Chapter 28: The Stoned Standoff
It was his.
The room held her shape in the silence after he left. Jennie stood motionless for a full minute, absorbing the altered acoustics. Then she moved.
She began to tidy, but her tidying was a form of archaeology. She folded his discarded shirt, burying her face in the cotton to inhale the sweat and clean smoke. She realigned the whiskey bottles on the desk into a precise, soldierly line. She found one of his volleyball socks under the bed and slipped it onto her hand, stroking her own cheek with the material. She was cataloging, claiming. The green-flecked cheese went in the trash. The single plate and fork were washed, dried, and placed alone in the cupboard.
She opened his laptop, her fingers flying over the keys. His password was the name of his childhood dog, a fact she’d deduced weeks ago. She skimmed his emails for any mention of herself, found none, and felt a twinge of something hot and unpleasant. She closed it. She would not be a secret.
Her own phone buzzed—a notification for his team’s bus departure from the sports complex. She visualized the route. She pictured him leaning against a window, his curls against the glass, earbuds in, ignoring Mateo’s needling. The thought was a comfort. She sank into the dent his body had left in the mattress, pulling his pillow over her face. She could still sleep here, wrapped in the evidence of him.
Hours bled away in a pleasant haze of ownership. She attended a lecture via a crackling audio call, her notes meticulous while she traced the veins on the back of her own hand, imagining his. When the digital clock on the microwave flipped to 4:17 PM, a new sound disrupted the quiet. The metallic scratch of a key in the lock.
Jennie went still, her head tilting like a predator identifying a frequency. It wasn’t his step. The door swung open, and a cloud of vanilla perfume and cheerful chatter preceded the visitor.
“Leo, you will not believe the shit Professor Gable tried to pull today with the—” Rosé stopped dead in the doorway, her sentence wilting. Her dyed blonde hair was in a messy bun, a guitar case slung over her shoulder. She blinked, taking in the sight: Jennie, cross-legged on Leonid’s bed, surrounded by her own textbooks, wearing what was unmistakably Leonid’s hoodie. The room smelled different—less like stale smoke, more like cherry blossom and a cleaned surface.
“Oh,” Rosé said, the bubble in her voice deflating. “Hi.”
“Hello, Rosé,” Jennie said. Her tone was placid, a flat lake.
“Is… Leo here?” Rosé’s eyes darted to the closed bathroom door, then back.
“He’s at his away match. In Carlton. The bus returns after ten.” Jennie relayed the information as pure data. “You have a key.”
Rosé held up the key, as if needing to confirm its existence. “Yeah. Yeah, he gave it to me. For, you know. Emergencies. Or when we hang.”
“I see.” Jennie’s gaze was a physical weight. It scanned Rosé from her boots to her worried eyes. “He didn’t mention you were coming over today.”
“He doesn’t know. It was a spontaneous thought.” Rosé shifted her weight, her confidence seeping back in. She was his best friend. This was their space. She walked in, dropping her guitar case by the desk. “We usually just… chill. Smoke a bit. Debrief.”
Jennie watched her move through the room with a familiarity that made her jaw tighten minutely. She saw Rosé notice the neatened bottles, the made bed, the absence of the usual chaos. “You redecorated,” Rosé said, a faint, unsure laugh in her voice.
“I optimized.”
An awkward silence thickened the air. Rosé plopped down in the leather armchair, pulling a pre-rolled joint and a lighter from her jacket pocket. An old, shared ritual. She lit it, took a hit, and offered it across the space toward Jennie. A peace offering. A test.
Jennie stared at the glowing tip. She uncoiled herself from the bed and walked over. She didn’t take the joint from Rosé’s fingers. Instead, she leaned down, her black hair falling forward, and placed her lips where Rosé’s had just been. She inhaled, her eyes locked on Rosé’s widening ones, then stood straight, holding the smoke in her lungs before releasing it in a slow, deliberate stream that dissipated between them.
“He’s mine,” Jennie said, the words simple, clinical, floating on the exhaled smoke. She said it not as a threat, but as a correction of a fundamental fact, like stating the time or the weather.
Rosé’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked at the joint, then back at Jennie’s impassive face. A slow smile, more impressed than afraid, spread across her features. “Okay. Yeah. I’m getting that.”
“Good.” Jennie took the joint properly this time, sitting on the edge of the desk. “You may stay. He values you. Therefore, you have value.”
“Gee, thanks,” Rosé snorted, the tension breaking into bewildered laughter. “So, what’s the protocol, then? Do I need to call you ‘ma’am’?”
“Jennie is sufficient.” She took another hit, her body relaxing infinitesimally. “You may tell me about Professor Gable’s shit. I am proficient in academic grievance analysis.”
Rosé shook her head, a laugh still bubbling in her chest. She leaned back, grabbing the half-full whiskey bottle and taking a swig straight from the neck. “You know, Leo told me you were intense. I don’t think he has the right word for it.”
“His vocabulary is adequate for most purposes, but lacks specificity in this area.” A tiny, almost imperceptible smirk touched Jennie’s lips. She passed the joint back. “Proceed with your debrief.”