Tina not pushing for more, or seeking for confirmation either way as to whether she should be scared.  Not listening to her partner admitting to feeling left out.  Concentrating on herself amidst the waning connection.

Both receded into the corner they’d become comfortable in.  Luxuriating in the lack of balanced expectation from the other that had been prominent in their past reflective of a healthy relationship. A missed opportunity amidst the crisp morning air and neighborhood sounds of a new day’s start.

Instead, silence and more of it as the days melded to the weeks and months that followed.

—-

Not waiting for Tina’s answer she pressed on with words tremulously spoken, “I felt it in the way you looked at me.”  Bette’s eyes were drawn again to the table between them.  A physical barrier that was easy to overcome as opposed to the emotional remoteness that entrenched itself between them over time.

Lids forced back the moisture that gravity tempted to fall, her wilted shoulders expressed as much as the words that had been said and those that followed. 

“What you didn’t say to me,” Bette said without malevolence, her tone matter of fact.  “What you kept from me.”

Leaving when all she wanted was to spend time together.  That it had to be Alice to call and alert her to how distressed Tina had become after bringing Marcus to the sperm bank.  The intense rejection she felt upon hearing the words that tore her in half.  Tina’s initial reluctance to have a reflection of her heritage in the being who would have embodied their love and commitment. 

Then the decision regarding the birth. Believing she would have agreed eventually.  Granted only after a lengthy discourse of pros and cons, global considerations and proper planning.  Bette would have supported the decision for a home birth.  A preference Tina had for their child.  A critical choice that was made without her involvement.  Yet how could she challenge that behavior?  What she herself perpetuated?  In the way she spoke and made decisions for Tina in their day to day.  Especially regarding financial aspects of their union.  

“And I from you.”  The choices made in a vacuum, symptomatic of how they had drifted apart. 

Taking two short breaths she said with a tone laced with regret, “We withdrew from each other and it was killing me inside.” 

She had used the word ‘we’.  The blonde knew that was being liberal.  Yes Bette would be the one to be more inclined to immediately focus on her own situation over others’.  The art director could vanish in her own world readily.  But it was she who had the tendency to withdraw.  To shut down and resort to silence in answer.  To avoid confrontation and concurrently get what she wanted.  To steer the outcome without explicitly doing so – a skill she had now admitted to having mastered over time.

“The pressure of it all, I felt I would somehow handle but…” an agitated Bette continued, with clenched hands directly in front of her chest, “there was so much space between us I couldn’t breathe.”   The emptiness they’d both felt. 

Slowly, her eyes shut.  She pushed the fingers that briefly rubbed her forehead through dark hair, pausing to firmly grasp handfuls before laying her elbows back on the chair.  Looking askance then up at the ceiling, she bit the inside of the right side of her lip. 

Blinking slowly, the hard swallow was visible given the extended position of her neck.  Drawing her head level, her eyes settled on Tina.

“Things were losing their center and I was confused.  I, I…” Bette hesitated then persisted,  “I reached out to steady myself and she…she was there.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”  The longer haired woman offered in explanation what she hated admitting to most.  “I didn’t know what to do.”

Her voice was deceptively even contradicting the visible struggle to divulge.  “Everything seemed beyond my grasp.  Everything…I, things were out of control.”

Bette frowned then admitted quietly, “I needed something.” 

Reiterating her confession, the brunette whispered, “I reached out.  Needing to steady myself and…” Bette stopped short, not needing to repeat the rest.

She was there.