Juicy news traveled fast. I heard about my favorite couple's fight before they even entered the cafeteria. There was a hush as soon as they walked in, like we were in a movie theater and the lights just dimmed.

Flora's face was set in defiance as her eyes circled the room. She tilted her chin upward, challenging everyone with a what-are-you-looking-at glare. Sean reached an arm around her shoulder and steered her toward the food. He bent down to whisper something to her and she nodded.

They joined the line. Flora carried the tray, and I could see Sean nodding to some of the dishes. She briskly picked up whatever he wanted. He was busying rubbing his hand on her upper arm. She leaned her head against his shoulder whenever the line wasn't moving, and at one point she reached up to stroke the back of his neck. Sean turned to her and smiled.

To an outsider they looked as deeply in love as ever. To me, however, they looked like Hollywood couples, the ones who hold hands as they walk down the red carpet, making a statement to the tabloids about how perfectly in love they are.

Something almost negligible was missing. It was like taking away the filter from a camera lens; things appeared about the same but just not quite right.

There was no emission of serene happiness. The telepathic connection between people in a relationship. A secret look only they knew the meaning of. Smirking at each other like sharing an inside joke. Right now Flora was smiling so fake she looked like the wife in The Truman Show, and Sean seemed to be trying too hard. A public declaration of love in the hallway? It was so not him it was alarming.

"Are you guys okay?" I asked when they sat down to join me. "Worried about not being popular enough?"

Flora nodded. "Yup! I noticed some of the sophomores weren't paying enough attention to me. I need to show them who the real drama queen is."

"We're fine," Sean said.

"We have too many sparks between us, sometimes an occurrence of a short circuit is inevitable." She looked at him. "That's what causes a short circuit, right? When the electric current is too strong?"

"Yeah. It can happen when the wire is damaged, too."

Flora didn't pick up anything to eat. On the tray was just the same couple of greasy items Sean ate every day, and I knew exactly what caused the explosion between them. Too many sparks and a damaged connection.

"Hey, have some consideration for your less intelligent friend," I said. "Can we not have a physics lesson in the middle of lunch?"

Flora smiled. "What's new with you, Jan?"

"You guys wanna do something fun?" I twirled my spaghetti around the fork. "I want to shoot a music video and post it on YouTube. Do you want to star in it?"

"What's the song about?" Sean asked.

"It's a lighthearted song about high school love. It's called Twisted Fairytale."

"I get it." Flora nodded. "Sean is the fairytale part and I'm the twisted part. Cool."

"Hey." He frowned and nudged her lightly with his elbow.

"You're both the fairytale part," I said. "It's a fairytale with a twist, you know, without the dwarves and elves, castles and dragons, and instead there are real conflicts and hardships, but you can still get to happily ever after. Just not in a royal carriage."

"Maybe in a Mercedes," he said.

She smiled. "Is that song actually based on us or do you just want someone good-looking in your video? I'd love to do it, as long as you're not worried that ninety percent of the comments below will be about your pretty brunette friend."

"I figured you'd be interested since you two are so into acting," I said. "I'm really looking forward to your history presentation, by the way."

Sean dragged a fry though the ketchup. "We haven't practiced our history presentation in ages. We're up after Christmas holidays."

"Yeah, it was just an excuse to get close to him." Flora smiled up at him, her whole face drenched in admiration. "But we have much better things to do now."

Fighting in the hallway, for example.

Flora stood up when she saw Lucia went through the door. She announced she needed to talk to her about cheerleading tryouts, then she squeezed Sean on the thigh before she left.

At first he was silent, but when she was a few steps away, he looked at me. He parted his lips slightly then closed them again, like he was dying to talk but was debating about whether it was the honorable thing to do.

"Is everything really okay?" I asked.

He flicked his gaze to where she was, all the way across the room. She was bent over in laughter, a hand on Lucia's shoulder. He turned back to his tray and picked up another fry.

