Page 106 of Semantics

“Yeah, night,” Enya added and walked down the hall, still staring at her phone.

“See ya,” Arlowe said as she practically jumped up and went toward the kitchen, which would take her out to the garage.

“When they say they’re going to leave, they mean, like, really fast, huh?” Stella said with a little laugh.

“Are you staying?” Violet asked.

“I can stay. Want to watch another episode? We can talk through it since we’ve both seen it a million times. Actually, if you want to just watch the one after 33, we can. I do not mind starting at the beginning. I–”

“I didn’t like that you had your friend send you women’s profiles from some dating app, Stella,” she stated before she could stop herself.

Stella turned to her and replied, “I didn’t.”

“That’s what she said.”

“No, she said that she was going to send them, not that I asked her to send them. And she hasn’t, by the way.”

“Hasn’t what?”

“Sent them.”

“Because she’s too busy having FaceTime sex with her girlfriend? Is that what you said earlier?”

“I don’t know what they’re doing, but the odds are that that’s part of it, yeah.” Stella turned to face her, crossing her legs on the sofa, and took both of Violet’s hands in her own. “Violet, Jen has been trying to set me up for a while now. I actually went out with someone a couple of weeks ago, before you and I started whatever this thing between us is called. It didn’t go well, but Jen keeps trying.”

“She knows about us, though.”

“She knows that we were sleeping together, yes.”

“Ah,” Violet said and pulled back her hands.

“She also knows that I wanted more than that, but you said you didn’t, so tonight, she decided to try to make you a little jealous on my behalf, I guess. I didn’t know she was going to do that; I promise.”

“She wanted to make me jealous?”

Stella nodded and asked, “Did it work?”

Violet smiled, looked at the TV that had started playing the next episode automatically, and replied, “I didn’t expect this.”

“Neither did I,” Stella revealed.

“None of it. I thought, when I found out that it was you at Cerebral, that I might be a customer and that’s it, or nothing at all, and now, you’re on my couch, and we’re… talking about maybe not just having sex.”

“I feel like you missed a few key points in that path you just took,” Stella teased.

“We know how we got here. That’s all that matters.”

“It makes it sound like we signed a Cerebral contract and then fucked on my desk, Violet.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, turning back to Stella. “Who cares what it sounds like? It’s just us here.”

“I like arguing with you,” Stella replied, smiling at her.

“You’re not getting laid tonight, so don’t even try making this foreplay.”

Stella laughed loudly at that, and when her laughter faded a bit, she asked, “Why am I not getting laid?”

“Because we shouldn’t start with sex.”