Winona came back to the house long after midnight, when I was still making my way through a Night of the Living Dead marathon.

  Benjamin wasn’t in tow with her. Neither was the art hoe horde, which had gradually dispersed over time as I watched one Romero knock-off movie after another. In a strange way, not having young, impressionable women clawing their way against my wooden patio seemed to kill the vibe for me.

  She was smiling. Delirious, actually. We made brief eye contact and I could tell the evening with Benjamin had gone really well for her. My abdomen crunched itself into a painful curve.

  “You’re happy,” I murmured with little enthusiasm. “Everything went well?”

  She nodded. “I should’ve brought a jacket with me. The air was cold outside.”

  “Well, it would make sense, since all you were wearing was the pink frilly thing,” I replied.

  She shook her head. “It was okay. Benjamin gave me his jacket to wear.”

  Right. He was such a charming gentleman that of course he was willing to wrap his jacket around her shoulders. I’m one of those uncultured swine in comparison.

  “Get anything to eat?”

  Winona started counting with her fingers. “First we went to the McDonald’s drive-through, then, since I was still hungry, we went into Wendy’s. You know the one with the new drive-through? The one we were supposed to go to?”

  “Yes…” I grumbled.

  “Then we went for a walk around the estates, and Benjamin showed me the dilapidated factory you and I used to hang out at all the time when we were teens. Then I got hungry again, and we went to Burger King.”

  This would’ve been the part where I pretended to puke. I hated Burger King, and Winona knew that. She always dragged me along to it anyway when we went out together, because she didn’t want to be separated from her Ultimate Cheddar Triple Beef for too long.

  She waited on me and my horrible attempt at throwing up, but nothing came. Nothing at all. I stayed silent, and she stayed silent for a few more seconds before continuing on.

  “…Then we went to Andre’s joke shop,” she added. “He was closed, but he opened the doors for us. I brought back some of his imported Belgian candy for us to eat. He asked me where you were and who this guy I was with was, but I told him you were busy with a few things at university and couldn’t come.”

  I looked at her, then gave a faint smile. Benjamin had followed the same footsteps that Winona and I had taken growing up and spending time together. First Mickey D’s, then Wendy’s, then a stroll through the rundown factories of Charlestown to shake off all that newfound weight we’d gained from the excess food binge.

  Then they went to Burger King, the usual bane of my existence and the worst part of the time Winona and I spent together, then they scurried into Andre’s joke shop, where they had to endure the same awful off-key old man jokes Winona and I would get through just to buy his mystical imported Belgian chocolate we couldn’t get anywhere else in the world.

  It made me feel silly that these moments were so important to me I’d stitched together a tapestry that only Winona and I could grasp. It made me feel even more foolish for having spent time with Winona, who let Benjamin into it — the secret world we’d shared together.

  “Is everything alright?” Winona asked, sensing my discomfort.

  “Everything’s fine,” I lied.

  “You’re not upset that Benjamin and I spent time together, are you?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I moved the conversation along elsewhere.

  “Why is he here?” I asked quietly. “I mean, why is he now living across from us?”

  Winona paused. “He bought it,” she said.

  “He bought that house?” I was shaken. “Winona, houses here are worth a lifetime of cobs on the corn!”

  That was an in-joke between us. Once I’d said cobs on the corn to the million-dollar question on a game show we were watching together, and Winona giggled and told me I got things mixed up. Cobs on the corn had been our little euphemism for something expensive ever since.

  But it didn’t land, and Winona didn’t smile or giggle in the way that I’d hoped. Her visage just remained neutral until she spoke up again.

  “He told me he got an advance,” Winona answered.

  “From a publishing company?”

  Winona shook her head. “No, from a film company. They want to turn one of his webcomics into a movie.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled quietly. “…Good for him.”

  Winona looked down at the ground. “He wants me in it as well,” she explained, “or rather us.”

  “You mean you and Benjamin?”

  “No, us-us,” Winona said, stepping closer to me. “Benjamin is friends with the director and screenwriters. They need someone to perform a musical piece during the movie.”

  I grew silent.

  “When Benjamin and I were at Burger King,” Winona explained, “he spoke about it. He asked me if Irish Navajo could fit in. I said it sounded good to me, but I had to ask you first.”

  Winona was probably expecting me to start jumping up and down in excitement, tear out the roots of my hair, realising this might finally be our big break in the world of music.

  But I didn’t do any of that. I just nodded along, pretending this was what I wanted, when what I wanted was to tell her how much I hated the idea of Irish Navajo being in a movie that had anything to do with Benjamin Renzetti. How much I hated the idea of Winona being whisked up in his artisan nonsense, spending time away from me when we should’ve had dinner together, instead of giving her plate to a begging Triple H when I was on my own for the night.

