“What, that I’m a bombastic bully?” She was still quick, I had to give her that.

“That you’re loyal and unswerving in your convictions.” I went back to my drink and let that settle in for a moment.

I’m positive she knew that I was flirting with her. And why not? Henry wasn’t there. Jodi wasn’t there. It was just us. And the familiarity of the moment was so intoxicating to me.

I found myself scooting closer to her when more people joined our table. Though my hand was in my lap, I found that I had to exercise more and more restraint not to let it do what it was so comfortable doing, and that was to grab Bette’s hand and place it back down on my lap.

There were so many times when we would sit in various public places, whether with friends or by ourselves, and would be holding hands, resting them on top of my thigh. Our fingers would play and dance with each other’s, gently stroke and caress the other’s hand. If we were sitting at a table with a long table cloth, our hand play would often times escalate into leg play. And during the times when I wore a skirt, Bette’s fingers would slowly make their way inside of it, and ultimately inside of me for a brief and discreet encounter. We were so adventurous when we first got together. It was so hard to keep our hands off of one another. I loved it.

Fuck, Bette, what happened to us?

I looked at her again with longing. We locked eyes again for a brief moment. I had to look away. She was unbearably gorgeous. I could tell that she was perplexed, wanting to know what I wanted and why, but she would never ask in this setting.

I was probably scaring her. At the very least, I was confusing her. It wasn’t something I could control.

Jenny and her agent dream team, Becca Roberts, Brian Dutton, and Joe, whose last name I didn’t really care about because he was an idiot anyway, sat at our table. I had forgotten that Brian was a long-time art collector and knew Bette when she had her own gallery.