Two Flavors, One Cup

HELEN

“How could you?!”

I grabbed Emma by the shoulder and spun her around.

Maybe the dormitory hallway wasn’t the best place to have this fight. But my secret was already out, and the second I’d spotted Emma, I couldn’t contain the anger inside me.

“Whoa, watch it!”

“I can’t believe ~you’d~ do this to me.” I wanted to slap her in the face. I wanted to shove her up against the wall. I wanted to tear her hair out!

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

People were staring at us, but I didn’t care.

“Dude, I’m not lying.”

I thought she was my best friend. That I was safe with her. That I could tell her anything.

I was wrong.

After Brittany had told the entire art class about me and Sam, the word spread across campus.

Everyone must have known what had happened at Bear Creek by now.

What had happened between me and Sam.

And the ~only~ person I’d told was Emma.

I didn’t want to believe she would do this to me. But there was no other explanation.

I shouldn’t have said what I’d said about her, but I’d still never thought she’d go behind my back—and to my arch-enemy of all people.

“You told Brittany!”

Angry tears were blurring my vision.

“You told her everything!”

“I didn’t tell Brittany shit!” Emma snapped back, sounding truly stunned.

“Then how did she know about Sam?”

“So that’s his name? Sam?” Emma said. “Look, I’m sorry you decided to sleep with your family, but leave me out of your drama, okay?”

“You don’t know anything about me and my family, or what I had with Sam!”

“And I don’t want to, sicko,” Emma turned away from me. “Leave me alone.”

“Just because you think it’s weird, doesn’t mean you can just go around telling people.”

Suddenly, Emma turned and stomped toward me. She marched me up against the wall and leaned in until her face was less than an inch from mine.

“That guy must have a dick the size of a bear to make you act this crazy.” She spat her words at me. Quiet and fierce. “I didn’t tell anyone, okay?”

I stared into her face. We were both red with anger, but I saw the tears building in her eyes and suddenly couldn’t speak.

“Now leave me alone, Helen.”

Emma pushed herself off me, and all I could do was watch as she hurried down the hall.

***

I didn’t see Emma for the next couple of days.

Even though I was mad at her, I kept looking at her empty bed and wishing she was there.

Wishing someone was there. Anyone.

People started avoiding me in the dorm hallways. I started hiding in my room to avoid the whispers and stares I was getting on campus.

It seemed like everyone was obsessed with me and Bear Creek. Those nosy fuckers!

They either thought I was a joke or a freak.

~Don’t they have exams they should be studying for?~

~Don’t they have anything more interesting to obsess over?~

I thought about messaging Sam. I wanted to reach out.

But I knew it was for the best to keep my distance.

We could never work in the real world. Not if this was how people reacted. They would never understand and, judging by the past few days, I couldn’t live my life like this. It was just too hard.

I even started to think maybe they had a point.

It was unusual, out of the ordinary, not to mention the part that I had managed to keep secret. The part where my sexy stepbrother was a werebear.

~What was I thinking?~

I couldn’t date a werebear!

I didn’t even know if their elders would let me.

And if I couldn’t date a werebear, then there was no point obsessing over Sam.

Gradually, my thoughts about Bear Creek…about Sam…started to fade.

I got sick of hiding in my room.

~Fuck those guys!~ I muttered to myself as I pulled on my favorite shirt.

It was a blue button-down blouse that used to belong to my mom. I loved it because it reminded me of her and also because I looked great in it. The pale shade of blue went amazingly with my hair.

She’d gotten so fed up with me borrowing it that one day she had just told me to keep it.

I always wore it when I needed cheering up…or just wanted to look effortlessly chic.

The shirt made me feel confident enough to leave my dorm and reenter the real world.

People still gave me a wide berth in the hall, looking at me like I had some flesh-eating disease. But I was starting not to care.

It didn’t hurt anymore when groups turned inwards to whisper and giggle. The only thing that still hurt…was Emma.

I wandered into town knowing exactly where I was heading.

Emma and I had always gone to this ice cream parlor on Pearl Street whenever one of us was upset or on our period. It was our special, happy place. And a happy place was exactly what I needed.

I ordered a cup of gooey butter-cake with caramel and chocolate sprinkles—mine and Emma’s favorite flavors mixed in one cup—and sat in the window.

It tasted like heaven.

I considered whether they’d let me live in the store from now on.

