Jennie

I came up from the subway half expecting Lisa not to be there. Before she'd left my apartment in the morning to go back to her hotel and change for a sales call, I'd drawn her a map designating where to meet me later. Then I'd called in sick to work because today was important—I was going to show Lisa my New York. And there she was, outside of the Duane Reade, right under the blue pharmacy sign like we'd planned. She had her hands in her coat pockets and a cigarette between her lips.

Outside the comfort of my apartment, she was real, and she was waiting for me. I couldn't quite shake the feeling of being sixteen and having no say in when I got to see her. That she'd appear and disappear based on forces I couldn't control.

As our eyes met, she made no sign of recognition except for the familiar stare I'd come to expect from her over the years—until I stepped off the curb, and she looked both ways for me.

I walked up to her and took the cigarette from her lips. She looked at it, almost daring me to take a drag. I dropped it in the snow. "I can't believe she hasn't made you quit."

"Nobody makes me do anything, Jennie."

"You almost quit once. For me."

"That was a different time." She nodded at me. "Put your coat on."

It hurt that Lisa wouldn't stop smoking for me, if not for herself. It wasn't an unreasonable request to want her around as long as possible. "What if I won't kiss you after?" I asked.

"You said you didn't mind the taste."

I hesitated. I liked the taste, actually, because it reminded me of her. That wasn't enough of a reason to risk her health. I didn't want to start a fight, though. I wanted to be in her arms. We weren't at the point where I felt I could reach out and touch her whenever the urge struck me, so I just stepped close enough to break the barrier of politeness.

"What's wrong?" I asked when she stayed where she was.

"You wasted a good cigarette."

I pursed my lips. "Really."

"I've fought a man for the same thing."

"So fight me."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "It's not because of the cigarette."

The cold day started to hit me. I'd taken my coat off on the stuffy subway, but now I was more interested in being warmed by her. "So what's it about?"

"We're in public."

It took me a moment to register her meaning. I was the other woman. Except that I wasn't. I was hers, always, from the beginning. Nayeon was the one who'd stolen her away. She was the one who should be kept at arm's length on the street. "You're going to hide me away?" I accused.

"It'll take some time for me to acclimate."

"Why?"

"I'm used to checking over my shoulder with you." She removed one hand from her pocket and took the ends of my hair in a loose fist. I thought I could stand up to her, but with that one touch, I wanted to melt. I fought to keep my eyes open. "You never had to be the one to worry about all that," she continued. "I did. I was older than you. Even now, I feel like people are looking."

"Nobody is, Lisa. I'm twenty-two."

"I couldn't let my guard down for a second, even after you turned eighteen. Couldn't get caught staring at you."

"I loved when you did. Even though most times I looked at you, you looked away."

"I had to. You didn't think about things like that, because nobody cares if a sixteen-year-old stares at someone older. Not true the other way around, though."

Hadn't I worried I'd be found out? Maybe some part of me had wanted to get caught. I didn't think about consequences much in those days. Now? I supposed there was the slightest chance someone might recognize us, considering there were people from Orange County who'd moved here. Chanyeol, for one. Doyeon would never tell, even if she was angry with me. I tried not to show my disappointment, but I needed her to know I was more mature now and could play by her rules. I shivered. "It's okay. I can wait."

She opened her coat and pulled me into it. "I can't. I'll just have to get over it."

"What if someone sees us?"

"They won't." She rubbed my shoulder, bringing me closer and closer.

I parted my lips, expecting her, but she only stared. "What's wrong now?" I asked.

"I'm remembering your mouth on me last night on the fire escape."

Despite the fact that I could see my breath, I warmed at the memory. After all the ways Lisa had fought me over the years, I couldn't believe she'd finally given in. "We can go home and do all that stuff again right now."

"No, don't."

"Don't what?"

"Tempt me, when all I want is to spend a normal day with you. Even being allowed to fantasize about you is a whole new world to me."

I quirked an eyebrow at her. "But you did, right? Even if you weren't allowed?"

Her expression sobered as she squinted over my head a moment, then took my coat. "Do you have a plan for us?" she asked, opening it for me.

I wasn't sure why she couldn't answer that. After all the things we'd said and done the day before, I didn't believe for a moment she'd never thought about fucking me. Maybe she wouldn't admit it to others, but to me, it was welcome. I turned to put one arm in my coat and then the other. "Not a plan so much as some places to hit," I said.

She turned me around, buttoning up the coat. "Where are we headed?"

"It's no fun if I tell you. Let it be a surprise."

