“You have been in every line I have ever read.”

Philip Pirrip

--

It’s part library, part café.

Bookshelves line one side of the wall, and a coffee bar on the opposite. In the centre, rows of square tables anchor a mostly white setting, whose neutral palette is enlivened by colours coming from the paperback spines and the Paul Smith edition Anglepoise desk lamps.

Polite servers dressed in all black round out the minimalist effect. They bustle about discreetly pouring drinks, setting plates, and taking orders to keep up with the brunch rush hour. Smiles and happy chatter exchange between couples while parents try valiantly to keep their young in tow. New Yorkers and the visiting weekend crowds blend together in the busy scene.

The Standard is unassuming and would escape most people’s attention, were it not for the monochrome Albers prints on the walls, the Eames shell chair Jennie is currently sitting on, the Wegner loungers a few feet away, and the Stelton ceramic coffee pot and creamer set on her table.

Jennie only knows this, and can identify the brands, as a by-product of years of living with an architect, conditioning her awareness of her environment and attuning her to the material goods that proliferated their everyday.

Observation skills she had picked up from Lisa’s habit of looking up and around whenever she stepped foot in a new space. Their late-night conversations would then revisit the things they saw during the day, the surfaces and textures and colours that she knows Lisa was meticulously cataloguing away in that immense visual library in her head.

She was always surprised, but not, when Lisa referenced something much later on that had only been a passing image seen in one of the many design publications they perused together during coffee breaks.

(Lisa never said but Jennie is fairly certain she was world building an entire metropolis—a better built future for humankind—with all the tabulating and indexing and bookmarking and clipping that was happening on her side of their shared workspace in the den. She received a withering glare once for joking about Lisa’s fancy degree going towards becoming a professional scrapbooker.)

As Jennie looks around, and takes note of how the wood grain of the floor subtly picks up on the lines of the wall art, she realises the depth of Lisa’s influence in how she sees the world, how it became another filter that her appreciation of beauty passed through.

Somewhere along the way, Lisa had taught her to pay closer attention to her surroundings, to have a closer connection to the ground, when Jennie’s artistic tendency was to look skywards.

She wonders what old Jennie and Lisa would have to jointly say about The Standard, if they would zone in on the same details or come to similar conclusions about the aesthetic choices.

Generally, it’s a bit more upscale than what she’s accustomed to from their past Sunday routines. Maybe this was grown-up working girl Lisa versus stressed-out postgrad intern Lisa. Or perhaps Lisa had picked it subconsciously for its reminder of her adopted continent.

Regardless, she’s glad the slight air of pretension falls short of crossing over onto the douche side of things, that the marked European influence hasn’t tipped the scale towards asshole territory—always a risk in lower Manhattan.

Instead, The Standard is attentive to detail, well-appointed but understated, reflecting what Jennie can only assume is Lisa’s matured discerning taste.

(She remembers an afternoon spent watching a bottom lip worrying under teeth as Lisa self-debated herringbone or houndstooth as the better textile pattern for the cushion cover of their new sofa.)

Whatever awaits Jennie’s fate, she has to give kudos to Lisa the tactician for picking a casual and comfortable enough place, with the right degree of cautious restraint, for a mid-day appointment with one’s ex.

—

Jennie had arrived twenty minutes early, giving herself the extra time to slow her racing heart and set her bearings. She was also too nervous to wait in her apartment with Jisoo still hovering. While the shower had been a quick affair, the wardrobe selection was a battle of wills as Jisoo pulled out every low-cut top Jennie owned.

(“Jisoo, I’m not wearing that. It’s like –8 F out.”

“But it’s Lisa’s kryptonite.”

“It’ll already be an uphill climb trying to hold my shit together. I can’t be worried about killing her too.”)

After another hour of cajoling (and some pointed under-breath comments from Jisoo about working with one’s best assets), Jennie had compromised on skinny black jeans and a blue fitted top, still flattering but with adequate coverage to not be mission-distracting.

Her wardrobe choice didn’t matter in the end as the frigid subzero wind chills outside ensured that Jennie kept her parka on inside. Normally her internal temperature runs like a furnace but even her body can admit defeat under icy conditions the weather forecast had called an eyelash-freezing hell.

Happy to have snatched one of the last remaining tables by the fireplace, Jennie is currently cozied in her seat, onto her second cup of coffee and perusing a Penguin classics that was left behind by one of the last patrons.

(Great Expectations. She doesn’t appreciate the universe’s sense of humour.

Though curiously the book isn’t actually Charles Dickens’s 544-page tome. More like a collection of only the first page of Great Expectations—seventy different design layout versions of the same introductory text. As an opponent of long-form reading and a proponent of all forms of creativity, Jennie likes the unusual typographic experiment and the visual treatment of the narrative.)

The book and lively atmosphere are a good distraction. It keeps Jennie’s thoughts from circling around why Lisa wants to meet, tempering any gnawing feelings that more devastation awaits her. Surely, bad news wouldn’t be delivered in such a public setting. And really, she tries to comfort herself, how much worse can it get? They’re already broken up, her life a thinner version of the fullness it used to be—it would take another monumentally cruel twist of fate for things to bottom out further.

Then again, Jennie is all too familiar with how swiftly things can get upended, when everything had been good and steady. Implosions tend to be the most effective on the least suspecting, the shrapnel most cutting when the world collapses violently inwards while one isn’t looking.

But watching the little girl a few tables away spilling the yolk of her sunny-side-up on her pretty dress, to her mother’s dismay, Jennie places her faith at the altar of Sunday brunch that nothing bad could possibly happen.

—

She’s engrossed in her paperback, nibbling on sourdough bread, and enjoying the many creative ways the name Pirrip (Pip) has been written, when she hears a throat clearing, and looks up to find Lisa gesturing to the empty chair across from her.

“Is this seat taken?”

Jennie shakes her head, too jarred again by the vision of a Lisa in the flesh to string together sentences.

While the gears of her brain are over-running, trying to process that Lisa is actually speaking to her, she takes a moment to observe the brunette as she settles in.

Lisa is swallowed in her own oversized parka, a dusting of snow on her shoulders and a beanie that she’s taken off to shake out. Chestnut hair tumble forth, a few strands going rogue from the static of her hat. Though gone is the wool coat of last night, the red scarf still wraps prettily around her neck. Her cheeks are flushed pink, and her green eyes have taken on an entrancing lustre from the cold.

Jennie can’t look away. She remembers crisp mornings where the only motivation to open her eyes was so that she can look into Lisa’s.

Lisa takes Jennie’s cue and keeps her outerwear on. So it’s an equal mystery as to what Lisa’s wearing underneath, but noticeably absent is the formality of last night. Her spine is less straight, shoulders lightly dropped, making her appear marginally more relaxed. The overnight drop in temperature had inversely, but welcomingly, led to a warmer reception today.

