Page 119 of Derivation

“So, Stella wasn’t feeling well?” Sarai asked, redirecting everyone’s attention in a clear attempt to avoid an interrogation from Arlowe. “Babe, coffee?”

“Yeah,” Gabi replied as she moved to sit down in her usual chair.

“She had a stomach thing. It hit her right before we got there, I think,” Arlowe said. “She still wanted to go, but Violet told her no and started playing nurse, and not in the sexy way, so we just left.”

“She texted me this morning that Stella’s feeling better,” Enya added.

“That’s good,” Sarai replied as she went about making coffee.

Enya and, most importantly, Arlowe seemed content to just be eating their breakfast, so Gabi’s eyes kept landing on the backyard, and she wondered if either of them had noticed what was out there. She needed to come up with a reason to go outside and pick everything up.

“Want cereal or something else?” Sarai asked her. “We have eggs.”

Sarai then set a cup of coffee in front of Gabi, wrapped her arms around her neck, and leaned down from behind her to kiss her on the cheek.

“Um… Yeah. Sure.”

“Which one?” Sarai asked with a chuckle.

“Yeah, it was an and-or question there, Gabi,” Arlowe said, looking over at her.

“Whatever you’re having is fine,” she replied.

“Well, she already had you this morning,” Arlowe noted.

Sarai let go of Gabi then, walked around to where Arlowe was sitting, and playfully smacked her on the back of the head.

“Ow!” Arlowe laughed. “Come on… I get some credit. I held it in.”

“For about a minute. You get no credit for that.”

“If it’s any consolation, you should know that we heard it all the way from in here, so Gabi clearly enjoyed it. And I heard Sarai practically scream your name last night, so you were doing something right.”

“Not a consolation,” Gabi said. “Embarrassing.”

“Not embarrassing,” Enya replied and looked over at Gabi. “We’re used to it. And Arlowe’s right: we could hear Sarai pretty easily, and that’s never happened before. She’s usually really quiet.”

“Okay, enough,” Sarai said from over by the fridge.

“Agreed. I don’t really need to hear anything about my girlfriend having sex with other people, even if it, apparently, wasn’t all that good.”

“Hey!” Sarai said, turning around. “Oh, wait. That’s not a dig against me. That’s a dig on them.”

“I couldn’t hear them, either, Sarai,” Arlowe said with a laugh.

“I hate you all,” Sarai stated and pulled eggs out of the fridge. “Except you. I don’t hate you.”

Gabi smiled over at her and turned to see Enya staring at her.

“It’s really not embarrassing. It happens when you live with other people.”

“Yeah. What’s embarrassing is that you two went out to the backyard to hang out and ended up getting naked out there because you couldn’t keep it in your pants to at least make it back inside the house, which is all of twenty feet from that soaked blanket out there,” Arlowe said. “Now, I should get credit for holding that in for as long as I did.”

“I think I’ll just go pick everything up,” Gabi said.

“We have neighbors, you two. Neighbors… With children…”

“It was dark. No one saw anything,” Sarai defended as she cracked an egg into a bowl.