A/N: Thank you for reading! This story is rated M for mature language, themes, and events. Takes place 10 years after TJM, assuming Arnold found his parents and stayed with them. Buckle in, there's a lot more where this came from. R/R always welcome!

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 1: Conditional Wretch

"Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were." – Marcel Proust

"You should have come back sooner, Football Head," Helga said with sincerity. Ten years was a long time. So much had changed, their friends had grown up and moved away and changed; the class they shared together as kids in PS118 was gone. Helga was still best friends with Phoebe Heyerdahl, and of course was in her band with Brainy, but the rest had all scattered out and across Hillwood in high school or shortly after.

Arnold looked at her, feeling as guilty as he had the time he read from her pink book out loud to the rest of their friends on the school stoop. He had missed his friends, all of them, terribly. But all of that guilt was useless inside him, empty emotional calories that he could do nothing about now.

"Why didn't you write me back?" Arnold searched Helga's face for something, his question hopeful but quiet. Arnold had kept his promise at first, writing her once a month without missing even one letter. Helga read them all, touching each line of her beloved's thoughtfully composed letters and keeping them in a big box she decorated with her pink ribbon - the one he liked so much - and marked it "Important."

Over time, though, his letters started to come less and less, and then finally they stopped. Helga knew she was part of the reason.

"I wrote you back once," she said sourly, arching one of her strong eyebrows up and crossing her arms under her chest protectively. She always felt naked in front of him, terribly visible, somehow even more so now that he was back.

"'Hello Football Head, don't get killed in the jungle. Regards, Helga.' That's what you wrote to me, 'Regards, Helga.' What was that?" Arnold bitterly recited her pithy letter from memory back at her in its entirety. Helga winced with every word.

Of course, she wanted to write him back. She wanted to write him every day. She had stacks of letters, actually, boxes and boxes of them written, each of them confessing in a new and special way all of her desires, all of her feelings for him and wishing him every happiness. All of them remained unsent, and up until Big Bob and Miriam divorced after she graduated, the boxes were in her old closet. Now they sat in storage, a library of her love for him, long since packed away.

"Well what was I supposed to say?" That was part sarcastic Helga, part sincere question. "You found your family, you got what you wanted. And we were ten."

"I told you how I felt, what happened?"

"Criminy, I just said what happened. You found your family. I was a ten year old girl you thought you had a crush on because I helped you find said family. You probably didn't even mean what you said - and what was I supposed to do, ask you to come back or something? Because, duh, we were ten years old."

"I meant what I said, Helga." Arnold's voice was quiet, but she could hear the anger in his voice. She remembered when he sounded like that the last time, right before their confrontation on the FTi building.

"Yeah, well, Bucko, that's all old history now," she lied. He had no idea how much it meant to her that he was back. She felt like dying every time he looked at her. The fact that he was upset with her tortured her.

"Is it? Dammit, Helga." Arnold's snarl of frustration was genuine.

She jumped when he cursed her name, flinching like she was just pricked by a sharp needle. He'd never cussed before! She'd never heard it before anyway, and the first time she ever did, her name filled his mouth with it. She tried to show how little she cared with a disdainful curl of her lip, but it took all of her effort. She squeezed her own rib cage hard, protectively.

"Are we done here?" She finally managed to ask. Arnold just looked at her for half a beat, shook his head, and then stood up from their table. Helga's heart was dropping into her stomach, terrified he would walk out that cafe door and out of her life forever.

"Arnold, wai-" She started to say, but Arnold held up a hand to silence her, turning slightly so he could face her.

"I'm going to step outside to get a bit of fresh air. When I come back I want you to talk to me truthfully. I know you have something else to say, and I'm going to hear it before I leave Hillwood"

Before he leaves? Helga's mind raced, a bolt of white panic settling down like molten lead in her guts, making her sick to her stomach. She wanted to throw up. When is he leaving again? How much time do I have? She didn't respond to his silent, questioning look. He was waiting for her to speak. She just looked up at him helplessly, her eyebrows high and her mouth pursed in fear. He seemed to wince when he processed her expression, and then finally turned to walk out of the door.