When she'd finished, my collar nearly choked me. She fixed the lapels, her eyebrows wrinkled. "I don't like surprises."

"I'll remember that for the future." I tilted my head up. We were face to face and still hadn't kissed.

"Lead the way," she said.

"Okay." I didn't move.

"Was there something else?"

I rolled my lips together. I had, in my mind, made it very clear what I wanted. To ask for it was a completely different thing than hinting at it. It wasn't some easy thing to just kiss her, considering she towered almost a foot over me. I would have to rise onto the tips of my toes, and I would have to put my heart on the line again. No, it wasn't easy at all.

"You can touch or kiss me when you want," she said. "You don't have to wait for me."

I shifted. For the briefest of moments, I thought—no, I can't. You don't belong to me. I would be kissing and touching someone else's wife.

Maybe sensing my unrest, Lisa put her hands under my jaw, lifting my face to her. I rose onto my tiptoes, and she nuzzled her nose against mine a few slow seconds before Hurricane Lisa made landfall. Nothing felt more exhilarating than being whipped into a frenzy by her kiss, but her anxiety about being in public belatedly hit me. It almost felt gratuitous to be intimate outside the privacy of my apartment.

I ended the kiss but smiled. "Let's go while it's still early. Daylight is precious this time of year."

"It's only noon."

"I know. I hope you have comfortable shoes on."

We started in the theater district, zigzagging through streets, alleys, and avenues. We'd been here the other night, but this time I pointed out the plays I'd been to, those I still wanted to see, and the ones I'd give my left leg to score a part in.

"Do you sing and dance?" she asked.

"I've taken lessons for both, and I'm all right on the piano, but I don't typically try out for musicals, which can be limiting. I like speaking parts, dramas mostly. It's thrilling to be up in front of all those people."

She looked up as we passed Carnegie Hall. "Have you done it a lot?"

"We had performances in school. Some of my friends are writers and have cast me in small productions. And then there's auditioning, which is basically baring your soul on a stage so they can judge and reject you."

She brought my hand in her pocket, rubbing her thumb over my knuckles. "What moron would reject you?"

I laughed. According to my more experienced peers, the brutality I'd experienced was simply a preview of what was to come. "You'd be surprised."

"Have you tried out for any of these?" she asked about the flashing billboards around us.

Rejection wasn't the easiest thing to admit when Lisa had always known me as a type-A overachiever. "A couple, but I've never gotten a callback."

"What about other kinds of acting, like in front of a camera?"

"Some of my friends are interested in that, but most of us, like me, want the stage." I squeezed closer to Lisa to let a dog walker by. I smiled at the fact that his hands and arms were tangled with leashes, yet he seemed in complete control of the five or six pups in his care.

"Should I be jealous of the guy or the dogs?" Lisa asked.

I wrinkled my nose at her, and she kissed my forehead. "Dogs," I said. "Always be jealous of the dogs."

I took Lisa along Central Park South, by the Plaza Hotel, FAO Schwartz, and down Fifth Avenue to see the holiday displays. The windows were decked with wrapped presents, shiny tinsel, and ornamented Christmas trees. Some featured toy trains and Barbie dolls, and others exquisitely beaded gowns, multi-colored sequined heels, and lush crimson velvet.

Everything behind the glass exuded warmth, even the fake snow. "What will our holidays be like?" I asked Lisa as we wandered.

"However you want. We can spend it with your friends, or we can stay home on the couch watching A Christmas Story."

I smiled a little. "The one with the boy who pokes his eye out?"

"Well, technically he doesn't, but yeah, that's the one. I used to watch it every Christmas with my family before Madison passed."

My heart deflated. "Then we can watch it, too," I said, squeezing her hand, "or we can start our own traditions. There's lots of New York Christmas movies to choose from. Like Home Alone."

She nodded gravely. "A classic in its own right."

"What were your holidays like growing up? With Madison?"

"My parents always made a big deal of them. It wasn't all bad all the time, not at all. We were a pretty normal family for the most part. Lots of presents, at least what they could afford, mostly for Maddy." She surveyed the shops without giving much away. "She cared more about decorating the tree and wrapping presents for us, though. Usually things she'd made, like jewelry for my mom, or found."

I rested my head on her shoulder, hoping to offer even the smallest bit of comfort. Losing a family member wasn't just about their absence. The DNA of her existence had been altered. My sister was still alive, and yet my life had changed dramatically without her in it. It was especially hard around holidays, so I held Lisa a little closer. "What was your favorite part?"

"The food, I guess. My mom would cook more than I could eat and that's saying something."

