Page 80 of Semantics

Violet turned and saw Arlowe walking into the kitchen with her headphones around her neck.

“Excuse me? I trust myself just fine.”

“Not with your own heart. I blame that evil first girlfriend of yours. She did a number on you.”

“Like Eline did on you?” Violet tossed back.

“Shots fired,” Enya said and bit into a baby carrot.

“Across the bow?” Sarai asked.

“Nope. Direct hit,” Enya replied.

Arlowe sat down in her chair and said, “I was in love once, yes. I ended it because of the circumstances neither of us could control. You thought you had a girlfriend waiting for you at home. You told the whole world about her. Then, you got back, and you found her in bed with someone else.”

“Come on… I really don’t need to picture that for the millionth time,” Violet said.

She hadn’t told Stella the whole truth, but when she’d gotten home, Violet had been supposed to go straight to her off-campus apartment, but she hadn’t been able to wait. Her girlfriend had made her promises to come to Amsterdam at least once while she was away, but no trip had happened, and when Violet had offered to come home once or twice, she’d been told by her girlfriend that she’d been too busy for them to have any time together anyway. Violet had been upset because she wouldn’t get to see the woman she thought she was falling in love with, but she really hadn’t wanted to leave Amsterdam for a weekend. She loved it there, and she had made good friends, whom she was now sitting with ten years later.

When she’d gotten home, though, she’d gone straight to her girlfriend’s apartment. She didn’t have a key, so she’d knocked, and one of the roommates had let her in. Later, Violet would understand the look on the woman’s face at seeing her standing there. She’d also understand why she’d tried to keep Violet out of the bedroom that she walked toward. The door had been closed, so she’d knocked.

“Babe, hey! I’m home,” she’d greeted.

“Shit! What? Violet?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m–”

Violet had seen her girlfriend naked before, so she’d figured that if she were just changing her clothes or something, that wouldn’t matter, but she’d opened the door and stopped immediately. Frozen, she had watched another woman jump off the bed and away from the woman she’d been so excited to see just a minute ago. They’d both been naked, and from what it had looked like for that split second, that woman had been going down on Violet’s girlfriend. Violet had dropped the flowers she’d bought at the airport onto the floor and run out of the apartment, finding her bags sitting just inside the door, likely brought in by the roommate because Violet had been too excited to grab them from the hallway earlier. She’d dragged them back out, pulled them down the hall toward the elevator, and her cheating girlfriend had caught up with her on her way out. That had been when all the confession had come. They were done.

She’d dated here and there but not often and had only tried having another relationship a couple of times. Both had fizzled out fast for different reasons, but Violet had to admit that Arlowe was right. She’d never really gotten over seeing the woman who she’d thought had been waiting for her having sex with another woman and then finding out that it had been going on the whole time and with multiple women, all while Violet had been faithful to her in another country.

“I’m fine,” she said to her friends.

“You are, huh?”

“Yes, Arlowe, I am.”

“So, why aren’t you dating Stella, then?”

“Stella doesn’t want to date me. We’re just sleeping together. We’re not friends with benefits or a couple or–”

“You’re not friends with benefits?” Sarai asked as if in disbelief. “She hung out with you, like, all day. And that was, apparently, after she didn’t get any benefits last night. What exactly is that again, Enya?”

“Friends with benefits,” Enya confirmed.

“At least,” Sarai added.

“Hey, do you like her?” Arlowe asked softly. “I mean, for real. I’m not messing with you here.”

“I like her in bed.”

“What about out of it? You said you stayed the night at her place last week, and you two didn’t sleep together then, either.”

“We did when we woke up.”

“Sure. Then, you didn’t last night. Did you snuggle?”

“No,” she replied, but she looked away from Arlowe, which she knew was her own tell.