That’s why I knew that Bette would have to contact me again, although I didn’t expect it to happen in quite the way that it did. I really should have had a bit of fun with her and pretended to be angry for the way she’d been behaving lately, but I didn’t want to be.

Besides, when Bette Porter comes knocking on your door at two in the morning, you try and turn her away.

I hadn’t even been sleeping, really, just sort of nodding off in front of my laptop, glasses all askew, an article totally not written on the screen. Then, the knocking, and I put the laptop aside to answer the door and there’s Bette Porter looking messy, unkempt, and kind of adorable, actually. She brushed past me into the apartment, wearing jeans and a white tank top and sneakers, of all things, mumbling, “Sorry about this, were you sleeping?”

“No, actually,” I said, dumbfounded, struck by many things at once, the most prominent being a nagging thought that she’d never really been comfortable enough to wear sneakers around me while we were dating. She had always looked cool, collected, poised, none of this adorably messy hair in a haphazard ponytail nonsense.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, clearing a spot for her to sit down on the couch. She sat, shrugging, and I took the seat next to her, glancing at the clock.

“Yes. No, actually, no, that’s why I’m here because I feel weird and-” She broke off and looked at me, eyes wide and startled. I tried to wipe the grin off my face, but I couldn’t help it.

“You have a problem and you came to me for help with it?” I bit my lip. “This is getting to be a habit with you, huh?”

“***** you.”

“Sorry.”

“This was ridiculous.” She moved to stand up. “It’s two in the ***** morning, I-”

I grabbed her arm to still her movements. “Stay.” She did. I cleared my throat. “Is this about… Tina, or…”

“No,” Bette said slowly. “It’s about me. It isn’t Tina. She’s perfect.”

God. Okay. “Well, then-”

“Alice, can you be honest with me?”