  “I’m going to bed, Winona,” I said once she’d finished recounting all of Benjamin’s plans for Irish Navajo in the future.

  “Aren’t we going to play Overwatch 2?” she asked, but I shook my head.

  “It’s 2:42 a.m.,” I said flatly.

  “And? That hasn’t stopped us before,” she wasn’t perturbed by my flat delivery.

  I waved her off. “Not in the mood for it. Now goodnight,” I finished.

  “Goodnight, I guess,” Winona replied.

  There wasn’t any snark in her words. Just sudden, faint indifference. That had never happened between us before. Even when I was tired and angry at her for something serious or silly, Winona would at least get worked up about it.

  But she didn’t. Even as I climbed up the stairs, I watched as Winona sat idly on her phone, no doubt texting Benjamin with newfound glee, all the while a Triple H with a snout reddened from leftover lasagne chewed and locked at her fingertips.

  Then, once I’d ducked underneath the covers, I realised Winona like me didn’t have a smartphone at all. It must’ve been a new present that Benjamin had bought to spoil her like I’d spoiled Triple H with Winona’s leftover dinner that she wasn’t here to eat.

  Morning came, and Winona wasn’t in bed next to me when I woke.

  Triple H was.

  She hadn’t even the foresight to wipe his face clean from yesterday’s lasagne leftovers either. I stayed there for a moment, slightly groggy and unhappy that I couldn’t push Winona and her perky butt out of bed the way I usually. I couldn’t do it to my favourite mutt either, even if face my was turning red from sloppy lasagne kisses.

  So I smiled as I endured it, wondering where on Earth I’d gone wrong in life to be awakened by kisses from a dog named after a muscle-bound wrestler.

  I looked around the estate as a precautionary measure, but I still couldn’t find Winona. Not cuddling in the guest bedroom or making her way through whatever new K-Pop drama she’d enraptured herself with on Netflix in the living room.

  It was only when I found myself in the kitchen and sizing up whether or not I should make root beer pancakes again or have an omelette for the first time in ages that I discovered a clue to her whereabouts — there was a note on the kitchen counter, alongside a brand-new Apple iPhone Mini that was for me.

  I picked my way through the note, learning Winona was over at Benjamin’s house doing a few things, and that Benjamin had bought me this smartphone so I could use it when we were on set together. Winona had told him all about our strange habit of being the only pair of Bostonians with a landline phone.

  According to him, that wouldn’t do, Winona wrote. He felt we were like a pair of horses crying about the cars on the road (his words, Winona was quick to point out, this time not one of her Arizonan euphemisms) and that we should get with the times if we wanted Irish Navajo to survive.

  I groaned. Winona was smitten with him, undeniably so at this point. If he’d asked her to dress up in some stereotypical Tiger Lily and dance for him she would do so in a heartbeat. My whining wasn’t helped by the fact Winona had written she’d already set up an Irish Navajo Instagram page, and that I should hop on board and make my own account so she could tag me.

  I wasn’t hungry anymore. In fact, I wasn’t in the mood to do a whole lot now. I could easily just spend the rest of my Sunday morning brooding in the corner about imaginary slights, but I didn’t.

  Maybe Winona was right. Maybe it would be a good idea to create my own Instagram account, and see what was out there on the interwebs for us. Not having social media had been more of a headache for Irish Navajo than the book, and I realised it would only get worse in this increasingly digital world of ours.

  I opened up the package, trying to figure out how these smartphone gadgets worked. I don’t think I’d ever had one, aside from a brief stoppage when my last flip phone had fallen apart and I hadn’t set up a landline connection yet for me and Winona back in our apartment. Perhaps I wouldn’t even need to do that here now, just need to go and find cellular service from one of the many phone companies in Boston.

  I tapped at the buttons. Too much like a pinball machine for me, these smartphones. But that was the intention — you were hooked for good once they’d gotten into you. It was far too much like the dystopian cyberpunk nightmares in those cyberpunk novellas I’d read a lot of growing up.

  This wouldn’t do. It would be a tool for me, and little else. I downloaded Instagram and signed up for an account, giving the best alias I could while still matching my own name.

  Winona had already crafted an Irish Navajo page, and I quickly followed. There weren’t many photographs yet, just a few behind-the-scenes photographs of stage banners and Winona crafting the Irish Navajo logo in traditional Navajo paint.

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  There were a slew of comments underneath, however. Most of them banal, a few brutal, many teasing her about the disastrous Palestinian performance in a coffee shop we still hadn’t quite lived down yet.

