CHAPTER 6
Gabi had been so optimistic about the apartment she’d checked out after a call with the woman who would’ve been her roommate.
When she had arrived, she’d been shown her possible future room, all the common areas, and she’d been excited that it was a two-bathroom apartment, so she’d have her own, but the pictures of that apartment had been conveniently missing any evidence of the dogs – no bowls, beds, or toys around at all, and the whole snake set up had been in the woman’s bedroom, which hadn’t been photographed for the ad, so it had been an unfortunate deal-breaker because, with the layout of the apartment and the fact that the woman was an attorney, trying to make partner, Gabi probably would’ve felt like the place was all her own if it had not been for the other three unexpected residents.
“She wanted you to take care of them for her?” Enya asked as they walked into the kitchen.
“She said she’d knock two hundred bucks a month off the rent and pay the utilities if I walked the dogs whenever I worked from home and fed the snake when she couldn’t.”
“She wanted you to feed a snake?” Enya exclaimed.
“Yes. Live mice… I’m sorry; I know we should like all animals or whatever, but snakes are not my thing.
I’d rather have a pet mouse than a snake.
I knew I’d just end up falling in love with every mouse I’d have to feed the thing, and I’d be traumatized.
Circle of life and all that, but I still cry when Mufasa dies, so not sure I could’ve handled it even for the cheap rent. ”
“Mufasa dies?” Arlowe asked. “Spoiler alert.”
Gabi hadn’t even noticed her in the room, so she must have been in the garage before her interjection.
“She’s kidding,” Sarai said, following Arlowe into the kitchen.
“Hey,” Gabi greeted. “Also, I was told there would be brownies.”
“Right here.” Enya nodded over to a plate of brownies. “They’re chocolate-peppermint. I wanted to try something different.”
“Oh, really? That’s cool.”
“Those are Violet’s favorite,” Sarai explained. “Enya’s been missing her.”
“We all have,” Enya added.
“Well, that’s nice to hear,” Violet said, walking into the kitchen with Stella close behind.
“Hey. You’re late,” Arlowe noted. “Sex?”
“We were hanging out with Jen and Haley, and we lost track of time,” Violet said, ignoring Arlowe’s sex comment.
“We’ve been replaced,” Arlowe joked.
“Who are Jen and Haley?” Gabi asked.
“Stella’s best friend and her girlfriend,” Violet shared.
“They’re about to move in together, so I think they invited us over to Haley’s place, where they’ll be living, to try to butter us up to ask us to help them move,” Stella explained. “Oh, brownies!”
“Chocolate-peppermint,” Enya said and held the plate up to Violet, ignoring Stella.
“My fave. Thank you.”
Violet smiled at Enya and took a brownie.
“So, game night, huh?” Stella asked. “What are we playing?”
“I picked up a few. Want to go out there and pick with me? I’m thinking something with teams,” Arlowe said. “Or, we could skip the board games and the cards and go classic with charades. You and Violet, me and Gabi, Sarai and Enya.”
“You know Enya will barely play. Trying to sandbag me, Arlowe Romano?” Sarai asked.
“No. I’ll be on Enya’s team, then. You can take Gabi.”
“I feel very welcome right now, being tossed around,” Gabi said sarcastically.
“Try being me,” Enya replied. “No one wants to be on my team because I don’t really want to be here at all.”
“Oh, come on. I’m sure it’ll be fun,” Gabi said. “Why don’t you and I team up together? Arlowe and Sarai can be on the same team and probably argue so much that they’ll end up losing no matter what.”
“Oh, I like her,” Violet said, chuckling.
“Charades sounds like fun,” Stella added.
“Fine. But you two, keep it rated PG in there. I don’t want you acting out whatever you do in the bedroom,” Sarai said, which made Gabi laugh.
They went into the living room, with Arlowe following behind, holding a bowl for all the clues to go into. Then, they each took a few slips of paper and wrote down some clues before folding them up and tossing them into the bowl.
“So, you’re moving in here?” Stella asked Gabi.
“Yeah, it looks like it.”
“When?” Arlowe asked.
“Huh?”
“When are you moving in? We have to give you a key and stuff.”
“Oh. I was thinking next weekend. I’m still in new-hire orientation at work, so I don’t have a lot of time to do that and move, but I’d like to start bringing things over slowly, going to the storage unit and putting stuff in my car every day after work. Can I start tomorrow?”
