CHAPTER 27
“Oh, hey.”
“I really need to start remembering to bring my clothes in there,” Sarai said.
“Or, you don’t,” Gabi suggested. “Just an idea.”
Sarai laughed and held the towel to her body. Gabi had, once again, run into her just out of the bathroom after Sarai’s shower.
“It never mattered before, but you live here now.”
“It never mattered before? So, you just ran around the house naked, with Arlowe, Enya, and Violet around?”
“No, but it also wasn’t a big deal to walk out wearing a towel because none of them wanted to see me naked.”
“How do you know that I wanted to see you naked?” Gabi challenged.
“The face you made when I said I didn’t want to have sex on our first date gave me a pretty good indication of that fact.”
“What? I thought I held that in pretty well.”
“You didn’t,” Sarai replied.
Gabi laughed before she pointed to the bathroom and said, “I need to…”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
Sarai moved out of her way.
“Seven?” Gabi checked.
“Yes, seven,” Sarai confirmed.
“Okay. I should take my shower, then,” she said.
“Yes. Do that. I’ll start getting dressed.”
“And I will go home,” Violet added, and Gabi and Sarai both turned to see her standing there as well now. “Date number two, I take it?”
“Yes. And we have to get ready for it, but if you could get your car out of the driveway so that I can drive mine tonight, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Yes, Sarai. I am leaving, so I’ll be taking my car. I just wanted to say thank you to Gabi for all her help today.”
“Of course,” Gabi replied. “No problem.”
“Arlowe told me you figured out something pretty important that I don’t understand, but I trust her.”
“And I’m standing here in a towel, so…”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before, Sarai,” Violet stated.
“You’ve seen Sarai naked, and I haven’t?”
“No!” Sarai said loudly. “No one in this house has seen me naked, and I’d like it to stay that way.”
“You sure about that?” Violet asked just as Gabi lifted a challenging eyebrow in Sarai’s direction.
“Violet, Arlowe, and Enya have never seen me naked, and I’d like it to stay that way,” Sarai clarified.
“Nice save there,” Gabi replied with a little laugh. “And I’m out here in a robe, so I should probably go shower now.”
“Thank you again, Gabi. I’ll see you all later. Have fun on your date tonight.”
Violet walked by the hallway, and a second later, Gabi heard the front door open and close.
“You’re naked under that robe, aren’t you?” Sarai asked.
“Oh, yeah,” she replied with a wink and walked into the bathroom.
Gabi smiled the whole way through it, thinking about how they’d bumped into one another in the hallway and that if no one else lived here – assuming they’d already had sex – she would’ve had that towel on the floor in a heartbeat.
She understood and even appreciated Sarai wanting to take things slow, but it didn’t stop her from wanting to speed things up.
The fact that Sarai had thought that she could be her last first kiss had probably been the best and most romantic thing any woman had ever said to her.
Even with everyone interrupting them last night, they’d still managed to salvage their date, and it had ended with Gabi falling asleep on Sarai’s shoulder and Sarai waking her up and telling her that it was time to go to bed.
They hadn’t kissed at their doors how Gabi had imagined them doing, but she’d at least hugged Sarai at the door before they’d said good night to each other.
Today, she’d woken up and found Sarai in the kitchen, making them all breakfast, and it had taken everything in her not to walk up to her at the stove and kiss her good morning.
Instead, Gabi had walked up behind her, wrapped her arms around Sarai’s waist, and held on to her while Sarai had told her good morning and asked her to help set the table.
Given how Arlowe and Enya had kept interrupting them on their very first date, she had been worried that living with two other roommates while they were just starting out might be a bad idea, but when they’d all had breakfast together that morning, neither Arlowe nor Enya had said anything, so Gabi had thought it might be all right after all.
Of course, then, Violet had shown up, and they’d had a Saturday morning meeting to primarily talk about the upcoming campaign and launch, but also the issue that the app had experienced.
Arlowe had asked if Gabi could help, and she’d said yes because Sarai would be there, too, and it would give her an excuse to be in the same room with her.
