But when Helena touches her, it’s Bette. When Helena kisses her, it’s Bette. When Helena makes love to her, it’s Bette. It’s Bette’s hands and Bette’s lips and Bette’s perfect tongue. It’s Bette’s name she tries her hardest not to cry out when she comes.

She tries to convince herself that it’s just familiarity laced with confusion-that Bette is all she can remember, all she had for eight years and her body has just convinced itself that Bette is all it will ever have. She tries to convince herself, but she doesn’t try very hard.

She likes pretending it’s Bette, just a little.

XXI.

***** amazing is how Bette describes everything. One of Brancusi’s birds, seen up close for the first time, was ***** amazing. Sometimes, on a good day, strawberries were ***** amazing. When she was drunk, arbitrary things like trees with branches that dipped low were ***** amazing.

Tina is ***** amazing, but so is everything. ***** with Tina is ***** amazing, but again-so is everything. Life, at this moment, is ***** amazing. But so is everything.

They’re that way, Bette thinks, because she’s seeing them right. It’s hard to see anything with a cell phone attached to her ear and an endless stretch of work ahead of her.

So she steps back and she puts the phone down and she remembers to get her head out of her own ***** for once. And yes, there are things that are ***** amazing. And there’s Tina. And their baby. And a home. And even ***** amazing falls short.

XXII.

There are facets, little pockets, aspects of Bette that Tina will never truly get. Like why she brushes her teeth more often than normal humans should, or why she’s a complete idiot when it comes to opening milk cartons (because the last thing they need, really, is to pretend not to cry over spilt milk), or why she has that complex about sleeping naked sometimes.

They’re little things, though, and she doesn’t want to understand them. She likes looking at them. She likes examining Bette’s habits and drawing conclusions-she doesn’t understand why Bette likes a particular piece of art, but the minute she sees it, she knows that it’s something Bette will love.

If she was feeling particularly analytical, Tina would surely apply the same theory to herself. Of course, she’s not quite sure what it is and why Bette loves her, but she knows that Bette does.

Tina had a misconception when she was a kid, and this was that love was an entity that was firmly and resolutely placed in the Good column. There were a lifetime of clichs neatly packed into her head where loved conquered all and all you needed was love and that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

She isn’t cynical now, she’s just practical. Love is just what it is and it’s neither good nor evil-it’s what you make of it.

Bette makes it good. She ***** up. And then she makes it good.