There was a woman in his office who had been hired about the same time he had. She was somewhere in her mid twenties, tall, and attractive. Most people in the office liked her – she was kind, and good-tempered, and always made coffee when it was her turn.

The only issue was that she seemed to absolutely loathe him. He could not get within fifteen feet of her without receiving a pained glare, and she pointedly avoided him in any situation. At office parties she kept a steady distance from him, as if she were tracking his movements and corresponding hers to stay the furthest from him she could. She avoided his eyes in meetings, and never looked at him when he spoke. The small talk they made was halting and awkward, and she fled at the earliest possible interval.

She hadn't always despised him. At first she'd been reserved but kind, but gradually she had begun to show signs of dislike. He was mystified at first, and then angry, since she never did this to anyone else. Everyone else knew her as sweet, and shy, and gentle.

Her hatred was not consistent. He'd found her crying in the boardroom one afternoon. It had been an instinct to reach out and touch her arm.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

"Tough day," she said. She was dabbing at her eyes with a mascara-stained tissue. She sniffed and smiled up at him, very watery but completely genuine. "Thanks for asking."

He squeezed her arm and smiled. "Anything I can do?"

"No, but thanks anyway," she said.

He left her in the boardroom to dry her tears and when she came back out she smiled at him again. The next morning he left an African violet on her desk by way of a peace offering, and was pleased to find her stroking the plant's fuzzy leaves with a gentle touch.

But he'd been wrong to assume her anger with him had vanished – by the afternoon he received a heartfelt thank-you letter, delivered with the frostiest air he could have imagined. He assumed, then, that she kept the violet only because she didn't blame the plant for the man who had bought it.

It was after a year and a half of glowers, angry flushes, and halting greetings that he'd had enough. He plucked up the courage to speak to her one day after a meeting.

When he said her name she raised her eyes to him. For a moment her stare was friendly.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked.

"Okay," she said.

He pulled her into the boardroom. There was no preamble. He laid it on her right away:

"What is your problem with me?"

"I don't have a problem with you," she volleyed back, very quickly. She was staring at his shoulder as she spoke, and not at his face.

He crossed his arms. "It seems like you do."

"I really don't," she said. She frowned, seemingly offended by his assertion, and it was at that moment that he truly lost it. Furious at his undeserved treatment, and at his wit's end with being treated like a pariah by a woman seemingly biased only against him for whatever stupid crime she thought he had done her, he snapped.

"Okay, you know what?" he said.  She managed to look up at him, and he was astonished to see that she looked surprised. "No. That's ridiculous. You so obviously have some sort of issue with me, and because we're colleagues I thought we could talk about it like adults, but-"

Her face flushed a deep crimson. "I don't have a fucking problem with you!" she retorted. Her eyes for a moment met his. An admiring voice murmured to him that she was really very pretty, but beginning to look very angry.

"Then why does it seem like you do?" he demanded. She began to frown. "No, don't pull that face, you're always pulling that face whenever I talk! You barely even look at me and when you manage to bring yourself to do it you always make that face like it's agonizing to have to listen!"

Her mouth opened in what he assumed was outrage and she looked as though she wanted to speak. He didn't let her. "And since when is it okay to ignore a colleague like you ignore me? Or to avoid talking to them? Jesus Christ, I try to make small talk and be nice and you won't even get on an elevator with me! You think I don't notice you doing a three-sixty whenever you see me? You think I'm that stupid? You don't do that to anyone else, so what the fucking hell is your problem with me?"

He got to the end of his diatribe and found himself more riled up than before. Meanwhile, she took a deep breath and spoke more words in a single minute than she had spoken to him in a year and a half.

"Oh, okay. Okay," she said, and her narrowed eyes were on him. He had the urge to loosen his collar under the heat of a stare in which he had never found himself before. "Are we gonna do this? You really want to go? Fine. Okay. We didn't have to do it like this, but you just won't leave it the fuck alone, will you? Okay. You asked for it!"

"What the-" he began, but she went on, full steam ahead, no holds barred, all stops pulled out.

"You want to know what my problem is with you?" she demanded, jabbing an accusatory finger toward him. Then the next sentence poured out of her mouth, each syllable more forceful than the last. "My problem with you is that you're very handsome and extremely nice, and you make me incredibly uncomfortable because I can't even rationally think in front of you or even look at you without feeling like my brain has turned to mush and it makes me feel awful because I'm supposed to be a fucking professional and here I am probably in love with a man I work with and who doesn't even notice me and who I can't even fucking talk to and who might be married but I can't even bring myself to ask because I'm a fucking chickenshit!"

She threw her hands up in the air. Then she fell silent. There was a short pause. He looked at her. She stared resolutely at the floor.

"Okay?" she said, very forcefully. Her face was still flushed, but steadily fading.

"Right," he replied. It was not the answer he'd expected. "You've, uh, got a funny way of showing that you think I'm – what was it? – very handsome and extremely nice?"

She flushed a deep red again. "Fuck off," she snapped.

He smiled, very gently. "I'm not married, by the way."

"Spectacular," she snarled, each syllable heavy with sarcasm. "Good for you. Whoopity-fuckin'-doo."

There was another pause. After a moment, she spoke again.

