“If you trust me, why are we even having this conversation?” Dana was on the verge to cry. She was angry, furious even, as well as disappointed. She should have seen this coming, she thought. Alice had been acting a bit weird for a while now. She worked all the time. In all the years she had known Alice the woman had never overworked. The blonde had never really been a careerist, like Dana. It was not like she was lazy; she just seemed to value other things more than work. But now she took every assignment she could get her hands on. If she was ever at home she was working. She had seemed indifferent to how Dana spent her time, also very unlike her. Not asking any questions at all, which was completely against her nosy nature. Yes, Dana should have seen it coming. Alice had not set her foot in the Planet in almost a month now, always away on work. “I mean, you barely speak to me for weeks, and when you finally do, you ask me to stop seeing my best friend.” That just popped out, Dana realized. But in all fairness, Lara was her best friend nowadays. Alice was her girlfriend and Shane was busy with her own life. And Dana had never been remotely as close to Bette and Tina as Alice were. She had looked around, and there was Lara, eager to become friends and hang out again. Dana had felt that she needed something outside her relationship with Alice, besides tennis. Their relationship had been so intense in the beginning. They hardly went out. All they did was have sex, eating, talking, and sleeping It had been wonderful, but eventually they both needed some time apart.

“That’s not true. I’ve spoken to you.” Alice answered, although she at that moment realized that maybe it was her own fault Dana had spent so much time with Lara lately. Alice had been so busy covering her real feelings with work she did not notice that Dana had been hanging around to spend time with her, and not Lara. The soup chef was really her girlfriend’s second choice.

“Not really, Al. ‘Hi’, ‘bye’ and ‘see you’ doesn’t count as conversation.” The tennis player exclaimed bitterly. “I can’t see why you’re making such a big deal about this. I don’t hassle you for hanging out with Helena Peabody.”