CHAPTER 20
Sarai Kaplan: Hey, where are you?
Arlowe Romano: Out with Gabi. Why?
Sarai Kaplan: You went out with Gabi?
Arlowe Romano: Yeah. Why?
Sarai Kaplan: No reason. I just didn’t hear any noise in this house, which is kind of scary considering it’s generally pretty noisy around here. Enya must be asleep or something. I thought you and Gabi would still be working in the garage.
Arlowe Romano: Nope. I’ll see you later, or maybe tomorrow. I don’t know when we’ll be back.
Sarai looked around the empty kitchen. Then, she walked to the front of the house and noticed that Enya’s car wasn’t there, so she pulled out her phone again.
Sarai Kaplan: Hey, did you go out? Your car’s not here.
Enya Callaghan: I went to that seminar on how people talk when they don’t speak the same language.
Sarai Kaplan: It’s after eleven.
Enya Callaghan: I met up with the lecturer after. We’re out with a couple of grad students right now. I’m thinking of asking them for their help with the hardware.
Sarai Kaplan: Okay. Have fun, I guess.
Sarai put her phone into the pocket of her sweatpants, looked down at herself, and wondered what she was doing.
She’d spent most of the week in her bedroom whenever she wasn’t working, and she’d been surprised that her friends had allowed that to happen.
Usually, when she went into one of her solo modes where she didn’t want to talk to anyone for a few days, they still bothered her for one thing or another, but this time, they’d actually allowed her to just be on her own, contemplating her life outside of work for the first time in a while and trying not to think about how Arlowe and Gabi had been getting along so well the previous weekend.
She would hear them laughing as they’d walked by her room on the way to their own, and while she knew what Arlowe had told her about not wanting anything with Gabi, she also knew Arlowe, and she wasn’t so sure about Gabi’s intentions.
Gabi might not have been interested in Arlowe in the beginning, but she could be now.
They’d been really getting along, and now, they were out together somewhere, too, just the two of them.
It was after eleven, and it was entirely possible that they were on a date.
Arlowe hadn’t exactly said that in her texts, but she hadn’t told her anything to the contrary, either.
Sarai pulled her phone back out before she sat on the sofa and opened her texts with Arlowe, intent on asking that very question.
Sarai Kaplan: Are you and Gabi on a date?
She leaned back against the sofa and deleted the message.
If they were on a date, she had no right to know unless they wanted her to.
She also had no right to be upset about Gabi and Arlowe liking each other.
Seeing Gabi just fit right in with her friends and their work the previous weekend had been great in a lot of ways because she knew that Gabi had been hoping to make new friends and fit in with her roommates, but it had also brought out Sarai’s pretty intense jealousy.
She tossed her phone onto the sofa and picked up the remote control.
Having put something on TV that she didn’t care about, she just sat there, acting like a mom whose teenager was on their first date, and she needed to make sure that they didn’t spend an hour making out in the car after curfew.
She wasn’t proud of herself, but she also hadn’t gotten up and gone to her bedroom to get some sleep, either.
It was around midnight when she heard a car pull into the driveway, and it took everything in her not to get up to see if it was them.
“Oh, hey. You’re still up?” Enya said when she walked in the door.
“Yeah. Just watching some TV. How was your seminar?”
“Good. Nothing new in the concepts or anything, but I had great conversations after that with everyone. I forgot how nice it can be, talking to academics about languages.”
“You’re not going to leave us for that fancy university, are you?”
“What? No way. We’re finally making real progress. I’m not going anywhere. It’s just nice. I’ve spoken in, like, five languages tonight. You know how important it is for me to practice.”
“Gabi speaks French fluently. You could probably practice that one with her.”
“I could, yeah. I always forget that she lived there for so long. She said she speaks Spanish, too, right?”
“I think she understands that one more than she speaks it, but I did hear her say a curse word in French the other day when she couldn’t open a jar. It was pretty hilarious.”
Sarai smiled at the memory.
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t know it was a curse word until she told me, but the face she made was–” Sarai stopped.
“Was what?” Enya asked, sitting down next to her.
“Nothing,” she said as she shook her head.
“You know, I’m not as aloof and out of it as I appear sometimes, Sarai.”