Now, Gabi was getting ready for their second date, and this one, Sarai had planned, having asked her at lunch if she could take her out for dinner that night.
Gabi had been glad because they hadn’t talked about when their next date would be at the end of their first one, and she hadn’t wanted to wait long.
“You look great,” she noted when she walked out of her bedroom and saw Sarai at the end of the hallway, waiting for her again.
“You look great, too.”
“I like you casual. Just making sure you know that. And I loved the dress; wear that dress whenever – like, anytime, honestly – but you look amazing in everything, so this is also amazing.”
“This is just a sweater and jeans,” Sarai told her with a chuckle.
Gabi walked to her, took Sarai’s hand in her own, and said, “I love everything you wear. I even liked you in those big-ass clogs you stood in outside of–”
“I remember.” Sarai laughed. “I like that picture a lot. I still have it on my old phone.”
“You still have your old phone?”
“I kept it, yes. I had all my old messages with my friends on there, so I didn’t want to get rid of it.”
“It’s so easy to transfer stuff to new phones now, but it wasn’t back then, huh?”
“Right,” Sarai said. “I also kept it because of your messages.”
“Mine?” she asked, smiling.
“The ones from right after you left, yeah,” Sarai revealed.
“I guess I could’ve exported everything and kept it all on my computer or something, but that seemed like a lot of work when I could just keep my phone.
I still have the old charger, too. You know how often they change those.
I didn’t want to take the chance that I wouldn’t be able to start it up one day. ”
“You are very cute,” Gabi told her with a smile. “And I kept mine, too.”
“You kept your phone from Amsterdam?”
“Well, it wasn’t from Amsterdam; it was just my phone.
But when it was time for an upgrade, I didn’t turn it in.
I still have it. It’s in a box. Maybe when we get back, we can charge them up or something, and we could look at them tomorrow and reminisce; see how lame we were back then. Well, me. I was lame. You weren’t.”
“I’m sure I was pretty lame.” Sarai squeezed her hand. “I like that idea, though.”
“Cool. It’s a plan.”
“It’s a date,” Sarai said with a smile. “Now, we should go.”
“Are we late for a reservation?”
“No, you don’t make reservations for this place. I just know that one of our roommates will eventually emerge from somewhere, so I’d rather get out of here before they do.”
“Let’s go, then,” Gabi agreed.
They headed out on their second date, and Sarai was driving this time, so Gabi took her hand and put it in her own lap when they made it out onto the street.
“So, what exactly did you do with Arlowe earlier?”
“Oh, nothing major; just helped her with a few lines of code. It had gotten corrupted somehow. We ran some diagnostics to find out what had happened and fixed them. No big deal.”
“You say that, and I say that there’s no way I would’ve been able to do that.”
“Well, there’s no way I could do what you’re doing for the launch. How is that going, by the way?”
“Harder than I thought it would be,” Sarai shared. “I had an old program that I’ve used before, but they’ve updated it a few times since, and it’s somehow more complicated.”
“You’re doing the animation yourself. That’s amazing, Sarai. I can’t do that.”
“I don’t want to use AI. It would’ve made it easier for me, I’m sure, but I think it’s important that something creative like this is still human-made, you know? The animation program is a good one, though.”
“Can I see what you’ve been working on so far?”
“I don’t know. It’s pretty early in the process. I had to write the commercial script copy first and plan the animation before I even got to start creating it, so I’m not all that far along.”
“You’re worried, aren’t you?” Gabi asked.
“It’s… a big deal. Violet gave me a lot of money to run this thing, and we only have one chance for it to land.”
“Babe, you’ve done the research. It’s going to work.”
“We really need downloads for the new version, Gabs. And we need to grow subscribers faster, too, not just downloads. We need to be able to show our investors an increase in paying customers.”
“I know. You’ll get them.”
“I was thinking about redirecting some of the budget and having someone else do the animation work to make it better. I know we bought the time already, but I can call the network and have that changed.”
