CHAPTER 8
After a lengthy conversation with Jen about how she’d messed things up with Amber, Stella had decided to let herself off the hook a little.
Amber wasn’t ever going to be the woman she’d end up with.
They could chat, yes, and Amber was gorgeous, so maybe they could’ve had a good time in bed, but she couldn’t see it going much further than that.
Jen had eventually agreed with her after expressing her disappointment that it hadn’t worked out for the two of them, and Stella had then done some thinking on her own.
With no alcohol involved, she’d taken a deep dive into her feelings about Amber versus the ones that she still seemed to have surrounding Violet.
Violet had been one of the most annoying people she’d ever met, but she had also been one of the hottest, and Stella had definitely noticed back then.
Of course, Violet had made it clear to nearly the entire city that she was taken by that girlfriend back home, whom she’d mentioned all the damn time, and Stella hadn’t felt the need to come out to her, considering how they had felt about one another.
Now, though, she found herself thinking more about Violet, the woman she used to hate and thought was incredibly rude, more than the woman she’d been on two dates with.
She was thinking about her right now, too, because Violet Russell was standing only about fifteen feet away from her, which couldn’t be the case.
Stella had only just gotten off the phone with her about twenty minutes ago.
Yet, it was the case. She was not hallucinating.
Violet had just walked into the coffee shop where Stella had decided to work for a few hours that day to get out of the office.
“What are the fucking odds?” she muttered to herself.
She had started her day behind her desk, but not being able to stop thinking about one incredibly annoying woman and the agreement she hadn’t yet signed, along with the failed hangout over drinks, had had Stella distracted, so she’d thought she’d work from home, but after driving by this place, she’d decided to turn around and work from here until the end of the day.
She’d responded to all Violet’s emails and had even had their very brief phone call from this spot, and now, Violet was joining the short line of people, preparing to order.
Stella turned away, trying to hide her face by looking out the window, hoping that Violet would just grab a coffee and maybe a pastry to-go, but when she glanced back at her, too curious for her own good, she noticed that the woman had her bag with her and knew that her computer was probably inside that bag.
“Maybe she’s just not the type to leave it in the car when she’s running errands,” she mumbled, thinking that yeah, that sounded just like the uptight Violet.
She returned her glance to the window, silently praying that Violet would leave the café without noticing her there, and when the barista called Violet’s name, Stella caught her coffee order.
Apparently, Violet’s drink of choice was a large mocha with extra chocolate syrup and extra whipped cream.
That didn’t seem like her at all, but Stella only had an idea of Violet and didn’t know her well enough to guess her coffee order.
What followed next was a sound of something metallic falling to the ground behind the counter, drawing Stella’s attention away from the window, and that was when Violet’s eyes met her own and Stella knew that she’d been caught.
Violet actually sighed. Like her entire body lifted a little and then fell back down as if the weight of the world was now on her shoulders because Stella happened to be sharing the same coffee shop with her at the moment.
Stella wondered what she would do. The other night, Violet had fled the bar.
Would she do the same now? Not even say hello and simply run out of the coffee shop with a hot cup of coffee in her hand?
Would she exchange pleasantries and then run?
Stella thought about standing up or, at least, waving to encourage her to come over, but she decided against it. The ball was in Violet’s court.
Violet took another moment, and Stella just stared and waited to see what she’d do.
Then, Violet walked over toward Stella’s table, holding her cup of coffee and with her laptop bag on her shoulder.
Stella expected the greeting and polite conversation, but what she got was something else.
Violet sat down at the table next to hers, set her coffee cup down, and proceeded to pull out her computer, open it, and pretend like Stella wasn’t even there.
“You’re kidding, right? I’m not invisible, am I?”
“No, you are not invisible. But I came here to get some work done away from the office, and I did not expect to see you here. You also looked like you were working, so I didn’t want to interrupt you,” Violet said.
“I’m working, but we can take a second to say hello to one another, Violet.”
Violet turned her head toward her and replied, “Hello, Stella.”
“Hello, Violet.”
“What are you doing here?” Violet asked her.
“You just pointed out that I was working.”
“Yes, but you work at an office building where, I’d assume, you have an office of your own.”
“I do, yes. And sometimes, I work from there. Sometimes, I work from home. Today, I decided to stop here for coffee and get some work done.”
“Well, I’ll let you get back to that, then. I won’t be long. I… I’ll just send a few emails and get out of your hair.”
“You don’t have to get out of my hair, Violet. It’s a café. You can stay here as long as you want. Or, at least, until they close and kick you out. I’m honestly surprised that you even stayed. I assumed you’d run like you did the other night at the bar.”
“I didn’t run,” Violet objected quickly and turned to face her completely. “I told you that something came up.”
“And that was a lie, wasn’t it?” Stella turned to face her, too. “You can just tell me.”
“It… wasn’t a lie,” Violet told her, clearly lying again. “I might have embellished the urgency.”
“So, a lie.” Stella laughed. “Why did you do that? You agreed to a drink. Then, you showed up with practically everyone you met in Amsterdam, like, ten years ago, crammed them into the booth with you, and ran right after I sat back down in a chair that I had to bring over myself for the drinks that we agreed to have together.”
“I didn’t run,” Violet argued again. “I left. There’s a difference.”
“Fine. Why did you chug your martini and leave the bar when you could’ve stayed and talked to me for five minutes after agreeing to meet me in the first place?”
“It was awkward. I don’t do well with awkward.”
“Who does?”
“I don’t know, but not me. You seem to be fine with it, I guess. You asked someone you hated a decade ago to have drinks. Of course, I didn’t think about the reason why you did that until today.”
“Reason why I invited you for a drink?”
