Bearly Interested (7 page)

She opened the door of her apartment and stumbled in. It was empty again. No food cooking on the stove, no glass of wine waiting for her and definitely no irritating bear shifter to distract her. Just a bunch of dying flowers in vases scattered around her apartment. Just like she wanted.

Her shoulders slumped down and she sighed.

There was a plate of freshly baked blueberry muffins on the counter from the morning. She grabbed one and headed to the balcony. It felt weird having all of his stuff gone. No suitcase in the corner and no blanket on the bed. Seeing her apartment void of his stuff felt like returning to your bedroom after an exciting trip abroad. Boring. Plain. Unexciting. Lonely.

She sat on the balcony and glanced up at the night sky. Sidney would be back home right now. She pictured him around the campfire gazing up at the endless beauty of a trillion stars. She stared at the muted black sky above her apartment building and sighed.

The couple in the building across the street was having another romantic, candlelit dinner. They were holding hands and talking.

This sucks
.

This was what she told herself she wanted. And Angie was always someone who knew what she wanted.

She leaned her head back on the chair and closed her eyes. She had been called a genius before, she had been a member of Mensa since she was six, she graduated University when she was nineteen and she was one of the top, leading Quantum Electrochemists in the world.

But she was starting to slowly realize something.

When it came to relationships she didn’t know shit.

six

“Just one more time,” Sidney said, popping the VHS tape into the VCR.

Connor, Grace and Edwin groaned on the couch. “Sidney you made us watch these every day for a week now,” Connor complained.

“Oh no I left the iron on,” Grace said, sprinting out of the room. She ran through the cabin and out the front door. Sidney shrugged. It was better with just the guys anyway. He needed some male bonding time to mend his broken heart.

“I better go help her,” Edwin said, standing up.

Connor grabbed his shirt and yanked him down onto the couch. “If I have to stay than you have to stay.”

“Thanks guys,” Sidney said, grabbing the remote and sitting down. The chair squeaked under him as he crushed the life out of the springs. “It’s the only thing that makes me feel better anymore.”

Connor huffed. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Sidney smiled and hit play. He fast forwarded through the announcers talking and started the football game when the Chicago Bears defense took the field.

It was obvious who he was but he pointed himself out anyways. He was a head taller than everyone else. This was his favorite part. It was a recording of his first NFL game against the Denver Broncos. He giggled in anticipation.

Denver only had one man guarding him.
Fools.

“Watch this,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. He smacked Connor’s chest. “You’re not watching.”

Denver hiked the ball and Sidney plowed through the offensive line like a car driving through a line of patio chairs. Players were launched in the air as the Denver quarterback ran for his life from the charging beast.

“Look at this,” he said, crouching up. “BOOM!” He had slammed into the quarterback and the poor man looked like a dummy flying through the air. Sidney held his gut as he laughed.

Connor and Edwin stared at the screen with blank faces.

“There goes the ball,” Sidney said, on his feet now. “Here’s where I get it and…touchdown!” Sidney spiked a pillow onto the ground and did the same awkward dance as the football player on the screen, looking like an ostrich having a seizure.

“Well it looks like you’re all better today,” Connor said, standing up.

“No,” he whined, collapsing back in his chair. “I miss her so much.”

Connor huffed and shook his head as he sat back down.

Sidney glanced at him out of the corner of his eye to make sure he was sitting back down. “Let’s watch it again,” he said, rewinding it.

Connor and Edwin watched his old tapes for an hour before they couldn’t take it anymore. They both made excuses and disappeared.

Sidney sat in his seat and sighed. His bear grumbled inside him. His bear didn’t understand why he wasn’t with his mate and he was getting more agitated every day. He couldn’t sleep and he was rarely hungry anymore. It wasn’t fun.

Sidney walked out of the cabin and grabbed a kayak. It was late afternoon on a nice, cool, end of summer day. He took a deep breath and walked down to the still river reflecting the tall trees on the other side. He placed the kayak on the water and sat in. He pushed off from the bank with his paddle and glided into the middle of the river.

He still wasn’t sure where he had went wrong with Angie. She was his mate. He was sure of that. So why was he denying her love for him?

He took a deep breath and paddled down the calm river. Maybe it didn’t work that way for humans. He was told that they couldn’t bond back but how could she not feel the same way? It was hard to believe that he could have that much love flowing to her with nothing coming back to him.

He sighed, feeling his bear pacing within. He feared that these questions would haunt him to the rest of his days.

Every bear shifter had seen an older, unlucky bear who had been denied by their mate. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The bears turned the men bitter and resentful. It was a slow death. One with very little happiness. Sidney paddled along wondering if that was his future.

The sun was fading as he got closer to his destination. It was just up ahead. The cut tree trunk just off the river bank. Sidney steered the kayak onto the beach, got out and pulled it onto the grass.

He took a deep breath as he headed into the forest. The little cabin was just ahead. It was the same abandoned cabin that he had stayed with Angie on their first night together.

He walked past the garden, remembering her squeal in delight when she found it, saving them from eating a poison ivy salad.

Sidney stepped into the cabin and looked around with slumped shoulders. He had been sleeping here every night since he returned from New York City.

He sat on the cot and brought the musty blanket to his nose. He could still smell her scent on it. It was fading but it was still there for now. It was all he had left of her. And even that would be gone soon.

