Let's Get Married || Jensoo

Chapter 5: You Only Hurt the One You Love

* * * * *

She was woken by the sound of her cellphone. Bleary-eyed, Jennie looked at the screen.

Wife, it read. She let it ring out before checking her messages. Fourteen missed calls, all from Jisoo.

She dropped the phone back onto the bed and rolled over, listening for any noise which would indicate that anyone else was still there. She heard nothing.

She was alone — just the way she liked it. The way she used to be. The way she was intended to be.

As she padded to the toilet, she spotted a note written on the hotel’s stationery.

Took $100 for a cab. No phone number, no name.

A long bath made her feel less grubby on the outside, but it couldn’t cleanse her conscience. Putting on the previous evening’s clothes didn’t help, either.

The itemised bill on the check-out screen indicated that she and her playmate had ordered a bottle of tequila from room service. The salt that she’d recently washed from her skin pointed to body shots. She had no recollection of either.

She could barely hold her head up in the cab ride back to her apartment. She was considering asking the driver to pull over so that she could be sick again when they arrived at her building anyway. She gave him a handful of money and got out.

Anthony the doorman hurried to let her in as she fumbled in her purse for her swipe card. When had people stopped using keys, she wondered.

“Hey, Miss Kim.” Despite being only a few years older than her, he was old school and always addressed her formally.

“Anthony.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat.

“I, uh…” His cheeks were tinged with his embarrassment. “Miss Kim left a message for you. She asked that you call her as soon as you return.”

“Did she?” She made her way slowly towards the elevators. Every step hurt. Anthony took her arm, guiding her the rest of the way.

“She was pretty upset,” he added.

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

He furrowed his brow at her cryptic reply. “So, can I get anything for you? You need for me to get the deli to send something round?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine.” She leaned against him while she waited for the elevator to arrive. Drink was not her friend, she decided. “I’ve survived worse.”

True, Anthony had seen her in much worse states than she was in; she had, however, never felt worse, inside and out.

“You sure?” The car arrived and he steered her into it, keeping the door open by wedging his foot against it. “It’s no trouble.”

“I’m sure.” Her stomach was lurching. Food was the last thing she wanted.

Anthony nodded and stepped back. “Well, just buzz down if you change your mind.”

She gave him a weak smile and waited for the doors to close. A thought suddenly occurred to her and she shot her hand out. She winced a little as the door butted against her forearm.

“Hey, Anthony, was she with anyone?”

“Miss?”

She hated herself for asking and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. “When she left, was there anyone with her?”

He shook his head. “No, she was alone.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

* * *

The next time she woke up, she was equally as disoriented as she had been that morning. It was so bright and she was so hot, but there was something cool against her forehead. She feebly reached up. It was a damp washcloth.

“Hey, you’re awake.”

She opened one eye cautiously. When the light didn’t blind her, she opened the other to ascertain her surroundings.

She was on the couch, as was Jisoo. In fact, her feet were in Jisoo’s lap, if the soothing foot massage she was receiving was anything to go by. She lifted her head enough to see her wife. It was nowhere near as painful as expected — not the head-raising nor seeing Jisoo.

“I left you a drink.”

She looked to the side. On the coffee table was a glass of soda, the ice almost melted and condensation pooling underneath it. She picked it up and tried to put it to her lips, but succeeded only in spilling it down her t-shirt. She didn’t remember getting changed into a t-shirt.

“I was worried. You could have at least texted me.”

“Yeah.” What else could she say?

“Anthony called me. I think he knew you wouldn’t.”

Jennie propped herself up enough to drink her soda. It tasted of cherries and something else she couldn’t place. She held the cool glass to her cheek.

“I was really worried,” Jisoo repeated.

“I’m sorry.” She looked down at the red stain spreading across her chest. “And about your shirt.”

Jisoo snorted. “It’s an old one.”

“When did you dress me?”

“When I came home. You don’t remember?”

“No.” Jennie shook her head. She wished that she could go back to sleep and wake up alone with no regrets. Better yet, she wished that she could have the last day of her life back entirely.

“You were sprawled here. I got you changed and settled down. What did you drink?”

“Everything.” She remembered bourbon, beer and some red stuff that tasted of aniseed at the bar; there had been tequila at the hotel.

