Archive of Our Own ^beta

The cold wakes me before my alarm does.

I’m curled into myself under two comforters that aren’t enough. New York in January is a special kind of misery.. the kind that seeps into your bones and makes you question every life choice that brought you here.

Like turning down CalArts.

Like stupidly following a girl instead of staying in California where I belonged.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I ignore it, pulling the blankets tighter around my shoulders. When my actual alarm goes off three minutes later, Melissa’s guitar cuts through the silence. I’d set it as my wake-up song two weeks ago, right after New Year’s, right after everything fell apart.

🎵Don’t try to call. 🎵 

The opening lines feel like they’re playing from inside my chest as I force myself out of bed.

But she is calling. She won’t stop calling. The floor is ice against my bare feet as Melissa’s voice fills the small space with words about bridges burned beyond recognition. Beyond repair.

I stumble to the ancient radiator and crank it, but I know it’ll take twenty minutes before this place is remotely habitable. I stand there shivering as the verse continues, pulling my robe tighter as she sings about forces that turn beyond recollection, beyond my stare.

🎵When I feel the cold in the dark, I know you’re there. 🎵

I actually laugh at that line. Hell yeah, I feel the cold. Every goddamn morning in this frozen city I chose because of her. And yeah, even when she’s not here, even when I’m ignoring her calls, I know she’s there. 

My phone buzzes again on the nightstand. I don’t look at it.

I turn off the music before stepping into the shower. The water takes forever to heat up, and I stand there shivering, wondering for the hundredth time what I’m doing here. I could’ve been in LA right now, warm and working on actual film sets instead of freezing my ass off in Morningside Heights studying “filmmaking through a fine art lens” at Columbia.

But Bette was going to Yale. Bette had that full ride she’d worked her entire life for. And I’d thought.. God, I’d actually thought that being closer to her was worth more than sunshine and my dream school.

First sacrifice, they say. Never the last.

*****

By the time I make it to the café three blocks from campus, I’ve missed two more calls. Both from her. 

The place is warm, smells like espresso and cinnamon, and I claim my usual corner table near the window. I have an hour before my Production Theory class, and I’m woefully behind on the reading. Something about Godard and the French New Wave that I can’t make myself care about today.

“The usual?” The barista, Gigi, smiles at me when I approach the counter. She’s smiled at me before, but this time she doesn’t look away.

“Yeah, thanks. And maybe one of those almond croissants?”

“Good choice.” She rings me up. Our fingers meet over the card reader, and she traces her thumb across my knuckle before letting go. “I’ll bring it over when it’s ready.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I nod, suddenly shy, and retreat to my table. It’s the first time in weeks.. maybe months, that I’ve felt anything other than numb or angry. I pull out my textbook and try to focus on Godard’s jump cuts, but the words blur together.

My phone sits face-down beside my coffee. Three missed calls now.

I give up on studying and put in my headphones instead, pulling up the song again. It’s become a kind of masochism, this constant reconnection, but I need it. I need to feel something, even if it’s this.. this raw, bleeding hurt that Melissa somehow captured perfectly.

The next section plays as I stare out the window at the grey New York street, and I let my eyes close as the words pour into me:

🎵Long ago I was a woman in pain, a woman in need. 🎵

It wasn’t even that long ago, really. Just last year when my parents were fighting about the divorce, when my mother was falling apart and my father was already seeing someone else. I’d called Bette crying at two in the morning, and she’d stayed on the phone until I fell asleep.

🎵I ran to you. 🎵

I did. Every time. Turned down CalArts and ran here to be closer to her. Rearranged my schedule to match her breaks. Made myself smaller, quieter, easier because I thought that’s what love meant.

🎵Long ago I did not understand, you were making me bleed. 🎵

I hadn’t understood. Hadn’t seen how I was erasing myself bit by bit, sacrifice by sacrifice. 

🎵I ran to you. When I feel the cold in the dark, I know what you do.🎵

The music cuts out when someone lifts one side of my headphones off my ear. Gigi’s leaning over the table, holding my croissant.

“Tried calling you,” she says. “You were really in it.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” My face heats as I take the plate from her. 

“No worries. Good song?” She nods at my phone where she can see the album art for Yes I Am.

“Yeah. Kind of obsessed lately.”

Gigi smile shifts into something softer, more knowing. “That whole album got me through my last breakup.”

The understanding in her eyes almost undoes me. I manage a weak smile back. “Yeah. That’s… yeah.”

