Restart
-0-
and don't trust poets,
we're no good
we love pretending that our jagged edges tantamount to a beautiful disaster, but in reality –
there ain't nothing beautiful about shaky hands holding a cigarette and
empty eyes staring at the cracks in the walls.
- Lana Rafaela
-0-
"He . . .He. . . Helga? Is that really you?"
The initial shock wears off when he cups her face. She takes his hands off and looks away, unable to take his eyes on her. "Who else would it be, Football head?"
"I – I –" he stammers, before passing out on her, his head dropping on her shoulders. She almost falls back due to his weight, but she manages to keep them standing.
She tries to wake him up, but he only grunts. Deep breaths, she tells herself. She hails a cab.
-0-
She takes him to the hospital because she's paranoid. She fills out some forms with whatever personal information she remembers about him. She surprises herself with how much she still recalls.
A nurse checks up on Arnold. She asks her more questions, about where he's been, how much he'd been drinking, if he'd taking anything else other than alcohol. Helga tells her she doesn't know, causing the nurse's eyebrows to rise.
A few moments later, a doctor comes. He tells her that her boyfriend's fine, that his blood alcohol level is not high enough to cause much alarm.
"You should probably take him home," the doctor says. "Stay with him. Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. Let him take his rest."
"He's not my boyfriend," she says, but apparently it wasn't loud enough for the doctor to hear. He just gives her a piece of paper, excuses himself, and goes on to the next patient.
Helga curses under her breath. So what will she do now? She doesn't know where Arnold lives. She doesn't even know why he's in the same city as her. Who should she call? Stella? Miles? Phil? They're miles away from here. Maybe he has a roommate, or even as it pains her to even think about it, a girlfriend.
She sighs. It's not like she could call any of them. She looks at the blond man next to her. He still looks like the Arnold she used to know, only older. Sure, his football shaped head is less football shaped now and his chin is now lined with stubbles she has not seen before. Still, she recognizes the shape of his eyes, the curve of his lips. She wonders if . . . She stops herself, tries to focus at the task at hand.
She calls an uber driver. When the car arrives, she slaps Arnold a few times, trying to wake him up. His eyes open, and look at her with a blank expression.
"Arnold, I need you to help me. Can you stand up?"
He nods and stands up. He wobbles a bit, so she puts her arms around him for support.
"Can you walk?"
He nods again. "Okay then," she says. "Walk."
Arnold does as he is told.
The uber driver helps her take Arnold in the cab, and then later, out of it and into her apartment.
She drags him to her bed.
She slumps at the floor, her back on the side of the bed. Then, she turns around and observes him. She stands up. She grabs a chair, put it beside the bed and sat on it. She watches Arnold as she begins to slowly drift asleep.
-0-
She feels stiffness in her neck and moves a bit. She can't seem to get on a comfortable position so she decides to open her eyes. She stares at the ceiling moments and then moves her attention to her bed. Arnold is still sleeping. She looks at the clock. It's 7:06 am. She has to go to work in about two hours.
She stands up and checks if Arnold is still breathing. When she judges everything to be okay, she goes to the small space she calls her kitchen, heats up some water for coffee. She takes out a few eggs and fries them. She thinks of what she'll say when Arnold finally wakes up. Should she let him stay for breakfast? Will he be angry? Should she ask him how he's been? Maybe he'll still be asleep when she leaves. Maybe she can just leave him a note, or something, pretend this never happened. This was a bad idea. She shouldn't have taken him home. Maybe –
The smell of burning food brings her back to reality. She curses, turns off the stove.
"Is everything alright?" a voice behind her says.
Great, she thinks. She turns around. The tormentor of her thoughts is standing just a few feet away from her.
-0-
The next few moments are surprisingly normal. Arnold volunteers to cook for her. She lets him because she doesn't really know what to do with him here.
They don't talk. It's as if both of them are trying to weigh each other, trying to see where they should stand.
"So, this is awkward," Arnold says finally, breaking the tension in the air.
"Don't look at me. I'm not the one who goes home alone drunk and ends up almost getting hit by a truck," she replies without thinking, and she fears that it came off as too aloof. Criminy, wasn't it just yesterday when she was telling herself she'll find him one day and say all her thanks and apologies?
Thankfully, Arnold shrugs it off, runs his hand through his hair. "Right. Sorry about that. Thanks for taking care of me, though."
She nods, and silence fills the room again.
"How are you, Helga? I haven't seen you in what? Six, seven years?"
"Why do you even care?" She retorts, and she immediately chastises herself. What is wrong with her? She's not the old Helga anymore. She's different. She's okay now. She doesn't have to bring up her walls. She's okay. She's okay, but looking at him now, she feels 15 again, and her old habits are beginning to rise up and she hates it. "I'm sorry, what, what I meant to say is that I'm fine. I mean, I'm doing fine. I graduated college, just last June. Got a job as a marketing assistant. Everything's going well, I guess. Um, how about you?"