“Lisa said you left early.”

It was in a moment of weakness that she had agreed to a night out with Lisa in the first place. She should have guessed that it would lead to a whole bunch of questions about Jisoo that she didn’t want to answer. She didn’t want to face what she really felt about her wife, and she really didn’t want to admit it to her sister. She had fended Lisa’s nosiness off for a couple of hours and then cut their evening short.

“I went to a bar.”

“Obviously.”

She used to go there all the time. She wasn’t sure why she’d gone, other than she had been feeling sorry for herself. She hadn’t been there long when she got hit on by a particularly attractive brunette. Rather than responding, she had held up her left hand and shown the woman her wedding ring.

For some reason, that brief interaction had soured her mood further. She had downed three shots of whisky in quick succession and then took a cab home.

The next part was her clearest memory of the evening: the apartment in darkness, apart from a light from under Jisoo’s door; the craven need to see her wife, even it was only for as long as it took for Jisoo to slam the door on her; then, the sound of two voices, both decidedly female.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” She didn’t recognise the voice, but it had to be the infamous Little Miss Staying Alive.

“It doesn’t change anything!”

“Your wife?” The voice was scornful.

“So? It makes no difference that she’s my wife. It doesn’t change anything between us.” Jisoo, her wife, thought she wasn’t important. Their marriage meant nothing.

“Jisoo, come on. It makes a huge difference.”

“I don’t want to talk about it any more. I don’t want to talk at all.” A crooning, pleading tone, that of a desperate lover.

Her only clear thought had been that she really didn’t want to listen to the sounds of her wife having sex with Seulgi. The rest was a blur: lurching backwards, only just stopping herself from falling by catching onto the back of a chair; staggering back out of the apartment; going back to the bar from which she’d just returned. The hot brunette had left, but she found an acceptable red-headed substitute.

“Where’d you go?” Jisoo asked.

“A hotel.” She flushed a deep red. For additional spite, she had taken the redhead to the Plaza, the location of her non-honeymoon. She didn’t remember much at all after that, until waking up to a hangover and a note. “Didn’t want to disturb you.”

Jisoo sighed. “I’d rather have been woken up by you coming home drunk in the middle of the night than not know where you were. You not coming home was disturbing. You not answering your phone was disturbing.”

She took another drink and bowed her head to conceal her lie. “Had it on mute.”

Jisoo stood and started pacing in front of the television. Just watching her made Jennie feel sick again.

“I really thought we’d gotten somewhere. I really thought we were at least friends.”

“We are.”

“Well, friends don’t stay out all night without a word or ignore your calls. Friends don’t let you hear that they’re not dead from the goddamn doorman. I spent half the night worrying and I wasn’t worth a damn at work today because all I could think about was what had happened to you. I was genuinely thinking of calling the police, or at least the hospitals.” She stopped pacing, her hands on her hips, waiting for a response.

“I’m sure you weren’t up all night worrying,” she snapped.

Jisoo scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m sure you had something else to keep you occupied last night.” She regretted saying it. Maybe if she hadn’t been so hungover or hadn’t been so angry at herself for caring about Jisoo sleeping with Seulgi, she would have thought twice and kept her mouth shut, but there it was.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your little sleepover.”

“My what?”

Even before they’d got to know each other, when Jisoo was just Lisa’s annoying friend and they actively disliked each other, she’d never seen Jisoo so angry, but she was too angry herself to stop. She felt defensive and unfairly accused of being the one in the wrong.

“You brought your fucking girlfriend back to our house!”

“Pardon me?”

“You’re giving me the friends speech when you spent the night fucking someone else in our house!”

Jisoo’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know anything.”

Unsteadily, she rose, matching Jisoo’s aggressive stance. “Oh really? I know that you think that I don’t matter. I know that you think it’s okay to bring a date back to your wife’s house.”

“You are not my wife, Jennie!”

“Yes I fucking am! If you have trouble remembering that, why not look at the ring on your finger? It might give you a fucking clue!”

Jisoo held up her hand. “This? This is a lie, just like everything else between us is a lie.” She twisted the ring off and tossed it in Jennie’s direction. The metallic clink indicated that it landed somewhere in the kitchen. “I honestly don’t know why we even bother.”

“Well, you clearly don’t bother that much, given last night.”