The door chime jingled once, and he was out the door into the late summer haze.

Helga's head lowered into the bare comfort of her hands, and she tried to find the world beneath her that had just rushed away.

Why is he leaving me again?

Helga stood from her seat in the lecture hall, shouldering her pink and black canvas messenger bag and grumbling to herself in a private monologue on her way out the door.

Criminy. Idiot professor. Of course the Bronte sisters don't represent a terribly huge stride forward in feminist thought for their time, but damn it all if they weren't successful women authors! Fucking male women's studies professors!

Helga's disagreement with her Women's Studies professor stemmed from a lot of things, mostly a difference in personality, but Helga couldn't help but suspect it was because she wore a lot of pink. And it was her choice to wear pink, she liked pink. She didn't wear it to impress anyone!

Almost anyone. She thought bitterly. She remembered that he had liked pink too, specifically pink on her. For that alone she felt like maybe her professor had a point, but her Pataki genetic predisposition to catastrophic stubbornness did now allow her to ever say it out loud. As it stood, she was still the professor's favorite student partially for her enthusiasm for the subject and also the fact that Helga seemed to be exhaustively well read. Most of the students in the 101-level class simply copied notes down and asked questions; Helga challenged her professor, often. So even though this was a common occurrence, and Helga would stomp out of the lecture hall with her bag wrenched tight in white-knuckled fury, she had the highest grade in the class.

That hardly calmed the stormy sea of her anger though.

Her temper was still legendary; most of the incoming Freshman to the University gave her a wide berth after, on Greek Day, a foolish prospective Fraternity freshman attempted to catcall her for image and prestige. She was a likely target for that kind of thing; Helga had grown into the same enviable Pataki body that Olga was blessed with. And even though her strong eyebrows and nearly perpetual frown turned a lot of people off, Helga's bold style of dress, powerful and athletic build she maintained well in the gym and batting cages, and glorious tumble of nearly hip-length blonde hair made her seem like a walking Valkyrie, an image she was proud of and cultivated. And yet despite the intimidating figure she cut physically, she kept her hair in pigtails most days - not today - and wore a lot of pink flannel. It gave the false impression that she wasapproachable. Soft. So it was that the unfortunate soul, who in his misogynistic baseness thought it would earn him a few brownie points with his prospective brothers, called out to her that day.

Not only did he not get into the Frat he wanted, but he dropped out of school after she corrected the number of teeth he thought he should have. It turns out, Helga asserted with her fist, he needed a few less.

So it was that Helga's powerful, obviously disgruntled stride was given a wide berth by the rest of the student body. With her eyes cast to the ground in a scowl, she could only just make out in her periphery that there was one figure stubbornly remaining in the trajectory she was on to her next class. Growling to herself, she walked faster, not about to alter her course for some box turtle of a Freshman that didn't know what was coming.

Her blue eyes flashed up suddenly and she felt her heart do a terrible flip inside her chest when he turned around right as she ran into him, toppling them both over in a collection of tall limbs and unique hair.

"Geez, anybody get the number of that freight train?" He grumbled."Not even for insurance purposes, I have a complaint." She heard him groan as he rolled off her to get up. She lay right where she fell under him, gripping the concrete with her hands and a look of absolute terror on her face.

Arnold Shortman rolled onto his heels, rubbing his arm where she ran into him, and looked into her eyes for the first time in ten years.

"Helga?" He blinked twice, his face a mix of something she couldn't recognize.

Her mouth was dry with panic, so she licked her lips and tried to swallow. All she could manage was a dry croak.

"H-hey, Arnold."

Helga had no idea what was going on or where she was going or how in the name of anything holy she was going there with Arnold.

And yet there he was, all six feet tall of him (When did that happen? She wondered), beautiful and golden (He's so tan! She marveled), and smiling at the city around them, and walking with her.

She walked in morbid silence, unable to do much beyond a simple nod or two to simple questions he asked her about the neighborhood. She just was having difficulty processing the situation. She was now nineteen years old, and Arnold had left Hillwood not long after their adventure to San Lorenzo. After all, he found his parents in the jungle, and what is an orphan kid going to do if he finally discovers his parents out there, alive and well? And then almost ten years later, she quite literally runs into him on her University campus.

