Chapter 7
When Bette landed in L.A., the burning sun piercing through her sunglasses, she could only think how this was one of the first times she was truly happy to be back. California had always been home, sure, but when she had to move back there two years after finishing college, she had to do it out of conviction that it was the best for her future. Her heart had stayed in New York, though, with her friends and the places she had grown to love, and the girlfriend she had at the time. Then years had gone by, and she got comfortable again in home soil, but every time she got the chance to fly away she came back feeling like maybe there was a quieter life out there, without the flashing lights and luxuries of being a Hollywood star, but with the steadiness of a normal job and knowing you could get home without paparazzi camping at your front door. She craved it sometimes, the comfort of not being surrounded by the craziness that her life usually carried.
But now she had Tina.
And Tina had kind of changed it all for her.
Now she was happy to be back in Los Angeles because she knew that she would get to sleep in the same bed as the blonde, who would surely wait for her with that pair of white and blue pyjamas she usually wore. She couldn’t wait to knock on her door, kiss her hello and get lost in the pretty smell of a house that she hadn’t known for long, but lately had been feeling like home. She knew she was supposed to act cooler than this, so she pretended that half of the things happening were the acting they were allegedly doing, but when she looked deep inside herself, she knew that she was head over heels for Tina Kennard.
But how could she not be?
She walked through the airport as quickly as she could and got into the car Claire had set up for her. Bless that woman, for real, she had to give her a raise. There was nothing that was out of her assistant’s control. She gave the driver the address to Tina’s house, assuming that she would be home already. She tried to call her, but Tina wouldn’t pick up the phone, and she couldn’t help but hope that it was because she was taking a hot bath, and she could just join in and wrap herself around the blonde’s body. God, her own body trembled with anticipation at the thought.
When she got into the house, using the spare key that Tina had given her just in case, she noticed that something was a little off. The dirty plates on the dishwasher were not normal, as the other woman was obsessed with keeping everything clean. And the air was a little heavy, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in a long time. She hurried upstairs, getting to the main room in a couple of seconds. When she opened the door, the sight of a sleeping Tina, cuddled up under a pile of blankets, almost melted her heart.
Then, almost immediately, she realized that the hot Californian weather didn’t call up for that many blankets. And that Tina’s skin looked a little too red for her liking. She got closer to her and noticed the sweat running down her forehand, and didn’t even need to put her hand on it to know that the blonde was burning up a high fever.
“Oh, Tina” she mumbled, realizing now why the messages of the day had been so short and unenthusiastic. She had thought that maybe Tina was overwhelmed by the interview she had just given, but now she realized it was just a bad day. The thought calmed her down, a warm feeling spreading through her chest at the idea of being able to take care of the blonde while being sick. She went to the nearest sink, drenched a towel and pressed it to Tina’s face, who moaned a little bit at the cold feeling, still unconscious, before slowly opening her eyes.
Her hazel eyes looked tired, almost dizzy. It looked like she had made a big effort just to open them briefly. She saw Bette, smiled a little bit at her and whispered, with a raspy voice:
“Hi, baby”, before drifting back to sleep.
Yeah, Bette thought, smiling softly. I’m so happy to be back.
-
“When did you start feeling like this?” Bette asked, pouring steaming water in a mug before handing it to Tina.
“Like shit?” the other woman asked back, laughing softly, picking up her cup of tea. “Yesterday, at night, I felt a huge headache when I got here from work. I thought it was just fatigue, so I tried to sleep it off, but then today I woke up nauseous and I called in sick.”
Bette got to the couch and sat next to her, reaching her hand out to caress Tina’s hair. She looked so worn out it made her feel helpless.
“You should’ve told me.”
“You were on the other side of the country, Bette. Besides, it’ll pass sooner than later. I’m sure it’s just a cold.”
“I still would’ve like to know.” I want to know everything. I want to take care of you, she meant to say.
“Sorry.” Tina apologized, sincerely. “I just didn’t want to worry you. You had enough with all the interviews and stuff.”
“You watched it?” Bette asked, with curiosity in her eyes.
“Not live, no, because I was working. But then Alice sent me the video.”
“Of course she did. She sent me a thousand messages about it.”
“Me too!” Tina exclaimed. “But I got to admit she had reasons. You made some… interesting choices with your statements.”
“Can you believe he asked me about a wedding?!”
“Of course he did. But you got out of it gracefully. I’d have panicked.” Tina pointed out, sipping on her tea.
