Wednesday night. I’m showering after working out, listening to the podcast Rach had linked to on the bluetooth speaker. I’m up to Rita Hayworth, who of course every guy regardless of age already knows about from Shawshank Redemption. Some things are essential to the straight male soul: Band of Brothers, a signature beer or drink, cargo shorts, and non-horror Stephen King movies.

  I hear the door buzzer go off. Deciding I was rinsed off well enough anyway, I shut off the shower before grabbing a towel. They put Hayworth’s picture on a nuclear bomb they were testing? I doubt I would’ve wanted that kind of mojo, myself.

  “Who is it?” I ask into the intercom.

  “Delivery,” a woman says.

  I press the talk button. “Yeah? For who?” I press the listen button, but hear nothing. Finally, I release the listen button and shimmy into my shirt.

  Did someone else let them in? Was it some lowlife just looking to steal packages? Was it someone else onto me?!

  Well, if it were the latter, they probably wouldn’t have been defeated by my asking who the package was for. I pull on my jeans.

  A knock on the door. Guess someone else let them in. Don’t think I’m wrong to be a little paranoid about people lately.

  Looking out my peephole, I see nobody. Maybe the deliverywoman dropped it off. At least there’s no yellow jacket. Did I order anything, though? Wait, I did. The new 300mm lens with the low f-stop. My camera’s this ancient Nikon digital model that doesn’t have GPS tagging or Bluetooth or anything else that could inadvertently give away the game if I’m taking a shot from a rather unconventional vantage for one of Rojas’ jobs. Metadata: something else I’m not wrong to be paranoid about.

  I open up the door and immediately fall back with a yelp. Flo’s looking back at me like a feral terrier. I put one arm up, mind racing, desperate to stay out of range of her grip.

  “What the hell?” Because naturally she’s too short to be seen from the peephole.

  “Can’t believe you fell for that, dumbass,” she’s saying as she’s letting herself in, closing my door behind her.

  “How do you know where I live?” I ask, buying time even though I know the answer. I’m still backing away, towards the far wall. Towards the window with the fire escape.

  “We’ve been trailing you for a minute,” she says, looking at the Jeter poster in my living room. “The only debate was how to make the approach without you, well, flying away. Why are you listening to a podcast about Rita Hayworth?”

  Kinda wish I were flying away right now. Pausing, calculating the risk, I move quickly near Flo to shut off the bluetooth speaker on the kitchen counter before backing off again. “Why are you here? If you’re here just to kick my ass, then I’m leaving out the window.”

  She turns, her usual glare and frown gone. “You do that?” She walks over past me to the window with the fire escape as I keep my distance, walking backwards towards the kitchen, not liking how she’s now between me and my point of egress. My building sits on a hilltop in northern Manhattan with a commanding view of Washington Heights. And, more importantly, no buildings with easy sightlines to my window.

  “Sometimes, although usually I go up to the roof first.” Obviously not an option if I’m being pursued by an angry little person able to pull my arm out of my socket like cotton candy, as she had put it.

  “Love the view.” She’s still looking out the window as I sit cautiously on my couch, my heart still racing, not knowing what this person is capable of.

  “Seriously, don’t you hate me?” I’m finally forced to ask.

  She turns, and is silent at first. Her features really are pretty when she’s not looking like she’s getting ready to crush my spine like an accordion, her lips, feminine eyes and soft, gentle jawline accented by subtle makeup of a kind that’d be alien to Rachel. “You seriously don’t talk to anyone about what you can do?”

  “Like I told you guys, I’ve never met anyone like me before.”

  “Then that’s why I’m here,” she says, sitting down gingerly on the other end of the couch. “Not to submit you again.”

  “Good, because that kind of sucked.”

  “I kind of liked it, so don’t fuck with me. When did you find out? Wait, you said 16, right?”

  “Yeah, although who knows how long I actually had the ability. You?” I’m still regarding her carefully, like she’s a lit firework that didn’t fire off, not liking the fact that my window is currently closed. For her part, she seems relaxed. For the moment. I have to choose my words carefully so as not to set her off.