(If Jennie wasn’t so nervous, and on much better terms with Lisa, she would laugh at their tense reunion looking like a two-person lunch meeting of the Polar Bear Expedition team.)

Lisa takes a moment to survey the scene, as she warms herself up by blowing into her hands, her gaze lingering appreciatively over the walled-in gas burning fireplace, before landing back on Jennie, then onto the table.

“Are we waiting for someone else?”

Lisa quips to break the ice, as she tips her chin towards Jennie’s side of the table where it looks like she’s recently become a food hoarder: there are blueberry pancakes, two avocado toasts, a plate of assorted cheese, a walnut and watercress salad, a basket of the honey and fig sourdough bread, a basket of home fries drizzled in truffle oil, and a bowl of yam and roasted beetroot soup. (She had skipped breakfast.)

Jennie would blush in embarrassment if she wasn’t currently concerned with overheating ever since Lisa sat down. She’s rethinking her parka and the fireplace, whose earlier comforting crackling now seems taunting as the embers feel like a forest fire has erupted against her back.

But if Jennie is anything in life, it’s ridiculously loyal, and as in most cases would rather remain faithful to her life choices and suffer their consequences than to waver in judgment.

(She hopes Lisa doesn’t notice the moisture collecting in the space between her brows.)

“I wasn’t sure if you’d be hungry. I ordered extra.”

She pushes a plate of avocado toast infinitesimally over to Lisa’s half of the table. Jennie knows she’ll likely decline, sharing food with an ex is probably too intimate for a first second encounter after a four years absence, and too low on the totem pole of priorities of their still-hidden meeting agenda.

Before Lisa can voice any polite refusals the waiter appears to take her order. Jennie tries to hide her disappointment when she simply asks for oolong tea, probably to dampen any misguided interpretation that this was a lunch date.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Lisa says, ignoring the food prompt and thankfully too preoccupied with forming her next words to notice Jennie’s sweating.

“Yeah, of course. I’m glad you texted.” Jennie rushes to return, but then just as quickly deflates realising she might have sounded too eager. She decides to go for cordiality instead.

“How are you?”

“I’m good.”

“That’s good.”

“How are you?”

“I’m good too.”

“Good.”

God, this is painful. Jennie would bang her head against the table if it wasn’t covered in so much food. She’s had more invigorating conversations with her dentist, while her mouth was stuffed with cotton balls, than whatever this is.

Lisa must be feeling the same because she’s picked up her fork and has mindlessly started tapping the tines against the table. A nervous tick, or a Morse code cry for help, Jennie can’t be too sure.

“It’s cold outside,” Jennie tries. Despite Oscar Wilde deriding conversation about the weather as the last refuge of the unimaginative, she nevertheless resorts to meteorology, putting misplaced hope on climate talk to save them from themselves.

“It is.”

“It’s not cold inside.”

Oh. my. god.

Jennie had realised belatedly when she arrived at The Standard that she had forgotten her phone at home. Now she thinks she might have left her wits behind too.

“No, it’s not,” Lisa offers her a pitying half smile.

Fortunately, a minute later, the brunette soldiers on to a topic that might have better traction.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer last night.”

“It was good to see you though, brief as it was.”

Lisa hums her acknowledgment but doesn’t say anything, concentrating instead on her tiny table concert. A few more rhythmic taps of her fork later, she finally puts the utensil down and looks up at Jennie.

“I was hoping we could talk. It’s been a while.”

The reaction is immediate. While Jennie’s eyes widen in disbelief, Lisa grimaces at her own gross underestimation as soon as the statement leaves her mouth, lowering her gaze to rest back on her cutlery set.

Three years, three hundred and forty-six days to be exact.

Jennie can’t help but correct in her head.

She almost scoffs loudly at Lisa’s economic summation of their time apart, as if they’re work acquaintances or bar buddies who haven’t seen each other after a long holiday (“It’s been a while. How’s it going? How are Judy and the kids?”).

Other than that regrettable voicemail the night of Lisa’s flight, Jennie hasn’t exchanged a single word with Lisa since the day she moved out. It has been complete silence on either side of the Atlantic. Certainly no more phone calls.

There have been many written and rewritten texts, deleted emails, innumerable tear-stained letters, but nothing has ever left the confines of Jennie’s keyboard or desk.

Although one time, Jennie did make it all the way to the post office, letter and determination in hand, only to break down on the steps of the building, with a crumbled envelope and a more crumpling heart.

*****

Dear Lisa,

This is the fifth letter I’ve written, and likely the fifth letter I won’t send. I came close on number four. I wonder where we would be had I posted it, where you would be when it reached you.

I wonder if you would be reading it in your ‘flat’, that’s what they call it over there, right? Or maybe you’d be on the tube, in a pub. I’m not sure, and out of ideas from my little knowledge of London and the English ways of things.

I’m imagining tea and biscuits next to my scrawling. Too cliché? Perhaps. But maybe the sense of decorum will give more seriousness to the loops of my l’s and k’s. You once told me they were too whimsical. You had traced the letters of my name with your finger on my back to prove your point.

“See Jennie, that’s how you write l and k.”

But I didn’t care then if they were straight lines or loops, I was just happy to be lying naked underneath you. To feel your breath against my neck as you mapped out my back with your gentle touch, as an invisible alphabet formed over slopes and valleys.

I would have carried the weight of the Lalisa Library, your namesake, if it meant you were the one writing out every letter of every book.

Sanskrit, Dutch, Kanji, it didn’t matter.

You held every cursive, and every prose and verse I could have ever wanted inscribed on my skin.

Falling asleep to the movement of your hands was a dream that I never wanted to wake from.

A beautiful dream I wish I could experience again. Just once.

It seems so fleeting now. The secret language spoken by your fingertips so out of reach.

And each day that you’re not here, I find my own words are slipping. I’ve never been good with them in the first place, at least not as clever as you are. Images have always been my vocabulary of choice. You know this.

But now, I have trouble with even the simplest of nouns.

Jar, rain, door. Home.

I don’t know what else to say other than that I wish you were here, sitting next to me as I write this, so that you could help me find the right words.

Or, better yet, I was there with you, so that no words were needed at all.

Missing you terribly …

Yours still,

Jennie

—

Enclosed in the envelope is a napkin drawing of Big Ben with two figures in the foreground.

—

Drawers in the corner of Jennie’s studio are overstuffed with similar doodles, created during coffee breaks from her studio, at night while idly watching Netflix, on weekends in the park while sat against a tree letting her mind drift along with the clouds.

Whether they are teared-out sheets from sketchbooks or napkins thieved from cafés, untold stories live on the edges of a line, within the drops of ink. The scenery changes, the activity might be different, but each one prominently features two figures.

Some are invented tales of a different life, in alternate universes, of a Jennie and a Lisa that are happy, that are in love. That are still together. Others are narrations documenting the everyday, a picnic, a Sunday morning, a swim at the lake, a cuddle by the campfire.

