Chapter Text
2003.
It was somewhere between discussing when her mother was next coming to town and a meeting she’d set up for the next morning, that Helena realized she no longer had her friend and business partner’s full attention.
In fact, the brunette had just watched as Tina’s eyes darted from her face to somewhere behind her shoulder for the fourth time in the past ninety seconds. At this point Helena was convinced the blonde wasn't listening to a single word that she was saying.
"So then I decided to give away all the company stocks to a woman I met at a bar last night," Helena tried, getting little more than a gentle nod from the blonde. "And better than that I've decided to move to Slovenia and shave off all my hair. And get a neck tattoo.”
Nothing.
Or at least nothing more than yet another glance to the other side of the room. Even when the people in front of them are able to take a few steps forward in line, Tina remains standing stock still. Helena put her hand on her friend and pushed her forward. “Okay, will you tell me what’s going on?” the brunette said, spinning around to whatever it is that has caught Tina’s attention.
“She’s nothing,” Tina said quickly and quietly, tugging uselessly on her friend's shoulder to turn her around. “Nothing is going on, everything is fine.”
Helena crossed her arms as her eyes locked on the woman she assumed Tina had been watching. She was tall and slim, with bouncy brown curls and glowing mocha skin. She seemed to be reading the newspaper, with her eyes darting up every once in a while to behind the register. “She certainly isn’t nothing,” Helena replied. “She’s very beautiful.”
“She’s annoying,” Tina promised, grateful for the line moving forwards and forcing Helena away. “Although, she always wanted kids so maybe she is your type.”
Helena ignored the jibe about her harmless little thing for pregnant women, and instead turned her attention back to Tina. “So you know her already, huh? Who is she and what’s with your… little…-” Helena shrugged, gesturing towards her friend, unsure as to what to even make of the nervous energy emanating from her usually calm friend.
“Her name is Bette and there isn’t a little… anything,” Tina defended. Helena watched as hazel eyes traced the brunette’s body. “I drove here with her from New York and then I saw her again a few years ago. Really nothing.”
“You should go talk to her,” Helena suggested, smirking as her friend’s eyes widened in horror. “What? Maybe you’ll have a better time now?”
Tina shook her head urgently. “She’s married. Well, okay, she was engaged the last time I spoke to her, or maybe she was getting engaged… I don’t know but I can only assume she’s taken.”
Helena just scoffed. “So you don’t know if she’s married at all… or if she’s available either way?”
“There is no either way Helena,” Tina replied, unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes.
Both women continued to stare across the room at the striking brunette. Their eyes stayed locked onto her even as flipped through the paper, even as she just drew her hand through her hair, even when she dropped her pen and reached down to pick it up. In fact, they stayed transfixed, eyes locked, until a slightly older black woman, carrying some food and a coffee made her way straight to Bette.
She whispered in her ear and moved her head to the side and suddenly rather than watching Bette complete what seemed like a rather mundane morning ritual, Tina was looking at her right in the eyes. The blonde jumped, shocked and turned her body back towards the other people in the ordering line.
“Tina,” she heard, called out across the cafe. “ Tina Kennard .”
The blonde turned back around, unable to ignore Bette twice. She scowled at Helena and hoped that she wasn’t the deep shade of red that she imagined. As she looked over, Bette was waving her over, smiling as though she was actually pretty happy to be seeing Tina.
The blonde shook her head, refused, still able to feel the embarrassing rush of heat spreading up her chest at having been caught staring at Bette Porter. The other woman just waved again, and with a slight shove from Helena behind her, Tina had no real choice but to make her way over to her old companion.
“Hi Bette,” Tina said awkwardly, as stood beside her, hands twisting around each other.
Bette just grinned, moved her newspaper and gestured to the seat beside her. “Please, Tina. Join me?”
“Oh, no I-I couldn’t.” she replied, looking around for Helena as an explanation. Her friend, now being given her coffee by the woman up the front, the same one that had been talking to Bette, just motioned to her phone grinning and made her way to leave the cafe. “Except, apparently I can.”
