Page 6 of Semantics

“Well, our daily Sarai-Arlowe fight has now commenced, which means our stand-up is over,” Violet noted with a little laugh.

“We spend too much time together,” Sarai said, closing her laptop.

“We all just need to get laid sometime this year,” Arlowe suggested. “I mean, seriously, we’re always here. How are we going to meet women if we’re always here?”

“No one is stopping you from driving that clunker you own down to the nearest gay bar,” Sarai said. “Go now. We’re fine without you for the rest of the day.”

“It’s ten in the morning, you asshole.”

Arlowe laughed and tossed her yellow smiley-face stress ball in Sarai’s direction, which flew by Sarai’s head and hit the garage wall, bouncing a few times before it rolled under one of the desks.

“What about me made you think I would catch that?” Sarai said with a laugh.

Violet stared around the hot garage and wondered how much longer they would be able to sustain this. All the pressure was on her shoulders, and if their business didn’t make it, her friends would have to go work somewhere else, which meant that they’d all move out and possibly away, losing all of this. Violet wasn’t ready to admit defeat just yet.

When her phone dinged, she looked down at the screen and saw that it was a text from her father.

“Oh, God… Not again,” she said.

“What?” Enya asked.

“My father has a new woman he wants me to meet. He thinks she’d be perfect for me.” She clicked into the message. “Guys, he sent me her LinkedIn profile.”

“Want to pretend like we’re dating so that he leaves you alone?” Arlowe asked. “I can dress up nicely for the Russell family picnic or whatever you rich people do in the summer.”

“No, but I reserve the right to change my mind later.”

“Just let me know so that I can buy some boat shoes.”

CHAPTER 2

Stella stared at the customer relationship management system, or CRM, on her screen, looking over all the opportunities that her sales team had yet to close. As the SVP of this software company, she had big goals that she needed to hit and an otherwise all-male executive leadership team that was not necessarily waiting for her to fail but not exactly expecting her to succeed, either, which drove her to do just that. She’d been working for Cerebral for the past three years, coming in as a director of sales after working her way up at her previous company before making the move here. The former VP of sales had left, and that had given her a chance to interview for his role, which she’d gotten. Later, when she and her team had outperformed all their key metrics, she’d been promoted to SVP. The company didn’t yet have a Chief Revenue Officer, but Stella could see herself getting there one day, and maybe even soon, with how fast they were growing.

She’d never seen herself working for any particular kind of tech company. It was more that she had wanted to work in tech and lead a sales team, and she’d always believed that if she were a good salesperson, she could sell anything. Now, here she was, looking over her charts and graphs and checking in on the old opportunities to see why those accounts had not been marked as a closed-won yet, paying extra attention to the ones that had been marked as closed-lost, which meant that they hadn’t gotten the account. After that review, Stella filtered by inbound leads and noticed one with a very interesting name. She clicked into it, wondering if it was the same Violet Russell.

Russell was a common-enough name, but Violet was a name that wasn’t as common anymore. Of course, that could also mean that it was making a comeback, since all old things eventually did, but she clicked on the name of the company that this Violet Russell had provided on their intake form, and after scrolling to the About page of the website to see if she could locate a photo of their leadership team, which was standard company practice, she leaned back in her chair.

“Well, hello there,” she said to herself because the Violet Russell, whom she’d known for a few months about ten years ago, stared back at her from a professional headshot.

Violet was wearing a pinstripe gray business suit with a nice-looking blouse under the jacket that, Stella guessed, was designer, given who Violet’s family was and how the woman had grown up with that silver spoon safely implanted in her mouth.

“Hey. Lunch?” Jen, her friend, whom she had brought on at the company a year prior, asked when she walked into Stella’s office.

“Sure. I have an hour. Want to go down the street?”

“Yes. I don’t have a meeting until two, and I could really go for their BLT.”

“It’s just a sandwich.” Stella laughed. “Why do you love it so much?”

“It’s how they cook the bacon. Diners always have the best bacon. It’s just crispy enough without being burnt, and it still has the chewy fat component.”

“You’re weird about bacon,” Stella replied, chuckling.

“Anyway… Can we go? I’m starving.”

“Hey, do you remember me mentioning someone named Violet Russell?”

“No. Should I?” Jen asked as she walked over to Stella’s desk and grabbed a piece of candy from the bowl that Stella kept there for anyone who came in and wanted a piece. “You need better candy. Why not have those fun-size candy bars?”