Alice [brightens up a bit—at least Bette is talking decently for once]: Alright, well take care. Maybe you can order some take out since I will be late. GoodBye!

Bette [winches]: Uh-huh, no problem.

With that, Alice left to pursue her daily life of glitter and gold, leaving Bette on the lounge thinking about the moment her life turned upside-down.

Tina Kennard was a name that Bette Porter could never forget. Almost four years ago, Bette had been an up-and-coming happening artist in metropolitan Manhattan, New York. Today, she was a struggling art lecturer at the local community college who sold her self-deprecating and sullen paintings at community shows. Along with her shattered knee, her ego and self-confidence had taken a seemingly fatal blow. The reconfiguration surgery and follow-up knee rehabilitation had still left her with a telltale limp for life, an external marker for the many internal handicaps that Bette now possessed. She couldn’t recall the once thriving, vibrant and passionate artist within her who had turned anti-social, bitter and gruff, dishing out sarcasm for breakfast, misplaced anger for lunch and snobbery for dinner. Her marriage was on the rocks—Alice and her were as distant as Mercury and Pluto. They just existed in the same solar system nowadays.

And it all came down to that one fateful meeting with a certain blonde. Every waking moment of her life, Bette wished she had never met Tina Kennard.