46. Back then
Back then
Despite all odds, Helena made friends in college. They were genuine friends, which was nice to have, it turned out.
They became close enough that they took a trip together for spring break—a human, a tree sprite, a half-werewolf, and a three-quarter-human-one-quarter-pixie.
They found fifty dollar plane tickets to the cheapest, seediest vacation hotspot for the kind of sleezy spring break they saw in human movies.
Frozen Palms was made up of mostly non-human People, so many bars didn’t enforce the human drinking age.
And after another tumultuous breakup with some guy she didn’t even like, Helena definitely needed a drink.
The girlies were all in agreement: Most Recent Guy was a total asshole for breaking up with Helena, even if she had been thinking of breaking up with him. Helena was smart and beautiful and brilliant, and anyone would be lucky to have her!
UFIZZY’S was the hottest non-human bar in the Frozen Palms, which itself was the hottest non-human vacation spot. College-aged People from all over flocked there in droves for spring break. So, it wasn’t really surprising for any given humanoid being to show up there.
Helena still managed to be very surprised when she saw Bertram.
At first she thought it was a trick of the light, a hallucination, wishful thinking by her tipsy mind.
She looked a second time.
A third.
The identity of the half-orc across the bar did not change.
It remained definitely, irrefutably Bertram.
He was wearing a button-down shirt so deep blue that it almost looked black, which brought out the warm undertones of his green skin.
It was unbuttoned at the collar and rolled up at the sleeves, showing off the strong forearms Helena had often fantasized about.
He was deep in conversation with a pretty troll girl. It looked flirty.
“Go get your man,” said Helena’s tree sprite friend.
“He’s not my man,” Helena protested.
“Not with that attitude,” said the half-wolf.
The two gave Helena a stern yet rousing, loving yet slightly bullying pep talk, then sent her toward Bertram with a shove.
The girlies had offered to doll Helena up for the evening, which she had politely declined—she liked makeup, and was already wearing some, but she didn’t relish the idea of sitting still for a more elaborate makeover.
And she absolutely didn’t have the patience for them to try to tame her frizzy black waves of hair into something sleeker or, even more quixotic, straight hair.
She knew if she tried to wear false eyelashes she would end up ripping them off in annoyance, and if she wore bright red lipstick, it would end up smeared when she inevitably forgot and wiped her mouth.
Seeing Bertram, she wished she hadn’t waved off their helpful offers. Suddenly, her meager eyeshadow and blush and lip gloss didn’t feel like nearly enough armor.
Helena imagined an alternate universe in which she had let her friends work their full cosmetic magic on her.
She wondered how much better she would have looked if she borrowed the sexy black dress offered by her tree sprite friend.
She had turned it down out of worry that her much thicker form would stretch out her willowy friend’s garment.
Maybe she should’ve been selfish and borrowed the dress. Maybe she should’ve sat still long enough for a full makeover. Her friends could’ve made her look like a bombshell.
Instead, she looked . . . cute. Maybe. She was wearing a blue dress with yellow flowers. When she chose it, she thought it was flirty and spring break appropriate. Now it felt too juvenile for trying to convince someone that she was a grown, sexy woman.
She should have brought a push-up bra and worn higher heels.
She imagined how Bertram would have looked at her if she walked over to him decked out like a goddamn supermodel.
She fantasized about how seeing her like that could have driven any memory of her as an awkward kid straight out of Bertram’s mind.
Instead, Helena was stuck looking like . . . Helena.
“Bertram,” Helena said, and there was an annoying squeak of nerves in her voice.
He looked up at her and blinked several times, as if he, too, had trouble processing that they were in the same place. Then his eyes focused, and his gaze was sharp, intense. Full of fire. Helena watched the way his breath hitched in his throat, the rise and fall of his chest—
“Helena,” Bertram breathed, and she suddenly—and to her utter delight—felt like maybe she didn’t need the heels and push-up bra and black dress after all.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” Helena said to the troll. “Are you his girlfriend?”
“We just met,” the troll replied, uncertainly.
Helena swallowed. “In that case, I need to give him something really quickly.”
“Give me what?” Bertram asked.
“This,” said Helena, and she kissed him.
It was a line her half-werewolf friend had fed her moments before, which she would never have had the audacity to use in real life.
But randomly stumbling into Bertram at UFIZZY’S in Frozen Palms wasn’t real life. It was a dream, a miracle, a lightning bolt of divine intervention. A nudge from Cupid that sent her careening down a flight of stairs. It was delicious insanity.
What was even more insane was that Bertram stood and deepened the kiss.
“Every time I meet a nice guy,” the troll mumbled to herself as she walked away.
Helena ran her hands over Bertram’s broad shoulders, his strong back.
His hands found her waist and squeezed tightly.
His tongue slipped into her mouth and Helena gasped, which only spurred him on.
Her whole body felt hot and wild. She was buzzing from head to toe, every inch of her brought to shocking, breathtaking life by Bertram’s touch, by the idea that Bertram might finally, finally want her the way that she had so long wanted him.
Bertram pulled back from the kiss, and Helena’s heart lurched.
She couldn’t have him do something stupid like come to his senses.
“If I have to sign a contract that I’ll never talk to your mother again, I’ll sign,” Helena said.
Bertram shook his head.
“I will send her a text right now saying her research is stupid and she’s a dummy for giving those foxes names and touching them and then I’ll block her—”
“I don’t want to think about my mom right now,” Bertram said hoarsely.
“Then—”
The very coherent arguments Helena was formulating as to why Bertram should kiss her fell away, because Bertram was already kissing her.
“You’re the one who stopped,” Helena managed to sputter out between kisses.
“I was just catching my breath,” Bertram said, and then returned to kissing her.
Her college friends were good at taking a hint, especially when it was being written with strong hands and battling tongues and ragged breaths and, wow, Helena would never do this in public in real life, but since Frozen Palms wasn’t real life, this wasn’t really in public.
The college girlies quickly confirmed that Bertram and Helena were both reasonably sober so as to be considered consenting adults, and then Helena found herself cut loose from her friends’ supervision with their enthusiastic well-wishes.
She went back with Bertram to the two-room condo he had rented for the weekend with his college roommate.
The roommate had met a handsome vampire at the bar and gone back to his place, leaving Bertram’s condo vacant. Gods bless UFIZZY’S.
Helena and Bertram fell into bed immediately, removing their clothes before either of them could come up with some very logical reason not to, which would have been against the Frozen Palms spirit.
Helena had built up the dream of fucking Bertram for so long that she knew the real thing could not possibly live up to her wild, desperate fantasies.
Somehow, the real thing surpassed them all.
She had imagined how hot Bertram’s lips would feel against hers, how thoroughly his tongue would claim her mouth.
How confident he would be thrusting into her, his athleticism in sports made apparent from his athleticism in the bedroom.
They were silly, girlish fantasies, based on cheerleader gossip and beach read novels, and yet actual-Bertram managed to hold his own, even against the Bertram of Helena’s imagination.
What she hadn’t imagined was how safe she would feel, how warm, how precious.
Bertram held her like she mattered—not just to him, but like she was some valuable thing that mattered to the whole world.
Even when he was rough, he was gentle. He made sure she finished first, which was a nice change from most of her haphazard college flings, who often forgot to notice or care if she finished at all.
They had sex twice that night, Helena initiating the second time and Bertram asking several times if she was sure before proceeding to absolutely rail her against the wall. She was a sweaty, writhing mess by the end.
And she hadn’t even had to wear fake eyelashes.