CHAPTER 3
“So, I’m starting to think that Arlowe might be right. I must be high or drunk, right?” Sarai asked in the kitchen the following morning as she sat down next to Violet at the round kitchen table that fit just the four of them comfortably.
She placed the open box of cereal that she’d carried over with her on the table, leaned back in her chair, and sipped the coffee she’d just made before she set the cup down, picked the box back up, and shoved her hand down into it, pulling out a handful of dry cereal that she then ate.
“You know we have bowls, right?” Violet said.
“Overrated.”
“Also, that’s communal cereal, Sarai. You can’t at least pour it somewhere instead of eating out of the box?”
“Only Arlowe likes this one, and this brand still comes with a toy inside for kids that she collects, so…” Sarai stuck her hand back into the box to pull out a small object wrapped in plastic. “I’m holding this for ransom.”
“What is that?” Violet asked and laughed a little.
“Hell, if I know. But if she wants it, it must be mine.”
“I still can’t believe you two never dated. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that you didn’t, but sometimes I wonder.”
“Oh, gross.” Sarai made a face that told Violet that she did not agree with her assessment. “She’s like my sister. All of you are.”
“It’s amazing that none of us ever got together initially, when you think about it,” Arlowe noted as she walked into the room.
She then proceeded straight over to Sarai, yanked the small toy from her hands, and said, “Thanks for fishing this out for me. I knew I could count on you.” She shoved the toy into her front pocket.
“Now, if you want it back, you’d have to get to at least third base. ”
“Gross,” Sarai repeated. “I don’t even want to get to first base with you.”
“Feeling’s mutual, little sister,” Arlowe said and rubbed Sarai’s head.
“You’re four days older than me!” Sarai exclaimed and tried to fix her hair once Arlowe removed her hand and stole the box of cereal from her.
“We have some weird conversations in this house,” Violet said to no one. “And why do you agree with Arlowe now?” she asked Sarai and looked back down at her computer.
“Wait… You agree with me about something?” Arlowe joked as she chomped on a handful of cereal and handed the box back to Sarai.
“About the hardware. I’ve been doing some research, and I think we should try to make it work.”
“What?” Violet asked, looking up. “I just put out feelers for the software we decided on yesterday.”
“We need to do that, too,” Enya said as she walked in. “I need help. I can’t do it all on my own; not on our timeline, anyway.”
Enya sat down in her usual seat and took the box from Sarai.
“Hi. That was my cereal,” Sarai stated. “And what are you doing stealing it? You don’t even like it.”
“I’m out of mine,” Enya replied.
She then stuck her hand into the box, took a handful, and handed the box to Arlowe, who did the same.
“And this is how the next pandemic will start… I just know it,” Violet suggested.
“We all showered this morning. We’re fine,” Sarai said.
“I know we all showered because Enya hogged the hot water,” Arlowe noted.
“I did not. I was only in there for, like, ten minutes.”
“The hot water here sucks,” Sarai proclaimed.
“So does the water pressure,” Enya added.
“And yet, we persist,” Violet said, trying to divert them from the path they were on.
“All right, all right, RBG,” Arlowe replied and held up her hands in mock supplication. “Want to start the meeting?”
“We’re still eating breakfast,” Sarai protested before she stole the box back and took another handful of cereal. “Have you even had your six Red Bulls, four Monsters, and two cups of coffee yet, Arlowe?”
“Yes, which is how I’m able to do this.”
Arlowe quickly stole the cereal box back from Sarai.
“Well, this has been a fun morning,” Violet said. “I’m good to start the meeting now if you three can stop making me dizzy by passing that damn box around.”
“It’s one of those mornings, huh?” Sarai asked.
“What do you mean?” Violet asked back.
“Mom’s mad about something…” Arlowe suggested.
“How am I your mother, exactly? You’re two months older than me.”
“It’s not decided by age. You take care of all of us. For example, you’re the one who did the grocery shopping last week and bought Sarai and I this cereal that we argue about for fun.”
“Anyway,” she began. “Back to the meeting.”
“Yes, Mom,” Enya said.
“Not you, too…”
Violet shook her head and noticed that a new email had come in. It was spam, so she went to delete it, but then, she noticed another email that she hadn’t yet gotten to because Sarai had interrupted her.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It can’t be…”
“Can’t be what?” Arlowe asked.
