JENNIE

In the town of Chester, you saw the same faces every single day. Even when you didn't want to. I was quick to learn that Lisa not only took Kai to the park every now and then, but she also carried that big boy into town each day and would sit in the sun with her companion for hours. It seemed to be Kai's happy place, and Lisa had no trouble giving her dog that joy.

Even though she hated when I looked her way, I couldn't help myself.

It was intriguing to zoom in on someone I believed was so different from me and see parts of her that matched corners of my soul.

Maybe we weren't so opposite, after all—both of us being lost and stuff.

She wasn't the only one I saw in town, though, which was unfortunate.

I saw Rosé all the time, but I did a good job of avoiding her. I saw her first at the diner. Then again at the ice cream shop, and I dipped out before she could say a word my way.

Then we crossed paths in the grocery store.

She was wearing high heels and had her blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. As she pushed her cart down the fresh produce section, I paused. She looked at the bananas as if they were foreign creatures, studying every single one as if she'd never seen the fruit before.

They are just bananas, idiot. Just pick one.

The moment the thought rolled through my mind, I felt guilt.

Sorry for calling you an idiot.

Wait.

No.

She stole my husband. I was allowed to mentally call her names without feeling guilty about it.

As she picked up the bananas, she raised her head, and her eyes fell on me. "Jennie," she said, my name rolling off her tongue like a disease.

She stepped backward, and I stood still.

Her eyes watered over, and I hated that it happened. She began to cry in the middle of the grocery store, tears hitting her soon-to-be-purchased fruits. Gosh, I hated her tears because they reminded me of my own pain.

The pain she caused me.

She stepped toward me, and my body tensed up. I pushed my cart away from me.

"Jennie, wait. Can we talk?" she asked.

Her words stung me as they left her mouth.

She stepped closer.

I turned around and ran.

I ran.

Just to be clear, I wasn't a runner. I was certain that I didn't even know how to properly run. After about twenty seconds, I was winded, and sweating in places I didn't know sweat could come from. But, still, I kept running because I could hear her behind me, click-clacking in her heels.

Rosé was a runner.

She'd been running since she was in diapers and was one of the fastest people I knew.

As I raced down the streets of Chester, out of breath and seconds from passing out, I listened to her calm as day voice still calling after me. She wasn't a lick out of breath while I was debating if I should call an ambulance for CPR. My arms flung all over the place like an octopus as she ran like the next USA Olympian champion.

The second I could, I threw the door to The Silent Bookshop open, and Momo saw my panicked expression, though I didn't have time to say anything to her. I hastily opened the set of double doors and rushed into the silent area, where I proceeded to hide behind bookshelves.

My whole body ached as I placed my hands over my chest. My heartbeats were erratic, though that was nothing new. As I listened to the door open, I whimpered to myself. I wished I were invisible. I wish I had Harry Potter's cloak of protection so I could avoid ever actually having to face Rosé.

"Jennie? I know you're in here," she said, as I heard her tiptoeing in my direction. "You can't keep avoiding me."

A few people shushed her, but she didn't listen.

Who would've thought that a woman who took her best friend's husband wouldn't obey to the quiet rules of The Silent Bookshop?

She turned the corner, and I stood still, pressed up between Narnia and Hogwarts.

I was cornered. Books surrounded me on the left and right side, and Rosé stood tall in front of me.

Had she really run that whole way in heels and didn't have a drop of sweat to show for it?

I hated her.

Oh, how I hated her glowing skin.

"We should talk," she told me, wiping at her eyes.

What kind of mascara did she wear that it didn't run at all when she cried?

"You can't talk in here," I scolded her. "And even if we weren't here, I wouldn't want to speak to you."

"Please. If we are both going to be in town, we can't keep this up."

"You'd be surprised at how long I can keep this up."

"Jen."

"Go away."

"No. Not until we talk," she told me, crossing her arms. "I need you to understand."

"To understand what? How you betrayed me? How you stabbed me in the back? I'd rather not."

"It was only supposed to happen once, Jen."

It was only supposed to happen once.

That didn't make it better in any way, shape, or form.

"And it happened when Taehyung came to work at the hospital. We saw each other every day since I'm the receptionist there. One night, we went out for drinks, and he fell apart over you. He told me how you left him."

I huffed. "How I left him?"

"Yes. That night we had one too many drinks, and…" Her words faded.

"You betrayed me. You never called to ask me if what Taehyung saying was true."

"I'd never known him to lie," she told me.

