Don't Wanna Be Your Girl || Jensoo

Chapter 10

The seconds stretch, charged, heavy, and something shifts, a subtle rearranging of air between them. Jennie wants to claw back what she just said. Because Jisoo's hesitation is sending her stomach into a wild plummet and there isn't a graceful way to extricate herself from this. She's trapped beneath Jisoo's body, her stare, the weight of that stupid admission.

They're pressed so tightly together, hips and stomachs and ribs, that Jennie feels the rise and fall of Jisoo's diaphragm as she sucks in a small breath and lets it out slowly.

"Jennie, I—" she begins, and it's so tentative, so completely unlike her usual self-assuredness that it makes Jennie flinch.

If this is Jisoo letting her down easy then Jennie can't bear to hear it. The best thing, the sensible thing, the thing that will preserve her dignity, she decides, is to beat Jisoo to the punch.

"You're a catch. That's all I meant." If the words sit uneasily, twisting and coiling in her gut, then she hopes it doesn't show on her face. "Who wouldn't be flattered?"

Jisoo's eyebrows shoot up.

"I'm a catch? Are you fucking kidding me?" She shakes her head slightly. "Besides the fact you're super fucking attractive? Everything about you is just... Jennie, in the dictionary definition of girlfriend material there's a picture of your perfect face."

Girlfriend material?

It occurs to Jennie that she's holding her breath. Has been for the last several seconds. But she's too reluctant to move a muscle or so much as blink in case it disrupts this confessional mood, puts a stop to whatever it is Jisoo's on the verge of saying.

"God, sometimes, when you look at me..." Jisoo drops her gaze and when she glances up from under her lashes half a moment later, Jennie's heart thuds so forcefully in her chest it's a wonder Jisoo doesn't hear it slam against her rib cage. "I don't even know what to think."

In Jennie's head, there's Chaeyoung telling her to woman up and find some fucking backbone. So when she speaks her voice sounds only slightly uneven. "The mixed signals aren't exactly one-sided, Jisoo."

She can't quite read Jisoo's expression. It's pensive. Brown eyes downcast again. A few seconds drag by where there's only the shallow sound of their breathing and Jennie's own pulse thundering in her ears. She cushions herself for rejection, denial, a dismissive laugh at the very least.

"It's not that I don't—" Jisoo stops, catching her lower lip between her teeth. She exhales softly, and Jennie's sure she isn't imagining the discernible wobble in it. "We have a really, really good thing going here. But, speaking from past experience? If we let this become something more, it'll get ugly. Once feelings are involved, everything gets messed up."

"Jisoo." Jennie's throat constricts over that single syllable, the name coalescing into a hard lump, and she swallows around it. "I think that ship's already sailed. Don't you?"

It's risky—this whole conversation has klaxons going off in Jennie's brain—but she lifts both hands to trace along Jisoo's jaw. She doesn't shy away from Jennie's touch. She's trembling slightly. They both are.

"It isn't the end of the world."

"No?"

"I don't think so."

"It is if the person I'm with makes me feel like I'm the bad guy. Like I'm cheating on them just by doing my job."

"Is that what Hanbin did?"

Brunette brows knit together, mouth turning down, and, really, Jisoo's doing a stellar impersonation of Grumpy Cat right now.

"How...? Oh. Seulgi's so going on my shit list."