Violet didn’t answer. She clicked on the email from Cerebral, and her eyes went to the sender’s email address before they moved down her screen to the sender’s email signature.
“Stella Ross, SVP of Sales, Cerebral.”
“Huh?” Enya asked.
“Did you just say Stella Ross?” Sarai asked.
“Stella Ross, as in–”
“Stella Boss is what I used to call her in my head,” Sarai interrupted Arlowe. “Every time she’d piss Vi off, I’d be like, ‘Stella Boss strikes again,’ because I thought that would make a cool super villain name.”
“You’ve never even read a comic book in your life. How would you know a cool super villain name?” Arlowe asked.
“I’ve seen the Marvel movies. Well, some. Mostly just the Captain Marvel ones and the Black Widow one.”
“Lesbian,” Enya said before she took another handful of the cereal from the box.
“You watched them with me, like, four times, Enya.”
“Also a lesbian.”
“Guys, shut up!” she interjected. “It’s Stella Ross. As in, yes, that Stella Ross.”
Violet turned her computer toward the group because she’d just done an internet search to see if the Stella Ross who had emailed her from Cerebral was actually the same Stella Ross who had been a pain in her ass back in school, and she’d found Stella’s picture on their website.
“She’s still hot,” Arlowe noted.
“Not the point,” Violet replied.
“But you agree with Arlowe?” Enya asked.
“She’s pretty, I guess.”
Violet turned the computer back around and stared at the clearly professional picture of Stella Ross, who had short blonde hair now.
Back then, it had been longer, and she’d had it pulled back a lot.
Now, it was sort of swept to the side a bit and a little over her forehead, but Violet could still see the big brown eyes that she remembered staring her down in classes whenever her hand had gone up just seconds before Stella’s.
Their competition had been juvenile and immature at times, yes, but Violet had intended on having fun and not having to study that hard to still get top-of-the-class marks for her semester abroad.
Stella Ross had made that impossible for her, so she’d gone a little hard, but Violet didn’t regret it because Stella had deserved it.
“So, she works for some vendor that we’re using?” Sarai asked.
“Not yet. I reached out to a few companies that looked like possibilities for us, and she’s the SVP of sales for one of them. She just emailed me back.”
“The SVP of sales does the emailing to prospects over there? How big is that company even? If it’s that small, their product can’t be all that good for what we need,” Arlowe suggested. “Did you leave me any coffee?”
“No,” Sarai replied.
“I hate you.”
“Love you, too,” Sarai joked back.
“What do you want to do?” Enya asked Violet. “What does she say in the email?”
“It just looks like one of those template emails asking me to set up a demo, and there’s a calendar link I can click to make an appointment.”
“Blast from the past, huh?” Arlowe said. “Amsterdam strikes again.”
Violet looked up then. Arlowe was staring out the window behind Enya and into their backyard.
Violet had probably been the closest to her back in school.
Then, in recent years, Arlowe and Sarai had been the frenemies who loved and would do anything for each other, while Violet and Enya had been more focused on growing their business and had grown closer as friends.
She supposed, every so often, their friendships shifted a bit.
There had been times when she’d be extra close with Sarai, then close with Arlowe again, and back to Enya, and it had been like that since the beginning, but when they’d all met, she and Arlowe had been the first to really start hanging out, and she remembered Arlowe meeting Eline and how it had seemed like they’d been in love and would make a real go of it.
Violet also remembered how heartbroken Arlowe had been after they’d gotten back and tried their best to keep in touch.
Arlowe would tell her all about the women she’d go out with and sometimes sleep with, trying to pretend like she had been fine, when Violet had known that she hadn’t been.
Not much had changed for her friend since, and Violet knew that while Arlowe stared out the window, she was thinking about the one who the three of them had always thought had gotten away from her.
“It didn’t strike a first time,” Violet replied, trying to refocus. “She was another student in my program. That’s all.”
“A hot one,” Sarai added. “She’s gay, right? I know we were all guessing back then, but did anyone ever confirm?”
“I did not,” Violet announced. “I was busy with–”
“Your girlfriend, Renée,” all three of them said at once.
“Yeah, we know. You never shut up about her,” Arlowe added.
“What? That’s not true.”