He laid down on the groaning mattress, curled up with the blanket and cried.

“What the hell did you do to this guy?”
Grace asked over the phone. Angie swallowed.

“Is it bad?”

“He won’t stop talking about you,”
Grace complained. “
We have to watch these football tapes over and over just to cheer him up.”

“How do you like living over there?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

“Amazing,”
she said.
“I never thought that I could leave the city but it’s just incredible. Peaceful and relaxing. We had a herd of deer walk by this morning.”

Angie glanced back into the restaurant. Her team was sitting with their significant others with the heads of the University. They had taken them out to celebrate.

“I have to go luv,” Angie said. “They just served dinner.”

“Well I just wanted to congratulate you,”
she said.
“Big kiss. Muaah.”

“Thanks Gracy,” she said. She slipped her cell phone back into her pocket and headed back to the table.

She had spent the rest of last weekend, red eyed and Red Bull fueled, finishing the project by herself. She got all of the data, compiled it and managed to publish her findings. It was a big deal in her tiny world but she had discovered that the movement of quantum molecules mutate into erratic patterns when exposed to electrical currents. It had huge consequences for the work done at the Hydron Collider in Europe. Consequences that she originally wanted to discover for herself. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Frank nodded his head at her and raised his wine glass. She shot him a nice, fake smile. She had published the report on her own and even though her team had abandoned her she invited them to put their names on the ground breaking study. It was her fault, after all, that the project had gone off the rails in the first place. Frank was reluctant but when she told him her results he instantly agreed. He did have a professorship riding on it.

“Cheers,” Rick, the head of the science wing of the University, said as he raised his glass. “To a job well done.”

They clinked glasses and dug into their food. Angie poked a potato with her fork. She hadn’t been eating much lately and her insomnia was back after a quick break of it while Sidney was in town.

She looked around the table with a vacant stare at all of the couples, smiling and holding hands as Rick spoke. She was the only one who showed up alone.

She was being celebrated tonight but she felt like a failure. How could all of her peers have significant others and a career and she couldn’t?

Her purse buzzed and lit up an electric blue as the table nodded in unison at whatever Rick was saying. She grabbed it, excusing herself and headed towards the hallway where the bathrooms were. She didn’t care who it was, she just didn’t want to be at the table any longer.

She slid her thumb across the screen. “Hello?”

“Angela Hawkins please.”
The man had a strange accent that she couldn’t quite place.

“That’s me.”

“Oh,”
he said, startled.
“This is Dr Alexia Achterberg calling from Geneva.”

Her stomach dropped. She had dreamed about getting this call since she was sixteen.

“We are very impressed with your work,”
he said.
“How would you like to come work on the Hydron Collider?”

Her appetizer came crawling back up her throat. She was happy that she only nibbled on it or it would be all over her shoes.

“Hello?”

She exhaled into the phone. Why wasn’t she excited? It was a lifelong goal coming true. She dropped her head back and looked up at the water marks on the ceiling.

Yes she had been working for this. But what do you do when you realize that what you were working for won’t make you happy? She could go to Geneva, leave Sidney behind and let her work consume her only to reemerge decades later when her wits had started to fail her. She would have a stack of awards and a bookshelf full of studies but nobody to share her successes with.

“Hello?”

“Yes. Sorry,” she said. “This is all a bit shocking.”

“We would like you to come to Geneva as soon as possible,
” he said. “
We have a lot of things to discuss.”

She stood up and took a deep breath. “Dr. Achterberg I have another idea.”

seven

Angie pulled up to Brooke Excursions in her rented car and smiled. She was amused that she was back here and even more amused for the reason why.

She cranked the rear-view mirror down and checked her reflection. She winked at herself.
You’re making the right choice kid.
She wiped the Dorito crumbs off of her shirt that she was munching on the drive over and stepped out of the car.

The air was electric. There was a natural energy radiating up here in the mountains that got killed and smothered by all of the concrete and pollution in the city. She looked up over her shoulder at Mount Washington in the distance.
That’s where it’s going to be.
She squealed in delight.

It wasn’t the Hydron Collider but Angie knew in her gut that it would make her happier than moving to Europe. And if she had learned anything over the past few weeks it was to follow her gut.

“Hey shorty!” a familiar voice called out. Angie turned around and burst out laughing.

“What the hell happened to you?” Angie asked, laughing.

Grace was stripped of all her expensive, designer clothes. She wore cargo shorts and a loose t-shirt that was covered in different colored paint spots. Her hair, usually all done up like she just stepped off a photo shoot, hung loose and free on her shoulders.

“Did a raccoon steal your Louboutins?” Angie asked looking down at Grace’s muddy hiking boots.

Grace walked over and hugged her. “You have Dorito crumbs in your hair,” she said, swatting them off.

“What did I tell you?” Grace asked.

Angie raised an eyebrow.

“Once you get fucked by a jock you’ll never go back.” She laughed and wrapped her arm over Angie’s shoulder. “Now look at you. Coming back all this way just for some cock.”

“Shut up,” Angie said, giggling. “You did too.”

“You bet,” Grace said. “I get fucked so hard my headboard is dented from the back of my head smashing into it.”

They giggled as Connor spotted them and made his way over.

“Hi Angie,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re here. I haven’t known what to do with him.”