CHAPTER 24
Sarai looked at herself in the mirror and wasn’t sure of her choice.
She’d opted for a dress because it was a first date, but Gabi hadn’t ever seen her in a dress before.
Usually, she just wore casual clothes around the house and maybe a nicer sweater paired with some decent jeans when she went out to the bar.
“Just go out there and pick her up, even though you live in the same damn house. It’s not weird. Don’t make it weird,” she said to herself. “You chose this dress for a reason. Don’t doubt yourself now.”
Having her friends tell her that they’d noticed her insecurities over the years had been a pretty big wake-up call for Sarai, but hearing that Gabi had been willing to move out of the house she’d only just moved into in order to have a chance with her had been the thing to push Sarai over the edge.
She had worked up the courage to ask Gabi out, and now that it was finally happening, as Gabi had put it, Sarai was both excited and terrified.
Of course, she’d happened to ask Gabi out on the least sexy day of the week, Monday, and since Tuesday and Wednesday weren’t exactly nights known to produce hot dates, they had pushed their first date out a bit.
Sarai had also made plans with Arlowe, Enya, and Violet to go for a friend dinner on Wednesday night before she and Gabi had talked on the swing, which meant that her first date with Gabi was four days after they’d agreed to go on one.
And had they not lived together, that wouldn’t have been a big deal.
They probably would’ve texted or talked on the phone a bit between the asking part and going on the date, but having four days around the same house, knowing that they were going on their first date, had been a little awkward.
They hadn’t told anyone that they were going out, but her friends had to know, given how Sarai and Gabi had been like their old selves around the house, laughing, talking, sharing small touches here and there, and spending time on the swing together as opposed to her being out there by herself.
It had been so nice, having someone sit out there with her.
Sarai wasn’t sure that any of her friends had ever joined her out there when she’d been in one of her moods.
Maybe they had been afraid to or something, but Gabi hadn’t been, and that had made all the difference.
“Whoa!” Arlowe said, looking up at Sarai from her position on the sofa. “What are you all dressed up for?”
“Nothing,” she lied. “Just going out.”
“You look nice,” Enya told her with a smile. “Is that dress new?”
“No, I’ve had it for a while. I just haven’t worn it before.”
“Hey,” Violet said, walking in from the kitchen. “Damn, Sarai. You look hot.”
“Uh… Thanks?”
“Who are you calling hot now?” Stella asked, following Violet out with a big bowl of popcorn.
“Sarai. Look.”
“Oh. Damn, Sarai. You clean up nice.”
“What are you two doing here?” she asked and looked back down the hallway, expecting Gabi to emerge any minute now.
“We were invited. We’re watching a movie with Arlowe and Enya. Enya told us you couldn’t come.”
“She’s right.” Sarai turned back to her friends. “And I need you all to either be extremely cool, or leave this living room right now. You choose, but you have to pick one.”
“Huh?” Arlowe asked.
“Please. I will do all the dishes for a week or–”
“Oh, shit,” Arlowe said, standing up abruptly. “You’re going out with Gabi tonight, aren’t you?”
“Yes. And it’s our first date that’s already weird because I can’t exactly pick her up and drop her off at her home.”
“You’re going out with Gabi tonight?” Violet softened. “Enya just said you were going out. I figured you were doing that to get Gabi off your mind or something. Why didn’t you say anything? Stella and I would’ve stayed home.”
“To avoid this exact situation where you all make a big deal out of it and I’m trying not to.”
“Sarai, it is a big deal. You better make it a big deal,” Arlowe told her. “She’ll be expecting that.”
“Arlowe, don’t make her nervous.”
Enya stood and slapped Arlowe on the shoulder playfully.
“Too late. Been there for days. Need you all to leave now.”
“Leave where, exactly?” Stella asked.
“Just… go into the garage, or the backyard, or even Arlowe’s bedroom.”
“Kitchen. Now,” Enya ordered thankfully, and the four of them hurried there just as Sarai heard a door behind her.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again before she turned around and saw Gabi standing there, about five feet away from her, wearing a sweater, jeans, and a pair of black boots.
“You dressed up?”
“Yeah, I–” Sarai’s eyes darted to the kitchen, where she saw all her friends pretending not to be listening in, but very obviously listening. “It’s our first date.”
She looked back at Gabi.
“I went more casual. I should change. I thought you’d be casual. You’re always casual.”
