JENNIE
"What are we going to do?" I ask Lisa over breakfast in bed. "On a practical level."
"I don't know." Even though we barely slept, and Lisa's jet-lagged on top of that, she looks more gorgeous than ever. Maybe because we can enjoy the simple act of having breakfast together now—of discussing pragmatic details of our immediate future without being racked with too much guilt. "Maybe we can just stay here for a while. Just for a few nights until we get our bearings."
I nod. "See what happens?"
"I can't go home. Not for the next few days. We all need some time," Lisa says.
"I'm going to have to get my own place eventually." I sigh at the prospect of all the things Kai and I have to sort out, legally and emotionally. "And a divorce lawyer."
"All in good time." Lisa drinks from her coffee.
"Yeah." Part of me wishes time could pass already, but the other part of me doesn't want to miss a moment of how things will evolve between Lisa and me.
"Maybe the hardest part is really over now." Lisa puts her cup down. "I'm not saying it's going to be easy from now on, but, you know, we faced Kai. Nothing can be harder than that."
I nod. It's not as though I've suddenly stopped loving Kai because I'm in love with his sister. But he pulled away from me at the worst possible time, which is not an excuse, but it is an explanation. We will never know whether we would have found our way back to each other. Kai and I are over. I will need to grieve the end of our marriage as well, although I feel like I have already done so much grieving for the other things that didn't work out. One look at Lisa is enough to pull me out of my funk. And I have no way of knowing whether she and I will make it, whether this is a real thing or just a rebound reaction, a complicated means of making myself feel better. Am I just burying my real emotions, my pain for not being able to conceive, underneath a layer of sexy euphoria? Only time will tell. And time, we have.
"What are you doing today?" I ask.
"Being with you." She flashes me a smile, and inside me, a glimpse of possibility flares up, because time is not the only factor that will let me know, loud and clear, how things will go between us. Last night, we professed our love for each other, and maybe that will count for a lot more than time and the circumstances of life. "I should see Damian at some point. Give him a debrief of my time in Europe." She falls back onto the bed. "No more auditions for me," she squeals. "I'm a working actor."
I remember her absolute anguish when she first got turned down for this part and I can't help but wonder if we would even be here if that hadn't happened. It's impossible to say and, of course, I wish that Lisa hadn't had to go through the pain of rejection again, but that rejection kick-started this—us. Or maybe it all started when she took her bikini top off in the hot tub. Or when she whisked me to Jisoo and Chaeyoung's party. Maybe there's no point in wondering. Maybe we should just enjoy each other's company from now on.
"You are Jieun Lee's co-star." It's so easy, delightful even, to get wrapped up in this with her. "You might regret no longer being single once your show airs," I say, painting on a smirk.
Lisa pushes herself up and shoots me a funny look. "No regrets. No matter how hard it's been and it might still be, I have zero regrets about choosing you."
"Neither have I." I push the breakfast trays to the side so I can hug Lisa for a good long while.
Later, Lisa and I venture outside for the first time as a couple. We stop by the office to assure Sana I'll be back in full force tomorrow, although I already told her yesterday. But I want her to actually see me with Lisa. Sana's my best friend and I haven't always given her the best updates on Lisa. To her, Lisa was always just my husband's annoying little sister whom I didn't much care for. The wannabe actor who never acted. The girl who, in my hyper-judgmental view, never amounted to very much. It just goes to show how things can change and how you can get people totally wrong, because what I didn't see back than was that Lisa was persevering most of all. She had the privilege to do most of it poolside in her mother's beautiful backyard, but she still had to do it. She had to find the strength inside herself to not give up again and again. She had to believe in herself when others, like myself, had given up on her a long time ago already.
"I'm not going to pretend this isn't freaking me out, okay?" Sana's never been one to mince her words. "Because it damn well is."
"We know," I reply. "But sometimes life's just freaky like that."
"It's going to take me some time to get used to this new arrangement." Her gaze skitters from me to Lisa.
"Take all the time you need."
"Let's hope time has the same effect on me as it did on you," Sana says. "So you both went away and came back knowing that you just had to be together?" She almost stares Lisa down, but Lisa's not that easily fazed.
"That's right," Lisa says. "Although Jennie made the first move."
"Guilty as charged, but in my defense, I wasn't living it up in Paris and London with Jisoo Kim. I was doing some serious introspection in the suburbs of Des Moines."
"The point is." Lisa squares her shoulders in that way of hers, as if she just got injected with an extra shot of confidence. "When you know, you know. Even when it's inconvenient at best and plain hurtful to someone you love at worst." She pauses. "I've been there. I know what it feels like to be stabbed in the back by someone you love. My girlfriend left me for my best friend," she explains to Sana. I might have mentioned it at the time, but it wouldn't have been a huge topic of conversation between Sana and me—another token of my ignorance.
"That's awful," Sana says.
"There are no two ways about it. It hurts like hell. And the circumstances aren't exactly the same, but that doesn't change how much pain we caused Kai. Yet, we're all going to have to find a way to deal with that. To learn to live with it and with each other again."
"Kai and I, we were pretty much on the rocks, although we hadn't exactly acknowledged that yet. But it was in the air," I say. "We had this huge divide between us and I honestly stopped seeing how we could ever bridge that. How we could come together again. I don't know." Plenty of anguish courses through me when I talk about Kai. Plenty of guilt as well. But sometimes it has to hurt really badly for a while before it can feel better—like pouring alcohol on a wound to disinfect it.
"I'm not judging you," Sana says. "I'm your friend. It's my job to root for you. To support the choices you make, even when they seem totally crazy to me."
"Was that what you were doing when you told me to fall out of love with Lisa already?" I reach for Lisa's hand.
"Fat load of good that did." Sana shakes her head. "My friendly advice clearly was worth nothing to you."
"That's not true. I tried, but I failed." I gaze at Lisa. "Spectacularly."