The Adventures Of Bette Porter and Sissee Gardner After Yale (Part 4, Chapter 12)

PART FOUR: NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA

Chapter 12

Maxine and Bette had come prepared to spend the night at my house. Maxine protested when I suggested she sleep in my bedroom. She thought I was giving something up. Bette interrupted and insisted however, until her mother reluctantly gave in.

With everyone showered and changed, Bette and I went into the spare bedroom and closed the door.

I went to a drawer at my desk and took out a small, gift wrapped package, then handed it to her saying, “Merry Christmas.”

She took the gift and said, “Thank you,” with an enigmatic smile, as she turned it over several times in her hands. “That’s interesting…..” she said, kind of letting her observation hang in midair.

I tilted my head to look at her with curiosity. “What is?” I asked.

She went to a chair where she had put her overnight bag and pulled out a similar package which she brought back to me.

“Merry Christmas, to you, too,” she said, with a warm smile.

We both held the gifts, looking at them and then at each other. They were the same size. They even felt the same weight. They might as well have been wrapped in the same tissue paper, with the same bows.

Without speaking, we both opened them carefully and indeed, we saw that we had given each other the same thing. We each held a small box in which was a diamond-crusted heart shaped necklace. There were differences of course, but the idea was the same.

We were both touched – perhaps for even the same reasons. We could have just laughed. It was not so long ago that we were laughing with Maxine. Bette might have uttered one of her favorite expletives. We might have suggested that one of us returned her necklace and get something else so they would not be alike. A lot of possibilities surface now, as I think back to that time, twenty years ago.

But I think what moved us so much was the fact that we both leaned toward something very personal, romantic and endearing, .something sweet and sentimental. I know I paged through Christmas catalogues before I made up my mind what to get her. Then when I decided, I went to several jewelry stores before I found the right shaped heart, one that hung off center with gradual diamonds, symbolizing to me that our love would grow, just as each diamond got bigger. Perhaps she put just as much into her final selection. It too had a sideways heart, just hanging from a white gold chain, enclosed in a futuristic shape, suggesting, today, tomorrow and forever.

In any case, we were both rendered speechless for once and when our eyes met again, we searched inside and seemed to find a new and deeper place to share in our hearts. Our eyes filled with tears that spilled down over our cheeks. There was no embarrassment or shame. There was no sadness either. We had simply both touched the other in a very good way.

Then Bette put her package down and took mine. She lifted the necklace out of the box, opened the clasp and put the chain behind my neck, closing the clasp. Then she straightened out the front of it and touched the heart with the tip of one finger. She traced the heart and looked into my eyes again and whispered, “I love you.”

In response, I smiled slightly and then she gave me the sweetest kiss she ever touched my lips with. No passion. No tongue. Just her lips on mine, warm, moist and wonderful.

I actually felt weak in my knees because it so affected me but when she pulled away, I knew it was my turn to pick up the box I had given her and put her necklace on. I traced it too with a finger and then I touched her lips with the same finger and made a heart sign over them, followed by a soft, tender kiss.

“I love you too, Bette.” I told her in a whisper of my own. “I love you more and more as each day goes by.”

With that we went to bed and wound up with only our necklaces on, which we drop-kissed several times, on our way down to more intimate, sensitive places. The earlier simple kisses turned into passionate ones, with generous amounts of tongue, that dueled, licked and flicked.

She made me feel good and I made her feel good. It was goodbye-love because I would be going to Wisconsin tomorrow afternoon with Howie, which meant that Bette and I would not see each other for eight whole days – or so we thought at the time.