so, do we like each other or not? // JENLISA

Chapter 10

The next evening, Lisa got home from work and immediately sat down cross-legged on her bedroom floor. The box of envelopes was pulled out in front of her. She'd spent most of the day psyching herself up for this moment – she'd even left work a few minutes early so Cherin couldn't suddenly decide to keep her behind for three hours and make this whole thing impossible. But now that the time had finally come for her to take the lid off the container, she couldn't bring herself to do it.

She had to look through the letters eventually. She knew that. She had $10,000 to spend and Jennie didn't seem intent on dumping her any time soon, so she was finally in a position to make a dent in the stupid decisions she'd made over the past decade. She'd been avoiding going anywhere near those envelopes for some time though, and the thought of finally opening them one by one and seeing the ugly truth of just how much trouble she'd manage to land herself in was enough to make her break out in a sweat.

Taking a breath, she reached out and quickly flicked the lid off the box. It was a band-aid that had needed ripping off for a while.

Where the hell should she start, though? There were dozens of letters in there. Hundreds, probably. The box was starting to overflow and some of the envelopes at the very bottom had been there since before she'd started college. Lisa had been ignoring them for so long that it had almost become possible to pretend they'd never existed.

She shakily reached for the closest letter. It was thicker than she would have liked.

Peeling it open, Lisa steeled herself for the cacophony of abuse and demands that were about to come flying out at her. She scanned her eyes down the page. She saw the word 'court'. She saw the word 'repossess'.

She immediately shoved the letter back into its envelope and scooted back against the wall, as far away from the box as the confines of her tiny room would allow.

There was a scrap of paper in her pocket and she pulled it free, smoothing it down against her thigh so she could remind herself of the totally feasible action plan she'd laid out:

1. Put the letters in date order

2. Work out who you owe what to

3. Start arranging payments

It was only three tiny steps, but it seemed like a mountain – and she'd already failed before she'd properly started to climb.

Her chest went tight and so, before she could give up entirely and hit the bottle like normal, she decided on a new system: she reached into the box, pulled out three random envelopes, and opened them to see how much she could realistically pay off from her first month's allowance. The amount contained in that handful of paper alone was way too much, more than Jennie had given her, and so she tried again. When she was faced with a figure that was slightly more realistic, she grabbed the roll of money she'd tucked away under her mattress and headed to the bank before it closed.

When she got back to the apartment, she went in search of Mary and thrust six months worth of rent into her disbelieving hands. Parting with the money made her want to throw up, but the look of utter shock on her roommate's face was somehow worse.

"Where did you get all this from?" she asked, staring down at the notes. They'd been crisp when Lisa had got them, but after 10 minutes in her sweaty palms, they were curling at the edges.