The Fighter and the Baroness: A Modern-Day Fairy Tale

by Sunniva Dee

  “Ngh,” she grunts, anxious.

  “The joint is what inhibits it, see? It doesn’t go back over it. You got the ring on though. How long ago was that?”

  “Mm… Two days ago.”

  I suppress my laughter. “That’s not really when you got engaged though, right?”

  “Of course not. I told you I just haven’t worn it much.”

  I shake my head. “Gunther Wilhelm the Sixth must have been excited about having such an enthused fiancée.”

  “Gunther Wilhelm the Fourth.” Eyes squinted, she straightens.

  “Right. You guys have difficult names. I am but a foreigner after all,” I say, making half of an apology. She seems mollified—until I blow it by winking. She slaps my hand away and wants to get up. I don’t let her. Instead I take a hold of her shoulders and swing her back around.

  “You want me to ‘shaddap?’” I ask, face in serious folds.

  “Please, yes.” She’s fighting the urge to smile. Good.

  In the end, I make it happen. After two near-panic attacks, she agrees to shutting her eyes and allows me to wriggle and turn her ring until I can force it off her finger. It’s a good thing she’s not watching, because it actually turned an odd shade of blue before I got the damn thing off.

  Helena is so relieved she thumps back on the bed. Blowing her cheeks up, she lets out a soft hiss of air.

  “Feels good not to be chained to some enormous diamond, huh?”

  “Yeah, seriously,” she replies, not catching my sarcasm. I’m not going to remind her.

  We have dinner at McDonald’s. Or she does, while I snack on healthier stuff from a Delicatessen store. It’s romantic. Helena knows how to enjoy the moment. She wanted three kiddie meals, something about the size of everything being “too cute,” and how “pretty” it looks with three tiny bags of French fries instead of one big one. She hands me her apple bites and yogurt.

  “Oh there’s Zeke,” she says, looking up from the three dry little burgers she has separated from their respective top buns. She’s pouring mustard on them. She was contemplating which top would work best with which lower bite when she discovered my buddy.

  “Hey, Princess,” he greets her and leans on a fist against our Mickey-D table. Zeke sets his eyes on me. “So what’s with declining my calls, dude?”

  “I was busy,” I say.

  “You were?” His expression brightens for me, getting entirely the wrong idea. “So… you got a room?” With a twist of his head to Helena, he adds, “Victor’s a bit of a prince too. Likes the good life. He’s not gonna be caught drinking in a pub or sleeping on bucket seats in an airport, mind you.” He rolls his eyes.

  Helena tilts a grin his way in response. Already, she knows more about my background than my fighter friends. It’s not what we talk about at the gym and certainly not on a trip like this.

  Zeke solidifies his ignorance by adding, “Victor’s the uncrowned prince of Japan.” I’m not one to hide my origin or how I moved to America, but I see no reason to volunteer information either.

  Helena’s gaze goes to me. She’s entertained by Zeke but waiting for my reaction. Zeke’s are friendly jabs, and I have no problem with them. Mostly, I’m just surprised at how he doesn’t insinuate the nature of my being busy.

  I lift my hands, forming a reverent teepee in front of my nose. Then I bow deeply, causing both of them to laugh.

  “Watery eyes” has a new meaning to me now. I’m trying not to stare at Helena when I duck up again.

  Sharing a hotel room with a girl isn’t a big deal. Shouldn’t be, anyway; I’ve never doubted my stance on abstinence, and excess of any kind should only apply to martial arts.

  Sure, in my teens, I had my nights of surrendering to temptation. There was guilt, my martial arts being the only religion creating it. It was the straying from my goal, from where my mind, my dream, my parents had me anchored. Not once, not even during puberty, did I see a bigger prize in life than mastering my art.

  It’s been a while since my drives have been in this kind of uproar. Helena is wrapped in on her side of the bed. I’m on top of the comforter, a foot away, but even so, a single strap of her top, the way it slides to the edge of her shoulder when she moves, produces a burning vacuum at my solar plexus. The heat travels, and there’s not much I can do about it, so I drop my arm in front of my crotch.