Mixed together and uncategorised, the drawers are a blurring of the imagined and the real, both a timestamp and an unrealised future. In them, twelve years of biography and four years of fiction collapsed onto themselves.

—

So no, Jennie notes contritely, it’s been more than a while. It has felt like forever.

*****

There’s a sheen to her eyes that she tries to blink away while Lisa’s head is down in contemplation. She’s passably dried-eyed by the time the waiter returns with Lisa’s tea.

“Yeah, it has been a long time.”

Hoping to move the conversation along, Jennie takes the opening when Lisa goes to sip her cup.

“Speaking of tea. How is London?”

“Good. Wet.”

Lisa’s linguistic regression lands them two steps back to the earlier conversational strain. Her unhelpful reply plunges them into minutes of silence.

Despite being the one who called the meeting, she seems no more equipped than Jennie to navigate this unchartered territory. But Jennie supposes few people would know what actions and behaviours are acceptable when the once well-oiled mechanics of a couple irrevocably in love have been disassembled and rusted with disuse.

Considering that Lisa had walked herself back into Jennie’s life, it’s not a terrible start. But the tiny sighs, the stolen glances, the stilted conversation, the complete and utter lack of banter; are a cry so far from the Jennie and Lisa they used to be—or the ones they could be in Jennie’s sketches—that an ocean might as well exist between them.

Jennie is thankful for the accidental foresight to order half the menu so she can busy herself with cutting up the pancakes and chomping on the blueberries, hoping to eat her way out of the awkwardness.

Lisa in the meantime has put aside her one-woman orchestra and has taken up folding and unfolding her napkin into neat little triangles. A lightbulb goes off when Jennie catches on to nimble fingers recreating miniature paper versions of the Egyptian pyramids.

The difficulty lies in neither of them knowing what to do with their hands. They had been one of those exceedingly physical couples who communicated through constant touch, much to Rosé’s annoyance.

(“Lisa, you can let go of Jennie’s hand, she’s not going to get lost on the way to her own bathroom.”)

When out, Lisa’s arm would be a fixture around Jennie’s waist, while Jennie’s head would take up residence on her shoulder. When not entangled in one another, hands would intermittently rub backs or caress necks or play with baby hairs. Leading such busy lives as a pair of aspiring artist and architect, they wanted to be as close as possible when the opportunity arose, to breathe each other in, to let the dust of a hectic day brush off against soft skin. To re-energise underneath gentle lips.

Classmates and colleagues learned to interact with them as a two-for-one deal, not batting an eye when Jennie would place a kiss to the corner of Lisa’s mouth after a well-delivered joke.

At home, they had a mutual habit of grazing each other in passing, a press of lips on a forehead, a shoulder brush here, a butt squeeze there, as a way to check in and affirm their co-presence. They developed almost a sixth sense for when the other was in the same room, never failing to reach out and find an awaiting warm body.

Talking was optional, but touch was needed and often sought out.

Lisa would be absorbed in the latest edition of National Geographic or Architectural Review, leaning back against the arm of the couch, occasionally murmuring her dis/agreement to what she was reading. Jennie would be focused on a drawing, sitting between Lisa’s legs, her left hand flying across the page of her sketchbook. And every few minutes there’d be a kiss to the crown of her head, slender fingers carding through her hair or a hand stroking her side. She in turn would massage Lisa’s leg or engage their hands in a silent game of push and pull.

Laced, entwined, or simply held, these tiny acts of intimacy, of tenderness, were the perfect seconds of an hour spent with not one word exchanged.

(“Gross,” Jisoo once walked out of dinner with them, drawing the line at their holding hands while eating.)

Their physical connection was one of the hallmarks of their relationship, even before accounting for the sexual intimacy that had Jennie’s heart rate at a near-constant risk of cardiac arrest.

(She quickly shuts the latter train of thought down. There is no way she would survive this non-lunch if she lets her mind wander to the whimpers and silent pleas that Lisa’s hips and abs could coax out of her with little effort.)

—

Between bites Jennie goes to unconsciously rub the cover of Great Expectations that’s since rested on her lap.

While waiting for Lisa to make the next move, she notices how every few minutes, Lisa’s gaze subtly shifts to the piece of avocado that had fallen off the toast on Jennie’s plate. It’s a coordinated sequence of eyes on her tea, then the plate before flickering up to Jennie’s eyes, and all again in reverse order.

But she knows Lisa won’t ask.

—

In all the years that she’s known her, Lisa has rarely ever asked for anything, at least not aloud. Their first kiss, the last bite, an extra blanket. Warmth and comfort and support were always freely given but not demanded in return.

Even when the want for something was plain in her eyes, she would not vocalise it. Lisa suffered through the terrible cold of 2002 because Jennie usually kept her childhood bedroom at near arctic conditions, her linen closet minimally stocked of wool coverings. Only when Lisa had started triple-layering her pjs and wearing a beanie to bed did it occur to Jennie that the goosebumps they shared during high school sleepovers weren’t for entirely the same reasons. She finally understood why Lisa would always end up physically closer to her by morning than where she had started at night, undoubtedly gravitating towards the space heater that was Jennie’s body.

When she had chastised Lisa for not saying anything, between sniffles from a very red nose and through watery eyes, Lisa had poorly defended, “I didn’t want to wake you.”

It equally frustrated and endeared her for Lisa to prioritise Jennie’s needs and well-being to the exclusion of her own. Her altruism sometimes being the source of their infrequent fights.

So Jennie had gotten exceptionally good at interpreting her non-verbal cues, at reading her micro facial expressions, the subtle shifts in body language. What each tell meant. A tight jaw, a crinkled nose, a raised chin—how the tips of her ears pink, thumbs becoming overactive, her spine straightening in incremental degrees.

All minute changes invisible to everyone else’s naked eye.

But for Jennie, out of necessity and honed through practice, she had become a behavioural and linguistic specialist in all things Lisa.

—

Her decade–plus tenure as a Lisaologist keys her in presently to the tacit want behind Lisa’s micro eye movements. And if that hadn’t clued her in enough, then the less than subtle licking of Lisa’s lips once or twice confirms it.

Unable to take the low-key pining any longer, Jennie pushes the plate closer to her. “Lisa, please have some. I won’t be able to finish all of it. There’s too much food. I might’ve been too trigger happy when I read the menu.” Jennie laughs self-consciously.

She sees the warring of emotions as Lisa weighs the pros and cons of the offer, seemingly assigning the same value to accepting toast as pressing a nuclear button. But then Lisa’s stomach grumbles loudly, deciding for her.

Jennie takes advantage and urges on, “it’s just avocado toast, Lisa.”

That might have been the exact wrong thing to say.

Lisa’s eyes flash dangerously at Jennie’s comment.

Though it’s too late to take back the words, she immediately retracts her arm that had been extended in offer, feeling the burning sting of Lisa’s glare on the back of her hand.

