[✔] ADF «» Jenlisa

Chapter 24

The Prodigal Returns

Well, it's all looking pretty bleak for the girls. Is Jennie up to no good with Nana? Will Lisa ever find the courage to make her move? Let's find out...

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A broken cup. She hadn't even meant to break it, it had fallen from her hands, numbed as they were, and it robbed her any satisfaction she might have taken from its destruction.

You're too late.

She couldn't find the anger. This is your fault. You dithered, and dreamed, and all the time she was slipping through your fingers, just like the damned cup. Only there was someone there to catch her.

Nana.

Jennie had promised her she wouldn't respond, wouldn't get in touch. But what did the brunette really owe her? Not her life, not her happiness. Lisa had no right, as a friend, to demand anything of her.

True, Jennie had lied to her, but what of it? She could be mad as hell at her, but it wouldn't make any difference, and all it would do was make her leave all the sooner, and then it would be her consigned to the trash can of Jennie's memory, it would be Lisa who was the unspoken episode in Jennie and Nana's life. The dangerous friend neutered, beaten. True love wins out.

She had no idea what she was going to do now. She was dreading the moment when the cat eyed girl walked through that door, seeing the look on her face. She'd surely know that Lisa had called, and just as surely she'd know that her dad had spilled her secret. Would she apologize? Explain? She heard those words again, whispered down the phone. I'm sorry, Lisa, but it's for the best.

She curled up on the bed, as tightly as she could, trying to shut it all out. She could call her dad, but she felt like she'd betrayed him. Not done the thing he told her to do, left it all too late, and all there'd be was sympathy tempered by an unspoken I told you so. You put all your eggs in one basket, and then you dropped the damned thing.

Nice going, Lisa.

She contemplated, briefly, just going away for a few days, letting Jennie collect her stuff and go without all the awkward silence and recriminations. And then she realized she was too weak even for that - the thought of never seeing the brunette again was too much to bear.

She awoke mid-morning, sweating and lonely, from a bizarre dream where she'd been in a store which, unaccountably, sold nothing but eggs. She hated eggs, but she'd been starving, so she'd collected a basketful, and taken them to the till. She'd mentioned, in passing, that the store seemed oddly egg-specific, but the cashier had shaken his head.

Oh, no, he said, we sell donuts, too. He'd reached under the counter and pulled out a donut. Not many people buy them, he'd said, sadly. Most of them just go moldy and have to be thrown away.

Lisa had taken a bite of the donut. Not bad. Why don't you put them out on display? Maybe more people would buy them.

The cashier frowned, puzzled. Do you know, he said, I never thought of that.

She crawled out of bed, and found, unsurprisingly, that last night's misery had passed, undiminished, into today. The habits formed by a year of solitary living kicked in, and made her go through the motions of brushing her teeth and making coffee. She picked up the broken pieces of the cup, and that brought it all back again, the last, joking, instructions Jennie had left - the apartment had better be tidy when she came home.