  “And can you not say ‘don’t fuck with me’? I’m really uncomfortable right now.”

  She holds up her hands. Tiny, delicate hands, I would’ve thought if I didn’t know any better. “I can go.”

  “No, I…” I wrestle with it in my mind before I decide my need to talk about it, what I can do, outweighs my understandable fears. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Got any gin?”

  “Why as a matter of fact, I do.”

  Not long after, I’m telling her one of my near-miss stories. She’s relaxed and engaging now, her expressive features registering astonishment or mirth as I’m giving my story of the time in basic when my drill sergeant was crashing through the barracks at 3am, wondering where the hell I was as I hovered in abject terror above the building. It ends with me lying and saying I was jerking off outside the mess hall, which earned me two weeks’ confinement to quarters after hours and the nickname “Meat,” which stuck with me throughout my service.

  Soon, between her and the gin, I’m calm enough to tell her more about myself, like the degree in marketing I had finished after my bit with the Navy. My job, she isn’t impressed with at all, to my disappointment. I segue into my friends group, rattling off their names, something about Angel’s insane workload as a lawyer, Rachel’s true crime podcasts, Carter being a douche, and a bit about how I’m worried that we’re all drifting apart.

  “So how did Ian connect me to the Russian, anyway?”

  “Your Arctic Monkeys wallet.” Flo checks her nails.

  “Huh?”

  “In the back of your wallet. There should be like, a credit card or something you don’t recognize. Oh, I wish I could wear acrylics.”

  I rip my wallet out of my pocket, flipping through the various slots. There. I pull out a completely blank, black “credit card.”

  “Jesus Christ. How—”

  “Almost like we have a girl who can flip to another dimension or something.” Flo looks back up. “Ian asked if he can have that back. He’s broke.”

  “That is so wrong!” I fume, turning the card around with my fingers. “So that wasn’t even the first time Elena pickpocketed me!”

  “Oh no, she slipped into here behind you one night,” Flo says, leaving me sputtering in outrage. “She told us how unsurprised she was you didn’t have any girl over.”

  “She… she… why does everyone keep saying that?!”

  On her end, Flo is new to town, although she’d been“recruited” by Ian in Philadelphia a couple years ago. She’d put off his entreaties about moving here until he and Elena had a lead on the rumored Flying Man of New York… getting in on the ground floor of whatever the hell our group is, proved irresistible.

  But she’s been lonely and isolated, and not just since moving. Her friends in Philly had drifted away, one after another – moving to different towns; disappearing into their marriages; just vanishing for no apparent reason. Which, of course, has me fearful of my own group of friends.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Flo hasn’t had much life outside work and occasionally working on music at a studio—she doesn’t elaborate, but it’s clear it hasn’t netted her many connections. And neither Ian or Elena are exactly lives of the parties themselves. I’m starting to suspect she came over less to check in on me and more for simple social contact.

  Her story growing up had been a bit different than mine. Around 12, she noticed she started getting stronger, and kept getting stronger to the point that she realized she had to start hiding it. But also, how liberating it was and how adventurous her gift let her be. I ask if that includes barging into strange men’s apartments uninvited, and she answers in the affirmative.

  “Have you ever, you know, used your strength on anyone else? Besides Ian and I?” I ask tentatively. Boundaries are just not their thing, and I have to come to terms with it.

  She nods, setting her drink down on my end table. “This guy I was dating hit me in my dorm room because he thought I had been too friendly with another guy at the campus dining hall. He, well, he… I hit him back, let’s just say.”

  “Wow,” I murmur, clutching my glass in one hand, fascinated and slightly scared. The fear, the danger, is giving me a thrill, I have to admit. “What then?”

  “He tried to press charges. The campus police officers just laughed when they came to my dorm room and saw how tiny I am.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I had a black eye, too, which helped get him expelled for his troubles on top of the fractured skull and vertebrae. I’m not invulnerable like Superman or something.”

