Page 117 of Semantics

Stella’s eyes grew three sizes, and she had to clear her throat and pull out of Violet’s embrace to look at her.

“You couldn’t have mentioned that later? Now, I know, and I can’t unknow that. I’m picturing it right now.”

She looked down and lifted Violet’s pleated skirt. Violet laughed and pushed it back down.

“Come on. Let’s go. You can see later. I have a gift for you, by the way.”

“Yeah? Is it you not wearing any underwear?”

“No, it’s an actual gift. It’s silly, but it’s in the car. Come on.”

Violet pulled her out of the house, gave her a minute to lock up, and they walked hand in hand to Violet’s car, where Stella found a pastel blue gift bag with white paper sticking out of it on the passenger seat.

“Do I open this now?” she asked after sitting down and placing it in her lap.

“Yeah. Like I said, it’s silly.”

Curious, Stella pushed the paper aside and pulled out a sort-of-flat object that was heavier than she expected.

“What the–”

“It’s the plaque,” Violet said.

“I can see that.” Stella laughed a little. “Wow. Why am I holding it?”

“Because I’m giving it to you. It’s yours now. It probably should’ve been yours then, but as you just pointed out, I might have been an asshole to you and told the professor about some of those very small and unimportant errors you made.”

“Babe, it has your name on it.”

She held it up to show Violet as if Violet hadn’t known that already.

“I know, but I can have that taken off, or we can put both of our names there. My GPA that semester was only one-tenth higher than yours. We basically tied anyway.”

Stella smiled at her, leaned over, and kissed her cheek.

“That’s not how it works. You got the higher score. You earned the plaque and whatever else came with it. I came in second to a very intelligent woman. I can handle that now. I couldn’t then. I thought about keying that bicycle you bought that you always chained up outside the dorm, but–”

“You did what?”

“I thought you could afford a new one.”

“You were going to key my bike?” Violet laughed.

“I didn’t, did I?”

“Well, I am glad you had a little self-control,” Violet replied and started the car. “And it’s a gesture, Stella. It’s just me trying to say that I’m ready to start over with you.”

“I thought we were already doing that.”

Stella put the plaque back in the bag and set the bag on the floor in front of her.

“We are. This is, I don’t know, a moment. It’s just something I thought we could look back on later and maybe say that it was when we recognized that we’d let all of that go and we were ready to have this new, maybe great thing developing between us.”

“And you’re good with that now? You’re not scared of it anymore?”

“Oh, no.” Violet chuckled. “I’m still very scared. I’m scared of a lot of things. I always have been. I was scared that my parents wouldn’t ever really love me for me for a variety of reasons, so I did whatever they wanted up until one rebellious move to go to Amsterdam instead of Oxford or Barcelona or even just staying at home.” She backed them out of Stella’s driveway. “I’m scared that I won’t ever fall in love or have someone who would be faithful because of what happened with my first girlfriend and because of what has happened since. No one has ever wanted to put up with me so far. I’m really scared about work. I’m excited about the prospect of having more investors, but I’m terrified that I’m still going to let everyone, including them now, down. I’m scared of this.” Violet stopped the car when she got to the end of the driveway. “Because it wasn’t supposed to be you.”

“No, I don’t imagine it was supposed to be me,” Stella said as she took Violet’s hand to move it to her lap.