  “We should turn the TV off and go to sleep,” I murmur. Her top doesn’t plunge that deep on her chest. Fuck, but it’s low enough to have to consciously glue my stare to her face. If she happened to roll closer to me in sleep, I’d poke her… hard. I should take another shower.

  “You want to watch porn first?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Ha! Kidding. You just had that look. I think you’d make an intense porn actor. Some of them just look like they’re on pills or something that make it stand for them and then they go, bang-bang-bang, and they don’t even look like they’re enjoying it.”

  Wow. A chick just left me speechless. I have no idea what to say.

  “Sorry.” She pulls in a deep breath. I risk a glance and see a light blush creep into her cheeks. I’ve got no luck on a clever comeback. It doesn’t help that I’ve got a piece of granite protruding behind my hand.

  Helena turns, a naked shoulder rubbing against the headboard as she faces me. “I’m going tell you something because I’ll probably never see you again. It doesn’t matter what you think of me; I’ll just be the princess from some foreign airport to you anyway.”

  I nod. Despite my attraction to her, I’m able to bob my head in a somewhat natural way.

  “You know how we display only certain sides of ourselves with our families?”

  “Yeah,” I husk, how my voice sounds when I’m sexed out. She probably thinks I’m tired. “Go on.”

  “I’m the perfect baroness to our county. It’s not hard for me to be that person. I enjoy it—it’s who I was until I left for college. But then I left that bubble. And I feel like over the last three years I’ve learned more than I have since I was little.”

  I reach for her on top of the sheets. My plan is to pat her arm, but her fingers entwine with mine as she continues. “In college, I stopped drinking high quality stuff the way I did at home.”

  “How old were you, eighteen?”

  “Germany is different to the U.S,” she says, smiling. “You know?”

  “Yeah, right,” I say.

  “I knew my wines; we have a wine cellar at the castle, and it was weird to drop all that to drink super-cheap wines, but I didn’t want to stand out.”

  I feel a side of my mouth quirk up. Me, I can count on one hand the times I’ve been drunk, and they were all on cheap beverages. “A few rough experiences, yes?”

  “You can say that.” She giggles. Helena sounds even younger when she’s entertained. “You have no idea. Apparently, unless the wine is too expensive for almost anyone—including my father—my hangover lasts until June.”

  My smile grows. “Even if you drink in December?”

  “Bah, you know what I mean. It lasts a very, very, very, very long time.”

  “‘Very, very, very, very long.’ Got it.”

  She giggles again. Problem is, she’s also slinking lower between the sheets and she isn’t letting go of my hand. I don’t want her to let go of my hand either, which is another problem. While she does what she does, long strands of golden hair slide around her, and some of it rests over my knuckles.

  “Anyway,” she sighs, sleepy and leaning a cheek on my shoulder. “In college, I got hammered, I had hangovers, friends from the poor side of the valley. I lost my virginity to a football player, and I even watched porn once with my roommates. Is that shocking to an American boy?”

  “I’m not American.”

  “You are if you’re a citizen. Are you?”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t born in the U.S.”

  “But you got there when you were five and grew up there.”

  I nod
even though we could have a month’s worth of debates on this.

  “AM-erican. So, what’s the verdict? Are you shocked or not?” She angles her chin against my lower arm, digging in with it.

  It’s hard not to smile around her. She’s alive and sincere and a little bit wild on the inside. “Oh yes, you’re shocking the shit out of me.”

  This seems to excite her; Helena folds up sideways on the bed, grinning. “Really? I surprised a real-life ninja? What kind of girls are you used to then?”

  My smile fades. I still feel it linger around my eyes as I dive into all that glittering pool water in her gaze. “Not very many.”

  “Oh. You’re not a virgin, are you?” She almost looks hopeful.

  “What? No.”

  “Aww.”

  I study her face. “You’re disappointed?”

  She shrugs one really sweet shoulder half way up to her ear. “I don’t know.”

  Seventeen years of strict upbringing yells at me to not say what I say next. “Did you dream of teaching some novice?”

