What do you have to say for yourself?

She saw again how, when Brenda had began to caress her leg, had gotten up, quickly, as a teenage virgin, scared to be touched. Her heart had pounded vividly against her chest, yet in such a different way than if had ever before… It was sex, it was fucking, it was, indeed, getting laid… And yes, she had enjoyed it… But it wasn’t love… It wasn’t even close to love… Was it right what Alice said? Shouldn’t she assess that on a first date? Yet she had felt it with Bette upon the first glance, and it had only been reinforced by everything that had happened after that…

I wouldn’t worry about me getting laid, Al…

Worry about me being loved… The thought rang through Tina‘s head as if she had said it out loud… And for a moment there, she thought she had, as she had, in one of those rare moments, made Alice Pieszecki speechless. The last time had been when she had been pregnant of Angie. Tina smiled as she had thought about Alice’s mouth opening and closing, as if she were a fish… She could see her in her mind eye now, sitting on the other end of the line, gawping.

Oh baby
I, I, I, I’m fallin’
I, I, I, I’m fallin’
Fall

Oh… My… God! Tina!? You didn’t! You did? Oh my god!!!!!

Stroking her daughters hair absentmindedly, she remembered the way Brenda had stood too the night before, putting a reluctant stray of hair behind her ear after Tina had so quickly gotten up, saying she should go…

Don’t go yet…

Letting her fingers slide over her cheek, Brenda had carefully forced Tina to look her in the eyes, and, in the same casual way as she had just asked whether she had wanted some more wine, she had asked…

Do you want to have sex tonight?

So much in her life seemed to revolve around sex all of a sudden… It had all tumbled… Shane giving it up, Bette asking what she was doing for sex… And then… Jodi… ‘Fuck me baby’ ‘Last night she said it to me’ The words and the images had swirled into her mind again.