Chapter 5

Don’t talk, I can guess it.
Don’t talk, well now you’re restless
and you need somewhere to put the blame for how you feel inside.
You’ll look for a close and easy mark and you’ll see me as fair game.

10,000 Maniacs, “Don’t Talk.” 1987


Note: Thank you all for the great feedback! Ultimately, I believe in BnT as a couple, but infidelity is not something that people just “get over.” Often, couples are still dealing with the effects of cheating years later. BnT are meant to be together, but it may be a long hard road to recovery.



“I told her you were my first, last, and forever.”

“I still am Tina.”

“Are you? I mean, do you really see yourself with me forever?”

Bette turned towards Tina and answered simply, “Yes.”


“Then help me understand, Bette. I just don’t see how you can say that, feel that, and yet be with someone else.”

“I feel that now, Tina. I’m not saying that I felt it when it happened.”

Tina looked at Bette sharply, wanting so badly to say something that would hurt her the same, make her feel like someone was grabbing onto her heart and twisting it. She had asked for honesty, and that was exactly what she was getting. Tina wasn’t so sure that she wanted to hear anymore.

Bette noticed that Tina seemed to be struggling, she looked like she wanted to get as far away from Bette as possible.

“Do you want me to keep talking?” Bette asked. She was more than willing to put the conversation off for as long as possible.

Tina looked down at her hands, taking note of the ring still on her finger. She wanted to take it off, throw it back at Bette and tell her to ***** off. But she wouldn’t. She could never do that. Taking off the ring would be like losing a piece of herself. She had made and kept her vows, and she would be damned if she was just going to forget about that, even if it had been so easy for Bette to do so.

“Go ahead,” Tina said, keeping her gaze low.

“What I meant was that I felt very distant from you, Tina. We haven’t exactly had the best relationship for, what was it that you told Foxworthy? Three years?”

Tina nodded, “Something like that.”

“We could barely be civil to one another, barely spent time together alone. Then we decided to have a child, and with that, came even more stressors on the both of us.”

“We talked about it, Bette, we went around everything time and time again.”

“I know we did, and I was confident that we had it squared away. And then you stopped working, which was fine, but suddenly my job was no longer secure. I know that you told me that if anything happened, we would be all right. I just couldn’t see that. I saw us losing the house, losing the cars, everything. There was no way three of us could have lived for long on our savings.”

“Bette, we’ve got enough in the bank for us to live for a year.”

“No, Tina. We would have lasted six months, tops. Diapers, formula, clothes-none of that was going to come cheaply. I had nightmares about it, Tina, I really did. I was so afraid that everything was going to fall apart.”

“I can understand all that Bette, I was scared too. I guess maybe I was a bit naive to think that we could get through it.”

“No, you weren’t naive Tina. You were just happy, and you went with that. I couldn’t though. I had to keep seeing the things that were wrong. It didn’t make me feel any better when we went to that group therapy and they all made me feel even worse than I already did.”

“Okay, so once your job was relatively safe, and you had a show to open, I still don’t see how you got to that place where you were with someone else.”

Bette took a deep breath, this was the one part she feared talking with Tina about. She would have to admit all of the doubts that she carried about their love, and how that had led her to betray their marriage.

“I needed you so bad during that time, Tina. All those nights working late, trying to get the show off the ground, all I wanted was to come home to you. But there were nights when you weren’t home, you were off with Alice and the girls, or at the gym. When we did spend time together, it was with the group, and never alone. As much as I love our friends, I’m not married to them. Your focus was on the baby, and I felt like the third wheel. I just didn’t feel like I belonged anymore. So I started to question everything, whether or not our relationship would last, whether or not I would be pushed even further away once the baby was born.”

Tina turned to look at Bette as she spoke. Had she made Bette feel as though she was an outsider? Had she not included Bette in on everything? Well, how could she, if Bette was never home?

“Bette, you’re trying to blame me and the baby for what you did? Is that it?”

Bette sighed, of course Tina was going to feel attacked. Bette knew that if she were in Tina’s position she would have felt the same way.

“No Tina. I just want you to know what I was feeling.”

Tina stood from her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well let me tell you what I’m feeling, Bette. You’re a ***** coward. You are a coward for not coming to me and telling me this when it was happening. You ran away from the problems, stockpiling them and using them as an excuse to be with someone else. I would rather you had just broken up with me, because then at least I would have known that things were as bad as what you’re saying. What about when I told you that I was scared, that I wasn’t feeling the love from you? Why not say something then Bette?”

Bette held her head in her hands. She knew that at that point there was no reason to continue their talk with Tina poised and ready for a fight. “I think I need to stop.”

Tina threw her hands up, “Why does that not ***** surprise me?”

Bette stared at the spot that Tina had just occupied, not letting her tears escape until she heard the door to the bedroom slam.

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Tina paced the bedroom, chewing on her fingernails. It would be just like Bette to blame her. She should have expected that. Why couldn’t Bette just accept her responsibility? How were they going to work through this if Bette couldn’t own up to what she had done?

Tina was pissed, so much so that she was shaking. She reminded herself that the last thing she needed was to get all worked up, it wasn’t good for the baby. She rubbed her belly. It had only recently started to bulge a little, but most people would have thought that she had put on a few pounds. After all, she had just come through a rough patch, and gaining a little weight would not have been so far fetched.

She was getting frustrated, damn frustrated. Maybe she was expecting too much from Bette. Perhaps she should just tell Bette to ***** it, whatever happened, happened and they could just move on from there. No, that wasn’t going to work. Tina still had too many questions. Was that it? Was it that she expected Bette to answer a certain way, and when she didn’t, Tina could only react by getting angry?

Bette wasn’t the only one who had been going through something. Tina remembered plenty of times when their relationship was strained and she thought that maybe they needed to split for awhile, maybe for good. She regretted not walking out on Bette before, thinking that the bullshit could have been solved years ago. She felt stupid for thinking that love was enough to get them through it all. Love had nothing to do with it, she could see that now.

She laid on the bed, and stared at the ceiling as though it held the answers to her problems. The things that Bette had said began to gnaw at her, making her doubt everything between them.

She had been working at the center during the time period that Bette had first started something with Candace and there were plenty of times that she and Bette went to bed without speaking to one another at all. She had made Bette her one and only priority for so long, and once she thought she was no longer number one, she went out and found someone else. Is that what Candace had given her, the boost that Bette’s ego had been so desperate for? Tina almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

Mostly, Tina wanted to understand why. Bette had said that she needed Tina during that time. She had been there, about as much as she felt Bette was there for her, especially in the last few weeks. She was tired of being the one who gave more, and got less. Their relationship had gotten to the point where scores were being kept, and that was never a good thing.

‘You can’t run away each time she says something that you don’t like,’ she chastised herself. She had given Bette the option to stop the discussion whenever she needed to, and Tina began to feel bad about the way she had acted with her. She knew that if they were going to try to mend their broken relationship, they were going to have to change the way they acted with one another. Instead of stewing in her anger all night as she would normally have, she set back out towards the deck to make her apologies.