She looks up, and finds that he's smiling. "I'm fine, too, I guess. I – "
Her phone rings. It's Martha, and for once, she's grateful to be hearing about what impossible tasks her boss would give her. She takes it. Martha tells her to come to the office earlier, because their client changed their venue at the last minute and she needs her help. Helga tells her she'll be there in 15 minutes before ending the call and locking eyes with her blonde ex-boyfriend.
"I'm sorry, I have to go. Work matters. I just need to shower and stuff. Will you be okay? You can stay here if you want. I'll take care of the dishes later." She goes to her room and looks for decent clothes.
"Oh no, it's okay. I'll leave too." he calls after her. She bursts out of her room carrying her clothes and hurries to the bathroom. Arnold continues. "I'll just wait for you to finish and clean up a little bit here. I don't actually know where I am."
"Right. Of course." Helga calls out before she turns on the running water. Right, she forgot she hasn't actually given him her address and she didn't really ask him where he lived.
She finishes her shower as quickly as she could because Martha needs her as soon as possible and not because a certain football head is right outside her door, making her nervous. She brushes her teeth as quickly as possible, too.
She ignores the compulsion to take a little more time to fix her hair and do her makeup, because she's late, damn it. She doesn't need to look a little bit better just because Arnold is here. They're just old friends who happened to bump into each other in the most inconvenient way.
She goes out of the bathroom and Arnold looks up from the couch. She finds that the dishes are neatly piled in the sink and the table is wiped clean. She looks back at him, and sees that Arnold's eyes are still boring into her.
"Are you ready?"
That seems to bring him back to reality. "Yeah," he says.
"Okay, let me get my bag."
They go out the door a few moments later. He tells her he'll go to his apartment and he gives her his address. She finds out he lives just about 10 minutes away. She gives him directions.
"Thanks, Helga," he says and for a moment, Helga thinks he'll say more. But he doesn't and only turns away.
It would so easy, just to let him go like that. She could just tell him the words she wants to say in a later time, when she's ready. But something nags her, causing her to call him back and reach for his arm.
"Wait," she says. She tugs on her hair. "I'm really sorry our reunion was cut short. Maybe we can meet tonight? Have dinner? Just to catch up. If you're not busy, that is." She almost slaps herself with how awkward that sounded.
Still, he smiles at her. "I'd like that."
They exchange phone numbers. He tells her he's free from 4pm onwards and Helga tells him she'll text him when she gets out from work.
-0-
She tells him to go to a diner she usually goes to. Nothing fancy, because she's a broke recent graduate who's trying to save money for law school.
She's a little late, and when she arrives, he's already there.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey," he replies.
Arnold orders spaghetti and meatballs and medium iced tea while she orders a large chocolate milkshake, a bowl of chicken wings, a cheeseburger and some fries.
She notices Arnold smirk. "What?" she asks.
"I see you've gotten your appetite back."
"Haha. Very funny, Arnoldo. Work was hell today. I deserve it."
"Whatever you say, Helga."
Helga rolls her eyes, and then smiles. She misses him more than she ever cares to admit.
She asks about what he's been doing. He says he graduated from Hillwood University last June and was accepted to veterinary school here in this city. In return, she tells him about her own university, about her plans to go to law school and about why she accepted this marketing job a few hours away from where Olga and Bob were. They laughed about the fact that they were living at the same city for about four months and only found each other now.
He asks about her family. She tells them they're adjusting pretty well and for the first time it wasn't a lie. She tells him about Olga's marriage, and how she's now carrying her first baby. She tells him about Olga's husband Matt and the business he's starting to build with Bob.
She asks about his family. She asks about Miles, Stella, and his little brother Theo who was just a year old when she left. He tells her they're fine, but he doesn't really get to talk them much now because he's busy adjusting to school. He doesn't elaborate. Then, she asks about his grandmother and his grandfather. He tells her Phil died in a car accident in his second year of college and that Gertie died in her sleep a year afterwards due to Alzheimer complications.
"I'm sorry," she says, unable to think of anything else to say.
"Don't be," he says, and she sees the same unsettling thing in his eyes that she noticed the day she hauled him to the side of the road.
She lets him change the subject, lets him tell her about crazy teachers and about old classmates, lets him ask her about new friends and part-time jobs.
She doesn't know how much time they passed, but suddenly, the diner becomes too crowded, and they decided to head out.
"It's still early," Arnold says. "Do you want to stay at my place first? We could get some ice cream and watch a movie. I'll drive you home afterwards."
For a moment, she hesitates, but she ultimately agrees. She's an idiot, apparently.
They go to a convenience store and buy a tub of ice cream. Then, he drives her to his apartment and introduces her to his gangly roommate Kent.
