My heart
skipped a beat as I watched her laughing and joking at something with Shane as
she made her way towards the door. Unaware that she had an audience and I enjoyed
the rare opportunity to just take her in.

I was so
excited for our wedding tomorrow but from the time of the proposal until now
with all that had happened it seemed somehow less important, well less to us
and more to all the amazing women who had become our family. Like some kind of
final initiation into the group. And I had no issue with that, I really do feel
that I owe these women everything and would do anything to repay that debt.

I was
pulled from my revere again as Bette approached and linked her arm through mine
urging my feet to start the journey to the front door that everyone else had disappeared
through while I was lost inside my own head.

            “Come
on Blondie just two more days and you can daydream till your heart’s content
and have some time with just the most important women in your life. But till
then just try and at least pretend to be focused hey?”

As I felt
my body fall in step beside her I thought maybe the reason that she and Andy
had forged such a strong friendship was within my reach but still just never
quite clear. So I thought who better to ask than her while we had a rare few
minutes alone.

            “Bette,
does it ever strike you as odd that you and Andy have managed to be such good
friend and never had any, I don’t know apocalyptic argument?”

She
glanced at me from the corner of her eye before seeming to accept the sincerity
behind my blunt question and stopping just outside the door to face me.

            “Well
I know exactly why I think and I know it has baffled you all too some extent,
but as you have asked I will give you my take. I think that yes had Andy and I been
the same age and at the same stages in our life then there would have been some
fireworks along the way but now in this life we didn’t meet at a time where
competition was anything we needed. We get each other; it is a simple as that. You
and Tina love us and know our flaws and are our soul mates in love and passion
and life, but she and I we know what it is like to have the irrational fears
that we do the ones we place upon ourselves and it bonds us in a different way.
I have always felt a little like an outsider due to my need to appear the
strong one, a need I have never managed to quite shake and now within a group
of women that all have special bonds due to their own understandings of each
other I finally have what I would call a “best friend” who I can be my total asinine
self with and just gets why. As high school as that sounds, does that make
sense?