“Can we talk?”

Three simple words.

Three words that, simultaneously, make Lisa ecstatic and fill her with absolute dread.

“Sure, what’s up?”

Lisa plops down on the couch, next to the older girl, with a grin.

Jennie stares at her for a moment and Lisa shifts uncomfortably.

Lately, Jennie had been looking at her differently.

Almost like she was sizing her up.

Like she was fully taking Lisa in and pulling her apart piece by piece, leaving no stone left unturned.

No detail unexamined.

It made Lisa nervous, to say the least.

“Actually,” Jennie’s eyes travel to Chaeyoung’s open bedroom door, “let’s go in my room.”

She gets up and Lisa immediately follows, still confused as to why Jennie has suddenly asked to speak alone with her.

Jennie closes the door behind them both and stands ramrod straight in front of it.

“Sit down,” she orders.

Lisa falters in her step and turns to look at the serious expression on the shorter girl’s face.

“What’s this about?”

“It’s about Jisoo.”

Lisa frowns, “What about her?”

Jennie scoffs and shifts her weight to one leg, “Are you really that oblivious?”

Lisa’s frown deepens, confusion plainly evident in her face, “What are you talking about?”

“Have you not noticed her mood change?” Jennie stalks forward.

“The way she hides away in her room when you’re all over me?”

Jennie keeps getting closer and Lisa can’t help but take a step back.

“She barely even laughs anymore, for God’s sake, and you haven’t even noticed.” She hisses. “And, even when she does, it’s forced.”

“What are you- what?” Lisa stumbles back and falls on her rear when her knees hit the edge of the bed.

Lisa can only look up at her as she approaches.

“It’s all your fault,” Jennie glares at her and Lisa wishes she could make herself disappear. Wishes she truly understood why Jennie was mad at her. Wishes the older girl would look at her with something other than anger.

“How?”

Jennie shakes her head and snorts at the stupidity of the question.

“How? Lisa, she’s in love with you and you’re too blind to even realize it!”

In love with me?

Jisoo?

“Don’t you see what you did to her when you confessed?”

Confessed?

Lisa racks her brain for something, anything, that will give her an inkling to whatever it is that Jennie is talking about.

The only thing she has confessed to Jisoo recently is…

No.

Her eyes widen and snap back up to meet Jennie’s angry gaze.

“I don’t understand what she sees in you,” Jennie mumbles and Lisa thinks that a rusty, jagged blade straight to the heart would hurt much less than those spiteful words.

Her blank gaze falls on the floor, she can feel the tears building up in her eyes, is closing up on her.

She gets up, her head hung low, hair half covering her face.

She’s having a hard time breathing and her legs have never felt so weak before.

Jennie is standing right in front of her and Lisa, for the first time in her life, wishes she weren’t.

“I have to go,” she mutters, her strained words barely make it out of her lips before she’s side-stepping Jennie and out the door.

Jennie doesn’t stop her.

Jennie doesn’t see the tears that stain her cheeks throughout the entire night and well into the morning light.

She doesn’t see the gaping hole she leaves behind, where a heart full of love used to reside, with one simple sentence.

Eight simple words.

Careless words.

**

Lisa’s avoiding Jennie.

She’s sitting on the floor, her back against the couch, legs stretched out in front of her, when Jennie walks in through the front door and makes a beeline for the living room. Lisa immediately gets up and rushes into her room.

Correction: Lisa’s trying to avoid Jennie.

However, that is proving itself to be quite an arduous task when they work and live together.

She’s halfway to her room before Jennie spots her.

“Lisa, wait.”

The taller girl ignores her and slams the door behind her, locking it for precaution.

“Lisa,” Jennie sighs, leaning against the locked door, “come on, I just want to talk.”

And rip my heart out again? Lisa thinks.

Lisa slumps against the door and slides down into a sitting position on the floor, her arms around her knees.

She’s trying so hard, but Jennie is always there.

She’s trying so hard, but the lump in always comes back when she sees her.

When she hears her.

When she thinks about her.

.

.

.

.

She tries to swallow the lump in , she feels like drowning.

“Go away.”

“Look, I’m sorry-,”

No, you’re not.

“Leave me alone.”

“Lisa-,”

Stop it.

“Leave!” Lisa yells through the door, her voice breaking.

Jennie startles and takes a step back.

She doesn’t know how long she stands outside Lisa’s closed door, head hung in shame, before she finally decides to leave her alone for the time being.

Lisa had never yelled at her before.

She’d never even been angry at her.

Not really.

Not like this.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs one last time, in hopes that two meek words would mend the bond that she so carelessly shattered.

**

Lisa’s been having the same dream for three days now.

It’s always the same. Every single detail.

The empty skies.

The darkness.

The trepidation.

Then, there’s Jennie, and with Jennie there’s light.

Jennie, with her sweet smile.

Jennie, with her kind words.

Jennie, with her soft, inviting hands.

But, then, she’s not smiling.

She’s scowling.

Her words are no longer kind; they’re cruel, taunting, piercing.

And, her hands, they’re still deceptively soft, but…

Suddenly, Lisa is standing at a cliffs edge and Jennie’s soft hands don’t reach out to help her, they push her.

She’s falling, hard, and fast.

“I don’t understand what she sees in you.”

The words echo in her head like a broken record.

The world around her warps and she’s no longer falling towards the pointy, jagged ends of rocks as angry waves crash into them. She’s falling, but she’s inside a volcano, and the hot, molten lava awaits her with open arms.

“I don’t understand what she sees in you.”

The fall is inexplicably long, Lisa wonders when she’ll hit the bottom. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knows this shouldn’t be physically possible.

Because it’s not real, a small voice supplies.

It is real.

She doesn’t love me.

“I don’t understand what she sees in you.”

She never will.

The scorching heat consumes her and she wakes with a jolt, beads of sweat cover her entire body, a scream dies in .

Not a dream.

A nightmare.

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