I was in my third year of MFA school, that niche hotbed of sex, lust, mistakes, sex, and—if you’re lucky—love. It was stifling, August in Southern Illinois, and a few of us seasoned hands were welcoming the new recruits with alcohol and queries into whom among them had already found solace from the grueling pre-semester training in each other’s loins. Gossip, I said, is the lifeblood of storytelling.

I had strategically sat myself next to Andreas, the new fictioneer who came into the program already a legend. His friend Dan, a fellow third-year and officemate, had told me Andreas was “a dreamboat,” the bearded, bosom buddy with whom he had adventured in Alaska. Somehow, Andreas’s cohort had heard that he was accepted into both the fiction and poetry programs. And though this was not true, it shot his graduate-school street cred through the roof.

So I was a little disappointed when he declared that he didn’t like to gossip. He was here to “write” and not to “get laid” and that the guys who went around looking for someone to poke seemed “desperate.” I agreed. Desperation is uncomfortable. But that didn’t stop me from casually noting that his choice of words suggested he didn’t have a girlfriend.

Because Dan had some sway with the English Department secretaries, Andreas was placed in the third-year office. Since no real work gets done in an MFA office, I spent most of my time babbling to him. He was a very good listener. He gazed intently as I explained that there was literally nothing better to do than drama it up in this petri dish of egos, social anxiety, and late-stage adolescence—it was basically our job! Soon, he was asking for the latest.

Sometimes I stopped rambling long enough for Andreas to say something endearing or hilarious. However, he was always conscientious of the fact that I might be working on my thesis—or hungry or thirsty or in need of caffeine. He was careful not to interrupt me, and whenever he took a walk to the student center for provisions, he always asked, in earnest, if I needed anything. Before Andreas, I shared an office with four men who enjoyed arguing about nonsense—at high volume and length—while I was meeting with students. Andreas, I concluded, is a truly thoughtful person.

By September, we were chatting every night on the Internet, and I had a full-blown crush. Since I knew he wasn’t here to “get laid,” I decided to strategically position myself as a friend—his truest and most faithful friend that he loved and occasionally—maybe—had sex with, you know, after all the words were written for that day. This strategy included…

· Asking to interview him for “Talking to Strangers” on nerve.com (which, if you’ve never read that feature, is quite a bold move).

· Inviting him to romantic non-dates, like midnight canoeing on the campus lake (which was cancelled due to the threat of tornados).

· Wearing short-shorts and eye black to the Fantasy Football draft at his apartment (which, in fact, makes no dent in a room full of testosterone, beer, and pizza).

· Agreeing to bowl once a week with “the guys” (even though the competition and my social anxiety caused me overthink high-fives and what my butt looked like on that godforsaken stage).

All of this appeared to be “working.” When I confessed my bowling anxiety, he told me that not having fun is a normal, valid feeling, as is boredom, especially since “every time [I] wasn’t around [him] was probably super boring anyway.” His first foray into flirt! The playful banter continued from there.

Around this time, Andreas’s roommate, a friend of mine, told me that he thought Andreas might have a girlfriend. He was always locked in his room, he said, talking to “someone.” This caused me some pause. Last year, I had had an affair with a guy who eventually quit the program to move in with his modern-dancer girlfriend in NYC. This girlfriend had given him something of a loose reign while he was away at school. The details of their arrangement were never truthfully disclosed to me, but by the end, I gathered that he had grievously violated her trust — and that people who want to watch the world burn are not always so easy to spot.

At the same time, this seemed different. Andreas and I hung out so regularly that it seemed too strange that he wouldn’t have already mentioned a lover. Maybe they were on the outs. Or maybe they were no longer together. Maybe he would tell me when he was ready. Or maybe it wasn’t any of my concern. I certainly wasn’t going to ask. What does a FRIEND care if he has a girlfriend? Huh? They DON’T!

Meanwhile, we went to local fairs. I picked him up from campus so that he wouldn’t have to ride his bike home in the rain. I made a video of myself playing “Sentimental Heart” on my ukulele and pretended it was for my friend and not for him to watch multiple times a day, awash with how adorable and impressive I am. We watched The Fountain together in the dark without touching—not even once, the air so thick with tension I could hardly breathe. One night, I scrounged up the nerve to “platonically” invite him back to my house after drinks so he wouldn’t have to walk a mile home in the dark, but he politely declined. He is an honorable man.

He mentioned his girlfriend for the first time in October, messaging me to say that he had just gotten into a fight with her because he didn’t call her enough. (She was in Texas on a goat farm.) She told him to fuck himself and hung up. Then he said, “I’m pretty sure that’s over.” I said, “YOU DESERVE BETTER.” But she called back.

The day of the MFA Halloween party, he texted a picture of his cute, new haircut to both me and his girlfriend. This, my friends, is what we in the biz call the “turning point.” He either…

1) Regarded me as a buddy so non-threatening to his relationship that his girlfriend wouldn’t care if I was included in the text, or

2) Was completely oblivious to the workings of group texts and wanted to show me his cuteness as much as or MORE THAN he wanted to show his girlfriend. (She, however, wasn’t oblivious, making sure to “reply all” her sexy response.)

Donned in my foxy fox costume, I vowed to get to the bottom of this and enlisted one of my girlfriends to objectively observe his behavior at the party. Did it seem like he was into me? Am I crazy? These were the questions. Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard to figure out. He never left my side — except to help me herd the party to the backyard, where I dictated instructions for the best goshdarn holiday floating lantern launch Southern Illinois has ever seen. It takes two people to successfully release a flaming dome of metal and paper into the sky—and one woman in fox-face, bouyed by two glasses of wine and the attention of her just-out-of-reach love interest, to make sure a bunch of alcohol-soaked English majors didn’t ruin her scene. Twenty-five lanterns, shepherded by the wind, turned to pinpricks in the night sky. But ours was the brightest.

After the party, our friends figured we had finally taken the leap into romance. Except we hadn’t, and this shit was getting ridic. At the time, asking him what was up myself still seemed like it would ruin the cradle of plausible deniability that I had been building for the past few months. Plus it wasn’t my job to ask. Plus there was still a chance that I was delusional or that he was just another psychopath (or both!), so I finally broke down and asked Dan if Andreas had a girlfriend. He said he didn’t. I asked if he was sure, and relayed what I knew about the Texan. Dan, eager to participate in orchestrated scandal, offered to conduct a reconnaissance mission that night, before they went to the midnight showing of Skyfall.

I will never know what was actually said between them. But in the few minutes before bowling the next day, Dan told me that Andreas was technically still with his girlfriend but that he was interested in me. I was not relieved. The response seemed a bit too polite, and Dan could not offer concrete and telling details: tone, body language, etc. There was no plan of action, no carefully noted confession. Sometimes, when it comes to boytalk, men fail to “advance the plot.”

I became awkward and withdrawn.

A few days later, Andreas called me out on my stoniness. “I’m afraid,” I confessed.

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid because I want to sit on your lap all the time and kiss your face and maybe you wouldn’t like that.”

“I would love that.”

I told him that, as far as I know, he still had a girlfriend, and I wasn’t interested in going down that road again. He told me they had broken up soon after Skyfall. We made plans to hang out later in the week, and I haven’t sat on another lap or kissed another face since.