“The fact that you were only interested in my company and drinks with me because you wanted me to do something for you.”
“I wanted a connection to Russell, yeah. I won’t apologize for that. My job is sales, and I work for a tech company that might be able to sell to them. I didn’t lie to you or pretend otherwise, Violet.”
“But you weren’t exactly upfront with your intentions, either.”
“Would you have even met with me if I started the conversation with, ‘Sure, you can buy my software, but you’ll be small potatoes. I really need an intro to someone bigger. Can you call your daddy for me?’”
“No, obviously.”
“And you’re telling me that as a CEO, you’ve never held something back when trying to do something for your business?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because I don’t have a history with anyone I’d do that with. Not like you,” Violet answered.
“And what is our history, exactly? In your words.”
“You were a pompous asshole. I had one thing that my parents actually thought I was good at and supported me in, and that was school; the fact that I studied hard and brought home great grades. If I went home with anything less than the highest GPA in a very competitive business program and the plaque that went along with it, my life would have–”
“Wait. There was a plaque?” Stella asked.
“Yes, there was a plaque. You didn’t know?”
“I guess I thought we were competing for top of the class because it came with recommendations and networking opportunities that we both needed. I didn’t know there was a plaque.”
“Well, there was. And you were a pain in my ass, always making every class way more complicated than it needed to be, getting great grades without even trying, and–”
“You think I didn’t try?” She slammed her laptop shut.
“Um… One of us was the poor girl who could barely afford the program. Of course, I tried. I had no choice. I had busted my ass just to get in. I wasn’t going to waste my opportunity.
But you just had to keep answering the questions I knew the answers to, meeting with the professors in their office hours, taking up all of their time, so they couldn’t meet with anyone else, and taking a scholarship from someone else like me who could’ve really used that money in the first place. ”
“What?” Violet asked, looking very much offended. “I met with the professors because I was trying to keep up with you. But what about the scholarship?”
“You were one of the scholarship–”
“I won a scholarship, yes. It was a contest, and I won the spot and the money that came with it, but I didn’t take the money. I just took the spot.”
“What do you mean?”
“I earned my spot fair and square, Stella. And I did win a scholarship, but I only took the spot in the program that I’d earned. I told them to keep the money and give it to another student because I didn’t need it.”
“I didn’t know that,” she admitted softly.
“Why would you? I didn’t tell anyone.”
“It doesn’t matter. We just didn’t get along, and it makes more sense to me now than I think it did then, why you bothered me so much.”
“It makes sense to you now?”
“I’ve recently come to the conclusion that the reason I disliked you so much was actually that I wanted to sleep with you.”
Violet’s eyes went wide at that.
“I know. Surprised me, too. I mean, it did, and it didn’t.
You’re an attractive woman. I had just come out then – or recently enough, at least – and while I was in another country, away from everyone I knew, there was this pain-in-the-ass woman in my program who kept rambling on about her girlfriend back home.
So, even though you weren’t available, I knew you were into women.
Don’t worry; it was just lust. I didn’t actually want to date you.
It was more like I wanted to fuck you up against a wall or something to shut you up for just one single minute. ”
Violet didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, she closed her own computer and looked over at Stella.
“Well, that is new information.”
Stella laughed loudly and said, “I imagine so, yeah. You never thought about it? You and me just going at it, releasing all that built-up tension we had?”
“I didn’t… know for sure that you were… into women. And I had a–”
“If you say, ‘girlfriend back home,’ one more time, I’m throwing used napkins at you,” she joked.
“It’s true.”
“Well, I don’t see a ring on your finger, so I guess you two didn’t work out. Or, at least, you’re not married.”
“Oh, no,” Violet said with a little laugh. “We broke up right when I got home. She was sleeping with someone else the entire time I was away.”
“Whoa. Seriously?”
“Yup… The whole time I was bragging about having a girlfriend to, apparently, everyone who was within earshot, because she was my first-ever girlfriend and I felt like I could finally brag about having one, she was sleeping with her statistics tutor. I didn’t know it at the time, but not only the said tutor was in the room for some of our phone conversations, but, in some cases, she was in the bed with my girlfriend. ”
“Jesus. How did you find that out?”
“She told me when she confessed to the cheating. She lied to me for months and then got incredibly honest all at once. It was not fun for me.”
“Shit. Sorry,” Stella offered.
“Maybe I should have let you fuck me against a wall or something after all. She wasn’t exactly faithful.”
Stella’s eyes got big then.
“I don’t know why I just said that. I don’t… I mean, I didn’t–” Violet scrambled. “I should go.”
“Why?”
“Because we shouldn’t be talking about this. I might be your customer.”
“You said no to the price earlier.”
“I don’t know what would happen with that just yet, but I do know that this is a very weird conversation that I’d like to get out of, so I think I’ll take my coffee to-go now.
” Violet shoved her computer into her bag.
“I’ll have to order three more drinks before I leave, though, so if you could return to your work and pretend like you didn’t see me here, I’d appreciate it. ”
“No way.” Stella laughed. “Why are you getting three more drinks? And how are you, of all people, a mocha drinker with extra everything? I had you pegged as a black coffee or a double shot. Something plain.”
“I like chocolate. And I have to go. Goodbye, Stella.”
Stella laughed and told her, “Hey, I’m going to Buddy’s tonight.”
“Okay. Well, that’s…”
“I’m telling you so that you know that I’ll be there. I’m meeting someone for drinks. Since you go there sometimes, I thought you might want to know so that you could… stay away,” she teased. “Since you clearly can’t stand the sight of me.”
“It’s not–” Violet stood up. “You know what? They can drink coffee at home. I’ve got to go.”
Then, Stella watched a very flustered Violet hurry out of the coffee shop.