Somewhere in the background, a band was already drifting through a song about wanting to leave without knowing where you’d land. I’d heard it before. I knew that much. I just hadn’t placed it — not until Winona and I pushed our way through the bar door and the words California, California hit me.

  I snapped my fingers. “California by Phantom Planet!”

  “The theme song to The O.C.,” Winona grinned. “Do you remember when we binge-watched that whole awful thing?”

  I nodded. “We were fifteen, right? That summer when I was house-sitting while my parents were away on business.”

  “You said it was for research,” Winona rolled her eyes. “We were going to do a road trip from Boston to California one day.”

  “Still haven’t been,” I said. “Besides, The O.C. wasn’t that bad.”

  “Twas awful, Nathan,” Winona countered. “That’s over a hundred hours of my life I’ll never get back.”

  Minerva’s was packed — a student bar planted squarely in downtown Boston, close enough to every nearby college to guarantee a cast of impressionable freshmen tasting freedom for the first time. And by God, freedom tasted good in this place.

  I wasn’t much of a people person by nature, but something about Minerva’s — its Greco-Roman architecture, the barmaids dressed like extras from Spartacus — made me feel content. At ease. Even with over a hundred college partygoers packed in around us.

  “Well, you wanted to watch Dawson’s Creek, and of course we couldn’t have that!” I yelled. The tribute band was picking up speed now. My ears were going to bleed if they pushed it any further.

  “So you vetoed it?”

  “Obviously! I didn’t want to watch six seasons of Cape-Cod goons running around the place. I had enough of that stuff in my personal life already.”

  I glanced over Winona’s shoulder and caught the lingering gaze of a drunk quarterback tracing her hips. He wobbled, then made a beeline for her so he could wrap his arms around her and give her a smooch on the neck. I shot him the deadly glare I’d inherited from my mother and he instead hobbled over to the pool table.

  Winona didn’t even notice the whole commotion that had transpired. In fact she was looking over my shoulder now.

  “I’m not sure you’ve had enough of her and her Cape-Cod goons, though.”

  I followed Winona’s finger. Felicity was huddled in the bar’s corner with what I assumed were her fencing teammates, judging from all the fencing USA merchandise they were wearing. Like her, they were very much a shoe-in for being apart of Team USA’s squadron they would send to the next Olympics.

  “Cape-Cod goons is an apt description, don’t you think?”

  “I would think so.” I murmured. They really did look like the young adults who’d spend their days carefree in the warm Boston sun unlike the rest of us and out gazillion part time jobs.

  I was envious of them, especially of the Dawson lookalike who was beginning to cosy himself up against Felicity.

  She hadn’t even noticed we were here yet. We hadn’t even the chance to talk one another earlier on since she’d left the music hall by the time me and Winona had finished putting away our instruments. I wondered if she even remembered it, considering how much I’d replayed it in my mind since then.

  “Why don’t you go talk to her?” Winona crossed her arms. “Now’s the perfect time.”

  “I haven’t any pickup lines on hands,” I answered. The tribute band finished California, and it was announced through the speakers that there was to be an intermission for the next few minutes as they tried to untangle themselves from the cables around them.

  Winona gently rubbed at my arm. “No girl has ever gone for a pick-up line, Nathan.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, I haven’t anything to say to her.” I paused. “Or her friends.”

  “Scared?”

  “Not scared, just worried I’ll be eaten alive by a pack of WASPs on the way.” I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of all these people. WASPs could be heartless when it was time to munch on an unassuming young Irish-American for dinner.

  “Just say something to her,” Winona said, “I’m winning this race of ours so far.”

  “You’re supposed to help me, you know,” I hissed. “Any advice on what to say?”

  “How about your eyes look pretty?”

  “Stalker energy.”

  Winona shrugged her shoulders. “Then I’m out of ideas.”

  I watched as Dawson moved in to plant a kiss on Felicity’s cheek, and my blood boiled over. Then suddenly she pushed him, eyes wide in shock at what he’d done, and then started reprimanding him not to do that again. And again. And not to do that to any woman he’d come across in his short minuscule life either.

