Jamie slowly got better and returned to his old self as the days passed by. By his old self, I mean, he went back to his I-don't-talk-to-you-or-to-anyone self.

He was right about me not catching the cold--the one he had. Because I didn't.

Not that I stayed in the apartment much the next few days either. Most of my time went by patrolling the city sometimes. Saving lives, helping out people, and trying my damnedest to away from the cameras. Whenever I saw Neo though, I grew a little wary and paranoid. The rumours he was spreading around were still just rumours since he hadn't yet disclosed Ice Phantom's real identity. And maybe what he had said to me earlier, the burning mess thing, maybe that really had just been a coincidence.

I barely saw Ice Phantom the next whole week, on the other hand. Not that I was complaining. As long as we weren't crossing paths, I wouldn't have to ask him why he had helped me out back there in that fire. As long as we didn't see each other, a lot was fine.

Though there was still this nagging thought at the far back of my mind, wondering how he could've frozen the entire building. Wasn't he scared of fires? Wasn't there a limit to his powers? What else could he do that I didn't know?

It wasn't like I had ever underestimated his powers in the three years I'd been fighting him. That also didn't mean I hadn't ever thought about it sometimes. How had he gotten those powers in the first place?

I remembered asking the same from Orias countless times. It couldn't be natural, his powers. I had lived my whole life at the Agency headquarters, a secret organization that worked under apparent government orders, with such high personnel and technologies, yet I had never seen anyone with powers. Superpowers. Ice powers.

And Ice Phantom had frozen a whole damn building right before my eyes. A building that had been on fire.

Granted, I didn't know for sure if it had been Ice Phantom, but who else could it have been?

"Dahlia, what do you say?"

I looked up from my almost empty notebook, save for some disturbing doodles, and saw Mrs Laney (Beth--as she preferred to be called) staring at me with a wide smile and a knowing look in her eyes. Not just her, I noticed. The whole class was staring at me now.

"I...uh..." I trailed off, my eyes darting to the whiteboard to see what the hell we were supposed to be talking about. "I say it's a...brilliant idea."

Apparently, the answer was satisfying enough since everyone turned back to the board, not caring anymore. Beth laughed and nodded. I had a feeling she'd known I wasn't really paying attention.

I really loved Beth, our professor for the Advanced Writing class, but she had a knack for picking on me every chance she got. In a total mischievous-motherly way. She was the age I considered my mother to be if she were alive. And she had vibrant green eyes too, just like my mum. Maybe that's why whenever she picked on me, on purpose, asking me questions in between her lectures, I never really got pissed off. She was just as bubbly as I imagined my mum to be.

I sighed and leaned back in my seat, tuning into what she was saying.

"...so that's settled then. Make up partners or trios or groups, whatever you all are comfortable with. And every pair slash trio slash group of you will be making a portfolio on any of the great famous heroes we just talked about." Beth continued, walking towards her desk and perching on the very end of it. Her long brown hair was up in a messy bun today. She always looked a little high on life, now that I think about it. "And you'll be submitting it to me by the end of this semester. Remember, this portfolio will make up half of your grade. If you need any sorta help, you know where to find me."

Technically, no one ever knew where to find her. I rarely saw her on campus outside this class.

I watched as everyone started pushing back their chairs, walking over to their partners for the semester. Our Advanced Writing class barely had a handful of students and I knew none of them.

None of them except, I turned around in my seat and looked at the guy sitting behind me, Jamie.

"James," I cleared my throat with a charming grin (or at least I hoped it was charming). "Would you mind?"

Jamie looked up from his own notebook, which unlike mine was scribbled with notes, and seemed to stare at me for a few long seconds.

"Mind what?" He asked a little bluntly, his big blue eyes still on me.

"Being my partner, duh." I turned around fully this time, sitting almost backwards on my chair, and raised my brows at him. He looked far less ill than a few days ago, and I made sure not to touch that subject. He'd seemed on edge whenever I'd try asking him about his cold, or if he'd like me to make him some soup (which I had asked him approximately three point five times the past week).

My eyes left him and I saw a girl from our class making her way towards us. Not me, I realised a second later, but towards Jamie.

My shoulders slumped when I heard her calling out, "Jamie, should we be part--"

"Sure." He cut her off.

I blinked. Then blinked again. Then my lips broke into a disbelieving grin. He hadn't said sure to the girl. He was looking at me.

"What?" The girl asked, stopping by his table, which I guess was mine too now since I was leaning against it.

"Sorry, hun," I told her sheepishly. "I already got this one. You can partner up with Max over there. He looks partnerless."

That worked, surprisingly, since the girl didn't really seem pissed at me and went walking towards blond boy Max.

"So." I looked back at Jamie, just in time to see his dimples as he chewed on his lower lip. "What...exactly are we supposed to be working on?"

Jamie eyed me with something that looked like a mix between disgust and disbelief. "You really have no shame."

"What?" I spoke up in mock defensiveness.

"You asked me to be your partner just because you know no one else in this room will give two shits when it comes to you."

"That's not true," I said with wide eyes.

Jamie gave me a mean look.

"Well, not entirely." I backtracked. "You're a nice guy!"

He dragged a hand through his hair in what looked like defeat.

"And you've got really blue eyes." I forgot to clamp my mouth shut in time. "And a beautiful smile too. Yes. Um, not like I'm a creep, ha ha."

Jamie looked at me and I saw the amused glint in his eyes that he was trying so hard to hide. At least someone was finding this amusing.