The ice cream cheered me up as much as it possibly could, but I still felt weird about things between me and Emma. We’d never fought like this before.

I was about to toss the empty cup away and leave when Chris walked by the window. He stopped, made a goofy face, then waved.

I thought maybe he’d keep walking, but he turned and headed for the door.

~Oh God, he’s probably heard all about it by now too!~

“Why so blue?”

Chris pulled up a stool next to me. I felt tears spring to my eyes. I didn’t understand why he was being nice to me when he had to know what I’d gotten up to over spring break.

“Are you making fun of me?” The tears started spilling over.

“What? No. Why would I do that?” His expression seemed genuine, like he really cared.

“Come on, I know Brittany would have gone running to you. Don’t pretend you don’t know what everyone is saying about me.”

“Brittany is a bitch.”

That last statement caught me completely by surprise.

“What? Then why are you dating her?”

“I’m not, I dumped her.”

“You…dumped…her?” I sputtered.

Shock didn’t begin to cut it. Surely he was joking, just another way of tormenting me.

“Yeah, she was getting on my nerves. Plus, I didn’t like the way she talked about people.”

Something in the way Chris looked at me made me realize he did know what people were saying. But maybe he didn’t care.

“So you do know…that I…”

“Hey,” he put his hand on my knee. “Brittany says all kinds of mean stuff, that’s part of why I dumped her.”

“Yeah?” I laughed a little. “What’s the other part?”

He grinned and looked away.

“I guess I had interests outside our relationship.”

~Is he talking about... me?~

I didn’t understand why he was being so nice... more than nice... But it felt good to have someone to talk to.

“Listen, ignore the losers back at school. They’re going to move on from this really quickly. You’ll see. Someone will get a new Frisbee or get too wasted at a frat party and they’ll forget all about you.”

Chris was right—there was always some shiny new drama to occupy our easily distracted classmates. I just hoped Emma could forget everything that had happened as well.

“You wanna take a walk? I want to hear about your trip to Bear Creek.”

“Come on.” I glared at Chris.

~So he was just making fun of me.~

“No seriously, not about all that stuff. Tell me what it’s like out there. Are there hiking paths or is the forest really dense? Didn't you see a bear? That must have been crazy!”

By the way he smiled at me, I could tell he was sincere. He seemed super keen to hear about the parts of my trip that didn’t involve hooking up with my stepbrother.

We left the ice cream shop and started walking back in the direction of campus.

***

“So tell me more about the bear.”

Chris and I walked all the way back to school. The sun was setting by the time we reached the edge of the campus.

I tried to tell him about my spring break without revealing anything about Sam or the bears. Instead, I told him about the wedding and a bit about my camping experience.

But I was finding it difficult to give him a full picture without breaking my word not to let anything slip.

“It sounds ~super~ country,” Chris said, nudging me. “You must be really tough to have survived out there in the wilderness.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said, and smiled thinking about Mom and Jack’s amazing cabin, the bee farm, and the lake.

“Sooooo,” Chris looked at me sideways. “What about the bear? You’ve ~bear~ly mentioned it.”

He emphasized the bear part of the word and held his hands up like paws, which made me laugh. If only he knew what it was like to see a real bear in person.

“It’s hard to describe, I guess.”

I was doing my best to be coy.

“I heard you did an amazing painting of the one you saw.”

“You did?”

Chris put his hand on my shoulder.

“Yeah, see? Not everything people are talking about is bad.”

I couldn’t stop blushing. I didn’t think after our trip to the movies that we’d get to hang out again. But this was starting to feel like a proper date...

~Is this a date?!~

I didn’t want to make the same mistake as last time.

“Can you show me?”

Chris had bugged me all the way over here about the bear, and I’d given him nothing. The least I could do after he’d been so nice was to show him the painting.

“Professor Hammond hung it in the student gallery. It’ll be closed now but”—I pulled the security fob out of my pocket—“I’ve been given special access in the lead up to finals.”

“Great, let’s go!”

Chris slipped his arm around mine as we started walking in the direction of the gallery.

I knew the last time I’d thought something was happening with Chris it had all come to nothing.

I was terrified I was making the same mistake.

But there was a glint in his eye that told me this time would be different.

~Why is my heart beating so fast?~

~Why does his arm touching mine give me butterflies in my stomach?~

~We’re all alone here…~

~What’s going to happen?~