*****

“Is this seat taken?”

The girl looked up at Jennie’s question, her eyes opening slowly, and using her right hand as a visor to shield from the anticipated brightness.

She sent Jennie a curious look.

To the right and left of her the bleachers were completely empty. She was sitting with her legs stretched out before her, bum at the edge of a mid-level bench, upper body leaned back against the row behind her, and her chin tipped up to take in the afternoon sun. Wearing denim cutoffs, with sunglasses propped atop her head, and white sneakers half dangling off where her ankles cross, the high schooler was the embodiment of a carefree, disaffected teenager in a John Hughes movie.

Next to her was a flattened brown paper bag on which sat a half loaf of bread, one slice quarter-eaten, and an avocado. Beside it, an open book that Jennie thinks might be Catcher in the Rye dog-eared to where the name “Holden” can be made out.

Her prone figure and makeshift picnic were the only signs of life within view for a mile. Otherwise, it was a tumbleweed landscape absent of their peers or teachers.

While everyone else were currently holed up in the cafeteria expending the coiled energy present at the start of every new school year, Jennie wanted to enjoy the last of the late summer days. August’s humidity had given way to a cooler September, the balmy weather always making her hands itch for her pencils and a vista.

For an unfathomable reason, the bleachers called out to her, surprising given her usual lack of inclination to voluntarily be anywhere near a sports field. And despite no lack of choice spots to seat herself, something drew her to the only occupant.

At the silent head shake and the congenial wave of a hand, as if to say the seat is all yours, Jennie sat down, offering a grateful smile and leaving a comfortable gap between them.

“Do you mind?” She asked, pointing to the sketchbook she had pulled out of her bag and settled onto her lap.

Another curious look, followed by another head shake.

After a stretch of time, while Jennie was engrossed in tracing the contours of a few clouds that looked suspiciously like a pair of swans, her silent companion finally spoke up.

“Alligator pear.”

“What?”

“That was the English term for avocado back in the 17th century.”

“Really?”

“Either that. Or old Spanish for testicle.”

They both laughed. The girl sat up then, and offered her hand to shake, which Jennie happily obliged.

“Lisa.”

“Jennie.” She was warmed by the soft give of her grasp.

“I know,” Lisa said with a twitch to her lips that Jennie also returned knowingly, if not more timidly.

—

Of course Lisa knew her name. Likewise, Jennie was certainly aware of Lisa’s existence.

She had noticed Lisa on the first day of school for their freshman morning assembly, not hard for a lanky girl with a summer tan, green eyes, and impressive hair to stand out among the sweaty masses. But aside from the breath-stealing aesthetic, she had never seen such carriage and presence for someone their age, so disarmingly self-assured despite her slight frame. She made cutoff jean shorts and a racer back tank top look like the tailored garment sported by royals.

Jennie had to hide her pleased smile, on entering her last period class, when she spotted the familiar mass of curls sitting a few rows from the front. Their gazes met as Jennie stalled at the doorway, her breath caught in her throat at how arrestingly pretty the girl was up close. The freckles on her nose and sprinkled across exposed shoulders made Jennie think of sun lotion and white sandy beaches. She could almost smell the salt water.

Wow, was all Jennie could think, rooted in place as the latecomers brushed pass her into the classroom.

She must have had the same effect on the brunette. When their eyes locked she didn’t miss the shallow swallow. The tiny gasp.

Despite the instant connection, however, nothing more came of it after Jennie took her seat and they both focused on the lesson. A combination of nerves, an unfortunate incident in the art room, and Jisoo and Hyuna’s distracting antics had kept Jennie from approaching her the rest of the week.

—

Had she known how much more mesmerising, and unexpectedly intimate, the hold of Lisa’s gaze would be during their first real one-on-one interaction, Jennie might have delayed their introductions even further.

“It’s nice to officially meet you.”

She’s glad Lisa doesn’t mention their previous silent encounter and whatever unconventional first impression she’d left behind.

To distract from those eyes and Lisa’s still lingering smile, she switched gear to bravely admit, “I’ve never had avocado before.”

“Goodbye, Jennie.” Lisa abruptly rose from her seat, and feigned gathering her things to leave. “It was nice to meet you but we can’t be friends.”

“No, wait.” Jennie laughed, amusedly caught off-guard by the overdramatic performance. “Sue me, I’m sheltered,” she defended as she pulled the girl back down by her arm, “help un-shelter me.”

She stifled her chuckle when Lisa nodded with more seriousness than Jennie was anticipating.

As if tasked with the most important assignment in the history of the world, Lisa reached for her assortment of food and carefully placed it on her lap, using the brown bag as a placemat. She pulled a spoon from her pocket, and started to carve out small chunks of avocado that she skilfully placed in neat rows on a fresh slice of bread.

“Do you always carry a spoon with you?”

“Comes in handy,” Lisa shrugged off the tease, continuing their easy-going banter without skipping a beat, “you never know when you’ll come across soup in the wild.”

With her tongue adorably poked out in concentration, she expertly wielded the plastic instrument to cover the bread in a layer of green, and presented Jennie the assembled product with two hands, as if handing over a bar of gold.

“Keep in mind, it tastes way better when the bread is actually toasted and there’s proper sea salt and peppercorn.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jennie half listened as she eyed the open-faced sandwich and tried to strategise how best to get the thing in her mouth without losing the prized toppings. In the end, she decided to take the biggest bite she could, hoping for adequate coverage to minimise any loss.

“Mmmm, it’s good.” Jennie took another bite, wiping at the corners of her mouth, before asking, “but, why avocado?”

Lisa looked pleased that Jennie liked it, and didn’t hesitate to answer.

“I hated fruit as a kid. Apples, oranges, bananas especially. I wouldn’t touch any of them. One day my dad came home with a bag of avocados, convinced that he had found the exception to my rule. He said, ‘you’re going to love these berries.’”

Lisa dropped her voice to mimic what Jennie assumed was her father’s baritone voice.

“Berry?” Jennie asked around another mouthful, “I thought it was a pear?”

“I was confused too. But he told me that botanically it’s a large berry. I was still skeptical but humoured him anyways. When I didn’t hate it, he felt victorious.” Her face lit up as she said, “my dad is this huge tower of a man but I swear he actually squealed.”

Jennie mirrored her smile before taking more enthusiastic bites and then asking, “how’d it end up on bread?”

“One time we ran out of luncheon meat for my sandwich. The only thing we had in the house were avocados. So my mom cut some up and put it on top of toasted bread. She saw it on an Australian cooking show once. I loved it. Something about the softness of the avocado with the crunch that made it so much better than on its own.”

Lisa licked her lips, her eyes glazed over as if the sandwich had magically appeared before her. “It became my new lunch staple. Seeing how much I liked it, Mom got more adventurous, and started experimenting with adding other stuff. Arugula, sun-dried tomatoes, walnuts, cheese shavings. Even oatmeal because she thought that’d be a good way to sneak in my fibre.”