  One of them was from an Instagram account called Felicity_Fencing, having used the Palestinian emoji alongside a garbled-up mess that I assumed was supposed to represent a mess of cars — a train wreck.

  I felt our Palestinian performance might never not be remembered at this point, but I pressed on Felicity’s profile. Inside was a curated collection of photographs that showed a life groomed from the beginning for fencing success.

  Photos of Felicity showing her as a child, winning her first fencing tournaments with ease. Photos of her approaching her teenage years, gradually coming onto the horizon of the international fencing community with victories at the World Cadet Championships in Bulgaria, Italy and Poland.

  Then there were the rehearsed smiles for her NCAA photo shoot, her long red hair over a white fencing uniform, announcing she’d been fortunate enough to receive a sports scholarship to Boston University for her excellent track record of fencing achievements and passionate pursuit of climate justice in the modern world.

  I tried finding some of her fencing highlights, but Felicity didn’t have any on her page. In fact, I’d never seen Felicity fence at all.

  Strange, when I thought of it like that, considering how much of a crush I’d harboured on her down the years, but the fencing part was something I’d missed.

  I followed her, then just as I was about to start making breakfast, I got a ping on my iPhone that said she’d followed me back.

  Then another ping. She’d messaged me. A name like Nate-Con wasn’t much good for an alias then.

  Felicity_Fencing: Hiya!

  Nate-Con: Hiya, Felicity…

  Felicity_Fencing: How r u? :)

  Nate-Con: Good, I think.

  Felicity_Fencing: Happy 2 hear!

  Something about bad grammar over text always irked me. I wasn’t going to kick up a fuss when it came to Felicity, but suddenly root beer pancakes seemed more appealing than conversing with her for the first time.

  Nate-Con: Okay. Need bodyguard duty?

  Felicity_Fencing: You read my mind! Yes, I do!

  Then she went on a horribly spelled tangent, telling me she was in the fencing club, doing another media workout session for local TV before the World Championships in Paris next month. She needed a big strapping man to take care and prevent her from being trampled over by any pernicious paparazzi that were lying in wait.

  There wasn’t much else I was doing on a Sunday afternoon like this. I could either sit down and watch the hundredth repeat of Smallville on the CW, or I could spend the afternoon with Felicity and at least say I did something productive to Winona when she came back.

  She was spending time with her crush right now — why couldn’t I?

  Nate-Con: Alright, I’ll see you there at 2:15.

  Felicity_Fencing: Ty Nate! <3

  She melted my heart again. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair the power women had over us men.

  I’d never thought fencing would have a media workout session, but sure enough that’s exactly what it was. When I walked into the fencing club, I found a whole host of journalists and reporters lingering around the place, poking and asking for any sign of this prodigious fencer everyone had heard of but couldn’t quite place in the room.

  I couldn’t find Felicity anywhere, but I did spot Raven and Blondie from Friday night loitering near the water cooler. If there was anyone who could point me in Felicity’s direction, it would be those two.

  “Bodyguard duty?” Raven asked.

  I nodded. “Let me guess — you heard about it in a group chat.”

  I don’t think I’d ever been in a group chat before, aside from old TeamSpeak calls and back when Skype was still a thing. I shuddered at the thought of the hours I’d sunk into both during my Roblox clan-raiding days.

  Blondie giggled. “How did you know?”

  “Benjamin Renzetti told me,” I murmured. “That’s also where he learned I do Felicity’s homework.”

  “It seems the popular kids stick together in group chats then,” Raven said.

  “…I hope that isn’t common knowledge on campus already,” I added quietly. The last thing I wanted was to feel like I was embarrassing Felicity more than I already was.

  Blondie shook her head. “No. It’s just us, Felicity, Benny, and a few of his filmmaking buddies.”

  I breathed out in relief. “Good. Where is she, anyway?”

  Raven pointed towards the changing rooms. “Over there — but she’s the only one inside right now. See all those lovely fencing stalwarts over there?”

  I followed her finger and spotted three different fencers pacing and shuffling around the piste. They were much older than Felicity or me — men who’d clearly been in the fencing world a long time. Their faces were weathered and scarred, and one of them even wore an eyepatch.

  And they were men.

  Not women — but men Felicity was apparently meant to face down all by herself.

  “Hungarian imports,” Raven continued. “Flown in just so Felicity can wipe the floor with them.”

  “…And send the crowd home happy,” I finished. I’d watched enough pro wrestling to recognise what she meant. Jobbers. People brought in to lose, just to pad someone else’s record along the way.

  “So you’d best be ready to manhandle them if they get angsty about losing to a woman,” Blondie said.

