“Diana was a bust,” said Bella. “You should have at least figured out whether she was straight, first.”

“I didn’t get much of a chance to get to know her before that,” I replied. I pulled the string of a teabag, and made it swirl around. It twirled just like the dreamcatcher. Once again we were sitting at the coffee table in my living room.

“That’s a problem, Milo!” she said. “I thought you’d known this woman for a long time.”

“Yeah, but we never talked about things like that,” I said, somewhat defensively. “It’s not my fault.”

“Weren’t you flirting with this chick every time you met up with her?”

“Of course I wasn’t flirting with her! I hadn’t intended to date her.” Bella facepalmed.

“I thought you ran little races, complemented her progress? And you were touching each other to stabilize during lifts?”

“I’d do the same for a male gym partner.” I preempted a possible question. “I’m not bi, by the way.”

Bella sighed. “You treated her like a bro, didn’t you.”

“What?”

“You sent her mixed signals. No wonder she got confused.”

“I’m not sure I…” I almost pulled out my phone to apologize to her again, but thought better of it.

“It sounds like her signals were unambiguous, though.”

It was my turn to sigh. “We talked about the way Romans used sex to cure hanahaki for like an hour.”

“Oh. Huh.” Bella was pretty cute when she blushed.

“If that’s not flirting, nobody flirts with me, so this is a doomed cause.”

Bella’s eyes narrowed. “I’m going to explain what flirting is, and then you can look for it next time you are with one of them.”

“I know what flirting is,” I said. “You’re the one who seems to be confused.”

But as it turned out, we had a lot of disagreements about the subject. Flirting occurs on the edge of deniability, to spare both participants if one of them doesn’t reciprocate; I shouldn’t have expected it to be simple. It’s a matter of escalating ambiguous signals into obvious ones, so naturally, it was very ambiguous.

Bella started giving examples, bringing up Greg and the cheerleader whose name I still didn’t know, but she listed so many exceptions that by the end I was more confused about her position than when we’d started.

“I mean, everybody likes getting compliments,” I said. “If a guy has a cool beard, I’m going to say something.”

“That’s not natural, you know?” said Bella. “If you tell some random guy he has a cool beard, he’s immediately going to wonder if you’re into hairy men.”

I frowned. “Maybe if you’re a woman. Man to man, it’s not like that.” She looked past me and toward the wall as she thought.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’ve complimented boys. Some of the time they get the wrong idea, so I’ve got to be careful, but I don’t recall a girl acting weird after I complimented her.”

“Now that I think about it, most women don’t give me compliments very often.” I received more compliments at work from male coworkers than female ones. I rubbed my chin. I’d always thought that women were harder to impress, or perhaps meaner, but maybe they were just more reserved to avoid miscommunication. It was obvious in retrospect.

However, all five of my dating prospects, even Diana the lesbian, had complimented me at least once.

“Are you sure that friends don’t also give compliments to each other?” I asked Bella.

“Of course they do,” she said. Bella’s eyes moved as she thought, like she was reading, but there wasn’t a book in front of her. “Flirting is a lot of compliments, though, and more focused too. And it’s almost always in a one-on-one context.”

“I’m going to keep complimenting people’s beards, then,” I said. “If it’s a stranger I don’t even know, they probably won’t read too much into it, and men need the compliments anyway.”

“You know what, you do you,” she said. “What do you mean, about men needing compliments?”

I tried to explain to her how male existence was lonely and soul-crushing, a whirl between work and machismo with ‘friends’, and that we lived in a society that deprioritized men in so many ways that most men felt they were constantly beset by enemies on all sides.

“So you are unhappy all the time?” she asked, with some concern.

“Oh no, not me,” I said. “Other men who are less successful, though. And other men who aren’t as deliberate with their friend choices, and who are less aware of their emotions, and more self destructive…”

“That sounds awful,” she said.

“It is. So, I want to show solidarity with them, let them know that they are appreciated and valued. If they take the time to make their beard look cool, they should be lauded!” I exhaled. “And this is the part where I say that women also get a raw deal from society, and have been subjugated for centuries, and have to deal with ongoing biases and patriarchy and immense injustices from unequal pay, so–”

“You can skip that part,” she said, making me tilt my head. “I know it already.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’ve already decided to do something about it.”

“What's that?” I asked.

“I’ve decided I’m going to be a mechanical engineer,” said Bella, “Unless it gets boring, in which case I’ll change to something else.”

I laughed. “Excellent response. Particularly about changing course when you learn something about yourself.”

“Thank you.”

—

Diana excused herself from our next walk. Her father needed help with remodeling part of his house and she was skipping her workout. Without her there to set a pace, I found myself walking too fast. I didn’t check myself until I started to lose my breath.

