Holiday Wine, with You and Me [Chaennie ]

Part 10 : When Friends Come To Call

Jennie doesn't plan to flee the city.

Controversy erupts around K-Corp's acquisition of Metropolis Medical Tech, and while Jennie could have sent an associate or chosen to handle the crisis from the relative safety and comfort of her office, she decides to fly out personally. It's in K-Corp's interest, she rationalizes. Establishing a little bit of goodwill and all that. It's not as if she's going out of her way to avoid Rosie — Jennie even makes sure, like the good friend she still believes she can be, to let Rosie know right away that she will be very busy for a while, and that perhaps it's for the best if they postpone their next get-together indefinitely, you know, just until things settle down.

Rosie even agrees with her, understanding as she is.

Their text chain stutters to an awkward halt after that final, curt exchange. Jennie no longer wakes up to new portraits of freshly unfurled monstera leaves or updates on the pigeon eggs that are surely about to hatch. No mystifying non-sequiturs await her when she returns to her suite exhausted, face-planting into her bed at the end of every day.

Jennie is frustrated with herself, knowing she's the culprit of their dwindling affiliation but unable to think of a way to talk to Rosie without feeling like she'd just be confusing matters more. Maybe it was too soon, she thinks, maybe they're too raw, the nerve of their attraction still exposed. Jennie hates it, this constant tightness in her chest. Why should it be so uncomfortable, so hard, when she and Lisa had segued effortlessly into friendship almost a decade ago?

She returns to National City on Tuesday night, late in the evening, and finds her best friend loitering in her lobby. Lisa is wearing jeans and a soft sweater and a contrite but hopeful smile on her face. "I'd like to state for the record that I could have come to gloat," she says, "but I'm here to apologize, instead." She raises the bottle of Viñedo Chadwick she's carrying and says, "Will you accept a drink from a very remorseful friend?"

Lisa lies down on her sofa as Jennie walks the wine into her kitchen, kicking off her heels and shrugging out of her blazer before finding two Bordeaux glasses and filling one a little too close to the rim. She hands the other one to Lisa and sits down by her head, waiting as Lisa wriggles over and puts her head into her lap. Lisa looks up at her, soft. "I've been a shithead, haven't I," she says.

"Yes." Jennie brushes a lock of hair from her best friend's forehead and admits, "But there's been a lot of that going around."

Lisa bites her lip. "Will you tell me? All I know is that two of my friends are sulking, and Rosie keeps insisting everything is fine but her eyes twitch every time I mention your name, and Jisoo refuses to talk to me about it anymore because she seems to think it's somehow all my fault."

Jennie studies the movement of the wine swirling in her glass. "We aren't sulking," she says. "We're trying our best to get along. And," she chides, glaring at Lisa's skeptical expression, "you can't honestly believe you're innocent in this. You're the one who practically threw me into her bed that week in Colorado."

"Uh, I distinctly remember you telling me you climbed into it all by yourself, that first day," Lisa says. "And I don't understand how you go from that to this—" she wiggles her fingers, "perplex awkwardness."

It's quiet for a moment. National City's warehouse district glitters white and yellow across the moonlit bay. Rosie's building is back there somewhere — Rosie probably typing away at her laptop, blissfully undisturbed in the odorless interlude between two Cabbage Saturdays.

"We're not lovers," Jennie insists. "I'm trying to be her friend."

Lisa looks at her from Jennie's lap, eyes dark and knowing. "You may want to tell that to your face. I haven't seen you look this starry-eyed since we first got word that Spheer had successfully developed artificial antibodies." She waits, tapping a finger against her glass. "I know something went down the weekend before you left for Metropolis. Tell me."