Bette put her keys down on the table next to the front door and got down on her knees to gather the mail. Tina heard the shuffling of paper on the floor and gathered what strength she did have to stand up and look to see her girlfriend reaching back and forth, gathering each piece of mail she could.

“Leave it.”

Bette looked up to Tina standing over her, drink dangling between her fingertips, her eyes were nearly pinched shut and she couldn’t stand seeing Bette like that. Down on her knees trying her best to make sure everything was in its place and that her home was tidy, it brought an image of her mother to mind, and that thought alone made her cringe.

Bette looked up to Tina, standing over her, wearing nothing but an Adidas track jacket and house shoes. She didn’t say anything else, instead her feet shuffled down the hall and into her bedroom. Bette left everything in the foyer and followed her, Tina had put her drink on the nightstand and had wrapped herself up into the sheet that was left on the bed. The covers had slid off of the foot of the bed who knows how long ago but she didn’t really care.

Bette walked into the room and saw that Tina’s jacket and house shoes were on the floor next to the bed, she was lain across the bed sideways and her eyes were wide open now. Bette pulled her shoes from her feet and dropped her jacket as well, she slid onto the bed behind Tina and pulled her close. Tina could feel Bette’s desperation in the way that she grabbed her and pulled her so tight. It was never her intention to instill such a panic in her girlfriend but she didn’t know any other way to relieve herself of these relentless memories.

She wasn’t sleepy anymore, but she was exhausted, her forearms hurt and her wrists were tight enough to crack on their own now if she so much as bent them. Instead of going to sleep with Bette she allowed her body to be used for Bette to take solace in the fact that she hadn’t slipped too far into her own demons.