Chapter 54

Lisa was startled from her sleep by the sound of a door slamming shut. Her vision focused as she realized she'd fallen asleep on the living room couch.

She slowly rose to a sitting position, rubbing her eyes.

"Having an exciting spring break, I see."

Lisa's head snapped in the direction of the voice, and she saw Jieun hanging up her coat and stepping further into the house. She was sporting full make-up and meticulously curled hair, a stark contrast to Lisa's freshly woken appearance.

"Jieun? Why are you here so early?" the younger sister asked groggily.

She looked at the time on her phone - it was almost 3:45 in the afternoon. There had been plans for Jieun to come have dinner with them on that night - Monday night - since she'd been too busy to come around the past few weeks due to exams.

Lisa had nearly forgotten about it since she spent the weekend in a gleeful daze, hugging pillows in her room and getting yelled at by her mother for spending an hour in the shower. She was on cloud nine from her talk with Jennie on Friday night.

They'd been texting sporadically since the other girl was skiing with her family. But at night Jennie would sneak away from her father and brothers to talk with Lisa for a while.

Ah, she wanted to see her so bad. Although they'd finally meet again tomorrow, it felt like an eternity had passed during the wait.

"Uh, Earth to Lisa?"

Lisa started, not realizing she was being spoken to.

"Huh, what?"

Jieun rolled her eyes, folding her arms over her chest. "I asked if Mom was home yet."

"I think you'd know if she was," Lisa replied cheekily.

"She'd have rushed out of her office to come see her precious favourite daughter."

Oops. Maybe that was too harsh.

Her and Jieun were on better terms, after all, and Lisa was doing her best to try and foster a better relationship between them. She couldn't immediately forgive her sister for not being there in times of need, but Jieun seemed to truly regret it.

Plus, she was a victim of their mother's controlling nature as well, and it was safe to say it warped her personality to have to constantly be perfect.

"Shit, sor-"

"Yeah, you're right," Jieun sighed, cutting her off. "Honestly, that's why I came so early. She'd be in the kitchen asking me a million questions while I was trying to cook."

Lisa was surprised. She'd never heard Jieun really complain about their mother - she'd always taken the expectations and the interrogations without a peep. Perhaps this meant that the sisters were in fact getting closer.

"Wait, you're cooking?" Lisa exclaimed, suddenly processing the latter half of her sister's sentence.

"Yeah, of course," Jieun replied. "Chicken parmesan."

"Oh my God, I can't remember the last time I had a decent home-cooked meal!" Lisa yelled, leaping up from the couch.

Jieun cracked a smile, a rare gesture from the stoic young woman.

"Then you can thank me by helping me out."

"Of course!"

---

The sisters got to work in the kitchen, Jieun responsible for preparing the meat and batter while Lisa cut vegetables and grated cheese. Lisa was no cook but being Jieun's sous chef was nothing new for her.

"Hey, we used to do this all the time as kids," Lisa reminisced as she got to work cutting a tomato.

Jieun let out a small chuckle. "I remember. You'd be fine for a while, but then you'd get bored and start eating the ingredients or running around and falling in the kitchen."

Lisa laughed. "You'd never just yell at me though. You'd try to reason with me, like 'Lisa, you really shouldn't do that, you could hit your head and suffer from permanent brain damage'."

"And it seems like you actually did," Jieun teased.

Lisa beamed, delighted at their banter. It seemed...normal. As children, they were relatively close - due to their six-year age difference, Jieun watched over Lisa a lot. Although Lisa did her best to annoy her older sister, they still played together and liked being around each other.

But when their father left, the entire family dynamic changed. Jieun was devastated and their mother became extremely overbearing and controlling. Lisa was only six at that time, so most of her family memories were centred around a perfectionist mother, a withdrawn sister, and an absent father.

But maybe through mutual support the sisters could reconcile their troubled past and make a more positive future for themselves.

"You seem a lot happier than the last time I talked to you," Jieun suddenly remarked. "Like, today you've been smiling nonstop."

Lisa paused her vegetable slicing, realizing that she was smiling like an idiot right at that moment. Had her demeanour really changed that dramatically?

"Uh, you think so?" Lisa asked, playing dumb.

Jieun flashed her a disbelieving look, raising an eyebrow.

"Did something happen?"

