I combed my hair, not even pausing to wince as I went through a particularly nasty knot. Frantically looking for my phone, I threw pillows around my dorm room and saw the tell tale blue sticking out beneath the cushion. I pulled it out, continuing to comb, and started dialing the only person who would realize how exciting this was for me. The phone rang once, twice, I squeezed it tighter, as if that would make the likelihood of her answering greater, three times, finally she picked it up.

“Hello,” she drawled out in her British accent.
“Hey, so, you’re never going to believe it, but he said yes,” I blurted out, faster then even possibly understandable.
“What are you talking about,” she replied.
“He finally agreed to go off campus with me, but the thing is, we need a ride,” I said in a pleading and desperate tone.
“Really, that’s quite a change, yes, I’ll meet you out front in five,” she said and she hung up.

Ecstatic, I opened my bedroom drawer and leafed through it to find all the quarters I had stashed there in case I needed to go out. It had been a long time since he had even wanted to be in a room alone with me, let alone a room off of the campus where our boarding school was located. I was not going to let anyone ruin this opportunity for me. I pulled on a blue and white patterned over-shirt, and rushed back to the main building.
I entered the building to find him sitting on the couch waiting for me. He was wearing light wash blue jeans, a white shirt with green stripes that I had given him years ago, and a pair of sunglasses designed to make him look cooler then he actually was. He stood as I entered.
“Ready to go?” He asked.
“Yes, just let me check on our ride,” I said, slightly out of breath from my run over.
I walked into the hallway just in time to see her coming through the doorway of her office.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Yes, just let me grab the keys,” she said.
I walked back to him and said “she’s just grabbing the keys.”
“Sweet, should we wait outside? It’s finally getting warm again,” he said.
“Sure,” I replied, smiling.

It had been so long since I had thought of us as a we. In the darkest of times I had to remind myself that he didn’t care about me the way I wanted him too. He would never love me, but it seemed like that was behind us now, a blur of screaming, silence, and tension slowly dissolving over the last couple months.

We stepped out into the sun and I could feel it instantly embrace my body. As each ray rained down on me I was reminded of what a difficult winter it had been. The iciness came at a time where I was already dealing with the frigid loss of my latest love ploy. Though I was still dealing with the scars of that, it was nice to feel the sun on my skin and know that I had made it through the darkest times, and that there was light ahead.

“So, have you heard back from any colleges?” I asked him.
“Yeah, three so far, what about you?” He replied.
“So far I’ve been accepted into six,” I replied.
“Damn, sounds like all your years of hard work at all costs finally paid off,” he said.
“Yeah, but I still have seven more to hear back from, so I’m still playing the waiting game,” I replied.
“Your mother took the car,” she said to me as she walked up to where we stood in the parking lot.

My heart sunk immediately. There was nothing more that I wanted in this moment was to have this experience with him. Now that we were finally on good terms, I wanted to solidify it with something fun, and what is more fun than ice cream.

“Uhm, can we talk a school vehicle?” I asked her.
“I’ll go check to see if there are any on campus,” she said and started walking back to the main building.
“Why is nothing ever simple,” I said, turning to him.
“That’s a good motto for life,” he responded laughing at me.
“May I see those for a second?” I asked, pointing to his sunglasses.

“Sure,” he said, handing them to me. As his skin grazed mine, I was surprised at how soft his palms were. Far less callused and gruff then his personality had become over the time I had known him. There was a comforting quality to it. I took them from him and put them over my dark blue eyes. The area around me turned sepia toned and I looked directly at him.

“Do I look like a classic Californian now?” I asked him, referring to my blonde hair, blue eyes, and hotshot personality.

He laughed for a moment before saying “I know you’re from Cali, but there is nothing Californian about you.”
“First of all, only people from Cali can call it Cali,” I said jokingly.
“Second of all, how am I not Californian?” I finished.
“ I don’t know, you just don’t have the self-centeredness I associate with Californians,” he said shrugging.
“Thanks,” I said handing the glasses back to him.
The car pulled up and I got in the backseat with him.
“I guess I’m just the chauffer then,” she said from the front seat.
“So, are you thinking you might actually go to college now?” I asked him.
“Uhm, I don’t know, I’m not supper excited about another four years of school, but I don’t know what else I would do,” he said.

