DELICATE ★ JENLISA - Chapter 38: Chapter 38

~Lisa~
After Charles took the plea deal, I seemed to convince myself that all the incessant worrying on both Jen and I's part would be over. I suppose I just wanted Jen to be okay, and I knew that when Charles was released she wouldn't be, so I refused to let myself think about it.
It was impossible to do that now.
He had been released from prison and now Jen was, for lack of a better word, missing. I knew that she'd have to be gone for a full twenty-four hours before the police department could assume something was wrong, but I couldn't wait that long. I knew something wasn't right. She was supposed to get off work hours ago, yet she still wasn't home. What worried me the most was the fact that she had begun to respond to one of my many texts, then stopped, and had since been completely unresponsive. The only logical explanation that I could form in my mind was that Charles had payed a visit to her at work, she'd tried to text me, and the two were now off somewhere....
My blood ran cold. Charles had to be angry. What would happen if he got her alone?
Just how much was he capable of?
In the midst of my pacing, I bumped into Ashley, who grabbed hold of my shoulders and brought me to a complete stop. "Lisa," she said, her tone soft but demanding. "Are you even listening to me?"
"Yeah," I mumbled, "I just don't believe any of the words coming out of your mouth."
She sighed. "I'm sure she's okay. She probably went to a friend's house and her phone died. Honestly, I think you're blowing this whole thing out of proportion."
I considered it for maybe half a second. I knew the only friend she'd consider spending real time with was Taemin, but all of me knew that she wasn't with him. Somehow, I just knew. I pulled out of her grasp. "When the love of your life goes missing, you're entitled to sit around and wait for them to just show up. But we're different people, and I'm not going to do that."
Jackson spoke up from his spot on the couch in my living room. He'd been over this afternoon so that we could catch up, but now I was quite obviously panicking about Jen and neither of them seemed to want to let me do anything about it. "Charles seems like an asshole but do you really think he's stupid enough to try hurting her the day after he gets out of prison?"
"Yes, I do think he's that stupid. Honestly... both of you deal with criminals a lot more often than I ever have, how am I the only one that can piece this together? Jen's missing the day after Charles is released. She's never not answered me before, I have a hard time believing this is a coincidence."
Ashley and Jackson looked at each other and I practically rolled my eyes. It was as if I was a child and needed permission from my parents to go make sure my girlfriend was okay. I brushed past Ashley and walked right past the kitchen. Jackson jumped from the couch and ran over, sliding into the space between me and the door. "Woah, just wait a minute okay? Where are you going?"
"Charles's house," I muttered, trying to walk around him.
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me back, shaking his head. "As your friend, I can't let you do that Lisa. He's dangerous."
"I know!" I shouted in his face, trying to hold myself together. "Why do you think I'm so god damn worried? She can't do anything to fight against him, especially not with the state she's in, and if he gets her alone—"
"Okay, okay, I get it, but I'm coming with you," he said, releasing me. I didn't bother arguing. I pushed out the front door and got into my car as Jackson slid in the passenger seat, driving off and leaving Ashley alone in my apartment. I pulled up to the house and stormed out of the car, knocking on the front door over and over again until Charles opened it.
"Oh this is a fun surprise." He was the first to speak, and while he had his usual smug, cocky attitude to him, he also looked ridiculously tired and worn out. "To what do I owe this pleasure, blondie?"
"Where is Jen?" I snapped. I was convinced he had her in there and I wasn't going to leave without her. Jackson towered above me and stood about two inches taller than Charles, so I figured if we had to fight our way through the house to find her, we'd be okay.
He didn't seem like he wanted to fight. "Jesus, I didn't even do anything and I still get you people banging down my front door. Look I don't have her. You're welcome to look around, if you must."
I turned slightly, eyeing Jackson. He seemed skeptical too, and Charles obviously caught our glances. "I really don't have her. I haven't seen her since the trial, honest. I swear on Cate's life, and I know you think I'm a despicable person, but I do happen to love my wife. Hell, I'll swear on my life if you want me to."
I ignored him, pushing into the semi-familiar house and looking around. I started in the kitchen and searched every square inch, but she wasn't in there. He was telling the truth about one thing, he didn't have her. Whether or not he knew where she was, I wasn't sure. Charles watched as Jackson and I returned to the door, the frustration clear on my face.
"You should probably keep better track of your girlfriend," Charles muttered as I was passing. He spoke again, "I'd kind of like to move on with my life and this shit gets old."
I froze, turning slowly and meeting his cold eyes. "You'd like to move on with your life?" I practically whispered in disbelief. "You're actually joking right?" I looked at Jackson. "He's got to be joking."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Charles stepping forward. Before I had the chance to blink, Jackson was between us and was twisting Charles's wrist behind his back, pressing him against the wall. "Here's the thing," he whispered loud enough for both Charles and I to hear. "I may not have been able to do anything about you touching Jen, but you will not lay your hands on this woman, understand?"
