CHAPTER 17
Arlowe was laughing louder than she had in a very long time, and she was doing so in a public place, which meant that a few of the restaurant patrons were looking over at her like she was ruining their quiet night out.
She understood, so she quieted down, but these people had no idea what she was going through.
She was having dinner with the woman whom she’d always thought of as the one who had gotten away, and they were talking about a user experience competition in which the winner was chosen based on creating the worst experience on the internet.
Eline had participated in that one year and had come in fourth place, winning a little money for her efforts.
“So, every time they clicked in the box and filled something out, instead of it going down to the next field, it went back up to the previous field. It would delete any numbers, but not letters, and your password had to be entirely special characters, no letters or numbers,” Eline said.
Arlowe laughed again but tried to lower her volume this time.
“What did the winner do?” she asked as she signed the credit card receipt for their meal.
“You had to enter your phone number using a sliding scale for each number and adding the number prior to it every time.”
“What?” Arlowe laughed again.
“And you had to start with the country code and area code, so if you were in the US, you’d scale to one and probably think this wasn’t too bad.
The next scale, you’d have to scale to one and then, let’s say, three or something for your area code.
Then, it’s one, three, five, or whatever your next number was, and you had to keep going until you’d entered the whole number on all the scales.
The best part was that if you hit enter, it would open a dialogue box and ask you to verify it, and then another scale would appear, and you had to do it all over again. ” Eline chuckled.
Arlowe shook her head, and her eyes ended up on the lake to her left, giving her an idea.
“Hey, do you maybe want to walk around the water for a bit? It really is a nice night.”
“Yeah, that sounds great,” Eline replied.
“I’m sure the people at the nearby tables can’t wait for me to leave. I haven’t laughed like this in a long time,” she confessed.
Then, she stood and looked around for a gate or opening in the short barrier between the restaurant and the path around the water. She nodded when she found it back behind Eline, and Eline stood up and looked in that direction.
“Shall we?” Eline asked.
Arlowe met her at the gate, pushed it open, and let Eline go first. They made it to the main path, and Arlowe wanted to reach for Eline’s hand, but she tucked her own into the front pockets of her jeans instead, trying to keep in mind that tonight wasn’t a date.
They joined a few other people on the path, but it was mostly empty, which she liked because she felt like she could use a break from the busy world around her, and with the offices around them mostly empty, there was a quiet calm over the night that she appreciated.
“So, have you been here before?” Eline asked.
“No,” she said. “I hadn’t even heard of the restaurant before I was trying to figure out where to go tonight. It’s kind of tucked in off the road, so it’s very easy to miss. I liked it, though.”
“Me too.”
“And I like this,” Arlowe said. “Did you know that this lake wasn’t even here five years ago?”
“I know it’s manmade.”
“Yeah, Sweeney-Maddox built that giant build-ing over there right before COVID hit.” Arlowe shook her head. “Bad luck for them, huh?”
“What happened?”
“They’re still around, but they’ve been mostly remote, so they lease out floors and offices since they didn’t end up needing all that space.
They started building this lake around the same time.
Well, digging it out, technically. They weren’t going to finish it when the pandemic hit and everyone started working from home, but the city told them that they had to because they’d bought the land and had it coded, or whatever you do for something like this, as a water feature, I guess.
I don’t know. Violet was the one who told me about it.
She said the city told them that they had to finish it or fill it back in and make it so that someone could build something else on top of it.
It was more expensive to do that than to put the lake in, so they did that.
Now, it’s this kind-of-cool place that we can walk around. ”
“Well, I’m glad they did it, then,” Eline replied.
“Yeah, me too.”
Arlowe looked around, trying to think about what they could talk about now that she’d pretty much exhausted the topic of the office building and the lake’s origin story.
“You look nice, by the way,” Eline spoke. “I didn’t tell you that earlier.”
“Oh, thanks. You do, too, but I always think you look nice.”
“Even in the morning when I just wake up?”