“I mean, you could take community college classes at night and then get a job during the day or something,” I said.

“Yeah, but I also don’t know if I want to work,” he said snickering.
“Haha, well you still have some time,” I replied.
“I think you should go to college, I just think that in the future, you will look back on it and think it was a good decision, but that could just be the way I was raised,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s the direction I’m leaning,” he said.
It was only about a four-minute ride to the local ice cream shop. When we arrived, she parked the car and said “Text me when you want to be picked up.”
“Thanks,” we said in unison.

I opened my car door and then waited for him to exit his. We walked towards the ice cream shop slowly, enjoying the fresh air on our faces. The pink building was surrounded on the outside by tables with tilted umbrellas sticking out of their middles. We walked up the ramp that led to the entrance. I tripped slightly and stumbled, but did not fall.

“Are you sure there open?” He asked me.
“Yeah, there pretty much always open,” I replied, trying to seem knowledgeable.

We stepped closer to the door and he tried to open it. My heart sunk as it stuck and he pulled back on the door handle several more times. He then gave me a look that reinforced our new life motto. Why is nothing ever simple? Then I saw the sign in the window written in small neat handwriting and placed on the door in lime green paper. “Back in a minute,” it said. I was pointing it out to him when we heard a voice from behind us.
“I’m a coming,” the shop owner said as she bustled up the ramp.

We moved out of her way as she took out a key ring and unlocked the door. I held it open for him and he entered the air-conditioned room, turning his attention immediately to the menu.

“What do you usually get here?” We said, again in unison.
We laughed at how in sync we were. I turned my gaze to the floor before looking back up at him expectantly.
“Uhm, I usually get a vanilla and coconut shake,” he said.
“Nice, I like the chocolate cherry coke,” I replied.

We told the women behind the counter that those were what we wanted and stood chatting while she made them, the whir of the ice cream machine behind us.

“So let me get this straight. You invited me out for ice cream with no intention of actually ordering ice cream?” He said grinning at me in that cocky you-make-no-sense way he usually did.

“I don’t really eat ice cream,” I replied, shrugging off his expression.
“So, why are we here?” He replied. He didn’t see unhappy that we were, but curious as to my motives for bringing him to an ice cream shop without ordering ice cream.

“Well, I wanted to spend time with you off campus. You know, just chat, like the old days. Ice cream is merely a formality,” I explained.

“I feel like I could write a book out of the ridiculous quotes I get from having these chats with you. Did you really just say, “ice cream is merely a formality?” He chuckled.

“Yes, ice cream is a formality. A pretense for which we may find ourselves preoccupied doing something else instead of just sitting down to talk,” I said.
“I guess that makes sense,” he said.

“Plus, doesn’t ice cream make chats so much more fun? Imagine if I had brought ice cream to all those little chats we used to have about us,” I said both nostalgically and poking fun at our past. I was trying to be careful not to toe the line to close to making him uncomfortable.

“If memory serves I think I may have ended up with ice cream thrown at me more often then not if you had brought it to our past talks,” he said.

I rolled by eyes at him. The women handed us our order and I paid her all in quarters. We took a seat at one of the tables indoors that was a ghastly shade of Pepto-Bismol pink. I looked around more to see that the entire room was decorated with pink. There was also a fake rose sticking out of a purple vase on our table.

“Valentines Day,” I said to him, gesturing around the room.

“So, what’s new,” I asked
His eyes widened and he looked taken aback. He stuttered for a moment before saying “you know I’m bad at small talk, can you ask a more specific question?”
“Sure, what are you doing for spring break?”
“Skiing”
“Are you excited for that?”
“Yeah, if I could live on a ski slope, I would.”
“Awesome”
There was a pause for a second where we both just nodded in acknowledgement of each other.
I smiled and reached up to grab a piece of my hair, twisting it around my finger.

“This is the part of the conversation where the other person usually asks a question back,” I leaned in and whispered to him jokingly.

