She heard gentle tapping on the door of the carriage.  She opened her eyes with a start, and realized the carriage hadn’t moved forward yet.

She heard the tapping again, and as she refocused on the door, saw it start to open.  For half a second she was thinking (with some relief), that maybe the ride had experienced a glitch or something.  So maybe the operator was coming in to tell her that the ride was being cancelled?

Instead, she saw a familiar swathe of blonde hair, followed quickly by the rest of the owner’s body.

“Hi, I asked him if I could join you on the ride,” Tina said softly.  “Hope you don’t mind?”

Bette stopped breathing, and her heart started pounding.  Her mouth dropped open slightly, and her eyes widened.  She found she couldn’t speak, nod or shake her head, or move a muscle.

Tina stepped into the carriage, and took a seat at the other end of the bench.  She smiled quickly at the operator, who had stuck his head in after she sat.  He noticed Bette hadn’t said anything, and was looking at Tina as if shocked.  So he turned to the blonde, instead, and said, “Mademoiselle, please feel free to stay on the ride, as long as you’d like.  “Just pull on the wire there,” he pointed behind her, “when you both would like to get off, and I will let you both off when that ride ends.”

He bowed slightly, and then shut the door.  Shortly thereafter, the carriage moved smoothly forward, and began its upward ascent.

Bette still hadn’t said anything, instead retreated a little further into her corner, and continued to stare at Tina.  Her thoughts were swirling, mental wheels churning a mile a minute.

“How have you been?” Tina asked tentatively, a small smile playing on her lips.

“Ummm…. okay, I guess, for the most part,.”  Bette blew a steadying breath out.

Tina blew a breath out, too, smiled nervously.  She rubbed her palms on her thighs, mentally counting backwards from 10.  In her mind, she had gone over this scene a thousand times over the past year, and now that it was actually happening, she inexplicably found herself at a loss for what to say.

In her rush to get to the Ferris wheel, she had completely forgotten everything else, including her script of what to say when she finally could talk to Bette, concentrating instead on just getting to the carriage.  She was half a second from missing it, and had benefited from the delay caused by the passenger in the carriage behind Bette’s who had dropped her purse in the carriage, and had asked the operator to delay moving the wheel along while she sought to look for her purse.  The Ferris wheel was just about to move when Tina grabbed the arm of the operator, panting from her sprint across the park.  Her driver, who had ran alongside her, explained in rapid French that Tina needed to get into the carriage Bette was in.  The operator was about to argue with him, when it struck him that Tina was the woman with Bette, two years ago.  “Oui, mademoiselle, why did you not say so!  The other mademoiselle said she was alone tonight… but here you are! Bon.., please come this way.”