CHAPTER 25
The plan had been to go to Stella’s place, have multiple orgasms, stay the night merely because she would be too tired and sore to even think about driving home, and leave early before morning sex had a chance to take them into a breakfast in bed and showering together again.
The plan had been to prove to everyone, including herself, that she didn’t actually want anything other than those orgasms from Stella Ross.
The plan hadn’t been foolproof, but she’d pushed all thoughts of wanting a relationship with someone out of her mind.
She’d focused on the present and only the sex while she’d driven, and she’d had that focus and intent right up until the moment that Stella had opened the door and looked comfortable and sexy at the same time.
Stella had looked like she’d been ready for a night in with her live-in girlfriend, not like she had been ready for a night of multiple orgasms.
Seeing the pans on the stove and lit candles that made Violet think of the fall and winter they’d shared in Amsterdam, despite being mortal enemies back then, had had her worried that Stella might have had other ideas for the night, but noticing the cloth napkins had pushed her over the edge.
Violet hadn’t seen cloth napkins at the dinner table since the last family dinner with her parents, which was awkward, as they always were these days.
Then, the bedroom had been set up like a romantic comedy’s big first-time sex scene: candles everywhere, and Stella had even had her phone set up on a speaker, which meant that she’d been about to turn on some R wanting to go out and make friends in a new city, but staying in my dorm room instead.
The program wasn’t what I’d expected. It was supposed to be tough, but not too tough, and I expected to sail through it. I chose it because of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got into three semester abroad programs. One was at Oxford and would’ve been a pain in my ass.
One was in Barcelona. I applied there because I’d be learning in a different language.
My Spanish was basic, but I got into the immersive program, and that would’ve been hard, too.
The Amsterdam program was good. It was solid.
And it was taught in English, so I didn’t have to learn Dutch.
I thought I’d be able to have the best of both worlds: have fun in Amsterdam and earn top marks to impress my parents.
It’s also possible that I told them that the program was in Dutch to make it sound like more of a big deal to excel in it than it actually was. ”
Arlowe laughed and asked, “And what happened when they saw that plaque you won that was etched in English?”
“Oh, they’ve never seen it,” Violet replied.
“They just needed to know that their only child was preparing herself for the company after her MBA. I impressed them with a few sentences I’d learned in Dutch when I got home and told them I’d been top of the class at dinner.
My dad grunted and started talking about my MBA program and how competitive it would be. My mom got quiet and ate her food.”
“Your parents are really top-notch, aren’t they?”
“They are the product of their environment, and so am I. I was raised to follow the plan.” She held her arm out like a path in front of her.
“It was all about the path that had been set for me. Being gay wasn’t part of that, so, in their mind, they’d already made a slight detour to allow me to have a wife instead of a husband one day. ”
“Oh, how nice of them,” Arlowe said sarcastically.
“I got myself a girlfriend – or, at least, I thought I did – and I set out for Amsterdam. When I got there, though, there were these three cool people who all had different plans for their lives.” Violet smiled at her friend.
“And they weren’t like mine. They weren’t set in stone.
They could do whatever they wanted after school.
Hell, you were already building things back then. ”
“Engineers are different. We only go to school sometimes. We tend to be more self-taught, like me.”
“I know. But then, I also met Stella in a class, and she introduced herself to everyone on the first day. It was like she exuded this confidence. She’s hot, yes, and she was back then, too.
I’m not blind. She didn’t have a plan at all, though.
She wanted to work somewhere in business, and that was it.
She was a senior, like me, graduating in the spring, but she still hadn’t thought of a plan.
She had no internships lined up, no real connections, according to her, and she wasn’t bothered by any of it. ”
“You were jealous,” Arlowe stated.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “And that jealousy made me do stupid things around her.”
“Oh, I’m guessing the jealousy made you act like a bitch around her, but the stupid things had something to do with the crush you had.”
“Maybe. Either way, I had a girlfriend back home.” She bit her bottom lip. “But when I… you know… myself…”
“Masturbated?” Arlowe guessed.
“Yes, thank you.” Violet rolled her eyes.
“I can admit it now that I sometimes thought about her, but I think I have only admitted to myself that it was once up until right now. Only once that I thought about Stella when doing that.” She shook her head.
“Ten years later, though, I think I have to be adult enough to admit that I was thinking of her a little more often in general, not just when I was doing that.”
“Well, you had a crush on her, so that makes sense.”
