CHAPTER 22
When Sarai walked into the kitchen Monday morning, she was surprised to see it empty.
She checked her phone and noted the time.
It was after eight. They usually got started officially at nine, but everyone was in the kitchen for breakfast or, at least, coffee by eight.
She knew that Gabi was already gone because her car wasn’t in the driveway, which meant that Gabi was working from the office that day.
Sarai hoped that none of their employees, like Mitchell or Clay, were coming in today because she wasn’t sure she could handle having extra people around.
She had a lot of work to do on this plan for the possible launch of a partnership for their software.
It would take months for any contracts to get signed after they found someone who was interested, but she needed to have all the logistics ready, and she needed her intern to do some research for her, so an email to her first thing was in order.
Surprised to not see anyone in the kitchen, she walked into the garage and found her three best friends sitting in their chairs, facing the door, staring up at her as she walked down the steps.
“What’s going on? Am I late for a meeting or something?” she asked.
“No,” Violet said. “This isn’t about work. We wanted to talk to you about something else.”
“Not work? Then, what?”
“Have a seat, Sarai,” Arlowe said.
Sarai noticed her own chair was off to the side a little, but that it was facing her three friends.
“Why does it feel like something’s wrong?” she asked and sat down.
“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine,” Enya said, which probably should’ve calmed Sarai down because Enya wasn’t a liar or even an embellisher, but it didn’t.
“If everything is fine, why are we sitting in the garage, with the three of you looking like you have terrible news and me wondering what the hell is going on? It feels like you’re about to do an intervention on me or something, but I’m not addicted to anything.”
“That’s not a bad way of looking at it,” Arlowe said.
“Yes, it is,” Violet argued. “It’s not an intervention. It’s a conversation.”
“A serious one, apparently. So, what is going on? Tell me. I’m getting worried, Vi.”
“Enya, why don’t you start?” Violet suggested.
“Me?” Enya asked, looking surprised.
“Oh, my God! One of you just fucking tell me what’s going on right now, or I’m getting out of this chair and going back to bed.”
“Gabi wants to move out,” Enya said.
“What?”
“She asked Violet about it yesterday,” Enya added.
“She asked you if she could move out?”
“It’s my name on the lease, and she wanted my permission. I told her that she’d have to talk to the three of you because you’re the ones paying rent, but that I’m okay with it.”
“You told her she should move out?”
“Not that she should, Sarai. She asked if she could.”
“Why does she want to move out? She just moved in. I thought things were going well.”
“I think you know why,” Arlowe said.
“What are you–”
“Cut the crap, Sarai. You two have a thing. We all know it. You like her. She likes you.”
“Precisely why I wanted Enya to take the lead, Arlowe. She has a gentler approach,” Violet noted.
“Why are we talking about this? If Gabi wants to move out, she can. We didn’t need a roommate. Arlowe offered without talking to us about it anyway,” Sarai said.
“Oh, act like you want her to go. Come on, Sarai. You know you don’t,” Arlowe replied.
“Sarai, she wants to move out because she wants to be with you,” Violet revealed.
“Damn, Vi… Didn’t she tell you that in confidence?” Arlowe asked.
“She didn’t, actually. At no point did she ask me to keep our conversation between the two of us, but I also don’t care. I’ll apologize to her later if she’s mad. Sarai, you like her.”
“So?”
“So?” Arlowe challenged and rolled her eyes. “She likes you, too. She’s in the room next door, and you don’t want to be with her? I don’t get it.”
“I do want to be with her. I want to go out with her, at least. I don’t know how a date will go, but I know I like her. I also know that I’m not holding her hostage here, so if she’s saying she wants to move out, I’m not going to stop her.”
“Sarai, the only reason she wants to move out is that she wants to be with you,” Enya told her. “She couldn’t find an apartment the first time she looked, and I doubt she’s going to find one now, but even if she does, do you really need her to move out just to date her?”
“It could be easier,” she replied.
“You love having her here,” Arlowe said. “You’re just scared, like you always are.”
“Arlowe, what the fuck is your problem with me today?” she asked.
“My problem?” Arlowe said and leaned forward in her chair. “You’re doing it again; that’s my problem.”
“Doing what?”
“She’s right,” Violet added.
“I still don’t know about what,” Sarai insisted.
“You get scared of stuff, and you go hide. You question your decisions, your ideas, and you hide. You have an amazing woman who you liked all these years ago come back into your life, and guess what: she still likes you. She’s not going back to Paris, and you’re not going back to the US.
She’s not about to start college when you’re finishing school.
So, you had to make up more excuses to not date her because you’re scared,” Arlowe stated.
“They’re not excuses, Arlowe.”
“Yeah, they are,” Violet said.
“Enya, come on. Back me up here,” Sarai pled.
“I can’t. I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.”
“No, you’re not,” Enya replied with a soft smile.
“Sarai, you don’t want her to move out. I’ve seen you two around the house together – you like that she’s here.
You don’t need her to leave just to date her because you’re a mature person, and so is she.
You would handle things just fine if it ended. And Gabi’s lease is only for a year.”
“It’s already been more than a month,” Arlowe added.
“Exactly. If it ended, and things did go bad, we’d just let her move out whenever, but the longest she could be here is a year unless you want her here longer than that.
We’re all fine with the two of you being together and being roommates, and it seems like Gabi doesn’t really care, either.
She’s only doing this because of you. I think she loves living here, too, so it’s not what she wants.
She’s just willing to do it. On top of that, none of us care that she’s sort of working with us, but you. ”
“She’s doing something important, Enya. The hardware is the thing we’ve been wanting to work on forever.”
“And we don’t need Gabi to do it,” Arlowe said.
“We’re pursuing partnerships right now, and I think those will get us where we need to go before we have our own wearable, but Gabi isn’t the only product designer with engineering experience in the world.