She hesitates like she wants to say more, then glances back at the counter where another customer is waiting. “Well, if you ever want to talk about it…” She shrugs, leaving the offer hanging in the air between us. “I’m here most mornings.”

“Thanks,” I say, and mean it.

She walks away, and I watch her go, wondering what it would be like to be someone who could move on that easily. Who could accept comfort from a pretty barista instead of sitting here replaying a song about bleeding and running and knowing what someone does to you in the dark.

My phone buzzes. A text this time.

I flip it over and immediately wish I hadn’t. 

We need to talk. Please.

I lock the phone and shove it in my bag, turning back to Godard and his goddamn choices, trying to ignore the way my hands are shaking.

*******

The university library is quiet in the mid-afternoon, that particular hush of a Tuesday when most students are in class. I’m tucked into my favorite spot on the third floor, textbooks and notes spread across the table, but I’m not studying.

Instead, I’m scrolling through photos on my iPhone, torturing myself with memories I should delete.

There.. Bette and me at the National Honor Society gala where we first met. I’m seventeen in this photo, wearing the navy dress my mother picked out, my hair pulled back in a style too sophisticated for my age. I look like every other rich girl at the event, which was exactly what my father wanted. He was on the board, after all. Had to maintain appearances.

Bette stands beside me in the photo, but we’re not touching yet. This was early in the night, before we’d really talked. Before I’d noticed the way she held herself, all sharp edges and careful composure. Before I’d learned she was there as the token scholarship kid from her Philly prep school, trotted out to prove their commitment to diversity and merit.

She’d looked so uncomfortable in her borrowed dress, so perfectly put together and yet somehow fragile underneath it all. I remember wanting to know her story, wanting to understand the girl behind those careful walls.

I swipe to the next photo. We’re closer in this one, and Bette’s actually smiling.. a real smile, not the polite mask she wore most of that night. I remember making some stupid joke about the ice sculpture shaped like the Liberty Bell, and she’d laughed like I’d surprised her. Like no one had made her laugh in a long time.

I swipe again. And again. Each photo a moment I can’t get back. There’s us at the Philly MoMa, Bette explaining Rothko to me with such passion in her eyes. Us at her graduation, her in her cap and gown, me standing beside her because her family hadn’t come. 

My phone buzzes in my hand. Another text.

I know you’re reading these. I know you’re there.

She’s right. But I can’t answer. Don’t know what to say that won’t break me completely.

I put in my headphones like armor and press play, needing everything else to drown out. The song picks up where I left it, and the next verses feel like they were written specifically for this moment.

The metaphor isn’t lost on me. I am crawling through our past. Right now. Literally scrolling through the ruins of what we were, each photo a piece of broken glass I’m examining, trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

🎵Over stones blood and glass 🎵

That’s what this feels like. The good memories hurt as much as the bad because they remind me of what I’ve lost. I can still remember the moment she first touched my hand, how my whole body had lit up with electricity. That was the beginning. The first stone in a path that led here.

I swipe to another photo. Bette asleep in my dorm room last spring, her face soft and unguarded in a way she never was when awake. Blood, I think. I bled for her. Gave her everything.. my trust, my plans, my future. 

🎵Reaching under the fence as I try to make sense in the ruins.🎵

I’m reaching back through time, trying to find the exact moment when love turned to betrayal. When did she decide I wasn’t enough? When did she meet that woman? When did our long-distance relationship become an inconvenience instead of something worth fighting for?

Another photo: Bette and me at Christmas, just weeks ago, before everything fell apart. We look happy. We look like forever.

But forever ended on New Year’s Eve, courtesy of Alice and a handful of photos from Provincetown. Bette, caught in a moment that wasn’t meant for me.. yet told me everything.

BANG!!

A stack of library books crashes onto the table across from me, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I rip out my headphones as some dick drops into the chair, oblivious to the fact that he just gave me a heart attack.

“Sorry,” he mutters, not sounding sorry at all, already opening his laptop with a bang that echoes through the quiet space.

I glare at him, but he’s not paying attention. My heart’s still racing, the song cut off mid-verse, the photos still glowing on my screen. I look down at the last one I’d been viewing: Bette and me at Pier 54, her arm around my waist, both of us laughing.

Four missed calls. Seven texts now.

*****

The production meeting at the Gene Siskel Film Center runs long.. longer than it should because Marcus can’t decide on the sound mixing for the opening sequence, and Sarah keeps suggesting changes to the program layout that would require completely redesigning everything we’ve already approved.