“Haven’t seen that in a while, but from what I remember, I even like you when you wake up and have those little eye crusty things, messy hair all over the place, and terrible morning breath.”
Eline gave her a playful shove with her shoulder, which made Arlowe laugh.
“For what it’s worth, I like you like this, too.”
“Like what?”
“The broccoli-loving, blazer-wearing, older and wiser Arlowe,” Eline answered.
Arlowe stopped walking, which made Eline stop, too, and look at her in confusion, but Arlowe decided that now was the time.
She’d been playing it safe, and she knew it.
Maybe she should keep playing it safe, continuing this slow path they were on toward whatever might happen, but something in her told her that playing it safe hadn’t gotten her anywhere back then, when she’d left her heart behind, so if she wanted things to change, she should do something to try to change them.
“Do you know why I wear blazers a lot now?”
“No. Should I?”
“I don’t walk around with a purse – a little too femme for me.
And I have my laptop bag, but I don’t always bring my computer places, obviously.
Sometimes, I wear an actual jacket or coat, but I don’t always need one, and I don’t love putting it in the pockets of my jeans unless I have to because I’m afraid I’ll lose it. ”
“Lose what? Your phone?”
“Not my phone,” she said and reached into the interior pocket of her jacket to pull out the letter.
“I pretty much always carry this with me. I have since I took that plane out of Amsterdam. I read it at least five times on the way home while I was crying and trying to hide it from the poor confused guy sitting next to me.” Arlowe let out a nervous laugh.
“I don’t bring it places where I think it could get damaged or something.
Like, one time, back when we were all maybe twenty-five, we decided to go to an amusement park – I didn’t bring it on any roller coasters.
Day to day, though, I usually have it with me, and I read it sometimes.
I have it memorized, but I still pull it out, unfold it very carefully because it’s delicate, and read it to myself.
Sometimes, I think it still kind of smells like your old cucumber melon body spray stuff, but I’m not sure if it actually does, or if I’m imagining it, but I like it. ”
“That’s my… letter?” Eline asked.
“My letter, technically, because you gave it to me, but yes. I wear a lot of jackets or blazers, as you call them now, because they have inner pockets. Safer that way. I can keep it close to me and always have a part of you with me when I can’t wear one of your shirts that I stole.”
“You kept the letter?”
“I couldn’t get rid of it. I had other things to remember you by, not just the shirts, but I don’t know…
This felt important. Even though it made me cry every time I read it back then – a bit less and less over the years now – I didn’t know what else to do with it.
I kept wanting it to say something else, I guess.
Like, if I reread it again one day, the words might change and tell me that you wanted me to call you, talk to you every day, figure out how to stay together, or be friends even until we could.
It never did, obviously, but I keep rereading it.
I even scanned it. I have it on my phone now, so I guess, in that way, it is always with me. ”
“Arlowe…” Eline said softly.
“Eline, I want this. I want you again. I know we said we would keep talking and getting to know one another, and we can keep doing that for as long as you want to, but I want you.” She took a deep breath.
“I want to put this letter behind us because we’re moving forward.
I want to take you out on a date where we don’t say that we’re hanging out, but where I can hold your hand and kiss you again.
God, Eli Fay… I want to kiss you again.”
“I want that, too,” Eline replied.
“You do?”
“And I would like you to have a new nickname for me, since I’m not really Eli Fay anymore.”
“You’ll always be Eli Fay to me,” Arlowe said.
“I liked it when you called me something else better.”
“I remember,” she replied. “And I could call you that again if you agree to go on a date with me, but I can’t call you ‘babe’ if we’re just friends, Eline.”
“I want to move forward with you, too, Arlowe. I’ve missed you so much. Do you have any idea how many times I picked up the phone or went to search for you online and didn’t hit enter?”
“Same for me. And we can still talk about that stuff, but I want to talk about new stuff with you, too; like what we did tonight. I want us to have a real second first date.”
“Second first?” Eline asked with a little laugh.