"But you were my person, not his. You were my best friend."

"Jen…"

"Please just leave me alone," I begged. That was all I wanted, really. To be left alone.

Momo walked into the space, and she glanced my way. I gave her a stare, begging her to save me.

She looked at Rosé with such distaste. "I'm sorry, Rosé. This is a quiet section. If you are going to speak, you must go in the lobby."

"But she won't follow me there," she whined. "And we have to talk."

"We aren't going to talk," I barked her way. "There is nothing you can say to me that will make me want to—"

"I'm pregnant," she blurted out, her words somersaulting from her tongue and slapping against my skin.

For a moment, I blacked out. I felt acid rising from my stomach and burning against my tongue as I stayed frozen in an unbelievable state of shock.

She shifted around in her heels. "When Taehyung saw you when you closed on your house, he was supposed to tell you, but he told me he couldn't. Not after all the miscarriages that you two have dealt with," she told me.

Unlike Mama and Taehyung, Rosé had no struggles saying the word miscarriage.

I wished she had, though, because hearing it from her made me want to be sick.

"You're pregnant?" I choked out, my body shaking uncontrollably.

She nodded slowly. "I…this…" She took a deep inhale and sniffled as tears kept falling from her eyes. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this, Jen. I swear, none of this was ever supposed to happen. I didn't expect to fall for him, and this…"

I zoned out on her. I zoned out on all the sounds surrounding me. I watched as Rosé kept speaking, but Momo took her by the arm and pulled her out of the room.

My eyes began to blur as I became dizzier by the second.

I would vomit.

No, I would pass out.

No…

I was going to die.

She did it.

She did the one thing I was never able to do. She would give my husband a child, and I was certain that child would have his eyes.

Those crystal blue eyes…

For a long time, I thought perhaps it was both of us who were the issue—both Taehyung and me. Yet it turned out, he wasn't at fault at all. He was able to bear children.

It was me, and only me, who was tragically flawed.

"Jennie."

I heard my name but didn't flinch. I was frozen. Unable to move, unable to breathe. Unable to do anything but stand still.

"Hey! Snap out of it!" Lisa shouted my way. She placed her hands on my shoulders and shook my body back and forth, making my blurred vision clear somewhat. I looked into her eyes and blinked a few times.

Then came the tears, each one taking its precious time to roll down my cheek.

"She's pregnant," I softly spoke, staring into her eyes that weren't as hard and cold as they usually appeared. "My best friend's pregnant with my husband's child."

"Yeah." She frowned but not hee normal frown. This was built around her pity for me. "I heard."

"I-I-I…" My eyes faded over, and I only saw black. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. I didn't know what to do or how to react. All I knew was that this was not a panic attack.

I knew panic attacks.

I knew anxiety, and how it had swallowed me in the past, but this was a new feeling.

This felt like the first moments before the final descent into nothingness.

I'd never forget the moment as I stood there in The Silent Bookshop. It was one of the big moments. One of the ones that truly defined who I'd be from that point on. It was the moment that changed me from the person I'd always been.

It was the exact moment when I lost my last mustard seed of faith. It was the exact moment when I no longer believed in God.

"Come with me," Lisa whispered.

"But…" I started.

"Princess," she said, her voice smoky as it always had been. She took my hands into her and lightly squeezed them both. "Come with me."

And with her guidance, I followed her.

We walked the streets of Chester with my hand in her, and it still felt as if time was frozen. We reached her property, and she took me to the area in the back of the shop where the broken-down car sat.

She stood me in front of the car and then grabbed a pair of safety goggles and placed them over my eyes. Then she grabbed the sledgehammer and handed it my way.

"Okay" she said, nodding toward the vehicle. "Go wild."

I took a deep breath, pulled the sledgehammer over my head, and slammed it into the car. I kept swinging, unaware of how long I beat the car. I couldn't stop pounding the metal piece of junk in front of me. I slung the hammer into the back window, shattering the glass as my eyes released a floodgate. I couldn't see through the goggles, but I kept swinging over and over again, taking all the strength left in my body and releasing it onto the vehicle. I might not have had much left inside me, but I had enough power to release the anger inside me.

"All right," Lisa stated. "That's enough."

But I didn't stop. I kept pounding away at the balled-up sheet metal.

"Princess, that's enough," she said, this time sterner, yet still, I didn't listen.

Everything inside me ached in a way that I didn't know could hurt. It was as if my soul was set on fire, and it would be an eternal burn.