Lisa got lost for a moment down memory lane before she picked up her thread again. “One time she tried sardines. That didn’t go so well. Turns out I like my fruit to be fish free.”

Jennie chuckled when Lisa made a scrunching face as if this time the cold-blooded vertebrates had irrationally leaped out of the Hudson River and slapped her with their pungent smell.

Although Jennie was eager to hear more, enjoying the animated retelling, Lisa went quiet after that. She started to play with her hands that were now hanging from her knees, circling her thumbs while looking distantly towards the baseball diamond.

By the way her lips were pursed and a slight stiffness had creeped into her shoulders, Jennie suspected that Lisa might have revealed more than she typically does. She was surprised she had opened up at all. From the short but thoughtful answers Lisa gave in English class, she got the impression the girl wasn’t much of a talker in general.

At Lisa’s long pause, Jennie turned fully to her and asked softly in concern. “Hey, you ok?”

“Yeah,” Lisa said, then a moment later, added almost too-quietly. “She died a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok. I mean, it’s not. But she was sick for a while.”

They sit silently, letting the sadness settle until it naturally petered out.

Eventually Lisa resumed her story, a smile returning. “Anyways, my dad …” she chuckled, ”my dad is basically useless in the kitchen. Avocado toast was the only culinary legacy of my mom’s that he could do justice. So my sister and I, we basically survive on it now.”

Jennie rustled with her own bag then, and retrieved her pitiful peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and made to hand a triangle half to Lisa. “If it’s any consolation, here, this is part of my survival kit, courtesy of my WASP parents. Not as exotic but very dependable.”

“Thanks, but I’m good.” Lisa mocked a disgusted face at the banality of pb&j, but nevertheless gave Jennie an appreciative smile.

"Suit yourself," Jennie says, "it's an American institution. You're missing out."

For how little they knew of each other, Jennie felt an odd sense of peace sitting there next to Lisa. Her initial physical attraction had been quickly sidelined for the promise of something different, more profound. There was something about the girl, and her earnestness and gentle demeanour, her quiet confidence and wry wit. Something that resonated with Jennie.

Where it should have been another awkward encounter of two near-strangers, she instead felt the spark of an already-formed connection, a tether to a deeper bond, a thrumming in her mind hinting at something familiar yet unnamed.

“Thank you for sharing. Your sandwich, and story.”

Jennie placed a gentle hand on Lisa’s knee, receiving a meaningful nod in kind.

Perhaps it was because Lisa had willingly opened up and let herself be vulnerable that Jennie felt an inexplicable need to protect her, to keep her heart safe.

A seed was sown that day that Jennie had subconsciously committed to watering.

—

The bleachers soon became their spot, even as it got more populated when the other kids discovered the appeal of the great outdoors versus the stale air of the school gym.

While the weather was still agreeable, Jennie would make her way out to an awaiting Lisa, sketchbook and a grocer’s bag in hand, to find two neatly portioned piles of avocado at the ready, and the spine of her book cracked further as she progressed through the novel.

Jennie would draw, and Lisa would read.

(One afternoon Lisa had interrupted Jennie’s drawing to wax on about her complicated relationship with Holden Caulfield. While in principle she embraced his independence and ‘fuck-you’ attitude, she found his relationships with the female characters, and they themselves, troubling, and was supremely frustrated that Jane didn’t have more agency in her happiness. Jennie didn’t have an answer to Lisa’s feminist quandary, too busy gapping like a fish at a fourteen year-old using the word agency.)

Even when November clouds had forced them to find a more suitably dry spot for their now-daily meet ups, the avocado toast remained a constant. No matter if it was the cafeteria, the library, the art room, or the landing of the north stairwell, staked out in whatever corner they could find, Lisa would provide the base ingredients and Jennie would surprise her with her creative selection of add-ons.

(Their daughter’s spiked interest in grocery shopping didn’t go unnoticed by Josh and Minzy Kim.)

*****

The waiter’s dutiful reappearance to check in on them pulls Jennie out of the memory, and by the startled jump from across the table, it looks like Lisa had too been temporally displaced from their present location in The Standard.

Austin, the name tag reads, departs hastily on Lisa’s polite but curt concession that everything is good.

“I’m sorry,” Jennie capitulates.

Lisa waves her hand to shrug off Jennie’s apology, and offers a white flag in return. “No, I’m sorry. It’s very kind of you. Thank you.”

She delicately places one half of the avocado toast on her napkin, and begins to dig into it contently.

Once they’ve both recovered from Jennie’s mis-step, the conversation resumes in earnest, though it’s mostly Jennie making small talk. She manages to steer clear of any more emotional landmines, focusing on Jisoo’s progress as a mechanical engineer completing a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT in her spare time; Hyuna’s recent promotion at the police academy; and Dawn’s latest heroics over at the fire station. Nothing that Lisa probably doesn’t already know through Rosé.

(She omits information about her art, not yet ready to unpack that TSA over-regulation baggage.)

Not paying heed to Jennie’s newfound posting as her friends’ career biographers, Lisa hums and nods at the appropriate intervals, even as she remains visibly faraway with her own thoughts. It’s a strange situation Jennie finds herself in, to be politely engaging in inconsequential chitchat when the big questions hang over them like a guillotine.

But she’s glad for the temporary detente, if only so she can muster up enough courage to finally address the subject. When Lisa has completed eating, Jennie treads lightly as if approaching a grazing doe.

“What were you doing at the gallery last night?”

“To see art.”

Lisa stalls as she swallows her last bite prematurely, and goes to wipe her mouth with her overly-creased napkin.

“Lisa.”

“I wanted to see your art.”

“Why?” Jennie asks. “How did you even know I had an exhibition?”

Were you thinking of me? Did you seek me out? are the follow-ups that Jennie keeps to herself.

Lisa smoothly overlooks the first question and addresses the second one, “Rosé had mentioned it. And my office was having a dinner party in the neighbourhood. I figured since I’d be in the area—”

“Wait, your office?” Jennie cuts her off when the middle part of Lisa’s rambling catches up to her.

Lisa nods. “Yes, to welcome new hires and transfers.“ She pauses to take a sip from her tea, looks down at her hands that are now neatly folded on the table, and then sheepishly admits, “I started three weeks ago.”

Jennie leans back in her chair, somewhat stunned. The collar of her down puffer suddenly feels too tight. She doesn’t know where to start, her mind reeling from the information overload: that Lisa has an office, that she’s just started a new job, that she’s in New York, permanently perhaps.

Yet for some reason, it’s learning that Lisa has been within physical proximity for close to a month that Jennie finds the most unsettling.

“My office is actually just around the corner. I pop into here for lunch sometimes. They make a nice pomegranate salad, and I like their selection of fiction.”

Jennie’s tuned out by now as Lisa prattles on about the culinary and literary merits of The Standard.