By the time we finish, I’m exhausted. My final project film is premiering next week, and instead of feeling excited or proud, I just feel anxious and empty. The film is good.. I know it’s good. It’s a twenty-minute short about a girl trying to preserve her mother’s memory after Alzheimer’s takes her, and my professor called it “devastating and beautiful.” But I can’t feel anything about it except tired.

It’s dark when I get to my car, the temperature having dropped another ten degrees. I sit in the driver’s seat for a few minutes before starting the engine, my breath fogging in the freezing car. When I finally turn the key, my phone connects to the car’s Bluetooth automatically, and before I can stop it, the song starts playing right where it left off.

The first tears fall before I can stop them.

🎵I know your heart has held its own fear. It’s perfectly clear what they did to you.🎵

God, I do know. I know about Bette’s fear in ways she’s never let anyone else know. I know about her father.. the kind of man who used his fists to maintain control, who made his daughter believe she had to be perfect or suffer the consequences. I know about her stepmother who turned a blind eye, who chose her own survival over protecting a child.

I know why Bette holds herself so carefully, why she needs control like other people need air, why she can’t let anyone see her vulnerable. I know all of it, and I’ve loved her anyway. Loved her through it, despite it, because of it.

🎵In my heart it’s the screaming I hear. I won’t let them come near. 🎵

I remember the night she told me, six months into our relationship. We were lying in her dorm room, the lights off, and she’d whispered the truth into the darkness like it was a confession. Her voice had been so small, so broken, and I’d held her while she cried.. the first and only time I’d ever seen Bette Porter cry.

I’d promised her then that I would protect her. That I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her ever again. 

🎵Since my love knew you. 🎵

I knew her, and I loved her anyway, and I thought that was enough. Thought that my love could heal her, could make her feel safe enough to let me all the way in.

🎵When I feel the cold in the dark, I remember you. 🎵

The tears are streaming now, hot against my cold cheeks. I remember everything. Every moment. Every touch. Every whispered “I love you” in the dark. Every time she’d look at me like I was her whole world.

🎵I will crawl through my past, over stones blood and glass, in the ruins. 🎵

And here I am, crawling through those memories, trying to understand how the girl I loved.. the girl I’d sacrifice everything for.. could do this to me. 

🎵Reaching under the fence as I try to make sense in the ruins. 🎵

But none of it makes sense. How do you reconcile the Bette who held me after I told her about my parents’ divorce with the Bette who was holding someone else in Provincetown? How do you make sense of someone who says they love you while destroying you?

The song is abruptly swallowed by my ringtone. Alice’s name flashes across the screen.

I let it ring. I can’t even breathe, let alone talk. The tears keep streaming, blinding and relentless. Then the texts arrive. Alice always texts. And those, I look at.

Tina 
  are you ok
    I haven’t heard from you
      say something
        should I have told you?

That last one makes me sob harder. Should she have? Would ignorance have been better? Could I have just gone on loving Bette, believing in us, never knowing that everything was a lie?

No. No, Alice did the right thing. She took photos because she knew I’d need proof. Because she knew Bette would deny it otherwise.

And she was right. When I’d finally answered one of Bette’s calls on New Year’s Day, when I’d confronted her through my tears, she’d tried to explain it away. Said it wasn’t what it looked like. Said she’d had too much to drink. Said it didn’t mean anything.

But it did to me. Maybe.. maybe it meant everything.

My phone buzzes again. It’s not Alice. 

I let it ring as I sit there crying in a parking lot, an empty car the only witness to my heartbreak.

*****

I make it home eventually, though I don’t remember the drive. My face is swollen from crying, my mascara smudged beyond repair. I look like exactly what I am.. a girl who’s falling apart.

I’m supposed to go to a gallery opening tonight. Dr. Reeves, my thesis advisor, has a show at MOCA, and attendance is “strongly encouraged.” Under normal circumstances, I’d be excited. Dr. Reeves is brilliant, and her work is always thought-provoking.

But these aren’t normal circumstances, and I can barely think about getting dressed, much less making small talk about conceptual art.

Still, I drag myself into the shower. Let the hot water wash away the tear tracks and the salt and the exhaustion. Tell myself I can do this. I can put on a dress and go to a gallery and pretend to be a functioning human being for two hours.

