CHAELISA One-shots

Love Will Find A Way

**

It's been a long day. Most days are long, at least to Rosie. She's drowning, truly. She gets up at five am to get up and get ready for work, where she stands on her feet all day as a part time manager at Old Navy.

Then she heads straight to the community college to take her couple night classes, that are way more expensive than what she thinks they're worth, but she's trying to set an example for Jennie and Ella, and Lisa repeatedly told her she was too smart to just run a store for the rest of her life, though she was good at it. Then she comes home, and there's always dishes to be done, or no food, and sometimes no Lisa.

Lisa worked nights at the salon sometimes, or she worked her second job at the gas station, and it wasn't often their schedules matched up.

Sometimes they only saw each other for five minutes a day, before one of them collapsed into bed, while the other slid out of it to quietly shower. Or sometimes Rosie would come home to find Jennie on her couch, eating the one bag of chips they always kept, Jennie's favorite, Doritos, and Ella would be painting her nails with one of Lisa's thousand of colors.

Rosie loved when her siblings visited, and was so happy that she'd been able to help Jennie pay for driver's ed, so she could get her license on her 16th birthday so she could drive to the outskirts of town to visit her, because she sure as hell wasn't allowed in her parent's house anymore.

It was a lot. Going from never working a day in her life, never thinking she would have to work if she didn't want to, to working grueling hours and pinching pennies to pay rent for a shitty one bedroom apartment.

But she had a car, and so did Lisa, and they were together, and they were surviving, barely. Which is why Rosie's eyes fill with tears as she throws open the door to the apartment and chokes on the humidity.

The air conditioner is clearly broken, and it's been a long day of being bitched at at work, and she has homework that's due on Thursday, and the week just started and it's already shitty. The kids had come over yesterday, and Jennie had even brought Lisa's adopted sister and her little girlfriend, Jisoo, so they have no food, and probably won't until Friday when she gets paid. She figures she could always ask Lisa's stepdad if they could come over for dinner, his new wife, Chitthip, wouldn't let him turn them away, but they're both a bit too proud for that.

She's hungry, and exhausted, and has a throbbing caffeine withdrawal headache, and it's fucking 90 degrees in her apartment, and Lisa works til seven. She sniffles and presses the palms of her hands to her eyes until black and white flashes appear.

She's pissed. She hates her life. But crying isn't exactly going to do anything, so she heads to the fridge and cabinet and fills a cup with water and chugs it, to cool her down. She fills it again, before putting the pitcher back and she presses the cool glass to her already sweaty forehead, heading back to their bedroom.

By the time she makes it, her shirt is sticking uncomfortably to her back and she sets her glass down and sheds her clothes.

She takes an ice cold shower and then dries off, trying to ignore her aching body. She hangs up her towel and tugs her hair into a scrunchie, and collapses into bed, naked and already sweating again.

She kicks off all of the blankets except the sheet, and checks her phone. Lisa hasn't responded to her last text, she's probably busy, and Jennie had texted her saying it was good to see her and she looked happy. She responds quickly, but then ends up plugging her phone in and trying to fall asleep so she doesn't have to feel hungry and miserable anymore.