  Dawson slumped down, and disappeared into the netherworld of broken lives and crippling self esteem issues when it came to attracting girls. I felt myself slumping down for a moment too. He was creepy, but no one deserved a pulverising fate like that.

  “Looks like your opening has arrived.”

  “Too sleazy.” I snapped, “she’s just after pushing some smooching oddball away. She doesn't need another.”

  Winona grunted. “You’re too nice around her.”

  “I’m sure you’d just love to have to swat away another dude grinding against you if you were in her shoes.”

  I watched Felicity’s posture stiffen. Her girlfriends closed ranks around her, protecting her from any strange glances that she might get from on the patrons of this fine student bar.

  “Too late. My chance is forever lost now because of some drunken idiot.” I turned back to Winona. “Now are we going to turn into a pair of drunken idiots or not?”

  She beamed. “You’re getting it this time?”

  “You did get lunch.”

  “I think I got the better end of the deal then. When was the last time we did get drunk?”

  “A month ago, after the Palestinian fundraiser together.”

  “Oh yes, we had to drink the memories away, since everyone else in the audience was doing the same thing.”

  Winona reached into her pockets and handed me some rolled-up dollar bills. It was all a big jest. Minerva was a cash-only bar, and she knew that I only paid by card these days anyway. That, and I was taking on the whole risk by trying to get us some drinks with this jaunty fake ID of mine.

  “Corona. Not the virus, mind you!”

  “Okay, if I get an earful from the barmaids, then I’ll bring back root beer instead.”

  “Barq’s!” Winona yelled as I walked away. “Make sure it’s Barq’s, Nathan!”

  I started giggling. The bar countertop was filled with all sorts of amusing Greco-Roman illustrations that I knew didn’t match the time period this bar was going for, but it passed the time.

  I was about to reach for Livia the barmaid’s attention (I’m pretty sure name tags weren’t a thing back then either) when I heard a voice cutting in amidst all the mutterings of friend groups sticking together.

  “Nathan?”

  “What is it, Winona?” I asked haphazardly.

  There was a rapture of a few giggles here and there. Feminine giggles. Feminine giggles that only came out when they were in a group together and knew a man’s heart was on the line.

  Then, turning to my right, I realised it hadn’t come from Winona. It had come from Felicity instead.

  “Mistook me for the Navajo girl?” she cooed.

  I grumbled out a few words that were indecipherable to anyone but me. My tongue was tied until I found my footing again.

  “No, it’s just…”

  She cut me off. “What are you doing?”

  “Ordering,” I clenched up. “For me and the Navajo.”

  I looked around and saw Winona was busy conversing with a few acquaintances. I turned back to Livia.

  “One Corona and root beer, please,” I said.

  “I’ll pay!” Felicity roared from the corner. “Livia, hold off on making the Corona for another few minutes. Nathan, why don’t you come and sit with us?”

  I shouldn’t. It didn’t sound too bad, of course, but Winona would be waiting once she’d finished chatting with whatever acquaintances of ours she had on the edge of their seats with her Arizonian tales.

  Felicity tapped on the seat next to her. There were three of them, and not another man in sight.

  I really, really shouldn’t.

  “Sir?” Livia the barmaid interrupted my train of thought. “Your root beer. We can let the Corona go if you’re comfortable with that.”

  My hand tightened around the glass. “Yes, that’s fine with me. Ten minutes?”

  Livia nodded, then turned her attention to another irate customer. That settled it.

  I started walking, turning my head to find that Winona was lost telling stories, her stomach pounding with hearty laughs as she went on about this misadventure she’d gotten up to elsewhere in the world with her parents.

  I should be at her side, but I’d heard all of them. I wanted to hear new ones. So I found myself alongside Felicity and her smiles and the rest of her friend group instead.

  “Ooh, I like the look of this one, Felicity,” a raven-haired girl said. “He seems strapping enough.”

  “And smashing,” a blonde girl with an English accent whispered. They really did want to play up the Anglo-Saxon heritage. “I can see why you picked him out from the crowd.”

