Fire Lodge ( jenlisa )

Part 4

Jennie woke up, her head pounding. Someone out there was ringing a bell over and over and OVER again - it felt like her head was going to split in two. The ringing stopped and she was able to try to reconstruct some memory of what had happened. Last night had been fire ceremony, just her and Lisa because Chaeyoung and Jisoo were stranded in town. And Lisa had set that sweet goal, that she was going to make Jennie happy. And Jennie had decided they should each have a second shot of scotch, which turned into a third, which turned into - oh My GOD! - she was pretty sure they'd finished the bottle.

Jennie sat up and almost immediately her aching head made her regret such a rash course of action. If her head had felt like it was going to split in two when she was lying down, sitting up made it feel like it was being split in two then glued back together then split in two the other way then glued back together, and so on.

At least that infernal ringing had stopped. Only now it had been replaced by a banging. Like someone was knocking on her door, with a sledgehammer. Eventually she recognized that is was someone knocking on her door.

"Come in," she yelled, "QUIETLY."

The door quietly opened to reveal Lisa, holding a phone in one hand, and a can of tomato juice in the other hand. She put the tomato juice down on Jennie's nightstand, opened the can, then put a packet of Tylenol down by it.

"That should help your headache," Lisa said, "and holding on the phone I've got a Mr. G. Dragon. He insists it's urgent that he talk to you and only you. Should I have him call back later?"

"No," Jennie responded, leaning over to grab the juice and take the Tylenol. "I'd better talk to him. It's probably about the truck."

Lisa handed Jennie the phone and waved good-bye as she tiptoed out of the room.

Jennie pressed the buttons to take G-Dragon off hold. "Hey G. What's the damage on the truck?"

"Oh, that's no big deal. Fuel pump and a couple of other things. I've already worked out a payment plan with Chaeyoung, all you've got to do is sign off on it and send the money each time you send someone to town for groceries. That's not why I called. I called about Chaeyoung. You've got a potential problem heading your way."

"Oh, what's that?"

"Well," G-Dragon said, "here's how it is: Jisoo's fallen for Chaeyoung. Fallen hard. Worse than me. Chaeyoung knows, but only because I told her. Who knows how long it would have taken her to figure it out on her own. Chaeyoung's solution is to ignore it, not do anything about it, because she's Jisoo's boss. If you want my advice, I think Jisoo'd be good for Chaeyoung - she's a sweet kid. The trick's gonna be how to get Chaeyoung over her hangups before she drives Jisoo away. I'd recommend you have a talk with her as soon as she gets home, before she has a chance to do any more damage."

"More damage?"

"You know how Chaeyoung gets into her 'all business' moods when something's bothering her and she doesn't want to deal with it? That's how she was this morning. You and I know that Chaeyoung doesn't mean anything by it, but Jisoo doesn't, and I wasn't able to get a chance to tell her. Unless I'm mistaken, you're about to welcome an assistant chef who's on the verge of quitting because she thinks her head chef hates her and a head chef who's totally oblivious to the problems she's caused."

Jennie sighed. The headache from her hangover was just about gone, but now it was about to be replaced by another one. "Thanks for the heads-up, G. Thanks for everything. It looks like I've got just enough time to figure out a plan to handle this before they get here. I'm sure whatever you and Chaeyoung have worked out about the truck will be fine - for a rapper, you're a great mechanic."