Venice Beach

The soft roar of the waves was all that she focused on. Surrounding sounds, children playing in the sand, a faint tune from a boombox belonging to a beach volleyball game, and even the Alice-like-squawking from the soaring seagulls could not rescue Bette’s attention from its liquid captor.

Rippling tides collided ashore to breed the white frothy foam that would eventually spread across the earth and dissolve with the undercurrents only to repeat the process. The late afternoon sun’s rays glimmered and reflected off the blue-green fluid blanket that stretched beyond the horizon. The sea breeze lazily made its way through Bette’s long, luscious locks and caressed her face as she remained deep in thought.

The advertising executive sat in the sand hugging her knees just meters away from a colorful lifeguard tower painted in purple and orange, bearing the number 19 on the back and side walls. She had left her suit blazer in the car and the white longsleeve button-up shirt was haphazardly untucked from her black suit pants and the sleeves were sloppily rolled up a quarter length. In her left hand, she held a pair of candy apple red pumps. Though the look was certainly out of Bette Porter’s normally sophisticated sense of fashion for the power lesbian, the sloppy ensemble did nothing to reduce the level of sex appeal the dark-haired beauty possessed.

In a nearby parking lot just off of Ocean Front Walk, Tina was kicking off her own silver pumps in favor of slipping on the pair of jeweled, brown Reefs that Bette gave to her in San Diego. Because traffic was terrible the entire drive to the beach, she had no time to go home and change, so she was still wearing her charcoal grey Tahari suit. She smiled to herself as she made her way out of the lot towards the sand thinking about the utter fashion faux pas she was committing. Brown flipflops with a grey suit and black sunglasses. You better believe that I love you to be seen like this in public, Little P, the blonde thought.

The wind began to kick up a notch and Tina was grateful that she had kept her suit jacket on. Even on a Monday afternoon in autumn, Venice was still a bustle of commerce, artisan wannabes, healthnuts, and the less than fortunate.