"Are we done here?" she asked. "Can I go, or would you like me to continue embarrassing myself?"

"Okay," he said.

"Great," she said.

She left the boardroom.

He thought about it for a minute. Then he thought about it some more. Then he left the boardroom. He caught up with her outside of the bullpen. She still wouldn't meet his eye.

"Can I talk to you?" he asked.

People were staring. They must have heard the shouting. Some were glaring at him, some at her. People seemed divided in their loyalties.

"Okay," she said, still not meeting his eyes.

He pulled her over to the water cooler by the fax machine. "I'm not done with the embarrassing, actually."

She looked at him in a mixture of rage and horror. She managed to look pretty while doing it.

"Can I embarrass you over lunch?" he asked.

"What the fuck?" she squeaked.

He didn't end up taking her to lunch, but he did embarrass her over dinner. He made sure to embarrass her all the way home, including embarrassing her all the way into his apartment.

"You're terrible," she said, sitting on his bed and watching as he took off his shirt. Her eyes were wide as she took him in, and he saw again the pained glower that he had misinterpreted as anger. "Truly awful. I'm suffering over here."

"Well, then come over here instead," he said, and snatched her up to kiss her.

"Oh, God," she'd said.

The next morning he'd woken her up with a coffee and a kiss. She stirred and at once gave him a smile. Then she seemed to remember who he was, and scowled. She accepted the coffee, shuffling further under his blankets and muttering something about how horrible he was, and didn't he know how much suffering it caused her that he was so considerate?

He realized there was a pattern to what would get a set jaw and a resolute glower, and he did every single one of those things. The angrier she looked the more he satisfied he became.

Though it was against dress code he'd take off his tie at his desk, lean back in his chair and stretch, massaging the muscles of his shoulders with a casual hand. Four desks away she would be staring hard at her computer, looking for all the world like she was contemplating his murder.

He joined her in the kitchenette while she was pouring coffee and when she could no longer avoid looking at him, hit her with a smile as her eyes rose to meet his. He watched in satisfaction as she missed her mug and poured coffee all over the countertop.

"I hate you," she hissed in a whisper, as she began to clean it up.

"Let me help you with that," he replied, still smiling, as he helped her sponge it up.

"You're the worst," she said, very weakly.

In meetings he would feign restlessness, stretching and shuffling, crossing one leg over his knee. She would be flushed red and watching whoever was speaking with a face of intent and pained focus. Even better was when he fixed her in his most heated gaze – then he watched in delight as she tried to look anywhere but at him. The best was when her eyes did flicker up and they met his. For a moment her face was bare, frank, and honest, and then her cheeks would darken, her lip would curl, and her eyes narrow.

"You're a shithead," she snapped at him, on the way out of the meeting. "I loathe you."

He figured out she liked his laugh by the way she closed her eyes as if praying for strength, and so made a point to laugh while he was near her – particularly when the joke was told by a pretty woman.

"Yeah, fucking hysterical," she muttered, one day as she was passing.

Of course, there was a mellowing in her moods, too. One day he pretended not to see her as she marched up to his cubicle. With a sweet smile that he never used to see, she plunked a mug of coffee down on his desk.

"Black, one sugar," she said, in the kind way she spoke to everyone else. "For you."

He smiled up at her. "Thanks. Did I do something to deserve it?"

She looked shiftily around – it was early and there were not many people around, so she leaned in.

"Just trying to be nice," she said, with a sunny smile. "Because you're nice. And very, extremely, spectacularly handsome. And also I like you."

"Thank you," he said, and reached forward to squeeze her hand.

She gave a low groan, taking back her hand and escaping from his cubicle.

He sat next to her for the first time a meeting three days later, and she stifled a look of horror. "The fuck you doing?" she said, very quietly.

"Is someone else sitting here?" he asked, very innocently.

"No," she replied, with a glare of pure hatred.

One day when she was making copies he snuck up behind her. Working the fax machine, he leaned over and said, very casually, as if he were merely commenting on the weather:

"I love you."

The copier jammed and she kicked it. "Go away," she said to him, through her teeth.

He smiled, hummed happily, and finished with his fax. He offered to help with the copier but she, seething with fury, offered to punch him in the face. He went away still smiling.

The next day, he waited until she was leaving the boardroom after a meeting, and then he asked her a very simple question. She glared, and then she seized him by the front of the shirt and dragged him into the room for a kiss.

Later, he asked the boss for some time off, because he was getting married.

"Congrats!" said the boss. "Take as much time as you want."

Two minutes later, she knocked on the boss's door. Four minutes later, the boss ambled by his cubicle.

"Weirdest thing," said the boss. He gestured at her. "But she just asked for some time off, too. Getting married, too. Weird coincidence, right?"

"Weirdest," he replied, with a smile.

The boss went back into his office, and he waited. Ten minutes later the man erupted from the room, in the throes of an epiphany.

"What the fuck?" he yelled, and people stared. "Are you getting married to each other?"

She looked up. "Married? Us?" she scoffed. "Why would you think that? I think he's the worst. Terrible. Awful."

He got up and went over to her. He planted a kiss on her temple and grinned. "Yes, she does. And why do you think I'm the worst?"

She gave a sigh and then, to his everlasting bliss said quite simply:

"Because you're wonderful and I love you."