I don’t really like most people when I first meet them, it takes a bit to find something to connect to. In my grad program, we used to go to a local bar after classes let out on Friday. There was a local girl and her friends who would meet us there (friends of one of the people in our program’s girlfriend) and we’d drink and talk and dance basically until the bar closed. I didn’t like this one girl in the group at first because she didn’t seem to be interested in anything that we were studying, so she didn’t ever get involved in our conversations, just completely disengaged and disinterested until it was time to dance. I was like “aight, if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I won’t talk to her then.” Then after awhile she opened up and we started getting friendly, but then she had a strange habit of always touching me, tapping me on the arm or the shoulder, grabbing me when we danced, picking lint from my shirt. I didn’t complain, but it felt like she’d skipped a few intimacy steps or something. I’m not sure what happened, but one night we went out and met them at the bar and she was like a whole different person. She was engaged and clever and really comfortable in a way I hadn’t seen her before, just like a flip had switched that week. After the bar closed, she came back to my apartment and we hooked up, and then we just kind of kept hooking up for a few months. I asked if she wanted anything more at some point and she was just like “Nope, better to keep it simple.” Then sometime around the spring I was writing my thesis and we just stopped hooking up, no drama or anything, just like ‘guess this has run its course.’ Enemies to lovers to strangers in about 6 months or so.