Tina played the friend game, and played it well. You know the game: you pretend you have nothing but platonic feelings for the person, you support them in their relationships with others, you bite your tongue and smile rather than reveal your true feelings. You hug lightly and kiss on the cheek, all the while wanting more. Tina played the game well.  

As hard as it was to watch them together, Tina knew Jodie was actually good for Bette. She refused to allow Bette to put in her in that box of which Tina had grown so weary. Jodie forced Bette to treat her as an equal; Bette could no longer retreat behind a facade of protective superiority. Tina enjoyed watching Bette grow to be the woman she needed to be, but she found it difficult to be merely observing the maturation instead of acting as the catalyst. That had been one of the parts of being with Bette that Tina had most cherished, watching her grow as a woman, every day more complex and more lovely.  

So she smiled at Jodie when she picked Angelica up from Bette’s house (still theirs in Tina’s mind), and she accepted her into the circle when Bette brought her to The Planet. She managed to hide her deeper longings from all but a few, convincing them that she was content to be friends and wanted nothing more. Only Kit and Shane suspected Tina’s true feelings, but they respected her right to follow her own path.  

Only at night did Tina reveal the state of her heart, when she lay alone in her too-large bed, unable to sleep in the wee hours, allowing tears to stream down her cheeks. She knew this was the right thing to do, to play the hated friend game, but it was so very hard. Sometimes it took all the control she had to show mere affection when her heart burned with passion. It was those nights that she slept not at all.