CHAPTER 17
Gabi woke up energized and ready to get to work; not her actual job because it was Sunday and she had the day off from that, but working on the hardware for her new, sort of second job.
Needing to take a shower first, she changed out of her pajamas and put on a robe that she had bought earlier that week.
She’d never been much of a robe person, but she’d also not had roommates since the dorm, where she’d had her only other robe.
She had bought it thinking it might come in handy, and she was proven right about that when she opened her door to walk across the hall to the bathroom and nearly bumped into Sarai, who was leaving said bathroom with wet hair and a towel wrapped around her body.
“Oh, sorry,” she said and quickly looked away.
“Why? She’s worn less clothing out to a club before,” Arlowe said.
Gabi turned to see Arlowe walking down the hallway toward them and then right between them.
“You’ve worn less than a towel to a club before?”
“She’s exaggerating,” Sarai replied. “But I will admit to having dresses that are only slightly longer than this towel, and they were probably also a little more skin-tight.”
Gabi swallowed.
“Shower?” Sarai asked.
“Yup.”
“I was quick, so there should be plenty of hot water.”
“Okay. Great. Thanks,” she replied.
“No problem.”
“Sarai, we’re in the garage!” Arlowe yelled then, probably from the kitchen.
“Why?”
“Vi just texted. She’s coming over with Stella. Gabi, are you free?”
“I’m about to take a shower.”
“And after that?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Vi wants to talk about the hardware.”
“It’s Sunday. Can’t we have one day off?” Sarai asked, and as she did, she let go of her towel.
It had all happened fast. The towel hadn’t been tucked in well enough, and one end of it had begun to fall, but even with how fast it had happened, Gabi had had a split second to consider her next move.
She could’ve let it fall and gotten a glimpse of Sarai’s naked body a mere inches away from her own, or she could’ve reached out and stopped it from falling.
She’d opted for the latter, but in that short period of time, the only way that she could think to stop it from falling had been to reach out where the end of the towel had been moving to catch it.
Having done that, though, she ended up with one of her hands on Sarai’s right breast.
“Uh…” Gabi let out.
“Sorry,” Sarai said, taking the towel and tucking it back into place, which more or less forced Gabi’s hand off her body.
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”
“It’s fine.”
“What are you two talking about?” Enya asked.
Gabi had been startled by her and jumped back against the wall. Her robe, which had been tied at the waist, nearly came undone, but Sarai’s hand had jumped, too, and she was currently holding the two ends of the belt together to keep Gabi from being naked this time.
“Jesus,” Gabi said.
“Hey, are you three coming or not?” Arlowe asked, reappearing in the hallway.
“Yeah. Are you coming?” Enya asked.
“You knew Vi was coming over?” Sarai asked.
“She texted all of us.”
“I was in the shower,” Sarai explained while Gabi was too focused on the fact that she’d just had her hand on Sarai’s boob and Sarai still had her hand on her belt.
When her brain started working again, Gabi took control of her belt, and it made Sarai drop her hand.
“Gabi’s taking a shower now,” Sarai added. “And I need to put on some clothes. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“I really only need you a little bit,” Enya said. “It’s more about whether Gabi can come.”
“Well, why is Violet driving her ass over here when she didn’t even know if Gabi was free?” Sarai asked.
“She wanted to come for breakfast anyway,” Enya answered. “She and Stella are picking up bagels and coffee for us.”
“So, she misses us, too,” Sarai said. “It is both adorable and frightening how co-dependent we are with each other.”
“We’re not co-dependent; we just like each other,” Enya said before she walked by them. “I’ll be in the garage working until they get here.”
“I should…”
Gabi nodded to the door behind Sarai.
“Right. Shower. Yeah.”
When Sarai moved out of the way and hurried into her own bedroom, Gabi turned to see Arlowe standing there with her arms crossed over her chest.
“What?” she asked.
“Question. Are you a bagel or donut person?”
“I like both,” she replied.
“I’ll let that slide. You’re new.”
Arlowe walked off before Gabi could ask her what she meant by that, so she focused on the task at hand. She went into the bathroom and started the water.