We can always wait and get someone else.
She’s amazing, I won’t lie, and the mock-ups she’s been working on are great, but we’d be okay. ”
“Can you tell us what you’re really afraid of?” Enya requested softly.
Sarai looked around the room and let out a very deep breath.
“Remember how you told me you saw me after I came out of the train station?”
“Yes,” Enya replied.
“I don’t think I realized just how much those three days mattered in my life until she came back into it,” she admitted. “I tried to push that feeling of saying goodbye to her, that you witnessed, I guess, out of my mind.”
“Keep going,” Enya encouraged.
“I didn’t think it was possible to feel something like that for someone I only knew for one weekend and texted a little bit after, but…” She shook her head. “I still have the phone.”
“What phone?” Violet asked.
“I didn’t trade in my old phone when I got a new one.
I still have the phone I had in Amsterdam.
I told myself that I kept it because it had our entire friendship on it from that year.
It has our whole group chat. I didn’t want to lose that, and phones didn’t just carry everything over back then like they do now. ”
“You kept it because of her messages, too, didn’t you?” Arlowe asked.
Sarai nodded.
“I get it. I kept my phone as well. I still have our group chat.”
“Eline?” Sarai asked.
Arlowe nodded this time.
“But you and Eline were together for months. You two were in love. I just had one weekend with this somewhat shy, smart, beautiful, funny person, and I didn’t think it was the same as what the two of you had.”
“It never is,” Violet told her. “Do you think what Stella and I have is what Arlowe and Eline had? It’s not.
I love Stella with my whole heart. I want a life with her.
Arlowe loved Eline with her whole heart and wanted the same.
Our situations are totally different, though.
I met Stella and kind of hated her immediately.
Now, we can look back and think that maybe it was some sexual tension and some misunderstandings, but that is how we met.
Arlowe and Eline met and fell in love pretty much at first sight. ”
“I know that, but I’m scared, Vi,” she replied.
“I don’t know why. I feel like I’m always scared.
The few relationships I’ve had have ended primarily because of me; because I spent too much time at work.
And, at work, I wasn’t even doing a good enough job to make us money, so I just failed at both things. ”
“You’ve never failed us, Sarai,” Violet said.
“She’s right,” Arlowe agreed. “You put way too much pressure on yourself.”
“We have to make money to stick around, and I was put in charge of sales and marketing, so…”
“Sarai, we’ve hardly ever had a marketing budget. And being in charge of sales was never your goal, either. You only did it because we didn’t have anyone else,” Violet reminded. “We’re where we need to be now, though. Things are looking up, and we have a budget. We need your next great idea.”
“And we know you have them because you always do. You just erase them from the board because you doubt yourself too much,” Enya said. “Stop that, by the way.”
Sarai chuckled and said, “Like it’s that easy.”
“You know what is easy, though? Telling that woman you like that you want to go out with her.”
“That’s actually really hard, Arlowe.”
“It’s not. Answer me this: do you see Gabi as a person you could end up with?”
“We haven’t even–”
“My God! Just answer the damn question.”
Sarai nodded and replied, “I think so.”
“Then, you have to go for it, unless you really want to be like me. Do you want to be too scared to look up the one that got away online because, at least right now, she’s a Schrodinger’s cat?”
“What?” Sarai asked.
“She’s both married to the love of her life and single, pining away for me at the same time, until I find her profile and check to see if she is actually married to the love of her life,” Arlowe explained.
“I’m so scared of a relationship because I can’t see one comparing to what I had with her, so I just don’t have them.
I know it’s stupid. I know there could be another woman out there for me who could be the love of my life.
I know that what I felt for Eline might have been in passing or not meant to last forever.
I still can’t shake it, though. So, what I’m saying is…
there’s a woman who lives in this house.
She’s here, Sarai. You liked her then. You still like her now, and she’s here.
You can keep being afraid of all the things you’ve talked about in your life, or you can start taking some damn risks.
Not just with Gabi, but with work, too. Some might not work out, yeah, but I guarantee you that some will.
And I don’t know what the future holds for you and Gabi, but I do know that you’re risking nothing by asking her out because she’s going to say yes.
I know you’ve been sad lately because you like her and you think you can’t be with her, but you can, Sarai.
She’s here. She wants you. Don’t– Just don’t fuck this up for yourself because you’re scared; that’s all I’m saying. ”
“I like her for you,” Enya said. “She makes you get off the swing.”
“What?”
“I noticed it, too,” Violet added. “Gabi makes you trust yourself more. You need that, Sarai. I know you have an idea for a launch campaign for the next version of the app. I saw it on the board. Then, it wasn’t there anymore.”
“Yeah, it just said, ‘Influencer,’ after that,” Arlowe said.
“She wrote that,” Sarai shared with a smile.
“Because she believes in you like we do. Just do whatever you want to do, Sarai,” Violet said. “Trust your gut on this.”
“Which thing? Work or my love life?”
“How about doing both for once?” Arlowe suggested.
“Now, I’m starving, so I’m going to make us all bacon and eggs, and we’re going to eat in the kitchen like civilized people.
Then, we’re going to get to work, and, Sarai, you’re going to tell us in the real morning meeting all about your idea. We’ll go from there.”
“Also, I might have suggested that Gabi gives you some time before asking if she could break her lease, so don’t be surprised if she pulls away a little,” Violet said. “It’s because I wanted to talk to you first.”
“So, she didn’t just ignore me for most of the day yesterday because she wanted to?”
“No. I thought you’d be on that swing or in your room most of the day, so I told her to give you a little space.”
Sarai nodded and said, “Thanks.”
“No problem. Let’s go watch Arlowe pull eggshells out of the bowl.”