”What was all that about, Bette?”

Bette knit her eyebrows, trying to follow Tina’s story, and increasingly worried by the edgy tone the blonde was inflecting into her questions.

Oh! She slapped her forehead. ”You mean Kelly? Kelly Wentworth?”

”Whatever her name is, you were flirting with her, Bette.”

Bette didn’t realize she was holding her breath, so she breathed out, with some relief.  She had completely forgotten about the encounter.  On the other hand, she had spent the night picturing Tina with George, and, although she trusted her friend with most things, she also knew he could be a real charmer, and Tina was a very, very attractive, no, check that, beautiful, sexy woman.

Let’s face it, Bette had reasoned to herself that night, as she lay in bed, unable to sleep.  Tina was clearly available, now that she had broken up with Eric, and in fact, had told her several times that she wanted to move on from the disaster with Eric.  Bette knew how much attention Tina attracted from men – their walk around Paris this morning alone had drawn sustained attention from many of the male species they strolled passed, and not only because of Bette’s outfit.   In fact, the night she saw Tina go out with George, she took a sleeping pill, something she very rarely took, to make sure she was asleep before Tina returned from her outing with him.  That way she wouldn’t have to deal with looking at Tina whenever she came to bed.  If she would come back to Bette’s suite, that is.

Simply, while she was sure Tina was, or seemed to be, open to exploring something with the brunette, it was reasonable that a dalliance with a straight man wouldn’t be out of the question, either: there were a lot of interested men, that was for sure.   What she didn’t expect was Tina being clearly upset about Kelly.

It was Bette’s turn to protest. ”Well, that was harmless, totally harmless, T.  Kelly and I knew each other in college, and I was just surprised to see her in Paris, that’s all. So, I gave her a hug.  Yes, yes, I will admit to you that I had a crush on her long go, back in college, and I guess when we literally bumped into each other, she kinda signaled she wanted to pick up on her ”rain check.”