The first time Anna sees her, she thinks the blond is probably uptight as heck. Like seriously. A pantsuit on a Saturday? And a bun? Anna is supposed to be working on her senior thesis paper (something about gender identity in Ancient Greek Literature) but she's bored, easily distracted, and the girl is hot, and oh yeah, she's really bored.

Because she's so bored, she starts to imagine lounging with pantsuit-girl on a queen bed. The blond would probably be reading a book about—God knows what—architecture in eighteenth century England, and Anna would be draped across the bed, head resting against stocking-encased feet, flipping through channels on the television.

She lands on one of those music channels which play nothing but old music videos from the 80s. A familiar opening sequence catches her eye. Before she knows what she's doing, Anna's on her feet, bouncing until the entire bed sways.

Pantsuit-girl is startled out of her book. "What—"

"Ice. Ice. Baby!" Anna stage whispers. Well, she tries to anyways. It comes out as more of a shout.

"Anna!" Pantsuit-girl is horrified.

"Oh, come on, baby. This is just how I roll!" Anna winks vigorously.

"Can't you walk like a normal person?" the girl grumbles.

"But baby, I know you love it when I'm on my back for you."

Anna guffaws loudly, not sure if she's more amused by the scandalized expression imaginary-pantsuit-girl is wearing or the thought of her own fictional self-attempting to dance to Vanilla Ice while being smooth.

The rest of the café stares at her. Including pantsuit-girl. Awkward. Anna coughs and pulls up an online copy of the Odyssey on her laptop to peruse.

In her apartment, things are tense. She broke up with Rapunzel a week ago, and her ex-girlfriend's stuff is still everywhere. Anna immediately regrets leaving the café when she opens the door. Rapunzel and Flynn are in the living room, loading stuff into boxes.

"Oh." Flynn settles a box onto the counter. "Hey," he offers clumsily.

Anna ignores him.

"You don't have to do this," she pleads with Rapunzel's back.

"Yes, I do." She doesn't turn to face Anna. "It's over. Finally," she sighs, like it's a fucking relief.

"So you can start something with him?" Anna jerks her chin at Flynn, who fidgets helplessly. The anger creeps into her voice now. It makes her sound sullen and bitter. She feels sullen and bitter.

"Flynn and I are not doing anything." Rapunzel still won't look at her.

"But you want to," Anna grinds out. "What was I? The college experiment?"

"You know what?" Rapunzel whirls, eyes flashing. "I am so sick of you, acting like your life is some sort of movie. Like we're all just characters to be moved around at whim to advance whatever plot lines you have going on. Grow up, Anna."

"What does that even mean?" Anna gives in to the urge to yell. "I love you."

Rapunzel scoffs. "No, you love whatever fantasy version of a girlfriend you have tucked away in some closet in the back of your head. You don't love me. You only ever fall in love with ideas."

Anna wants to fight back, wants to scream, wants to prove that her love means more than whatever cliché shadow Rapunzel is reducing it to. But she's given up already. She knows how this scene is supposed to end. It makes for better drama that way.

Storming out of the apartment, Rapunzel calls out, "Try not to be here tomorrow."

The next time she sees pantsuit-girl, she's not in a pantsuit. She's wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt in the middle of the park, looking absolutely normal. Except for the disgruntled white cat at the end of a black leash.

Is she trying to walk her cat?

"It's for a bet," the girl explains quickly, noticing Anna's stare. "My roommate—well, nothing. She just thinks that dogs are better than cats, so I'm trying to prove that cats can do anything dogs can do and more."

"Oh."

"Yeah." The girl self-consciously sweeps loose hair out of her face.

Anna should say something like, "Need any help?" or at least, "Good luck." But the muscles in her throat jam and she only manages a nod before moving on.

Somewhere, twelve flights above, Rapunzel is dumping the last of her stuff in a black garbage bag and taking it out of Anna's pathetic life. God, she needs space. Anna winds up at the animal shelter, halfway through the paperwork to adopt a new kitten before she remembers she needs to notify her landlord.

"But dogs are so much better than cats," Anna moans, flopping onto the bed.

"You just say that because you've never owned a cat before," the girl insists. "Come on. He's cute, right?"

Anna regards the pile of white fur that has been deposited on her bed skeptically. "Maybe." A pink nose pokes out and sniffs Anna's fingers. "He's okay. You're cute."

Anna falls in love with the shade of pink the girl's cheeks turn.

Anna keeps seeing the girl at the café. Occasionally in the park too, but she keeps her distance then, afraid to have another "conversation." Visiting the Laundromat due to a dryer malfunction, Anna sees the girl depositing quarters into the coin slot. She immediately turns around and waits four hours before returning for her clothes. Each new encounter, new outfit, new accessory, feline or not, inspires new daydreams.