“Sure. I’ll give you the extra key before you leave tonight,” Arlowe replied.
“Great. And when do you want to go over the furniture stuff?”
“What do you have?” Enya asked.
“Pretty much everything. I have a full living room set, which this place doesn’t need, I guess, and then kitchen stuff mostly.”
“We could use a new coffee table. Arlowe’s had to fix this one a few times already,” Enya replied.
“This is our old, trusty table. We got it when we moved in,” Violet said, leaning forward and running her hand along the table.
“Which is why Arlowe’s had to fix it, like, three times,” Sarai added. “We got it at IKEA, Vi. I think it’s paid for itself by now.”
“Can we take it if they’re going to get rid of it?” Violet asked Stella.
“We don’t need a coffee table, babe.”
“Are you maybe missing this place?” Arlowe asked.
“No,” Violet stated quickly.
“You’re lying.” Sarai laughed. “You miss us.”
“I’m here all the time for work.”
“Yeah, but not to live. You miss us,” Sarai repeated.
Violet leaned over, kissed her girlfriend on the lips, and said, “I can miss something but still be totally happy with the decision I made.”
“Happy to hear that,” Stella replied.
“So, how is it, living together? It’s been a few months.”
“It’s been a week, Enya,” Violet said.
“No, you’ve basically been living with Stella for at least two months.”
“It’s been great,” Violet replied, rubbing Stella’s knee.
“I do miss it here, though. I know I’m here all the time, but it’s still strange that I go home at the end of a workday.
I have an actual commute now. I’m glad you guys decided to add a roommate.
It’s kind of funny to me that it’s Gabi, whom we all met in Amsterdam, and that I met Stella there, too.
” Violet shook her head and gave a small laugh.
“Like our past is coming back to haunt us, but in a good way.”
“I’m glad you added the ‘good way’ part,” Gabi said.
“Hey, you don’t have a drink,” Sarai noted.
“I didn’t get anything.”
“What do you want? I’ll grab it.”
“Whatever you’re having, I guess,” she replied.
Sarai got up and headed into the kitchen, but that gave Arlowe a chance to steal Sarai’s seat, like Enya had done the last time she’d been here and they’d all been hanging out.
“Why don’t you go first?” Arlowe said to her. “Enya can guess the clue, and you can act it out. I’ll use my phone as the timer.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said and stood up to pull a clue from the bowl.
When Sarai came back, she looked at Arlowe, gave her a glare, and sat down on the other sofa next to Enya instead.
“Three words,” Enya guessed when Gabi began showing the clue. “First word.”
And on and on it went for well over an hour before they were finally done with playing charades.
Sarai and Arlowe had come in third at the end.
Enya and Gabi had placed second. And, surprising no one, the couple in the group had won it all.
Arlowe then suggested that they move on to Monopoly and play with the official rules, which no one actually knew, so they spent the next twenty minutes reading the rule book and making sense of it before they each picked their piece.
“I think I’m going to sit this one out,” Enya said. “Can I just watch? I hate Monopoly.”
“Sure, Enya,” Arlowe said.
“Me too,” Sarai added. “I’m going to sit and watch.”
“What? Why?”
“Why was Enya let off the hook, but you’re questioning me?”
“Because you actually like Monopoly. You take it way too seriously and become this crazy person who wants all the properties and money and hates having to mortgage properties. You’re the reason I said we have to play by the real rules, because when we play by the house rules, you make it less like a game and more like–”
“A nightmare?” Violet finished.
“Hey!”
Gabi laughed and asked, “Are you really that bad?”
“I like to win,” Sarai replied, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Come on. Play. You can help me out if you want. I’m pretty bad at this game,” Gabi encouraged.
“I don’t think she wants you to see her dark side, Gabi,” Violet teased.
“I do not have a dark side,” Sarai argued. “And I’ll play, but when you all lose, I don’t want to hear any complaints.”
“Do I have to play against dark-side Sarai?” Stella asked.
“No, babe,” Violet replied, cupping Stella’s cheek. “You can watch, too, if you want.”
“Let’s roll to see who goes first,” Arlowe said.
“Is this going to be a regular thing now?” Gabi asked.
“What?”
