Page 62 of Semantics

“I know how it works.”

Stella nipped at Violet’s neck and slid her thigh between Violet’s legs.

“Oh, no. I cannot go again,” Violet told her with a little laugh.

“Are you sure? You’re not coming by tonight. I’d hate to make you go without.”

She pressed into Violet’s center with her thigh.

“I went thirty-two years without you and me doing this. I think I’ll be okay going one night without it.”

“So… That means, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow night, then? If you’re only going one night without it.”

“My God, woman! You are insatiable,” Violet replied through her laughter and pushed Stella away. “I don’t know about tomorrow night. I’ll text you. Don’t you have anything better to do than have casual sex with me? You’re some big-time SVP over there at Cerebral.”

“How could my job ever compare to good sex?” Stella ran her hands into her own hair before finding her shampoo. “Turn around. I’ll wash yours first.”

“I can wash my own hair, Stella.” Violet ran her hand over Stella’s, wiping away the shampoo there, and placed it in her own hair, which made Stella laugh because, of course, Violet would do that. “And isn’t your job important to you?”

“I guess so, yeah. But so is my personal life. Great sex is, thankfully, part of that right now.”

Violet began washing her hair, and Stella just watched her for a minute. Violet’s eyes were closed. She looked contemplative, as if she was considering what Stella had just said and not taking it as the compliment it was meant to be.

“This company is my life,” Violet said when she opened her eyes and looked into Stella’s. “It’s the most important thing to me outside of my friends, who also work there with me. I’ve got to find a way to keep it afloat. I think Cerebral will help, which is why I agreed to spend the money on it, but I don’t know if we can all keep working this hard and not have much to show for it.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Stella replied. “I’ll help with Cerebral however I can. I’m sure I can fudge some numbers when it comes to Monique’s time so that you can have a few extra hours or something. I can even help you–”

“No, Stella,” Violet interrupted while she rinsed her hair. “I need to do this on my own with my friends. You’ve already gotten us a discount and helped. That’s enough. We have to be able to stand on our own.”

“You know that’s not how business works, right? Do you think your father stood on his own at any point in time? Didn’t he inherit an empire?”

Violet stopped, stared at her, and asked, “What’s your point, exactly?”

“That everyone needs a hand sometimes, and it’s okay to take it. I have friends, Violet. I worked my way up to SVP, and I’ve met a lot of people along the way. I can help introduce you to them.”

“Would you have offered that to me if we weren’t sleeping together?” Violet asked, turning off the water.

“Hey, I still need to rinse here. And probably not, but only because we wouldn’t be talking at all after you signed the contract. You’d be Monique’s customer through implementation, and then you’d get transferred to a permanent account manager, and you’d probably only deal with me if there was some massive problem that we had to go all hands on deck at work for. I’m not offering this because we’re sleeping together, though. I’m offering because had we just reconnected somewhere and kept talking, minus the sex, I’d still offer, Violet.”

She turned the water back on and moved until she was under the spray to rinse her hair.

Violet left the shower then, and Stella watched her wrap herself up with a towel. She quickly rinsed her hair, turned off the water, and followed Violet out into the bathroom, where she grabbed a towel of her own and wrapped herself up in it.

“So, that’s a no still?” she asked.

“We’re very different people, Stella,” Violet replied as she walked into her bedroom. “I was raised to put business above everything. Sometimes – hell, most of the time – even above family. My family is old money, which means they, unfortunately, still believe that sons are better than daughters. I guarantee you that when my father found out that I was a girl, his heart broke a little. I’ve felt that my whole life, okay? I had to work three times as hard to earn his attention and maybe affection if I did something right. Perfection was required, even though it was impossible. My mom wasn’t much help, either, and being an only child meant that all the pressure was on me to carry on the Russell legacy.”

“You have other family members, Violet.”

Stella removed the towel around her body and used it to towel-dry her hair as she followed Violet into her room.

“I do, but my father is the first-born son of his father, and my grandpa was the first-born son if his. It’s like a monarchy, Stella. It’s hard to explain, but the first-born son inherits, and the rest of the siblings support him. I don’t like it. I never have. But I am a first-born daughter of the first-born son, so it became my inheritance, even though I’m not a son. My aunts and uncles have kids, and thanks to me stepping away, my cousin has become the de facto first-born son. It’s his business to run now, and I’m the disappointment that my parents spent time and money raising to do something that I didn’t end up doing. My mom couldn’t have any more kids. She had a hysterectomy after I was born due to some complications, adoption isn’t an option for the Russells, and surrogacy wasn’t as common back then as it is now. Trust me, I’d know – they told me everything that they considered to try to have another child, preferably a boy. So, when I tell you that the company matters to me, I mean it. It’s not just some job like maybe yours is to you, because you can be an SVP of sales anywhere. This was my escape from the life I thought I wanted growing up until I realized that I’d never decided that for myself. It was a decision that had been made for me from before the moment I was even conceived.”

Stella sat on the edge of her bed and asked, “So, why won’t you let me help you?”

“Because if I only make this work because of charity or handouts, I haven’t made it work at all.”

Violet tossed her towel onto Stella’s bed and found the small bag she’d brought with her with her overnight stuff in it. That was when, for the first time, Stella noticed something about Violet. That bag didn’t look designer. Her clothes were nice, yes, but none of them looked designer, either. Violet had dressed them up a bit with some jewelry or an accessory that made things look more expensive than they actually were, but she wasn’t walking around wearing the latest fall fashions or even next spring’s line how she had been ten years ago. She bought her clothes off the rack. She really was struggling, and not just personally. She was keeping an entire business in operation and essentially paying her three best friends to help her make that happen.