  “Manhandle them?”

  She nodded. “All at once, too. Felicity’s duelling all of them.”

  “All of them? At once?” I had no idea how competitive fencing worked, but I was fairly sure it didn’t involve a foursome with three Hungarian fencing brutes and one ginger WASP caught in the middle.

  “I’m just going to nosy on over there then,” I muttered.

  Behind me, I caught both of them covering their mouths, barely holding in fits of giggles.

  The man with the eyepatch — the gnarliest-looking of the trio, and likely the leader — seemed to have overheard us. He was already shooting daggers in my direction. I swallowed and quickly drifted towards one of the pillars at the edge of the room, standing awkwardly alongside a cluster of newscasters.

  While I was waiting on Felicity’s grand arrival, I looked around the place. It struck me that she really was the one who’d put this place on the map. She’d fenced out of other clubs before, sure, but Boston University’s fencing club had never seen this kind of attention until she’d arrived.

  The walls were lined with the usual collection of sporting trophies a club might have, but I saw that the name Felicity Brigham was repeatedly etched over and over again on the gold. There hadn’t been an abundance of trophyware like this until Felicity had come along, which perhaps explained why she was so confident in dismantling three men at once.

  All of them at once, I repeated to myself. Three vs one. And she was going to wipe the floor with all of them.

  No, it didn’t work like that. No fencer was so skilled that she could roadhouse her way through a trio of Hungarian fencers. Nobody was capable of that.

  Were they?

  I looked across the changing rooms, seeing a womanly freshman dart into the changing room, then coming out again, motioning to the rest of the fencing team that was here to stand alongside and opposite her as two large lines formed from the changing room to the fencing mat.

  Then they took the knee. A bunch of eighteen- to twenty-two-year-old college students took the knee as Felicity brazenly pushed her way through the changing room doors.

  She looked pristine. Her sabre was holstered around her waist like a Wild West sharpshooter, and she was already in the midst of putting her fencing mask on. But for that brief interlude, I saw how beautiful she looked. Her ginger curls, once wild and reckless, had been fastened into a simple ponytail, and she’d chosen to use little makeup to bring out the best of the freckles she often hid from others.

  Pristine.

  The Hungarians tutted their blades on the mat in frustration. Felicity took her time, smiling on the rest of the university fencing club like a maidenly Queen tending to her subjects, all the while flickers of cameras constantly went on and off to capture her in this ethereal moment.

  She even glanced in my direction, smiling that I’d actually come to protect her from any unruly Hungarian brutes who might get in her way. My heart started to beat. This was no good, letting a woman have so much control and power over me.

  No good at all.

  Felicity made her way onto the mat, and I watched as Raven acted as the impromptu fencing referee, dictating the terms of this strange exhibition fight. The Hungarians were already working themselves up in a frenzy, slapping one another’s barrelled chests like a group of barbarians about to paint the medieval village red.

  Felicity remained pristine. She listened half-heartedly to all the rules and regulations Raven announced, preferring instead to wave at the crowds and smile for the cameras that were nearly jostling around her. Preferring to smile at me, her eyes turning soft as she realised I would always be in her corner, backing her up.

  I’d listened to the rules with a little more care. She would duel all three at the same time, each of the Hungarians holding one of the three traditional fencing blades — épée, foil and sabre. All they had to do was simply strike Felicity once and the game would be over, while Felicity, as were the rules of holding a sabre blade, had to strike each of them from the chest up to win.

  Raven finished with the rule set, and Felicity started shooing away all the paparazzi around her. If she was struck down here, her whole star power would be snuffed out in an instant. Even if she won gold at the World Championships next month, this would hang over her head as an example of the delusions of grandeur so many young women go through in life when they’re in their early twenties.

  “En garde!” Raven called out.

  Suddenly Felicity was off from the starting point, not worried that the three Hungarians were already beginning to circle around to ensnare her. She kept feinting with the blade to keep them at her pointed end — it would not do for anyone to try and score a point on her in the most aggressive of manners. That wouldn’t do.

  She wanted to be the aggressive one. Suddenly she shot out and swept underneath Captain Eye-Patch’s swing, stabbing him in the stomach and turning her attention to the other two lackeys.

  Eye-Patch was out. He stumbled over to the side, and I watched as he brought a hand to his chest, unable to figure out what had just happened. He’d been beaten by a woman half his age and half his size, and he couldn’t accept it.

  Then I saw something dark and aggressive overcome him, turning his attention back to Felicity, who’d already skewered the two lackeys, reluctantly leaving the piste after she’d shooed them off with a pat at their backsides to get them moving.