  “My mind went to the Hulk, actually, when you, uh… had me.”

  “Yeah,” Flo continues, not looking at me. Her expression is casual, like she’s discussing her commute to work. “Either way, that guy should be glad I was holding back… which was something that took some learning.”

  She looks away for a moment, grimacing, before continuing. My eyes dart to my window again before looking back at her. “They were convinced he was beaten up by a bunch of dudes and he had just been trying to pin it on me.”

  “Wait, if you’re not invulnerable, then how do you not break your hand into a million pieces when you punch a guy like that?”

  “Oh, I brace myself,” she says with a casual shrug. “Then, I can take anything. But if caught by surprise…”

  Huh. Maybe that’s why she’s normally a bit high-strung. Either way, surviving another round with her depends entirely on getting the initiative. Initiative of fight or, well, flight.

  But I’m disappointed to hear none of them have any clue where, exactly, our abilities come from. None of them have cool origin stories from the comics like a freak lab accident or ancient prophecy either. So, no closer to finding out why I can fly. And Flo says human muscle fibers have natural maximum force, a maximum she routinely violates by orders of magnitude.

  Is it magic? Or are we born with it, whatever “it” is? If we’re born with it, why don’t any of our parents seem to have it? Naturally, I’m too paranoid to submit my genes to one of those gene analyzer companies.

  “Good,” Flo says, setting down her drink. “Ian says that’s the last thing you should do, and I never trusted those companies anyway. Too, I don’t know, deep state for me.”

  “Shit, I’m too careful to even search for myself online,” I tell her. “I have a guy do that for me. He did the numbers and said it takes like 125 kilowatts of energy for a ten minute flight. That’s more than a Tesla’s entire battery supply. It’s far more energy to hover in place, which is why I guess it’s a lot harder for me. Where does this power come from?”

  “Ooh, I so want a Tesla.” Her brows scrunch up in concern. “Wait. Someone else knows about you?!”

  “Oh, this guy… he’s not like us but he would never tell anyone. He owes me for this thing.”

  Flo looks at me curiously.

  “Ok, I saved his life, alright? He was about to fall…”

  “That’s so amazing,” she murmurs, one finger idly circling the brim of her drink. “You’re a life saver.”

  Nope, not really. Neutral at best on that score. “So what else are you into?”

  “Weird reason to change the conversation, but ok.” She polishes off her drink, sets it back on the end table. I wonder if her physical strength affects her alcohol tolerance. “You want to talk about the other night.”

  “Ian,” I say, nodding. Doesn’t seem like Flo is as close to him as Elena is, which might mean she’ll let on what this is all about. “He said something about changes coming. Do you know what it is?”

  She pauses at that. “Yeah. Vaguely.” She taps one foot on the ground. “I overheard them. There’s something about another person who can do what Elena can do. Except, she hates him. Or they hate each other. Even though I live with her, I don’t really know how to even ask her. I don’t know.”

  “Wow.” Another Elena out there, but one who may be a potential threat. My knowledge of people like me has gone from zero when I was a kid to one when I was 16 to, by my count, four or five. I’ll have to process that later.

  “Your fits eat, you know that?” Flo then says. “Even if you were irritating at first.”

  That was unexpected. “I was in my work clothes!”

  “Even better. Most guys wouldn’t know drip if they were standing under a leaky faucet.”

  “Isn’t it annoying how the media co-opted that word?” I grin. Her compliment triggered a slight head rush. “At least we still have gooning.”

  “Maybe you do,” she mutters slyly, eyeing me, grinning before grabbing her coat. “Anyway, I gotta head back. Don’t tell me I Uber too much when I should take the train because I already know.”

  “Hmm,” I say, a bad idea starting to germinate in my head. “Where you headed?”

  “Elena’s. She’s in the East Village.” She glances at me before looking at her nails again.

  “You know… what if I just gave you a lift?”

  “Huh,” she says. “You’re parked around here?”

  “I don’t have a car,” I mutter, deciding whether I could finally feel relaxed around Flo, still with a nagging fear in the back of my mind mixing with the brief euphoria.