The mocha-skinned brunette pushed out the other chair and Tina smiled slightly as she sat down into it. Bette might have been annoying and presumptuous, but even the blonde could admit that she also still had the same undeniable charm that always had Tina leaning in. “It’s nice to see you again,” she said.
“Trying out somewhere new?” Bette asked. Tina just blinked, confused until the other woman gestured around the cafe. “I haven’t seen you here before.”
“Oh,” Tina said. “Yes, yes. I just moved into some nearby offices and thought I’d check out the local. You’re a regular?” God help her if running into Bette was going to become a commonplace thing and she’d heard such good things about The Planet too.
Bette grinned as the same woman from before came over with Tina’s coffee. As Tina took her first sip, savoring the taste, Bette introduced them. “You could say that. This is my sister Kit. She owns the place.”
“It’s lovely to meet you Kit. I’m-”
“Tina,” Kit said, smiling back and forth between the blonde and her younger sister. “Bette told me. I have to get back to customers but it’s lovely to meet you.”
Bette blushed and the sight made Tina relax more than she could have imagined. “I-I just… when you were standing… like min-”
“Of course Bette,” Tina said, taking mercy on the stammering woman. “I wasn’t going to assume that you’d been telling your sister about me over the years.”
When Bette felt her blush only deepen, she quickly curled her fingers around her coffee cup and tried a conversation change. “How are you anyway, Ms Tina Kennard?” she asked between sips. “How is… Carrie?”
It had been years but still Bette felt that name roll off the tip of her tongue. That weird, kooky lawyer that had driven Bette a little around the bend with her chattiness. “I’m sure she’s great,” Tina said softly, before sighing. “We broke up. A few weeks ago.”
A wave of sadness crashed against Bette’s chest as she watched flickers of pain dance across Tina’s iris’. “I’m so sorry. It’s… really hard, I know. Breakups are just awful.”
“You sound like you speak from experience,” Tina noted, as she sipped her coffee.
Bette slumped back in her chair, twisting her fingers around each other as she tried not to seem as depressed as she truly felt. It had been a rough six weeks and the fact that she was back at this coffee shop, and not under her bed, felt like a minor miracle. “I am… getting a divorce,” she admitted slowly.
Tina’s mouth hung open in surprise. When she made the comment about experience it had largely been in reference to Bette’s younger and more unruly days - not the dissolution what Bette had told her was a great joy. “Bette… that’s… I’m so… what happened?”
“It was a couple of things,” Bette hedged, her mind still trying to find the way to distill the disintegration of her marriage. It was incredible, she thought, how both simple and complex one topic could be. “I was a bit too… traditional in the end, I guess. For example, I wanted kids and she really didn’t. I thought we could work things out but she kept telling me we were at a crossroads… that we needed to end it.”
When Bette began to dig into her hand with her nails, Tina automatically stretched out her own, covering them. “We don’t have to discuss this, you know,” the blonde offered.
A wave of gratefulness washed over Bette as she felt the endless empathy that she remembered all those years ago in the car. For weeks she’d hesitated to talk to anyone about how she’d been feeling, unwilling to burden anyone else. It felt nice to finally feel like there was someone that she could tell. “She told me that she was going to move out to make things easier for me. Except instead she just moved straight in with the woman she was cheating on me with.”
Tina almost spat her coffee out in surprise. There were a lot of things that she thought might be a problem for Bette in a relationship but she didn’t think looking for sex elsewhere would be one. “That’s… so cruel.”
Tears pricked at Bette’s eyes as she nodded along. It had been cruel. It had been cruel and nasty and not betting of the kind of love that Bette had truly believed they’d shared. Her heart still pulsed with humiliation if she thought too hard about it, and she swallowed back the vile she felt resting in her throat. “It was awful. It is awful. I still feel so… out of sorts. It's almost like it’s not even my life anymore.”