“I never said you–”
“I was there when you dropped her off at the station.”
“Huh?”
“In Amsterdam. I went with you, remember?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You went inside with her when someone asked me for directions. I helped them and waited for you, but when you came back out, you seemed different. You had this moment where your shoulders were up and then down.”
“I shrugged?”
“No, you kind of looked like Eeyore,” Enya said. “Sad. You were sad. Then, it was like something changed, and your shoulders went all the way back up to your ears. You put on a brave face, walked over to me, and said you were ready to hit the grocery store like nothing had happened at all.”
“Nothing had happened. I dropped someone off at the train station.”
“Someone you liked, Sarai.” Enya patted her on the knee. “And by some miracle, that same someone is here. She lives with us, and you could actually talk to her about what you’re feeling instead of hiding away in your bedroom all the time.”
“I wasn’t hiding away.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Fine. Maybe I was. But only because Arlowe has been all over her this week, and it’s been annoying the shit out of me. She told me she wasn’t interested in Gabi, but then what the hell, you know?”
“I don’t think she is.”
“Well, they’re out together tonight, and–” She stopped when she heard it. “Shit. I think they’re home.”
“I’m going to bed,” Enya said. “I don’t have the energy to sit through whatever is about to happen. Will you just keep it down if you’re going to argue with Arlowe?”
“I’m not going to argue with her,” she replied.
“Sure; because that’s never happened before.”
Enya stood and walked down the hall toward her room. The front door opened a second later, and only Gabi walked through it before she closed the door behind her and turned to notice Sarai on the couch.
“Oh, hey. You’re up?”
“Yeah, I was watching something. Enya just got home, and we were talking, but she went to bed.”
“What were you watching?” Gabi asked.
“Nothing, really. Just mindlessly staring at the TV.”
“Why were you doing that?” Gabi asked with a laugh.
“How was your date?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.
“My date?”
Gabi sat down next to her and looked pretty confused.
“You went out with Arlowe.”
“You thought we were on a date?”
“I didn’t know. I texted her, and she said you two went out together.”
“Yeah, to a gay bar where Arlowe met someone, and…” Gabi motioned to the room. “Do you see her anywhere?”
“She went home with…”
“Probably. She was just telling me the whole drive there that she wanted to get herself ready for a relationship, but then, a hot woman walked up to her, asked her to dance, and suddenly, they’re making out on the dance floor, and Arlowe is asking me if I’m okay taking my own Uber home.
My guess is that they’re still there, or at the woman’s house, but I don’t know.
And I told you that I wasn’t into Arlowe, Sarai. ”
“I know.” She sighed.
“And she’s not into me, either. I asked her about that earlier today just to be sure that there’s nothing on her side because I don’t want her to think that I’m interested at all.”
“You two were just getting along really well this week, so I thought that maybe something had changed.”
“It hasn’t,” Gabi told her.
“Okay. Well, good, I guess, or whatever. I should go to bed. It’s late,” she rambled as she turned off the TV, feeling like she needed to get out of there fast.
“Can you tell me something first?”
“Possibly.”
“Why are you so concerned with Arlowe’s feelings for me and mine for her?”
“You just said you don’t have any for her.”
“Sarai, I’m serious. Come on.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt. Arlowe has been telling us over and over again that she’s ready and wants a relationship, but her actions don’t exactly back that up. I didn’t want you to think that she wanted more when she probably doesn’t.”
“So, you’re just trying to protect me?”
“Yes.”
“And it has nothing to do with the fact that you like me?”
“What?!” she asked, her eyes wide and her voice probably up an octave, which had Gabi laughing.
“You do, don’t you? Arlowe said–”
“Arlowe told you that I liked you?”
“No, she’s weirdly protective of all of your secrets. She just said that you’re a terrible poker player the other day because you can’t bluff, and now, I can see it.”
“See that I can’t play poker?”
“You’re not a good liar, and that’s basically what bluffing is, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t even say anything.”
“Sarai, your eyes got so big; like you’d gotten caught doing something.” Gabi smiled softly at her. “It was really cute.”
“Cute?”
“You have to know how I feel about you.”
