Bear with Me

"Do you think Mom would like this," Meg asked, holding up a black, silky nightgown. "I bet Nadir would."

The garment she had thrust at him was conservative, as far as black, silky nightgowns went, but Erik had no desire to think about his long-time friend – who was as close to an older sister or mother figure as he had ever had – in anything remotely like this. Especially since said sister/mother figure was currently engaged to his best friend, Nadir Kahn.

"I don't know, and I don't want to know," Erik stage-whispered while shaking his head. "But if you buy that for her, I'm out. I will not be a party to this wedding gift."

"Geez, I get it! I'm putting it back," she assured him in the slow, overly calm voice of a hostage negotiator. "I wish she was like regular moms. Amy's mom is obsessed with those fancy charm bracelets. All Amy has to do is pick out something from her wish list, and she's done. Mom and Nadir don't want or need anything," the little blonde huffed. "It's crazy they haven't made a registry, not even for their honeymoon."

"Maybe we should try one of those keepsake stores and get them a music box," Erik suggested, desperate to be anywhere but the misses section. "We could have it engraved with their wedding date."

"Good thinking," Meg agreed, brightening up. "There's one by the food court, and I'm dying for pretzel nuggets."

"A ballerina eating carbs," Erik gasped. "Will wonders never cease!"

"I've been budgeting my calories all week for this shopping trip. I'm getting the pretzels." Meg turned on her heel and marched straight towards the food court, blonde hair bouncing with every eager step. Erik quickly accompanied her, making sure they weren't separated.

He just wanted to leave the mall as soon as possible. Meg may not have noticed, or perhaps she simply didn't care, but employees had shadowed them at every store. The reason was quite plain – a man in a mask was suspicious, though perhaps not suspicious enough to throw out when a pretty, young woman was chatting with him animatedly. He was not in the mood to stick around for pretzels. Nevertheless, Meg was family. Pretzels she would have.

Erik sullenly dropped into a seat at a table long enough to hold twenty people and waited as Meg stood in line. His gaze wandered about for a moment before landing on a Puccini biography a couple of tables away. He glanced up at the person holding the book, and his mouth dropped open.

The reader of this book was a woman about Meg's age – probably early to mid-20s – roughly ten years younger than him. She had long brown ringlets that tended towards the frizzy side, and the eyes riveted to the page were bright blue. She was chewing on the end of a pen, occasionally using it to underline something or jot notes into the margins.

His first thought was, I really hope that's not a library book. His second thought was, who is she?

Meg chose this moment to throw herself into the chair across from him. She immediately noticed him tilt his head to see around her and twisted in her seat to follow his line of sight. She turned back around with an exaggerated grin. "Cute, isn't she?"

"What? No," he replied unconvincingly, not taking his eyes off the girl. "I haven't read that, and I wanted to remember the name of the author."

"Oh, sure, like there's a book about Puccini you haven't bought as soon as it was published," Meg answered sarcastically.

She was right. He had preordered that one and then read it in three days. It had been pretty good, though he thought the author spent a little too much time on the more sensational aspects of Puccini's life, like his life-threatening car accident, and his numerous extra-marital affairs. He didn't buy books about composers to learn about their personal tragedies – he wanted in-depth analysis.

"You should go talk to her," Meg suggested, cutting through his musings. Meg had always wanted to play matchmaker for her lonely, masked friend. For years, she'd tried to convince him to sign up for those dating sites, and she made up elaborate love stories between Erik and every age-appropriate woman involved with the opera company, despite Erik's total lack of interest.

What had she called it? 'Shipping?' She had 'shipped' him with various singers, dancers, musicians, and administrative employees since she was fifteen. Now that Erik had looked at a woman twice – well, looked once for an embarrassingly long amount of time – she was already planning her bridesmaids' dress. Erik's probable wife over there looked like she would pick out navy blue off-the-shoulder dresses. Taffeta, maybe chiffon. Might be hard to find the right shoes; she'd have to check online when she got home.

Erik interrupted her appraisal, "She's just an attractive young woman interested in one of my favorite composers, going about her day. There's no reason to approach her. It probably wouldn't be welcome, anyway."

"You just said you think she's attractive," Meg pointed out, ignoring everything else Erik had just said.

"I'm disfigured, not blind," Erik hissed, leaning back against his chair and unconsciously smoothing back his dark hair.

"Come on, you have a great opening," Meg argued. "You could talk about that book or tell her about other biographies she should try. Just make sure you don't mansplain it."

