Infinity: A Jenlisa AU

Chapter 5

They give Jennie a private room on the eighth floor.

Sleep tugs, but the scientist in her brain won't power down. Jennie can't stop thinking. Formulating hypotheses and dismantling them. Struggling to wrap logic around everything that's happened.

In this moment, she have no way of knowing what's real and what isn't. She can't even be sure that she was ever married.

No.

Wait.

Jennie raises her left hand and studies her ring finger. The ring is gone, but the proof of its existence lingers as a faint indentation around the base of her ring finger. It was there. It left a mark. That means someone took it.

Jennie touches the indentation, acknowledging both the horror and the comfort of what it represents-the last vestige of her reality.

She wonders- What will happen when this last physical trace of her marriage is gone? When there's no anchor?

As the skies above Seoul inch toward dawn-a hopeless, cloud-ridden purple- Jennie loses herself to sleep.

___________________________________

Lisa's hands are deep in the warm, soapy water when she hears the front door slam shut. She looks up from her laptop, glancing back over her shoulder as footsteps approach. Jennie appears in the doorway, grinning-as her mother would say-like a fool.

Lisa watches Jennie set the canvas grocery bag on the table and move toward her. Her arms slide around her waist. Lisa says, half jokingly, "If you think a couple pints of ice cream are going to get you out of this, I don't know what to tell you."

Jennie presses up against her and whispers in her ear, "Life's short. Don't be mad. It's a waste of time."

"How did thirty minutes turn into almost three hours?"

"I feel terrible."

Jennie's lips on the back of Lisa's neck put a delicate shiver down her spine. Lisa retorts, "You're not getting out of this."

Now Jennie kisses the side of her neck. She interlaces their fingers.

"We should eat something," she says. "I'll warm up the food you brought."

Lisa tries to step past Jennie on her way to the fridge, but Jennie blocks her path. "My God, I've missed you." Jennie announced.

"Did you dri-?"

Jennie kisses her out of nowhere, she runs her hands over Lisa's hips and pulls her shirt out of her jeans. Jennie's hands on her skin now, as hot as an oven range.

Lisa pushes her back. "Jennie wha-" That's when Lisa realized it. "Something happened while you were out," she says, with full conviction.

"Nothing happened, other than I lost track of time."

"When I left the restaurant, my mind was elsewhere. I wasn't thinking. I stepped out into traffic and this cab nearly splattered me all over the pavement. Scared the hell out of me. I don't know how to explain it, but ever since that moment-in the restaurant, walking home, standing here in our house-I have felt so alive. Like I see my life with force and clarity for once. All the things I have to be grateful for. You."

Lisa feels her anger towards Jennie beginning to melt.

Jennie starts again, "It's like we get so set in our ways, so entrenched in those grooves, we stop seeing our loved ones for who they are. But tonight, right now, I see you again, like the first time we met, when the sound of your voice and your smell was this new country. I'm rambling now."