Bette officially met El a week or two later. He wasn’t close to what she had pictured him to be. Bette hated to admit it but El definitely stood out from the rest of the guys who she has met – hitting on Helena or bringing her out on a date. Although El wasn’t the best looking among those guys, he carried himself well, he was charming, chivalrous and gentlemen-like. Somehow a lot like that pro tennis player, Roger Federer. El’s also very attentive towards Helena, always putting her before himself. He was sickeningly perfect.

Things between the two of them couldn’t go better. Helena seemed to happy with El, El that lucky bastard also seem to be happy with Helena. It was becoming very obvious that they weren’t just dating anymore but more like an exclusive couple. And this becomes the part where Bette has to start to accept the reality.

If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, Bette reminded herself bitterly, over and over again.

It took her six days, five pints of ice cream and countless number of chocolate bars to fully accept the fact that it was time to start moving on.

When the I-stuff-myself-with-crap-because-I-feel-like-crap phase came to an end, she felt extremely guilty to have consumed so much crap and that led to getting up extra early every morning to go for runs. Shortly after that, it led to I-run-to-burn-off-the-crap-I-ate-but-in-actual-fact-I’m-in-denial-that-I-run-to-run-away-from-the-scary-thing-called-reality phase.

On some days, she goes for runs to run away from listening to Helena talk about Eerily-Perfect El. On other days, she goes for runs to release that anger/pain/jumbled (fucked) up emotions that cannot be described.

The funny thing was that Bette felt fine whenever it came to hanging out with Helena alone, talking and laughing about everything else in the world except El.

Eventually, after a couple of weeks or so, Bette graduated to the next phase, I-am-officially-starting-to-get-over-her-but-I-run-occassionally. She realized that she needed to stop thinking about Helena and El. And so, she kept herself busy with schoolwork, running, drawing and painting, running, hanging out more than usual with her friends, running and hanging out with Sierra.

Coincidentally, Sierra was a fellow schoolmate who was majoring in dance.