Erik didn't need a comeback; the woman closed her book and rose from her seat. Meg and Erik could see she was wearing a uniform for one of those stores where kids came in and picked out teddy bears and their accessories. She slowly glided back to work a couple of doors down from the keepsake shop, her hips swaying a little as she walked.

Meanwhile, Erik reminded Meg that they had an engraved music box to buy. Meg dropped the subject of the Puccini lover...until they got back to Erik's car. The whole journey back to her apartment, she kept pushing Erik to go to that teddy bear store and sweep her off her feet.

Meg brought it up again the next time he had dinner with her, Antoinette and Nadir, who all agreed that he should go back. Meg brought it up again at the opera's next cast party, recruiting everyone there to her cause. She brought it up again and again and again.

Thankfully, this poor woman had no idea she was a subject of regular conversation for three solid weeks until Meg came up with a plan he had to carry out. She asked for a personalized teddy bear from that particular store for her birthday.

Erik grumbled all the way to the store – about silly girls asking for silly toys, people who couldn't mind their own business, and how embarrassing it would be to show up at this store as an adult with no children. Going to any store in a mask was bad enough, but this was going to be a disaster. They'd be sure to call the police, just like that time his car broke down outside a bank, and he had to go in for once to use their phone. Nadir had not been sympathetic when Erik called him to bail him out.

Erik hovered at the entrance for a moment, but that only seemed to draw more attention. He finally swept into the store wearing his customary all black and a scowl. As expected, everyone in the store stared at him. Parents consciously or unconsciously put themselves between him and their children, shielding them from the strange masked man with the sour expression.

The pretty woman with the Puccini biography was working that day, and she was walking straight towards him.

Shit!

He had really hoped she wouldn't be here today. He didn't want her to see him here buying a dumb teddy bear, probably thinking he was a total creep. As she approached, seemingly in slow motion, he wished the floor would open right there and swallow him whole, or that he would melt away into the disgusting carpet.

"Hi, can I help you, sir," she asked politely in the most exquisite voice. Her plastic nametag announced that her name was 'Christine.'

"I'm here to buy a gift for someone," he muttered, sounding very much like Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs. When she looked at him uncertainly, he cleared his throat and clarified, "I need to buy a gift for someone."

A father nearby rolled his eyes, obviously thinking, Yeah, sure, there's no way this teddy bear is for your creepy ass.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather bring your son or daughter here and experience this with your child," she asked brightly. "Kids have a lot of fun putting their bears together and doing it with you might make the gift more meaningful."

Erik's face burned with mortification as he stammered, "I don't – I don't have kids. I mean, this isn't for a kid. It's for my friend. Meg. She's 24." He cringed and hung his head.

"Oh," Christine said, looking down at the floor. "Well, this would probably be a fun date..."

Erik snorted. "It's not like that," he assured her. "She's like the sister I never had. I think she just said she wanted one of these," he gestured to a shelf covered in stuffed animals, "for her birthday to humiliate me."

"Ah, I gotcha," she nodded thoughtfully. "I don't have any siblings, but that sounds like something a kid sister would do." She glanced around and then leaned in conspiratorially. "You know, if she doesn't want a bear, and just wants to torture you, then I think we need to make something really crazy."

Erik smirked, relaxing a little at the prospect of mischief. "I like the way you think, Christine," he purred. He saw her eyes go a little unfocused for a moment, but then she blinked a couple of times. He knew it wasn't fair to deploy the Voice, but desperate times called for desperate circumstances.

"I'm thinking, maybe a punk rock unicorn, or a stoner bear," she whispered.

"Supervillain," Erik offered. "Or an assassin."

"You know what," Christine said enthusiastically, "there are an unnecessary number of weapons in the Star Wars line."

They picked the darkest bear in the store and started rummaging through the accessories. They found black pants, a black motorcycle jacket and some black boots. Erik took a few minutes to decide between the stormtrooper blaster and the Boba Fett blaster, weighing the pros and cons of each. Christine suggested he go with the Boba Fett blaster. Otherwise, Assassin Bear would be destined to be a terrible shot. Erik deferred to her superior knowledge of stuffed weapons, saying that they should really go with two – one for each arm. Then Christine topped off Assassin Bear's look with a pirate's eye patch – most sinister, indeed.

Christine brought him a little voice recorder they could put in Assassin Bear's tummy, so Meg could hear a special message when she hugged it.

