“That’s a lot of things.” Tina giggled. “Sounds good though”.

“You just wait.” Bette, smiled and sighed. “I wish you were here”. 

“Me too, babe. Me too.” 

They were silent for a long time. Both finding comfort in hearing each other breathe. They would do this on occasion, whenever they needed the reminder of home. They both treasured it. How something so simple could calm their rising need for one another, closing the space between them, was welcomed and highly personal. They felt like the only two people in the world.

“Bette, you’re falling asleep.”

“Hmm? No, hugfn, no I was-wasn’t”. Bette yawned.

Tina smiled. “You were, go to bed babe. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“Bette.”

“Yeah?”

“You know that shirt of yours? I’m not wearing it anymore. Actually, I’m not wearing anything at all. Night, babe.”

Before Bette could respond Tina had disconnected the call. Bette shut her eyes and cursed silently. She reached over and grumpily put the phone back on the nightstand, murmuring incoherent sentences mostly to herself. “Damn.”

Tina shut her phone and walked into the bathroom. The shower was running, filling the small room with hot steam. She moved and stood in front of the mirror. She rubbed the steam of the glass and saw her face come into view. She had aged, but there was still fire behind her hazel eyes. She looked down at her body, stripping the robe she was wearing.

The steam from the room made her skin tingle. She looked into the full length mirror to her side. The image before her was to this day a foreign one. She had worked hard to get into shape, and she was, by far, in the best shape of her life. However, beside muscle definition other things had changed as well.

Her battle scars.

One that she was proud of and would gladly show off; her caesarean section. Angelica’s passage into the world. Without that scar Angelica wouldn’t be with her, she wouldn’t be her daughter. And that made Tina more than proud of the “mark of love” as Bette would call it.

Then there were others.

Across her right arm she had a light pink line that ran along the length of her elbow to the beginning of her palm. It would take long for it too fully heal but Tina knew that it wouldn’t reduce in size. The colour she hoped would fade with time, but the shape wouldn’t. She moved her hand and touched her stomach. Her abs flinched at the light touch, but the thick purple scar remained still. Just below her ribcage on her right, that’s where she had been stabbed. Tina closed her eyes and shook the images of blood and fear out of her mind.

It was a hideous scar. She hated it. It had been over a year since that night, the night of the attack, but she remembered it all too well. She hated the fact that so much had been stripped from her. In the beginning she couldn’t be alone in the house. Someone always had to be beside her. She hadn’t come to terms with her body as she much as she had before but Bette had assured her that she was still attractive.

Tina closed her eyes and remembered their first night together after the hospital, when Bette had made her feel special and beautiful again. She had been gentle and caring; promising that nothing would be different and that she was beautiful. It had taken some time, but Tina had slowly come to appreciate her body again. Things would never be the same; she thought it best to deal with it. At least to herself.

Thankfully the worst of it could be concealed by clothes. She hadn’t worn a bikini yet, and chose to wear long sleeved shirts and blouses to work. Even at home, when they had company, she had always opted to cover her arms. She had fully mastered the skill, not even her closest friends had seen the scars. Bette was the only one that had seen her. Truly seen all of her.

She was still able to show some cleavage. The scar from her surgery in the hospital was precise and almost completely faded. It was the least of her worries, even though it ran across her chest. It wasn’t big, and she could cover it up if she wanted to.

But she couldn’t conceal her face.

Just above her eyebrow, on the left side of her face a thin line travelled to the base of her ear.

It wasn’t that huge a difference from her feature before. But Tina resented it. It was a constant reminder of what she went through. Besides learning to live with it herself, she now had people looking at it, their curious eyes burning. It was a part of who she was now, but it wasn’t who she was. Tina Kennard wasn’t her scars. She knew it, her friends knew it, her wife knew it, but everyone else rarely saw beneath the exterior. It had caused people to speculate upon meeting her.

The hiding had been the cause of many arguments between her and Bette. Tina had pleaded for time, that it was her body, her burden to bear. She saw the looks she was getting from people when they spotted her scar on her forehead. She needed time. And Bette had given it.

The scars she carried in her soul were the ones that hurt the most. The ones that no one knew existed. You had to look very closely to see them. Somehow they were the hardest to keep hidden, their lack of shape and colour and visibility made them so much more difficult to control. Often, they’d appear as nightmares. She couldn’t escape them. Her heart was bleeding and no one knew.