Chapter Text
1.
There were two ways this could go. First option, the dinner was a complete disaster. Somehow, Angie decided to be the worst step-daughter on the planet and antagonized her mother’s fiancée at every turn. Then, Tina and her would need to sit down with her and she would have to take the moral high-ground and encourage her beloved daughter to not hate Carrie on her behalf. Second option, the dinner was a success. Her sweet baby girl would be the well-rounded sixteen years old that she could be, charming and funny. She would be an instant hit and she and Carrie would like each other immediately. Bette didn’t know what was the most depressing option. A part of her desperately wanted to dislike that woman, just because she was the one taking away the love of her life from her.
She felt a constant pain in her chest. Any time she thought about the situation, she felt her heart give a squeeze, like it was reminded of everything she had lost and was trying to crawl back on itself. And when she would meet Tina… Oh! That was when the pain was the most vivid. Her heart would pound furiously against her ribcage, like it was trying to scream: ‘Take me back, please take me back’. Don’t think she was being a drama queen but at some point, the pain had gotten so vivid that she had decided to go see a doctor. Maybe it was just coincidental. Maybe it was the symptom of a very real disease that could lurk in the unknown. She was a middle-age lesbian after all and her body liked to remind her of that sometimes.
The diagnostic had been irrevocable. “I’m afraid you suffer from a broken heart Mrs Porter”. Imagine for just one second her embarrassment. She was a grown woman who mistook chest pain for something else entirely. What was worse, she wondered indeed. Shane had watched her with so much commiseration that she had wanted to cry. She hadn’t. Shane already had enough on her plate. Alice was still in the unknown, just because of how ridiculous the information was in the first place. She also had a lot to deal with between Nat and Gigi.
So, here she was, sitting in the dinning room of Tina and Carrie’s new home, her daughter on her right, the happy couple sitting across from them and not nearly enough wine in her glass. The house was beautiful of course. It had Californian beach house vibes and everywhere Bette could see Tina’s influence. In the furniture choice, in the cabinets colors, in the art choice. It felt like her. It was familiar like her. But different somehow. They had chosen their house in New York together, had decorated it together. This one, the one she had chosen with Carrie, was completely different. And that too, hurt a little. It was stupid. She didn’t know what to expect. But the art, the art was beautiful and so colorful. That was something Tina would have never picked out with her. Now, those were choices that she made.
The patio had this great view on the hills. When she had relocated, Bette had opted for a closed location, without view, because it felt the safest for Angie. The view here was breathtaking. Bette could picture it—Tina with a glass of white wine in the evening, taking in the scenery before the sun set. There was even a jacuzzi. This, Bette didn’t even want to imagine anything about it. Instead, during the tour she had wanted to smash her glass of wine and stab herself repeatedly in the chest. Dramatic? Yes, but that was too much to take.
“Bette?”
She looked up, realizing she had been lost in her thoughts for too long. Carrie was requesting her attention.
“More wine?”
“Yes, please,” she answered, hoping she didn’t sound too eager to get drunk.
She kept her eyes on the glass as the other woman poured alcohol. She was acutely aware of Tina’s stare on the other side of the table. And really, she had no business staring at her like that. So why was she craving the attention?
“It’s a French wine,” Carrie went on to explain. “From Languedoc-Roussillon. It’s in the South. I went there once for the holidays. The house I rented was all in stone, in the middle of nowhere, overlooking a lavender field. Every morning I would wake up at dawn to see the colors change in time with the sunrise.”
“Well, the wine is excellent.” Bette answered in the most polite and neutral way she could.
She couldn’t care less. Fuck, she was the worst person on Earth.
“It sounds cool,” Angie chimed in with a shrug.
Bette felt a small smile tug at the corner of her lips. Her adolescent baby was too damn adorable sometimes. Even for no reason.
“You could come with us sometime,” Carrie offered.
Bette’s smile froze. Her hand stopped in the air for a second too long before she reached for her glass. She felt that familiar pain in her chest again. She was a masochist, but she couldn’t help it. She glanced at Tina. The blonde was staring back at her like a deer caught in the headlights. Frozen in place too. Horrified by the conversation’s turn.
“I mean, if that’s—“
“Yeah, I think I’m too old to go on a trips with grown ups,” Angelica cut her off without any hostility.
Bette gulped down her wine and peered humorously at her daughter.
“Really?”
The echo is what got her. A chill ran up her arms and she looked back at Tina. They had spoken the same word at the same time. It wasn’t the first occurrence, but it was the first in front of Carrie and Angie. There was surprise on her wif—ex-wife’s features. They gazed at each other for what felt like an uncomfortable amount of time before Bette shook herself up and turned to her daughter again. Her baby’s face had taken an uneasy look, eyes traveling between her parents. This time, the thug at Bette’s heart was directed straight at her daughter.