What the fuck is happening? That was the basic limit of what her thoughts could process. Arnold, (Bless Him, she thought), for his part, was merely walking next to her, a respectful but agonizing nine inches of air between their shoulders. After he helped her up off the ground, Arnold had exploded with joy, shouting and talking a Tolstoy novel a minute about how he had missed her and he was so happy to see her and he couldn't believe how tall she was, and just about a trillion other things by Helga's reckoning. She had to forcibly shut him up with a hand on his shoulder.

"Cool it, Football Head. You look like you've seen a ghost. it's just Helga G. Pataki here." She tried to play it cool. Old habits die hard, don't they old girl? She mused to herself. She was scared, and surprised, and so unbelievably happy she could barely process the fact that he was standing right there, smiling in her general direction.

"It's just really good to see you, is all, Helga." The same brilliant, angelic smile he had back then, she thought, only now it was augmented by a more robust, adult jawline andoh my dear God is that his CHIN? She had trouble just looking at him. Time in South America was apparently verygood for handsomeness.

"What are you even doing here?" She had to ask.

"I'm back!" Big smile from Arnold.

"You're back? Back back?" She wondered if he caught the tremble of hope in her voice, the quiet plea.

"Let's just get caught up first, it's been so long! I saw Gerald at his Frat house and he said you'd probably be here. I'm just so glad to see you, Helga."

She stopped walking, and Arnold stopped a step behind her, turning to look at her.

"What's up, something wrong?" He had a slight accent, she just noticed, like he hadn't been speaking English much for a long time.

Helga hesitated. Of course, she had fantasized about this exact moment, this very precise occurrence. A thousand scenarios had been played out in her imagination, her fevered dreams, her private notebooks filled with poetry and prose dedicated to him, and his memory. There was a laundry list of things she wanted to say to him, things sheneeded to hear to get closure on her end. There were hours and hours of monologues written and prepared for the myriad variables for how she would see him again. Cross-indexed and aligned according to season, location, and method, she had at her mimetic disposal the immediate way she wanted to have this go down.

Helga wanted to jump on him and drown him in kisses, and destroy the pavement beneath them with the sheer force of their pelvic collision.

But seeing him in the flesh somehow dispelled all those fantasies. Somehow, the Arnold of her dreams just didn't measure up to the Arnold standing in front of her. She could barely think, now that he was here, much less remember what she wanted to say. All she could do was panic, and stall for time. In a sick haze she remembered her next class, and felt a cool wash of relief that she had a way out.

"I-I don't have a lot of time before my next class, Hair Boy." Arnold frowned at her. It was devastating, and she felt very cowardly. She held onto her arm for comfort, and looked away, unable to bear that dreadful expression on his glowing face..

"Oh. Well. What about after, maybe we can meet at the coffee shop down the corner when you're done? Is two hours enough?"

She gripped her bag uncomfortably. He better not be asking her on a date. He had too much to explain. Too much had happened. She had confined the memory of him to an almost impossible-to-reach location. Romantic interludes were simply not possible. And even though there was little else in the entire possibility stream of this quantum universe we inhabit she wanted more than to catch up with Arnold over a cup of coffee, she was downright terrified. Unfortunately the way she typically showed fear was with anger and impatience.

"Yeah I guess that works. This better not be some kind of date, Arnold." She clenched her fist at her side, and Arnold looked at her hand, nonplussed. He canted his head just slightly, and looked at her for a beat, as if he was searching her face. She added, quietly. "I mean it."

"It won't be. Just catching up."

She knew what she wanted to do, and she also know what would happen if she sat opposite of Arnold at a little table in a dimly lit, comfy coffee shop where the exotic smell of roasting espresso beans and the romantic sound of eclectic music filled the air. She wasn't sure her heart could take jumping full on into the Arnold ocean just yet. She begged inwardly for a chance to go back to the kiddie pool. With no savior coming to her aid, and nothing left to do but go with her own decision making ability, she chewed her lip and struggled with her choice. Finally, she knew what to do.