  Felicity waved them away. “Quiet down, everyone, so I can make proper introductions.”

  I steadied myself against a wall. I wasn’t even sitting alongside Felicity; I didn’t want to perturb her.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Nathan? I did ask if you wanted to sit down alongside us.”

  Blondie smirked. “It’s an order on her part, mind.”

  Mind. Yes, I hoped she didn’t mind as I slumped down between Felicity and the raven-haired girl.

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  “Now, everyone, do be kind with him.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “This is my friend, Nathan Connolly.”

  “Boyfriend, you mean,” Blondie giggled. “I see the way he looks at you. It’s obvious there’s something going on there.”

  “No, no,” Felicity waved them away. “We’re just friends.”

  “How did the two of you meet?” Raven pressed.

  Felicity hiccupped. She was already drunk on whatever spirits Dawson had smuggled into the place beforehand. How she was able to push the creepy bastard away, I wasn’t quite sure.

  “Computer science electives,” I mumbled.

  “Long before that!” Felicity wheezed. “We were classmates, weren’t we, Nathan?”

  I shook my head. “Yes — in elementary. Then in high school. Now here at Boston University.”

  “So it’s a slow-burn thing then?” Raven asked.

  “Slow burn as in friendship, yes,” I answered. I really didn’t want to go against the grain and say we were dating. We weren’t dating. Yet. But that would put a drunk Felicity on the spot in front of her other drunk friends, who might use the new information to hammer her down the line.

  “We’ve…” Felicity slurred her words. She was slowing down. I was surprised she was even able to steady Dawson away from her. “We’ve been around the bend. A lot.”

  I nodded my head. Whatever Felicity was whispering at this point, I could only nod in agreement.

  “What kind of bends?” Raven asked.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  “Not-so-complicated,” Felicity giggled. “If you can do it to me. Again and again!”

  She started coughing, and I felt her grip breaking away from the seams of my best thrift-store nightclub shirt as Blondie moved to caress her and hold her up again.

  “Homework,” I replied. I didn’t want them thinking the pair of us were already having sex. That hadn’t happened. Yet.

  “I help Felicity out with her homework from time to time.”

  I pre-emptively armoured myself, feeling this would be even more ammunition for Raven and Blondie to riddle me with — to make fun of the simpering fool who followed after Felicity like a lost dog.

  …But they didn’t. Their sharpened talons recoiled away, and I sensed I wouldn’t have to deal with any put-downs for the rest of the evening.

  That couldn’t be right.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Raven quickly answered. “Felicity’s just been training hard these past few weeks.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I felt myself straightening up again. “We can’t even meet up anymore with everything on her plate.”

  I hoped that made me appear a lot less pitiful in their eyes. It was the only way I could let my mind stop fretting until Felicity finally caught hold of herself and gargled out a few more words.

  “Thanks for doing that,” she said.

  “The homework?” I looked at her. “I’ve only done it twice.”

  She shook her head, whisking away the drops of drunkenness still in her veins. “No, for doing that.”

  She was pointing at Winona.

  “I’m not doing her, Felicity,” I answered cautiously.

  She giggled. It was the first time I’d seen Felicity Brigham giggle — giggle with me, not at me. That was a very important distinction in these kinds of things.

  “No, you handsome dolt,” she smiled at me. “Thanks for helping her earlier!”

  Then suddenly everything clicked. Just as I’d watched her push Dawson away, Felicity and her friends must have been watching me glare the quarterback away on Winona’s behalf.

  “It was nothing,” I said.

  “It was everything!” Raven replied. “We saw you glaring at that big quarterback like her life depended on it.”

  “You did?”

  Raven nodded. “That’s why Ms Brigham here wants you to sit with her.”

  “To make sure the last miscreant who tried kissing up to her doesn’t come back,” Blondie added.

  “Oh, well…” I looked around, scanning the place to see if I could find Dawson anywhere in the vicinity. I couldn’t see him or his blond hair. Maybe he’d already hightailed his way back to the student dorms. “I’m not trying to kiss up.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t do that,” Felicity tapped my thigh with her hand. “But we do need your help.”