"It's okay to complain once in a while to your very best friend," I said.

"Well, actually I want to ask you if she ever complains about me."

"Hardly ever," I replied. Flora stopped complaining about everything altogether, because Sean doesn't like whiny people. Besides, she was practically building a shrine for him with the way she obsessed over him. "When she's with us she can't shut up about how great you are."

"Not even about how our dates are boring?"

"No, she says she can't get enough of you. I shouldn't tell you this but your new nickname is Mr. Diamond."

"Why? Because I'm shiny but useless?"

"No. Because a diamond is forever."

He groaned as he rested his forehead against his hand. "Great. My biggest regret is that I never should've mentioned forever. It's just a direction to work for, but I think she takes it as a life sentence or something."

"How so?"

"Just the other day she said, there's something so final about forever. It's like whatever she has now, it's going to be like that for the rest of her life. What she doesn't have she might as well forget it because she'll never get it." He sighed. "Isn't that bad?"

It was worse than he realized. Flora felt trapped instead of protected, and the word shouldn't have that kind of effect.

I met Brian when I was 16. After one of my gigs he had walked up to me and said, "I know I'm probably the eighteenth person to say this tonight, but you were sensational."

I had thanked him and asked which song he enjoyed the most. He told me it was Index Finger. If it were back in the cassette days this song would probably be placed on the B side at track three. No one had ever commented on it but secretly it was my favorite song.

"It's like you couldn't wait to get to this song. You sang all of the songs with passion, but when you sang this one, you had a...a special light in you, like it reminds you of why you like doing this," Brian said. He had a really nice smile. "If I completely misread you, please don't be offended."

I was shocked, then I was hooked. I gave him my number and I waited for him to wait for at least three days before he called me, should he decide to call at all. He waited for an hour. I was barely out of the club when the phone rang. I already had so much to tell him, and it went on all through the night. It was very Before Sunrise.

I wasn't normally very chatty on the phone but somehow it didn't surprise me when the sun came up. I watched the sky unveiling and unveiling, turning from the color of dark sea water into the underbelly of a fish, the light casting different shapes on my window pane. I yawned and said, "Hey, it's good morning, I guess."

"Good morning. Want to come out for breakfast?"

A few months later Brian told me he had wanted to tell me that first morning, on the spot, that he hoped to marry me one day. He didn't say it then to avoid sounding creepy, and my toes curled at his words. I loved hearing it, creepy or not, and I remembered how in the initial stage I wanted him to only see the best of me. He was only to hear my loveliest songs, look at my prettiest dresses, laugh at my funniest jokes, and I would be cool and clever as I tried to impress him.

Thirty dates later we would be lying in bed, hair uncombed, clothes unchanged as we ate pizza, sometimes not even exchanging words. Sometimes we would go on a marathon and watch every movie directed by Coen brothers, from The Big Lebowski to Burn After Reading, argue over our favorite one, then eat more pizza. Sometimes we fought, mostly over his parents, who only wanted him to date other premed students. Sometimes we ignored each other for days.

He had seen me at my worst and I him, but that was a good thing. If you only see one facet of a diamond, how can you define its glamor? I had never felt bored, scared or uncertain, and forever seemed so within reach. It wasn't a bad word, and there was nothing wrong with wishing for it.

"I didn't ask Flora to make any promises," Sean said, "but I don't know why I can't even hint at the prospect of a future without her freaking out. It was fine when we were just flirting. Ever since we got back together she's been acting really...emotional."

"Maybe because she cares about you more."

"Yeah, that's what she said too. But she's been crying a lot. Quick to anger. At first it's nothing I can't fix quickly, but now it's gotten hard. I'm apologizing to her all the time."

"I see." I nodded. "You are Leslizing her."

"What?"

"Is she crazy and clingy and teary all the time? You're turning her into Leslie."

He narrowed his eyes at me and leaned back. "J, I like your smart mouth, but you're really mean sometimes. Besides, she was crazy before I met her. That part wasn't me."

