57. Helena
Helena
Helena hoped that Bertram would kiss her again, ideally outside of the context of truth or dare. She kept waiting for it.
It never happened, nor did either of them discuss the kiss.
Which made sense; after all, it was only done in the context of a very mild, innocent, nothing sort of game.
Although with that being the case, Helena thought that it would have made sense for Bertram to make some passing reference to, “hey, remember when we kissed during that game the other day? That sure was funny and casual and would never happen in real life.”
But he didn’t say that. Maybe because it did mean something to him, or maybe because he wasn’t thinking about it at all.
For Helena’s part, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
She had blurted out the dare as a throwback joke and then started to walk it back.
But Helena had forgotten how fast Bertram was.
Even back when he played baseball, she never quite expected him to move as quickly as he did. His frame was so broad, so bulky that he didn’t look like he could possibly move so expediently.
But he moved like lightning. One second he was sitting a polite distance from her, drink in hand, and the next second his massive hands were framing her face, and his lips were on hers.
It didn’t seem possible that he should be on her so quickly.
It didn’t seem possible that he should be on her at all.
A million thoughts had flooded her head, but she tried to swat through all the doubt and anxiety and focus solely on the feeling of Bertram’s mouth on hers, his hand on her neck, the other on her waist, pulling her closer until their bodies were flush together.
And then the kiss was over, and as far as Helena could tell, Bertram moved on with no more thought on the matter.
The same was not true for Helena.
After that stupid, probably-nothing-kiss, Helena felt dizzy. Her heart was racing and her vision was blurry. If she didn’t know any better, she would say she was having a medical emergency.
Bertram was her medical emergency.
But there he sat, sitting casually on that log, face serene, posture relaxed, as if their kiss was a silly little high school throwback, no more or less meaningful that having a YETI lemonade shoved into your hands and kneeling to drink it.
It wasn’t the last time they sat around the campfire and shared drinks together after Lovey went to sleep, though no more games of truth or dare were played, and no more kisses were exchanged.
Instead, they had good, genuine conversations—about how Lovey’s training was progressing, about passages in Katherina’s and Hippolyta’s books, about which leopardopterans they had recently spotted.
Helena had seen several common possyms, a possum-like creature with common posy butterfly wings, but she was immensely jealous that Bertram had caught sight of a periarmadillo metalmark, an armadillo-like creature with wings resembling a periander metalmark butterfly.
Bertram claimed he had seen one rolling through the sky, wings tucked fully against her carapace.
Helena couldn’t tell if he was serious about that part of it.
It was those teasing, playful, competitive moments that kept the mood fun and light and safe.
This was a good thing, Helena told herself. This was what she wanted. The safety and security of friendly banter, professional in-jokes, and maybe, maaaaybe just the faaaintest hint of flirting.
But none of that rivaled the searing heat that had flooded the air, flooded her body, when Bertram had kissed her. That was something different altogether. Maybe not for Bertram, but it was different for her. That fire . . . that tension, that passion . . . that could be deadly.
She knew what it felt like to glow under Bertram’s affections, and what it felt like to languish when those affections turned from her.
And so, when faced with the choice to burn or be burned, Helena chose the third option:
YETI Avalanche.
And when she tricked Bertram into taking a bottle from her, he dutifully dropped to one knee and chugged it all.
And they laughed and they smiled and Helena pretended that her heart didn’t ache every time she looked at him, even when his errant tusk was bright blue.
Perhaps especially when his tusk was bright blue.
She told herself that she could withstand the heartache of laughing with him, smiling with him, debating him, but not touching him. Not truly being with him—at least, not like that. She told herself that this was actually the best possible course of action.
But it didn’t feel like the best course of action.
And the more the days passed, the more Helena began to feel like there was a possibility that Bertram was staring at her out of the corner of his eyes the same way Helena stared at him.
That when he riled her up on purpose, it was because he liked the flush of her cheeks.