Tina just squeezed both of Bette’s hands further, rubbing her thumb along the backs of them. She gave a small smile and the brunette couldn’t help but feel her own lips twitch in response. Tina was a happy person, a natural source of everyday joy, and even just a moment in her presence had raised Bette’s spirits. “Thank you for telling me about it.”
Bette just nodded again as she tried to find her voice. “What happened with Carrie?”
“I don’t really have a good answer for you,” Tina admitted. “There isn’t some… devastating story. I love her, I do but… I don’t know. I woke up one day and I just realized I didn’t love her enough. She didn’t love me enough either. We couldn’t compromise on where we wanted to live, we couldn’t compromise on when we’d have children. She’s older than me and that became glaringly obvious as to our priorities.”
Tina struggled to be any clearer because even in her own mind the whole thing seemed tangled. How do you love someone for years but also not? How do you love someone and miss someone and also really want to be broken up with them? “We just… fizzled I guess,” she whispered, her eyes now downcast. “I feel like a failure about it all to be honest.”
“You shouldn’t,” Bette said firmly. “You have always been kind Tina. You have always been kind and warm and… if it got to this point then it wasn’t because you didn’t try.”
Tina looked up at Bette and couldn’t help the giggle that rose to her chest. “I gotta say when I came in here this morning to check out this cafe, I did not think I’d be almost crying with you about my recent break-up.”
Bette grinned, her chocolate eyes crinkled. “No, I can’t say I thought this was how my day was gonna go either,” she admitted. “I have to say though that I am so glad to see you again.”
“Same,” Tina agreed softly. “Tell me about your work. I assume you’re in a gallery?”
A broad smile spread across Bette's face. “Yes, I have my own gallery. It’s… hard work but it's also the most rewarding experience of my life. How is the new office?”
Tina sighed, looking at Bette with a frown. “White. Boring. Undecorated. I just haven’t had time to fill the space with something that I like.”
“Well… what do you like?” Bette asked.
“I don’t even know,” Tina admitted. “I like color and movement and water.” She smiled again at Bette as her phone whirled to life besides her. “I have to head back to the office but maybe we’ll run into each other again?”
“I’m here most mornings before I head into my gallery,” Bette said, nodding her agreement as she watched Tina stand up.
“I will see you soon again then, no doubt.”
Bette watched quietly as Tina backed away from the table, but when she walked out the cafe doors, regret washed over the brunette gallerist.
She couldn’t believe she didn’t even get a phone number.
-
Tina rubbed her eyes, trying to alleviate the growing headache. It was just past four in the afternoon and the day did not seem like it was coming to a close any time soon. She groaned in frustration when her assistant popped through the door.
“Yes?” she asked, softly. “Can I help you with something Andrea?”
The tall redhead just nodded. “I have some artwork that has arrived for you. I didn’t know we were expecting anything today but it came with a note.”
Tina’s head shot up in confusion and her assistant passed her the note. “I-I didn’-”
I hope that you find as much joy in this Holloman painting as I always have. It was the first thing I thought of when we spoke earlier today. Thank you for being a friend today. I have sorely needed one. If you want to get coffee again tomorrow, I’ll be at the Planet at 9:30am.
Your friend, Bette Porter.
By the time Tina had finished reading the note, her assistant Andrea was already carrying in the art in question. It was huge, firstly. It was going to take up a large part of the white wall across from her.
It also was everything she’d mentioned earlier. It was a beautiful deep blue that she could barely look away from. In fact, Tina imagined that if she closed her eyes she could dive into it and land in the center of the ocean.
It was so thoughtful of Bette.
“Can you do whatever needs to be done to get that on my wall,” Tina asked her assistant.
The redhead just nodded, always eager to follow her boss's instructions. She was halfway out the door, mind going through the things she needed to do when Tina called out one final task.
“Also, call the Bette Porter gallery and confirm with her assistant that I’ll be available for coffee tomorrow,” she said.
Tina smiled.
It was going to be nice to have another friend.