  I feel her stomach ripple with mirth beneath our hands. “Ah… no. I guess I just really didn’t want to think of you with anyone, like, at all.”

  Fuck. I can’t resist her any longer. I slide down on the bed, and she doesn’t move away when I pull her in. She gasps like she’s been waiting for me. I lift the covers and shuffle inside.

  “Oh,” she says, silky against me. I can’t fathom—

  Vice.

  Excess.

  My insides rage. Her arms go around me, and I drink her lips. Helena pushes against me, and she’s a girl unafraid of it all. “It took you long enough,” she sighs.

  “Don’t let me.”

  “But please.”

  HELENA

  What do you do when you’ve dropped everything and fled your home like some pubescent teenager?

  Me, the first two nights in Florida, I stayed in a hotel, feeling like Papa again by paying a lot of money just to sleep. It was a renowned chain, one I’d heard of and felt safe about. I’d done no research on this city beforehand, and what if their cheaper hotels are shady?

  I bet Florida isn’t as safe as Germany. I could end up in a brothel, probably, instead of a hotel, and I really never aspired to become a sex slave handcuffed to a bed with smelly sheets.

  On the second day, my smart self kicks in and draws me to a university. I spent my last years on campus in Germany, and if it’s anything like home, I’ll find boards plastered with roommate ads.

  Jackpot!

  I lie when someone picks up on my second call to the perfect apartment. I tell him I’m here for my master’s in Business Management, and the guy sounds instantly excited.

  “What did you say your name was again? I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I love your accent,” he gushes.

  “Thanks. It’s Helena von Isenlohe, and the plan is to get rid of said accent while I’m here. What’s your name?”

  “Oh my God, you’re German?” he gushes again.

  “Yeah…”

  “I’m Gunther—Gunther Weber! I’m also from Germany.”

  I lean my forehead against the wall. What kind of thwarted fate is this? The apartment seems amazing, just what I need, but clearly I’m not destined to escape the Gunthers.

  I aim at a carefree tone. “Wow, but you sound totally American.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m third generation American. The fam just never forgets the good ol’ roots so we all have German names. You can call me Gun.”

  “Gun? Like a shotgun?”

  He laughs again, a raspy sound. “Nah. Just Gun, as in short for Gunther.”

  I have a home now in a small suburb far removed from the ocean. My room is much smaller than at the dorm of my old college. It feels nice to drop my purse full of crown jewels on an old office desk the former tenant didn’t take with him.

  “You can do whatever you want in here. Our landlady’s cool. She’s youngish, and Angelo, the Italian of the group, keeps her happy.” I follow Gun’s finger jab to a short, wiry guy with a seductive glint in his eyes.

  He nods. “She’s nice. Don’t worry about Robyn. Just tell me if you have problems, yes?”

  I extend a hand. “Nice to meet you, Angelo. Your room’s next to mine?”

  “No-no-no-no-no. Is one up from Gun’s. Next to you is Cassandra. Oh Cassandra, Cassandra.”

  Okay. Angelo must have a thing for Cassandra.

  “You can call her Cass. She prefers it,” Gun explains. “She’s out and about right now, but you’ll get to know her soon enough.”

  “Where’s Cass from?” My teeth bite into my lower lip; as far as I know, there are only four rooms in this apartment. Men are easy for me to get along with if there are no crush issues. Girls can go either way: she can become your best friend or your enemy. In my case, my first roommates were gossiping, conniving, and jealous. They soon found out about my family and made life so difficult I ended up moving to another building.

  “She’s from New York.”

  “No, you have to try it,” Cass murmurs, voice passionate. “It’s so freaking good you’ll never drink coffee or regular tea again.” She squints her eyes, obscuring the sort of blue I see a lot in my home country—regular sweet blue of the type I’d always wanted for myself.

  I love the array of eye colors in this country though. Anything goes, from a black so deep you hardly see the pupils to all shades of light—green, orange, a wispy grey—and I’m sure I haven’t seen them all yet. Germany has become a fusion of people over the last decades too, but the feeling I get in America supports history: this medley is old, it’s assimilated, and it’s here to stay.