"Alright. I'll meet you there. Don't wait up if I'm late though, I'm busy." Why did you say that? She hated herself for accepting his outstretched hand at the same time she pushed it away.

"Great. I'll count every minute." Arnold smiled at her and she had to screw up her face in a sour expression to keep from a savage, heavy tear from tearing free of her eye and rolling down her cheek. He frowned again, looking at her in the same terrible, searching way he had moments before. She shifted uncomfortably in his gaze.

"Sure, great, alright, well, now that I have a creepy stalker I'll go be on my way to class and try not to worry you've got several duffle bags with my name on them." She snorted, and Arnold made a face.

"Whatever you say, Helga." And then he turned way, and for a hideous second Helga remembered the last time he turned away from her, and what that meant for her, and she almost tackled his back. If she did that, though, she knew, heartbreak and trouble would immediately follow.

"See ya soon, Arnold." She whispered the same last words she had when he left the last time, and staggered in a daze to her next class.

Of course, Helga couldn't concentrate in her class at all. Within her heart was a stirring turmoil that rose like boiling water under her skin, and left her dizzy and surly. Thank God this is just Russian History. Helga was thankful that her easiest subject in what was really a quite rigorous semester was what followed her confrontation with Arnold. Confrontation? Hardly, I was the only one that was confrontational, she cursed herself.

How was she supposed to listen to a lecture about what was normally one of her favorite subject, Catherine the Great, when the one-time love of her life was just hanging out at a coffee shop she could get to in two minutes full sprint? Helga was decidedly not paying attention, and held her thick, bold eyebrows knitted in concentration and worry. There was too much happening in her head to make any kind of coherent thoughts gather.

What she did know was that she was extremely happy and extremely afraid. There was precisely one human being in all seven-something billion on the planet that could do this to her. She had the unfortunate luck of meeting him when she was only three years old, and was unfortunately his servant in heart and mind ever since. That was what scared her. Even though she spent hours and hours daydreaming about this exact moment, wishing every day that she would turn a corner and bump into Arnold, she never imagined how it would feel when it really happened. It always went a lot simpler in her mind.

What would he say? What did he want? Was he really just eager to catch up to an old friend - was she just a friend to him still? Their parting had been the most confusing and difficult moment in her life, and not knowing how she stood with him anymore was nightmarish.

Easy, Helga, old girl. Remember, his letters towards the end got really chummy. Helga had to remind herself of the way his writing matured and changed over time. She felt unimaginably lucky to get to watch his style and prose grow as he wrote to her, unanswered. Except for once. That was all she could bring herself to manage, that single letter devoid of anything except a casual wish for his general well health.

"Don't die in the Jungle. Regards, Helga."

She remembered the words. She chewed on what to write for months. It took her six months from the time he left to write him back, six of his unanswered letters asking her to write him back so he could talk to her about his incredible hero parents, and that pathetic response was all she could muster.

She shifted in her chair and slunk further under the desk to try to keep from getting called on, feeling her face get hot with the shame furnace of embarrassment. She knew she was red, her fair skin always showed embarrassment really easily. Luckily, her professor was an old man and uninterested in most teenage problems, and kept his questions to the ones that participated the most. It was usually Helga, but today she was visibly pensive. The normally loud-mouthed and expressive girl was quiet and tense in her chair, unable to make eye contact where it normally was held confidently.

Putting it mildly, Helga Geraldine Pataki was shaken.

He's finally back and you're too afraid to go see him. Her courage with Arnold had always been fleeting. She somehow found it in special moments, the moments when she really needed it the most. She did not hesitate to act when she felt like he was threatened or being taken advantage of; Summer had learned that lesson. She smiled to herself suddenly remembering the "kiss" she gave Arnold in her Babewatch one piece bathing suit.Still the second best kiss of all time. She smirked. Thinking of the good moments gave her the strength to keep thinking of him, to press herself forward mentally with the grim determination that she wielded like a weapon in all other instances.

Before she knew it, however, her class was over, and she had to go see him. She had to walk herself to that coffee shop and try to not act like the entirety of her world had suddenly changed again. Helga could deal with adversity - that was her forte - but in this one subject she had to force herself to do it.

