Page 108 of Semantics

“Not having sex again before our first date? Yeah, I’m good. I’d still like to kiss you, if that’s okay, but we can wait for that, too, if you–”

Violet cut her off with a simple, sweet kiss on the lips.

“That’s all you’re getting until our date, so if you want to go home instead of staying over with that new piece of information, I’ll leave that up to you.”

“I can keep my hands to myself,” Stella replied.

“Don’t do that. I still want you to hold me.”

Stella smiled then and asked, “Can we go out soon so that I don’t have to wait too long to kiss you again?”

“Yeah, I think we can manage that.”

“Want to watch the next episode and go to bed, then?”

Violet nodded.

CHAPTER 30

Stella had gotten an idea. She hoped that it was a good one. In a way, it would take them back in time, and she wasn’t sure if she should be focused on them starting over or moving forward instead, but she hoped that it could be a combination of the two.

According to Jen, she’d gone overboard, but she hadn’t ever had a date like this before. It felt important. After falling asleep next to Violet that night, she’d woken up the following morning feeling like she’d wanted Violet to know how much this thing between them mattered. Violet had been busy all week, and Stella hadn’t exactly been bored with work and planning for their date, so it had taken until the weekend for them to be able to have a night together. She’d asked Violet to come to her place to pick her up, citing the fact that she preferred not to drive, and Violet hadn’t had a problem with that, but Stella wasn’t planning on them driving anywhere. She just needed an excuse to get Violet over to her place.

She took one final look around, agreed with Jen that it might be too much, but when the doorbell rang, there was no going back. She took a big deep breath, walked to the door, and smiled as she pulled it open because Violet looked absolutely beautiful in her little black dress with a white cardigan over it. She also had her hair pulled back, which exposed her neck that Stella loved to kiss.

“Hi,” Violet said, smiling back at her. “Are you ready?” She looked down at Stella. “Why are you dressed like a–”

“Bartender in a certain Amsterdam hotspot where students from our program used to go?”

“I was going to say like you’re in The Great Gatsby,” Violet said as she pointed to Stella’s head. “You’re wearing a hat.”

“I am, yes.” She tipped her pageboy hat. “I was going for a vibe tonight.”

“Is that vibe hot? Because you look hot, Stella,” Violet noted and walked inside.

Stella looked down at her vintage ensemble that she’d ordered online. It came in a set that included a vest waistcoat, a hat, an evening cravat, which was, apparently, what they called a necktie back then, a plastic pocket watch, and suspenders that she had on under the vest. It had come in gray, brown, or black. She’d chosen the gray set and wore it with jeans. She thought she looked pretty good, but hearing Violet tell her that she thought she looked hot meant that at least one of her goals for the night had been accomplished.

“Thank you,” she replied and took Violet’s hand after she closed the door behind them. “So, do you remember that bar that they made like an old American speakeasy just outside of one of the red-light districts?”

“Still can’t believe they have more than one of those.”

“Vi… focus, babe.” Stella motioned around her living room with her hand. “I tried to recreate it.”

Violet looked around, and Stella stood there, waiting nervously, hoping that she’d done something fun, spontaneous, and nice, and not something that would scare her date away. She couldn’t do much to make her place look like an actual bar without remodeling her house, but she had pushed the sofa back against the wall and had hidden it with a burgundy drape that she’d hung from the ceiling in front of it. She’d also bought two cheap wooden stools online and a tall table that was skinny and looked enough like a bar after she draped one of those fake backgrounds people used for their Zoom meetings that she’d got online as well. It looked like wood, or at least, was close enough to looking like wood.

She’d changed the colors of her smart light bulbs in the ceiling fan to make the room look dimmer and a little on the red-ish side, which was how their old bar had looked. Well, it hadn’t been their old bar. It was a place that most of the students had gone to on the weekends, and she’d seen Violet there a few times, but they’d never sat down next to each other and shared a drink.

To complete the look, Stella had set her phone to slow music from the twenties, had looked up recipes for some old, easy-to-make drinks, and had a few bottles sitting on a shelf where she used to have some books that would go back up there later. She hoped the effort she’d put in was enough and not too much.

“Oh, my God! Stella,” Violet said and took her hand.

“I know it’s silly. We didn’t even go to this bar together. But I was thinking about how if things had been different back then, maybe we would have, and we could’ve had a good time ordering the fun drinks with their weird names and actually getting to know each other instead of making assumptions and pissing each other off all the time. Is it too much? Should I have gone for a reservation at some casual eatery and kept things focused on the here and now instead of–”

“Stella, this is… You did all of this for me?”

“For us, technically, but yes. Look.” Stella walked over to her fake bar and went behind it. “What can I get for you, my lady?”

She leaned over the plastic table, which was a mistake because it wasn’t very sturdy, so she nearly toppled it over. Violet laughed and hurried over to help keep it upright.