There was a resonating thunk followed by an aggravated grunt exposed in an empty hallway. Kyle Broflovski had just aggressively threw his empty coke bottle into the metal trash bin in rage, as if taking his frustrations out on the trash bin would alleviate his anger (it didn't). He proceeded his private tantrum by violently kicking the trash bin, having it clunk against the stucco walls. There was a sudden grumble from a shocked passerby that quickly shuffled away from the hallway, once again leaving Kyle empty. Kyle felt the blush creep up to his cheeks as he tugged at the flaps of his ushanka in embarrassment. Kyle muttered some string of curses under his breath and walked out of the hallway that lead to the open beach. He had just came out of a fairly vacant fishing shop, where he entered simply to escape the consistent hassle that was Ericka Cartman. As he exited the fishing shop, a setting where he lingered in for at least twenty minutes, he saw Ericka dashing at the far distance away from the beach and towards the parking lot. There was laughter behind her and she bore clenched fists and tight lips, her eyes covered in her bug-eyed sun glasses that reached down to her mid-cheeks. He turned his head to the direction of the laughter and saw vague figures of his friends. Friends were with him and Ericka in a beach party that they decided to execute for the sake of it being summer. It was the entire gang: Stan, him, Kenny, Cartman, Wendy, Craig, Token, Tweek, Bebe, Clyde, Jimmy, and so on. He figured that Ericka, as always, had started some fight in which she held some intolerant, immoral opinion of, and as the bitchy jerk she was, left when the argument was too heated and not going her way.
As he walked towards the vast space of the beach with his sandals gathering clumps of sand between his toes and against the soles of his feet, he realized that the laughter had come from Craig, Clyde, and Token. The others were far away in the shores of the beach.
"Hey." He called out to them, their laughter subsiding slightly but not entirely. "What's up with her?" Kyle motioned his head in a quick jerk to the direction that Ericka trudged off to.
"The bitch is just pissed off we called her a fatty and that she was the whale of the beach." Clyde answered, ruffling his hair before covering it with a snap-back cap.
It was a generally normal subject to discuss when Ericka was especially intolerable. She never took serious offense to it before, because it was always some quick insult depicted as "fat ass". Still, when Kyle heard that, he felt uncomfortable and almost concerned. Sure she was a bitch and intolerable at best, but wasn't that going a bit too far? He tried to remind himself this was Ericka Cartman they were talking about. Token shrugged. "She said she's gonna drive off without us, but she doesn't even have the keys to my fucking car. Idiot."
"She might do something stupid or insane… or both." Kyle sighed. "I'll drag her ass back."
"Good luck with that." Craig added sarcastically.
Kyle walked away from the three and towards the direction that he saw Ericka trudging to. He came across the parking lot of the beach and glanced around for Token's car, a large van that brought the bulk of the gang to the beach. He spotted the conspicuous van from afar and began his walk towards it. The closer he came to the van, the more he could see the quite plump figure of Ericka Cartman inside the car. She was leaning against the car window, the top of her head and her shoulders the only visible thing to distinguish her. When Kyle stood directly in front of the car window, he knocked on it. That action slightly frightened Ericka, having her jump back in an unexpected flinch. Her surprise immediately dissipated into an expression only evident in her furrowed brows – seeing as her large sunglasses masked anything her eyes may have been showing - as she flipped him off. Kyle rolled his eyes.
"Open the door, Cartman." He said as he knocked again. She ignored him and returned to her original position. He tried to open the door manually and succeeded, having Ericka almost slump out of the car, her stable position disrupted. Kyle held her by the shoulder before she fell completely.
"Oh, God dammit! Don't touch me!" She growled bitterly, swatting his arm away in an ungrateful gesture and then regaining her composure.
"Oh, fuck you. It's not my fault you were dumb enough to leave the car door unlocked." Kyle growled back. "How the fuck did you even get in without the keys?"
"Kenny taught me." She simply answered before saying, "I don't want to talk to you, or any fucking one." Her voice rather off as she attempted to step out of the car and walk away.
Kyle immediately noticed the change in the tone of her voice, it was wavering… almost breaking.
"Hey hey," he said in a more tender voice than he intended, "everything okay?"
"Piss off, kike." She barked, her voice surely breaking. "Don't act like you give a fuck."
Kyle was about to retort with an aggressively bitter attack on his own until he took note of her bottom lips trembling. It was then that he took a good look at her face before she quickly turned it away to walk out of the area. She had tears streaming down her cheek.