Sometimes they're in Anna's apartment, now devoid of all traces of Rapunzel. Sets of clothing way too classy for Anna to wear have found their way into her closet. There's a layer of white cat fur covering the sofa. It looks more comforting than it's ever been.

Other times, they're just at the café, like always, but sitting at the same table, like never, and when the girl tosses her head back to laugh at one of Anna's jokes, Anna reaches out and touches her fingers. The girl looks back at her and smiles, grasping Anna's hand firmly in hers.

Once Anna devotes an entire afternoon to an imaginary dialogue in the grocery store, arguing over whether Raisin Bran is worse than Mini Wheats.

More than once, Anna imagines sliding her fingers along the girl's thighs, watching the pink rise in her face. She imagines laving her tongue across pale skin. She imagines the sound of the girl's mewling, keening, whimpering.

Her fantasies get more fantastical. She pretends that the girl is really the ruler of some mystical land, presiding over her kingdom with grace, magical powers, and a really big white cat. In this universe Anna alternates between playing a knight, a princess, and a common ice peddler. Each role is wholly satisfying; within a few plot twists Anna always finds herself appointed as the queen's right hand, best friend, and clandestine lover.

There are increasingly elaborate wedding plans in which they decide to wear jeans instead of dresses. A honeymoon in the tropics. And when Anna is really spacing out, children named after Greek historians.

Put simply, Anna conceives of and contemplates any encounter which ends with the declaration, "I love you." Gentle, desperate, steady. How Anna says it doesn't matter. The girl receives each avowal solemnly, without question.

She wanders through Anna's dreams like an insolent nomad.

Anna's parents love her. They really do. Though they might have hoped she would be the one taking them out to dinner by now, not the other way around.

Anna's mother orders the grilled salmon with a side of steamed vegetables. Her father gets a burger.

When they ask how things with Rapunzel are going, Anna's answer is clipped, betraying just the right amount of stoic anguish. They offer their condolences. And a soda. Then they ask about her goals for the future.

Part of Anna wants to say "talk to the girl in the café." But another part of Anna isn't sure she even wants that.

So she shrugs, chews her pasta, and tries to exude an air of youthful nonchalance, as if her life is exciting and spontaneous and not at all terrifying.

Every time Anna sees the girl sit down with a cup of some mysterious drink cradled between her fingers, her heart nearly leaps out of her chest in a desperate bid to be near the object of its obsessions. But Anna's body stays put. She has a dozen possibilities for how their first interaction—the one-sided conversation about cat walking doesn't count—could go. She could be clumsy, tripping over bags and spilling her drink right onto the girl's table, for which she'd apologize profusely, dabbing at the coffee stains on the girl's blouse with a napkin. Maybe she'd actually manage to be smooth and walk over to the table like a normal person. She could tell the girl she's really pretty, even when she's in a pantsuit.

Anna might even come off as genuine. She has a knack for that. All her elementary school teachers used to gush about her vibrant personality on the back of her report cards. "Anna is one of the friendliest, most outgoing kids in her class. Everyone loves to be around her, and she has truly been a delight to know." Elementary school Anna adored fairy tales and believed wholeheartedly in love-at-first-sight. Then she got to high school and the commentary was reduced to "Good effort."

For some reason, Anna can't quite bring herself to put those much-vaunted interpersonal skills to good use. Almost every day now, she lingers in the café, waiting for the girl to show up, and stays there at least five minutes after she leaves. A couple of times (a few? no, surely it couldn't have been that many), Anna catches the girl gazing in her direction. Whenever this happens, she immediately redirects her attention to the empty space above the girl's head and forgets to breathe.

Once, when the two of them make eye contact, the girl blushes. That shade of pink is absolutely perfect.

Merida examines Anna's face, tensed for any reaction.

"So, they're getting married."

"Yeah." Eyes trained on Anna's, Merida swirls her straw through her diet Coke.

"But—" Anna isn't sure what to say. "But isn't that kind of soon? They weren't even dating last I heard."

"Well." Merida pauses, choosing her words carefully. "They've known each other forever, and they've been together for… a while."

"Oh." How long is "a while"? Anna doesn't want to know. "Tell them congratulations."

Two days later, Anna gets a wedding invitation in the mail.

One day, the girl has a date. It's obviously a date. The two keep touching and laughing at each other. They're loud; Anna can hear their muffled voices through the glass window. The date is a brunette. Anna wonders if that's her type.

It's never occurred to her before that the girl could be seeing someone else.

Someone else? She's not even seeing you.

Anna attends Rapunzel and Flynn's wedding. It's elegant, clearly paid for by their parents, but not opulent. Fairly traditional. If this were the closing scene of a rom-com and Anna the pining lesbian heroine, she would shamelessly her undying love in the brief pause after the preacher pronounces, "Speak now or forever hold your peace." Moved beyond words, Rapunzel would sprint away from the altar and back into Anna's arms. But Anna doesn't want that anymore.

