56. Bertram #2
Bertram grinned wickedly as Helena noticed that it was a blue raspberry lemonade YETI bottle in her hands.
“Stupidest fucking thing.” Helena shook her head.
But ever a stickler for the rules, she dropped to one knee to chug as much of the YETI as she dared—which was about half the bottle.
Bertram couldn’t help but smirk at her poor constitution.
“Weak,” Bertram said affectionately.
“Fuck off,” Helena retorted, but she was smiling.
Bertram cracked open his own YETI before sitting beside Helena on the log. The two stared into the campfire, watching it crackle and sizzle. The sound was pleasantly comforting, and the glow of the fire cast orange light on their faces.
“The YETIS always makes your tusks bluer than your fangs,” Helena said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that. Maybe the tusk is more porous or something?”
Bertram turned his face from her.
He hated any reminder of the way she saw him. How she was so acutely aware that he was “other.” His stupid tusk was a physical manifestation of everything that made him lesser in her eyes—
“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing!” Helena said quickly.
Bertram wasn’t sure if he believed her.
“It’s just something I noticed,” Helena said. “Something I’ve always noticed but—sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I like your tusk! And listen, blue YETI makes my silly mostly human tongue waaay bluer than any part of your mouth—see?”
Helena stuck her tongue out, and as promised, it was indeed bright blue.
Bertram smiled. He couldn’t know for certain if she was covering for a slip-up or if she genuinely meant that she liked his tusk.
He certainly liked her tongue.
Helena pulled her tongue back into her mouth before Bertram got caught up in following that train of thought further than was appropriate.
“I only said it because seeing you with blue tusks reminded me of, you know, high school and whatever, and I think you already know this,” Helena said, “but . . . just for the record, being friends with you was the best part of my high school experience.”
“Was it really?” Bertram raised an eyebrow. “That was better than being Doctor Jenevieve, Countess of Roussillon’s research assistant?”
Helena blushed. “Well. You know. I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t really consider that part of my high school experience, per se—”
“Fine. If we were to broaden it to ‘high school era’ experience—”
“What is this, truth or dare?” Helena asked.
“It could be.” Bertram shrugged.
The night already had a surreal, nostalgic sort of feel to it, like it was a moment out of time. He saw no reason not to lean into it.
Helena rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. Then we’d really be acting like teenagers.”
“No reason why not to.” Bertram grinned. “Being adults means there’s no one around to tell us to act like adults. So. Truth or dare.”
“Dare,” Helena said with no hesitation.
“I dare you to tell me the truth about whether it was better to be friends with me or to be my mom’s research assistant.”
Helena groaned. “You’re being the most annoying Person on the planet.”
“That’s because I’m the only Person around, so you have no comparisons,” Bertram countered.
“The truth is it’s categorically insane to ask me if I preferred fulfilling my lifelong dreams of being a leopardopterist, studying under the top professional in my field and having a really terrific friend.
I’m not going to try to quantify wanting to do field research against wanting to fuck someone when I’m perfectly capable of doing both and they’re not even in the same category—I mean, I phrased that badly, because that makes it seem like I only like you because I—only liked you because I—no, wait, that makes it seem like I don’t still like you, and I do, I do still like you, but I also liked you back then and not just because I wanted you like that, I mean—”
“Hel,” Bertram said, gently, “breathe.”
Helena smiled nervously.
“Your turn,” Bertram said. “I pick truth.”
“Why didn’t you speak to me for five years?” Helena blurted out, as if she’d been sitting on the question for—well, five years. “I know you were upset that I didn’t tell you about med school, but five years? That seems like an overreaction—”
“Dare,” Bertram said at once.
They were having such a lovely time together, such a nice, peaceful night between friends, he saw no reason to bring the mood crashing down. Particularly over something they had already agreed not to discuss.
“Fine,” Helena said. “I dare you to tell me the real reason you didn’t speak to me for five years.”
“You can’t use a dare to make someone tell the truth,” Bertram said. “That’s basic truth or dare rules.”
Helena gasped. “But you just used that on me!”
Bertram smiled. “Yes, and you’re silly for falling for it instead of immediately saying that that’s not allowed.”
“You can’t just switch up the rules for me but not for you!”
“It’s not a conversation I want to have drunk,” Bertram said.
“Oh, please, you are not drunk off of one YETI lemonade—and it’s not a conversation; it’s a truth, in truth or dare. That’s, like, a totally different thing.”
“We agreed to start over, clean slate,” Bertram said.
“That was the agreement, remember? No rehashing. Just moving forward. Starting over. And listen, I—you were the best part of my high school experience, too, okay? I was glad to be with you then, and I’m glad to be with you now.
I’m happy with how things are, Hel. Nothing good can come from digging up the past.”
Helena sighed deeply. “Fine. But you have to do a penalty dare.”
“Fair enough,” Bertram said.
“I dare you to clean the lab by yourself for the next week,” Helena said.
Bertram snorted. “That’s not a dare; that’s blackmail.”
“Then go climb that tree and stay up there for eight minutes.”
“You don’t actually want me to disrupt the ecosystem like that,” Bertram said.
“Then kiss the prettiest girl on Mount Folio,” Helena said.
There was a moment of silence.
Bertram hesitated.
In many ways, there was nothing he would rather do more than kiss Helena.
But if she was just kidding, if he tried to kiss her and she didn’t actually want him to . . .
“Sorry.” Helena laughed. “It wasn’t meant to be—it was just a callback to when—besides, you can’t kiss the prettiest girl on Mount Folio, because Diana already lef—”
Bertram gently took Helena’s face and brought his lips to hers.
It was for two seconds, maybe three, the kiss closed-lipped and chaste.
But when Bertram pulled back, Helena was blushing furiously and staring at her feet.
“Are you okay?” Bertram asked.
“Yes, of course,” Helena said, quickly, “I just feel bad now because—that wasn’t me trying to force you to kiss me or anything—”
Bertram shook his head. “No, of course.”
“It was just a reference to that time when we were in high school, you know, the whole ‘kiss the prettiest girl at Titania Tech’ thing—”
“I remember,” Bertram said.
“So, I was just, you know, referencing that.”
“I know,” Bertram said. “I got the joke.”
“Yes, exactly,” Helena said. Relief seemed to wash over her features. “Yes, you were just joking. Me too. We were both just joking.”
Bertram swallowed and nodded. He tried to force a smile, tried to pretend that he thought it was a good thing that Helena said they were just joking.
What would he have rather she said? I meant it? Kiss me again? Kiss me again and again until neither of us remember a time when we weren’t kissing?
Yes, Bertram thought. He would have preferred that.
But that was not how Helena felt, and he wasn’t going to push her on it.
“Besides,” Helena said, “if you had actually kissed the prettiest girl on Mount Folio—”
“Don’t you dare suggest Diana is prettier than you,” Bertram cautioned.