Somehow one foot led in front of the other all the way to the coffee shop. She stared at her pink and black Converse high-tops the entire time, staring at the little white heart with "A+H" she doodled on them as a private joke to herself. She just had to wear them today.

Her hand mechanically pushed the door open, and the door chime jingled once. She found his face immediately, and was so shocked at seeing him a second time, nearly as bad as the first, that she had to steady herself on the wall for just an instant.

He's so good looking. She breathed to herself. Time in South America or wherever he was apparently aged him extremely well. Arnold was never a big kid, but the man sitting at the table waiting for her was almost six feet tall, and tanned in that healthy way that screamed a lifetime of working in the tropics. His hair was still that wild blonde mess, but the sun had kissed it and given him the light-drenched waves that were scattered over his forehead and eyebrows now. His head still reminded her of a football. She smiled at that, but the jaw line defined itself and his chin got just strong enough to lift up and expose the Adam's apple under a light dusting of blonde stubble.

He looked so good to Helga in his ruby red flannel shirt with his sleeves rolled up. She thought she caught a glimpse of something tattooed on his forearms, which looked strong and surprisingly well built to her. She had no idea what he had done in San Lorenzo, but it evidently was good for the male figure.

He saw her. Those big green eyes of his opened up wide and little thin lines creased at his temples when he smiled at her. One of her knees buckled, and she had to grab a man passing her on the way out as she stumbled down the short steps into the coffee shop to walk to their table.

Finally, Helga crossed her legs in the chair opposite of Arnold and looked at him in silence, her face as neutral as she could manage. He was still smiling at her, and all she could do was look at him in reverence.

"You look great, Helga," he half-laughed when he said that. "Really, I mean, you, uh," he looked away shyly, and she almost whimpered. "You grew up," he finally managed to croak out. He looked back at her, smiling still.

"Y-yeah, well, ten years does that to a girl." She hoped he didn't hear the clear tinge of bitterness in her voice, but she was afraid it was very obvious.

He didn't respond to the sarcasm. "No pink ribbon though? I couldn't imagine you without it." Helga tried not to let herself think that meant he did a lot of imagining her.

"I still have it, it's just in storage somewhere." She didn't add that it was wrapped around the box full of his letters. "Besides, I don't see that dorky blue hat you were obsessed with."

"I still have it, don't worry. Anyway, I'm just excited to be back in the old neighborhood. I didn't expect to see you here, actually, I thought you would be off with Phoebe at some Ivy League somewhere, solving the world hunger crisis." He laughed a little.

"Saving the hungry was always your sort of deal, Football Head. Besides, I got into those colleges, I just didn't like their offers. The only schools worth my time are the ones that beg me to go." At last, she seemed to find her footing, some little toehold of confidence she could use.

"Hahaha, that's Helga all right. Well what do you study?"

"Double major in Creative Writing and Women's Studies. I'll probably get a masters in something if they beg me hard enough. Oh, and pay me." She scratched at her arm, the only visible sign of body language that she was nervous. She needed to get the conversation off of her somehow. "So, uh, how about some coffee, Hairboy?"

"Oh right! Yeah, give me a second. I'll buy - not in a date way, just friends." He smiled at her reassuringly, standing from the table. She nodded at him, turning her head to look at something else. Anything else.

She couldn't help herself though, and whipped her head back around to check him out as he walked to the counter. Strong legs and a perfect ass too, and in old jeans. God, kill me, strike me dead, for I am unworthy to gaze upon such perfection. Are those dusty cowboy boots? Who is this guy? When did he become a caballero? She marveled at this Arnold ten feet away from her, looking up at the coffee shop menu in the handsome, warm light, totally oblivious of her gawking. For a second she couldn't remember the last time she felt this nervous, this physically sick just from looking at someone. But then she could, and bitterly recalled the last time he walked away for good.

He came back with two small white porcelain cups steaming and fragrant with espresso.

"Dos cafés," he said, setting her cup in front of her. "Para mi amiga." She looked at him a little funny, her bold eyebrows going up on her head, beneath her blonde bangs that she cast to the side away from the shaved surface of her scalp above the left ear.