“Sorry, Vi, but it is,” Enya said with a sympathetic expression. “You talked about her all the time. Whenever we’d go out and someone would merely walk up to you, you’d tell them that you were taken.”
“You’d say that you had a girlfriend and give them her name on top of it. I think it would’ve been enough to tell them that you had someone, but you were oddly specific instead,” Sarai noted.
“Yeah. What was that about?” Arlowe laughed.
“I’d never had a girlfriend before. Sue me,” she replied and closed her computer. “Not all of us were super popular, out lesbians who’d had multiple girlfriends or, at least, several sexual partners.”
“Why are you looking at me when you say that?” Arlowe asked.
“Because you fit that definition,” Sarai said for Violet. “You had, like, five girlfriends before Amsterdam. Then, you met Eline.” Sarai chuckled but stopped at her mention of the E word, which the group tried not to say often or ever, if they could help it. “Sorry.”
“You can say her name. We’ve been over this. Besides, it’s been ten years. I am over Eline Claasen, okay? I’ve dated tons of girls since then.”
“Women,” Sarai and Enya said at the same time.
“Sure. Whatever. I’ve dated multiple women since we graduated. I’m sure she’s married to some Dutch guy named Lars, who works on fixing windmills or making cheese, and they have, like, two kids named Elsa and Hans, and–”
“Aren’t those more German names?” Violet asked.
“Yes,” Enya replied. “But they are popular–”
“Not the point, Vi,” Arlowe interrupted Enya. “Their kids are probably, like, five and three now, have perfect blonde hair with little freckles, and they have a dog that they walk, and they all have bicycles, and they pick tulips, and–”
“And you haven’t thought about this at all in the past ten years, huh?” Enya said gently.
“My point is that I’m over it, and she is, too.”
“Because of Elsa, Hans, and the dog?” Violet asked.
“Yeah. Obviously.”
Arlowe looked back out the window.
“You closed your computer?” Sarai asked, changing the topic.
“Huh?” Violet asked back.
“Are you not going to book the demo?”
“You were just talking about how you now agree with Arlowe on the hardware thing. We can’t do both. We’d have to hire someone to figure out the hardware thing, so it’s one or the other.”
“I still think it’s worth seeing the full demo. Maybe this is the right call,” Sarai replied.
“It is,” Enya offered.
“Well, I have requested demos from other companies, too, so I’ll just wait for those responses, and we’ll see.”
“You don’t want to talk to Stella, do you?” Sarai asked.
“Have I ever?”
“Vi, Cerebral is local. Well, not exactly. Their HQ is in New York. But they’ve got a small office here, like a satellite thing, since there are so many companies popping up around here lately that might use them. I read about them before I recommended you reach out to them.”
“So what?”
“So, they’re the only ones with their people close to us.
It could be a big benefit for us. Implementing new software is already a pain in the ass and requires people from whatever company you go with to help support it.
I’m just saying… I think we should talk to them.
If you don’t want to hear from her, for whatever reason, just ask for a rep to do the demo instead of the SVP,” Sarai continued.
“It’s early. I would still like to hear back from the other companies before I do anything. Cerebral was the most expensive, too, which is part of the reason.”
“So, it has nothing to do with the fact that Stella works there?” Enya asked.
“An SVP at our age? As a woman in sales, that’s…”
“You’re the CEO of a company, Vi,” Arlowe reminded.
“Our company is four people, and you all elected me to be CEO a decade ago because I was the business major. It’s not the same.”
“Maybe she knows the head of her company. Everyone starts somewhere. Do you think you would’ve been the SVP of anything at your family’s company already?”
“A multi-national company where my entire family but me is currently employed at? No. I’d be a director at best.”
“Then, you would’ve been worse off had you gone that route.”
“I’d have better benefits, at least,” she argued. “And an assistant to help me organize everything.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Arlowe replied and stole the box that Sarai had just picked back up. “A little chaos is good for the soul.”
“Isn’t yours just, like, fifty percent Red Bull and twenty percent coffee by now?” Sarai retorted, glaring at her.
“Yes. How did you know?” Arlowe stood. “I’m going to make more coffee for me, Vi, and Enya. Sarai, you’re on your own.”
Violet went to open her computer back and found herself staring at the picture of Stella Ross again, who really was beautiful, damn it.