Swallowing Hard Facts

HELEN

~HOLY SHIT.~

~FUCK FUCK FUCK.~

~WHAT.~

~JUST.~

~HAPPENED?!?!~

I ran frantically through the woods, faster than when we’d heard the hunters.

I’d left Sam back at the honey farm—I didn’t have time to get my bra, didn’t bother with shoes.

I could feel every sharp prick along the forest floor as I sprinted back to the house, my tits flying side to side.

Back there, Sam had tried to…~fix things~.

“Helen, there’s really a simple explanation for all of this,” he’d started.

Maybe if I wasn’t so freaked out, it might’ve been kinda funny even.

Me being buck-ass naked in the middle of a honey farm, scrambling around for my clothes, not being able to find my thong.

But when Sam had stepped toward me, that’s when I ran.

“Helen, you don’t need to be afraid!” he yelled after me. “I’m not gonna hurt you!”

Sam seemed like he was back to normal now.

~But I know I saw what I saw.~

At least, I thought I did…

~Was Sam sorta turning into a…BEAR?~

I would’ve been a bit more calm about the whole thing if he hadn’t already lied to me about this ~ten fucking times~.

And also maybe if I hadn’t learned the truth while he was going down on me.

At this point, though, I just wanted to get the fuck out of Bear Creek.

Back to civilization, to Boulder, to where the dudes were predictably scummy, but at least they didn’t turn into literal monsters when they fucked you.

The worst they did is cum on your face and then ghost.

But what Sam had done was a whole new universe of dishonesty.

As I got back to the house, these thoughts were racing through my head at whirlwind speed.

So I was on automatic. I just grabbed a pair of shoes, my purse, and the travel bag I’d never really unpacked.

Seconds later, I was peeling out of the driveway.

My Corolla was no race car, but she was reliable and tight on turns. Tearing down those twisting dirt roads was probably crazy, but I had to put as much distance as possible between me and that house.

Between me and my monster stepbrother.

When I finally got to a paved road, I popped in my AirPods and tried to text my mother. If the son takes after the father, I knew she must also be in serious danger.

Helen

mom, are u home yet?

Helen

gotta talk to you!

Helen

its an emergency!

I saw my texts weren’t going through.

Mom was probably still with Jack, out of cell phone range.

~Stupid ass country town with no cell phone service.~

~Guess I’m on my own.~

As I drove, I thought back over everything that had happened in the past few days.

My mom got married to a guy who seemed really nice. I was happy for her.

But then, I started to get the hots for his son. Not only was it weird, but also a bit…skanky or something.

Like my horny hormones couldn’t give it a rest for even five minutes.

On the other hand, we were adults. And not related by blood. So who could possibly judge us?

Life was strange and you didn’t know which way it would turn or who you’d fall in love with.

~But then, is that what this was? Love?~

I’d been in love before, and it was always much more simple. Because usually it was instant.

But being completely fucking honest, I hadn’t even thought of the L word until I was driving home. It just slipped into my mind out of nowhere, and once it registered, I almost swerved off the road.

~How could I be in love with my stepbrother?~

My stepbrother who I’d just met.

My stepbrother who was also a ~bear monster?~

~A were…bear?~

~Is that what you call them?~

We’ve all read about them, right? Or seen them in movies? People turning into animals, stalking the woods at night or whatever.

But that shit wasn’t supposed to be real. I’d always prided myself on being open-minded—I guess I just didn’t expect that I’d ever have to accept something like this.

But after seeing Sam in his monster form back at the honey farm, there was no way for me to write this off or pretend that I’d imagined it.

Werebears were ~definitely real~.

And I began to be afraid for my mother. If werebears shifted during sex, wasn’t she at risk of getting mauled?

Then it dawned on me.

~My mother knows!~

No wonder she’d just given me a creepy wink after that Grizzly had almost eaten my car.

Maybe it was even one of her friends in bear form.

~Am I going crazy?~

I couldn’t believe I was actually thinking these things.

~But if she knew, why didn’t she tell me?~

I guess maybe because she never imagined that I’d have sex with my stepbrother.

~Sorry, mom. I know you didn’t want me to be an art major in college. And now this… Whoopsies.~

Not to be all gross, but I’m a girl who loves to swallow. Yet there were two facts that I had trouble getting down.

~My sexy stepbrother is a werebear.~

~And I’m in love with him.~

~What the fuck?!~

•••

When I got back to the dorm, Emma was planted on the bed in front of her laptop, munching on a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

“Hey babe,” she said to me, hypnotized by whatever she was watching.

~What the hell is Emma doing back?~

“I thought you’d still be up at your parents’ condo,” I said, barely hiding my annoyance.

“I got lonely,” she shrugged. “Plus, I just watch TV up there anyway. Here, I have at least a few friends left on campus to hang with.”

I was exhausted from the road and just wanted to climb into bed.

“They finally put the new season of ~Riverdale~ up on Netflix.”

Hearing that lifted my spirits just a little bit. It’d been a long drive, full of dark and confusing thoughts…

Maybe a little ’flix binge was just what I needed.