"Oh sorry, I, uh, sometimes forget to speak English," he explained. She privately filed away that he was at least bilingual now. Another reason he was amazing, and perfect, and another dangerous weapon he had against her.

"Very fancy, Football Head, very fancy. So...so what's up? What do you wanna know about your, uh, hiatus?" She tried to get to the point of the matter. She needed to know why her. Was it just because she was one of the few left in their hometown? Did he seek her out first? She had to know. She lifted the cup of espresso to her face to inhale the deep scent, and to hide her nervous frown.

"I want to know about a lot of things, but I'll find out most of it at the party." He set his cup down, smiling disarmingly.

"Party? Beg your pardon?"

"Yeah, Gerald said he is throwing a big party at his Frat house this weekend and, get this," Arnold reached for his messenger bag, old, leather, and instantly recognizable as his father's. She wouldn't forget it, not in this lifetime. He pulled out a little black book, and Helga recognized that too. Her eyes narrowed when she saw it, instantly suspicious. Gerald and Phoebe's Little Black Book, the dossier of everyone worth knowing and every major event in the city. Spoils from a particularly dangerous adventure in high school. The ciphers contained in that humble Moleskine could destroy lives and make careers. "He's got pretty much everybody from the old gang coming."

"What? How is that possible, even for him?" Helga had to give props to Gerald's impressive network. He was the one who had - reluctantly - helped her get her first gig with her band, and a few more after that. All he asked for were favors he could cash in later. He had yet to call any of them in, and he had a lot. But she always expected that the well-connected athlete going to the same university as her would call her in the least convenient way possible. She just didn't expect him to throw his weight around with the Black Book.

"All he did was use this," Arnold smiled as he put the black book on the table in front of her. "And tell them who it was for."

Helga's eyebrows went up, and she clucked her tongue, sure Gerald was up to something disastrously inconvenient this time. Nothing good ever came from that book.

"I was impressed, and thankful," Arnold laughed, putting the black book back in his bag. "He let me borrow it to find the old gang still living nearby, and a few important others." Arnold looked down at their table and swept some strewn loose sugar off the surface, clearing his throat.

"Which is why we're here," he slowly continued. She wasn't sure why he was looking down, away from her, but it made her afraid.

He must be tired of looking at me in this light. I bet I look a terror, all sweaty and no makeup. If she hadn't already been catastrophically self-conscious she would have suddenly felt totally exposed.

"I had to see you first." His green eyes lifted, catching hers directly and holding them tight.

"Wh-wha, what?" She stammered her response. He had to see me first? What does he mean?

"I wrote you so many times, Helga. I had to see you first, to know the truth for myself." Arnold was always so driven and obsessed with the truth. It was easily one of his most heroic qualities to her, but Helga found herself stymied by it often. Moments like now were a prime example.

She didn't respond for a good while, looking at her hands on the table, eyebrows up and her expression sad.

Finally, she spoke, slowly, and quietly, so Arnold had to lean in close to hear her.

"You should have come back sooner, Football Head."

Arnold came back into the cafe ten minutes or so after he left the table. She watched him call someone on his cell phone when he left, animatedly speaking Spanish and visibly frustrated. It bothered her that she was the reason he was upset, but it fascinated her that this man she loved - loved still? - had grown so different yet remained so utterly the same.

When he sat down, she started to talk immediately, before her courage left her.

"I wrote you back every single day," she began hastily. "I just never sent them to you. I couldn't. Every letter started with 'I miss you' and ended with 'Please come home.' Criminy, Arnold, do you know how hard it was when you left? How scared I was that I would never see you again? Every letter you wrote me was a new pleasure, an amazing soul-dizzying joy that I treasured, hoarded, kept in meticulous order by date in a huge box I marked 'Important.' I was twelve when you stopped sending them every month, and sixteen when they stopped entirely. I figured you, I don't know, moved on or something."

Arnold did not answer, but just looked at her like he wanted her to go on. She was expecting him to jump in, and his silence put her off balance, prompting her to keep spilling her guts.