"Finally, my boy brought a girl home," he says to her. "And here I was, beginning to think he's some kind of alien. All he does is study and work."
"Kent," Arnold warns.
"Fine, fine. You two have your fun. I'm going to my room and do . . . things." Helga pretends not to see the wink he gave to Arnold.
A slam of the door signals that Kent is out of the earshot. Helga turns to Arnold. "So, all work and study, huh? No girlfriends?"
"Well, like I said, busy," he says, his cheeks a little pink. "And besides it doesn't look like you have time for that yourself. I think if you had a boyfriend, I would have heard of him by now."
"Who says I don't have a boyfriend?"
Maybe she is imagining it, but Arnold flinches while he was pulling the ice cream out of the bag. "Well, do you?"
"No," she says and looks for spoons.
She doesn't catch Arnold smile from behind.
They decide to watch a horror movie on his laptop. They sit on opposite sides of the couch, bowls of ice cream on one hand. They argue about plot holes and dumb protagonists.
They watch another movie afterwards, even after both of their ice creams are done. They're closer now, and she doesn't know whether she moved or he did. It's getting late, and she should be going home, but her body just can't make the first move to say goodbye.
They decide to watch another movie, and eventually, she finds herself drifting to sleep, the smell of him filling her lungs.
-0-
She wakes up, and finds that she is leaning on Arnold's chest, her legs curled on the sofa. She shoots up. What is she doing? She begins to gather her belongings. She knows that he offered to drive her home, but all she can hear is a voice telling her that she needs to get out of here, fast. She didn't plan for this to go this far. Something is tugging in her chest again, and criminy, she doesn't want to know what it means.
Suddenly, a hand clutches her arm. "Helga," Arnold says, and Helga wonders of he's awake or he's just dreaming.
His eyes open. He's waking up then. "Helga, stay," he says, sitting up and facing her. "Please, stay."
The way he said it was so breathless, almost pleading. She freezes on the spot. There's that look in his eyes again, the one she saw briefly in the diner, the one she saw when he hauled him to the side of the road.
She opens her mouth to say something, but no words come out. They don't have a chance to when his lips suddenly crashes into hers.
Instinctively, she closes her eyes. She wants this, she really does. She can kiss the living daylights out of him, just like all the times she did when they were 14. Probably even more passionately than that. But alarm bells are ringing fiercely in her mind, screaming at her that this is wrong.
So she pushes him away, and she sees it again. That look. All this time, she can't help but feel that there's something off about Arnold. Sure, their talks went smoothly, but for brief moments, she sees . . . something. She thinks that maybe it's because they've grown up and changed, but a voice in the back of her head tells her that's not entirely it.
Looking at him now, she realizes what that something is. She knows that look. She'd seen it before in the mirror, back when she was thinking of breaking up with him, back when she first moved away from Hillwood, back when she –
"I'm sorry, I . . . I don't know what came over me," he says, pulling her out of her thoughts. He looks away and puts distance between them. He stands up. "Go get your things. I'll take you home."
She knows she's hurting him, and that's the last thing she wants to do. She wants, no, needs him understand. She takes his hand, and forces him to look at her before he gets away. "I'm sorry," she says, choking on her words. "I'm sorry Arnold, but I can't save you."
She feels wetness in her cheeks. Is she crying? When did she start crying?
"Wha - what?"
"You think a relationship would save you, but it won't. It won't Arnold."
He wipes tears from her face with her thumb, confused . "What . . . What makes you think that's why I kissed you?"
She sighs and berates herself for not pinpointing it out sooner. There's a question that's been bugging her ever since he met him again. "Arnold, why didn't you move?"
He stops touching her, and his face becomes unreadable. "What do you mean?"
"You stood in the middle of the road for more than a minute Arnold. I know you would have seen the truck approaching. Don't try to deny it. I was there. Why didn't you move?"
"I was drunk Helga. I don't really remember much about it," he says, turning away.
"Your blood alcohol level was 0.082%, just a bit above legal drunkenness. You weren't that drunk. An approaching truck would have still shocked you enough and cause you to move away. And even if you were as drunk as you say you are, why did you walk home alone? Wasn't someone with you? If you didn't, you have a roommate. You could have called. It's so unlike you to be so careless. Why Arnold?"
"Why . . . why are you changing the subject?"
His eyes are piercing into her now, and she doesn't know what to say. "I . . . I'm sorry," she says turning away. She gathers the courage to do what she should have done earlier. Way, way earlier. "I have to go. Don't worry. I'll get a cab."
She rushes out of his apartment, never looking back.
A/N: So you probably know by now that I changed my mind. I am continuing this story. Gosh, this pairing just refuses to let me go. Don't worry, this will have a happy ending (I hope). Please be patient with me though. It will probably take a while before I post the third and final chapter. Thank you.