“And since when do you think that young lady?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
Her guilt was guiding her to diffuse the situation. She scolded herself, thinking of how torn Angie must felt at this time. She wasn’t responsible for any of this. She was just a happy teenager stuck between a happy mom and a sad mom. If she couldn’t do this for Tina, she had to for Angelica.
Her daughter’s face eased again in a smile. She teased them about how she expected their last trip together to be when they would drop her off to college. She was ready for spring break she said. Bette mentioned her hopes of her choosing Yale’s art program, Angie and Mamma T rolled their eyes collectively before chuckling at their silliness and everything was well again. The dark haired woman glanced over at Tina. She just couldn’t help it. The woman she loved, the woman she still loved, gave her a grateful smile and Bette wondered if maybe—maybe—if she tried hard enough to act like this was normal, she could pretend she was ok with the situation.
Later that evening, Angelica dashed to her bedroom as soon as they got home. She was supposed to stay at Tina’s, but had insisted she needed to get some of her favorite clothes for the week to come. She would stay the night here and leave in the afternoon after school. Bette watched her disappear up the stairs and made her way to the kitchen with a sigh. She had to drive, so she hadn’t had nearly enough liquor in her system to deal with today. Alcohol wasn’t the solution. It never was. She had seen the damage it could do first hand on Kit, so she couldn’t fall into that pattern. She ought it to her sister, she ought it to her daughter, she ought it to herself.
The brunette felt her hand trembling a little as she reached for the kettle to prepare tea. The day had been a fucking nightmare. She had played nice as she knew how to. She had put on the politician suit that forbade her from butting heads with people she didn’t like and it had gone well. Objectively, Carrie was nice. Objectively, she was smart and funny in a way. Tina smiled a lot. She had let Carrie hold her hand over the table.
Fuck it.
Bette really needed someone to talk to. She wanted a confident. She wanted Kit back.
She felt tears prickling at the corner of her eyes and took deep breaths to stop them from falling. Not with Angelica in the next room. It wasn’t fair to her. Normally, she would have called Shane. She was her breath of fresh air now that she was back in town, but she couldn’t skip on her daughter. It would have to wait tomorrow.
Bette put the kettle on the burner and leaned against the counter. Her gaze got lost in the emptiness. She thought about happier times, when everything was evident. Simpler.
She jumped when a set of arms surprised her from behind. Almost immediately after, she recognized the shampoo smell and she let herself be hugged by Angie, stroking her arm gently. The teenager pressed herself against her back with a sigh.
“Do you wanna watch a movie with me?” She asked.
Her voice was muffled against Bette’s shoulder blade, making her mother giggle lowly.
“I’d love to. But only if I can put my brain down and just enjoy the movie.”
She took Angie’s hand in hers and gave it a soft kiss. Her daughter released her eventually and moved around to face her. Her eyebrow was raised in a mocking attitude that reminded Bette so much of Tina that she had a hard time keeping a cool expression.
“What? So you mean you don’t want to watch a pretentious, independent and critically acclaimed movie? Who are you and what did you do to my mom?”
“Stop making fun of me,” Bette threatened half-heartedly before pulling her daughter in a bear hug. “I thought you would be happy about it.”
Angelica snorted-laughed in delight and hugged her back. She indulged her mother for a few moments before either of them spoke again.
“Mom?”
“Hm?”
“Do you…”
The girl trailed off and sighed. She eased off the hug gently and took a step back. Her eyes were darting to the side like every time she was embarrassed or scared to say something. Bette waited for her to be ready on her own time. Eventually, Angie looked up at her.
“Is that what love is? You let the person you love be happy away from you even if it means that you are miserable in return?”
Someone could have pierced her heart with a knife right now that it would have been less painful. She saw the uncertainty in her daughter’s eyes. She saw the sadness for a mother, tinged with fear that someday, this could happen to her.
“Oh my baby girl…” Bette started and stopped immediately because of the lump in her throat.
She and Tina had worked on themselves for years to build an image of strong women, fearless but caring, independent but loyal, headstrong but vulnerable. Her desire to be a role model for her daughter also meant that she couldn’t lie to her right now. Bette took Angie’s face in her hands gently and rubbed away the tears that were streaming down her cheeks. Her own vision grew blurry as tears started to fill her eyes in turn.
“I’m not miserable,” she said, wishing her voice was stronger. “I just need a little time to process it. I need to find my way to feel normal again. But love…”
Bette sighed and breathed in deeply.
