Bette wandered over to the Planet after dropping her bags at home.  She had just arrived back to LA from New York. She sat in the Planet, sipping herbal tea, still high after a three day sex-fest with Jodi. Getting laid was always fun.  Even when one wasn’t entirely sure if the person they were sleeping with was ‘the One’ for them. Unfortunately—or fortunately, Bette knew—Jodi was not the person she would plan a life around. Bette still had a lot of emotional stuff, a lot of ‘Bette stuff’, to figure out. How to undo a life of trying to control every fucking damned thing or person in her wake? She wasn’t entirely sure just yet, but she was gathering clues. Best of all, she was becoming easier on herself in the process.

***

Helena stretched her long legs in front of her, sitting back in her chair.  She was sitting in a Starbucks, listening to the Clash.  Nodding along to ‘The Guns of Brixton’, the irony of the moment was not lost on her. She had to clench her jaw to keep from laughing out loud.

A tall, beautiful Asian woman, wearing an expensive black dress, walked into the coffee shop, and Helena nearly fell off her chair, scrambling to get out of the woman’s sights. 

It wasn’t Catherine. Thank the gods.

Helena was jumpy these days.

Her throat was starting to hurt. She barely slept at night. Had seen old friends, ghosts from the past, over the past two nights. She sniffled. She would have to stop at a drug store and get some vitamins, something to fight off an approaching cold.

‘Love is Blindness’ was the next song on her stupid ipod. She sipped her cappuccino, thinking that she truly was a ‘bougie ass’, just as her friends had called themselves. She skipped U2—too depressing, because it reminded her of Bette—and listened to some sort of English dance music. Alice had put this music on her ipod. The band was called The Gorillas or something along those lines. Helena only listened to it now because it reminded her of her friend.  Alice, sweet Alice.

Her friend, Alice, whom she missed more than anyone, even more than Bette.  Alice had not chosen Jodi, over her, afterall.  Helena knew that her petulance was unfounded—she had told Bette that she was leaving LA, before Bette intensified her efforts to be with Jodi. Nevertheless, Helena still preferred to think about Alice. Friends were often much more fun to think about than lovers, or ex-lovers, or whatever the hell Bette was to her.