When I get out, I turn on the Bluetooth speaker in my bathroom and it connects automatically to my phone. I’m rubbing moisturizer into my skin when the song starts playing again:

🎵Night after night, I am carving it out. 🎵

That’s exactly what this is. Night after night since New Year’s Eve, I’ve been doing this work. Carving out the pain, trying to extract it from my body like a surgeon removing a tumor. But it’s embedded too deep, wound too tightly around my heart.

🎵I will carry it down to the waterside. 🎵

I think about the last time we were in the water at Provincetown, and all those summer breaks when Bette would fly out to LA to stay with me since we met. We’d hold hands and talk about the future.. about moving to LA after graduation, about making films together, about building a life. We’d make plans like we were permanent, like we were inevitable.

I pick up my foundation and start applying it, trying to cover the evidence of my breakdown. In the mirror, I look like a ghost of myself.

🎵Night after night, I am hearing the sound of wings that come beating. 🎵

The image is haunting.. something trying to escape, or maybe something coming for you. Either way, it’s not staying still in your pain. About transformation, maybe, though I can’t imagine what I’m transforming into. What comes after heartbreak? Who am I without Bette?

🎵I will not hide. 🎵

I put down the foundation and really look at myself. My eyes are still red-rimmed despite the makeup. My face is thinner than it was a month ago.. I haven’t been eating enough, can’t stomach much beyond coffee and the occasional croissant from the café.

But I’m still here. Still standing. Still getting ready to go to this gallery even though every part of me wants to crawl into bed and never leave.

🎵When I feel the cold in the dark, I will know why. 🎵

Will I though? Will I ever understand why Bette did this? Why she threw away what we had for someone she barely knew? Why I wasn’t enough?

I pull my black dress from the closet.. the one Bette always drooled over. It still fits, but it hangs differently now. Everything feels different now.

I’m putting on my earrings when the song hits its peak, and I just.. can’t.

I can’t handle how much I miss her.. how it physically hurts. I can’t handle the shame of still wanting her after those photos. Still loving her.

I grab my phone and shut the music off, slicing the verse in half.

The silence that follows is worse somehow. 

My phone screen shows the notifications I’ve been ignoring all day: twelve missed calls. Fifteen texts. All from Bette. The most recent one just says: Please.

*****

I get two blocks from my apartment before I realize I’m walking in the wrong direction.

The museum is east. I’m heading west, toward the water, like my body has made a decision my brain hasn’t caught up to yet.

It’s insane to be out in this cold. The temperature has dropped into the single digits, the wind coming off the Hudson like knives. But I need to move. Need to walk. Need to do something with this energy thrumming under my skin.

I should turn around. Should go to the gallery. Should do what’s expected of me.

But I keep walking toward the water instead.

I pull out my phone and start the song again, one last time. I need to hear how it ends. Need to know if Melissa finds resolution in the ruins, or if she just stays there, crawling forever.

The chorus returns, that refrain about crawling through the past I’ve heard so many times today it feels like a mantra. 

🎵But if I am to heal, I must first learn to feel in the ruins. 🎵

I stop walking, right there in the middle of the sidewalk, as those words hit me. That’s what I’ve been doing all day, all week, all month. Feeling everything. The agony, the deceit, the rage, the grief. The love I still have for her that I wish I could turn off but can’t.

I’ve been trying to make sense of the ruins, trying to understand how we got here. But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point is just to feel it all, to crawl through it, to let myself break apart before I can put myself back together.

🎵I will crawl, I will crawl, I will crawl. 🎵

The song repeats those final words over and over, and I let them anchor me as I walk. One foot in front of the other. One breath at a time. One day at a time. I will get to the other side.

I’m so focused on the music, on walking, on breathing through the pain that I don’t hear the footsteps behind me. Don’t sense another presence until it’s right there.

     A hand catches my arm–

I spin around, yanking out my headphones, my heart suddenly in my throat.

“Bette.” Her name comes out half-air. 

She’s here.. actually here, on this freezing street in her peacoat and scarf, dark eyes locked on mine. Her curls are wild from the wind, cheeks flushed from the cold. She looks like she hasn't slept in days.

“What are you doing here?”

She takes a step closer. “I… had to see you.”

Ice stings my cheeks but I don't move. My legs feel like lead, my hands numb from the winter and everything else.

And then she reaches out. Just a hand, tentative, searching.

I don’t know if I’ll grab it. Don’t know if I want to. But I know I can’t look away.

So I take a deep breath, the first real one I’ve taken in weeks, and step toward her.

Everything is uncertain. Everything is fragile. But maybe.. maybe this is where it begins.

**** END ****