"We live in the same apartment. You can't blame a girl for staring." Oh God, I could almost imagine Penny laughing at my absolute stupid mouth. "Can we pretend I didn't say any of that?"

"Sure."

"Okay then. Let's start from the beginning. Hey, Jamie, would you like to be my partner for this portfolio that I know nothing about and that I want to do with you not just because I know you're kind enough to explain this to me, but because you're a great person too?"

He chuckled the exact same moment Beth showed up and wagged a few papers in my face.

"Greek heroes, Dahlia." She passed me a disappointed frown. "You need to start paying attention in class. I need you to be able to take this class next year too. Let's not get a grade that pushes you down the drain."

"Woah. Damn, Beth, I get it." I took the papers from her, peeking a glance at Jamie who was still smiling. My stomach lurched involuntarily. "Okay so, greek heroes. Why are we doing greek heroes?"

"Because every Greek legend holds a deeper, much sadder meaning behind it," Beth told me.

"Beth, can Misha and I do it on Thor?" Someone from the back of the class spoke up. "DC heroes count as Greek legends too, am I right?"

One would think a college student would know the difference between DC and Marvel.

Beth left Jamie and me to help out the poor guy with serious superhero issues. I busied myself with scanning the names on the papers in my hands. Some of them I recognised. Once upon a time, I had a thing for greek myths and legends. Some had even stuck with me--the stories.

"Wait, but how are we supposed to choose just one from all of these?" I asked Jamie.

He leaned forward to look at the papers and they nearly fell from my hands when my shoe accidentally brushed his leg under the table.

"Just pick one randomly."

"What? No!" I exclaimed. "We can't do that."

"Why not?" He raised a dark brow at me.

"Because every one of this is important in a way. Like the legend of Hades and Persephone, the utter love and darkness behind it. Then there's this one about Orpheus. Oh, and Psyche. How can you just randomly choose from such beautiful legends?"

Jamie stared at me. He stared at me for a very long time. I jumped a little when his leg brushed my own this time. Once again, he didn't seem to notice.

"You talk a lot for a typical nerd," He commented.

I don't know why my cheeks heated up.

"Fine then. We can meet up somewhere to decide which one of these we're working on." He added. Right on cue, the bell rang.

"Why not our apartment?" I asked him, watching as everyone started filing out of class. "Isn't that easier? We live together."

Jamie fixed me with another heart-stopping look of his eyes. "You barely are at the apartment."

Oh.

"We can meet at the library." He started picking up his things too.

"Or the bookshop," I quickly added in, standing up as well. He stopped momentarily to glance at me. "I work there till midnight on Saturdays. We can discuss the rest there?"

He shrugged, a tiny secretive smile gracing his lips. "Sure."

And when he left and I was all alone in the empty classroom, I couldn't quite understand why my heart was beating so wildly.

• • •

Later in the cafeteria, when Penny left to get both of us some pizza, someone slid into an empty chair on our table.

I was surprised when I looked up to see Neo.

"What are you...doing here?" I couldn't help it. My insides went high on alert whenever I saw his face at college these days. Almost as if deep down, I was expecting him to go around throwing cracker bombs. Isn't that what Ice Phantom did when he wasn't suited up?

But Neo isn't Ice Phantom, I reminded myself and something bristled inside me at the thought alone.

He smiled at me, pushing back his dark curls from his forehead. "Just thought to stop by. How's life going? Amazing, I hope."

I cleared my throat and looked around for Penny. I hadn't really told her what Neo had said to me earlier that day. Mainly because how was it supposed to make sense to her when it was just as confusing to me?

"It's going great." I passed him a polite smile. "What about you?"

He waved it off. "I heard you've been living with a roomie. We could've shared apartments, you know."

I stared at him in surprise. "Even when you stopped talking to me after that New Year's Eve party?"

"Oh, come on. You broke my heart." He gave me a smile that some people would've found devastatingly handsome. I didn't. I couldn't get his ulterior motive.

"What are you really doing here, Neo? I know you're not here to make friends again. What do you want?" I asked him, frowning. Not knowing what exactly he wanted from me was like a bug crawling on my skin.

He sighed, slid my untouched iced tea towards him, which wasn't so iced anymore, and took a sip. I frowned a little more at him.

"All I want," he said when he was done tasting my tea, "is for you to get your priorities straight."

"I've got them where they should be."

I could see Penny's red hair in my peripheral vision, making her way back towards our table.

"Not entirely, Dahlia." He stood up from the chair, pushing back the tea towards me, and passing me one last smile. His eyes crinkled at the corners. "You'll be left surprised otherwise."

Then he walked away, right as Penny came back.

"That looked like flirting to me, Dee." She slumped down on her chair, waggling her brows at me as she placed down our slices of pizza.

I stared at her. "Shut up."

That didn't stop her from grinning. Picking up my pizza, I took a large bite.

"Anyone in your place would've been willing to have his babies," She said, making me choke on the bite. "Just saying."

When I was sure I wouldn't choke to death, I picked up my cup of tea. "God, Penny, don't say such hideous things when I'm eating." Then I took a sip. Only to send the drink spewing everywhere from my mouth.

"Ew, Dahlia." Penny groaned, pulling her pizza aside and shielding it with her arms. "Table manners, for fuck's sake."

But I wasn't really paying her any attention. Eyes wide and my heart almost in my throat, I pulled open the lid of my tea to see irregular pieces of ice floating around. Filled to the brim.

My tea was iced again.