"Okay, talk into it on 'three,'" she instructed. "One, two, three…"

"Your days are numbered…be prepared for a great misfortune…a disaster beyond your imagination will occur," he growled into the little recorder. Christine giggled as she turned it off and saved the message.

"There's one last step," she told him.

"And what's that," Erik asked, good-naturedly.

Christine took his hand and guided him over to a box full of little red hearts. She picked one out and held it out to him. He took it with a grin and waited for an explanation.

"Now, hold it over your heart," she explained, taking the hand that held the little heart and gently placing it over his pounding chest.

Surely, she can feel that, he thought, fighting the urge to look away from her bright blue eyes.

"Now, hold it there for a few more seconds," Christine continued, "and think about how much you love…Meg, wasn't it?"

"Okay," he murmured, his hand shaking a little under hers. Finally, after a tense few seconds, Christine released his hand. His grip on the little heart slackened. She held out her palm in a silent request for him to give her the heart. He did so with a nervous laugh, and Christine carefully slipped it inside a little pocket in the bear's back and then sealed the pocket's Velcro strips.

"Now we just have to name him," she announced, turning to a little desktop touchscreen computer. She pushed a few buttons on to call up the right screen.

Erik hummed thoughtfully. "How about... The Phantom?"

"I like it," Christine declared, giving him a wide grin. "The Phantom, it is." She punched into the name and Erik's information. When she hit print, Erik realized that this was almost over. He should have been relieved, but he felt a little disappointed. As Christine boxed up The Phantom and the certificate she had printed out, he was filled with doubts.

Should he have flirted more? Should he ask her out for drinks? Should he ask if she had a boyfriend?

"Well, thanks for helping me with this," Erik said as she handed him the box.

"No problem," she replied. "Stacey can check you out right over here."

Back in his car, Erik slumped in the seat, kicking himself for not asking for her phone number. It was already creepy that he'd been hanging out at a toy store. He couldn't go back without looking like a stalker. And now he'd never speak to her again. He would never forgive Meg for pushing him to do this. Wondering what might have been with a stranger at the food court was one thing, but this was different. He had felt a spark, but now he would never know if she had felt it, too.

Erik had waited until the last minute to get this done – or at least the last couple of hours. He was expected at Meg's birthday dinner soon. He drove around aimlessly, thinking about Christine's smile, her voice, her eyes, her sense of humor…

He finally pulled into the restaurant, parked and joined Antoinette, Nadir, Meg and her awful boyfriend, Raoul at their table.

Without a word, he sat down and moodily pushed the box with the bear across the table to her.

"Oh my God, you did it," Meg squealed, clapping her hands like a little girl. "Was she there? Did you talk to her? How did it go?"

"Yes, yes, and fine."

"When are you going to see her again," Meg prodded.

"Probably never," Erik muttered, glaring at her. "It's not appropriate to come onto a girl at her job."

Meg and Antoinette made sympathetic noises while Nadir rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically.

"Come on, Meg," Raoul interrupted, "open it up. Let's see your bear."

Meg complied, always eager to open presents, even though she hadn't seriously wanted a teddy bear. When she pulled it out and saw it in all of its murderous glory, the astonished look on her face was priceless.

"That's what you get for meddling in my affairs," Erik chided with a satisfied smirk.

"What's this at the bottom," Raoul asked, pulling out the certificate. "Oh, wow, Erik! Nice going!" He handed the certificate to Meg, who simply squealed again before holding it up to Antoinette and Nadir.

"Erik, you dog," Nadir teased, wagging his finger at him while his eyes crinkled at the corners.

Erik could feel his neck and masked face turn red in embarrassment. He hated to not know why people goaded him. "What is it?"

Meg handed the paper over to him. It had the name and date, as expected, but there was a typed message at the bottom.

Erik, I told you this was a fun date. :) Christine

She had also typed in a ten-digit phone number.

Erik's eyes widened, and his throat went dry, as he stared at the message she had left for him. He had never gotten a girl's phone number before, at least not in a flirtatious, non-professional kind of way.

He didn't look up until the server asked for his drink order. He blinked and heard Meg say, "Just go and call her."

Erik shot out of his seat and ran past the confused server. He stood under a tree in the corner of the parking lot, seeking a little shelter. His hands shook as he dialed the number from the certificate.

It rang twice, and then the loveliest voice he had ever heard said, "Hi, this is Christine."

"Hi, this is Erik."