“I thought it was important to have it run in the slot you picked.”
“It is, but it’s also really expensive. I can save us a little bit of money there and spend it with a real animator. I bet they can make it look better than–”
“Babe?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you shown anyone else what you’ve got so far?”
“No.”
“So, this is your brain trying to convince you that it’s not good enough?”
“Yes,” Sarai confirmed.
“Well, how about this… You let your team take a look at it, and if they all suggest you make those changes, you do, but if they tell you that it’s amazing, you keep things the way they are.”
“Do you still want to take a look at it?” Sarai asked.
“I’d love to, but only if you want me to.”
“Can I take a look at it on Monday and let you know?”
“Of course,” she said, squeezing Sarai’s hand. “Where are we going, by the way?”
“Remember those tacos and burritos?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to the food truck the restaurant has, and we’ll sit at a probably dirty picnic table and eat.”
“Yeah? That’s amazing.”
“It’s not exactly romantic, but–”
“No, it’s perfect. I love their food, and I’m with you.”
Sarai pulled them into the lot, and several minutes later, she was standing behind Gabi, holding on to her and resting her chin on Gabi’s shoulder as they waited in line and talked about the menu, what they wanted to order, and how they’d share it all.
Even when they got up to the window, Gabi was still being held from behind while she placed their order, but then, Sarai got out her phone and tapped it on the reader to pay.
After they moved over to the side to wait, Gabi pulled Sarai in for a long hug, and she didn’t let go of her until their food was ready.
Then, she rubbed Sarai’s back before finally pulling away so that they could grab their dinner and find an empty picnic table in the grass overlooking a playground that was currently vacant.
“Can I ask you something?” Sarai said, looking up at her after she set her food down.
“Sure.”
“Do you want any of those?” Sarai asked, nodding toward a picnic table with parents and their two kids, both of whom were likely under the age of five.
“Kids?” Gabi asked back.
“Yeah. Do you want any?”
“That’s a pretty big question to ask on a second date.”
“I don’t,” Sarai revealed.
“You don’t?”
Sarai shook her head and asked, “Do you remember us talking about it in Amsterdam?”
“Yes. And you wanted them then.”
“I said I probably would because I wasn’t sure then, but I don’t want them anymore. I wanted to tell you now because I remembered us talking about it back then, and you said you wanted kids.”
“I was eighteen. I wanted a lot of things,” she replied.
“And I was twenty-two. I thought I did, too.”
“So, no kids?” Gabi asked.
“No. I’m already thirty-three, and I basically live for my job right now. I don’t see that changing now that things are picking up for us, either, and I love it. I don’t want to give it up or have to take time off. Maybe that makes me selfish.”
“What? No,” Gabi replied. “It makes you honest and self-aware. I think that’s more important.”
“Let’s pretend that you and I actually got that far and decided to do this. I’d probably want time with just the two of us first. Then, I’d be what, thirty-six? Thirty-seven? Maybe even older. And I don’t know if you–”
“Sarai?”
“Yes?”
“Babe, you don’t have to explain your decision to me. If you don’t want to have kids, you don’t need five reasons. I get it.”
“Does it change anything for you?” Sarai asked as she picked up her burrito.
“No,” she replied. “I’ll admit that this isn’t something I planned on talking about on our second date, but I understand why you’d want to. It doesn’t change anything for me, though.”
“You don’t want kids either now?”
Gabi shook her head.
“You’re sure?” Sarai asked.
“I’m sure, yes.” Gabi smiled at her. “Do you need any of my reasons?”
“No.” Sarai chuckled. “I do need a bite of your burrito, though. Yours looks better than mine.”
Gabi pushed her own paper plate over toward Sarai and waited for Sarai to slide her plate over toward her. Then, they ate in silence for a few minutes, and Gabi looked over at the playground, where she saw a swing move subtly in the breeze.
“Want to do something after we eat?” she asked.
“What did you have in mind?” Sarai asked back.