“And, what, you were out helping at a soup kitchen? Collecting for the March of Dimes? Selling Girl Scout cookies? Running a book club? Come on, why not share with me where you were all night, as you’ve so clearly got the moral high ground here.”

“Fuck you.”

Jisoo shook her head. Without saying another word, she walked out of the apartment and slammed the door behind her.

Well, that had gone well.

* * *

Three hours passed without a word from Jisoo. The most annoying thing — other than the fact that she’d stormed out in the first place, of course — was that she had left her cellphone behind in her bedroom and it had been ringing constantly. Eventually, Jennie dragged herself off of the sofa to retrieve it. The cellphone was lying on Jisoo’s bed. As she approached, it started ringing again. The screen said Mom and Dad. Jennie waited until the call went to voicemail before she flicked the switch on the side to mute the ringer.

She hadn’t been in Jisoo’s room since they’d started living together. They tended to stick to the communal areas of the apartment. It was an unspoken rule between them that their bedrooms were off-limits, but Jennie figured that all bets were now off.

The room hadn’t changed much, but it was still somehow very Jisoo. It wasn’t just because her stuff was everywhere and her family snapshots were stuck into the mirror frame and it smelled of that perfume that Jennie liked so much; it just had that feeling of casual homeliness that Jisoo seemed to bring with her.

One wall was taken up with photos and sticky notes — some kind of storyboard for a documentary that Jennie hadn’t known Jisoo was working on. Folders full of reports and newspaper cuttings were strewn across the desk by the window. One was labelled Suicide Rates; another, Hospital Admissions. Research for the project, she guessed. Or the worst bedtime reading ever.

There was a single framed photograph on the desk. It was from their wedding day, an image of them holding hands as they walked out of the building. Jennie didn’t remember their photographer following them out of the marriage offices, but he must have. He’d caught them looking like they were striding off into a shared future.

The apartment buzzer disturbed her poking around and she raced out to answer it, hoping that it was Jisoo returning.

“Yes?”

“Miss Kim, there’s a Irene Lewis here. She says she’s a friend of Miss Kim.”

“Jisoo’s not here right now.”

“I said that, but she says she needs to come up anyway.”

Jennie sighed. “Put her on.” She heard Anthony explain to their visitor that Miss Kim would speak to her.

“Hi,” a female voice said. “Is that Jennie?”

“Yeah, hi. Look, Jisoo’s out right now. I’d invite you up to wait, but I honestly don’t know if she’s even coming back today.” She wasn’t in the mood to entertain Jisoo’s family.

“Oh, your doorman explained that, but I’m not really here to see her. It’s just that I left my studio keys in her room by mistake last night. They must have fallen out of my pocket. She texted me this morning to say I could drop by any time to pick them up.”

The statement was like a slap in the face. “You were here? Last night?”

“Yes. I hope it’s not too much of a problem for me to come up. I guess I could come back later, if it’s —”

“No, no. It’s absolutely fine. Come right up.” She twisted the latch and pulled the door open. She left it ajar and went back to the couch, slumping down, her head in her hands. It was only a few minutes later when a questioning voice called her name from the hallway.

“Come on in,” she shouted. A head popped around the door before its owner shuffled inside. Despite their not having met before, Irene’s face was immediately familiar. Jennie had only just seen her smiling down from a photograph on Jisoo’s mirror.

“You must be Jennie.”

She grimaced. “Indeed, I must. And you must be Irene.” She extended her hand.

“So, I guess we’re kinda not-quite related?” The young woman looked bashful, but she had one of those smiles that made you start to grin despite yourself. Jennie knew that she had a little girl with Jisoo’s brother, Bogum, so, technically, Jennie was the child’s aunt-by-marriage. Irene and Bogum had broken up even before the birth, but Jennie’s understanding was that they were really good friends who still hooked up occasionally.

“I guess so.” She paused and wondered how much Jisoo had told Irene. “For now, at least.”

“So, can I just go and check?” Irene made a gesture towards Jisoo’s bedroom.

“Yeah, sorry. Sure. On you go.” She remained standing, rubbing her temple with her fingers. She couldn’t believe how stupid she had been. Again. When she saw Irene reappear, a set of keys in her hand, she asked, “Hey, do you have a few minutes?”

“I suppose.”

