“I’m dripping with sweat.” Siaka rips off his T-shirt, leaving only a pair of white canvas judo pants, bare feet, and a perfectly chiseled chest. His skin glows under the overhead lights. My adrenaline-fueled high evaporates and I feel suddenly weak.

Ambrose stands there in tank top and shorts, grinning and twirling the heavy quarterstaff like it’s a toy baton. His weightlifting champion body, muscles bulging, couldn’t be more of a contrast to Siaka’s toned, balanced physique.

“The newbies need a break,” Ambrose teases, strutting back and forth with the quarterstaff. “That’s okay, man. But in a few years, none of this break stuff. Nope. In a few years, I will have no more mercy on your fragile chicken butts. Ambrose, the master of the workout, the unstoppable...”

His pump-up speech is interrupted by a voice from the top of the stairs.

“Ambrose! Cupcake! I have that thing I need you to help me with,” Charlotte calls.

This knocks Ambrose out of his zone. “Can it wait?”

“No,” she says. “It’s that thing. Remember?”

He remembers. Dropping the testosterone-fueled diatribe, he channels a twelve-year-old who’s in on a joke. “Oh, right!” he responds. “The thing! Be right there.”

“Sorry, guys,” he says, fitting his quarterstaff onto its wall hooks. “Promised to help the wifie with a thing. But feel free to stay down here and keep sparring. If you want. Or you could maybe talk. You know, whatever.”

He’s up the stairs and the door slams. Now, it’s just the two of us.

“Um, that was...” I begin.

“So obvious,” Siaka says, laughing.

“Obviously a plot to get the two of us together. Word must have spread that things aren’t exactly working between the two of us.”

Siaka shakes his head, but is still smiling, “These guys are always way up in each other’s business. No privacy at all. Water?”

We hang our quarterstaffs on the wall rack and head toward the watercooler. Filling two sports bottles with ice-cold water, we slump down across from each other on overstuffed white couches in a corner of the room.

Siaka blots his face with a towel and hangs it around his neck. “So,” he begins.

“So,” I reply, tipping water onto my towel and dabbing my face with it. I lean back and sprawl in a position that I hope looks casual, never taking my eyes off him. “I think I should start.”

“Be my guest.”

“You totally misunderstood when I...” He tenses up in defensiveness, and I change my tactic. “Living in semi-isolation for the last five years has made me the suckiest person imaginable for communicating. Like, I put my foot in my mouth every time I open it.”

He nods. “Carry on.”