“Game night. I haven’t had a roommate since my college dorm, so I don’t really know how it all works.
You’re all best friends, too, and you also work together, so I guess you spend a lot of time together.
Do you always eat dinner as a group, or is it kind of a just let people know your plan thing?
Would I be invited to those dinners when it’s a group thing, since it’s your group and I just live here? ”
“You’d be part of the group, Gabi,” Arlowe said. “And we sometimes eat together, but not all the time.”
“It’s a do-your-own-thing, but you can see what everyone else is up to kind of a thing, and if we’re ordering in or someone’s cooking, you just join,” Sarai said.
“Okay,” she replied and rolled the dice.
“And you’ll probably want to park your car in the back of the driveway since you’ll drive to work and we all stay here.
There are some days we have to go, but we can let you know before that or take a different car if we have to,” Enya said.
“You can street park, but there’s space in the driveway, too. ”
“I can work from home. I just also like to work in the office sometimes.”
“Are you going to set up a desk in your room?” Enya asked.
“That’s the plan, yeah,” she replied. “I used to have it in my living room, but I think it’ll fit in my room here just fine. I’m not loud or anything. I’m usually just in my headphones coding all the time.”
“I hear that,” Arlowe said with a little laugh.
When they started the game, Sarai whipped around the board like a billionaire tycoon, buying and bidding on properties left and right, making handshake deals with other players to trade for their properties, and while she was cash-poor, she was asset-rich, and it hadn’t taken her long to start building the houses, upgrading them to hotels, and taking everyone else’s money until Violet was bankrupt, followed by Arlowe, and then, Gabi went down hard.
“Dark-side Sarai,” Arlowe stated as she stood. “I’m getting another drink. What game do you want to play next?”
They all decided on Cards Against Humanity, and when Arlowe and Stella returned from the kitchen, they took down the Monopoly setup and got the card game going, but Gabi looked around while Stella was passing out cards, and Sarai wasn’t there.
“Where’s Sarai?” she asked.
“And where’s Enya?” Violet asked. “How does she do that?”
“Do what, babe?” Stella asked.
“Enya is a magician. She’s there one minute and gone the next,” Arlowe explained. “She probably went back to her room. She’s the best at an Irish goodbye that I’ve ever seen, and that joke works because she is actually Irish.”
“Remember Briana? We never talk about her anymore,” Violet added.
“Oh, her big crush. Yeah, I remember,” Arlowe said.
“Whose crush?” Gabi asked.
“Enya’s. When we were still in Amsterdam, Enya went to Ireland for a week. It was a whole thing for her family or something, but she met an older woman there.”
“An older straight woman, who was engaged to a man. She’s an American, but he’s Irish, I guess, so they were going to live there,” Violet shared. “Enya came back from Ireland with a crush and then never saw her again.”
“That’s kind of sad,” Gabi said.
“Yeah,” Arlowe agreed softly, looking a little lost. “Anyway, let’s play.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Sarai?”
“She can join us in the next hand,” Arlowe replied.
When a couple of rounds had gone by and Sarai still hadn’t returned to the living room, Gabi got up to get another drink and went into the kitchen.
She happened to look out the back window and noticed something.
Sarai was sitting on a swing in the backyard, staring off into the darkness, from what Gabi could tell.
She was only lit by the moon and the little lantern lights that lined the sidewalk, splitting the small yard.
“Oh, that’s where she went,” she said and turned to see Enya standing next to her now. “I thought you left.”
“I did. I came back. I was working on something in my bedroom. When I get an idea that I just need to write down, I go in there. Maybe Sarai has an idea. Sometimes, when she needs to work something out, she goes and sits on the swing.”
“Is she okay?” Gabi asked.
“I’m sure she is. It’s been an adjustment for all of us this past year or so. A lot has changed. Sometimes, we all just need to take a break and process. Have you had a cookie yet? Do you think they need more salt?”
“I haven’t had one, but the brownies were great,” Gabi replied, giving Enya a smile.
“Okay. Well, have one and let me know. I’m going to go back out there.”
“Can you tell them that I’ll be right back? I want to go check on Sarai.”
“Of course.”
Enya then left the kitchen, but Gabi continued to stare at Sarai through the window. The woman was definitely contemplating something. Gabi found herself wanting to know what it was, so she pulled open the back door and let it close behind her.