“No, you would’ve not.” Bette was now fully lying on the couch, with her head resting on her own hands and her eyes fixated on the blonde. “Or maybe you would have. Sometimes you do that crazy thing on interviews where you can’t stop oversharing” she laughed, remembering one particular interview in the one Tina had started rambling so much the interviewer didn’t know how to stop her.
“Hey, don’t laugh at me. I’m too weak to defend myself.” The blonde complained. “You could do something more useful and come here to cuddle me.”
Bette complied, positioning herself beside the other woman and covering her up with a blanket that was on her lap. The weather was hot outside, but Tina had turned on the air conditioner to not sweat that much. And Bette wouldn’t complain at the possibility of getting cozy with her lover.
She held her tight and played with her hair while Tina fell asleep, cherishing the calm of a moment so simple yet so full of contentment. Then, she reached for her phone and typed a quick text, letting Claire know that they would both need another sick day before going back to work.
-
“Hey babe” Tina’s voice irrupted in her otherwise quite trailer. Bette looked at her from her bed and a soft smile formed in her lips at the sight of the blonde, who was fully dressed up as her character, with a tight pencil skirt and a white, formal shirt. She had a pair of heels in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other, the objects balancing in her grip.
Bette got up to greet her and planted a kiss on her lips, not being able to resist.
“Hi”, she whispered, their forehands touching. “Why do I have the honor of this unexpected visit?” She left a couple more kisses all over the other woman’s face before pulling apart a little bit.
“I wanted to give you these” Tina held the flowers higher, showing them to Bette. “For taking care of me the other day and taking all that time. I know you had to work extra hours after that to made up for the time lost.”
The brunette felt like melting then and there, or maybe burst up in the air.
“They are beautiful.” She took the flowers without letting go of Tina, her arm still firmly wrapped around her torso. “But it wasn’t time lost. Not if you needed someone to take care of you and I got to be that someone.”
She meant every word. Sure, staying until 11 p.m the next day to shoot more of her individual scenes wasn’t exactly her ideal way of spending a Thursday, but she would never complain if she got to have this beautiful woman in her arms in exchange. She took the bouquet and placed it in a vase on her coffee table, the reds and oranges of the flowers lighting up the place. Then she got closer to Tina again, attracted like a magnet who couldn’t stay too far, and kissed her hands in a simple gesture that they were growing used to share in the last couple of weeks.
Tina leaned in to kiss her again, and Bette responded with firmer, hungrier kisses this time. She wanted to let her know that there was nothing else in the world she would’ve rather done than being with her for those days, no other bed in the one she would prefer to sleep in. Bette had had her fair share of lovers during her life, but no one had been as tender as Tina, no one had made her feel like there was a fire so big inside her no amount of water could ever extinguish it. She took the blonde’s face in both her hands, allowing herself to fully taste those lips that she loved so much, pressing her own body against Tina’s, craving more. As if of their own accord, her hands travelled down the blonde’s body and stopped at her breasts, to which Tina’s kisses grew even more frantic.
“I loved taking care of you” Bette said, her voice low and seductive while she pushed Tina into the nearest chair she could find. “But I really missed doing this.”
She trailed kisses down Tina’s body, each moan encouraging her to go on. She took her clothes off as she went, a shirt quickly unbuttoned and falling to the floor, a bra discarded somewhere they would later have trouble tracking. Bette let out a little groan of pleasure at all the skin she had now in front of her, and left wet kisses all over Tina’s abdomen, savoring every inch of the blonde in her tongue. Frustrated by the skirt, she decided that the easiest thing was to just pull it up before falling to her knees, Tina’s hand quickly positioning in her brown locks and keeping her in place, as if there was anywhere else she would rather be.
Later that day, the make-up artist would look at Bette through the mirror, suppressing a smile.
“I need a stronger foundation for this”, she said, pointing at the marks she had in her neck and searching through her make-up bag.
Bette laughed softly, not really ashamed.
“You could not completely cover them, you know. I think they go well with Emma’s character at the moment,” she replied.
-
One morning Bette woke up alone, her huge bed still warm on the side where Tina had been a couple of hours before. She had woken up early and left with a kiss on the brunette’s cheek, mumbling something about hair and colors. Bette hadn’t understood most of it, being half-asleep as she was, but she remembered how soft the goodbye kiss had been and how she had fallen back to sleep smiling like a fool after it.