I swung the sledgehammer over my head, and when I was unable to swing it down, I turned to see Lisa's hands gripped around the head.

"Let go," I ordered.

"No," she replied.

"Lisa, let go," I begged, taking off the goggles.

"No."

"Let go!" I barked, this time with tears falling down my face, my heart racing faster and faster.

"Jennie, please…" she whispered, her voice quiet, almost a whisper as she stared straight into my eyes. She moved closer to me, and her fingers landed against mine as she started to loosen my grip. "Let go."

I released the sledgehammer and took a few steps backward.

Lisa placed the hammer down, and she gave me the most pathetic look.

"I'm okay," I lied, sniffling. "I'm okay."

"You're not."

"No. I am. Everything's fine. Everything's always fine. Everything's—"

She moved in closer and narrowed her eyes as she stared my way. The closer she got, the more my nerves began to build. "Seriously, I'm okay. I lost it there for a minute, but I'm okay. I'm—"

"You're bleeding," she told me.

I am?

She wiped her thumb against my cheek, and when she pulled it back, I noticed the blood resting against her fingertip. Then I felt the sting.

"It's a deep cut. I think some of the glass from the car must've struck you," she said. "Come to my place. I'll get you cleaned up."

I wiped my hand against my cheek and shook my head back and forth a little. "It's fine. I'm okay. I'm fine." I kept saying those words over and over again, hoping that I'd somehow start to believe them.

"Come on," she said, holding her hand out to me. I took her grip, and a chill raced over me as she walked me to her cabin. I didn't say a word on the whole walk over, mainly because my mind was numb. We walked into the house, and I stood in her living room, where an easel was set up and a piano sat in the far corner of the place. The cabin looked bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside, and it was a very clean place. The artwork on all the walls, many different paintings of sunrises and sunsets, was all breathtakingly stunning.

"Sit here," Lisa ordered, leading me to the couch. I did as she said, and she hurried away to get a towel and some Band-Aids. Kai was quick to come greet me, and when he tried and failed to jump on the couch, I helped him up, and he snuggled right into my lap, wagging his tail.

"Good boy," I whispered, somehow finding instant comfort.

When Lisa came back, she kneeled in front of me with a warm cloth and placed it against my cheek. I flinched a little, and she frowned. "Sorry," she muttered.

"It's fine," I replied.

We sat in silence as she attended to my wound, and Kai fell fast asleep in my lap.

"Lisa—"

"Look—"

We spoke at the same time, and I nervously laughed as her fingers brushed against my face. "You first," I told her.

She swallowed hard. "I didn't mean for you to get hurt. I'm sorry. I just thought some of the energy you had needed to find an outlet."

"Is that why you hit the cars? As an energy outlet?"

She didn't reply.

I lowered my head.

"You might need stitches," she told me. She cleared her throat, and when she looked up at my eyes, the guilt in that hazel stare made my heart feel as if it were being squeezed. "I'm sorry."

"No worries," I said. "I did, after all, make you drop a sledgehammer on your foot, so I assume we're even," I joked.

"No, that's not what I mean."

She stared at me with a hard look, and her lips stayed turned down into a frown. "I'm sorry for the way I've been. For the way I've treated you."

"If I knew all it would take for you to be nice to me was my husband getting my best friend pregnant, I would've done that ages ago." I laughed, but she kept frowning.

"You don't have to do that."

"Do what?"

"Laugh when nothing's funny."

"Yes, I do, because otherwise…" As she stared at me that way, I had to turn away because I felt my emotions finally catching up with me as my heartbeats slowed down. A small, uncomfortable laugh fell from my lips. "Because otherwise you're going to be annoyed by me," I warned her.

"Why?"

My bottom lip trembled, and I felt my body start to shake as my hands covered my face. "Because this is the part where I cry."

"Yeah," she agreed. Her hands brushed against mine, and she took them into her hold, lowering them from my face. "And this is the part where I let you." She moved Kai from my lap onto another couch cushion. Next, Lisa placed her hands into mine and lifted me up from the couch and wrapped her arms around me. She held me close to her, and she became the one who held me up as I began to fall. I sobbed against her T-shirt, thinking of all the years of struggles, all the years of pain as I tried to create the life that Rosé had stolen straight from under my feet.

Every now and then, Lisa's hand gently rubbed my back, bringing about an odd sense of comfort.

As I pulled back a little, I thanked her for holding me, for allowing me to fall apart. She brushed her thumb against my cheeks, wiping away my tears that kept falling.

