Chapter 16


Tina sat on the lounge chair staring at the sun reflecting off the pool water creating vibrant colors on it’s surface. She had showered, eaten, and called Shane to check on Angelica. The conversation was short, Tina understood Shane’s lack of detailed responses as a sign that she wasn’t able to discreetly talk.

Tina smiled as she heard the sliding door open and turned to see Bette approaching the lounger. Tina chuckled at her ex-wife’s appearance. Over the years Bette was able to relax on her days off work with her clothing choices and today was no exception. She had on an older pair of jeans that clung to her figure completed with a hole in the thigh area, hinting at the soft skin underneath. Her outfit was completed with a thinner sweater to shelter her arms from the slight breeze. However, in contradiction, her perfectly manicured feet were bare.

Bette sat down on the chair next to Tina and stared at the same array of colors Tina had just been staring at.

“You’re letting your hair air dry?” Tina asked in surprise.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“You never cease to amaze me. Just when I think I know you, you surprise me with some small thing.”

Tina held her hand out to reach for Bette’s as a sign of comfort knowing a discussion was looming. Bette looked over at Tina and smiled as she grabbed her hand and allowed her thumb to absentmindedly trace patterns on the top of Tina’s hand.

“Is this going to be as bad as I’m making it?” Bette asked without maintaining eye contact.

“We’re the parents. We just need to remember that.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning between us we need to set some limits to what she can ask and what we feel comfortable answering. Then we can’t vary from that, we need to stick to them.”

“What if she has other ideas?”

“She will.”

“That’s your answer?” Bette said looking over at Tina in shock.

“We know that going in, we just need to understand what we’re going to tell her and why we’re telling her these things.”

“I’m afraid she’ll hate me,” Bette said sadly.

“She has to understand that you weren’t the only cause of us falling apart, it takes 2 people to lose sight of a relationship.”

“I shouldn’t have lost sight.”

“I should have noticed and helped you up instead of stepping on you when you were down.”

“I just took everything for granted.”

“So did I until we lost the baby. I think that was the first time I realized things weren’t guaranteed to always work out.”

“Do you think that was the first step to us falling apart?” Bette asked.

“No,” Tina said. “I think the first step was me quitting my job and becoming lost in you. I resented you shortly after that when I wasn’t pregnant and yet your life remained in tact. All I could do was busy myself waiting for you to come home.”

“And I worked too much,” Bette said sadly. “I thought I had to if I wanted to be able to support all of us financially.”

“I hurt you when I rejected Marcus as a donor,” Tina said sadly.

“Yes, you did.”

“I do love you for who you are Bette, all of you. I know that was wrong of me to react the way I did. If I could do it over again I’d never have had that argument.”

“You weren’t entirely wrong Tina. She does struggle with the ‘otherness’ we’ve put on her.”

Bette’s statement was met with a brief period of silence.

“I shut you out when I lost the baby.”

“Why?” Bette asked for the first time since it had happened. She never did understand why Tina had chose to block her out of her life and avoid her. “Why did you avoid me?”

“I felt like such a failure,” Tina said with tears in her eyes. “You were able to hold up your end of the bargain and I couldn’t. Every single time I saw you I was reminded that I felt less then what you needed to be whole.”

“It wasn’t your fault that you had a miscarriage. Many women have them, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Why didn’t you ever talk to me about it though?”

“Pain,” Bette said. “I felt so much pain in not having a family and so much anger at myself for not being there when you found out.”

Tina wiped her tears away as Bette continued to massage her hand gently.

“Why has it taken us all this time to let this all out?” Tina said with a chuckle. “How many years have gone by and we’ve never talked like this before about everything that happened?”

Her smiled was met with one from Bette, but she remained silent not having an answer to their lack of communication.

“Why did you turn to Candace?”

Bette took a deep breath in thinking carefully about the words she should use to explain it.

“When you started to avoid me, I started to feel like you didn’t desire me anymore. The more you avoided, the easier it was for me to make excuses for not communicating with you. When I met Candace she seemed genuinely excited by me, she hung on every word I said. It reminded me of us when we first dated, it was exciting. I felt the newness of everything, desired by someone again.”

“So you traded stability for excitement?” Tina asked with a hint of anger in her voice. Bette noticed it immediately.

“I couldn’t keep trying only to be shut down.”

“God we let it all fall apart didn’t we?”

“Yeah we did,” Bette said sadly.

“We represented what most people are looking for, what they dream about. We had that and traded it for excitement and bitterness.”

“Yeah,” Bette uttered in agreement.

“Do you know how many people I met back then that wanted what we had? I’d hear all the time how we were some token lesbian couple that people gained hope from. Why didn’t we see what others saw?”

