Her name was Ophelia, so of course, she was doomed to become arrogant and obnoxious from the start.
To be honest, I should have seen a lot of the signs from the beginning. Like with most people that I found interesting, I made sure to make good use of my discipline and refrain from giving myself any kind of "unfair advantage." I found her cool. She was outspoken, unafraid to be herself, and unapologetically defensive of her ideas.
She wanted to become a playwright. Most of the people enrolled at the drama program of my university were, at best, misguided - why would you go to a university to become an actor? Go to an acting academy or something. But Ophelia had this interesting self-awareness to her, and even though we met in an economics class of all things (her elective class of choice), we hit it off from the first time we had a group project together. Most acting majors seemed lost and clueless. But her? She seemed to have a clear plan. She knew why she was there. She knew what she wanted to do after she graduated while still at university, and, as odd as this may sound if you never went to university, that was rare.
I guess I wasn't expecting her to be able to self-reflect like that. Not only was she majoring in the dramatic arts, which wasn't the best of signs, she also had a perfect mix of the two types of looks that condition someone into being a brat - she looked like a perfect mix of pure beauty and, quite frankly, a child. Despite being nineteen, I almost felt nervous talking to her in public at first. Anyone would have guessed that at oldest, she was eighteen. And yet, she looked like the stereotypical blonde girl that got voted prom queen in high school. She was practically a living stereotype, right down to fixating on one thing that she thought was too ugly - her nose - while the rest of the world clearly didn't care, fixating either on her beauty or her childlike figure, depending on whether they wanted to drool over her or talk down to her. Some guys, I feared, would switch between the two as they pleased.
The most promising thing about her was probably that she had talent to back up her words. After we began to hang out outside of class, she let me read her first script - something I assumed she showed very few of her other friends. It was good. She was good. If she wanted to push herself and make friends, she could have gone a long way.
I couldn't remember the last time I progressed a friendship and was completely uncertain where it would go. We would hang out more and more, and as we did, we found more things to do together. And the more things we found to do, the more excuses we had to hang out. We'd go out to neat little restaurants we'd heard about but never gone to, we'd watch movies at my place. At one point we even held hands, even if we didn't think too hard about what that meant. We talked every day, though most days it was just online. Even so, the absence of tone almost made it... more interesting. I had no clue if some days we just read each other's chemistry well, or we were getting serious with our flirting. It started as a joke, as it sometimes does - one silly remark thrown in, as a joke... then it became part of our daily conversation.
There was the odd red flag here and there of course. She'd make fun of my name, telling me that Randy was an "old person name," for a little bit longer than a normal joke should last. She'd brag, on more than one occasion, about how her IQ was in the ninety-eighth percentile. Occasionally she'd show me a piece of her writing, and I'd point out something wrong with it, and she'd tell me how unnecessary a criticism it was, then hasten to point out that I'd made a similar mistake in something I'd shown her. Then I'd tell her I was an economics student and I wasn't planning on publishing my poetry anytime soon, and she was, and... et cetera.
And yet still, the flirting continued. It was like Ophelia's gaze was fixed on me, and I on her, the two of us never blinking. We were always at the forefront of each other's lives, which was very sudden and, frankly, very new to me, at least in the form in which it came. Her downsides could never outweigh the rush of joy I had from just being near her. I didn't have to cheat to get that way or anything, and it felt amazing.
Then - what else could happen but this? - in walked trouble. When he first came to the university, he introduced himself as Cameron, but now, if you didn't call him Cam, he'd get irrationally angry at you. He was one of those guys that had a goofy, almost ugly face, and yet his confidence and presentation landed him some reputation of being a charming, even attractive, guy, with a trendy haircut and everything.
I was older than Ophelia and Cam, so I had heard everything about him since he first arrived. Also a dramatic arts major, a frequent party-goer that had a weird reputation around the women of the university. Almost every party-faring freshman girl at the university had some kind of story about him. When they told the stories, it was clear that every word out of their mouths was tainted with bitterness, and yet, every story involved them falling hopelessly for him and not ending at just 'making out with him at that party' or something. Oh no. It went far beyond that. Most of the storytellers would, in an out-of-character way, describe the sex they had over the next week or so, and all of the new and weird sexual fetishes they adopted for him, before he inevitably cheated on them, dumped them for someone new, or did something to them without their consent, sometimes the stories climaxing with all three events.
If I were a nosier guy I would wonder a couple things. How all of these girls managed to have practically the same story. How his reputation only got worse and worse, and yet he was never punished or brought to justice or anything. How none of his latest victims had managed to hear the increasingly-present stories about him. Most bizarrely, the few that did hear the stories about what he did seemed to actively not care, either because they believed they could be 'the one to fix him' or just outright dismissing them. On more than one occasion, I had to wonder if perhaps Cam and I shared qualities we could not speak about in the open.
Genuinely, I thought Ophelia was too smart to go for him. The first time I heard of them interacting, it was when Ophelia and I were watching a movie and she was talking about the party she went to last night. Cam was there. Cam was talking to her, more than the other partygoers. Cam asked if she was single. Cam was seeing another girl at the time, so Ophelia figured it was just casual conversation.
I shot right to attention and told Ophelia every story I knew immediately. For possibly too long, I gave her all of the reasons I could for her to leave Cam alone. In classic Ophelia style, she gave me a weird look, asked me if I had a personal stake in any of this, and laughed off the whole situation, telling me she was capable of making her own decisions. At the same time, she promised she'd keep a more careful eye on Cameron now that she knew his history.
Over time, as Ophelia and I hung out more and more, so would they. At first it was unavoidable things - the second time, he stopped her at the university's cafeteria and asked her about something related to a class. The third time, he smartly fed her ego and admitted he didn't get the theory in one of his dramatic arts assignments and asked if they could study at the library together sometime. Inevitably, the two started seeing each other regularly.
Our friendship was still going strong, though both of us were now getting completely confused. At first, Ophelia had a dream where she kissed me - and no, I didn't cause it - and a week or so later, I had a similar dream about her, though I lied about how far we went in that dream, so that I wouldn't weird her out or anything. We were now having weekly hours-long conversations in our car after I'd drive her back to her residence after a movie night we shared. She'd lower the seat and get comfy. She'd talk about her past or her family, and she'd cry. She'd tell me not to tell our mutual friends that she cried. I'd admit a few things about myself along the way, though I'd reframe what happened so she wouldn't freak out or anything. We'd hug each other goodbye, she'd tell me I smell good, and we'd be texting the next morning.
In what I thought was a victory, Ophelia was starting to hear more and more stories about Cameron. At one point, she asked a friend to sit between her and Cameron during the only class they shared, since he always gunned for the seat next to hers. She now fully believed, in her words, "he treats wild animals better than human women." I was relieved. It was clear, even in unspoken terms, that she was interested in him for a while, and I was glad to see that interest subside.
Or so I thought. Eventually, I'd start seeing her walking around the university grounds with Cameron. If Ophelia and I were going to hang out, he'd show up with her and 'drop her off,' leaving a visibly embarrassed Ophelia defending herself and explaining she still thinks he was bad, but that they talked it over or something. She was, of course, blissfully unaware that this announcement would ring more alarm bells than less. Maybe I was living in a glass house, but the man was a master manipulator.
Even so, it was clear she believed me, even if she was starting to see him more. She'd talk lowly of him to me, and every single microaggression, every single thing she disliked, she'd tell me all about them and we'd share our critiques on his character, eagerly agreeing with each other.