Somehow, Charles managed to get his words out, even with his cheek pressed against the wall. "Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I already have."
Jackson's brow pulled together in confusion and anger as he pulled Charles's wrist farther behind his back, so far he could probably dislocate Charles's shoulder if he so desired. I pulled at his arm, shaking my head. "Let's go."
Jackson took a moment to decide whether or not to follow me, before he released Charles and  joined me as I walked back to the car. "The fuck does he mean by he already has?"
I shook my head. "Nothing, relax." I took a deep breath, trying to start the car as I thought to myself. Was I overreacting? Maybe Jen really was at Taemin's and something had happened to her phone. If that was the case, I honestly needed to get a grip.
But I'd sworn... it seemed all too coincidental.
"Do you think he was telling the truth?"
Jackson shrugged. "Hard to say, but he didn't show the typical signs of discomfort or anything and he sounded pretty sincere."
"Am I crazy?" I practically whispered, "for worrying about her like this?"
"No," he murmured after a while. He tried to reassure me, putting his hand on my shoulder. "She'll show up, Lisa. I know she will."
I stayed quiet as I started back toward my apartment. When we made it to the parking lot outside of my building, I sat with my head pressed against the steering wheel for a long time, wondering.
Where was she?
Jackson began to get out of the car after a while, it being clear to him that I didn't want to talk. My cell phone started ringing just as he slammed the door shut and my heart started thumping. Jen. I scrambled to find my phone, only to realize that it was Liam calling me. I almost didn't answer; I was in no mood to put up with him or listen to whatever he planned to say. But then I forced myself to think rationally, and I realized that Liam hadn't called me in the longest time. Whatever he needed to say to me, it had to be important.
I answered, "I'm so not in the mood to be shit on right now so if this isn't important, you can probably hang up the phone."
"I probably deserve that," Liam muttered. "Look this isn't about us. It's about Jen."
My heart nearly stopped when he mentioned her name. "What about her?"
"She showed up at my door a little while ago... uh, she looked... bad. Like, mentally. Well, and physically I guess. She was shaking and.. short of breath. It looked like a panic attack if you ask me, but like one hundred times worse."
My worry immediately skyrocketed. "What'd she say? What'd she want?"
"Honestly, I'm not really sure. She was saying how she had to get out of here, but she couldn't leave without making sure you would be okay so she needed me to stop acting like an asshole... uh, she mentioned Charles.."
Charles. What did he do? I felt myself growing angry, the list of emotions I was currently feeling getting longer and longer. I tried not to focus on him because I was too worried about her. When would she think about herself? Even in the middle of what Liam had labeled as a panic attack, she was still thinking about me, and I hated it because it meant that she wasn't working out the things she needed to within herself.
She was breaking down, and I had no idea where she was.
"Is she still there with you?" I closed my eyes, mouthing the word please to myself repeatedly until Liam's words forced my heart to sink.
"No... I don't know why, but she just ran. Maybe it was my fault? Honestly Lisa, the whole thing happened so fast, I just... I thought you should know because I know she means a lot to you..."
"She does..." I said, looking down. "Is there anything else she said? Anything? Please Liam, think."
He let out a sigh. "I... I don't think so. I asked her if she was leaving you, because that's kind of the vibe I was getting? But then she got really frustrated... said no... and then kept saying how she had to go.. how she needed to clear her head." He finished after a few moments, "Then she ran."
Something about his words sounded familiar, though I wasn't quite sure what it was. I sighed. "Well... thanks.. I guess, for calling me. I'm sure that took a lot of effort on your part."
Liam was silent on the other line for a while. It sounded like he wanted to say something serious, but he finally just said, "You're welcome." After a brief pause, he added, "We may not be each other's biggest fans but I'm still your brother and I don't know what kind of a person I'd be if I kept this from you. She was... really bad Lisa. I honestly don't even have the words to describe it to you..."
"You don't need to... I've seen it before. Well, maybe not the panic attack part." I let out a shaky sigh, desperately hoping that she was okay. I knew she wasn't mentally, but that was something we could work on as long as she was okay physically.
Both of us stayed quiet for a while. Through the silence, I heard Jen's words in my head from what now seemed like such a long time ago. I saw her face, her beautiful, hopeful, happy face in my mind as I replayed the afternoon where we'd driven to Long Island together to visit her sister. "Tell me it wouldn't be like, the perfect place to come at night and clear your head," she'd said. Liam had said Jen needed to do exactly that.
Could she honestly be...?