"I'm just saying Flora is really bad at being in love."

"Being in love isn't driving a car. It's a basic instinct, not a technique."

I shook my head. "Don't get me wrong, I know she really loves you. I used to find her obsession cute, but now it's completely taking over her life. She doesn't know how to love you and herself at the same time."

"What does that even mean?"

"She's not used to being in a relationship. She wants excitement, unpredictability and a constant change. She thought being in love with you should be an upgrade from just flirting, but instead she got a whole different package and she doesn't know what to do with it."

"I can't change into someone unpredictable and exciting." Sean's eyes were a pool of troubles. "I don't even want to change my cell phone ringtone."

"Actually I think she really does like you the way you are. That's not what I meant."

"I think I bore her. She accuses me of making her feel like we're old and retired, but she doesn't want to force me into doing her things, either." He exhaled. "What's your suggestion? Do you think I should do something romantic?"

Even if Sean could think up new romantic things to do, which he couldn't, how long could he keep it up? I chewed on my spaghetti and pondered, then I slowly said, "I think you got too serious too fast. You're not going to like this, but I think you should let her date other people."

"No."

"Not date date," I clarified. "Just hanging out with guys alone, however you call it."

"How's that going to help?" His eyebrows were raised in plain disapproval.

"That's one of the things she had to give up, isn't it? Sooner or later it's going to lead to resentment. You took that away from her but you're not able to compensate her, and during the process you're also tiring yourself out. Just let her do her thing."

"That's also the only thing I asked of her before we decided to go steady. It matters a lot to me."

"She tries so hard fitting herself into your lifestyle and you try so hard keeping up with her. Yes, I agree, a relationship requires effort, but it shouldn't take that much effort. Let her go to parties with Raymond and expensive dinners with Charles or whoever. Let them worry about surprising her with new date ideas. At the end of the day, she'll appreciate having a steady boyfriend waiting for her and she'll always choose you. You know you can trust her."

"It's not that I can't trust her, or that she's wrong to want to hang out with her other guy friends, but it's just something I can't get past. It's easy to tell me to just change my opinion and everything will be better." He heaved an impatient sigh. "I don't even talk to other girls, yet she wants me to accept this. It's unfair and it upsets me."

"But you don't want to talk to other girls anyway," I said. Sean put too much emphasis on being fair, it was like he was signing a contract for a business deal. "Brian doesn't care at all that I hang out with you or Dylan. I don't ask what he does at university either. You just have to give each other some space. It relieves a lot of pressure, trust me."

"What works for you doesn't necessarily work for us."

I tried reasoning with him some more, using Flora's analogy: food. "You may be her favorite food, but she doesn't want to eat the same thing every day. She spends all her time on you and it's making her feel restricted. In an paradoxical way it's also making her insatiable."

"People are not vanilla sundaes," he said. "I'm not going to save our relationship with the help of other guys."

I cocked my eyebrows. "So you admit your relationship needs saving?"

He scowled and suddenly he was defensive. "No, it doesn't. We're fine."

I shrugged. Sean almost never listened to me, even though I had proved my worth time and time again. I hated to be wrong but in this case I really wished I was. Was it too late to start subscribing to their newsletter?

Flora came back and sat down with an overly-pleasant smile. "So what do we have to do in your video?" Her eyes sparkled. "Do we have to kiss? I'm saving my on-screen kiss debut for Ryan Gosling, but I guess you aren't too bad either." She pinched his chin.

"Anything you want," he said with a tolerant smile, even though kissing in front of the camera would be the last thing he felt like doing. The way he looked at her clearly showed he was hopelessly in love with her, but it was quite literally, hopeless.

Neither of them could see it yet, but instead of Cupid shooting arrows between them, it was Grim Reaper in its place. It saddened me because they were both good people trying to make it work, but a relationship isn't studying for the SAT.

Sometimes the harder you try, the faster you are fucking it up.

***