“But I had someone at home, so I was even madder at Stella for making me think about her and not the woman I thought was waiting for me back in Connecticut.”
“I get it, Vi, but that’s all in the past. It’s so long ago.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Arlowe, you don’t have relationships today because of what happened to you ten years ago.”
“We’re not talking about me tonight.”
Arlowe turned in her chair, facing her computer.
“But it’s true. You’re telling me that it shouldn’t matter, what happened back then, but you haven’t moved on, either.”
“Well, I was in love with someone I was in a relationship with, who was staying in the Netherlands, and I couldn’t stay. That’s a very different situation.”
“Why couldn’t you go back and forth or–”
“With what money, Violet? It wasn’t that simple.
Sometimes, I think the three of you assume I ended things with Eline out of nowhere, but I didn’t.
We tried to figure it out. How often could we even see each other?
How much were the flights? She had a roommate back then, who was always home, it felt like, so could we afford a hotel for at least a night or two to have some real privacy?
I didn’t want to live there permanently, so that was out, even if I could somehow get citizenship eventually.
She had things she wanted to accomplish there and didn’t want to live here.
We tried, Violet. We talked about it all the time.
In the end, I made the call, but she agreed.
We cried a lot, we made love one last time, and I went home.
” Arlowe looked over at her again. “But it’s not the same for you.
You and Stella weren’t together back then.
You weren’t in love. You didn’t leave the country with your heart still there. You can actually try now.”
“I can’t, Arlowe.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve changed places, and… it’s weird.”
“Changed places? What?”
“Stella has the money now. She doesn’t have the whole trust fund, but she’s got her own place. She’s making really good money, getting bonuses. She has stock options that actually mean something. She has a newer car than mine. We’ve changed places. I’m the poor girl now.”
“So?” Arlowe said with a chuckle. “Has she bragged or something? Made you feel bad about it?”
“No, of course not.”
“You are overcomplicating this like you’ve been overcomplicating the investor deck. You like her. She likes you. If you want to date her, you do it. If you don’t see it, you don’t.”
“The timing is off. We’re about to have this big meeting, and if it goes well, we’ll get a cash injection.”
“That we need desperately because you’ve been carrying us for far too long. Yeah, we all know that, and we feel terrible that we haven’t been able to make this thing profitable.”
“You do?”
“Of course we do. We hate that the investment money we did get ran out a long time ago. I know you’re paying our paychecks with your trust fund. We all do. We hate it. It’s why we’re giving this one last shot before we decide to maybe call it quits.”
“Wait. What?” Violet exclaimed as she leaned forward in her chair.
“We’re not giving up yet. I just meant that you can’t keep doing this forever, and we don’t want to take advantage even if you could. We want a viable business, so we all want this money to come in, too.”
“If it does, I’ll be dealing with all the strings it comes with.”
“We all will. You most of all, yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a relationship if you want one.
Plenty of people do what you do and have relationships, Violet.
You just have to ask yourself if you want to date Stella, or if you want to keep going to her house late at night for a booty call, pretending like having her hold you isn’t the best part of your whole damn day. ”
Violet didn’t have anything to say to that because when she thought about her day today, being held by Stella was up there on her list, but she wasn’t sure if it were the best part.
The best part, for her, had been when Stella had joined their team meeting and had argued with her.
It wasn’t the best because of the argument necessarily, but because it was nice to have someone who was very smart, gorgeous, and who kept staring at Violet with those damn brown eyes, there with her.
She liked having dinner with Stella joining them last night.
She even liked that Stella had sat in her chair at the kitchen table.
“I’ll let you get back to work. I’m going to bed.”
“You have a lot to think about, but, Vi, don’t overthink this like you do just about everything else, okay? Just be with her if you want, and if not, that’s okay, too. You don’t have a country or two in your way.”
Violet stared at her friend, who still felt the loss of her love so acutely, even after so long.
She suspected that was likely because Arlowe believed that Eline had moved on in their time apart, but she hadn’t bothered to check because it would be too hard for her to see.
Violet understood. She had thought about looking Eline up herself, but that wasn’t her place and would only open a can of worms that she wasn’t sure Arlowe would be able to deal with.
Violet headed to her bedroom and closed the door behind her. She wasn’t tired. She was exhausted but not tired, so she flopped back on her bed and tried to think about the important meeting she had coming up and not Stella’s eyes when Violet told her that she had to leave the house earlier.