"I'm 33, and I'm not married, and I'm not seeing anyone," Jennie started lowly, never looking away from Lisa's calm face, trying to gauge a reaction, "And I very much want a baby before it's too late."
A scroll of astonishment rolled across Lisa's e...
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Lisa didn't understand what she had done. It had been two weeks since she had seen or heard from Jennie. She had come home from the office party and a grueling after-party meeting to find a diamond ring on the counter and every indication that anyone had ever cohabitated with her, gone. Disappeared into thin air. It took two weeks for her to figure it out. Two weeks for her normally brilliant mind to tease out the straight to voicemail calls, the unresponsive knocks to her apartment, the untouched diamond ring in her kitchen, before it clicked.
Jennie had left her.
Jennie had left her, and taken their baby with her. As well as every ounce of joy from Lisa's life. She had worked incessantly since the day, and today marked two weeks. Jennie didn't want to stay with her, didn't want to marry her, didn't love her, hell, didn't even like her.
It was a pain Lisa felt the way one feels a burn; all at once in a violent flash, and then a seemingly cruel, everlasting, crescendo. And as she stared at the innocuous diamond ring left on her countertop, it was a pain that brought her to her knees. And it was a pain that left her feeling hollow as she let tears slide down her temples as she lay on her guest bed, an empty 4th glass of scotch on the table. She couldn't bear to remind herself of the perfume on Jennie's side of their bed.
Over the next week, she left her apartment simply because everywhere she looked, Jennie had given her a beautiful, crushing memory to dwell on. She worked harder than she had in her entire life. Until she couldn't see straight and her fingers ached.
Somi was avoiding her, and she knew then that maybe she wasn't keeping her act together convincingly enough. It didn't matter, though.
In some fit of madness, she hadn't stopped work on the house. The house she had renovated, basement to attic, for Jennie and the baby. Interior decorators were answered, marble suppliers were chosen and next-day service was delivered. On a Friday, it was finished. The house was finished. The house Lisa was going to ask Jennie to make their house.
But now it would sit, empty. Some part of her couldn't bear to sell it, and another suggested she leave the key for Jennie to have. She had dumped almost a million dollars into the house, and she had no desire to even look at it.
'Is it insane to want to lose the key?'
And so, it left her to stare at two boxes. Each could fit in the palm of her hand. A velvet box, and a flat box. Black. Nondescript. Bland. No one could know that the love of her life was embodied in that squareish velvet box; closed and cut off from the brilliance inside. And the casual observer would never imagine the rectangle to hold the key to her love for her supposed to be future family.
When she wasn't thinking of Jennie, Lisa thought of their baby. She was moving in on three and a half weeks without her family. Jennie had entered her second trimester without her.
