Jennie
"Aren't you a regular Sherlock Holmes?"
"I resent that." I huff. "I'm obviously a Nancy Drew."
Lisa seems to be memorising the ceiling. "My father owned the winery..." she finally comes out with, "... before his rapid descent into alcoholism." Her tone is flat and unmoved, like smooth glass. I've heard people get more emotive about the wrong Starbucks order.
"That must have been hard." I say.
"Sometimes." She's unaffected. Any pain there has long been scarred over and numbed. Eventually, she continues. "He was... well, the house was a war zone. No place for kids. So when I turned eighteen, I left and took Mina with me. It's been just the two of us ever since."
I swallow hard. Whether or not Lisa lets herself feel anything, I hurt for her. My big, bleeding heart goes out to her.
"I can tell how much you love her." I murmur.
"I'm all that she has." she says.
You were all she had, I want to say, but I hold my tongue. I have a feeling bringing Bambam up right now won't bode well. Lisa is peeling off her armour, bit by bit, and I don't want to give her reason to crawl back inside that shell of hers.
"I'm sorry that you had to go through that." I tell her.
She drops into a deep silence before she says, "I used to hate it when people apologised for him." She glances down at me, and there's clarity to her eyes that I haven't seen before. "When you say it? It feels real."
I grin. "You like it."
"I do."
"You like me."
"Yes."
"That's two things that you like today." I tap her stomach and yawn again. "Baby steps." I rest my palm on her bare chest. I like the warmth of her smooth skin. She wraps an arm around me, and she cups my side. Her thumb rubs over my hip bone, back and forth, back and forth. I feel safe here, cradled against her.
"Speaking of taking care of people." Lisa prompts. "Can we talk about you?"
"What about me?" My whole body feels heavy, sunken into her. "I'm an open book."
"You don't do a very good job of taking care of yourself. Case in point."
I sigh. "It's not that I... purposefully don't take care of myself."
"What is it, then?"
I think. The night-time air feels heavy and quiet, like I can say anything here and it'll never leave this barn. "I get a new project and I get... excited. And passionate. And..."
"You fall in love."
"Yes. I fall in love." I distract myself by writing shapes into her chest. "I love Mina. And I love Bambam. I want them to have something special, at the end of all this."
Lisa lapses into a silence at that. It's not an uncomfortable silence. It's a thick, navy blue, night-time silence, and it envelops us.
"We should go inside." she says.
But the thought of leaving her warmth seems unbearable. "One more minute." I whisper as I feel my eyes start to drop.
"Okay."
Before I know it, I fall asleep to the steady rhythm of her breaths.