A burning sensation is building behind her eyes, and she isn’t sure why.

It’s understandable that Lisa would have a life that Jennie is no longer privy to.

It’s understandable that Lisa would land a well-to-do job that’s reflected in the well-to-do neighbourhood in which they’re currently dining.

It’s understandable that the new office would want to celebrate a hiring catch like Lisa, she was always ahead of her peers in architecture school, a visionary and natural leader who could rebuild civilisation out of ruins if she wanted to.

But it’s knowing that she and Lisa have been in the same city, maybe even on the same block, for three weeks before Lisa reached out, that hits the hardest.

It is the three weeks that gets lodged in her throat.

*****

“Three weeks?!”

Jennie exclaimed in a fit of despair as if she had just been told of the death of her beloved pet turtle rather than being informed of a planned family vacation.

“It’s just three weeks, honey.”

Her dad countered in a measured tone, hoping to deescalate her rising panic. He received a harrumph and look of betrayal for his attempt at casualness, and failure to see the monumentality of such a timeframe.

“That’s two weeks and six days too long!” Jennie protested and couldn’t help deepening her frown thinking of being separated from her new best friend for more than twenty-four hours. Let alone 3,000 miles between them.

“Your grandmother has been looking forward to seeing you again this summer. You love going there. It’ll be good,” he tried to reason, but knowing what truly motivated his daughter’s emotional state these days, he quickly added, “and you can write to Lisa every day.”

“It’s not the same,” she argued, posture rigid as if in a Mexican standoff outside the saloon and not a father-daughter conversation in her bedroom.

“I know. But she’ll be here when you get back. She’s not going anywhere. Plus, they have that new video thing. What’s it called again? Skip?”

“Skype, Dad.” Jennie exasperatedly corrected.

“That’s right, Skype. You can videochat at night.”

The promise of continuing to see Lisa seemed to placate Jennie a bit. Ever since the day on the bleachers they had been nearly inseparable. Classes, study sessions, sleepovers, weekend trips to Jennie’s favourite art museums, to Lisa’s natural museums, late night food runs, early morning runs (well, Lisa ending her jogs at Jennie’s house for breakfast)—all ensured that the new friends were in each other’s constellations weekly, if not daily.

They took teenage co-dependence to a new level, but Lisa’s intimidating scowl and Jennie’s protective instincts prevented anyone from judging them for it. (Though it didn’t safeguard them from their friends mocking.)

“Fine,” Jennie surrendered, “I will go to California. I will have fun, and genuinely love every minute I get to spend with Grandma. We will do Sudoku puzzles together, and spend our nights on her porch, wrapped snuggly in her handmade-for-me oh-so-soft afghan while happily listening to stories about Grandpa.”

“That’s my girl,” Josh smiled.

“But know this,” Jennie puffed her chest, pointing an accusing finger at her father before she crossed her arms, jutted a hip out and levelled him a glare with the intensity of a thousand suns, “any other time not spent with Grandma, I will be wallowing in misery and completely blaming you for it, and will refuse to acknowledge your existence in public for an indeterminable time.”

“As long as I can still be your dad in private.” Josh snickered and drew his hand out. “Your conditions are harsh, but acceptable. Do we have a deal?”

“Ok.”

Jennie went to shake his hand and couldn’t help but smile when he pulled her into a hug instead and kissed the top of her head.

That afternoon, after the news bomb, she had biked over to Lisa’s to commiserate in the impending doom. Lisa endured an hour of Jennie’s dramatics before calmly setting them up on a Skype schedule with military precision. She marked on their shared calendar Jennie’s anticipated whereabouts calculated as a function of weather forecasts, local events, and her grandmother’s habits, and identified gaps for when Jennie could text or call Lisa. It turned out to be astonishingly accurate, save for a few adjustments to accommodate unaccounted-for visits by the neighbourhood kids wanting to hang out with Jennie.

So they did end up Skyping every night they were apart, and Jennie did text her at every opportune moment during the day.

—

Yet still, despite the sustained communication while she was away, Jennie felt the palpable distance when she returned three weeks later, a never-before shyness and hesitation to Lisa’s affection. She was more careful with her words and her touch.

One particularly fraught evening, they had been sitting on Jennie’s couch, each at either ends, with her parallel and Lisa perpendicular. There was a gulf between them when normally they’d be side by side brushed against one another, snugly sharing a blanket.

On the fifth time she caught Lisa’s flitting looks, Jennie had enough.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Lisa,” she chided.

“Really, it’s nothing.”

“Lis, come on.”

Jennie nudged her toe against the side of Lisa’s thigh, and gestured to the bowl of M&M’s in the middle of the coffee table, trying to lighten the mood.

“You haven’t even touched the red ones. I know something must be wrong.”

“Olivia asked me out.”

Jennie stilled her movements.

She didn’t know what a sucker punch was until those words ringed in the air. She wanted to immediately rescind her prodding, the sharp pain not worth sating her need to fix things. Her hands were suddenly clammy, and she could feel the colour draining from her face. She couldn’t understand the sensation, but there was a tightness in her throat and stomach.

“When?” She asked quietly.

“The second week you were at your grandma’s,” Lisa said without looking at her.

“Oh.”

Jennie’s loudly hammering heart must have drowned out her next question, “what did you say?,” or maybe the words got stuck in her mouth and never came out, because Lisa stayed mute for a long time after.

The living room suddenly felt too open, the atmosphere too thick. She pulled her legs in that had been stretched out on the couch, bringing her knees to her chest, as she turned her body to face the TV more directly, pretending to be absorbed by the turn of event in the movie they were supposed to be watching.

Her thoughts whirled, while her breathing slowed.

She knew that Lisa attracted a lot of attention. They both did. Jennie wasn’t oblivious to other girls’ crushes by the more than friendly glances they gave Lisa, and the less than friendly ones they gave her. But any jealousy was completely stymied by how much Lisa doted on her, to the exclusion of everyone else. (“Like white on rice” was how Hyuna once described their conjoined existence.) So it never occurred to Jennie that Lisa might reciprocate others’ feelings. Now, blindsided by the possibility that she could, with Olivia, the gut-wrenching thought had Jennie closing her eyes and willing the tears not to fall.

She wrapped her arms around her legs, and placed her chin on her knees, hoping the firm surface would help to keep her lower lip from trembling. She was trying to make herself as small as possible so the pain had no room to grow.

“Jennie?” Lisa must have moved closer while Jennie was deep in thought because she was now within arm’s reach to gently shake her shoulder.

“I leave for three weeks and you get a girlfriend,” Jennie tried to joke, discreetly wiping a wet cheek against her sleeve, and missing Lisa’s pleading look to meet her eyes.

“Jennie, I didn’t say yes.”

She snapped her eyes up at that, finally tuning in to what Lisa must have been trying to tell her all along.