Lisa paused, unsure of how much to say. Jieun knew pretty much everything about her past with Jennie now, but it still felt awkward bringing it up.

Especially because she wasn't sure about how her sister felt about the whole 'being a lesbian' thing. Not that she didn't know about it from her debacle with Lisa's previous girlfriend.

"It's about that one girl, isn't it? Jennie...wasn't that her name?"

Lisa tensed. Now she couldn't deny it. "yeah."

"And what happened with her?"

"Well, we sort of got back together..."

"Oh, well...that's really great." Jieun seemed to get uncomfortable with the topic and Lisa was starting to regret telling the truth.

"I know I just told you about all that and it's...kind of weird for you since it's about me and another girl, and uh..." Lisa stammered incoherently, trying to mend the awkward conversation while simultaneously making it worse.

"It's not-" Jieun protested quickly, but then sighed. "It's not weird. I'm just not good at talking about these sorts of things.

"What, about lesbian things?"

"No, you idiot! About romance and stuff like that."

Lisa blinked, a bit caught off guard. Then she grinned deviously. "I'd almost think you weren't a woman in your twenties with how shy you get about love stuff."

"Ugh, just shut up and cut the tomatoes," Jieun groaned.

---

Lisa woke up the following day immediately excited about her date with Jennie. She got up unusually early for a day of spring break, brushing her teeth and showering for too long.

Unfortunately, waking up so early meant more time trying to occupy herself before it was time to head over to Jennie's house.

She was going over just before lunch time and would be staying until Jennie's father got home. Although Lisa had no qualms about seeing Jennie's dad again, the honour student seemed embarrassed by the prospect and insisted that Lisa leave before then.

But until about 5, they'd be together. Alone. In Jennie's house.

As Lisa searched through her closet for something decent to wear, she was struck by the connotations of the convenient situation.

Surely Jennie wouldn't want to...but in the park, they both seemed open to the prospect. And Jennie had to know about what was implied when inviting her girlfriend over to an empty house.

They had literally just got back together, but they'd dated before, and Lisa had to endure sexual tension between them for months after. Still, maybe it was too soon? Or maybe she was overthinking it. They should do it whenever it felt right instead of going off of some ill-defined time limit. So, since Lisa was more than ready, she'd leave it up to Jennie.

The conclusion was satisfying to Lisa, but at the same time, it didn't ease her anxiety about the possibility of taking their relationship to the next level only hours later that day.

Lisa took her nervous energy out on cleaning the living room since she'd finished getting ready too early. By the time it was 11:00, every surface of the downstairs level was spotless. Her mother would probably assume that Jieun came over once she got home from work.

Lisa grabbed some Vietnamese candy that her father sent to her over mail the other day and headed out.

She got in her car, breathing in and out, fussing over her hair in the rear-view mirror. She was leaving a couple minutes early but standing around her house was driving her nerves out of control. So, she started the car and drove off towards Jennie's house.

The sky was blanketed with pale grey clouds and the radio warned of an incoming flurry by the afternoon.

The air was chillier than normal, prompting Lisa to turn on the heater in her car. By the time she pulled into Jennie's cull de sac, there were a couple of tiny snowflakes drifting onto her windshield.

Jennie's driveway was empty as Lisa expected, but she still parked on the curb in case she was still there by the time Jennie's father got home. She looked at the house, taking a few deep breaths to calm her pounding heart. It had been a while since she'd felt this way, and the familiarity was welcome. She still couldn't believe they were actually back together.

Lisa looked at the time on her car's radio. It was still a few minutes too early, but she figured it was creepy to just sit outside in her car. So, she turned off the ignition and prepared to get out.

As she collected her bag, a loud slamming sound gave Lisa a start. Her head snapped up at the noise, initially unable to locate the source of the sound.

But finally, her eyes fixed on the fence beside the house, leading to the backyard. The gate had been slammed open, and Lisa was unprepared for what she saw running through it.

It was a girl, tears streaking her face, eyes wide with fear, movements jerky and hurried as her head snapped around as if looking for an escape route.

And finally, her terrified eyes fixated on Lisa's car, and she sprinted towards it with urgency that could only be described as life or death.

As Lisa's brain struggled to keep up with this sudden startling sight, she found she knew immediately who the girl rushing to her car was.

It was Jennie.