Out of My League | JENLISA

Chapter VIII: On the rooftop

Lisa sat on one of her hands by the couch, her feet tapping at the floor, making her housemate Minnie look in her way. "You're doing it again, Lis," she sighed exasperatedly from the dining table where she had several books and an old laptop in front of her.

"Oh," her eyes widened at the realization that she was doing it again. "Sorry," Lisa mumbled, stopping the nervous tapping at their living-room's floor as she glared at the hours on her phone.

It was almost five in the afternoon, the time Jennie had told her she would be picking Lisa up for their official first date and honestly? Her heart was hammering so hard with every passing minute that Minnie would, anytime, start complaining about it too.

Lisa couldn't yet believe she had a date with her soulmate.

If it wasn't the perfect makeup she had put on earlier, Lisa would definitely be throwing herself against their cushions and screaming just to release some tension.

Not that she had the habit of doing so.

(She did.)

Her stress levels were almost through the roof and usually she would dance to feel more relaxed, but she had been too busy to do so — working, telling her friends everything about Jennie, finishing her project on street art, preparing a surprise for Jennie, going to the mall with Mina and Sana to buy the clothes she was now wearing, texting Jennie, doing her share of house chores, stalking Jennie's social media, and so on.

And yes. Lisa had been talking nonstop about Jennie with her friends the last two days. And she meant nonstop. Everyone had assured Lisa that both women had already been on a non-official date after they met each other in that alley back in Ihwa Mural Village — so therefore, according to them, she had no reason to be this nervous about this new date.

"Going to a coffee shop, then walking to the park to watch the sunset together before going to dinner and her taking you home and kissing you? C'mon, Lisa, you aren't that dense," were Bambam's exact words.

Lisa knew she wasn't dense.

But she was very much inexperienced when the topic was traditional dating.

And that's why she couldn't stop driving Minnie insane with her nervous tapping.

Lisa knew she had some sort of unconventional love life until Jennie. During school, when girls started noticing boys, Lisa was well aware she didn't find anything about them appealing. She had come out to her parents the year her father passed away.

After that, she struggled with such a heavy and soul-shattering grief: her father died and, a couple of years later, her mom decided to go back to Thailand, leaving Lisa alone in South Korea by the age of 16 years old. Jisoo too had left to study abroad that same year. Then, the world faced the COVID pandemic and Lisa got the news she wasn't accepted in any school in the US, which had been her dream.

It was some rough years for her, even though she wasn't one to complain.

Therefore, Lisa took a year off after High School to travel around the world. She visited dozens of cities in almost all continents. Every so often, at night, she would dress in good fitting jeans and go to a bar — half expecting to stumble on her soulmate, half afraid they would turn out to be a douchebag.

Her soulmate never showed up. Instead, she would meet a cute girl, they would take Lisa to their place and then Lisa would never see them again.

Her first year of college had been full of parties and supposed straight girls and sex and them pretending to not see Lisa on campus if they ever crossed paths after their one-night stand.