But the immense relief she should have felt was swiftly replaced with unqualified worry that perhaps Lisa was holding herself back, on account of Jennie; that in some way, she was Lisa’s inadvertent gatekeeper.

She turned her head, to lay it in the crook of her elbow, and looked at Lisa with all the softness in the world.

“You could, you know. If you wanted to.”

The words felt like sandpaper against her tongue but she wanted Lisa to know she prioritised her happiness, even if it meant sacrificing her own sometimes.

“I know. She’s really nice,” Lisa nodded. If she noticed the crack in Jennie’s voice she didn’t mention it. She raised her hand to move several loose strands of hair behind Jennie’s ear before she whispered, with all the gentleness in the world, “but then there’s you.”

Jennie lifted her head up in silent ask, what about me?.

At her imploring, expectant expression, Lisa’s momentary bravery precipitously ended. “You’re too high-maintenance. I don’t have time for anything else.”

Lisa’s deflection unwittingly gave credence to Jennie’s earlier concern about her complicity in Lisa’s non-relationship status. Though if Jennie had given it more thought before she went into panic mode earlier, she’d realised there was some truth to it. She was too demanding of her quality time with her best friend that if anyone stood a chance with Lisa they’d have to do so under subterfuge or when Jennie was busy playing bridge with her grandma.

“I’m never going away again,” Jennie puffed and half-joked once the dust settled.

“That would be best,” Lisa murmured her assent.

Although pleased with their progressive return to a state of equilibrium, the question still gnawed at Jennie minutes later.

“If it wasn’t Olivia, then why have you been distant all week?”

Jennie could see the hinge of jaw working back and forth minutely as Lisa weighed her answer and gathered herself.

“It made me think that, maybe,” Lisa gulped before finishing, “there was someone else.” She was fiddling with the hem of her sweater, eyes downcast, when she reluctantly added, “someone else for you.”

Taken aback by the confession, and the unanticipated role reversal from consolee to consoler, Jennie scrambled to unwrap herself from her cocoon position and straightened up to directly face Lisa. She moved to lift Lisa’s chin then brought a hand up to weave through her hair before cupping her neck, thumb gently swiping across where ear and jaw met.

She waited until their eyes were fully locked before she spoke.

“There is no one else, Lisa.”

The reassurance was like an injection of oxygen into the room, lungs inflating, hearts restarting. Lisa released a shuddering breath that Jennie felt its reverberations tingle through to the tips of her fingers, followed by a small nod then an absent kiss on her forehead.

She pulled Lisa closer into a hug, their upper bodies flushed. The closer proximity helped to recalibrate their breaths to a steadier rhythm. With relieved hearts, they finally moved to recreate their habitual two-person blanket fort on the couch, more together than when they had started the movie.

It had taken three weeks for the first naming aloud of the bond they shared, for Jennie to realise that perhaps what they had started eight months earlier was always something more than friends.

A something that became completely untenable to ignore by the next summer when Jennie returned for another three-week visit to her grandmother’s.

A something that transformed into an everything the following year when Lisa accompanied her on the annual trip as her girlfriend.

But on that particular day, hours later when Lisa was softly curled in front of her, chest rising steadily, as Jennie was also losing herself to sleep, she let the words fall out into the dark for the first time.

“No one. Just you.”

*****

“Jennie?”

She hears faintly, but the sound is too distant for her to hold onto as an anchor while her vision blurs.

“Jennie, are you ok?”

She feels hot. Too hot.

The images of their younger selves are swimming around and Jennie has to close her eyes to keep her body from swaying with the visuals. But it must’ve been for longer than she thought because when she opens them, she’s surprised to see Lisa kneeled down in front of her, one hand lowering the zipper of her parka, the other tentatively on Jennie’s thigh.

Austin their waiter is standing a few steps back, concern etched across his face that’s triply present on Lisa’s.

“Could you please get her some water?” Lisa sternly instructs more than asks the waiter who scurries away immediately to oblige, picking up on the obvious edge of irritation in her tone. She then turns back to the subject of her worry, and more softly implores, “breathe, Jennie.”

Jennie takes a deep breath and then a long drink from the glass of water that appears seconds later. She wipes the excess fluid from her lips with the back of her hand, and reassures a still on-edge Lisa, “I’m ok, Lis.”

The nickname slips but Jennie is too busy fanning herself and trying to regulate her internal temperature to see that it didn’t go unnoticed or how the hand that had been lightly rubbing her thigh had haltingly gone rigid.

At the return of Jennie’s cheeks to an acceptable level of rosiness, Lisa seems to register her unintended breach into Jennie’s personal space. She brushes the non-existent lint off of Jennie’s lap, and makes her way back to her seat.

Jennie fully unzips her parka and steps clumsily out of it, roughly discarding the human duvet cover onto the backside of a nearby armchair.

“Sorry, it was just getting too hot in here.”

Lisa must agree because she’s staring at Jennie’s top, which is currently clinging tighter to her chest aided by the accumulated sweat. Lisa snaps her eyes away with a self-chastising shake of the head but not quickly enough for Jennie to miss the flattering gawk.

Jennie hides her smirk behind the paperback she’s been using to fan herself and takes another greedy gulp of her water, as she re-situates herself and their tableau resets.

In an effort to distract with some levity, Lisa leans in to say, with a glint in her eyes and a double-meaning in play, “I know you think you’re hot, and I’ve never disagreed, but you didn’t have to go into systems shutdown to remind me.”

It’s the first genuine laugh they share, one that floods Jennie’s body with a different warmth. God, she’s missed that sound.

“You were always burning up,” Lisa says, “it’s a wonder you own a parka in the first place.” She smiles over the rim of her mug she’s picked up to sip.

That smile, the first that’s fully reached her eyes, isn’t helpful to Jennie’s overheating problem. Feeling an uptick of her heartbeat, she has to valiantly fight the tinge of pink wanting to colour her cheeks.

“It is really good to see you,” Jennie asserts instead, riding the high of their light moment.

Her emotions have yo-yoed so much within the last hour that she’s relieved for some respite from her fraying nerves, a sentiment that seems to be shared by the soft look she receives across the table.

—

A time later, with most of her meal completed, Jennie knows they’ve circled around the issue long enough. Were it up to her, she’d be happy to just stare at Lisa all day. To memorise the new lines that have formed on her face, to capture the dance of light across supple skin and reflected in clear eyes, to trace the petal shape of slightly chapped lips.

But the need to break the tension of her nervous anticipation outweighs any desire to soak in as much of Lisa as possible. Even her beauty has a limit when it comes to Jennie’s shattered nerves. She needs to find out why Lisa had requested this meeting as much as she needed to remind herself to breathe throughout the past hour.

She needs to be put out of her misery for all the wild theories that have run through her head so far. She can’t fathom any reason why Lisa would want to see her again unless she was sick or getting married, which would be two sides of the same coin of painful news for Jennie. Though rationally speaking, Lisa is under no obligation to inform her whether she’s suffering from an illness or have met someone else. Yet, Jennie still holds out hope that today’s purpose has no remote connection to death or marriage.