“Your mom and I, we were lucky to have some wonderful years together. I will always cherish them and I will always love your mom—that’s something I know to be inherently true. And because I do, I want her to be happy. I’m happy when she is happy. It doesn’t look like it right now,” Bette continued with a chuckle through her tears “but I will be. I just need time to process it and at the moment, with the wedding and trying to be a good parent to you, I’m not able to.”
She interrupted herself to plant a kiss on Angelica’s forehead.
“But love doesn’t have to be so complicated, you know. Sometimes it’s so easy that it feels like an evidence.”
“Yeah, but epic love is never evident,” the teenager commented, wiping away the remaining tears off her cheeks.
“Epic love? Where did you hear that?” Bette asked, almost amused by the phrasing.
“Uncle Shane said that you and mom share an epic love like you only live once in a lifetime.”
Ah. Uncle Shane—baptized that way by Angie when she was four. She had always been a supporter of Tina and her. The tall woman wasn’t the least bit surprised that it would come for her. Bette wasn’t sure she agreed on the word epic, though maybe to an outsider… she could see the appeal. She liked to think of it as unique. She knew there would be no one else like Tina. She just had to deal with it. But for now, Angie was smiling a little again, Bette was smiling at Shane’s antics and the mood had lightened. As if on cue, the kettle started whistling on the burner. She turned it off and poured herself a cup of tea as Angelica went in search of the perfect movie.
“It went well, did it?”
Tina almost had a scare jump. She composed herself and turned around with what she hoped was a serene look. It was tough. She had just spent God knows how long staring into space as she replayed the events of today in her head. Why was it so difficult to get Bette out of her head was a mystery. She had seemed so… sad. The blonde shook that thought off.
“It did, yeah,” she replied with force enthusiasm. “Though I knew that Bette wouldn’t cause a scene.”
Carrie made a weird face.
“Oh, I was thinking about Angelica actually,” she corrected. "I was scared she would lash out like angry teenagers have the secret.”
“Oh!” Tina laughed nervously.
Damnit! How stupid was she to mention her ex-wife at this moment?
“Well, I tried to make sure that she was ok with it and Bette—“ she paused, realizing she was mentioning her again “has assured me that Angie was fine and still her happy, carefree self.”
Carrie smiled gently and took a few steps toward her. She was supposed to be her rock, the calming presence she needed. Instead, Tina felt on edge, because the more she approached her, the more she thought about Bette, with the guilt emotions that followed usually.
“That’s good, right? I know you were anxious about this dinner.”
“Was I? I don’t know. I’m always a bit nervous about dinner parties. And I wanted Angie to like you,” she added as an afterthought.
That was part of her nervousness, but it was far from being the main point. Yes, her daughter was the most important person in her life. But Bette was also on that list. She would always be and given her reaction the first time—when she had announced her engagement over dinner—Tina felt a fierce sense of protectiveness toward her. They hadn’t split up because of lack of love. She just knew she never wanted to witness Bette pouring white wine over red wine to drink away her pain ever again.
Carrie kissed her and interrupted her train of thoughts. It was chaste, like usual. Nothing overly sexual. It was comforting. Tina smiled at her and tried her best to convey what she felt in it. They were ok, she loved Carrie and her stress would pass. Her fiancée followed up with a kiss on her forehead.
“I’m going to take a shower. Do you need help finishing up here?”
“No, I’m good. I just need to make sure I didn’t forget anything.”
She watched as Carrie retreated and felt an intense guilt feel her up again. It was wrong that she was thinking so much of Bette when she was supposed to think only of her fiancée. She remembered that night around the bonfire, when Tasha had stated that thinking was cheating, because it was intimacy you weren’t giving to the person you were supposed to.
Tina let out a shaky breath in her empty kitchen and put her hands over her face tiredly. Fuck. What was she doing?
Her phone buzzed on the counter. It was a text from Alice: “Breakfast tomorrow?”. She smiled and replied yes immediately. Anything to get her mind off Bette.
Angelica had truly chosen the simplest movie to follow. It wasn’t a romcom thankfully, but it didn’t mean the quality was better. Despite her blank moments, Bette was still able to follow the plot without any difficulties. Angie’s quiet laughs during some scenes were helping her refocus for minutes at a time. The rest of it, she was just lost in thoughts, one hand combing through her daughter’s hair slowly. That kid was the most precious thing she had in life. But something had been bothering Bette for a while now.
“Hey, Angie?”
The teenager let out a ‘hmm’ sound of acknowledgement against her side.
“Did you really forget some clothes here?”
“Of course.”
As she said it with certainty, she snuggled closer to her mother on the couch. Bette’s hand stopped moving through her hair for a few seconds. In the scenarios she had created, Bette had never imagined that it would be her daughter comforting her from her heart breaking time and time again. Sweet girl. Bette kissed the top of her head and hugged her just a little bit tighter.