  “Help protect us from creeps like you did the Navajo girl,” Blondie chirped.

  “Her name’s Winona!” I snapped. I was tired of it — tired of hearing others always referring to Winona as the Native or the Navajo girl. I was sure they whispered far worse things when we were both out of earshot.

  Winona was still out of my earshot. I looked over and saw she was still sharing those well-worn stories of hers with an even larger crowd of acquaintances. I wasn’t sure why she bothered being a singer when she could’ve made an excellent writer instead.

  Felicity shrugged her shoulders. “Winona, Winnie, whatever the hell her name is — just stay with us until we’re sure that blond creep is gone, okay?”

  I sighed. “Okay.” I wasn’t really fussed about standing guard, but what else was I going to do until Winona was finished?

  Stay at the bar and have a hapless conversation with Livia, the thirty-five-year-old barmaid who looked every bit of it, and the leftover vodkas she drank? No — I’d just stay put here and pretend I was part of the wallpaper.

  Not that I had to pretend. Suddenly Felicity and her friends were talking about some esoteric fencing technique, and I was lost in the conversation, nodding my head as they went on about it with me, then eventually without me.

  I looked over at Winona, seeing how smiley and giggly she was in a crowd and without me. I wanted to be with her again.

  “You’re in a band, aren’t you?” Felicity started digging into my thigh again. Raven and Blondie had gone a bit mute after all that talking, nursing whatever spirits they had left in their hands as they started to wind down.

  Not Felicity though. She looked sober now — or at least focused. Enough time had passed since her last drink for the edge to have worn off.

  “I’m not sure if a duet counts as a band, Felicity,” I said. Had I said that before to her? Or was it Winona? I wasn’t even sure anymore. My mind was spinning. All the loud noise and lights were beginning to turn me inside out.

  “Any musical act that has more than one person playing in it is a band, Nathan.” She nodded in the direction of the stage. “What do you think of them?”

  “They’re alright,” I answered softly. “For a tribute band, I mean. I wasn’t sure Phantom Planet was still popular enough to have their own tribute band, though.”

  “You dolt!” Felicity squeezed my thigh. “That is Phantom Planet!”

  She was right. I hadn’t realised it was actually them, considering the only image I had of the band was from when they were in their early twenties, at the peak of their popularity.

  Now they were in their mid-forties. Beer guts. A few greys in their stubble. Large patches of hair missing, but resisting the urge to go for a transplant in case they ended up in the news again for the first time in aeons — and for all the wrong reasons.

  They must really need the money if they were playing a place like this.

  “They’re good,” I said. It was true. A few off-key notes aside, Phantom Planet still had it. “Have you always been a fan of them?”

  Felicity nodded. “Yes. I’ve been a fan of them ever since hearing the theme song they did for 90210.”

  “The O.C.,” I corrected her.

  “What?”

  “They did the theme song for The O.C.,” I repeated. “The O.C. was the successor to 90210.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t One Tree Hill?”

  “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that either.”

  The fact that I knew all these trivia details about silly teen drama shows made me realise how lame I must look in Felicity’s eyes. I slumped down in my seat. I desperately hoped she didn’t think I was uncool.

  “Tell me something I don’t know, then,” she said, reading my mind.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Since when could you play the bodhrán?”

  “Since forever,” I answered quickly. “I was going to ask you about that.”

  “Ask about what?”

  “Why you were outside the music room when Winona and I were playing,” I murmured.

  “I heard someone smashing a bodhrán in, so I followed the trail.” She set aside the spirit bottle on the table and pressed herself a little closer to me. I reddened.

  “I used to play the bodhrán too, once upon a time.”

  “You did?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Before fencing was my thing, I used to bang drums together. A lot.”

  “Normal drums, you mean?”

  “That too — but also bongos. Snare drums. The djembe.”

  “Then you landed on the bodhrán,” I cut her off. “And it didn’t stick, did it?”

