french fries & milk ice-cream// JENLISA ONESHOTS

i thought i saw you breathing

title is from Sufjan Stevens's song - Casimir Pulaski Day

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"Just tell me where you are, and I'll come to you. Don't do this. Don't shut me out."

Lisa sighed and leaned her head back against the plush back of her chair. She tightened her blanket around her body and curled in on herself, stared out the window into the oranges and reds of the falling sun. It cloaked green, painted the woods bloody. It was beautiful.

She clicked to skip to the next voicemail on her phone, and Jennie's voice spilled back in again.

"Lisa, it's been three weeks. Please, stop this. Talk to me. I don't understand. I don't know what I did. Why can't you just talk to me?"

Tears pricked in Lisa's eyes as she skipped to yet another voicemail.

"I can't sleep. Lisa, I...I love you. Please, come home. It's been over a month now. I just...I want you to come home."

Lisa clenched her eyes closed, tears slipping free and falling. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, blowing the cool air up toward her wet cheeks. She couldn't do this anymore, this silence. She thought it would work. That she could end things and leave, slip away, disappear, and Jennie would eventually let her. Jennie would eventually let go and move on with her life, but she hadn't. Jennie hadn't moved on. She'd broken instead, and Lisa couldn't handle it. She couldn't endure it any longer. She was trying to protect Jennie, not ruin her.

She took a sip of water from a cup on the table and then re-situated herself in her chair. Her bones ached with the movement, and goosebumps prickled along her arms. She pulled her blanket tighter and stared down at her phone, stared at Jennie's name. One steadying breath and she pressed it. The phone rang in her ear, a haunting, nerve-racking kind of sound that made Lisa dizzy.

"Lisa, oh my god!"

Lisa closed her eyes. "Jennie."

The sound of Lisa's voice shot through Jennie like a flame, scorching her from the inside out. It was beautiful, the way she burned, and terrible. Painful.

"Where are you? Are you okay?" Jennie's voice trembled. "Are you safe?"

"Yes," Lisa whispered. "I'm fine, Jennie. I called to ask you to stop calling."

"But-"

"You need to move on, Jennie," Lisa said, reaching up to wipe at her tear-streaked cheeks with her blanket.

"Let me go and move on with your life. Find someone new to love."

"I don't want someone new," Jennie snapped, anger flashing, white-hot. She took a ragged breath that Lisa felt in her bones. "I want you."

"Please, Jennie."

"I deserve better than this, Lisa," Jennie said. "I deserve to know what's going on."

"Jennie."

"I want an answer, goddammit!"

"I told you I-"

"Needed time," Jennie said, shaking. "Yeah, and I'm not buying it. You didn't take time, Lisa. You fucked off to God knows where and dropped off the radar." She paced around her living room, their living room, one hand curled into a fist at her side. She felt restless, a caged animal. "You haven't called. You don't answer my calls. You just disappeared! Do you have any fucking idea what that's done to me? I can't sleep. I can't focus." Her voice cracked. "I don't understand what I did."

"You didn't do anything," Lisa whispered into the phone. Her lip trembled. Her heart crawled into her throat and stuck there. She wished she could crawl out of her skin. Curl into a ball. Disappear. Be someone new. "You didn't, Jennie. I just can't be with you. I'm sorry."