"I'll cook for you." After we walked a few blocks, I asked, "What's Christmas like now?"

She cleared her throat. "Good."

"I mean, I know what it's like at the house. Mom puts on Christmas music twenty-four-seven and it always smells like cookies."

She nodded slowly. "That's right. Nay and I go over in the morning and spend the day there. It took awhile for things to feel normal after you left."

I was lucky to have made enough friends here that now I always had somewhere to spend the holidays, but that didn't replace the warm, cozy family den where I'd grown up opening metallic-ribboned presents and drinking eggnog with nutmeg. Nayeon's gifts to us were always wrapped sloppily, but she'd bounce up and down while we opened them, unable to contain herself.

"What kinds of things did you buy her?" I asked.

"What's it matter?"

"You wanted me to know about your life," I said.

"The usual. Jewelry, clothes. Things for the house or kitchen."

"The kitchen?" I asked, remembering her comment about dessert after dinner. "Does she cook now?"

"Some nights. And she's not half bad."

I scowled. She couldn't be a good chef. She didn't have a culinary bone in her body, not like me or my mom. But she'd had years of feeding Lisa, learning about what she liked or didn't. That was time I'd never get back. My mind automatically drifted to the bedroom, where she'd also had time. "How was it with her?"

She kept her arm around me, her eyes forward as we navigated the crowded sidewalk. For a moment, I understood what she'd meant earlier about feeling as if people were looking at us. We were doing something wrong, and it seemed they could tell. "I didn't mean you should ask about this stuff," she said. "Things that'll make you jealous."

"It's just food," I said.

"You're not asking about cooking anymore, but I know you don't like to hear about that, either. You think I like imagining you feeding another man?"

"I didn't, though . . . not on a regular basis, anyway." My palm began to sweat in her, and I took my hand from her pocket. I could feel myself veering down a dangerously steep hill, but now that I'd started, I couldn't apply the brakes. I'd been thinking—and trying not to think—about this since she'd shown up on my doorstep. "So you can ask me all you want about cooking for other men, and I told you about Chanyeol, too, so now I want to know what it was like for you and Nayeon, and I don't mean in the kitchen."

She blew out a sigh and shrugged. "It was fine."

"Fine? That's it?"

"I don't know what you want me to say. I can't tell you it was the worst thing in the world unless you want me to lie."

I didn't want her to lie, but I wouldn't have minded hearing it was the worst thing in the world. "What was good about it? Is it because she's experienced?"

"No." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Christ, Jennie. No, it isn't that. It's sex. When I said you should know about my life, I meant the important things. You know your sister's, well, when she lets her guard down, she's sensitive and kind. She's really great like that, but it never lasts long with her. She lets unimportant things take over her life. She can be materialistic that way. And she's petty—she lets other people get to her, like you or your dad."

"Me?"

"Now that you're out of the picture, she gets to be the golden child. Your dad is more patient with her than he used to be, but it's clear she'll never be what you are to him. And that's hard on her. Even though you're gone, your presence at the house is strong."

Nayeon and Dad were getting along. These were the things I wasn't sure I wanted to know. It only highlighted how much I'd missed. I'd now spent over a fifth of my life without them. "It's better for her that I'm gone. She gets Dad, and she got you."

"She misses you. I know you don't believe it, but she does."

"Will you miss her?"

She looked down at me. "In some ways, sure. How you might miss a close friend or a roommate you've come to rely on."

I tried not to look hurt. She was choosing me in the end, and that was what mattered. "But do you have any doubts about leaving her? Will you miss her so much that you'll think of her when you're with me?"

She rolled her lips together, then stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and took my left hand. She held it up between us and ran her thumbs up the center of my palm. "Imagine if you had to have surgery to remove this hand." She kissed the pads of my fingers. "This beautiful hand that I'll do everything I can to protect, I should add. You'd miss it, wouldn't you? It would be hard. Something important would be gone. It would take time to get used to."

I sighed. To remove a hand was no small thing. Nayeon was Lisa's other half and had been for much longer than I'd even spent with her on my own. "It would be really hard," I agreed. "Too hard."

She smiled a little, then pressed my palm against my own chest, right over my heart. "Now imagine the surgery was to remove this. You can live without one, but not the other. Which would you choose?"

My throat got so thick, I had to wait a few seconds to respond, and in that time, my last six heartless years flashed before me. "But you lived just fine without me."

"Just fine, yeah. When I thought I could never have you. Now that you're mine, there's no other way. I'd be a fool to cut out my heart to save my hand."

