Bette: I have to try to make things right.

Candace: She won’t trust you.  She’ll never trust you.

Bette looked over at Candace.

Bette: Trust is fluid sometimes.   Do you think I trust you?

The question was disturbing.  It was staggering.  There lay an answer which Candace didn’t ask for the answer to.

Bette: Well do you?

Candace folded her arms.

Candace: I expect you will tell me.

Bette: Yes I will.  I don’t.   You had an affair with me, a woman who was not available and committed with someone else. You stepped over that line, and what would make you not do the same to me, to us one day?

Candace couldn’t believe her ears.

Candace: You are kidding right?  How can you sit there and pass judgment on me when you did worse? I wasn’t involved with someone. I didn’t cheat on someone.

Bette: No you didn’t.  Lucky you.

Bette grabbed her watch and bracelet.

Candace: Why have you turned so cruel to me?

Bette: I told you.

Candace: I’m suddenly responsible for everything htat is wrong now?

Bette: I didn’t say that.

Candace: Give me a chance Bette. Give us a chance.

Bette: I can’t.

Candace: you are shutting down on me.  Please don’t do that. I wouldn’t cheat on you. I wouldn’t do that to you.

Bette: You don’t know that.  One day you could find yourself in a place where you want what you can’t have.  A place similar to where you are now.

Candace: BUT I DID NOT CHEAT!  WHAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT THAT?

Candace grew desperate, loud and emotional.

Bette: No, you didn’t.  However, you were willing to step over a line to be involved with someone who really was not available.

Candace: Where the fuck is your responsibility in it?

Bette: It’s there.  It’s always there.  Every god damn morning I wake up.  Every bit of every day.  Every night I put my head on that fucking pillow I regret the moment you and I ever touched.  Do you understand that yet?  Do you understand that your touch is empty now? Do you understand that I can never regain what I had with Tina, with my life?   Do you understand that from the moment something stirred itself in both of us, that I lost respect for you?

Bette was harsh, hard, and cold.  She was steel.  She was letting out every bit of venom that filled her body.  The hate she had for her own self and actions, she transferred onto Candace. It was much easier that way wasn’t it?

Candace remained on the bed, feeling numb.  Bette made it clear.  She couldn’t move forward with her, as there would be too many doubts.  She placed her head in the sheets and cried as she heard the front door to her apartment close.

Bette drove to the Planet.  She knew from what Shane had told her, that Tina was becoming more consistent in stopping by in the mornings.  She wasn’t in the best frame of mind on this morning, but she just needed to tell her that she and Candace were a memory.

Bette tightened her hands around the steering wheel as she drove. Bette didn’t want to feel what she was.  Anger. Sorrow. Loss. Emptyness.  Maybe it was her own conscious getting the best of her.  Whatever it was, she just knew in her heart she couldn’t go back to either Candace or Tina.  What was done was done.  She also knew, she couldn’t go forward with Candace.  Her heart still wanted to somehow move forward with Tina, but that was a gamble whose odds were not in her favor, and a vision that was unlikely to play out in life.

 ====  Everyone knows what happened when Bette went to The Planet ====

                                                  The rest is history