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

Chapter 4

“Jennie,” Lisa huffed into a voicemail message. She was standing on a curb, shivering slightly in the drizzly rain, wishing she’d had the foresight to go home after work instead of hanging around expecting Jennie to remember she existed. “I know your head is somewhere else right now, but you told me you’d pick me up at seven for this party. It’s 7:30. Call me.”

The final instruction was pointless, because she knew she wouldn’t.

Sure enough, 10 minutes later, Sidney’s car rolled around the corner. When Lisa opened the back door and found every other seat empty, she sighed. “Where is she?”

Sidney was already looking apologetic. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. She just called me and told me to come and get you.”

Lisa clambered in and slammed the door shut. “Right.”

“Do you have the address of the party?”

“Just take me home,” Lisa said, “Please.”

Sidney nodded like he always did, then they quietly drove across town with Lisa stewing in the back.

She whipped out her phone, hoping she’d find a text from Jennie waiting for her but instead only finding one from Chaeyoung. What do you think of these dresses? I know you vetoed the lemon ones but maybe this is a compromise.

She tapped on a photo of four sherbet orange dresses and shuddered.

They’ll clash with Alice’s hair.

When Chaeyoung replied a split second later, Lisa breathed a sigh of relief. Shit. You’re right. Back to the drawing board.

Tossing her cell into her purse, Lisa leaned her head back and groaned. Ever since their confrontation with Lee three weeks earlier, she’d been filled with a sense of sick uneasiness –  not because of his threats, nor because she knew Soohan was still lurking around trying to get her attention, but because yet again Jennie’s mind had drifted off someplace where she wasn’t invited. She was a woman on a mission, unwilling to be disturbed and suddenly incapable of picking up her phone, and although Lisa was trying not to let it bug her, she couldn’t help but feel the same shrinking anxiety in her stomach as she had done two years ago.

Back then, Jennie had been silent because she was single-handedly talking every bank on the eastern seaboard out of sending Lisa to jail – now it was because she was determined to send Lee and Soohan there instead. Lisa knew that and she was trying to be patient, but when she kept getting left on the sidewalk like a stray dog, she couldn’t help but feel a little bit abandoned.

She pulled her phone out again and typed, Thanks for sending Sidney. I’m going home. Come round later if you need to vent.

She went to bed alone. Jennie never showed.

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Lisa was genuinely surprised when Jennie asked her round for dinner a week later. She half expected to arrive at her apartment and find another ominous envelope lying on the counter, but instead the front door opened and there was Jennie, looking tired and harried and possibly slightly hungover.

“Lisa,” she sighed with relief when she opened the front door. She yanked Lisa into a hug before she could even say hi. “I’ve missed you.”