Page 18 of Paradigm

“Okay.”

“Do you remember Stella, the woman Violet couldn’t stand?”

“They were competing in school, right?”

“Yes. They’ve been together for over two years now.”

“What?” Eline laughed. “I saw Violet glare at her once like she was plotting her death.”

“And now, Violet wants to marry her. We live in crazy times, huh?” Arlowe took another drink of her coffee, and it must have cooled off enough because she didn’t make a face. “We used to all live together, if you can believe it. That’s where the company really started. We had a house, the four of us.”

“You don’t anymore?” she asked, expecting Arlowe to start telling her about how she had moved out and in with a girlfriend whom she very much loved.

“No. Violet and Stella live together. Vi moved out first. Then, Gabi moved in with the three of us because she needed a place, and she and Sarai got together. They moved out over a month ago, though, so it’s just Enya and me now.”

Eline smiled, unable to help herself, because if Arlowe was with someone, at least they weren’t living together.

“So, do you like it so far, living here?” Arlowe asked, returning to her initial question.

“So far, yes. It’s an adjustment. When I was here before, I was a teenager, living with my parents. I mostly just went to school and home. Now, I’m an adult who has to pay her rent and adjust to living in an entirely different country. There’s no good public transportation here, so I had to get a driver’s license. I did that, but I’d much rather be on a train or riding a tram.”

“Me too, honestly,” Arlowe replied and looked out the window for a moment. “Eline?”

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me that it was okay to contact you?”

CHAPTER 7

Eline looked almost as she had twelve years ago, but still different at the same time. Her long blonde hair was a little wavier than it had been when they’d first met, and Arlowe wondered if it was still just as soft as it had been when she’d used to run her fingers through it. They would lie in her bed or in Eline’s after making love, and she’d have Eline’s head on her chest and feel like the world could end around them, and she would be totally fine because she had her fingers running through Eline’s soft hair that smelled a little of cucumber melon. Eline’s bright blue eyes were still just as blue, but Arlowe could see something else in them that hadn’t been there until the very end of their relationship. She recognized it easily because she still saw it in her own eyes whenever she looked into a mirror: sadness and regret.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me that it was okay to contact you?” she’d asked a moment ago, and Eline hadn’t yet answered, so Arlowe turned her eyes toward her and away from the window to find out why.

“Oh,” Eline let out when their eyes met.

“Yeah, oh,” she replied.

Eline shifted in her chair and took a sip of her coffee, and Arlowe waited, not wanting to fill the space between them with meaningless sound. It had already been an awkward meeting. She had seen Eline coming out of the bathroom, which wasn’t exactly how she’d pictured them laying eyes on each other for the first time after so long, and she had pictured it. She’d pictured running into Eline accidentally a million times. She’d be in Amsterdam with her friends, having some kind of reunion trip there, and running into Eline on the street, at a bar, or at that grocery store that they’d frequented. They’d talk and probably laugh a little while they caught up over time lost, and every time, she could picture them sharing their first kiss in a long time, making love like no time had passed at all, and then trying to figure out what happened next. She’d even pictured Eline in this very town, thinking about how ridiculous and impossible that would’ve been just as of yesterday, seeing her walking on a sidewalk, coffee in hand, and having to stop to make sure that it was really her.

She had never pictured walking into a coffee shop and seeing Eline walking out of the bathroom and looking right at her, but what concerned her wasn’t that. It was that they’d probably never had a weird moment between them. They’d been nervous upon meeting, yes, but it hadn’t been like this. It had felt to Arlowe, even with only seeing Eline for a second, that she’d found someone she was going to fall in love with, and that nervousness had abated quickly.

“I wanted to call you, text you, email you,” Eline began. “I wanted to find you on social media again and see what you were up to, but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“It didn’t seem fair at first because I’d asked you to give me time, but you were all I could think about, Arlowe. It took everything in me to unfollow and unfriend you the first time, and I didn’t want to know what you were doing back at home because I worried that you’d meet someone else, and I couldn’t watch you fall in love with whomever that might be.”

“But that’s not what I asked, Eline. Why didn’t you ever tell me that you wanted to hear from me? I wanted to respect your space and your wishes, so I never reached out, but–”

“Arlowe, I thought you didn’t want to hear from me,” Eline interjected. “I know what I put in that letter. I read it a hundred times before I left it under your door. I know it said that I didn’t want you to reach out, but I thought you would eventually. I maybe unfairly waited for you to call, or at least, send me a message, asking how I was doing, and when you didn’t, I thought you’d decided against it and that you didn’t want me in your life. I wanted to respect that.”

“You had to know that I’d want to talk to you, Eline.”

“No, I didn’t. Arlowe, you left. And I know we agreed to break up, but I loved you. I wanted to try to figure it out.”

“You said you didn’t.”

“No, I never said that. I told you I wanted to be with you, and you told me you couldn’t see how, when I didn’t want to move to America, and you didn’t want to live in Holland. I was pulling up information on my phone to share with you on both of those things.”