She got onto the set and desperately looked for the coffee cart, the thought of caffeine the only thing keeping her on her feet with how long and draining these days of filming were being.
“Queen B!” Helena screamed from somewhere behind her, her accent making her easy to recognize. “Add a late for me to your order, please”.
Bette did as she asked her and started small talk with her colleague. Helena had always been one of Tina’s closest friends, so for years she thought she had to walk on eggshells around her. But the truth was that the British woman had always been nice with her, and it had taken little time for Bette to fall into her charm.
“Here you go.” She said, handling the warm plastic cup to Helena.
“Thank you very much, darling.” The other brunette said, taking a sip. “Lord, this is too hot. You want to see your girl before starting your day?”
Bette smiled fondly.
“I barely saw her today with how early she left, so I would like that,” she admitted.
“I love this.” Helena said, cheerfully. “You two being like this? Love it. Dana won a bet against me because she always believed the whole fake-dating thing would end up like this, and I never gave my money away happier.”
“You were betting on us?” Bette asked, incredulously. “That’s crazy shit, even for you.”
“What can I say, Dana was right. Anyway, we got here. I’ve got to go.” She opened the door for the hairdressing room and walked away, leaving Bette wondering how many bets like that had happened between their mutual friends.
Tina was sitting in front of the main mirror mindlessly scrolling through her phone, clearly in the middle of the long process of dying her hair. Bette walked up to her and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
“Hi beautiful” she said. “You look good on that” she pointed at the silver shiny paper covering her head, laughing lightly.
“Ha, very funny.” Tina answered. “I’m so bored. Have you seen how crazy people are about us online? I had never paid this much attention.” She held her phone in front of Bette, showing her hundreds of tweets about them. Pictures, drawings, edits. You could find anything.
Bette knew, of course she knew. She just tried not to pay much attention to all of that.
“I’ve seen some stuff, but I tried to not care about it. It’s a lot to process.” She simply answered.
“Yeah, you’re right.” The other woman agreed, putting her phone to the side. “Anyway, how’s been your morning?” she asked, genuinely.
“I woke up like ten minutes ago, so, better than yours” Bette replied. “And now I got to see you, so I’m doing pretty damn well.”
“Charming” Tina said, smiling at her. “Next time, remind me to only pick roles where I don’t need to dye my hair. That would give me a couple more hours of sleep.”
Bette laughed at the remark, feeling grateful for her own hair.
“I feel like an idiot now, but I didn’t think you were dying it. I thought it was just your natural hair.”
“It’s not. I mean, I was blonde when I was little, and then I went through a phase in high school where I dyed it because it was getting darker. But if I let it grow by itself, I’m a brown hair girl”, Tina explained.
“I’d like that. I’m sure it looks cute on you”, Bette admitted.
“Me too, but the producers made me dye my hair from day one because they wanted me to contrast you. So, I’m doing all of this because of you, baby.”
They both laughed at the statement. Bette couldn’t care less about the color of Tina’s hair, but it was a given that every sapphic couple on TV consisted of a brunette and a blonde. It was mandatory, apparently.
“I remembered you being blonde.” Bette said, without thinking twice. “You know, in high school.”
Tina took a sharp breath, evidently caught off-guard. She lifted her eyes to look at Bette, and there was something difficult to decipher in them. Regret, maybe, or panic. Or a mix of both. Meanwhile, Bette’s face had turned pale, like if she had seen a ghost.
“I…” Tina started, but she was struggling to find her words. “There were many things I didn’t tell you back then, Bette” she said, finally.
“I know.” Bette responded quickly, without even breathing. “I know. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
A minute of silence fell upon them, neither of them knowing how to go on after the awkward moment Bette had just involuntarily produced.
“Sometimes I feel like we should talk about it.” Tina said, finally. “Like I want to move forward with you, fully invest myself in this, but I need to get things off my chest first to do that. And it scares me because I never feel… ready to do it, you know?”.
Bette shifted in her sit. She knew exactly what she was talking about, because she felt the same. It was such a relief to know they were on the same page, and still, there were walls built around them that were so old they felt impossible to bring down.
“I know. I feel the same.” She admitted. “It’s just that… I’m happy now. And I want to be happy for a little bit longer before we face all that shit.”
Tina nodded, but before she could say a word, the hairdresser walked into the room ready to finish her job. Bette got up and left a tiny kiss on Tina’s cheek before walking out of the room, the ghost of the past they both tried to forget following her closely.