“Hi, baby!”

Even now, years later, she had butterflies in her tummy whenever Tina’s face came into view, and when her voice floated out … “Hi honey… are you in the bath?” she thought again for perhaps the millionth time, How’d I get so lucky?

They chatted quietly about Bette running into Aerin, and what had happened to Rian. Tina caught Bette up on the antics of Angie and TJ.   “She was trying to get TJ to hop on a few of the keys of that giant keyboard in FAO Schwartz … you remember that one?  Well, TJ ended up loving that thing and was hopping up and down the keyboard, non-stop.  You know how he can get, Bette!  It was getting to be embarrassing!  Poor Christie kept apologizing to the kids who were waiting in line.  The moms were patient at first, but …”

“Let me guess,” Bette cut in, chuckling as she imagined the scene of a joyous TJ hopping up and down, Tina trying to coax him away, Angie probably pulling on her brother’s hand to get going, and Christie trying to sweet-talk the impatient kids in line to be a little bit more patient.

“Wish I could’ve been there…”

“You had important stuff to do, honey. But, yeah, of course we missed you….anyway, did you get to talk to that girl you’re so hot about?  The one who works with Cade?”

Tina’s eyes were dancing with mischief as she asked that.

Bette shook her head and smiled back. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.  As desperate as I am to get her, or someone like her, to work with me ….”

“So what did Cade have to say?”

Ten minutes later, after they’d each caught each other up on their work, they both fell quiet and smiled at each other through the screen.

Bette leaned back against the edge of the bath tub again, and angled the phone up and away from the level of bubbles.

“Ummm…. you’re lookin’ hot enough to melt butter there, Ms Porter.

“Kennard. Porter-Kennard.  Hot enough to snag a beautiful blonde I’ve been crushing on since forever?”

“Hmmm… I don’t know. I heard that she’s married.  And in love.”

“In love, huh? You’re right … she could do so much better than me.”

They exchanged small smiles.

“Tell me, again, when you knew you wanted me … for keeps.”

“Well, I got a strong feeling about it when we met in my old gallery, and you were mesmerizing everyone in that sparkly green dress …”

“Not as much as you were melting the irises of every eyeball in that gallery, what with that sexy, backless, black silk number that you still look absolutely stunning in, by the way …”

“And then we had that moment in the video art booth …”

“That was electric …”

“And when I left, while I was trying to get my head straight, for some reason it was twisting my guts to imagine you having sex with Eric …”

Tina frowned slightly. “Really?  You never told me about that.”

“I never did?”

“Na-ah … not that it matters, because I could only think about you … and how it would feel to kiss your possibly unattainable mouth …”

“Not so unattainable, it turned out, when it came to you … and you really spun my world on its axis when you kissed me out in the gardens of the Notre Dame…”

“Well you shot me into orbit when you took me to bed many hours after that kiss, as you know…”

“Nothing that matched what you did to me on our wedding night, T.  I honestly thought I’d never come down back to earth after what you did ….“

They fell quiet again, smiling at each other and mouthing, I love yous.

“It hurts, you know …”

“What hurts, baby?”

“To love you. To love you as much as I do.  It hurts…”

They fell quiet again.

“I know that it hurts.   After all these years, I still feel that ache when we’re apart.”

“And after we see each other again, it takes a while, doesn’t it, ‘till whatever it is we feel inside settles down, ‘til the ache eases …”

A rueful laugh.

“It hurts but I so love you, sexy.”

“And I love you, beautiful.”

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