One thing about living with roommates that had been a big adjustment for Gabi was the fact that she felt self-conscious about taking care of building tension and stress when she needed a little release.
In all of her previous apartments, her bedroom had been on an outer building wall.
She hadn’t planned it that way. Those were just the units that had been available at the time, but that meant that she hadn’t needed to worry about someone hearing her unless she opened a window wide and really let it out, which she never had.
Now, though, she was in a bedroom next to another bedroom across the hall from other bedrooms and living with three other women.
She’d never been loud when touching herself, but at the same time, doing that with the others being within earshot had been something she hadn’t been able to wrap her head around yet.
The shower had been an option. It would block out some sound, and she might be able to make herself come quickly, get out, dress, and pretend like she hadn’t just done that, but today would not be that day.
She couldn’t see herself rubbing her clit while standing in the shower, biting her lip until she came, and then going out there to have bagels and a work meeting with the rest of them.
So, despite wanting to do that more than she had in a very long time, she tried to unpack what had gotten her so turned on instead.
Of course, that unpacking had taken all of a few seconds because she knew exactly what had gotten her so turned on. She had just had her hand on Sarai’s boob, and Sarai’s hands had been about six inches away from where Gabi was washing and trying not to spend too much time.
She finished showering quickly, dried off, put on her robe, opened the door, and looked both ways down the hall.
Seeing no one, she made it back into her own room, closed the door behind her, and dropped her robe to the floor, needing to cool off a bit before she got dressed.
Then, she heard the front door open, which meant that Violet and Stella were here now, so she grabbed her hair dryer and got to work.
Ten minutes later and still a little turned on, she left her room and went down the hall toward the kitchen.
“Where’s Sarai?” she asked when she saw everyone but the woman who had almost made her touch herself.
“Outside,” Enya said. “She needed a moment or something.”
“Hey, you’re free, right?” Violet asked. “If not, it’s fine. I just thought that because you’re working Monday through Friday, this morning might work out to talk about the hardware, but I didn’t ask you in advance, so it’s totally fine if you have plans.”
“At eight in the morning on a Sunday? Unsurprisingly, I do not have plans.”
“You could’ve had church or something,” Arlowe suggested before she took a bite of a bagel.
“Not a big churchgoer,” she replied.
“Great.” Violet smiled. “Not the fact that you don’t go to church. I mean, go there if you want or not; that’s up to you. Just that you’re free.”
“She gets excited about work,” Stella explained. “Even on Sunday mornings when her girlfriend really wants to just sleep in.”
“Please, you knew this about me when you asked me to move in with you. I’ll go get Sarai, and we can get started.”
“I’ve got her,” Gabi said. “What kind of bagel does she like? I’ll bring her one.”
“If you do that, she’ll just eat it out there. We should get started in the garage,” Violet suggested.
“Babe, let them eat their breakfast,” Stella said with a little laugh. “I love you, but chill.”
“She likes the blueberry ones with cream cheese,” Enya answered her actual question. “She doesn’t usually eat them toasted.”
“And that’s her coffee,” Stella added, pointing to one of the cups in one of the two carriers. “Yours is right next to it.”
“Thanks.”
Gabi went about making herself a bagel and did the same for Sarai. She put them both on the same plate, shoved her own coffee under her arm, and held Sarai’s cup with her free hand. Arlowe opened the door for her, and she headed outside to find Sarai, once again, sitting on the swing.
“Hey, you didn’t get breakfast,” Gabi said. “Enya told me you liked blueberry bagels, so I hope she wasn’t playing a prank on me.”
“The blueberry bagel caper? Pretty lame prank.”
“So, it is a prank?”
“No, Enya wouldn’t know how to prank people. Blueberry bagels are my favorite,” Sarai replied.
“And this is your coffee.”
Sarai took the cup that Gabi held out and said, “Thank you. I was about to come in. I just needed a moment to myself first.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked and sat down next to Sarai, leaving some space for the plate, which she set down between them.
“I’m getting a little burned out. We work all day Monday through Friday and not just during business hours.
Then, there are these Saturday meetings or office visits.
I thought I’d at least have today to relax and, I don’t know, maybe even read one of those books in my closet that I haven’t had time for in years, but now, Violet is here with Stella, and I swear, they’re using this as foreplay. ”
“What?”