I missed being allowed to run. I had to concentrate to go slow.

Counting my steps ruined the experience a bit, but I expected that with practice it would help me learn to take my time. I listened to slower music with my headphones. It helped.

—

Weeks passed, and I finally finished the bloomycin course. I had ended up skipping the soup kitchen, ostensibly to recover, but maybe also because I was afraid I’d be embarrassed from having to run to the bathroom so often. I wasn’t sure what motivated me more, in the end.

The next time Anna came to town we went and got coffee. It definitely wasn’t a date–Bella and I decided that we wouldn’t call it a date until the lady verbally agreed to go out with me–but it was a chance for me to pay attention and look for any flirting. At least I wouldn’t have to check if Anna was a lesbian. I’d known some of her exes, and they were all male.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“The avian flu is particularly bad this year,” Anna was saying. Chickens were famous for their vulnerability to the flu, a sickness that humans easily fought off. “It’s really tragic. All those chickens die, and nobody even eats them.” Neither Anna nor I ate chicken. She was a full vegetarian, immensely rare for a farm girl, and I’d quit eating real meat after she’d inspired me.

“Is there anything we can do?” I took another bite of my berry sandwich. By ‘we’ I meant humanity, but Anna would know what I meant. Our conversations were often about how society, or ranching in particular, could be better.

“They cull birds,” she said. “But wild reservoirs of the disease make it so that it always comes back.”

“Just like hanahaki. Man, we need something like a fully-general way of preventing illness.” I scratched my chin. “I realize that’s a stupid thing to say, because illnesses are all kinds of things, but still. We need to spend more effort preventing respiratory sickness.”

“The real solution is to give the birds plenty of space, and healthier conditions. Or maybe to stop eating them entirely. Also, it’s kind of screwed up that to cure chickens, we kill a bunch of them.” She took a long pull of her coffee. “Chickens are actually very smart animals.” We’d had this conversation a few times, so I skipped straight to the end.

“Thinking of Misty?” I asked. Anna had kept a pet chicken for a time, growing up.

“Of course,” she said. “I remember that one time she pecked Gavin and you.”

I could remember the incident as well. Anna and I were eleven years old. She had been carrying Misty everywhere on her shoulder, and whenever Gavin or I got too close, the bird would go after us. Gavin had finally thrown up his hands and avoided standing anywhere near Anna.

I’d started giving Anna a hug every time I saw her, and just kept letting the chicken bite me. I was going to win against the bird no matter what it took. Finally, one day, Misty got me really good and I carried her around as she hung from my arm. She had drawn blood.

After detaching the bird, Anna had calmly told me to knock it off, because blood was bad for chickens. We’d called Misty the vampire chicken after that.

“Misty was a good guard dog, wasn’t she,” I said. Eventually the chicken had come around, and I’d been able to carry her too. Unfortunately, chickens don’t have long lifespans.

“She was,” said Anna. “Did you know that chickens have their own version of hanahaki?” That was a new step in the conversation.

“What? I thought it was humans only.”

“Well, ’hanahaki’ is, I suppose. It’s a disease, like ‘athlete’s foot’ is a disease, and birds get fungal infections like avian Aspergillosis.” She sipped her coffee, and I realized from the way she was staring into my eyes that a punchline of some sort was coming. “Many vertebrate species have their own Amorfloris worms, though. Chickens, cows. Even some plants.”

“Plants? Plants, with parasitic plants?”

“Oh yeah. But hanahaki isn’t a plant, or an animal, or a fungus. It’s kind of all three.”

“Fair. But Amorfloris parasites still cause blooms in plants, like they do in animals?”

“On plants,” she said, “But yeah, they do.”

“That’s crazy.” I lifted my fruit sandwich and her smile widened.

“Guess where fake meat comes from?”

“No,” I said, putting down the sandwich. “No way.”

“Yes, way!” She laughed. “Meat berry plants are related to Amorfloris.”

My appetite left me entirely. “So I’ve been eating hanahaki this whole time?”

“Again, it’s not hanahaki, just like shitake mushrooms aren’t athletes foot.” She put her head on her hand. “It’s fun to see you so flustered.”

Anna went on to explain some things about meat berry cultivation–how any tree could be used, but apple trees were preferred for their ability to support many grafts. About how meat berry consumption was rising worldwide due to it being more economically viable than traditional meat. About how you had to control your harvest so you didn’t damage the plant, just like with the units in BloomCraft.

It was a lot to digest at once, but I enjoyed it when Anna waxed poetic about something. She had this practical expertise about any subject she’d decided was important. She’d go out and figure out all the best practices about something, all the little nuances. She’d been that way when we were kids, always chasing after something with great intensity.