“I don’t,” she replied and swallowed, her throat going completely dry.
“I liked you then. I like you now.”
“You liked me back then?”
“Obviously.” Gabi chuckled. “Sarai, you were beautiful, kind, funny, and so smart. I met you, and I wanted to stay in Amsterdam and skip the rest of my trip. Why do you think I invited you to Paris and wanted to come back and visit you before you went home?”
“Because you wanted me to see Paris before I left Europe?” she asked more than said.
“I knew you saw me as a kid, and I tried to change that while I was there, but you were pretty locked in on the fact that I wasn’t even in college yet.”
“I was?”
“You kept bringing it up every chance you got. You told random strangers at a museum gift shop that I was on a gap year.”
“Oh, I remember now.” She chuckled. “I can’t believe I forgot about that.
But I wasn’t telling them because of that.
I mentioned it because the woman said that her daughter was about to go off to art school, which was why she was buying her a Van Gogh notebook and one of those pens that look like a giant paintbrush.
I was getting one for you because you said they were cool, but I wanted the red one for me and the blue one for you because you’d mentioned liking blue.
When we went for the blue at the same time, she explained the thing about wanting it for her daughter, so I told her that I wanted to get it for you because you were going to college after your gap year. ”
“You let her have it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. It was for her daughter, and she was going to art school. Seemed more appropriate, so I got you–”
“The magnet. I remember. I still have it.”
“You do?”
Gabi nodded and said, “It’s in a box in my closet, along with the rest of my travel stuff. I used to have it on my fridge, though. I put it away when I moved in here because the three of you aren’t really fridge magnet people.”
“You had it on your fridge?”
“Sarai, I liked you,” Gabi repeated. “Yeah, I had a girlfriend before you and I met, but I really liked you. I felt something the second I laid eyes on you, and you seemed so uninterested in me.”
“I was interested, but–”
“I was too young for you.”
“No. Well, yes, but it wasn’t really the age thing.
It was the life stuff. I was about to graduate from college, Gabi.
You were still going on your world tour before you even started college in Paris, while I would be starting out in some entry-level job somewhere.
It felt like an impossible situation, so I talked myself into thinking that it was just a crush and tried to push you out of my mind and move on.
I did on and off, but you were somehow always in the back of it.
Then, you’re in the front of it because you’re standing at a bar, with a menu in your hand, and I’m totally floored because I can’t believe you’re right next to me. ”
Gabi’s smile widened.
“So, can we go out on a date already, then?”
Sarai had been smiling a little, too, but stopped.
“Or not…” Gabi added.
“I want to.”
“I’m sensing a but coming.”
“But, Gabi, we live and work together. It’s complicated now. It’s somehow more complicated than it was back then. I didn’t think that was possible.”
“We can figure it out,” Gabi replied before she shifted a little closer to her and took Sarai’s hands in her own. “It doesn’t have to get in the way.”
“I know. But it could. If we try, and it doesn’t work, it will be awkward, and Enya just got done reminding me how we’re making actual progress at work right now.”
“Can you maybe put work aside for a minute and think about the fact that you and I liked each other about eleven years ago, somehow made it here, and still like each other?”
“I want to, Gabs, but we’ve been working toward this forever.”
“I get it; I do. But I’m not even a real employee.”
“You still live here, and… I don’t know, Gabi. I…”
Gabi let go of her hands and said, “Yeah, I got it. Understood.” She stood up. “I’m pretty tired, Sarai. I think I’ll just go to bed.”
“Gabs…”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure.”
“Is that it? The house thing? The work thing? Are those the only two reasons you don’t want to try?”
“I can’t risk it,” she said.
“That’s not really an answer, Sarai. What can’t you risk? Making things around here a little more complicated if you and I don’t end up working out? Or your heart to someone who’s pretty much wanted to protect it since she was eighteen years old?”
Gabi didn’t wait for an answer. She nodded seriously for some reason and walked down the hallway toward her room. After she closed the door, the front door opened, and Arlowe walked in.
“I thought you went home with someone,” Sarai said.
“I couldn’t go through with it.”
“Need to talk?”
“No, but… thank you.”
Arlowe looked at the floor before she walked down the hallway herself.