CHAPTER 6
Eline had arrived an hour early. She hadn’t been able to sit at home and wait after she had gotten ready, also way too early, to see Arlowe for the first time in forever, so she’d gotten into her car and had driven to the local café that was filled with people in their twenties and thirties, all on their laptops or phones, wearing noise-canceling headphones and sipping way-too-expensive coffee.
She’d gotten into the line, ordered a large plain coffee, and after finding a table, she’d sat down and stared out the window to her right, turning every minute, or so it seemed, to the front window where the door was, not knowing which direction Arlowe would be coming from.
She was sipping her coffee more to have something to do than anything else, and before she knew it, she’d finished the whole thing.
The man behind the counter was eyeing her, or so she thought, so she left her cup on the table to hopefully save her seat and walked up to the counter to order another drink as well as something to eat.
Luckily, her table was still available when she came back, so she sat down after tossing the empty cup into the trash.
She probably should’ve gotten an actual mug, but Eline had not been in her right mind when the barista had asked her if she wanted it for here or to-go, and she’d said to-go but then sat right down at her table.
After nearly finishing her second cup and eating the muffin she’d gotten herself, she checked the time to discover that she still had another ten minutes before Arlowe would arrive.
“Would you mind too terribly saving my table for me?” she said to the woman sitting next to her, who wasn’t wearing headphones. “I’m meeting someone, but I need to use the bathroom.”
“Sure,” the woman replied.
Eline got the four-digit code from the barista and closed the door behind her, blocking out the steady noise from the café for at least a few minutes, which she hadn’t realized that she’d needed.
Having finished with what she needed to do in there, she took several deep breaths as she washed her hands and dried them.
Then, she checked herself in the mirror and decided that wearing her long blonde hair down had been a good idea.
Adding a few waves to it had been worth the time as well.
She’d even put on a little makeup, but just enough to make her not look too pale.
Knowing that this was the best she was going to look at this point, she pulled open the door, walked back out into the café, and that was when she saw her.
Arlowe Romano was standing just inside the door of the café and off to the right a bit, likely to let others come and go behind her.
She was wearing a pair of jeans with a couple of small tears in them, which was just like the Arlowe that Eline remembered, but she also had on a dark-blue blazer, which wasn’t at all like the Arlowe that she remembered.
Under it, Arlowe had on an old band T-shirt, and Eline lost her breath when she realized that it was actually her old band T?shirt.
She’d bought it at a Dutch rock band concert that she’d gone to on her eighteenth birthday with some friends, and they’d broken up by the time Arlowe had even come to Amsterdam, so Eline had forgotten all about the band and the shirt, but Arlowe, apparently, hadn’t.
Their eyes met, and Eline realized that she did actually need oxygen, so she let out another deep breath and watched Arlowe as a smile hit her face and widened, and her shoulders dropped like she was relieved.
Eline knew the feeling because something came over her, too, the moment she’d seen Arlowe for the first time in twelve years.
Arlowe looked older, yes, and her hair was shorter now and actually styled instead of pulled up or just left natural and messy, which Eline had always loved, but she was still the most beautiful woman that Eline had ever seen.
They stood there, just staring at each other from across a café, until finally, Eline heard someone clearing their throat, and she turned to see a woman nodding toward the bathroom door that Eline was currently blocking.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said and moved out of the way.
The woman entered the code and walked into the bathroom, and Eline looked back at Arlowe, who nodded toward the short line.
Eline nodded toward the table that she’d been saving for them and then walked over to it just to make sure Arlowe understood.
She expected Arlowe to stay in the line and order herself a cup of coffee, but when Eline got to the table, Arlowe was there seconds later, and she had not been prepared to have to talk to her yet.
She’d thought she’d have at least a couple of minutes to decide how to greet her while Arlowe waited for her coffee.
“Bathroom,” she said when Arlowe was only a few feet away.