"So yeah, uh...so, I, I wanted to send them all to you. I wanted to know what your family was like, what you were going through, and tell you all about what was happening here. But, I figured Gerald was already telling most of the important stuff, and besides I couldn't send you something asking you to leave your family. But I was ten, and then a teen, and I..." Helga paused, forcing the words out of her mouth slowly. "I m-m-mmmissed you. That was what I wanted. I wanted you to leave them and come back to me. It was selfish. It would have hurt you."

Arnold started to make a face at her, and opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him quickly.

"No, Arnold, it would have been terrible. You don't know what I wrote. I couldn't help it, every time I started to write something friendly and apologetic for not writing back yet, everything just came pouring out of me, all over the damn pages, and in between the hot pissed off tears and ink stains were the words 'I need you every day.' I don't know how I managed to write what you got. It's a fucking miracle it was less than nine pages."

"So you just didn't send anything instead." Arnold's voice was flat.

"I couldn't be selfish and burden your new life with your parents with my stupid girlhood crush. I knew better. I hated it, but I knew someone as amazing as you would find someone out there. I was just going to be happy with what I had, nice childhood memories of a wonderful boy who was always nice to me no matter how nasty I got to him. I had the whole thing packaged up all neat and tidy, see, a real lovely little memory, and I would just live on and never forget. That was all I could do. Anything more wouldn't have been fair, or realistic, or even possible. And...and I figured you...you didn't mean what you said in the jungle, because you never said it again."

The silence between them was choking, stifling. Helga felt dizzy and sick, even worse than before. She certainly hadn't meant to totally pour her guts out to her first childhood love today. That was not on her agenda. All she could do was hope it was enough to appease him, to make him stay here to talk to her some more. She felt helpless, under his scrutiny, observed. She hated the sensation even as she thrilled under it.

Finally, Arnold gave her his reply.

"I just wanted to talk to you." His voice didn't even hide the hurt. She despaired that she hurt him. She knew she had to. She knew she would have to again. Her resolve, her absolute fortitude was that she could always do what she thought was right for him, even if it murdered her. He spoke again, this time with a bit more anger. "Nothing back for six years, Helga. Except that one letter, like nothing even happened. But it did. I said that I loved you back then, and I meant it. I may have just been ten years old, but I knew I meant it."

Her heart almost totally stopped, hammering so hard in her chest she felt it in her eyes. He couldn't imagine the power those words held over her, and what they did to her when he spoke them about her. But she was saddened by them, too, because she knew they were wasted. That was a long time ago. They were different now. He didn't know who he cared about, and it certainly wasn't the Helga in front of him. At best, she argued with herself, he thinks he loved some idea of me that got away from him and let him fantasize all day. She couldn't let herself believe him. It's over, now.

"Arnold..." Helga sighed. She was so tired. He wearied her, being this close to the sun was exhausting, blistering, and cruel to her heart. She despaired to leave his presence again, ever, but she had to get up before she couldn't ever stand up again.

"...The past is the past." Her gaze was level with his. This was maybe the longest conversation she had ever had with him, and she basically had just ended it.

Arnold looked into her face for several beats. He was badly hurt. She saw it plainly on his honest, open features, those beautiful features she would be haunted by, she knew, the rest of her life. She didn't mean a word of it. She thought she had put him in a little corner of her heart, fully sequestered and kept safe, but out of the way. Where he couldn't do any harm anymore. But today taught her, with terrible demonstration, that hewas her heart, the whole of it, and she lived to reflect him back on the world.

But she knew he had to let whatever boyish fascination he had for her go, for his sake. Ten years was ten too many to pine for Helga Geraldine Pataki. By being unable to do anything except ignore him she proved herself unworthy of his attention. Her failure was one of a spiritual collapse, a total ethical paralytic fit, an inexcusable stalemate.

Her heart dropped again when he stood up from the table. His eyes lowered, finally leaving hers, and he slid a piece of paper onto the table in front of her. Without saying another word, Her Football Head walked out of the cafe, and for all she knew, her life again.

