Page 5 of Derivation

“But I am single.”

“You are, yes. And if you’re still missing a woman you loved eleven years ago, your choices are either to finally try to move on, or reach out to her and tell her that you still think about her and miss her.”

“No, it would hurt too much when she tells me that she hasn’t thought about me since I left.”

“Eline?” Gabi asked Sarai as Enya also climbed in and closed the door.

“Yeah, same one.”

“They broke up, I take it?”

“Arlowe ended things when the semester was up and she was leaving for home. Eline is Dutch. Arlowe couldn’t see how they could make it happen.”

“That’s sad,” Gabi replied. “She still loves her?”

“I think she loves the idea of her more than Eline herself. She hasn’t seen her since we were all in college. A lot has changed since then for both of them, I’m sure.”

“Yeah. I thought I’d go to school in Paris and live there for a while. That didn’t happen.”

“Why not?” Sarai asked.

Enya then opened her door again and asked, “Can we get her home? She’s passing out on my shoulder.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Gabi replied and hurried around to the other side of the car to climb in.

Sarai got into the passenger seat and turned around to check on Arlowe. Arlowe’s eyes were closed, so she looked over at Enya, who gave her a sympathetic look.

“I know we made a pact not to interfere, but maybe we should look her up. Just to know. If she’s with someone, married or otherwise, we don’t have to say anything,” Sarai suggested.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sarai. Arlowe can forgive a lot, but I don’t know that she’d forgive us for that.”

“We wouldn’t tell her.”

“She’d know somehow. We all know everything about each other.”

Gabi pulled them out into traffic and asked, “Is she going to be all right?”

“She’ll be fine. She gets sad like this sometimes, but she rebounds.” Sarai turned around in her seat. “You’re going to take a left up here and then, the second right.”

“Hey, Gabi, do you want to come over on a night when Arlowe isn’t wasted and Violet isn’t giving us news that she thinks is breaking but actually isn’t even news?” Enya asked.

Sarai wondered where that was coming from because Enya wasn’t the one who invited people over. That was usually Arlowe or her. Enya was the person who only sometimes hung out when they had other people over and mostly stared down at her phone or disappeared at some point.

“We’re watching some game on Thursday night,” Enya added.

“Football. She means football.”

“She doesn’t know what sport you’re watching?” Gabi asked, laughing.

“She usually just shows up and works on her phone. She doesn’t like to miss out, but she also gets bored easily. Right, Enya?”

“Right. And if Gabi is there, I can be there still, but you can all ask her questions and–”

“She can distract us from the fact that you’re not paying attention to the game?”

“Right,” Enya confirmed.

Sarai laughed and said to Gabi, “I’ll give you my number and text you the details. If you’re free, you can join us. It’ll just be people we work with, mainly, and Stella, who kind of works with us, but not.”