53. Back Then
Back Then
After their tryst in Frozen Palms, Helena and Bertram texted frequently.
Sometimes they videochatted. Not about anything important; certainly not about what had happened between them.
Just to chat. Helena would casually tell Bertram about her college hookups.
Not in detail, but enough to prove that she wasn’t pining for him, to assure him that he hadn’t made a mistake by fucking her brains out in that rented condo.
To prove that she hadn’t become overly attached just because he put his dick in her.
“Are you seeing anyone seriously?” Bertram asked her the first night of summer break, when they were drinking wine on the porch.
Dr. J and Urghk were off doing in situ research on narwhals and lunarwhals. Helena had been so dizzy with excitement to see Bertram, in a house they had all to themselves, that she hadn’t even asked which subspecies of narwhal his parents were working with. True madness.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Helena countered.
“I asked you first,” Bertram said.
“No.” Helena shook her head. “Now you.”
Bertram’s answered by lifting her chin with one finger, so she met his eyes, then claiming her lips in a searing kiss.
Passion and arousal flooded Helena’s body, but she was surprised to find that the dominant emotion the kiss instilled in her was relief.
She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath, or how tight her shoulders were, until she relaxed into Bertram’s kiss.
Even more than longing for his touch, she realized she feared not having it.
There was a rightness to being in Bertram’s arms that she hadn’t found with any other lover.
It wasn’t just the way he fucked her until her legs were jelly or how his large hands created even more dimples in her thighs under his harsh grip in contrast to his soft kisses.
No, it was the utter safety she felt with him.
The sense of being known, known in a way that no one else could ever possibly know her.
They had spent two wonderful days together in Frozen Palms, but Helena knew that didn’t guarantee he would want to spend two more days with her during summer break. Even if he only took her this once, in the backyard on a blanket she once bought him for human Christmas, that would be enough.
They didn’t spend two days together that summer.
They spent two months.
Helena kept waiting for the novelty to wear off, for the utter delight of hooking up with Bertram to fade.
But it never did. Thrills she couldn’t chase even in her third session with some crush from college were still there the tenth time she had Bertram, the thirtieth.
They did other things than have sex, of course.
They binge-watched TV shows. They volunteered to plant trees.
They cooked—very badly, very well, and sometimes in between.
They parted ways at the end of the summer as friends, friends who knew each other’s bodies inside and out, friends who had made each other scream and moan and beg for more, friends who had borne each other’s bite marks and scratches across their skin and spoke nothing of what the future might or might not hold.
Thus began Helena’s junior year of undergrad.
She and Bertram still spoke frequently. She stopped telling him about her hookups, because she stopped having them. It felt stupid to force her body to go through the motions for someone else when she only ever craved Bertram, only ever would crave Bertram.
She never gave voice to this, of course.
She barely acknowledged it herself, and someone would have had to pry her fingernails off before she would confess to Bertram that he was right, that she had grown overly attached to him, that he was her security blanket, her safe space, her home, and that she could not shake him.
But Bertram must have sensed something in the lack of discussion of other lovers, because when he saw her that winter break, he didn’t ask her if she was seeing anyone.
He simply put his hands on her waist with a look that spoke multitudes, letting her know with one gesture that he was available if she was.
She kissed him for all she was worth, letting him know in no uncertain terms that she was wildly, incredibly available.
The summer of junior year, they both tagged along on one of Dr. J’s research projects, becoming coauthors on a paper about quicksand cats (Felis quickmargarita).
It was the kind of field assignment where they each had their own tents, and they managed to go to sleep late enough and wake up early enough that no one noticed them sneaking in and out of each other’s tents—hair a mess, faces slick with sweat, smiles pleased but guilty.
Or if anyone did notice, they were polite enough not to mention.
There was a time when Helena would have scandalized herself with the mere idea of being caught—or suspected of—doing any sort of canoodling on a research project, even though it wasn’t technically against the rules.
Still, she had a natural, anxious desire to make everyone around her think she was a brilliant, upstanding academic.
Especially those she admired professionally.
But she had come to learn that just as there was only one Doctor Jenevieve, Countess of Roussillon . . .
There was also only one Bertram.
She couldn’t stop wanting Bertram any more than she could stop admiring Jennie.
Senior year of college for Helena was her planned springboard to a PhD program, whereas for Bertram it was the final, merciful hurdle before he could go into fieldwork full-time. When she graduated, Helena decided to take a gap year before starting her PhD.
Even by the end of the gap year—which she had spent on a research project with Dr. J and Bertram, during which she and Bertram spent their time much as they had on the previous summer’s research project—Helena was torn as to what her next steps in life would be.
She was in agony trying to decide what to do or where to go, for reasons she wasn’t strong enough to confess to Bertram.
“Listen,” Bertram said one day, his voice too even, his posture a parody of relaxation, “you know, I’m on this study of shared territory use by black bears and manticores in the Pacific Northwest and I think you’d really be an asset, if you’re not sure about starting your PhD program yet . . .”
“Oh yeah?” Helena asked, as neutrally as she could manage.
“I found this great two-bedroom apartment close to the research site,” Bertram said, his tone casual to the point of calculation.
“I thought it would be nice to have a bedroom and an office. But you’re more than welcome to live with me, if you’d like.
I’m sure I could give up the office and work in the living room. ”
“Yeah, sure, that could be fine,” Helena said, her incredibly even tone at odds with her racing heart. “But you also, you know, you wouldn’t have to give up your office. We could always have it as a shared office and then just share the bedroom.”
“Yeah, sure. We could do that,” Bertram said, with no particular emotion one way or another.
“I’m sure I could find a small enough bed to fit in a corner. Or, you know, we could share your bed, you know, whatever.” Helena kept her voice level enough to make it clear that she had no opinion on any of these suggestions.
“Yeah, I think any of those options should be totally fine,” said Bertram with equal neutrality. “Happy to share a bed, if you want.”
And thus did the two of them decide to move in together, without the burden of words like “love” or, even worse, “boyfriend and girlfriend.” It was a move that at once seemed to jump over so many steps they hadn’t taken, and yet somehow seemed obvious and correct.
Helena went to her favorite bookshop and picked out posters featuring all the fauna—otherfolk and mundane—of the new apartment’s surrounding region.
She wondered if Bertram would let her hang it up in their bedroom or if it would be relegated to the office.
Not that they had officially said it would be their shared bedroom, per se.
But they had both dropped significant hints about decorating “The Bedroom” versus “The Office” and neither had refuted this with a claim of “My Bedroom” versus “Your Bedroom” versus “We’ll Work In The Living Room Because There Is No Office Because We Have Separate Bedrooms.” Neither seemed to have the courage to explicitly state that they would definitely be sharing a bed, much less what it is they might be doing in that bed, despite the fact that they were doing it almost daily and with great enthusiasm.
Helena had so many plans about what their apartment would look like, what their life would look like.
And then two weeks before they were supposed to move in together, Helena told Bertram that she would be going to medical school instead.
He didn’t speak to her for five years.