“No, it’s fine. You dressed up for Vi’s party thing, so I thought you’d dress up for tonight, and I wanted to, I don’t know, match, I guess.”
“My party thing? It was my housewarming party, not a party thing,” Violet whispered, but Sarai heard her along with Enya’s shushing sound.
“I should change,” Gabi repeated.
“What? No. You look great.”
“No, you look great. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a dress before, and outside of the time I ran into you on your way out of the bathroom when you were in a towel, I don’t think I’ve seen your legs. Why do you hide those in pants?”
When Arlowe laughed before she covered her mouth, Sarai internally plotted her slow and very painful death.
“We should just go. We don’t want to miss our reservation.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind changing,” Gabi replied.
“No, don’t.” Sarai smiled at her. “You look amazing.”
“You do, too,” Gabi said and held out her hand. “Shall we?”
“Did you park on the street by chance?”
“Yes, why?”
“Because Violet’s here, which means her car is in the driveway, and I didn’t want us to get blocked in,” she replied as she took Gabi’s hand.
“Violet’s here? Where?”
Violet cleared her throat in the kitchen, so Gabi turned her head, but Sarai used her free hand to turn it back toward her instead.
“Probably in the bathroom. Bad stomach, that Violet. I actually feel really bad for Stella, having to put up with all the… you know, smells.”
There was a high-pitched sound from the kitchen that nearly made Sarai laugh, but she held it together.
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah, but does she need any medication or something? Does she still have any here if she does?”
“That’s for Stella to worry about now. Once one of us has a significant other, the rest of us are off the hook.”
“You four have some very interesting rules; you know that, right?” Gabi joked.
“Yes. We’re way too close. So, let’s go and get me away from all of them as quickly as possible.”
“Okay.” Gabi chuckled.
They walked out the front door then, and Sarai took a deep breath and let it out. This was not the start to the date that she’d wanted for them, so now, she was a different kind of nervous that was mixing with the nerves that were already there, and that could not be good.
“They were in the kitchen, weren’t they?” Gabi asked, squeezing Sarai’s hand as they walked to the car.
“Yes,” she admitted as she lowered her head.
“And that whole Violet stomach thing?”
“I made it up. But can you not tell her that I told you? And maybe bring up how you’re concerned about her every so often?”
Gabi laughed and replied, “No problem. Did you make them hide in the kitchen for my benefit, though?”
“No, mine. And I didn’t tell them to hide in the kitchen. I suggested the garage, the backyard, or Arlowe’s bedroom. They had their pick and chose the kitchen, of course, so that they could eavesdrop.”
“Well, that calls for revenge, I think,” Gabi said as she unlocked the car with her key fob.
“Yeah?” Sarai asked, surprised to hear Gabi say that.
“Definitely. Want to plot something on the drive to the restaurant?”
Sarai laughed and climbed into the car, feeling instantly better, and when Gabi joined her, it hit her that they were on a date now. It was happening. It had started once they’d left the house. They were actually on a date.
“You okay?” Gabi asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“On a scale of one to ten, how much are you freaking out?”
“I’m not freaking–”
“Sarai…”
“Maybe a six.”
“What can I do to bring that down to at least a four?”
Sarai smiled over at her and said, “Nothing. Just drive us wherever it is we’re going.”
“That’s it?”
“That, and maybe… hold my hand again?”
Gabi turned on the car and held out her hand, palm up. Sarai smiled wider, took it, and rested their now-joined hands in her lap.
“I didn’t say it in there because I was pretty nervous, but you are gorgeous, and I love you in this dress.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah,” Gabi replied. “I especially like the fact that it’s short enough that our hands are touching your bare thigh. You should wear more dresses.”
Sarai laughed in response, and as Gabi pulled them out onto the street, she told her, “Thank you. I’m down to a four now.”
“I’m glad.”
“Where are we going, by the way?”
“I planned a thing.”
“A reservation?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that. I was actually glad that you were busy with everyone last night because they only offer this a few days a week, and last night wasn’t one of them.”
“What is it, exactly?”
“I’m getting the impression that you’re not someone who likes surprises.” Gabi chucked.
“That would be the correct impression to have.”
“Can you maybe trust me, though?” Gabi asked, turning them onto the main street out of their neighborhood.
“I do trust you. It’s not about me trusting you. It’s that I like to be prepared for things.”
