It was cold and rainy night. Mostly cold. Gray skies, lingering fog, the moon was invisible. The rain was more of a light sprinkle - not enough to dampen our mood, not that it needed dampening. I was walking next to a young, pretty woman. Dark hair. Large, brown eyes. Freckles dotted her cheeks. The low light from the flickering street lamps glistened on her lightly sweated brow; we had been walking for some time. As she walked, she rolled from her heels to her toes, launching off their tips as if she was half-skipping. I was dragging my feet, lurching down the road, defeated. I knew disaster was coming. "We can't be friends anymore," she said, "not like we have been." In the last three months, Catherine Graham had quickly become my best friend, though I wasn't hers. She was easily excitable, bubbly, quick to respond when you needed her, reliable, sometimes wise. I was a cynical, slow-moving, chatty, caricature of myself (Catherine: he was also frequently wise). She was always up for an adventure; I was always finding myself in the midst of one. It was the perfect friendship. I fix her bike; she fixes my shorts. I need someone to rely on; she needed someone large to stand behind her and look menacing in the lobby of her dorm (No I didn't, but I appreciated it). We spent a lot of time together in those days. Some would say, too much time. Lunches, dinners, spontaneous day trips. At its climax, we only really had time for each other. Hence the walk. Catherine, always choosing to follow her brain over her heart (I was secretly in love with him the whole time), planned to set an intervention. I was oblivious. How could I know that this woman, who spends most of her waking time with me each day, had feelings for me? I'm weird. If she does, she has bad taste (I don't). "We can't be friends anymore," she said, "not like we have been. We're acting like we're dating." I was shaken to my core. How could she say this? Doesn't she know I need her? That's when I realized: I need her. I went to the chapel to pray. What does this feeling mean? What do I do? How will this effect LeBron's legacy? Should I put $100 on Nick Castellanos hitting a homer tonight? She made me happier, wiser, more cautious with my own life. She held me to my faith. She was attractive, smart, funny, sarcastic, and she knew how to bake. I knew, from the bottom of my heart, that I would be devastated if we didn't hang out tomorrow. Did I love Catherine Graham? Yes. Probably. The next week I took her to our favorite, ultra-fancy dinner spot (It was Taco Bell) in my Lamborghini (the Toyota Camry he would total in two weeks). My hands gripped my steering wheel tight, my knuckles whitening under the pressure. I knew I had to take the leap. I knew I had to ask her out, properly. I knew I didn't want to just be her friend. But I couldn't. I moved my seat all the way back, trying to relieve the sudden claustrophobia. My head darted back and forth between my steering wheel, my feet, and the side of Catherine's head. She was staring forward, pretending not to notice. "Aidan Christian," I heard. I looked over, terrified that it was over before it began. "You don't love me like a brother." (Three days prior he had brought me cookie dough at my RA shift and sat with me for seven hours.) X**%**#*f, I thought, she was right. I knew that, but how could she? (I had eyes.) "No, I don't," I sheepishly responded. "So what are you going to do about it?" "I think I'll take you on a date." "Good."