  He raised his sabre high in the air to rain down on Felicity’s head, her back still turned, her smile still lost among the crowds of fellow fencers who’d watched her take down three men, their faces contorting into something Felicity had never seen before.

  Then I ran, shoving and pushing him to the other end of the mats, not unlike a spear reminiscent of the Rated-R Superstar Edge when I still watched WWE on early Saturday mornings. I rained a barrage of fists on his face and then, just as suddenly as it had happened, it stopped.

  I was being dragged away by Felicity’s fencers, and so was the Hungarian brute by his own entourage. The adrenaline was too much for me. There were tears streaming down my eyes as I yelled and shouted at the eye-patch bastard about how unhinged he was to attack a woman like that.

  I couldn’t find Felicity among the sea of white-clad fencers anywhere. I couldn’t be sure if that was a good or terrible thing, considering the shape I was in, but I looked out for streams of ginger curls anywhere in this world I didn’t belong in.

  “That was… something,” Felicity said, handing me a cup of hot chocolate.

  “Yeah, it was,” I replied. I didn’t actually like hot chocolate, but I pressed my lips against it for Felicity’s sake. It was the only thing they had in the canteen to drink that was warm. Not even tea or coffee was on hand. I thought that to be quite odd, but it is what it is.

  Eye-Patch and the rest of the Hungarians were escorted out of the building by no less than seven different Boston Police SWAT teams. The paparazzi left not long after, knowing they had a whole host of juicy gossip to work the headlines with for the next several months.

  Raven, Blondie and the rest of the fencing team had quietly dispersed once Felicity said she needed a moment with me — alone. Preferably inside the fencing gym, away from the others and all the slanderous gossip and buzz that was now emanating from outside the place.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “Are you alright?” I mumbled. “You don’t seem at all shaken up that some Hungarian was about to bludgeon you to death earlier.”

  Felicity shook her head. “It happens.”

  “You mean attempted murder is a thing in fencing?”

  “Again, it happens,” Felicity said. “Things can get heated.”

  “How heated?”

  She tore off a plaster, then put it on the bump on my right shoulder. Funny, I didn’t feel like Eye-Patch got any good hits on me when we sparred. In fact, he didn’t land any shots on me at all. I was so terrible at fighting that I wound up taking lumps out of myself along the way.

  “Once,” Felicity softly said, “there was some dispute about this or that at the World Cadet Championships. I wasn’t a part of it.”

  “No, I don’t think you’d be a part of it, Felicity,” I murmured. It got her to smile. I loved it when women smiled at me. She straddled her feet on the steps we were sitting on.

  “Well, the dispute grew heated, then things were out of control, and suddenly I was watching a strange impromptu jousting match between the French and the English, and Spaniards who were caught in the middle.”

  I snorted, and Felicity smiled a bit more. I think women must like it when men smile too.

  “And where were the Germans?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “At the bratwurst machine, I think. They had more sense to stay out of it.”

  “Yes, the last time the Germans were involved in a joust, it involved the whole continent,” I mused.

  Felicity grinned. Finally, I was able to make a not-so-subtle WWII reference around her.

  “Thanks,” she whispered, “again.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  I felt myself lost in her eyes, then I looked away. I did feel a bit like a knight in shining armour, albeit armour that had become worse for wear along the way. The things I do for nursing an unhealthy crush on someone. It just got me into heaps of trouble and a whole slew of unnecessary plasters along the way.

  Felicity trailed her fingertips down my left shoulder. I didn’t think I needed any more plasters.

  “I’m free after this, you know.”

  “You are?” I asked. Why wouldn’t she be free? Who would put themselves through all that media circus after nearly dying at the hands of a Hungarian brute?

  She nodded. “Me, Aisha and Kimberly are going to get something to eat, and…”

  “And?” I pressed. Aisha and Kimberly must be Raven and Blondie’s real names. I’d never heard Felicity utter their real names before, now that I thought of it.

  I watched as she started to twiddle with her fingertips. I knew that feeling well. I did it at times when I was around someone I really liked and couldn’t quite get the words out. Maybe Felicity already liked me a lot. Maybe she didn’t know she already liked me a lot, and was still fiddling with her feelings. That had happened to me many a time around women as well.

  “…And you can come with us,” she fumbled out, “if you’d like.”

  “I think I actually would like that, Felicity,” I said. It was a start. I wasn’t with her on her own and I’d have to deal with Raven and Blondie’s incessant ordering, but it was a beginning.

  A first chance at winning Felicity’s heart.

  I got up, scraping off whatever dirt still clung to my knees, and held out my hand to her.

  “Come on, let’s go to Mickey D’s.”