Page 39 of Derivation

“Do you remember the second night I was there?”

“Yes,” Sarai said and immediately flashed back to that night in her mind how she’d done a thousand times before.

They’d gone to a club instead of a bar that night, and Gabi had remained seated while Sarai and her friends had danced. Sarai had invited her to dance with them, but Gabi had declined, saying that she would rather watch the table for them. Sarai had glanced over at Gabi a few times to make sure that she was all right, and she specifically remembered a woman approaching Gabi at that table, sitting down next to her, and talking to Gabi for a few songs before she finally left. Sarai had gone back over to the table then.

“She wanted you to go home with her,” Sarai said.

“I told you that I could barely understand her. She had a thick accent, and that music was really loud,” Gabi replied. “I think she said that she was going home.”

“Uh… Yeah, that’s what I meant. That was her giving you an in. You were supposed to say that maybe you could go with her because it would be a little more private there and you could talk, but there wouldn’t have been much talking.”

“I never could tell when a girl was flirting with me.”

“But you weren’t exactly hard-up there, Gabi. Something about having experience with not one but two women by the time you were eighteen,” she teased.

“I met them in school, not at some club in a foreign country. Besides, she wasn’t even from there. She was from somewhere in Eastern Europe. She told me from where, but I couldn’t hear her, so I just nodded. When she said she was going home, I just said okay, and she looked at me weird.”

Sarai laughed and said, “Yes, because she wanted you to go home with her, Gabi.”

“Well, I didn’t want to go with her. I was there with you. I mean, with you and your friends.”

“Yet, you wouldn’t dance with us.”

“I was watching the table. Someone had to watch the drinks.”

“We would’ve just gotten new ones.”

“I’m not a dancer, Sarai. Never have been. I can do the fancy dances because my mom made me take lessons, but I can’t just go to a club, put my arms in the air, and let loose. I get too self-conscious. And back then, it was even worse. I felt so out of place that night.”

“You did?” she asked and took a sip of her drink.

“Yeah. I’d told you that I wasn’t a nightlife person – or, I guess, you said it – but I would’ve preferred to go back to your room and hang out. Your friends could’ve been there or not, but I would’ve been fine if it had been just us hanging out.”

“In my lame dorm room?”

“Why not? I’d had fun the night before.”

“You could’ve had sex that night, Gabi. That girl was hot. I saw her from the dance floor.”

“She was all right. And I didn’t go to Amsterdam to have meaningless sex. I went to explore the city and see the sights before I went somewhere else to do the same. I have never wanted meaningless sex.”

“Never?” Sarai checked.

“Not my thing.”

“And if you met someone who was only into that, you wouldn’t be interested even if you liked them as a person?”

“What? No. Why? Is that something you’re into now? I didn’t get that vibe from you. I don’t judge. I know Arlowe is kind of like that and that’s her choice, but I’m not into it.”

“When was your last relationship?” she asked.

“About a year ago. We were together for six months. I had two more before that. One was only four months, and one was for a little over a year.”

“What happened with that one?” Sarai asked.

“We were getting to that point where we should probably consider living together or, at least, taking another big step, but neither of us brought it up, and I got to the point where I thought that if we weren’t talking about those kinds of things, it might mean something. We talked. It turned out that she’d felt the same way. We’d burned out, I guess. It was amicable in the end. What about you?”

“What about me?”