Current Day

Slinging my Coach purse over my shoulder, I walked briskly into the coffee shop.  The sound of my stilettos was a constant clacking resembling a metronome.  I shifted my sunglasses to the top of my head as I made my way into the short line. I shifted my weight onto one hip impatiently and glanced to the front of the line, calculating the hold up. 

And then I saw her.

At first it was just a subtle flash of recognition.

The hair – that particular shade of auburn.  Her shoulders, and their perfect slanting angle from her neck.  All the features of her backside that I had secretly memorized over the years.

And then it was a gut-punching certainty. 

I see her standing there, and it’s her: I know it.

I see here standing there, with her hair swept back off her shoulders, blissfully unaware of my presence, and I realize:  that I would leave him in a second, just as I would have left him then.

For her.

For Bette.

15 Years Earlier

Bette and Tina were laying, legs entwined, on a small twin bed in a low-income housing apartment.   Tina burrowed her chin further into Bette’s collar bone.  The house was quiet but for the rain falling outside.  Bette, 21, and Tina, just 18, had grown up in the same poor part of town, in very similar poor conditions.  Friends as children, their teenage years brought feelings of much greater importance: feelings of love and genuine adoration.

The girls heard the key turn in the lock; Tina’s mother was due home after working the second shift.  They sat up in the bed, kissing softly before pulling away as the door opened. As far as their parents were concerned, it was easier to make believe they were only friends. Tina and her mother lived in an efficiency apartment, with one single bed and a couch occupying nearly all the living space beside the bathroom and kitchen.  For privacy, there was so nowhere to go.  If not for their parents’ double shifts and second jobs, they might never be alone. 

“Hi girls,” Tina’s mother said, sighing deeply.  Her shoulders sagged from the weight and exhaustion of the day.  She sat down on the arm of the sofa and rubbed her foot distractedly. 

“Hi, Mrs. Kennard,” Bette said, standing up.  “You look like you could use some sleep, I’ll just get out of your hair.”

Mrs. Kennard smiled and squeezed Bette’s hand gratefully as Bette walked toward the door. 

“I’ll see you at work tomorrow, Tina,” she smiled, winking as she closed the door behind her.

As Bette crossed the street to the small studio apartment she shared with her father and older sister, she could hear the ever-present sound of sirens in the near distance. She made a solemn promise to herself – the same promise she made every day:  That one day she would take Tina away from this place.  She’d find a way to make some money and she’d give the woman she loved everything she ever wanted. 

 TBC