Helga's feet curled under her chair and her hands balled into fists at her sides, her arms squeezing her waist as hard as she could to force air into her lungs. Her face was pressed on the table hard, eyes squeezed shut to keep the hot torrent in her tear ducts from welling up out of control. It was like he took her liver out.

Helga's hands gripped her pink shirt for purchase, and she felt one of the fat tears scream an angry line down her face. It had been many years since she shed any tears for Arnold; tonight, she would double them all.

Helga woke up to feel her phone buzzing furiously in her messenger bag against her leg.

She raised her head, temporarily unsure of her surroundings. Then she remembered all that had transpired not long ago in the coffee shop at the table she was dozing off on. The sick feeling started to come roaring back, so she pushed it down with the angry fact that she let herself fall asleep in exhaustion from the ordeal.

Crying alone in a coffee shop was one thing, but falling asleep from the emotions of it all was something Helga was not proud of.

Her leg felt the insistent buzz of her phone again. Whoever it was kept calling her, and wouldn't stop, she wagered, until she finally answered. Growling, she bent down to retrieve her pink phone from the bag.

She looked at the contact flashing on her screen. It was Gerald.

Beep.

"What is it?" The impatience and fury in her voice was evident.

"Shut up Pataki, and just listen." The fury in his voice was just as obvious, and shocking. Gerald hardly ever got mad in this way that she could recall.

"Listening," she ground out from between clenched teeth.

"You owe me a few big fat favors by my count, am I right, Pataki?"

"I may owe you a few minor favors. What of it, Afroboy?" She fell to old habits, referring to him by the new nickname she adopted when he started to pick out his magnificent hair into a stately and round afro.

"Time to cash in. Get your band ready for performing, and I mean tippity fucking top shape. You and Brainy are gonna play my party this weekend."

"What? No, Gerald, I can't possibly do that-"

"Shut up Pataki," he spat, impatience in his voice clear as day. "I have half a mind to march to that coffee shop and upend your tall blonde ass. He waits to see you for ten goddamn years and this is how you go with it?"

"Gerald, off this subject. Now." Helga tried to sound as intimidating as she could over the phone. It normally worked on the handsome, athletic Gerald, who typically didn't really want to tango with her.

He didn't back down.

"No, you hold up and listen to this: I'm not going to let you fuck up our plans. So you better step in line and do as you're told for once in your fucking life."

Helga's brain raced. Her considerable intelligence was able to disassemble the pieces of this conversation that previously remained elusive; like a great jigsaw a piece locked into place here, another snugly fell where its contours found the best fit. Her strong eyebrows knitted up and she breathed a surprised huff into the phone. Gerald was throwing him a party with all their old gang, or at least as many as could be reached in short notice. He was calling in favors, one at a time, from those that owed him from a lifetime of friendly debts. All those people with a young lifetime of problems unresolved, old grudges, and old loves. A massive reunion of Troubles for Arnold to see. Gerald was moving big things into place, and making grand gestures, and he was even using Helga's band as a resource. She knew what was happening here.

"You're trying to keep him here, aren't you?" Helga's voice was surprise tempered with outrage, and just the smallest tinge of hope.

"You're damn right, Pataki. What's the problem?" Gerald's voice challenged her to question him. She heard the tremble of anger in his voice.

Helga paused for several beats, her mind quickly racing with all the difficult choices she had just made, struggling with the truth she felt she knew in her heart, and the ugly conclusions that fell upon her as a result. She knew Arnold would have a better life without her. If he even felt anything for her - and Helga was sure beyond any doubting that he didn't - it was a misguided type of gratitude the lovely, loving, and generous Arnoldwanted to be something more. She was no good for him, ever, and even though in her deepest desires he was hers, Helga would never let that happen, for his own good.

But that didn't mean he couldn't stay here.

Helga lifted the piece of paper Arnold slipped her from the table, unfolding the tiny note and reading the contents entirely. Her eyes widened at the contents, unable to accept what she saw but staring at it nonetheless. She clenched her jaw, and slapped the paper down on the table decisively.

"No problem at all, Afroboy," she boldly announced. "I'm in. What do we do next?"

On the opposite end of the line, Gerald smiled wide, his white teeth showing.

"Baby, all you gotta do next is sing."