Lara was there as well, because she and Dana were still good friends. She was an only child and her parents had both deceased in the past three months. Dana didn’t want Lara to be alone during these festive days. Alice was clearly not pleased with it and couldn’t help a snide remark here and there, but she must have had some kind of agreement with Dana because Bette would have expected a lot worse, thinking back to those days in high school.

Helena and Tim had come over as well. Had Tim been a woman, they surely would have been an item. Or had Helena been straight. It was almost as if Tina’s departure a few years ago brought them even closer together. They were really close and always were there for each other. They had both already told stories where Tim was getting unwanted attention from a girl that was probably not even 18 and Helena had jumped in with a passionate pretend-kiss. Same went for Helena – when she went out and girls were throwing themselves at her, Tim happily jumped in to return the favour and let the girls believe that Helena was maybe a little bit curious, but not a lesbian at heart. She had had a short fling with a student called Dylan last year, but had decided that the chance of them being discovered was too close to reality and she didn’t love the girl as much as she loved her job, she just didn’t want to lose it. She stressed how she admired Bette and Tina and how they had decided to not care about anyone and just be together.

Finally, there were Hugh, Tina’s colleague, and his boyfriend Gary. It was the first time that all of them were together and it was funny how the most unexpected combinations arose, people who had things in common you’d never know. Alice, always talkative, almost exploded with delight hearing all the juicy celebrity gossip Gary heard daily on his trips to Hollywood whenever he was designing costumes for a movie. Dana and Dave both had an interest in computers – nobody even knew that Dana knew anything about it. Lara and Hugh shared a cooking passion. Shane and Alex spent a lot of time discussing motorcycles, Bette didn’t even know Alex was into that. Neither did Jack.

As they were all concentrated on their conversations again, it wasn’t very surprising that everybody had a minor heart attack when Alice suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs. Tina was mortified – the neighbours probably thought that there had just been a murder at their place. Dana stopped Alice by covering her mouth until she had to remove her hand to give the blonde some air to breathe.

“What’s up, Al?” Shane asked casually, as if the energetic girl had just walked in and said ‘hi’.

“It’s present time!” Alice said in delight. She pointed at the clock. “Eight o’clock.”

“But Al… we already gave each other our present this morning. You know, to our loved ones?” Lara said. The others nodded in agreement. Alice looked perplexed and turned to Dana.

“Couldn’t you have mentioned this?”

Dana shrugged. “I thought you had figured that one out. We did it too, remember.”

“Yeah, but we only gave each other one present,” she pouted as if she where still a kid. Everyone rolled their eyes and chose to ignore this. It was to be expected from this woman. 

The evening went on and nobody really wanted to go, but in the end, they all had places to be in the morning. After they had all said their goodbyes, Tina closed the door and turned around to look at Bette. They nodded to each other and headed for the bedroom.