“What?” Arlowe asked, and her voice was deeper now; deeper than it had been back then, but also deeper than in the videos that Eline had of her and of them together.
“Um… I got here early. I just had to use the bathroom first.”
“Oh, okay,” Arlowe replied with a small chuckle.
Eline hadn’t heard that laugh in years, and it still made her a little weak in the knees.
“I just wanted to know what you wanted. I’ll order it with mine,” Arlowe added before she hooked her thumb in the direction of the counter.
“Oh, I’m okay.”
“You don’t want anything?”
“No, I’m fine. Thank you, though,” she said.
“You asked me to coffee, but you don’t want any?”
“I had some already. I was early, remember?”
“Well, do you want anything to eat?” Arlowe asked her. “Honestly, I couldn’t eat breakfast, and I barely had anything for dinner last night, so I think I need to eat something just so I can carry on a conversation without passing out.”
Arlowe laughed a little nervously, and Eline was happy to hear it because it told her that Arlowe was nervous, too.
She had a way of appearing completely and totally confident and secure to everyone, but if she really let someone in, they could see beneath that bravado and discover how she really felt, which wasn’t ever all that confident or secure, and Eline was grateful that at least that hadn’t changed.
“I had a muffin already. So, get whatever you need. I’ll hold the table,” she replied and watched Arlowe’s face as she contemplated something.
A few moments later, though, Arlowe walked away, and Eline wondered if she’d been thinking about how they could greet one another because they hadn’t technically done that yet.
The last time she’d seen her, they’d hugged after sharing their final kiss as a couple, and neither of them had wanted to let go, so they’d stood there, holding on to each other for several minutes before, eventually, Arlowe had pulled away, unable to meet her eyes, and had left.
Eline hadn’t been sure if they’d shake hands today, hug, or not touch at all, and when Arlowe walked off, she realized that it would be the latter, and there was something very disappointing in that for her.
Everything about their relationship had been magical.
From the moment they’d met and even to their final minutes together, there hadn’t been a single awkward moment between them, from what she could remember, and since Arlowe had agreed to meet her for coffee, Eline had thought of at least a hundred ways it would go when they finally saw one another again, but this one – this awkward thing between them – had not been one of them.
In one of her visions of their meeting, she’d even just run straight up to Arlowe, pulled her into her arms, and kissed her deeply, despite not knowing if Arlowe had someone else.
That had Eline’s thoughts running again, so instead, she tried to casually look over at Arlowe, who was standing in line and had her phone in her hands, typing.
Eline smiled a little because she knew what Arlowe was doing.
She was sending her friends a message, probably telling them about the first awkward moment between them and maybe even asking them what she should do.
Eline looked down at Arlowe’s hands then, and while she knew that not all married people wore wedding rings, she still let out an internal sigh of relief when she didn’t see one on Arlowe’s finger.
Eline thought about how she had added Marti’s number to her contacts and had even texted the woman back so that she would have hers, but since they had only met once, and she knew that Marti had some things to deal with in her own love life, she decided not to message her about this situation.
She then watched Arlowe grab not one but two cups from the counter and walk over with them.
She set one down in front of Eline and sat down across from her with the other cup.
“I got you something anyway. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to, but it felt weird, getting me something and not bringing you anything.”
“Thank you. What is it?”
“Cappuccino, dry.”
Eline smiled and said, “You remembered?”
“Yes, I remember the drink you ordered every time we went out for coffee.”
“Did you get a hazelnut latte?”
“No, actually. I don’t drink those very often anymore. I think I got sick of them or something. This is a caramel latte. Close but different enough.”
Eline nodded and said, “So…”
“Yeah, so…” Arlowe said back and took a drink of her latte, which was probably way too hot because she squished her face together and set it down, making Eline laugh.
“You never could be patient.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Arlowe replied with a little smile. “So, you live here now?”
“I do, yes. I moved here about two months ago.”
“How? I mean, how did you do it?”
“Work visa. I’m the director of quality engineering over at GoldStash.”
