The door chime to Bette’s hotel room rang just as Tina opened the door of the bedroom, hesitating, and lost in thought, as she walked towards the breakfast table.  Tina had elected to go with the hotel’s bathrobe, instead of clothes.  Her skin was still tingling from the minty liquid soap Bette had used to lather up a washcloth, and which she then used on the blonde.  Tina’s other senses had also been awakened by the gentle, soothing massage she received from the brunette, and by the heady scent of the perfumed candles and bath salts that further softened the warm water Tina had soaked in.  These all combined intoxicatingly to open the blonde up to the sub-text of Bette’s story about love, as written by Plato, and which had echoed all the way from ancient Greece of thousands of years ago to the bath of this hotel suite in 21^st century France, outside of Paris, where she and Bette found themselves in. 

Love. Bette.  Baby.  Three words echoing in Tina’s mind.

Bette glanced quickly towards Tina, when she heard the bedroom door open, and gave her an encouraging half-smile, as the blonde headed to the table, seeming to be lost in thought.  Bette stood up to open the suite’s main door, with a puzzled look in her face.  As she approached the door she heard a man’s voice call out, “Room service!”

“Café au lait?,”the waiter asked, as he wheeled a food trolley in, bearing  two cups of coffee with creamy milk, and a separate pot of coffee and small pitcher of milk.  “Oui,” Bette answered, “Merci,” she smiled as she waved her arm in the direction of the breakfast table.  Tina had taken her seat, in the meantime.  The waiter set out the cups of coffee, and gently put the pot of coffee in the middle of the table, then surreptitiously picked up debris from the table, to try to clean it up somewhat.  Both Tina and Bette smiled their thanks to him, as he departed, pushing the trolley ahead of him, and shutting the door.

Tina smiled a little, “I thought you said you weren’t too fond of what they had here?” she asked, picking up her cup, and blowing on it slightly.  The coffee didn’t smell as good as the one from the boulangerie, but didn’t seem that bad, she thought. Bette shrugged, as if to say, “What can I do?” She waved her hand a little, to dismiss her own earlier comment, “I’m sure it’s alright.”