake.

She was filled with loathing for her Good Will clothes. She was tired of never having anything that belonged to her, always having to do without. She started hanging out with the rich kids who sometimes came slumming in her neighbourhood. Jennie was a very pretty girl with a quick mind and a healthy sense of adventure. They invited her into their circles. They let her play their games.

She still wore hand-me-downs, but now they were Donna Karan and Dior. Tiffany and her friends seemed to view Jennie as a sort of life-sized doll they could dress up. Jennie let them, taking their fashion advice, deferring to their judgment on how she should behave. Before long, she was a pretender to the crown, moving easily among the moneyed youth of Manhattan's Upper East Side. She was equally at home in the backseat of a BMW as on a crowded subway.

And all it cost her was her soul ...

Jennie was so accustomed to handling the vacuous, two-dimensional creatures that posed as friends that she hadn't given a thought to what her actions would mean to Lisa. But now, with the heat of the moment long gone, alone in her tiny, crumbling bathroom, she knew. She knew that she was going to hurt her.

She roughly pushed away the thought. Lisa was the dearest person in her world. She would do anything to protect her. But Lisa wanted her and that was the one thing she couldn't give.

Crawling off the counter, Jennie slipped silently into the room she shared with Ella. It was the dead of the night by the time she pulled on her pyjamas and slid into the double bed next to her sister. She stared ahead, watching the headlights of passing cars play on the ceiling.

Maybe ...

Jennie rolled over, trying to tamp down the odd sensation that curled in her stomach at the merest thought. It was a strange feeling, one she failed to recognize as hope. What if she could be with Lisa? She allowed herself to contemplate the idea. She didn't know if she loved Lisa – she honestly didn't think herself capable of the emotion – but she knew Lisa meant more to her than anyone else. She was tired. Tired of mind games and date rapes and trying to live in a world where she didn't belong. While the world of the wealthy might have glittered more, it wasn't any nicer. Sure, the kids in her neighbourhood got drunk to numb the pain. Tiffany and Pete's peers did the same thing, only it was martinis or ecstasy. The resultant effect was the same.

What if Lisa could deal with the real her? What if she could look at who she truly was and accept it?

Jennie took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling as if a weight was being lifted from her chest. For the first time in her life, she felt like there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Years later, Jennie would marvel at how her hardened, abused self could have still retained that much naiveté.