Page 89 of Semantics

Arlowe laughed and asked, “And what happened when they saw that plaque you won that was etched in English?”

“Oh, they’ve never seen it,” Violet replied. “They just needed to know that their only child was preparing herself for the company after her MBA. I impressed them with a few sentences I’d learned in Dutch when I got home and told them I’d been top of the class at dinner. My dad grunted and started talking about my MBA program and how competitive it would be. My mom got quiet and ate her food.”

“Your parents are really top-notch, aren’t they?”

“They are the product of their environment, and so am I. I was raised to follow the plan.” She held her arm out like a path in front of her. “It was all about the path that had been set for me. Being gay wasn’t part of that, so, in their mind, they’d already made a slight detour to allow me to have a wife instead of a husband one day.”

“Oh, how nice of them,” Arlowe said sarcastically.

“I got myself a girlfriend – or, at least, I thought I did – and I set out for Amsterdam. When I got there, though, there were these three cool people who all had different plans for their lives.” Violet smiled at her friend. “And they weren’t like mine. They weren’t set in stone. They could do whatever they wanted after school. Hell, you were already building things back then.”

“Engineers are different. We only go to school sometimes. We tend to be more self-taught, like me.”

“I know. But then, I also met Stella in a class, and she introduced herself to everyone on the first day. It was like she exuded this confidence. She’s hot, yes, and she was back then, too. I’m not blind. She didn’t have a plan at all, though. She wanted to work somewhere in business, and that was it. She was a senior, like me, graduating in the spring, but she still hadn’t thought of a plan. She had no internships lined up, no real connections, according to her, and she wasn’t bothered by any of it.”

“You were jealous,” Arlowe stated.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “And that jealousy made me do stupid things around her.”

“Oh, I’m guessing the jealousy made you act like a bitch around her, but the stupid things had something to do with the crush you had.”

“Maybe. Either way, I had a girlfriend back home.” She bit her bottom lip. “But when I… you know… myself…”

“Masturbated?” Arlowe guessed.

“Yes, thank you.” Violet rolled her eyes. “I can admit it now that I sometimes thought about her, but I think I have only admitted to myself that it was once up until right now. Only once that I thought about Stella when doing that.” She shook her head. “Ten years later, though, I think I have to be adult enough to admit that I was thinking of her a little more often in general, not just when I was doing that.”

“Well, you had a crush on her, so that makes sense.”

“But I had someone at home, so I was even madder at Stella for making me think about her and not the woman I thought was waiting for me back in Connecticut.”

“I get it, Vi, but that’s all in the past. It’s so long ago.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.”

“Arlowe, you don’t have relationships today because of what happened to you ten years ago.”

“We’re not talking about me tonight.”

Arlowe turned in her chair, facing her computer.

“But it’s true. You’re telling me that it shouldn’t matter, what happened back then, but you haven’t moved on, either.”

“Well, I was in love with someone I was in a relationship with, who was staying in the Netherlands, and I couldn’t stay. That’s a very different situation.”

“Why couldn’t you go back and forth or–”

“With what money, Violet? It wasn’t that simple. Sometimes, I think the three of you assume I ended things with Eline out of nowhere, but I didn’t. We tried to figure it out. How often could we even see each other? How much were the flights? She had a roommate back then, who was always home, it felt like, so could we afford a hotel for at least a night or two to have some real privacy? I didn’t want to live there permanently, so that was out, even if I could somehow get citizenship eventually. She had things she wanted to accomplish there and didn’t want to live here. We tried, Violet. We talked about it all the time. In the end, I made the call, but she agreed. We cried a lot, we made love one last time, and I went home.” Arlowe looked over at her again. “But it’s not the same for you. You and Stella weren’t together back then. You weren’t in love. You didn’t leave the country with your heart still there. You can actually try now.”

“I can’t, Arlowe.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve changed places, and… it’s weird.”

“Changed places? What?”