I laughed nervously. "Hot mess," I said, stating what she'd been calling me for the longest time.

She kept wiping my tears. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice deep and smooth. "For calling you a hot mess when I met you."

"Don't be. It's true, after all. I am a hot mess."

"Everyone's a hot mess," she insisted. "Some people are just better at hiding it."

I didn't know why, but that statement eased my mind a bit.

Lisa rubbed the side of her neck and cleared her throat. "You want water?"

"Yes. Please."

She hurried into the back of the cabin, toward the kitchen, and I took deep breaths. My fingers lightly touched the Band-Aids against my face, and I walked toward the walls to study the sunsets more closely. They were stunning. So stunning and realistic that they almost looked like photographs. Each one had the initials H.M. in the bottom corner.

"These are beautiful," I told her as she reentered the room with the glass of water. She handed the glass my way. "Who's H.M.?" I asked.

"Hannah Manoban," she quietly replied as she stuffed her hands into her pockets. "My mother."

"She was an amazing artist," I told her.

She nodded once. "She was more than that." Before I could ask her anything about her mother, she shifted the conversation back to me. "Are you all right?"

I snickered. "Truth or lie?"

"Truth," she replied. "Always truth."

I took a deep breath, and tears fell as I exhaled. I couldn't even reply.

"I'm sorry you're hurting," she told me.

"It's fine."

"It's not."

She was right, it wasn't all right, and I wasn't certain that it would ever be all right.

"You were right about everyone in town. They were just comforting me so they could get more gossip. They didn't care about my heart or how it beat. They just wanted something to talk about."

"I'm sorry I was right."

"It's okay. I just…I feel like I have no one, you know? I mean, I can talk to my sister and my father, but that's pretty much it, and I don't want to burden them. Everyone else in this town just feels like a stranger to me."

"Even your mom?"

I huffed. "Especially my mom."

She cleared her throat and rounded her shoulders forward. "I'm Lalisa Manoban," she calmly stated, locking her stare with mine. "I can't whistle, but I can do three backflips in a row. I got my car skills from my dad and my art skills from my mother. Last summer, I ate twenty-five hot dogs in a row like a professional badass. Alex recorded the whole thing. I can make the best shrimp fried rice, and—"

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Telling you about myself."

"Yeah. But…why?"

She brushed her hand against the back of her neck and slightly shrugged. "So I'll no longer be a stranger and you can talk to me."

Oh, Lisa…

First, she's sour, then shockingly sweet.

The gentle monster.

Her gesture surprised me, but perhaps she was learning to zoom in like I was learning to see her. Maybe, for the first time, the two of us were truly seeing one another.

"I don't know how to talk about it," I confessed. I didn't have a clue what to say.

"What's the hardest part?" she asked me. "What hurts the most?"

"Oh, that's easy." I lowered my head and wrapped my arms around me. "The betrayal of the situation, and the next hardest part is being alone. I don't know how to be alone. When Taehyung and I got married, I believed it was set in stone. You build your whole life around another person, and you think you'll never be alone again, but then you are. It's the hardest feeling to deal with. Loneliness hurts. It burns in a way that feels worse than fire."

"The burning never stops," she told me. "You just kind of become numb to it."

"How long have you been lonely?"

She gave me a broken smile, which told me her deepest truths.

"Oh, Lisa," I whispered, my hand gently brushing against her cheek. "You're way too young to be this sad."

She closed her eyes, and I felt her warm breaths falling from her slightly parted lips. "You're doing that thing that you do, princess."

"Doing what?"

"Putting others' hurts before your own."

I smiled and slightly shrugged. "It's my gift, my curse."

"It's not a selfish thing, you know." She opened her eyes, and the intensity I felt as she stared my way sent chills down my spine. She leaned in close, whispering against my ear as if she was revealing the biggest secret in the world. "You're allowed to choose yourself first."

What a wonderful thought, though the world I grew up in taught me the complete opposite. Where I came from, it was always give yourself to others first and whatever was left was what one used on themselves.

It just turned out that most of the time, nothing ever remained, and my tank for self-love was left on empty.

When it came time for me to leave, she offered to walk me home, and I once again declined. "But thank you for this…for helping me."

She gave me a halfway smile, or at least I pretended she did. "Are you all right?"

"No."

"That's fine," she declared. "You don't have to be."

Why did that make me feel a little bit better?

"Lisa?"

"Yes?"

"You're nothing like your father."

She frowned and cleared her throat as she looked down at the ground and crossed her arms. "I am when he's sober."