‘I know, but I don’t want to. Well, I want to but.. I don’t want to miss you. Fuck, if there was just some way..’ Carmen spoke. Shane didn’t say anything but looked at her sadly. Carmen drew up her own legs and rested her head on her knees, rocking herself slowly back and forth. Shane leaned over to look at her but Carmen had her eyes pinched close, while she was chewing on her bottom lip. Shane rested her head between Carmen’s shoulder blades and looked at the tree in Bette’s garden. How the leaves were moving in the breeze of the evening.

‘Baby..’ Shane whispered. ‘Everything will be okay. The weeks will be over before you know it.’ She wondered if that was true, two weeks missing Carmen seemed unbearable to her, but she didn’t want to think about that right now. She just wanted to cheer Carmen up. To see her smile instead of close to crying. ‘You’ll be too busy to even think of me. You got your mind full of other things there,’ Shane said. Shane could feel Carmen shaking her head stubbornly but then her body got lost in irregular shocking. She was crying. ‘Sssht,’ Shane said, ‘don’t cry baby. Please don’t cry. I can’t see you crying without crying myself.’ Carmen suddenly let out a loud sob, like she was holding it in but it finally found a way to escape her mouth. Shane’s eyes were beginning to water but she didn’t pay attention to her own tears this time.

Carmen bolded her fists and smashed them down on the wood they sat on. ‘It’s so unfair! It’s so fucking unfair!’ she cried out. Shane wrapped her long arms around her girlfriend but it seemed like she couldn’t calm her down now. ‘If they could just accept me, if they could just.. love me for me, than we wouldn’t have to miss each other, you could just go along and meet them and..’ Shane gently put her fingers under Carmen’s chin and lifted her head up slowly. Carmen turned her head to look at her. Carmen’s eyes were red from crying, so were the pads her salty tears had followed along her cheeks, her lips and jaw. She still looked beautiful. Maybe even more beautiful if that was possible.

‘They do love you. And you love them, I know that. They’re just.. not used to this. They just don’t know. And besides, I can’t come along anyway because I have to work, remember? I can’t afford to miss the money,’ Shane spoke, ‘Jenny and I still gotta pay this months rent.’ Carmen didn’t say anything but slowly felt calmed down by Shane’s words and she understood that Shane tried to change the subject, in order to cheer her up. But Shane was still looking at her with concern. She saw the tears glistening in Shane’s green eyes. Shane blinked and a tear ran slowly down her face. Carmen placed a soft kiss to Shane’s cheek, kissing the tear away.

‘That’s right,’ she whispered and placed another tender kiss on Shane’s lips. ‘But I still don’t want to leave you,’ she sighed. Shane dropped a lingering kiss to Carmen’s lips. ‘Like I said, you won’t even have the time to miss me,’ she said when their lips finally parted.