I curled my fingers into a fist. "I feel the same."

"Do you? Let me hear you say it."

"I . . . I love your hands. I know how hard you worked to keep them to yourself when you didn't want to."

"And your hands made me feel so good last night, Jennie. What about my heart?"

I swallowed that pesky lump, trying to rid it so I wouldn't cry. "I love it, too."

"You always believed it was good. That I was good. Even when I tried to convince you otherwise."

I'm no good, she'd said last night. The fact that she was here with me was progress, but I would have to make sure, going forward, she knew what a good person she was. And examining the past probably wasn't the way to go about that. "You know what?" I asked.

"Tell me."

"You'll make a great parent one day. The best."

She frowned. "You think about that?"

"I don't need to. I just know. Do you see that in our future?"

"Yes, Birdy. I see it. I see it so clearly. I want—I want to be everything my dad wasn't, everything your dad wasn't." She brought my palm to her mouth for a series of kisses that ended at my elbow. Reinserting me in her coat, against her side, we continued walking. "I'll do whatever it takes to make you proud, but I worry," she admitted. "Of course I do. I didn't have the best example."

"You honestly still think you'll become your dad?" I asked.

"Do you worry I will?"

"Not for a second."

"I have concerns. Like my temper when it comes to things I care about. So—you. And when we have a baby—our baby."

My jaw could not drop far enough. How was Lisa speaking so freely about things she'd held against her chest for years? She steered us through the crowd. I flattened my hand on her hard stomach. Thumb to pinky, I only took up about a third of the expanse of her torso. "You have a temper where I'm concerned," I agreed, "but why? What are you afraid of?"

"You saw how I reacted on the beach that night. There've only been a few other times I've gotten that upset."

"Tell me about them."

"It mostly has to do with my dad."

"And the time they sent you to solitary confinement."

"And that." She nodded. "If I let my temper get the best of me at any moment, it could change everything for me. I could go back to jail. Worse, I could hurt you."

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Not because I thought she'd ever get physical with me, but because I could hear in her voice that she believed she could. "You wouldn't," I said.

"You don't know that. I told you how it was with my dad. There was no telling what would set him off. And I'm the same, Jennie. That was what landed me in SHU."

"You never told me why you snapped."

"I never told you to protect you from that world."

"But we can't have secrets from each other now, Lisa."

She pulled me close, kissing me on the lips. "Your safety and happiness will always be my priority."

I read between the lines. She would keep from me the things that might hurt me. "I don't want to be in the dark, Lisa."

She looked anywhere but at me. "Hmm."

I didn't think I could ever make Lisa do anything she didn't want to, which was why it was important she see me as an adult, not the girl on the construction site. "We're going to be partners," I reminded her.

"We already are. We have been. Don't you know, no matter what was happening around us, that you were always in the center of my mind? That I would never do or say anything to let anyone hurt you?"

"Anyone but you. You hurt me most of all." As I said it, I slipped my hand back into her. I wasn't sure why, except that I knew this conversation was hard for her. Still, I couldn't stop from pressing the wound. Maybe it was revenge, or maybe it was that my insecurities needed coddling. I didn't think I'd ever tire of hearing her thoughts.

"I was selfish. I didn't want to be away from you. I wanted to feel like a good person, and that's how your sister made me feel."

"And I didn't?"

"You just made me feel good. So good, I thought it meant I was bad. How could I feel such a connection for someone I shouldn't? Can you see the logic in any of that?"

I twisted my lips. What would have happened if Lisa had not come into the house that day at Nayeon's invitation, which later resulted in their first date? I'd been a child then, admittedly more naïve than most. I couldn't have handled such a person as her, not like Nayeon. What if she'd done all the things I'd tried to get her to do, like take off my clothes in a truck while I was away at camp or kiss me on my sister's kitchen counter while she slept in the next room? Would she still be here if any of that had happened? If not for Nayeon, would she have left for good to get away from her feelings for me?

We passed more beautiful, glossy stores. Whenever their doors opened, warmth seeped out. "I wish we could spend this Christmas together," I said. "I'd cook you a turkey and you'd fix my heater. We could watch movies under the blankets and maybe fool around a little."

She kissed the top of my head. "Not maybe. Definitely. Sounds perfect. Next year, Birdy, I promise you."

I was stealing my sister's wife, shattering her world so I could build my own. But my love for Lisa was stronger than anything else. If I got to live eighty more years with her, I wasn't sure I'd change anything about the past few that might've prevented that. And I understood why loving me sometimes made her feel like a bad person.

In that instant, it was true for me, too.