"How's the thing with your girl going?"

I looked at Philip with the most annoyed look I could muster. Did he really need to ask? One moment she's the terror of my existence, an absolute mastermind of torment that makes me dread going to class every day, and the next she's my girlfriend. For my own part, I tried to reject her, but I couldn't bring myself to.

"She's attached," I answered.

He raised an eyebrow quizzically. "And you aren't?"

"She's been my bully for over a year. I didn't even know college kids could get bullied, much less by girls." I bent down and grabbed a grape soda out of the cooler we were sharing. "How could I be attached to someone who's been so cruel?"

Philip pondered this for a moment. "You've known her since elementary school, haven't you?"

"Yeah, but we were never close. I never talked to her."

"You're one cold motherfucker, Alan."

I popped the tab from my soda and took a sip. "Shut up."

My thoughts wandered back to Adelaide, trying to make sense of everything that had happened in the past month. I remembered all of the pain she had put me through before vividly, and for a long time I had hated her for it. But things changed after I snapped.

"Why don't you just leave me alone?" I had begged her. "Can't you see that I absolitely despise you? You do nothing but hurt me all the time. You seek me out, memorize my schedule, all for what? To make me suffer? What did I do to deserve that?"

She had been speechless. "Alan, I-"

"If you don't have an answer, then just go. Please."

Then came the letter. Slid underneath me and Philip's door, asking me to go to the humanities building and wait for her on the rooftop. I figured she had awful planned, so, in hindsight, I'm not really sure why I went. Perhaps I was hopeful I'd finally be able to see things through? Or maybe it was her handwriting. Adelaide was always energetic, loud, and popular, but she had never seemed graceful to me. When I saw the neat, ordered rows of letters scrawled in blue ink on cheap paper (probably pulled from the communal printer), a part of me, I think, had a revelation that maybe there was more to her than just a mean girl.

She wanted me to meet her at six thirty, a half hour after she finished her evening class. It was November, so the sun had started setting around five, but I knew she didn't care. When I arrived, the temperature was below freezing, and I had a coat bundled around me to keep the blood from freezing in my veins. She had a coat on too, but she had a blanket and a large stuffed frog with her too, sprawled out on the concrete floor like she had intended to camp out for a long time.

I shut the door behind me, and I noticed she briefly let a smile slip before she suppressed it. Normally, her smiling made me nervous, but this time was different. Heartfelt. "I'm here. What do you want?" I asked. It was freezing, and I wanted to leave.

"I need to confess something." I realized she wasn't making eye contact.

"I'm already aware that you're terrible. Just get on with it."

Her next words caught me off guard, smacking me across the face and rendering me completely paralyzed in shock. "I'm in love with you."

Emotionally, I was cornered. I couldn't respond cohesively at all. I didn't even have the composure to let out my confusion with a, "Huh?" I just stared at her, and this gave her the courage she needed to keep going.

"I know we've... had problems. Maybe that's an understatement. But I want to make it up to you. I didn't realize how much I was hurting you. I'll do anything, Alan, so..."

Another thing: Adelaide was (and still is) a very, very, beautiful girl. Her hair was brown, but her eyes were pale gray. Her nose was slightly upturned, and her lips seemed constantly poised to widen into a bright, winning smile at a moment's notice. In the cold, with the only light coming from distant streetlamps, I think I lost my sense for a moment.

"Please don't hate me." She said the words so softly, so painfully, that my heart, which had frozen over to her a long time ago, thawed.

I remained firmly rooted in my place as she stood and slowly stepped toward me. I felt a flash of heat in my cheeks as she got close enough for me to see her breath in the cold. She grabbed my hand, which was an odd gesture, considering she was at least four inches taller than me. Since she had been sitting, I had forgotten for a moment. "If you want to try it out, I'll be your girlfriend."

To this day, I had no idea what I was thinking. I was lost in her expression of guilt, I suppose. It made me think that the woman who had made my life hell was someone worthwhile, after all. "Sure."

Snap back to the present, with me standing on the balcony with Philip, drinking grape soda. It was almost Christmas, and I was actually concerned about getting her a present. I knew she would get me something; she had been spoiling me since the day after we became a couple.

"I'll repeat my question, Alan, for all the idiots on the balcony. You're attached, aren't you? You see the way she looks at you and think back to the brief, little bits of interaction you had with her in middle school. High school." He sipped from a can of soda of his own. "You've been realizing that she's looked at you the same way this whole time, right? She looked at you with that love and loyalty when you were thirteen, coincidentally getting paired up and working on a project about the Romans together. She looked at you that way when you helped her get to her car on your senior prom night when your dates abandoned you both and left you alone, only for her to roll her ankle when her high heel snapped."

"How do you know about that?" I said, incredulous.

"Would you put your brain cells together for just two seconds, Alan?" Philip said, rolling his eyes. "She was just as popular in high school as she is now. She didn't have the best grades, but she realized where you were going and she landed eighth in the class so she could follow you."

"Answer my question."

"She's been begging me to teach her how to get you to like her, you dense bastard!" he yelled. "I know your relationship with her is complicated. She's a bitch. I get it. But she's been trying. She understands how she's been treating you, and she wants to do better. The reason you said yes, Alan? It's because deep down, you know that. So stop being a dick, go back in that dorm room, and apologize to her for using me as an excuse to ignore her call."

I stared at Philip, dumbfounded, and sighed. I didn't really understand how I was the bad guy here, but him putting it like that made me feel it at the very least. I opened the glass sliding door to the dorm and pulled my phone from my bed.

I had her number on speed dial. How long had it been there, anyway?

The phone only had enough time to ring once. "Hello?" the voice on the other side said.

"Hey, Adelaide."

"I thought you weren't going to pick up."

"Fooled you."

She took a moment before replying. "I'm sorry for calling so late, I didn't mean to-"

"Don't worry about it. You're not bothering me."

"Alright, then."

"What did you call about?"

"I just... I didn't get a chance to see you today, and I wanted to ask how your day went."

I didn't respond at first, not realizing that the statement was also a question.

"So?" she prompted. "How did it go?"

"Oh. It was okay. How was yours?"

I swear to God, her tone changed so dramatically it was like night and day. I'd never heard someone seem so happy before. "Better, now that I'm talking to you," she replied.

Before I knew it, the sun was rising.