  “Well, it did for a time,” she mused, “but then fencing demanded more and more from me, and I could never get around to playing it.”

  I rattled down the last of my root beer, then spoke again. “I was the same. I mean, I didn’t lose interest because of sport, but because it wasn’t leading me to a good place.”

  “What kind of place?”

  I wanted to get girls, and bodhrán players don’t have much sex appeal, I thought.

  “At the time, Winona was putting together the band, and a bodhrán doesn’t fit well with our kind of music.”

  “So that performance of yours was just a one-time thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pity,” she said, deflated. “Navajo girl can hardly strum a guitar, let alone sing.”

  That stung. “She’s not that bad,” I mumbled.

  I felt Felicity’s grip loosening around my thigh, but she brushed herself even closer against me. This must be what flirting feels like to normal men. Like many things, I’d never flirted in my life with anyone, and nobody had ever flirted with me.

  “You’re right, she’s horrendous,” Felicity whispered.

  “Cut it out.”

  Felicity shook her head. “I was there when you had that little Palestinian fundraiser.”

  “You were?” How come I hadn’t noticed that? I would’ve zoned in on Felicity if I’d seen her in the crowd.

  “Yep. And Navajo girl was awful back then too. Why on Earth did she think songs about Mary Crow Dog or Wounded Knee would resonate with people?”

  “I…” I didn’t have an answer to snipe back with. Winona had thought at the time it would resonate because we were all oppressed people underneath the thumb of an oppressor. But Felicity was right. It hadn’t resonated, judging by the horrible reaction we’d received among a group of hipsters and champagne socialists.

  She dug her hands deep into my thigh again. “Thought so. Honestly, Nathan, I don’t understand why you put up with her. She hasn’t a musical bone in her body.”

  That wasn’t true. I desperately hoped it wasn’t true. Sometimes Winona could have a bad session when we were together, but it didn’t happen all the time.

  Did it?

  “I mean, once you’re playing the All-American Rejects—”

  “Did someone say something about AAR?” a voice cut in. Felicity and I looked up. It was Winona, still wearing the same smile I’d left earlier on.

  “Winona!”

  “Having fun?” she asked.

  “I think he is,” Felicity whispered.

  Winona looked over at Felicity, then I felt her frown for a split second. She put her hands on her hips. “Where is my Corona?”

  “Felicity wanted to pay for it,” I explained. “Then the two of us got talking. Sorry.”

  “About the All-American Rejects?” she asked, then turned to Felicity. “I didn’t know you were a fan.”

  “I’m not.”

  Winona grunted. “Hmph, thought that.” She turned back to me. “Do you want to head somewhere else, Nathan? I’m not liking the vibe of this place anymore.”

  “Felicity, I—”

  I felt her grip loosen against my thigh. “It’s alright, Nathan. I can tell your friend here wants to rodeo out of the place.”

  The rodeo part was not lost on Winona, who I sensed grew a little irritable. Felicity didn’t care.

  “Besides,” Felicity added, “I don’t see that blonde creep around me anymore, so me and the girls should be fine.”

  “Okay…” I mumbled.

  Felicity’s eyes softened in that strange way women do when they want a man wrapped around their fingers. She reached into her pocket for her iPhone.

  “What’s your Insta?”

  “Insta?”

  “Yeah. Insta.” She softened her eyes again, and I felt my soul turning to mush. “So we can hang out again.”

  “I don’t have an Insta,” I replied. “I don’t even have a smartphone.” The one time having a smartphone mattered, I didn’t have one.

  “He does have a landline though,” Winona said flatly.

  Felicity eyed Winona sharply. Her nails dug into my thigh again. There was a strange standoff here that I wanted no part in.

  “Well, what is it then?”

  “04572345753!” I stammered. Right now it felt like the most overcomplicated phone number in existence.

  Felicity typed it in. “Coolio. I’ll phone you if I ever need a strapping young man to act as my knight in shining armour. Alright?”

  “Alright,” I whispered.

  “Now get a move on,” she added. “Native girl is glaring at me for holding onto you.”