She doesn’t think it’s possible for a heart to break into any smaller pieces.

On the exhale of a shaky breath, Jennie buttresses her fortress to finally ask, “Lisa, why are we here?”

Lisa looks up from the crumbs on the table she had been picking at, startled somewhat by Jennie’s directness. She shifts her gaze away for a moment, over Jennie’s shoulder towards the fireplace, as if drawing up invisible courage from the heat of its slow burn.

“I want to give it another try.”

It’s a good thing Jennie had already finished her water or Lisa would have had to rescue her from a second medical emergency. The butterflies that had been keeping her company throughout this lunch could have easily escaped through her slackened jaw if they wanted to take a break from all their afternoon fluttering.

At her widened eyes and skyrocketed eyebrows, Lisa swiftly corrects. “Friendship, I mean.”

“Oh.”

Lisa fiddles with a piece of crust before she launches into making her case.

“Since I’m back in New York, I didn’t want it to be like those awkward exes that need to geographically divide the city and their friend groups into yours and mine.”

Jennie internally winces. The word ex will never not sting but she lets Lisa continue uninterrupted at her turbo clip. Her words are rushing out like she’s afraid they wouldn’t form in the first place if delivered at a slower pace.

“Our friends are friends. My sister is married to our best friend. Our circles overlap. I know it’s a big city but we’re bound to run into each other.”

Overlap? She balks. More like a contorted Venn diagram.

Give it to Lisa to take such a rational approach to navigating emotional upheavals. Where Jennie would often flounder, Lisa would formulate a ten thousand-word dissertation and bullet-point out ways to circumvent the vagaries of love.

Not able to do much at this point but absorb Lisa’s words, Jennie simply nods her quasi-understanding. She is fully aware of the delicate partisanship manoeuvring inherent to breakups, and is fairly certain Rosé wouldn’t even speak to her if it weren’t for Jisoo. She feels fortunate for Hyuna and Dawn’s maturity that they hadn’t taken sides, not many adults have the emotional fortitude to remain Switzerland when mutual friends go painful, separate ways.

“Your exhibition … your art …” Lisa stammers, struggling to finish her thought, and instead redirects when the right words don’t come. “After seeing it last night, I realised there are things about you that I don’t know. That I want to know. I thought we could go on some dates. Ease back into it.”

That finally gets Jennie to speak up.

“Dates?” She all but chokes out.

“Yes, friend dates.”

Oh.

Despite the Internet’s advice to avoid at all costs, and just general common sense, Lisa ploughs forward with her social enlightenment that former lovers can retain a degree of conviviality, heedless of a tectonic-plate-shifting breakup like theirs.

“We were always really good friends before anything.” Lisa takes a moment to finally breathe. “You were my best friend. I’ve missed that.”

Jennie notes Lisa’s word choice with interest—the word that instead of you—but nonetheless allows herself to admit the same.

“I’ve missed it too, Lisa.”

“So, friends?”

For all the bluster and hurriedness of her speech, Lisa ends it on a hushed note, letting her eyes communicate the rest silently.

—

The proposal throws Jennie for a loop.

She had come prepared to atone for every slight and cut and injury, ready to ask for forgiveness.

She wasn’t expecting Lisa to skip right over forgiveness and onto friendship instead.

Given how things had ended between them, Jennie is taken aback that Lisa would want anything to do with her.

But where there should be anger and resentment, she sees only the undercurrent of resigned sorrow borne out of heartbreaking loss. It sits in the corner of Lisa’s eyes, at the dull edge of a once unfettered smile. It had sat underneath the surface of her steel impassivity at the gallery.

Behind her steady gaze is a murmur of disquiet. Lisa looks unsure and scared, burdened by the weight of her ask, as if she had cracked her chest open and entrusted Jennie with a scalpel, waiting to see if she’ll use it to heal or to hurt.

Jennie’s not sure her trembling hands is up for the task, though she’ll aim for the former, she’s scared she might inadvertently cause more of the latter.

And she can’t bear to inflict any more suffering on Lisa than she already has.

—

Jennie is broken out of her rueful thoughts when in a further bid of courage Lisa sticks her hand out across the table to finalise her offer. Jennie’s silence must have unnerved her into action.

The gesture refocuses Jennie to consider what accepting means for herself.

It doesn’t feel real. That Lisa is volunteering a do-over that Jennie had shed tears for during sleepless nights but had never imagined in a million years would be possible.

She thought the ship had long sailed, that the train had left the station, the plane had taken off. Whatever the transport analogy, in all scenarios Jennie is the one still standing on the platform clutching her carry-on to her chest, out of breath and inconsolable for arriving too late.

She had dreamt of swimming across the ocean, running after the steamer, or hiring her own pilot, but never had she considered Lisa herself would steer the ship around, reverse the train, or reroute the plane.

Jennie must still be suffering from a heat-induced delirium, or the effects of global warming is personally singling her out, because the outstretched hand looks to her like the recent snowfall covering the dunes of the Sahara desert.

An unexpected but bright sighting.

It’s sublimely beautiful, if not majestic in its deception.

The precarity of the situation notwithstanding, she finds herself willing to accept what’s being presented before her at face value. The risk that it turns out to be a mirage, signposting that either the world has indeed ended or that she has succumbed to heat stroke, she’ll file away for processing at a later time when there isn’t a slight tremor to Lisa’s hand and Lisa isn’t looking at her with muted hope.

Never mind the alarm bells ringing off in her head that Dawn must be able to hear from his station miles away and across Brooklyn Bridge, or the out-of-the-blueness with which Lisa had appeared, or the scotch tape that’s still barely holding her own torn-open heart together.

Jennie can not deny the permanent ache that sits lowly in her chest easing just a little at the thought of being friends with Lisa again.

The empty space that Lisa had left behind was so vast that she needed canvases larger than the combined landmasses of Russia, China and Australia to fill, deserts and sand dunes included. Lisa’s proposal feels like a heavy-duty woven cloth where Jennie had previously been using filo-thin pastry sheets to cover her painting surfaces.

Surreal or not, she is grateful for the fearless hand that’s reached out to pull her from the depth of her regret.

She feels a little less hollow for the extra help to refill the cavern of her heart.  To start mending it.

If this is the end of the world, and the beginning of her unravelling, she doesn’t care. She’ll gladly go down in spectacular flames, and lead the charge out of the apocalypse, if it means having Lisa back in her life—and she gets one more chance at cosmic bliss.

Against reason, and in favour of hope, Jennie will save rationality for another day.

She shakes her agreement.

“Friends.”

—

The order of the day

Is mend the falling out

And let guilt fade away

Refinement bring about

Then we can begin

Then my heart can beat

And underneath it

underneath it

underneath it

underneath it

Underneath It by Ásgeir