Emma took one look at my face and closed her laptop.

“What’s up, girl? You seem bummed,” Emma said. “How was Bear Creek? How was the wedding?”

“The wedding was fine, but afterward it was…” I ended my sentence in a shrug.

~Could I really tell her about hooking up with a werebear?~

“Uhh, I’m not sure where to start, because the whole thing was not like anything I’d ever experienced before,” I said, debating whether I should spill everything.

“So, basically, Sam, my stepbrother, is like, one of the hottest guys who’s ever walked the earth. But he’s kind of this aggressive weirdo. He took me out into the middle of the woods and then announced we were sleeping there. Which wasn’t cool.”

“Eeesh,” Emma made a yucky face. “Too many bugs for me.”

“Yeah, I spent half the night swatting them,” I said. “Then he brought back a bunch of dead rabbits, and I had to watch him skin them for breakfast.”

“Barf, barf, barf,” Emma said. “And you actually ate them?”

“Yeah, but then we got drunk,” I said.

“Oh no,” Emma’s eyes went wide. “Don’t tell me you hooked up with ~your brother~?”

And seeing Emma’s reaction, I realized I was going to have to carry all these secrets myself.

“No, of course not,” I said. “Do I look like some backwoods ho to you?”

Emma laughed so hard she sent Dorito bits flying.

I was lying to Emma, but for good reason.

~I hope she doesn’t see right through me.~

“You did the right thing,” Emma said gently. “You can’t go around fucking everything that moves. And either way, be glad you didn’t have to see Chris and Brittany going at it.”

“Oh God, don’t even tell me, I don’t wanna know.”

“Now come sit down,” Emma said. “You’re gonna love this show.”

***

Emma and I stayed up till 4 a.m., bingeing our way through ~Riverdale~. Diving deep into that fantasy world made me forget the reality of my own.

And with a belly full of hard seltzers and Doritos, everything that had gone on between Sam and me began to feel like a distant dream.

Not something I’d have to deal with anytime soon.

The next day, I woke up around noon and began to get back into art mode.

Professor Hammond had given us an assignment to do over spring break, and I figured I might as well get going on it.

And I really needed to redeem myself for drawing my teacher with his junk hanging out.

Bear Creek was still weighing on me, and I figured a couple of hours in the studio would surely clear my mind.

Despite all the craziness of the past few days, I couldn’t stop thinking about the beauty of the honey farm. So, I figured I’d paint a landscape of that.

I took a couple of hits from my weed vape, grabbed a couple of Cokes, and retreated to the studio for the rest of the afternoon.

First, I put in the field, with its neat rows of trees and bushes.

Then, in between, I painted all the colorful honey boxes.

Right on the edge of the canvas, I drew me and Sam. My first random thought was to draw us in the middle of fucking…

~What a ditz! You draw Professor Hammond naked, and then yourself fucking?~

~It’s like you wanna tell everyone what a perv you are.~

Instead, I decided to draw the moment when Sam was standing there, half-formed, with me half-naked and yelling at him.

Seeing that image emerge on the canvas, I had to put my brush down and step back to look at it.

To tell the truth, I was shocked by it.

~A man-sized teddy bear in blue jeans. How the hell could I show this to the class?~

They’d probably laugh me out of there…again…

If they didn’t lock me up first.

Still, I couldn’t think of anything else to paint. My mind was all mixed up…filled with bears and sex and Sam.

Luckily, it was easy to fix a painting. I just daubed some green paint and quickly put in grass where Sam and I used to be.

I tried to paint the bear creature again, but it was no use. It made me look crazy, and it made me feel crazy.

~I gotta get the fuck outta here.~

Leaving the painting to dry overnight, I stepped onto the quad just as the sun was going down, giving off that beautiful light.

I was in a happy post-weed daze, exhausted from working so hard all afternoon.

So I almost jumped when I heard, “Hey Helen! Wait up!”

I turned around to the beautiful sight of Chris running toward me across the lawn.

It was so wonderful to see a nice, normal guy again. And though I always preferred blue jeans over khakis, seeing Chris made me want to update my preferences.

But just as he got close to me, I remembered what he’d been up to all weekend.

Thinking of him and Brittany in the hot tub, I almost puked all over his boat shoes.

“How was the wedding?” Chris asked. “How was Bear Creek?”

“Oh, you know, small town wedding, small town fun. Glad to be back in civilization now.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you are. I bet they don’t even have cell service up there.”

“No Wi-Fi either. I don’t know how I survived.”

“Speaking of survival,” Chris said, “you see any bears up there?”

I was kinda taken aback by this, for obvious reasons, and I kinda fumbled trying not to give away the fact that I almost had sex with one.

“Uhh, I think I saw one crossing my path when I was driving, but it was really far away.”

“Well, you’re lucky then. My dad used to go up there sometimes. He said the Bear Creek bears are, like, super-dangerous.”

Then almost in the same breath, Chris asked, “So anyway, what’re you doing later? You wanna go to the movies?”

~Wait a minute…~

~Is Chris asking me out on a date?!~