“Oh yeah, duh. So, what’s new?” He asked.
“I’ve been watching a lot of Revolution,”
“Oh, cool. Like the revolutionary war?”
“Nope, it’s a TV series about a giant power outage that basically makes it so no one has electricity all over the world,” I replied.
“Sounds interesting,”
“Yeah, I think it is really cool concept. What if the power everywhere just went out right now? It would change so many ways we go about our every day lives,”
“Wow, the show questions all that?”
“Yeah, I bet you would like it. It seems up your ally.”
“Imagine if we lived in a power outage. I don’t think I could deal without my music.”
“You and your music. Have you been playing the guitar a lot recently?” I asked, still twisting my hair around my finger.
“Uhm, yeah. I actually joined the band on campus. You know it?”
I tensed up a little and straightened in my seat, visibly becoming uncomfortable.
“Oh yeah, sorry. I forgot that he was the one who started it,”
“It’s alright, if I tense up every time someone mentioned something related to him I would spend my whole life tense,” I replied.
“How are you guys doing now, did you work everything out?” He asked.

I was surprised at the amount of sympathy he was showing me. It was uncharacteristic for him to ask me about drama, especially relationship drama as the majority of it had involved him. I guess he was just glad to be off the hot seat.

“Oh it’s a long story. As far as I’m concerned though we’re done. He’s been treating me poorly the last couple of weeks. I guess it just wasn’t going to work to be friends,”
“Yeah, it’s hard to get to that place.
“Right? It took us three years to get to this place. I don’t have that kind of time with him,” I said.

There was a silence. It was nice to be able to talk about this with him. He was really the only person who could relate to the situation fully, and may be able to provide some insight.

“You handled it better then he did,” I said.
“Handled what better?” He asked, not following me.
“Me telling you I loved you,” I said.
We both straightened ourselves up a little, but there was not the tension in the air that may have been expected. It was still light and friendly.
“How so?”
“Well, you actually wanted to work through it, he wanted to pretend it never happened.”
“Yeah, he’s good at that,” he said.
There was another pause before he said “he’s stupid for not caring if he loses you as a friend.”
It was one of the nicest things he had ever said to me, and I could tell he had tried hard to think of something to make me feel better. I took another sip of my drink.

“Thanks,” I said and I stared into his eyes.
For the first time, when I looked into them, I saw him. I saw who he was, whom he had become, instead of the person I had made him out to be when I had fallen for him. I took off my puppy love glasses and saw the friend that he had turned out to be.

“Can you believe we only have three more months of school before we leave this place?” I asked him.
“No, it feels like just yesterday we started freshmen year,” he replied.
“Yeah, except I’m a lot more cynical now then I was then,” I replied.
“You and me both,” he said laughing.
“We were so young and naïve back then,” I said
“Not to mention stupid,” he said
“I was a lot of things freshmen year, but stupid wasn’t one of them,”
“I barley remember most of it,”
“That might be a good thing,” I replied jokingly.
“It might be,” he agreed, also laughing.
“But looking back from then to now, who would have ever thought we would end up here?” I said, looking around.
He sucked up the last sip of his milkshake and it made that loud slurping noise of air entering the straw.
“I don’t know. I always kind of hoped we could get to his place.” He said nonchalantly.
“Me too,” I said.
“Well, we should probably text her to come pick us up so we can get back to school,” I said.
“I guess we better,” he said, standing up.

“This was fun, thanks for coming,” I said, reaching for his cup and then throwing them both in the garbage can.
“Yeah, it was. You should show me that Revolution show sometime when were on campus, you know, if you ever need a break from dealing with him,” he said.

“You better clear your schedule then.” I said half sighing, half laughing.

This was a revolutionary concept to me in itself. Having him as an ally instead of an enemy made me so much happier then I had been in a while. I had been so blinded by hate, and hurt, and regret that I had let it cloud my vision. I had let it turn the lights out on our friendship as if our emotional fuse boxes had been friend. But I was starting to see the lights come back on again, one flicker at a time until the entire country had regained power.