She forced her gaze back to the horizon where the sun was beginning to shine a little brighter, making the water sparkle like it was made of millions of rough-cut diamonds. The waves rumbled as they hit the shore, and Bette was just starting tolose herself in the sound when a voice broke through. “Hello, stranger.”
Bette didn’t even need to look up to know that it was Alison Silver, her ex-colleague and closest friend. They hadn’t seen each other in months, just briefly after Bette’s divorce, but that didn’t mean much. They had known each other for almost twelve years and there’d been plenty of months where they’d gone without speaking. The reason their friendship worked was because when they did make the time to catch up, it felt like no time had passed at all.
“You’re late,” Bette said, watching her friend pick her way across the sand, her blue summer dress flowing, golden bracelets jingling on her wrists and her blonde curls bouncing with each step. “Some things never change.”
Alison plopped down beside her, making a sort of grumble as she shifted her weight onto the sand. Her knees weren’t as young as they used to be, and physical therapists were known to have plenty of creaks and niggles.
“Downtown is on the other side of the world,” Alison said, handing Bette a takeaway coffee. She stretched out her legs and groaned again. “The least you could do is acknowledge the sacrifice I made.”
Bette grinned and took a sip of the coffee, grateful for the normalcy of the moment, which, unlike the rest of the week where she’d either dodged Emily in the surgical ward or hoped to spot her in the hallways, was nothing if not abnormal. “I never asked you to come all the way out here.”
“I know you didn’t,” Alison said, looking at her through her curly blonde bangs. “But the second you messaged and said you were coming to sit alone on the beach, I figured you needed an intervention. So, here I am. Ready to intervene.”
Bette looked down at her coffee cup, the faint smudge of her lipstick on the lid. “I don’t need an intervention. I just need anew heart to replace this broken one—and by broken, I mean physically damaged beyond repair, because for some reason it keeps fucking up on me. You’d think it should come with a warranty.”
Her heart wasn’t broken in the poetic, tragic sense—not anymore at least. Reba’s grand betrayal had simmered down to a barely there niggle she could ignore. No, it was just malfunctioning. Making reckless choices, steering her toward things she couldn’t have. Shouldn’t have.
Alison chuckled and bumped her shoulder softly against Bette’s. “Unfortunately, we only come with one of those. But why don’t you start telling me what’s going on? I’m assuming it’s not about Reba. If it was, you’d be spitting fire instead.”
“No,” Bette said, the edges of her lips barely tilted up. “It’s not about Reba.”
“Then what’s going on?”
Bette sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Since when has ‘it’s complicated’ ever stopped you from telling me anything?” Alison shot her a pointed look. “You know I eat complicated for breakfast, right? Gulp it down with a good cup of tea.”
Bette chuckled softly, grateful that her friend had made the trek all the way out there. She took a deep breath in, watching a golden retriever chase a neon green tennis ball, and exhaled. “I slept with someone—well, kind of.”
Alison, who was halfway through a sip of her coffee, choked. “Are you fucking serious?!” she blurted.
“What?” Bette scowled, feeling somewhat defensive all of a sudden. Why was it so surprising? Why did the look on Alison’s face resemble a woman who had just witnessed a gruesome shark attack? “I’m not a nun, you know.”
“No, but you’re not exactly a casual-fling kind of person either. Which I’m assuming that was.” Alison set her cup down in the sand. “Who is she? When did this happen?”
Bette hesitated. Saying Emily’s name out loud felt like overstepping a boundary. Emily was her colleague in the greater scheme of things and also a patient of hers. Ex-patient. “A surgeon at my hospital. She’s in orthopedics.”
“Playing with fire, aren’t we?” Alison said, smirking. Not that she could say anything about the situation. During their first year at Westbay Medical Center, Alison had a little rendezvous with one of the surgical ward nurses. That “little rendezvous” had turned into a full-blown relationship, which they’d only made public when Trish took a job at another hospital. Two years later, they were happily engaged.
“I didn’t plan it,” Bette muttered. “We were at the hospital gala, there was drinking.” She remembered Emily in that emerald, green dress, how it had clung to her slender hips, showed just the right amount of cleavage…
Alison was quiet for a moment, staring out at the sea before she turned her attention back to Bette. “Let me guess, you panicked after? Told the poor woman it was a mistake and then proceeded to ignore her.”
“Not ignore.” Bette pressed her lips together. What she had done was so much worse. She had refused to acknowledge the moment had existed between them, a moment Bette couldn’t get out of her damned head, and then acted like a total bitch. “I just…Well, I guess I just told myself that I wasn’t doing this again.”
“Doing what?” Alison asked.
“Catching feelings.” The words felt foreign in her mouth, like something she wasn’t supposed to admit. It was just one hot moment in the hotel garden. Or was it more than that, a hundred tiny looks over the course of a few weeks. “I spent years withReba thinking I had everything figured out only for it to blow up in my face. One massive Chernobyl explosion. I don’t know if I can—” Bette broke off, shaking her head. “It’s not like we even know each other that well. I don’t even know if she wants…” Again, she trailed off, the words thick like cement. Why couldn’t she just say it out loud? Why was she such an emotional coward?
Alison’s face softened. “You know you don’t have to do it all at once. You don’t have to have it all figured out. But maybe it’s time to start being open to the possibility of change. Of meeting someone else and not resisting it.” She picked up a clump of sand and squished it between her hands. “It sounds like that’s what you want, right?”
Bette had no idea what she wanted. It all felt too complicated, like a tiny golden chain getting all tangled up with no way to untangle it. She inhaled, the salty breeze filling her lungs, cool and sharp. Above her head, two seagulls wheeled, their cries cutting through the mess in her head.
“I don’t knowwhatI want,” Bette said, stretching her legs out, and wiggling her toes in the cool sand. “I have no idea.”
“You know,” Alison said, “for someone who spends all her time helping people recover, you really suck at letting yourself heal.”
Bette let out a sharp breath and kicked a clump of sand. “That’s different.”