“Look, um, this is embarrassing, but I just wanted to ask you something.” She sat down on the couch and motioned for Irene to take a chair.

“Okay.”

“Last night, were you here all night? Like, quite late anyway? In, uh, Jisoo’s room?” She was utterly mortified at asking, but she needed to know.

Irene gave a laugh of surprise. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, Jisoo’s not my type.”

“That’s not… No. I don’t really know what I’m getting at.” She saw a moment of realisation pass across Irene’s face.

“You were here last night, weren’t you?” she accused.

“What?”

“I thought I heard a weird noise out here, but I wasn’t certain, so I didn’t say anything to Jisoo, but that was you, wasn’t it?”

Jennie debated lying, before nodding. “Yes. I knocked over a chair.”

“Ah.” Irene leaned back in the chair with a very self-satisfied smile. “Well, now that makes sense.”

“What does that mean?”

“Why didn’t you come in?”

“I don’t usually go into Jisoo’s bedroom as a rule.”

“You don’t go into your wife’s bedroom?”

“Not without knocking. And not when she’s entertaining. Not that she’s ever entertained before. I just thought she’d want to be left alone. Well, alone with her guest.”

“Ah.” Irene nodded to herself. “You thought I was a special friend.”

“I thought you were her.”

“Her who?”

“Seulgi,” Jennie said.

“Seulgi? I haven’t heard her mentioned in weeks, and I know she’s not —” Irene stopped herself. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about there.”

She frowned. “Why should I have anything to worry about? It’s not like Jisoo and me are like that, either.”

“No, no, of course.” Although Irene was agreeing with her, her obvious amusement indicated that she didn’t believe what she was being told.

“We’re not anything!” Jennie protested.

“No, I can tell that from the fact that you’re jealously asking me if I stayed over last night.”

“I’m not jealous!”

“Whatever you say.” Irene jangled her keys in her hand and checked her watch. “Where is Jisoo anyway? I thought she was on early shift today.”

Jennie shifted uncomfortably and looked away. “We had a fight. She’s gone out for a while.”

“O-kay.” Irene strung the two syllables out.

“If you must know, I accused her of sleeping with Seulgi.”

“Of course you did. Because you’re so not jealous, right?” Irene laughed and stood up. “Look, I have to go pick up Yeri from daycare, but can you tell Jisoo I’m sorry I missed her and let her know I’ll call her at the weekend?”

“No problem.”

Irene stopped at the door. “You want some free advice?”

Actually, Jennie wanted free answers, not advice. “Sure. Why not?”

“Find her. Apologise. Tell her how you feel.”

“I don’t —”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You have no feelings for your wife, the woman you can’t bear to think of being with anyone else. I get you, loud and clear. What I’m trying to tell you is that, as Jisoo’s friend, I think you should tell her.” She turned to open the door. “I’m glad I finally met you, Jennie. Maybe you and Jisoo could drop by sometime and visit with Yeri?”

She didn’t really see happy family outings in her future with Jisoo, but she found herself picturing the two of them playing with their niece, swinging her between them. It was a surprisingly appealing image. She lifted her head to tell Irene that, but the other woman was gone. She heard the ding of the elevator doors from the hallway.

She stared at the wall for a few minutes, letting Irene’s words sink in. What did it mean that as Jisoo’s friend she thought Jennie should tell Jisoo how she felt? Had she misread Jisoo’s anger? Was it possible that she’d actually been jealous that Jennie had been with someone?

Sitting and waiting definitely wasn’t going to get her answers, so she went into her room and hurriedly put on a pair of sneakers. Grabbing her jacket, some cash and her house keys, she left the apartment and headed downstairs.

Anthony stood as the elevator opened. “Miss Kim, can I get you a cab?”

“Which way, Anthony?”

He held the outer door for her. “North. Miss Kim went north.”

Jennie grinned at him. “Mrs Kim. She’s my wife, you know.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

She jogged northwards until she reached the corner of her block. She looked left and right, then saw the deli up ahead and smiled to herself. Everything else was high-end stores and expensive bars. The deli was the only place within easy walking distance to kill a few hours on a limited budget, and Jisoo had left with only the change in her pocket. She walked briskly towards it, trying to ignore the niggling thought that Jisoo might have used whatever money she had to take the subway to a friend’s apartment.