“That cash-for-gold software?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“So, you help people sell their gold?”
“The software does. I just help quality-check it. It’s not exactly something I’m passionate about.
I was looking for my next job, and I applied to several places.
They reached back out and liked me but were also willing to sponsor me to come here, which most companies aren’t.
It’s a long process, and it costs them money, with no guarantee that it will even get approved, but I guess it did because I’m here.
I live in a little apartment about fifteen minutes from here.
Well, I say little, but it’s much bigger than the place I had before.
You know how small Amsterdam apartments can be.
There are so few apartments available and too many people who need them, so I took what I could get thanks to my dad’s connections. ”
“Do you like it here so far?”
“The apartment?”
“Living here. I mean, I know you lived here before when you were in high school – well, not here, but in the country – but I didn’t know you wanted to move here.”
“I didn’t,” she said quickly. “Arlowe, I didn’t. If I had, I–” Eline stopped and took a breath to prevent herself from rambling too much when they’d only just sat down and started talking. “I thought I’d be in Holland. I never planned to move here. If I had, I would’ve told you.”
“But then you did; you moved here. Two months ago, apparently.”
“Yes.”
“And the process to get you here probably started long before that.”
“Yes,” she repeated, knowing that there was something Arlowe wanted to say next, but instead of saying it, she merely ran her hand through her hair and sighed.
“So, you all started a company?” Eline changed the subject.
“I thought you were either going to work for someone else or freelance and work on your own thing. This is kind of a combination of that, huh?”
“I thought a lot of things back then, but I wanted to work somewhere established, because they’d have all the cool toys that I couldn’t get or afford on my own, and freelance on the side, but after we all got back from that semester, we kept in touch, obviously, and after graduation, we started talking.
Then, Enya had this idea for a language app that could be different than all the rest. We were a little drunk that night, but we all agreed.
” Arlowe chuckled. “And when we talked about it again, sober, we decided to go for it. Violet was getting her MBA, and she became our CEO. I’m head of engineering.
Enya is, well, Enya – the genius behind it all. And Sarai is in charge of marketing.”
“I also saw Gabi on your site. That’s the Gabi, right? The one we all thought Sarai liked?”
Arlowe laughed and said, “Yeah. And you’ll never guess what happened there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Gabi moved to this town, too. For a job, just like you, and they ran into each other at a bar one night a little over a year ago now. They’ve been together ever since.”
“Really?”
Arlowe nodded before leaning forward and said, “Oh, want to hear something even better?”
“Okay.”
“Do you remember Stella, the woman Violet couldn’t stand?”
“They were competing in school, right?”
“Yes. They’ve been together for over two years now.”
“What?” Eline laughed. “I saw Violet glare at her once like she was plotting her death.”
“And now, Violet wants to marry her. We live in crazy times, huh?” Arlowe took another drink of her coffee, and it must have cooled off enough because she didn’t make a face.
“We used to all live together, if you can believe it. That’s where the company really started. We had a house, the four of us.”
“You don’t anymore?” she asked, expecting Arlowe to start telling her about how she had moved out and in with a girlfriend whom she very much loved.
“No. Violet and Stella live together. Vi moved out first. Then, Gabi moved in with the three of us because she needed a place, and she and Sarai got together. They moved out over a month ago, though, so it’s just Enya and me now.”
Eline smiled, unable to help herself, because if Arlowe was with someone, at least they weren’t living together.
“So, do you like it so far, living here?” Arlowe asked, returning to her initial question.
“So far, yes. It’s an adjustment. When I was here before, I was a teenager, living with my parents.
I mostly just went to school and home. Now, I’m an adult who has to pay her rent and adjust to living in an entirely different country.
There’s no good public transportation here, so I had to get a driver’s license.
I did that, but I’d much rather be on a train or riding a tram. ”
“Me too, honestly,” Arlowe replied and looked out the window for a moment. “Eline?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that it was okay to contact you?”