Page 79 of Derivation

“We talked last night.”

“You did? That’s great.”

“No, it’s not, because she doesn’t want to risk it.”

“Risk what?”

“Honestly, I don’t know for sure.” Gabi sighed. “I think she’s a little scared about this whole thing, but I also know that part of the reason she’s worried is that I live and work here, and if something goes wrong, she’s worried that it will mess with the status quo. I don’t want to do that, obviously, but I also love what I’m working on, and I think I can build the thing you all need, so I don’t want to quit working on it. I was hoping, if we at least didn’t live together, that it might convince her that we’re worth giving it a shot.”

“Gabi, no.”

“No? I can’t get out of the lease?”

“No, not that. If you really want out of the lease, that’s fine with me, but you’ll need to get their approval because I don’t pay rent here anymore. They all do. And they’d have to pay more if you leave or decide to find another roommate, and they all love you, so I don’t think they want to do that.”

“They do?”

“Are you kidding me? Arlowe won’t stop talking about how cool it is to have you here, and Enya sung your praises about the design and the fact that you helped her figure out the exact amount of salt to add to her chocolate chip cookies.”

“I literally just told her that there was enough salt in the thing.”

“That’s sometimes all it takes with her. Arlowe is harder to impress, but you code and understand why she loves it so much, so you’ve won her over. Now, I think we both know that you’ve won Sarai over.”

“I really like her, Violet.”

“And you think moving out is going to make dating her easier? You live a door away right now.”

“It’s the one complication that I can remove. I’m only a contractor, and right now, I’m not really working with Sarai very much. I don’t need to be around when the marketing decisions get made. So, that’s less of a concern.”

“Gabi, this is just Sarai; she’s always been like this.”

“Like what?”

“She gets in her head a lot. It’s why she’s spent most of the week on her own. It’s why she struggles to see her ideas through. She can come up with them, but she doubts herself all the time, so it’s difficult for her to make the big ideas she has happen. She second-guesses things. Then, the campaign or whatever she comes up with doesn’t perform as well as she hoped, and she goes into the zone. That’s what we all call it. She ends up on the swing in the backyard or just stares at her dry-erase board, or she’s in her room, looking up at her ceiling or out the front window until she’s ready to come out of it.”

“The zone?”

“Yeah.”

“But this isn’t work-related. This is us maybe dating.”

“Same thing,” Violet told her.

“No, it’s not.”

“I meant that it’s the same thing to Sarai. Not that you’re like work to her. I mean that she’s stuck in her head, getting into her own way.”

“Did you know that I liked her in Amsterdam?” Gabi asked.

“Yes.”

“So, I was obvious then, too?”

“Yes,” Violet said with a laugh. “Honestly, I thought it was just a crush. You were a little younger than us, and it felt like you were crushing on the older, hot girl.”

“You think Sarai is hot?”

“No, but you did.”