She stared in the plate glass window. She couldn’t see Jisoo at the counter, but it was dinner time and the place was packed. She knew there were more tables beyond the meat counter, so she pushed the door open and went through to the back. There, she spotted a familiar purple haired head.

She sighed heavily with relief at first, then it hit her that she was going to have to apologise, which wasn’t her forte. Swallowing hard, she took the seat facing Jisoo.

“What are you doing here?” her wife asked. Jisoo’s tone was dull and flat. It didn’t seem like she was angry or jealous, more that she just didn’t care.

“I was hoping I could persuade you to come home.” She flashed a contrite half-smile, but it was met only with another impassive sigh.

“Really? Why would I want to do that?”

Jennie looked down at Jisoo’s cup of coffee. There was no sign of any plate, so she guessed that she’d been relying on free refills. “Because we have a full refrigerator and lots of better coffee?”

“Cute.”

While she had no right to expect Jisoo to make things easy for her, it didn’t stop her from wishing it were so. “Do you want me to get you something?” She fished into her pocket and put some crumpled bills on the table. “I have cash.”

“Not hungry.” Jisoo was resolutely staring at her cup and not at Jennie.

“Irene dropped by,” she offered.

A waitress appeared next to them, probably because she’d seen the money being put on the table. She was staring at Jennie strangely, at which point she realised that she’d left the house wearing beaten-up old sweats and a soda-covered t-shirt and that her hair and make-up were probably reminiscent of a gothic horror character.

“What’re you having?” she prompted Jisoo. The purple haired didn’t answer. “Can we get two cappuccinos and two slices of the pie a la mode?” Jisoo liked the apple pie. They often picked one up for dessert.

As the waitress moved off, Jisoo muttered, “I said I didn’t want anything.”

Jennie ignored the comment. “So Irene said to tell you she’d dropped by to get her keys and for you to call her later.”

Jisoo remained mute.

“I’m really sorry, Jis. I shouldn’t have stayed out all night. I shouldn’t have worried you. It was thoughtless of me and I’m sorry.”

“It’s gone past that.”

“What has?”

“How can we even be friends when you obviously don’t respect me?”

“I do respect you.”

“Yeah, that much is obvious.”

“I do!”

Jisoo shook her head and looked away. Jennie waited as the waitress placed their coffee and pie on the table and left their check.

“Jisoo, don’t be like this. I am really sorry for everything I’ve done.”

“You weren’t sorry last night or this morning or this afternoon, but you’re sorry now?”

“That’s not fair, Jis. I apologised earlier.”

“Right before you —” Jisoo stopped and lowered her voice. “Right before you accused me of not caring about you and bringing someone back to our apartment to have sex.”

“I’m really sorry about that, too. I know you didn’t.”

Jisoo shook her head. “And that’s the problem, Jennie. You believed that I would, and you’re only sorry now because you know you were wrong. If you knew me at all, trusted me at all, you wouldn’t have needed someone else to tell you that I would never, ever do that.”

Anger, she could have taken, but the weary disappointment in Jisoo’s tone was cutting straight through her and she had no defence.

She had entered the diner with the genuine intention of telling Jisoo exactly how she felt about her, but she now knew that she couldn’t. Whatever she said, Jisoo would throw it back at her in that measured, tired voice. She would think — with some justification — that Jennie was only saying it to try to make things right. And she so wanted to make things right, only she had, as ever, ruined everything. She didn’t even begin to deserve a wife like Jisoo, whose first instinct had been to take care of her, even when she must have known that Jennie had been out all night with someone else.

“Will you come home?” she asked.

“Maybe in a while.”

“I can go out, if you like, so I’m not there when you get back.”

“Don’t play the martyr, Jen. It doesn’t suit you.” She picked up a fork and dragged it through the cream on her plate, making random patterns.

“Do you want me to leave you some cash?”

“Just leave enough for the check and the tip.”

Jennie didn’t see the point in prolonging their discomfort, so she stood, leaving a couple of twenties on the table.

She reached into the pocket of her sweats and pulled out Jisoo’s wedding ring, which she’d retrieved from the kitchen floor some time before. She placed it deliberately in front of her wife and then left, not waiting to see if Jisoo picked it up and put it on.

* *©Devje* *