Kyle grasped at her shoulders once again. "I'm not fucking pretending to care. Just tell me what's up." She scoffed at him before trying to escape his grasp. He held onto her tighter. "Dude, just fucking tell me."
She smacked his hands off of her. "Why should I? You fucking left anyways." She was referring to Kyle leaving to the fishing shop out of frustration earlier. She seemed to be trying so very hard to keep herself from crying, and was failing miserably.
"You pissed me off!" He defended.
"Whatever." She shrugged bitterly and turned to leave again. Kyle ran to place himself in front of her. She tried to avoid him by going around him, but Kyle blocked every path she attempted to make. "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!" She said, yelling and irritated by Kyle's persistence.
"Ericka." He said in a softer tone, almost as if saying cut the crap and let me help you.
"What the fuck can you do about this!" She grabbed her stomach, a roll of fat pressed under her meaty hands.
"Yeah, you're fat. So what?" Kyle shrugged.
Ericka bit her lip, her brows furrowed in a painful look. "I hate you so much." She said in a trembled voice, trying to leave again.
Kyle grabbed her shoulders once again. "Fucking listen!" He growled. "So what if your fat? You're fucking fat. Get over it. That's not necessarily a bad thing."
"Oh really?" She spat out.
He sighed painfully, cringing in hesitation. "I'm going to tell you something, and you better not repeat this to any fucking one, or I'll slit your throat mercilessly. Got it?"
She bore a face of confusion. He took her sunglasses from her face and looked into her red, puffy eyes. Her mascara was smudged gracelessly and she looked away from him in embarrassment. "You're fat, but you're one of the hottest girls in South Park. I swear you're at the very least a ten. So what if you're fat? Own it."
She looked up at him, wide-eyed with red cheeks. It was true. Ericka was overweight, not grossly, but undeniably fat. Her footsteps were heavy when she walked and her arms were thick. She had plump cheeks and meaty hands. Despite all of that, she was gorgeous. She had a cute buttoned nose and cat like eyes that would sometimes make boys shy. She had a confident aura and walk, her confidence bleeding out in every little move she made. That was one of her best, among many, appeals.
She continued to look at him in shock, eventually leading her eyes down and away from his face. He sighed and stood up straight, his height towering above her – despite her high heels. "But I didn't say that. And you didn't hear that. Got it? Because you're still a bitch and insufferable and utterly bigoted in every sense of the word. So what if you're hot, you still got a nasty personality."
She knew he was trying to downplay his compliment and that made her smile slightly. "And you're still a dirty kike." She said smiling up at him. It was a genuine smile of gratitude that made Kyle look away, his cheeks red and his brows furrowed defiantly, clearing his throat.
"Oh, fuck off." He knew he should have been insulted from that comment at the very least, but he felt unquestionably happy. He looked back at her and saw her wiping away her smudged mascara with a tissue.
"So Kenny taught you how to open a locked door?" Kyle said, trying to fill in the awkward silence.
"He's a street rat, what do you expect?" She shrugged. "God damn poor kids, I swear."
"You're not that rich either." Kyle laughed.
"You're not that rich either." She repeated in a mocking tone. "Fuck you. I don't have an underground lair of Jew gold hidden away somewhere."
He shook his head while pinching the bridge of his nose, a contagious habit that came from Stan. "You're the most ridiculous woman I'll ever meet. That's for sure."
He sighed and leaned his back against the van as she took out mascara and black eyeliner from her beach bag, redoing her makeup and using the car window as a mirror. Kyle was looking at the other side of the parking lot, trying to count how many gray cars he could find until she finished. That's when, without warning, he felt thick arms wrap around his neck and a warm body pressed against his chest. He was pulled into a tight hug from Ericka Cartman, of all people. He was, at first, reluctant and confused, hanging his arms in the air as if he didn't know what to do with them. After a while, he slowly gave in and hugged her back almost just as tightly, her head buried in his bare neck and his chin resting on her shoulders. It was increasingly embarrassing, seeing as how they were both wearing bathing suits. After a long while she let go, and he could immediately feel the loss of warm that left with her. She walked away wordlessly towards the beach, leaving him almost breathless and confused, but utterly entranced. He cursed under his breath and ran after her to catch up. He had been trying to deny it for months, but that was the moment when he couldn't deny it any longer. He was in love with her.