Page 74 of Echoes

“Even though you swim at my house at least two days a week because your most recent place doesn’t have a pool, so I’ve seen you in a one-piece and a bikini, and you come over just to hang out and not do laps?”

Rachel had moved into a different apartment complex about six months prior, to be a little closer to the office, but it hadn’t had a pool, so Violet had offered her own. Rachel had felt bad about using it daily, so she only came over a few times a week, even though Violet would’ve loved to have her there every day.

“I know. But this is… bigger.”

“Well, now, you’re scaring me.” Violet leaned over a bit.

“I don’t mean to,” Rachel replied. “It’s just that she said something to me, and it made me realize what I’d been doing.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that… She said that I’m in love with you.”

Violet froze because she hadn’t expected that.

“Yeah, I know. I told you, it was big.” Rachel chuckled that nervous chuckle that she had.

“Why did she think that?” Violet managed to ask after swallowing nothing at all because her throat was suddenly very, very dry.

“Probably because I never stopped talking about you. The night she wanted us to watch a movie at her place and asked me to maybe stay over, I just kept talking about you, your house, how I’m over here all the time, having breakfast with you after swimming, and how we talk while we watch movies. She needs total silence, but I like to talk through movies sometimes.”

“I know,” Violet said. “It’s pretty cute.”

Rachel tilted her head for a second but then continued, “Shesaid that I spend more time talking about you than I do myself and that I don’t really ask her a lot of questions about her, either. I guess I did the first few dates, but that was it. Then, she suggested that we stop doing what we were doing because she’d never been with a woman before, and she didn’t want her first time to be with someone who was in love with someone else. So, I left, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what she said ever since.”

“And?”

“And you’re not running away right now, so does that mean you’re not mad at me?”

“Rach, why would I be mad at you?”

“Because we work togetherandwe’re friends. You’re really mybest friend, and I think I maybe accidentally fell in love with you.”

Violet smiled and breathed a sigh of relief.

“You’re in love with me?”

“I think I might have been all along,” Rachel confessed. “Maybe even since we met – not at the first interview, but the second one, where we talked, went to drinks, and then I came over to play with Apollo but we just kept talking – it’s been there, yeah. I just didn’t know it. I’ve never been in love before. You’re technically not my boss, but you’re above me in the hierarchy at work, and you never said anything about feeling anything for me, even though I thought you might. I thought in the beginning, when we first started spending time together, that you felt something, but you never said–”

“You told me you didn’t want anything serious. Rachel, you said you wanted at least a few years to focus on work. I wanted to give that to you.”

Rachel smiled a little and asked, “So, you did?”

“Yes, I did,” Violet professed. “I stilldo. I’ve wanted to be with you this whole time, but you said you wanted work first and to settle down later. I didn’t want to get in the way of you doing that by telling you that I liked you. Then, you mether,and I was trying to be supportive, but it’s been killing me.”

“Killing you?”

“Rachel, I love you,” she said. “God, I’ve been in love with you since we met. I’ve been holding it in this whole time because I thought you wanted something else. It’s been killing me, yes.”

“You love me?”

“Yes,” Violet said and laughed. “Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to hear that you were with someone else? I pictured youwithher, and it made me throw up. I mean that literally: I threw up. I knew I had no right to ask you to not be with someone, but thinking that you were with her hurt.”

“We didn’t do that,” Rachel shared. “She tried to kiss me once, but I pulled away and told her that I wasn’t ready.”

“I thought you said–”

“I lied,” Rachel admitted.