“Yeah, a second first date where I pick you up, we go somewhere together, and if I’m lucky, you let me hold your hand and maybe I get to kiss you goodnight.”
“So, I’m not getting a kiss tonight?”
Arlowe smiled and said, “No. We’re doing this right.”
“Okay. Can we go out tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Now that we’re talking about kissing, I want to go out on that second first date as soon as possible.” Eline took the letter that Arlowe still held out. “And I want us to put this behind us.”
“On your right,” a voice said.
Arlowe turned her head just in time to see a man in a tank top and running shorts about to breeze past them.
Before she could do anything, he whooshed by them, and the letter that Eline now held not so tightly lifted into the air.
The man was gone a second later, but so was the letter, and Arlowe’s eyes followed it as it was carried by the whoosh and the night breeze straight down the small bank, where it more rolled into the water.
There, it seemed to rest almost peacefully on the lake’s surface.
“Oh, my God!” Eline exclaimed and made a move to run down the bank, but Arlowe pulled her back.
“What are you going to do, swim for it?”
“I need to get it. Arlowe, it’s–”
“Gone,” she said, watching the paper soak through in the lights that lined the water. “It’s gone.”
Eline turned back to her then and said, “I am so sorry. I can’t believe that just happened. I wasn’t holding on tightly enough. You’ve had it for so long, and I held it for three seconds and–”
Arlowe smiled at her and said, “It’s okay.”
“You’ve held on to it all this time.”
“And I still have it in my phone, but maybe… maybe this was supposed to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to let go of the past, right? I’ve been carrying that thing around for years, but you’re here now. I don’t need it anymore,” she said.
“Tomorrow night?” Eline asked.
Arlowe nodded and replied, “I’ll pick you up.”
“Want to keep walking now?”
“I do, but…”
“But what?”
“I think I’d end up trying to take your hand or pull you into me for that kiss. I’m trying to do this right, but you know I don’t have much self-control when it comes to you… So, maybe I’ll go home and start thinking about what we’re going to do tomorrow night,” Arlowe said.
“Walk me to my car?”
Arlowe nodded in the direction of the first exit off the path, and they walked in silence until they arrived at the parking lot, where Eline pointed them in the direction of her car.
When they got to it, Arlowe opened the door after Eline unlocked it, and they stood there, not saying anything for a long moment before Eline moved between the car and its open door.
“Drive safe,” Arlowe said.
“I will. You too.”
“Text me when you get home?”
“I will,” Eline replied. “And I’ll see you tomorrow for our second first date.”
Arlowe smiled, waited for Eline to get inside the car so that she could close the door for her, and then watched her pull out of the parking lot before she headed to her own car and drove herself home.
Seconds after she arrived, she got a text from Eline saying that she was home safely.
She let her know that she was as well and went inside the house, where she found all of her friends sitting around the living room.
“Please don’t tell me you’re all moving back in,” she said in lieu of a greeting.
“No, we were just hanging out,” Violet replied from her position next to her girlfriend on the sofa. “How was your night? Enya told us you were hanging out with Eline.”
“I was. We were. We had dinner.”
“Yeah?” Sarai said. “And?”
“And it was fun.”
Arlowe flopped down next to Gabi, who was to Sarai’s right.
“That’s all we get?” Violet asked.
“Hey, none of you live here anymore, so I can kick you out if I want,” she suggested.
“Enya lives here. Enya, ask her for details,” Sarai encouraged.
But Enya, who was sitting next to Stella on the other couch, just shook her head and said, “Not getting involved here.”
“Smart woman,” Arlowe replied, offering her a wink. “And because I’m exhausted and want to go to bed, all you’re going to get out of me is that dinner was great. We went for a walk after and talked about what we both want.”
“And what is that?” Sarai asked.
“To go out on a real date.”
“Really?” Enya asked.
“We’re going out tomorrow night,” she said with a little smile. “I can’t believe it, but I’m going on a second first date with the love of my life.”