Instead, maybe she'll make a toast at the reception, blessing the new couple with health, happiness, and prosperity; confess that she wasn't exactly the best girlfriend in the world (though she'd loved Rapunzel all the same); and announce that she has transformed this love into goodwill and forgiveness towards Flynn—so long he treats his new wife right. It would be a precious ending to a heartwarming movie. But in real life it would involve acknowledging that she is attending the wedding of her ex-girlfriend and her former best friend, who have been seeing each other "for a while" and had likely been screwing behind her back.

Anna can't imagine the awkward.

Of course, she can pretend that this is a mid-season episode of some particularly heart-wrenching soap opera and proceed to get poignantly smashed at the open bar.

But she doesn't, because she's remembering that this is real life.

The entire night, she huddles with Merida and some other friends at their table in the corner of the ballroom. She laughs exactly three times, cracks some jokes, claps politely with everyone else. When it comes time to greet the new couple, she smiles at their noses and wishes them all the best. She bought them a set of cutlery for as a wedding gift.

As the evening wears on, she makes an early exit and returns home without getting obligatorily drunk at a bar along the way. She spends the night on the couch in front of her television, imagining pantsuit-girl and her date curled up on their own couch somewhere, snuggling and giggling, eating mangos.

It's a good thing Anna hates mangos.

Her thesis advisor mentions that one of her colleagues, Professor Milo Thatch, is going out to a dig site in Greece for a year. He needs an intern with adequate knowledge of classical languages. And he's paying.

Anna takes it. It sounds acceptably adventurous, which is all that really matters.

Life in the Mediterranean is hot. And dusty. But refreshing. And real.

One of the younger interns, Kristoff, has a thing for her, but for obvious reasons, it goes nowhere. When Anna has free time, she travels a little in Europe. She meets a girl in Dresden. It doesn't go anywhere either. The only time she thinks of pantsuit-girl is during one of Professor Thatch's presentations at a local Greek university. A woman is wearing the exact same pantsuit Anna first saw on the other side of the ocean. But she's so identifiably Mediterranean. And like forty. The woman is a boring speaker.

Professor Thatch encourages Anna to apply for his Masters program when they return home. Anna does.

Anna's been Stateside for five months when it happens. She's got a new (though equally un-classy) apartment in a new city, a part-time job and a stipend. She can balance a monthly budget. She files her freaking taxes. In the morning she doesn't waste any time hanging around in cafés. She runs to Dunkin' Donuts, taps her foot through the line, and rushes her order through the bored-looking kid at the counter.

She's heard the rumors of Rapunzel and Flynn's impending divorce and the speculations that maybe they married too young.

She's halfway to the counter at Dunkin' when she notices that the next customer has a substantial amount of white-blond hair. Her foot stops tapping, and her brain throws a fit.

Pantsuit-girl waits for her friend to place her order and add sugar to her cup. Is she just a friend? It's definitely not her date from before. The two head out together. Anna shoves her way out of the crowded shop to follow them.

Real-life Anna rolls her eyes and thinks, Seriously? You don't even know her. Are you really going to stalk her all over the city just so you can discover that you're completely incompatible?

But daydreamer-Anna, little-kid-Anna, True-Love-with-capital-letters-Anna needs to know. Because what if they are compatible? What if they are actually finely, perfectly attuned to living life on the same couch? What if Anna can have white cats on leashes and professional clothes in her closet and someone to listen when she says, "I love you"?

Pantsuit-girl and her friend stop beneath a skyscraper.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Elsa. Try not to be so mopey."

"I'm not mopey. I'm just tired."

They separate from each other. No kiss. No longing gazes. Not even a hug. Anna takes this as a good omen. The friend disappears into the building. Pant—no, Elsa (Real-life Anna hums her approval that the girl has an actual identity and True-Love-Anna simply swoons at the lovely, unassuming name) hurries along the pavement in the fast walk that all city-dwellers learn. Anna breaks into a jog.

"Hey!" The girl turns and sees Anna puffing up to her, wearing her best "friendliest in the class" smile, probably red in the face and moving with all the grace of a sack of mangos. At first, she seems confused, and then something like recognition crinkles in the corners of her eyes.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Anna breathes.

Cheesy one-shot that is the product of my time in the library. Hopefully it's well-executed enough that you can stand the sap. It was supposed to be funny. Then it got serious.

Definitely not continuing this one. "Leave it Be" is more than enough work for me.

Yes, the cover is sideways. Deal with it. And the Doc Manager is being weird. I blame it for all my problems.

P.S. So much Frozen crack with "Ice Ice Baby" on Youtube.

EDIT: I'm a dirty liar. Enjoy the next two chapters.