Awkward silence. I watched Tina, who watched Bette, who was watching her coffee like she expected it to get up and start walking.

Tina saved the world from awkward silences once again when she said with a smile that appeared to catch Bette off-guard when she finally looked up, “So, you were talking about me?”

Bette seemed to relax marginally and seemed a little bit more like herself. She shrugged. “I was telling Alice that you were going to be meeting us…”

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” Tina said.

“Oh, look,” I said, “my coffee’s empty. I’ll be back.” After I’m done barfing.

Bette watched me as I stood up, looking slightly alarmed at the prospect of being alone with Tina all of a sudden, although I wasn’t sure why since she pretty much spent all of her time with her, anyway.

Tina smiled at me in appreciation. Yeah, so, she has a nice smile, but so do a lot of people. I’m just saying.

At the counter, Marina looked past me and said playfully: “Is that il puttana with Bette there?”

I grinned. “You have a way with words.”

“Should I walk by and spill coffee on her?”

“Nah,” I said, leaning against the counter and looking over at Bette and Tina at our table. “Bette would find some way to get mad at me over it.” I held my cup out to her and gave her my most pitiful pout. “More coffee?”

Marina took my cup and gave me a dazzling smile. “On the house. To cure a broken heart.”

Marina‘s the greatest.

When I took my coffee back to the table, Tina was just heading off to the bathroom. Which was good, because I didn’t really love the idea of pretending to be nice to her or anything.

I sat down, saying, “What’s the urgent news? Or is it so pressing that you’re afraid I’ll publish it-what’s wrong?”

Bette looked pale and confused. *****. I felt awful. Here I was, joking away, and Tina had definitely told her she was like, dying or some ***** like that.

“Bette? You okay?”

She looked startled, as though she was just realizing I was there. She shook her head, the color slowly returning to her face. “I’m fine. Why?”

“Is everything okay with Tina?” Not that I liked the girl or anything, but if she was going to up and die, I’d feel bad. I paused in my vigorous coffee stirring for a moment.

Bette nodded nonchalantly. If I didn’t know her so well, I’d be convinced that she was perfectly all right. “She’s fine,” she said, and then added matter-of-factly, “She broke up with Eric.”

I clumsily dropped my spoon into my cup, coffee sloshing everywhere. “Did she?”

Bette took a long sip of her own, totally-not-spilled coffee. “Last night. Apparently.”

“Well,” I said. My heart was pounding in my ears. I mopped up the mess I’d made using Tina’s napkin. “That’s good, huh?”

“Yeah.”

I gave myself a moment to calm down and then looked up at Bette with the most casual, carefree expression I could muster. “Sure,” I said with a false playfulness that I didn’t even know I was capable of. “Now you can move onto, like, the ‘second phase’ of the ‘plan’, you know?” I even used air quotes around ‘second phase’ and ‘plan’ to further emphasize just how ***** wonderfully carefree I felt.

Bette exhaled. “Sure.”

We sifted into an awkward silence. I felt myself wishing Tina would come back from the bathroom. If I can say one nice thing about her it’s that she’s good at filling up awkward silences. I’ll give her that.