I couldn't even finish the thought because I realized she could very well be on that bridge. Clearing her head, I had no problem with, but in her current mental state, I was terrified she'd be taking it a little too far. I wanted for her to catch a break so bad. I wanted for her to smile again, for her to stop having nightmares that brought her to her breaking point, for her stop worrying. I could never be angry at her for just giving up completely because if I were her, I probably would have by now.
But I needed her.
I quickly put the car into drive and began pulling out of the parking lot with my phone pressed to my ear. I spoke, "I have to go."
"Do you uh.. need help looking for her or anything?" Liam asked, his tense, awkward voice making me nearly cringe.
"No, I think I know where she might be, but thanks."
"Well good luck then, I guess."
After a brief moment of hesitation, I responded, "We should talk sometime, you know, like how we were supposed to do almost a year ago when you stood me up."
I heard him sigh on the other line. "We should," he finally said, and then the phone call was over.
I continued driving, heading in the direction of his place, coincidentally. Most of me believed that what Jen had said ages ago and what she'd apparently said to Liam tonight were completely unrelated. But there was still a very small part of me that thought the opposite.
It was a huge shot in the dark, but it was all I had.
By the time I made it to where I thought Jen might be, I was a worried mess. I felt like I'd never see her again. The thought alone of having to live my life without her was terrifying. I knew she probably wasn't even here, let alone attempting to hurt herself, and I was probably severely overthinking her disappearance. She could have been anywhere, why did I have to jump to this conclusion first?
I parked my car near Liam's house and then took a cab to the section of the bridge where people were allowed to walk across. If Jen was here clearing her head like Liam had said, this was where she'd be.
But she wasn't.
I sighed heavily, letting my arms rest against the metal railings in front of me. I looked down, almost feeling like holding my head up was too difficult, and it was then that I saw her. She was there, sitting on the fence that namely served to stop people from jumping.
It all happened fast. I remember running as fast as my legs could take me, faster than I had ever run in college. My feet pounded against the concrete so hard I thought my knees would give in. There had to have been tears running down my face, because I know that at least on the inside, I was breaking down. In my mind, she had already jumped. She was already gone. All of my happiness was already lost.
I must have been twenty feet from her when I saw it happen. A single tear rolled down her face and her body sagged, like she didn't have the strength to hold it up anymore. Her lips moved, and it wasn't until I was ten feet from her that I heard what came out. I love you.
It was her goodbye.
She let go of the rail and tottered forward. She was literally playing a balancing game with her life; if the wind blew right, she would fall back onto the safety of the bridge. But if by chance the wind blew left, it would all be over.
It blew left, and I screamed.
She turned in time for me to see her grief stricken face, the tears pouring down, the defeat. I all but threw myself over the fence to catch her, even though I knew she didn't want to be caught. She wanted to be done. It wasn't my choice, I knew that, but to jump without saying goodbye? That I couldn't possibly let her do.
I grabbed hold of her hand after a terrifying few moments of fumbling. She pulled me forward, and for a second, I thought we would both go tumbling into the river. Then we stabilized, me with half my body hanging over the fence and her just dangling there. Her eyes were saying I'm sorry over and over and over again. Then it came out of her lips. "I'm so sorry Lisa," she whispered. I expected her to let go, but she didn't. She let me haul her over the fence, pull her into my arms and hold her.
For a moment, I convinced myself that I would never let go. As long as I held her, she would never have the opportunity to do something like this again. I would always have her, up until the day we both died the way people should. Somewhere beautiful, in Italy maybe, or in the house where we would have made so many beautiful memories. Raised our children in. Grew old together in. I pictured it. A two-story, somewhere far away from this town. A studio, of course, in the backyard for Jen to paint in. We would go to sleep one night in that house, not a retirement home, because we would be too damn stubborn to leave, and that would be that. We would be gone, but it'd be together, and it'd be after we'd spent a lifetime making memories we could leave behind.
Then, I loosened my grip.
I was so selfish.
I moved back a little, pressing her against the fence and cupping her cheek. We just stared. She hadn't expected to ever have to apologize to me. To ever have to face me after something like this. She expected to be gone, yet she was here, and now, I knew, she didn't know what to say.
In the heat of the moment, I could only bring myself to ask one thing: "Why now?"
Her eyes— pained and filled to the brim with tears— blinked at me. They all came tumbling down her face, one symbol of lost hope after the other. "It will never, ever stop," she whispered. "What I feel? It will never go away. I saw him today, in Max's store. He grabbed my wrist and I looked at him, and I just felt my entire world melting away Lisa. I went crazy. It was like someone pushed a fucking button, and suddenly I had no control over my mind. I don't want to grow old paranoid and schizophrenic because of that fucking maniac. I was hearing voices, Lisa, voices, telling me that I wasn't safe and that I never would be."