  She sets her coat down, her expression unreadable. “Seriously, Nick?”

  I pause. “Come on before I change my mind.”

  Flo quickly puts on her coat before clapping excitedly. “Are you sure? Oh shit, I can’t believe it!”

  I’ve already got second thoughts. I don’t even know why I offered. Flo’s actually dancing in the middle of my living room.

  “I’ve been wanting to since we first met. Since Ian first told us about you! Why do you think I really came up all this way? Come on, Nick, you’ve felt what I can do. It’s your turn.”

  “That’s really it?” I ask, a bit agitated. She somehow manipulated me into offering! “That’s all this is? You’re not here to check up on me and you’re not here to kick my ass, but you’re here for like, the cool carnival ride?”

  “Oh come on!” she exclaims. “Yes, I want to get to know you, but… if you meet someone decently cool with a private jet, you’re gonna want to ride the private jet!”

  “Decently cool, huh. Oh really. I’m enthralled. Weren’t you one step away from bending me into a pretzel the other night? And leave that damn spy card here. Your phone, too.”

  She sets the black card on my end table. “Oh, I left my phone at home,” she says, grinning madly.

  “Because you knew this is how you’d get home… just great.”

  #

  So then we’re on the roof. I’m bundled up in my thick black jacket against the bitter night air, unseasonably cool for late September, hat and mask on. She’s clutching onto my back. I don’t have any concern she could possibly fall off; quite the contrary.

  “Too tight! I can’t breathe!”

  “Sorry,” she mutters into my ear, loosening her unsettlingly vise-like grip.

  “Seriously, you’re going to crack a rib!”

  “Will you stop your yapping? Come on, let’s go already! Do I need to switch you into drive or something?”

  Steadying myself, I look up, then leap into the air. Flo may be small, but she’s still an extra 100 pounds or so of weight I have to balance as we ascend, the wind whipping by me.

  “Oh my God!” Flo shrieks. “This is so kickass!”

  “I’m trying to concentrate!” I yell. “I’ve only carried someone once before, and that was for like five seconds!!”

  We’re now roughly 700 feet into the night sky. I level off before starting to fly south, horizontal, Flo on my back. The air is positively delicious tonight, brisk with a crackle to it. I just want to bottle some of it up and save it for later.

  “Oh my God!” she yells again. “You’re like my Harry Potter broom!”

  “I’m not your anything!” I yell back as we speed over Washington Heights. “Aren’t you cold?!”

  “Freezing! Let’s go, Nimbus!”

  “Don’t you know that that lady is a massive transphobe?!”

  “She’s gone too far!” Flo agrees. “But some things in the LGBT agenda are utter horseshit!”

  “Oh no, you’re a conservative?!” I shriek.

  “I didn’t leave the Democratic party!” she yells into the wind as Harlem flows past underneath us. “The party of DEI and wokeness left me!”

  I just let off a ragged groan as we now are flying over Central Park, Flo informing me just how much Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pisses her off.

  Finally, I’m touching down on top of Elena’s building on 13th Street. Flo leaps off me with an excited squeal.

  “I’ve found my next coolest thing ever!” she yells into the air, dancing in circles around me.

  “I’m not your Quidditch broom!” I say again for like the fifth time in a daze as she stops, suddenly looking up at me.

  Looking at me in the way only girls can. Eyes soft, inviting, lips pursed. She’s actually looking really pretty in the moonlight… now that she’s not ranting about politics.

  “What?” I mutter, my heart racing again, but not from the flight and not from being afraid. Well… maybe a different type of fear.

  “Hey,” she’s whispering, still staring at me. “Why are you so tall?”

  My hands are on her rear before I can even think, lifting her up, her arms around me once again but from the front this time as her lips find mine, eyes closed.

  The apricot scent of her surrounds me as her lips, warm and tantalizing, caress mine. We kiss, clutching each other, her far more gently than I thought she’s capable off, stroking my cheek with one hand as we make out in the chilly moonlight.