“You need to stop yelling. No one was hurt, I have insurance, so just shut the fuck up, do you fucking understand me you fucking idiot.” Now Bette finds herself shouting “or do I need to scream like you, like a fucking insane savage?!”

The man refuses to be intimated “You’re gonna be one sorry bitch!” Bette surprised both of them when she grabs him by his shirt and hauls him up to her level so she can scream directly into his face. “What makes you think I’m not already?! What makes you think I’m not already?!”

***

Tina opens the front door. The lights are out, the shades are drawn, and the house is quiet. She walks slowly through the house she’d shared with Bette for the past seven years, looking around. She walks toward the bedroom door. She enters, flips the light switch, and sees Bette sitting at the foot of their bed. They stare at one another. Bette wasn’t supposed to be there. Joyce had asked her explicitly to be out of the house so Tina could get her things.

“I needed to see you.” Tina ignores Bette’s pleas and walks to the closet to begin pulling out her clothes. “You don’t want to give me anything I need, okay. That’s fair.”

“Nothing’s fair, Bette. You broke everything that meant anything to me.”

“Let me fix it!”

”No.”

“I won’t accept that.”

“Too bad.”

Bette sighs, getting frustrated. “Look, I… I overestimated myself. Alright. Supporting us both financially, and then – and then when we lost the baby, I thought that I had to take on the whole burden, I thought that I had to absorb your pain and ignore my own.”

“Well, I hope you had fun blowing off some steam with the carpenter.” Tina threw up her hands and walked out of the bedroom. She couldn’t deal with this now. She would come back the following evening when she knew Bette would be attending the opening of the Planet under Kit’s ownership. As much as she had going on, there was no way that Bette would miss her sister’s big night. Tina wanted to be there too but she knew Kit would understand.

***

The following evening Tina is sitting at the desk in the living room of Joyce’s guest house typing on her laptop, when she hears a knock on the door. “It’s open!” she yells not wanting to get up. Joyce and Alice were the only two people that knew she was staying there. Alice enters dressed up for the party, and fully expected that Tina would be too, but it was obvious that she wasn’t going anywhere dressed in yoga pants and a tank top. She’d been hiding her baby bump under loose fitting clothes when in public but at home she didn’t care since Joyce already knew about the baby. It hadn’t occurred to her to cover up in case it was Alice, but it wasn’t as if she could hide it much longer.

“Well – don’t tell me you’re not coming? T! It’s the reopening of The Planet! I mean, I know you don’t wanna see Bette, but, we all have to be there to support Kit.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. I – I need to finish this grant proposal, and turn it in by tonight. Plus, I wanna go by the house and pick up some things while Bette isn’t there.”

“Great… Remember how I used to tell you it would suck if you and Bette broke up? Well it does. This is so fucked. You know, I’m starting to get scared, it’s like Bette’s smoking and drinking herself to death, and you’re… I’m gonna say it, Tina… you’re eating your pain! And I don’t know how much weight you’ve gained! But if you don’t stop, you’re gonna have to go to some ashram, or hire some really majorly important trainer and you don’t have the money!”

“Alice… I’m not fat.”

“Tee!” Alice using Bette’s affectionate name for Tina, looks at her with skepticism. Tina gets up and lifts up her shirt to show Alice her baby bump. Alice just stares. “Shit…I’m a little confused… How did that happen?”

“I – I did it while Bette and I were still together. But I didn’t tell her because I wanted to see if it would take. I didn’t think she could handle another miscarriage.”

Alice hangs her head and starts to cry. Tina takes her into a hug and comforts her. “Ohh. Look, it’s gonna be okay!”

“No, it’s not, it’s so fucked up.”

“I’m gonna have a baby. I thought it was gonna be mine and Bette’s, but it’s going to be my baby. And I am going to love her, and care for her, and I am going to give her a great shot at life.”