  Winona really was glaring. She started moving away from us once I’d risen up and begun bidding farewell to Felicity, Raven, and Blondie.

  “Cheerio,” Felicity beamed.

  “Cheerio…” I muttered.

  I turned back, but I couldn’t find Winona anywhere. I looked around, just like one of the many lost souls of this place.

  “I saw her heading in the direction of the doors,” Raven said.

  “Me too,” Blondie chimed in.

  “Thanks,” I replied, but Felicity said nothing.

  I started moving away, then, once I’d passed the messier mosh of people, I broke into a rush after Winona.

  “Winona!” I shouted.

  She’d already made her way outside Chan’s Heart, the local Chinese takeaway nearby. Thankfully, nobody else in Minerva’s had developed a bad case of the munchies yet.

  “Everything alright?”

  She nodded at me, smiling. “Yes. Everything’s fine. Just…”

  I caught up to her. “Just…?”

  She looked down, kicking at a discarded rice box that had found its way underfoot. There were plenty of them around these days. Littering was a terrible problem in Boston.

  “I just can’t stand that Felicity girl, that’s all.”

  I thought something else might be coming, but nothing did.

  “Yeah, I know,” I replied. “She’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”

  “You’re making progress, anyhow.”

  “With getting her hand?”

  Winona nodded. “I can see it. She’s falling for you.”4

  “I don’t think that’s happening yet, Winona.”

  “Well, not yet,” she said, folding her arms. “But there’s something there. Why else would she want a knight in shining armour to protect her?”

  “Free bodyguard duty,” I murmured. “You know, you’re the one who’s usually supposed to say that.”

  Winona cringed. “Could she have picked a more over the top phrase? Ugh. So dramatic.”

  She kicked at the rice box in frustration. Then I kicked it back at her, then she kicked it off the curb and onto the roadway. Fried rice and shreds of chicken boiled over onto the grounds.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” she said, “and get something to eat. I’ve had enough socialising for one night.”

  She went to grab to the takeaway’s door handle, but I stopped her.

  “You were glaring at her, weren’t you?”

  Winona went quiet.

  “I was.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t answer straight away.

  “I was just tired of listening to her,” she said finally.

  “Is that the only reason?” I asked. “Not because she was dissing your favourite band, The All-American Rejects?”

  “Well, that too.”

  “And because she was dissing you as well?” I added.

  “I don’t care what people think of me,” she lied. “I didn’t like it when she kept referring to me as Native girl, though.”

  “I didn’t like that either,” I replied. “I wanted to say something.”

  She glanced at me. “But you didn’t.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  She nodded, but her gaze began to falter.

  “Do you really like her?” Winona asked.

  “She has her bad spots,” I said, “but yes. I really do, Winona.”

  She smiled back at me, but it was faint. I could tell she wasn’t happy with my answer.

  “Then I’ll be glad if she ends up falling for you,” she said, “even if I haven’t helped much.”

  “You did tonight,” I replied. “In your own way.”

  “I did?”

  I nodded. “I’ll tell you when we get inside.”

  Once we’d pushed through the door, I started telling Winona what had really happened inside Minerva’s — about pushing away the drunken quarterback who’d been leering at her, something she hadn’t noticed, but Felicity and her friends had once the Dawson creep had wandered off and they’d suddenly needed—

  “A strapping young man,” Winona murmured, doing a pitch-perfect imitation of Felicity. “I can see the appeal now.”

  I prodded at the noodles with my chopsticks. “You’re winning now,” I said.

  “At what?”

  “Our little bet. Remember?”

  She dug her fork into the sweet and sour beef. “Tell me again — what’s the prize for winning?”

  “Winner decides.”

  “Well then,” she said, “if I win, I want you to pay for my takeaways for the next year.”

  “At Chan’s Heart?”

  “Everywhere!” Winona gasped. “Chan’s Heart, Wendy’s, McDonald’s — anywhere we get food together.”

  “Huh. That means I’ll be cooking everything from now on.”

  She kicked me under the table.

  “Shut up.”