The attitude served her well on the ranches where she worked. Sometimes a lot of work had to be done, and a lot of motivation was necessary. I almost asked her out, right there, but I was still gun shy after what had happened with Diana.

“This was a lot of fun,” I said. “We should do this again soon.”

“I’d like that,” she said.

Close enough, I thought.

—

“Way to go!” said Bella.

“It’s not a date,” I said. “I didn’t call it a date, she didn’t treat our meetup like a date, she barely flirted with me. We’ve been friends forever and it probably won’t change.”

“Friendship can grow into romance,” said Bella. “It’s a very common pattern.”

“You spent half of our last discussion telling me I shouldn’t have been so pushy with Diana."

“It depends on the circumstance,” she said. “But with Anna, you probably have a shot. She seems to really care about you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Choosing games you’d like, remembering your preferences. Checking in on you when you are sick.”

“Anna is a compassionate woman. She cares about animals, but also about the farmers whose livelihoods depend on her.” Anna didn’t eat meat, but she worked with many people who did, and empathized with them despite their disagreements.

“So you’re saying you like her, too?”

“I’m saying that you shouldn’t denigrate her by implying she’s overly compassionate to me alone.”

Bella laughed. “Fine, fine. Well, let’s talk about the other two then.”

“I haven’t seen Emma in weeks,” I said. I felt my face fall. “I haven’t been going to the soup kitchen. I’m not sure if that means I’m a good person.”

“You’re still donating a fraction of your salary, right?”

“I upped it to twelve percent to compensate.” My overtime had made more than two percent extra.

“Uh huh,” she said. “You are definitely still moral, so stop worrying about that.” She hummed. “Maybe you should skip a walk to go to the soup kitchen, again? Talk to Emma?”

“Maybe I should pursue just one woman at a time?”

“You were just saying that Anna wasn’t that woman, and that you weren’t really pursuing her.”

I shook my head. “I think I will go to the soup kitchen, because I miss it.” I didn’t mention the digestive issues from bloomycin. I had finished the course some weeks before, but still hadn’t gone back to volunteering. “As for dates, I’ll cool it for now.”

“September is fast approaching.”

I laughed, intending to say “you got me there,” but the laugh turned into a cough.

“Not sick again, are you?” asked Bella.

“My lungs are still irritated from the surgery. It’s awful.”

“Well, I was going to ask about Chloe. You’ve spent more time at work, recently?”

“I have…” I said slowly. “But I haven’t interacted with Chloe much. My nose has been to the grindstone.”

“Hmm,” she said, and I tried to keep in mind that Bella hadn’t ever held an office job.

“I’m capable and independent, so when we aren’t on some sort of mission together, she spends most of her time helping others. Also, I’ve got my own office.” Bella hadn’t had an office job, so the bragging was doubly useless.

“Fair enough,” said Bella. “Have you tried asking her to get lunch?”

“She eats at her desk, like everybody else. Also, did you miss the part where she’s my superior?”

“A dominant woman, perfect for a pushover like you.”

I snorted, and something shot out of my mouth. It floated down onto the table: it was a single hanahaki petal.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

—

I saw Dr. Dominic the same day. He ordered another scan, which revealed that hanahaki worms were growing in my lungs once more. They were small–I’d caught it much faster, this time–but it hadn’t even been a month since the end of my bloomycin treatment before the disease had returned.

“We are going to have to perform further tests,” he said. “Did you ever ask your crush out?”

“I told you, I don’t have a freaking crush!”

“Mr. Caldwell, I’m just trying to understand your situation so I can provide better treatment.”

“Well, understand that I don’t have a crush, and I never did, and I tried to get a date anyway, and it made things worse, and this illness is still affecting me. Could it be anything else?”

“Your immune system could be compromised by stress,” he said. “Have you de-stressed, like I advised?”

“Yes! I–” I’d stopped going to the soup kitchen, and I’d stopped exercising very much, both of which made me happy with endorphins. And I’d been working overtime in the aftermath of the customer meeting. “Fuck.”

“Fuck indeed, Mr. Caldwell. I’m going to prescribe more bloomycins, and a nutritional supplement just in case your vegetarianism is causing deficiencies. We’ll see how you do.”

“What about surgery?”

“It shouldn’t be necessary.”

“Look, the bloomycins… their side effects are pretty awful.”

“Oh?” He listened to my concerns about having to run to the bathroom, and wrote in his notes. “I’m glad you said so. We’ll try a different kind so that you can keep volunteering.”

“Thank you,” I said. I was mentally kicking myself; I could have e-mailed him at any time, and made the problem go away. Then I remembered that you have to finish every course of antifloral drugs, entirely. Drug-resistant hanahaki was a growing concern.

“And an antidiarrheal, as well,” he added.

“Okay, yeah. Good idea.”