"I believe them." She placed her hands on either side of my face, brushing my tears away. "I know sorry means nothing, but Lisa, I could never have said goodbye to you. I would've seen you do this..." Her lip trembled. "And, damnit, I wouldn't have been able to do it. Now I can't. Now I fucking can't. You shouldn't have done it. You shouldn't have come." She pressed on my chest, pushing me back. "You should have just let me drop."
"Do you know what that'd have done to me, Jen? If I had done that?"
She looked down, the guilt obviously too overbearing to look me in the eye with. "I should have stayed where I was that night," she said, and for a moment, I didn't know what she was talking about. Then, she continued. "I should have sat right there at the bar and ordered another beer, paid, then left. You would be so much better off, Lisa."
It was quiet for a while. I said nothing, instead listened to the cars go by and watched the water ripple below us. "Do you honestly believe that?"
She didn't respond, just watched me avoid her eyes. I knew she did, she just couldn't bring herself to say it. "Do you know what my life would be like if I'd never met you, Jen? I would still be that absolute bitch you dealt with in September, except that part of me would never have gone away. I would have continued sleeping around— maybe I would have settled down with one of them. Probably a guy, because before you, I always figured the conventional route was the best route. We would have had kids and probably grown old, but do you want to know something, Jen? I would have grown old without ever experiencing what it's like to love someone more than myself. Without ever experiencing true happiness. Everything would just have been mediocre."
I brushed her cheek with my thumb. "Nothing is mediocre, or conventional with you. You aren't, and that's why I love you so damn much. If you want to go, go. I'm not going to be the one to make you stay in a world you don't want to live in. But don't you fucking dare leave me thinking that I'd ever have been better off without you."
"I don't want to go," she whispered. Her glistening eyes met mine. "I want to live in spite of Charles. I want to be able to walk up to him and tell him that he never got the best of me. But he did, Lisa. That's the thing. He did."
"I don't agree," I said. "He never got the best of you. You're still here. It was me who pulled you back up, yes, but you were the one that gave me the power to do so. Charles has always isolated you, made you think that you had to be alone, and do you know what you did?"
I smiled a bit. It was probably the hardest thing I'd ever done. "You let me in anyway, and everything you've done since then proves you haven't been bested. You still smile, and you still laugh, and I bet that if you give yourself a chance, you'll keep doing those things. Eventually it won't be in spite of him anymore, because he'll be so far lost in your past that he won't matter anymore and you'll do those things for yourself."
I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Don't you believe that? At least a little bit?"
"A little bit," she said, nodding. "But the rest of me believes I'll spend the rest of my life in Charles's control. I'll spend it depressed and bitter that other people get to live the way they want to when all I want to do is make my girlfriend fucking happy and I can't even do that."
My eyes were off the ground in a second. "Baby you do," I said, my lip trembling. "You do."
"I don't." She turned her head, looking up at the sky. "Love and happiness are two very different things Lisa. I know how you feel about me, but I also know that I drag you down with me every time I'm feeling like shit, which is pretty much every day, and I'm so tired of that. Conventional isn't always so bad, you know? I want you to have that, to not have to wake up every day and worry about your suicidal girlfriend. Don't you want that?"
"Yeah," I said, "I do. But I want it with you."
"But I'm not gonna get better," she said. "The world has some sort of vendetta against me. I don't know what the hell I did, but it does. My fate's been set, I think, and I don't believe it was ever in my cards to be happy in the end."
"Since when do you believe in fate? If it's not in your cards, you make new ones damnit!" Jen made to speak, but I grabbed her shoulders and shook my head. "No, I'm sorry, but I am not going to accept that. You give up because you don't want to keep going, not because you don't believe you can. I know you, and I know that giving up isn't your thing. You got me, remember? You sure as hell didn't do that by saying I can't. You kissed me, I got mad, and then you kissed me again. So you try to get better, you mess up, and then you try again. Okay?"
Jen's eyes began to water again, but if I knew her at all, it wasn't for the same reason as before. She pressed her hand to the back of my neck and pulled me forward so that our lips met. It was an odd sort of kiss, and when we pulled away, that was odd too, because all we saw were each other's tear stained faces. I would have done it over and over and over again, though. I'd never stop as long as she let me.
"Okay," she finally whispered. My heart swelled. She hadn't said much, but that one word meant, at least to me, the rest of our lives. It meant she'd keep trying, that she still wanted to. It was a promise, I like to think.
A promise I hoped would never be broken.
You have finally reached the end! Sorry for not updating this for so long. The ending is sad, but nowadays it's better to be negative than positive. All in all, thank you for waiting and grandpapi says,