“You’re prepared. Well, I am, which means that you are because you’re going with me.”
“What do I need to be prepared for?”
“Sarai, just… look down at our hands, okay? We’re on a date.
A real date, like eleven years after we met and I was so nervous around you that I didn’t know how to act.
I’m on a date with the super cool, older girl who waited for me to take a million pictures everywhere, and even let me take a few of us together because I wanted to have something of you to look at when I remembered my weekend in Amsterdam.
God, I remember being at those big Amsterdam letters, wanting to climb all over them, take a bunch of pictures, and send them to my parents, but I thought it would be annoying for you to take even more pictures of me.
You somehow figured it out without me even saying anything about it, and you told me to take however long I wanted to.
You took at least a hundred pictures and even told that kid, who wouldn’t get off the letter D that I wanted a picture in front of, to move out of the way. ”
“You wanted a picture in all the letters so you could put it together into some kind of collage or something. I wanted you to have that.”
Gabi let go of Sarai’s hand, and Sarai worried she’d said something wrong, but Gabi just rested her hand on Sarai’s thigh and gave it a squeeze.
Sarai closed her eyes and took a second to get herself together.
She was pretty sure that she’d never been this nervous before, which meant that she didn’t know how to snap herself out of it.
“You can put your hand on top of mine,” Gabi suggested. “Or, if you want, you can put it on my thigh. I know I’m wearing jeans, so it’s not as good as what I get to feel right now, but…”
Sarai couldn’t help but smile at that and said, “Somehow, we’ve switched places.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were worried about being nervous around me then, and I’m worried about my own nervousness around you now.”
“I kind of like it, if I’m being honest. It’s a nice change of pace.”
“What?”
Sarai laughed and put her hand on Gabi’s thigh.
“I was so nervous around you back then that I took my clothes off for the shower in the bathroom stall at your dorm instead of asking you to just turn around and doing it in your room. I ended up dropping a shower shoe in the toilet and had to pull it out and disinfect it in the shower.”
Sarai laughed louder and said, “No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. I didn’t bring a robe with me, and I had to borrow one of your towels.
I was holding it up, trying to make sure I didn’t drop it into the toilet, and I had the shoes in the other hand.
It was a whole thing. Then, I had to go back into the stall to change into my clothes before I went back to your room. ”
“You walked back into my room with the shoes that had been in the toilet?”
“I spent five minutes in scalding hot water using all the soap I had to clean those things. They were fine.”
“I think I’m at a three now,” Sara shared.
Gabi gave her a smile, and they hit the highway, which Sarai hadn’t expected.
“We’re not going someplace close?”
“Nope.”
“You’re not kidnapping me, right?”
“No, Sarai.” Gabi laughed. “Do I need to kidnap you to go on a date with you?”
“No.”
“Babe, just relax, okay?”
Sarai looked over at her.
“Yeah, it slipped out,” Gabi said and shook her head.
“I’m at a two now,” Sarai replied and looked out the windshield with a pretty big smile on her face.
They didn’t talk much after the term of endearment slip, and Sarai still wanted to know where they were going, but she decided to do what Gabi had requested and relax. About an hour later, Gabi turned them off the highway, and not long after that, she pulled into a parking lot.
“I have no idea where we are right now,” Sarai said as she looked out into the darkness.
“Remember how I talked about doing a dinner canal cruise at night, but with everything else I’d planned for that weekend, I couldn’t squeeze it in, so you took me on a hop-on, hop-off boat so that I’d at least get on the water?” Gabi asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s not a canal, but it’s a river, and one that does dinner cruises. I’m pretty certain it’s going to be a boat filled with retirees and probably at least one office party event or something, but I was hoping we could get our dinner cruise on the water after all.”
“You booked us a dinner cruise on the river?”
“Is that okay?” Gabi checked and parked the car before turning it off.
“It wasn’t very expensive, so I don’t have a ton of confidence that the food is going to be good, but it was more of a sentimental thing than for the food.
We can always grab something after if we don’t like what they serve.
I didn’t expect you to wear a dress, but I did bring us a blanket in my backpack, which I also brought like a nerd because I wanted to make sure I had anything we might need.
I put a travel first aid kit in there, too. ”
Sarai laughed and said, “I kind of love that.”
“So, it’s okay?”
“It’s pretty perfect, actually,” she replied.