“Because we lived it, we had to do the hard work to make the relationship work.”

“Wasn’t it worth the work?” Tina asked, not angry, but saddened that she could now point out things she should have done to save what was the most important factor in her life.

“It was, but I think we lost sight of that. At least I know I did, which catapulted me toward Candace before I knew what was even going on.”

“God I hated her for so long,” Tina said shaking her head.

“That’s what scares me Tina. You had a face to throw that anger at because you knew Candace. The only face that Angelica will know is mine.”

Tina rubbed Bette’s arm in an effort to calm her fears.

“I dated Helena, that didn’t earn me any points with our daughter.”

Bette chuckled at the sarcasm in Tina’s voice and the smile that graced her beautiful face.

“I imagine it didn’t.”

“Tell her you and Kristen broke up to earn points so when she takes them away over Candace you’ll break even.”

“Funny,” Bette said using her best mock smile to drive her point home.

“I’m sorry Bette, but all we can do is explain that happened and leave it at that. If we could go back and change it I would have already done it using what I know now to make back then better.”

“Did you have to date Helena of all people when she fucked me over at The CAC?”

“She didn’t purposely fuck you over, she wanted to take the Foundation in a different direction.”

“Yeah, not mine because she’s petty.”

“Was, she’s better now,” Tina said with a smile. “For the record I don’t think she did it to spite you though, she didn’t even know we were together when she asked me out.”

“She got to spend more time doing the ‘pregnant’ things with you then I did when you were carrying Angie,” Bette said sadly.

“I know, but we were dating.”

“I know,” Bette said knowing there was nothing Tina could say to take the sadness away regarding her choice to date Helena.

Tina got up and began to pace around the poolside working off nervous energy. Bette simply watched her move and they continued the conversation, both feeling overwhelmed by emotions.

“Why did we fall apart after she was born?” Bette asked.

“I wanted men,” Tina said simply.

“Yeah but why? Did I drive you toward that?”

“I still had so much anger in me over what happened. I was mad that you lost your job, frustrated that you wouldn’t just bow down and do what Franklin wanted to keep it.”

“That isn’t me,” Bette said shaking her head.

“I know, and although I love that about you, your independence, I felt like I had to pay the price for it when we had financial issues.”

“I tried to keep that job, I wasn’t given a chance.”

“I tried to understand why I had to go to work while you followed your passion. You took the luxury of pursuing a passion over keeping us afloat.”

“Well what was your passion? To my knowledge I didn’t keep you from anything.”

“At the time I thought it was Angie and being the best mom I could be, including staying home for her.”

“Didn’t you trust me to be there for her?” Bette asked.

“You weren’t me,” Tina said. “I’m sorry but at that time I felt like I was her mom more then you were.”

“So I wasn’t a parent to her?” Bette said now reflecting anger in her voice.

“You were, but when I gave birth to her, I felt this immediate bond and I felt like nobody else could do the job that I would.”

“Are you disappointed in the job I’ve done?” Bette asked pointedly.

“No,” Tina turned and stopped walking to face Bette so she could see the conviction in her eyes regarding her answer. “You’ve amazed me and proven me wrong more times that I can count.”

“So you resented me and thought you’d punish me by sleeping with men?”

“If it were only that easy,” Tina said sadly. “I felt like I had to give her the best life I could and that maybe it would be best to minimize the ‘otherness’ we had put on her.”

“So Henry could give you a better life then I could because you could be the perfect hetero couple?”

“I wanted acceptance for her.”

“From who?” Bette asked.

“I thought it would be easier on her if she had a family that mirrored what society deems ‘acceptable’,” Tina said using her fingers to make quote marks in the air when she said acceptable.

“What about your happiness?”

“I thought as a mom it had to come second.”

“So you weren’t happy with Henry?”

“Not like I was happy with you when things worked between us. I missed that emotional closeness two women can have, I didn’t have that with him. He provided the traditional male role and I eased into trying to accept that without the closeness I needed to my partner.”

“You aren’t a typical Donna Reed type Tina, you’re the brains behind a major movie studio. You’d never be the pearl wearing, vacuum loving type woman.”

“Yet that’s what I made myself when I quit Alpha Ville for us,” Tina pointed out.

Her observation was met with silence, Bette knew she was correct in that assessment.

“I ask myself what I’ve done to have you back in my life,” Bette admitted. “It scares me that I don’t have an answer.”

“You’ve grown, we both have, and it’s through that growth that we’ve become better people.”

“I hated Henry so much,” Bette admitted.

“I ended up hating myself much more then you hated him, trust me on that one.”

“What are we going to tell her about you and I, about what just happened last night?” Bette asked in a quiet voice.

Tina knew the topic of their intimacy would need to be discussed, she just didn’t think it would be so soon after it happened.

