I was so sure of it.

***

If I recall, in the week after Max and I saw Bette at her gallery and Bette invited me to lunch, I didn’t see Max once afterward. Mostly out of a misplaced sense of guilt, although I was not sure why. I hadn’t lied to Bette-Max and I were just dating and there was absolutely no exclusiveness to us. And for all I knew, Bette wanted to meet me for lunch to discuss politics (although it seemed to me that her intent was clear). I still felt guilty, though

My guilt quickly abated the moment Bette sat down across from me at a caf on La Cienega wearing a sleeveless black top, jeans, and her signature sunglasses and said, “Hi. Sorry I’m late.”

“It’s okay.” Of course it was okay. *****.

We ordered and talked and things were surprisingly not awkward, mostly owing to Bette’s fantastic ability to make past events seem like they never happened. When lunch was cleared away and we were just having coffee, she said with a wonderful smile, “I’m really glad you met me for lunch, Alice.” She had pulled out a stack of pamphlets in some effort to catch up on work and was currently glancing over one of them.

“Me too.” And then, because I didn’t want her to think that I’d spent the entire week just thinking about having lunch with her (because I had), I said, “I had a thing with a friend for coffee, but I cancelled for you.” Which was half of an untruth-Tamara had wanted to get coffee again, but I’d told her I had other plans.

“Oh.” Bette lifted her coffee to her lips with an enigmatic expression. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Oh, I wanted to.”

“I see.”

She hadn’t asked me to, but I felt elaboration was necessary, if only because I preferred when she was paying attention to me. “She’s my ex, sort of, but we’ve been friends for a couple of years.”

Bette smirked slowly. “How is she ‘sort of’ your ex?”

“Oh.” I set my coffee down. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I guess when you’re such good friends with someone after you break up, you don’t want to really think of them as your ex-anything.”