  “What’d you call it again?” I ask my new roommate, all five feet one of her with short corn-colored hair and surfer-girl bronze.

  “Mate! Ricardo, my new boyfriend, he’s from Uruguay, and they drink it all the time. It’s good for you. It’s totally got mateine in it.”

  “Which is?”

  She gathers all fingers on one hand, fingertips up and tight together like Angelo does. “You know how coffee has caffeine and tea has theine? So mate has mateine. It’s better for you than coffee and tea.”

  “Weird because theine is just another name for the caffeine in tea.”

  Her eyes widen with surprise, which is when I think that maybe she’ll overreact to anything I say. I guess I’ll have to get used to that if we’re to be friends. “Ah but this is mateine.”

  “So another strain of caffeine?” It’s just a question, but she huffs so hard she sounds offended.

  “Do you like it or not?” she asks.

  I purse my lips around the silver straw. It really is a thick, silver straw inside a goblet made of what looks like thin wood. Hot water floats over leaves that seem wider and fresher than regular tea. I let my gaze float up to her half-mad face as I start sucking.

  “It’s not too hot. I know how to make it now,” she says, blinking with righteousness. “Not sure if you like it sweet or not, but this round’s going to be sweet. I like it sweet. I put two teaspoons in there, and that’s after I had the first virgin rounds myself, so yeah—sweet.”

  I don’t know if the “virgin round” is regular American speak or Cass just repeating her boyfriend’s translation from Spanish. As a language person, it interests me to no end. I guess I’ll find out later; I won’t butcher our bonding any more than I already have by digging into what others consider irrelevant details.

  I pull liquid in through the hot mouthpiece. It’s sugary, a hay-and-tobacco-flavored richness I couldn’t have predicted. It’s very different, exotic, and her eyes arch wide with anticipation.

  “You need to breathe,” I tell her.

  Cass lets out that breath I knew she was holding and pulls in more air to ask, “Don’t you just love it?”

  “Did you love it the first time you tried it?”

  “What?” Manicured brows sink as she waits for more from me. What else am I supposed to say?

&n
bsp; “I mean, did you love mate the first time you tried it?”

  She pinches her mouth shut. Is she angry? “Gah, you’re just like Angelo. No, I didn’t like it that much the first time I tried it, but now it’s freaking delish.”

  “Okay then. Is it just one time, like this, or do we drink more?” I enjoy the smooth feeling of this goblet in my palms and the spicy scent reaching me from its surface.

  Cass’ exhale this time is less agitated. “No, usually, people do rounds and keep pouring water and sugar into the leaves. Once it’s watered out, it depends on each person if they want more. And then they just have to change out the leaves and start fresh with more hot water.”

  “Cool, so maybe we’ll drink until we have to change out the leaves,” I say. “Maybe I’ll love it too by then?”

  A half hour later, we’ve exchanged leaves twice, we’ve ingested half a bowl of sugar, and Cass is acting like we just got drunk together. She leans in over the kitchen table, stares deeply into my eyes with so much sincerity it’s hard to look away.

  “You can tell me, you know, why you left your country. You can be honest. Was it just the business program over here at WMU that attracted you, or was it something going on at home?”

  I have a moment to swallow before she adds, “I’ve seen your wedding dress.”

  What?

  “That could be just a ball gown.”

  “Really? In your country that’s what that is?”

  I shake my head. “Mmm. No. So you’ve been in my closet, huh?”

  “Maybe?” Her lips twist in one of those sitcom-embarrassed grimaces, mascaraed stare narrowed with worry.

  “I didn’t actually get married. I was supposed to, but then I backed out.”

  “What? You didn’t want to be the bride in a wedding?”

  That’s the silliest question I’ve ever heard. Cass seems bright. I mean, she’s studying to become a dental hygienist, and she’s volunteering at an animal shelter, taking care of the office records there. Perfectly normal, bright girl, I thought.

  “The wedding is only one day,” I still explain. “The wedded bliss is supposed to last a lifetime. Would you marry someone just for that one big day?”