“I actually don’t have an answer for that one.”

“I didn’t think so,” Bette said smiling.

“And you do?”

“I think I may, but I want you to hear me out before you say anything.”

“By all means,” Tina said smiling, resuming her seat on the lounger next to Bette.

“I obviously have been doing a lot of thinking about things. I’ve been the one that’s consistently been against talking to Angie because I didn’t want to relive the past and hurt you, her, or myself for that matter. Do you know the one thing that’s kept coming up for me?”

Tina just shook her head abiding by Bette’s wishes not to be interrupted.

“When things fell apart for us, I had to deal with my entire life crashing to the ground. It wasn’t enough that I lost my lover, my best friend, it’s that I lost all my friends. I lost everything that was important to me and I learned how much pressure was on us with our friends.”

“How so?”

“To be the perfect couple for them. It’s like you said before, we were the symbol people searched for in their own lives of what could be obtained given a lot of luck, love, and hard work.”

“That’s true,” Tina said hesitantly.

“Aside from Kit, and eventually Shane, I had nobody after we fell apart. I can’t handle that pressure again T. At least I can’t handle it now when I feel like I’m walking on shells to begin with.”

Tina sat up in her lounger and turned to face Bette, sitting now upright and looking into her eyes.

“Why do you feel like you’re walking on eggshells?’

“I’m so afraid of messing this up. I’ve been holding my feelings at bay for you for so long because I was afraid that if I let them in, if I acknowledged them, I’d be setting myself to lose everything again once I screw this up.”

“You won’t,” Tina said with conviction.

“I did before when I never thought I would,” Bette said with sadness laced in her voice.

“Bette, look at me,” Tina turned Bette’s head toward her so Bette could see how passionate Tina was about what she was about to say. “You weren’t the only reason that we fell apart. Lord knows that I’ve played my own part in everything. You’ve got to let it go.”

“Tina, the reason I can’t is because I still can’t understand how I could love someone with everything that I am, and still destroy it with all the unintelligent things I did.”

“For every action there’s a reaction.”

“What was I reacting to?”

“Loss, distance, pressure from all points in life.”

“And how has that changed?” Bette asked sincerely.

“I’m not in your shadow anymore Bette. I’m my own person that learned to stand on her own two feet.”

Bette just stared at Tina trying to comprehend how her answer was meant to quiet her raging fears.

“Bette, you want a simple answer to your question and I don’t know that I have one. All I can say is that I don’t need you in my life like I did back then, but I want you in my life and there’s the difference. I don’t feel dependent on you, I chose you and that has to be part of the key to making this work.”

Bette just nodded seeing strength in Tina she hadn’t seen in a very long time, even when they were together as a couple.

“I don’t think we should tell anyone that we’ve walked down the relationship road together again,” Bette said hesitantly not sure how Tina would feel about that.

“What?” Tina said surprised at Bette’s suggestion.

“I don’t think that Angie can take even the slight chance of us not working out if she knows we’re trying again.”

“Are we trying again?” Tina said angry.

“What do you call last night, or even this morning for that matter?”

“Sex,” Tina said angry.

“Stop being angry and talk to me,” Bette pleaded.

“I don’t want to be a secret Bette. I have a hard enough time with the way that people ogle you when we aren’t together, but now that we are I want people to know it and respect that.”

“So it’s about staking a claim more then it is our daughter and her well-being?”

“This is what she wants, this will make her happy.”

“And add pressure to us Babe,” Bette said carefully. “I want to enjoy this before everyone else begins to live in it like they did before. I’m afraid Tina.”

That stopped Tina’s anger in it’s tracks. There was something so vulnerable about the last part of Bette’s sentence that caught her attention.

“Baby,” Tina said getting up to sit next to Bette on her lounger. “Why are you afraid?”

“I’ve managed to fuck it up once Tina, I want to make sure we’re solid before we give our daughter the wish she’s been wanting all these years.”

“Are you doing this because of her?”

“What do you mean?” Bette asked.

“I don’t want you to be with me because of Angelica. I don’t want you to be with me as a rebound to what happened with Kristen.”

“You aren’t,” Bette said moving a stray hair out of Tina’s face and pushing it behind her ear. “They were rebounds to you Tina.”

“OK,” Tina agreed reluctantly. “If you want to keep us a secret for now we can do that.”

“I think it’s best,” Bette said rubbing Tina’s arms in comfort.

“Then you better make it worth my while by having a lot of secret rendezvous.”

Bette leaned over and gently brushed her lips against Tina’s.

“Is that so?”

“You better make it a promise Porter.”

Tina kissed Bette harder, her lips pressing against Bette’s in need as Bette leaned back in her lounger enjoying the new closeness to Tina.