“But if anybody’s awful?”

“I’ll get crazy, don’t worry,” Bette laughed, “Trust me – I wouldn’t be able to handle the idea of that any more than you. But just remember, Angelica’s not as naïve as we may like to believe she is.”

Tina didn’t have anything to say to that.

“She’s a big girl, T. And growing up too fast or not, there she is like a little bean, grabbing life by the horns.”

“The horns?” Tina asked, holding onto Bette with a fear that Angelica might be hurt by her willingness to put herself out there.

“It’s okay. I promise you she’ll be alright,” Bette whispered, admiring Tina as she slowly drifted off to sleep. “I take care of my girls.”

Tina closed her eyes, and tried desperately to imagine anyone good enough for Angelica. Nothing came to mind. No one would ever come close.

Bette smiled, sensing Tina’s thought process, and thinking much the same. No one would come close.

It had been the same thought going through Angelica’s mind nearly all her childhood, wondering why on earth any girl would want to spend any sufficient amount of time with a boy. Even in her preteen years, she began to wonder if her mother was onto something with lesbianism, but she quickly dismissed that thought because of her complete lack of attraction to girls. In a way, she had been disappointed back then that the only interest she ever had was in boys who stuck their hands in dirt and obsessed with bathroom humor and all of its disgusting relations. But in the last year, she’d begun to see a change, and she was hopeful of that.

Lying in her bed, listening to music, Angelica smiled at the text just sent, inhaling and reaching for the phone she’d placed neatly on the corner of her desk.

could this night BE any longer?

Ralph liked to imitate the Friends character, Chandler, because it always got the same smiling reaction out of Angelica – she rolled her eyes. And he had a fondness for that.

She laughed very quietly so as not to wake Bette or Tina, and typed back in the otherwise darkness of her room: Still working on Nuclear Physics or whatever it is you’re doing with your time?