earning it back // chaelisa

chapter 1: of art galleries and little kids

In the staring contest she's having with the door, Chaeyoung is clearly the one losing.

It's been - she checks the watch on her wrist - almost twelve minutes since she worked up the courage to climb out of her car and walk up the driveway. And that was after a good half hour willing her stomach to stop doing backward somersaults - it still hasn't, but she figured it wouldn't, not tonight, not before she did what she had come here to do anyway.

Now she stares at the door, following the pattern that the wood grain forms and wondering how much longer she can get away with standing in the small front porch after dark before someone in the neighborhood calls the cops on her.

It's a really nice neighborhood, something she can't even dream to afford anymore, but Chaeyoung hadn't expected anything less. There's a line of trees that follow the sidewalk, rising tall above her, and she imagines what they'll look like when winter isn't clinging to their lifeless branches anymore - bushy and full, casting delightful shadows that will make walking a dog something enjoyable and less of a chore. She imagines their green will match the grass, once the snow melts and it peeks through, welcoming the spring to the great white north.

She's stalling.

Chaeyoung shoves her hands deeper into the pockets of her fleece leather jacket that doesn't do much to fight off the cold, ignoring the fact that, if she wants someone to come to the door, she has to knock .

If she's being honest with herself, she's scared of knocking, of learning what's really waiting for her on the other side of this door, of shattering the fantasies she created in her mind for the last six years.

Because Chaeyoung remembers how she left Lisa.

For the umpteenth time since she closed the door on what could have been the beginning of a love story they'd tell to their grandchildren, Chaeyoung replays those last few hours she had had with Lisa. She remembers the careful touches and worried glances, the softness that surrounded them and that she made sure to break, the way she ended up breaking Lisa as well.

Fuck, she was such a bitch.

It has been an uphill battle for Chaeyoung to understand why she acted the way she did and to accept what she can't change, to stop beating herself over the head and wondering what she could have done differently. Chaeyoung did what she did because she was trying to protect herself, plain and simple - if she did it in the most selfish and cruel way she knew how to, well, that's something she will have to seek forgiveness for.

And for her to find that forgiveness, she has to knock on the goddamn door first.

But the lump in her throat grows bigger and bigger with each breath she takes as she psychs herself up to take her hand from her pocket, curl her fingers into a fist, rattle her knuckles against the door, try not to vomit as she waits for someone to come answer it. She only gets as far as sinking her nails deeper into her palm.

She owes it to herself to knock and wait and pray Lisa will let her get the words out before all hell breaks loose, before she kicks and screams and punches Chaeyoung like she's pretty sure Lisa wants to - if she were Lisa, by God, she'd want her head on a stick.

If Chaeyoung said she has even a clue of how Lisa will react to her standing on her porch six years after leaving, she would be lying. She might get the angry mess she half expects, she might not even get a look of recognition, but she owes it to herself to try, to at least try to make things right again. For her own sake, if nothing else - again, her selfish side comes to life, ignoring what harm she might do.

For the last six years, Chaeyoung has woken up every day knowing she had a battle to fight -  against herself, against who she thought she was doomed to be, against the person who looked at her from the mirror with bloodshot eyes and cracked lips. And she fought, every single day, without rest. She got up, no matter how badly she wanted to stay in bed and throw a pity party in between the sheets, and she worked on herself. She worked on herself too hard and for too long to not even try.