CHAPTER 25 #2
They made their way inside and down the stairs until they arrived at a large room with both rectangular and round tables. It looked to Gabi like bigger parties had been given the round tables, and the smaller parties had the rectangular ones lining the walls and windows.
“We’re table fifteen,” she told Sarai after checking their ticket on her phone.
They both looked around the room, much like the rest of the passengers, and Sarai pointed toward a table with the number fifteen on a sign at the end.
There were already four people sitting there, and they’d taken the seats by the window and the outer seats, which meant that Gabi and Sarai would be squeezed between them.
“I’m sorry. This might have been a bad idea.”
“Is it a buffet?” Sarai asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“One sec.” Sarai let go of Gabi’s hand and walked over to a steward standing nearby. “Hey. Do we have to eat at the tables, or can we grab our plates and take them elsewhere?”
“You can eat anywhere you’d like, Ma’am. You just need to wait for your table number to be invited to the buffet,” he replied.
“Great. Thank you,” Sarai said and returned to Gabi’s side. “Want to eat on the top deck?”
Gabi smiled at her and replied, “Absolutely.”
Dinner was decent, but nothing too fancy: just slightly rubbery chicken with scalloped potatoes and a salad.
They’d grabbed themselves drinks before heading up the stairs and had the upper deck mostly to themselves before the influencers had arrived to ruin the mood once again.
Luckily, they’d been basically finished with their food and neither of them had wanted dessert, so they had decided to walk around the boat again a few times, talking and laughing and stopping to take in the view every so often, but as much as Gabi had wanted to create another moment like the one they’d had when the boat had started moving, nothing presented had itself.
People had been milling about after their meals, and she hadn’t wanted her first kiss with Sarai to be with strangers walking around them, possibly interrupting them, or even vaping and trying not to get caught.
She’d caught some guy doing just that toward the end of the cruise, so she’d pulled Sarai away from the disrespectful idiot, wishing she’d just stuck with a normal dinner reservation.
It had made her tighten up a bit, and she knew it, but she couldn’t pull herself out of the funk as she drove them back toward the house.
“Are you okay?” Sarai asked as Gabi pulled onto their street.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You’ve hardly said anything since we got off the boat. I thought you were just paying attention to the road at first, but you look tense, Gabs.”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you lying?”
“No,” she said and laughed a little as she pulled them on their street. “I think I just got really tired.”
That was still a little lie, but not a total one.
Gabi was exhausted. Work had been hard, and on top of that, she had been working on the smart glasses and trying to find opportunities to be with Sarai in some way, at least, throughout the week without giving it away that they were going on a date in a few days.
“We’re almost home,” Sarai said. “Want to steal some of Arlowe’s ice cream and hang out on the sofa, or are you too tired?”
“I am not too tired for that,” she replied quickly.
Sarai smiled at her, and Gabi parked her car in the driveway after noticing that Violet’s car was gone now.
She took Sarai’s hand after they got out, and as they walked up to the front door, she had no idea what she should do when they actually got there.
Normally, she’d say good night at the door or see if the woman she was on a date with would invite her in, but Sarai lived here, too, so she merely unlocked the door and motioned for Sarai to go inside first.
“Hey, perfect timing!”
Gabi closed the door behind them and turned to see Arlowe and Enya on the couch.
“We just started a movie.”
“You’re still up?” Sarai asked.
“It’s not late. How was your date?” Arlowe asked.
“It was going well,” Sarai said.
Gabi got nervous again in that moment, and she couldn’t shake it for some reason.
It was awkward. This wasn’t how her first date with Sarai should end, but she didn’t feel comfortable asking Enya and Arlowe to watch their movie elsewhere or at another time.
She also didn’t know what to do because she didn’t want to join them, and she didn’t want the date to end just yet, either.
“So, you two are dating now? I guess it is kind of weird, huh?” Arlowe asked.
“We still need to talk about that,” Gabi said, internally smacking herself after the words unexpectedly came out of her mouth.
“We do?” Sarai asked.
“No, I… I meant that we have some talking to do.”
“Right,” Sarai said.
“Arlowe, maybe we should give them a minute,” Enya suggested.
“They have bedrooms.”
“Arlowe!” Sarai yelled.
“Okay. Yeah, fine. We’ll watch the movie in my room. Come on, Enya.”
Gabi stood there, realizing that she’d been the one to mess up their night in more ways than one at this point, and she wanted to run. She wanted to sprint to her car and drive away, or go to her bedroom and lock the door behind her.