Gabi laughed before she sipped her coffee.
“They have this whole argue-until-they-have-sex thing going on with them. It’s how they started dating in the first place. So, don’t be surprised if they say that they have to go unexpectedly. They’re going home to fuck each other.”
“You think that’s the only reason Violet wanted to meet this morning?”
“Not the only. Violet also works twenty-four-seven and rarely seems to get tired.”
“Which makes you feel like you can’t get tired?”
“She bankrolled us for years, Gabi. She had most of the pressure on her to get us to where we are now and would lose way more than the rest of us if it didn’t work out, and she just never gets tired.
I do sometimes, though. I’ve felt it for a while, and none of us ever take vacations.
I’m sure Violet will now because she’s in a relationship and Stella will insist on it at some point, but we hardly ever get days off, so we can’t exactly go away for a week.
It’s been like this for more than ten years now, and I think it’s getting to me.
I think it might be why I haven’t come up with a good idea in a while. ”
“Sarai, you’re only human. You need breaks.”
“So, Vi is part robot?”
Gabi chuckled and said, “No, but she might be built differently or something. She might also be burning out and not saying something, just like you. It could be that all of you need to take a damn break.”
“Not Enya. She lives for this stuff.”
“She’s also a person, though. I’m sure she could use a break. Why don’t you say something to Violet about at least having a weekend off for once?”
“I can’t,” Sarai said and took a sip of her coffee. “We’re finally making progress. Plus, we have you now, and you’re going to help us with the wearable. We shouldn’t be losing momentum.”
“For someone who told me that she reads a ton of business and marketing books, you really surprise me. There’s no way that you haven’t read about how, if you take breaks to recharge, you’ll actually do your job better. It has to at least be one chapter in some brilliant marketing book you’ve read.”
“It’s easier said than done,” Sarai replied. “But it’s too late for today. Vi is here, you’re here, and I really do want to make progress on this. The more we know about what you can design, the better we can be when it comes to the partnership possibilities.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’ll take years for something to be created, tested, and manufactured.
We’re going to try to get the software onto other wearables for now, and then, when ours is ready, we can decide to either keep it there or make it exclusive to our wearables.
Kind of like Kindle. When it first came out, you could only read on a Kindle device, but then, they made the app, and as long as whatever app store you use has it, you can read on it.
We need to figure out which road to take.
If you can design something that is so much better than anything anyone else would make and it could stand on its own, we could make it exclusive to our hardware, which is a plus in one way, but a minus in another because we’d risk losing a bulk of our users.
Anyway, my point is the more we know now, the better. ”
“God, now I’m a little nervous. I only have a few notes on my phone. I don’t have a mock-up or anything yet.”
“Gabs, you signed the paperwork on Thursday. Violet doesn’t expect you to have a working prototype already. She just wants to get the ball rolling.” Sarai went to take a drink of her coffee but stopped and added, “Shit. Sorry. I called you Gabs again. Accident. I wasn’t trying to annoy you.”
Gabi smiled softly and said, “It’s fine. It doesn’t actually bother me when you call me that for some reason.”
“You said it was annoying when we met.”
“I was trying to be more grown-up around you, remember? That was my childhood nickname, and I didn’t want to be a child anymore. I didn’t want you to see me that way.” She cleared her throat. “Or, you know, your friends. You were all four years older than me and so much cooler than I felt.”
“We were not cool. We were all just big nerds.” Sarai laughed.
“Not to me.”
Sarai smiled at her and said, “We should eat these in there. I’m sure Violet is pacing holes in the concrete floor of the garage right now, ready to get started.”
“Whatever you want,” Gabi said.
“Hey, what’s your favorite bagel? Just so I know for the future.”
“Oh, I’m not picky. I usually grab whatever’s left in the dozen.”
“But what’s your favorite?”
“I don’t know. I guess I like the asiago cheese one or the everything bagel.”
Sarai nodded seriously before she stood and said, “Arlowe usually eats the everything bagels, so have fun fighting her for those.”
Gabi chuckled, grabbed her own plate, and followed her inside.