Betty gives Gladys a call, tells her not to wait up before turning to you, eyes darker than you remember.
You're a little nervous but you're no gangly teen anymore and when she wraps her arms around you, you mirror her movements. This is what you'd been looking for all these years and found back at the start. If you'd just stayed here, you could have had this long ago and you think you must have been a bit simple back then, because how could you ever give this up? How could you ever give her up? You gave up smoking for the sake of your voice but you thought about the taste of Betty's mouth a lot more than the taste of smoke wending its way through your lungs.
Before she can kiss you again, you stop her.
"I have to go," you tell her. She steps back, looking a little forlorn.
"Oh. I'll just..." She picks up her handbag from the kitchen table, makes like she's about to leave.
"Not right now, but I have to go. I can't stay here now. I have tours booked for the rest of the year, I have obligations to fulfill and people to please." Betty just nods, shoulders her bag. "I have to go, but I want to come back. And once I'm back, I can't see myself ever wanting to leave." Betty's still awkwardly standing in your kitchen so you step past her, take the saucepan off the boil it's been at for the past few minutes, pour it into two mugs filled with leaves. She just watches you carefully. She puts her bag back down on the table. She's torn about something.
"I should go," she says eventually, sipping tea, leaning against the table behind her. There's leaves in her teeth; you know there's leaves in yours too.
"Why?" you ask.
"If I stay, I don't think I'm going to be able to let you leave," she says, looking down at her tea. "Not again."
"And if I asked you to stay?" You ask curiously, because you don't want to be this close to her and not be able to touch her; you don't want to be in this city if she's not next to you in this little kitchenette, you don't want to leave without resolving an issue that's been ongoing for most of your adult life. You want to touch her. You want her to touch you, and you don't want to wait until all your tours are over for that to happen. You've done your waiting; to be able to see her again should be more than enough for you but the news that she hasn't shacked up with Gladys in quite the way you thought has made you a little desperate.
"I don't think I could say no," she says frankly.
"Would it be cruel of me to ask?" You say slowly, because you've been cruel to her in the past, and you don't want to hurt her any more than you already have. You want her to stay, but you don't want her to suffer during the time you'll have to spend apart until you can return. She puts her tea on the table.
"I'm going to miss you like mad anyway, I might as well have some memories to keep me warm." And it hits you then, that this is really happening and you have to put your tea down too because your hands are suddenly shaking. You'd been resigned to the fact that Betty and Gladys were an item; you hadn't really thought this was going to happen, and now that it looks like it might, you're unaccountably nervous.
She smiles at you a little shyly and you feel like you're taking the biggest step in your life when you close the distance between you; the only difference now is that you're finally headed in the right direction.
Author's note: There's going to be one more chapter because I really hate odd numbered stories for some reason...