That he wanted her near him, wanted to be with her.
She began to hope that perhaps Bertram did burn for her as much as Helena burned for him, and if so, maybe their embers would ignite one another’s fires without leaving them both a pile of ash.
Every day, Helena hoped that Bertram would show Helena that he did want her like that; that he would kiss her again. And again. And again, ideally.
Could she act first? Sure. But since Bertram was the one who had blocked Helena on everything, who had cast her out of his life so completely, she didn’t think that was such a good idea. Bertram was the one who had shut Helena out; it should be on Bertram to indicate if he wanted her again.
Besides, it had taken Helena so long to rebuild this friendship as it was. She didn’t want to risk losing everything by pushing him for too much, too soon.
Plus, if she made a move on him and he rejected her, it would make things very awkward at work. And you couldn’t exactly transfer departments out of shame during a long-term study of owl-bear behavior on a remote mountain.
Instead, Helena settled for being as outrageously flirtatious as she dared.
This mostly involved smiling a lot and swatting Bertram affectionately on the arm, as well as making the occasional filthy joke. The problem was, she already made filthy jokes, so that wasn’t much of a hint, probably.
A better tactic, then, was to try to get him to see her body the way he used to, as that of a romantic partner, rather than just a colleague.
She made endeavors to remind him of her generous curves with the poses she subtly struck.
She tried bending over him as much as she reasonably could without it being pathetic, but Bertram was enough of a gentleman to look away any time Helena put herself in a compromising position.
Helena actually got very close to getting naked at one point. She said, “it’s hot in here,” before leisurely, slowly, sensually stripping off her snow jacket.
The fact that she was wearing a long-sleeve shirt beneath it, and a T-shirt over that, perhaps diminished the efficacy of this gesture.
But still!
He should have noticed! He should know what it means when a beautiful-ish, young-ish woman strips off an outer layer of clothing when coming in from the snow! How much more obvious could she be?! Was he truly so oblivious?
Of course, he could also be blatantly ignoring her flirtations because he wasn’t interested in her like that at all.
The options circled around Helena’s brain multiple times a day, sometimes multiple times a minute. There was no formula she could use—in MagiTracks or by hand—to calculate the likelihood of a coworker returning her crush.
It didn’t stop her constant wondering, though.
It reminded her of that old human game: “He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not.”
The poem was to be recited while pulling the petals off a flower one by one until there were none left, and that would give you the answer you were looking for.
Actually, Helena thought, it was an apt metaphor for humankind’s treatment of the natural world at large.
As such, Helena knew that ripping apart flowers would not provide answers.
Only one thing would:
Continuing her pattern of hopefully-workplace-appropriate-but-just-barely flirtations while psychically willing Bertram to make a move on her before her heart exploded.
No moves were made.
She couldn’t go on not knowing, simply pining for him day after day. But she also didn’t dare ask him directly and risk their friendship and their working relationship.
There was only one way out that Helena could think of. One way to end the suffering of not knowing, the suffering of Bertram just being there, available and yet not available.
And that was to make him categorically, definitively, unquestionably unavailable.
“You two should go on your date now,” Helena said the next time Diana was over practicing flight with Lovey.
Diana fell out of the sky in shock. Bertram barely managed to catch her—but he did.
They looked good together, Helena thought, Diana’s lithe, pale limbs clasped around Bertram’s thick grey-green shoulders. He was looking at Diana with surprise, as if he couldn’t believe that he had the good fortune to have her fall into his arms.
Helena forced what she hoped was a casual, laidback smile. “Lovey’s doing really well and clearly trusts all three of us, so . . . no reason the two of you can’t go out.”
“Do you—do you still want to?” Bertram asked Diana, setting her back down on her feet.
“Oh, fuck yeah,” said Diana. “I did promise to show you a really wild time.”
Diana winked.
Bertram smiled.
Helena got what she wanted.
Strangely, it did not feel good.