It began in Mr. Abram’s Intro to Philosophy class. The girl raised her hand and, without waiting to be called on, began to argue passionately in defense of Aristotelian ethics. She wasn’t deterred even when the professor told her that yes, they were arguing the same point.

“Well, good,” she said, and crossed her arms over her chest.

The boy caught up to her in the hall after class. “My name’s Neil,” he wheezed, jogging to keep up with her.

“Nice to meet you, Neil,” she said, before peeling off into another classroom.

It took him a week to learn her name—Emily, Emily McKinsey—and another month before he worked up the nerve to ask her out.

“Why would you want to do that?” she asked coolly. “Show your work there, Neil.”

That caught him off guard. “Because…” He faltered. “I think it would be fun?” She raised an eyebrow. “And—and! I know how to tango. My mom made me take lessons with her when I was in high school. The story’s not important. Whattaya say?”

She smiled but remained unmoved. “You’ll have to do better than that.” Swiftly, she turned on her heel and strode away.

With this invitation, he asked her out four more times over the next four semesters of philosophy classes. The day of their Ethical Philosophy final, he caught up to her in the courtyard, under a tulip magnolia tree, and asked her once more.

“Why would you want to do that?” she said again. Her gaze was steady on him.

This time he was ready. He handed her a single poppy and said simply, “Aristophanes.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”

He shrugged. “I could explain. But it makes me so hungry. Maybe it’d be better to tell you about it over dinner?”

She considered for a long moment, her mouth hanging open, her eyes darting about the courtyard. At last she said, “Breakfast.”

“Fine.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Perfect.”

“Meet by the fountain? Ten o’clock?”

“I look forward to it.”

By the time the coffee landed on the table, they were already at it.

“You really buy into that four-legged creature stuff?”

“Maybe not literally,” Neil said. “But as a metaphor—”

“As a metaphor, it makes even less sense,” she said quickly as she stirred cream into her coffee. “If it were true, and each of us really used to make up one half of a two-headed, four-armed, four-legged monster that was split apart by the gods because our many limbs made us too powerful, and the only point to us being alive—”

“Well, I don’t think it’s the only point…”

“—is to reunite with our other half…” She took a sip. “Well, that’s pretty metal. I’m kind of into the idea. Especially if we can get physically stuck back together someday and roam the earth as we were meant to, like…half a giant spider.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a romantic.” He grinned.

“But if it’s just a metaphor,” she went on, “what does that say about our collective imagination? We feel incomplete all the time. It’s part of the human condition. But we just assume that another human being is the only thing that will make us feel whole? How egocentric are we?”

Two plates of pancakes arrived but didn’t break their stride.

“So I take it you’re a Nietzsche fan,” he said, offering her the syrup. “Standing bravely on your own two feet and all that.”

She scoffed. “Kindly do not speak to me about Nietzsche. He can take his misogyny and his gross, oversized mustache and get outta here.”

“And I suppose you would also reject anything Kierkegaard has to say on the subject.”

“Well, what about Schopenhauer?”

“What about Aristotle?”

Breakfast turned into lunch, which turned into dinner. Their arguments shortened as they grew more heated.

“‘Love is giving something you haven't got to someone who doesn't exist,’” she claimed.

“‘You do things because you enjoy doing them for the person you love,’” he cried.

“Are you forgetting about Stendhal?”

“Well, what about Plato?”

“Proust!”

“Jesus!”

“Buddha!”

They spent the night together.

“I love you,” he told her in the morning.

“How do you know that? Show your work, Neil.”

“What do you mean how do I know? I know because I feel it.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she said, slipping into her skirt.

He wrote her love letters; she sent back dirty limericks. He brought her flowers; she plucked the petals off and ate them in front of him, one by one. Afterward, she became horribly ill and when he came to see her, she shouted, “This is what love does!”

In the end, of course, the fact could no more be denied than gravity: the two were in love. However, the more she felt for Neil, the lower Emily’s spirits sank. She bore it stoically, even cheerfully—but underneath the smiles and kisses and long walks in the rain and stimulating conversations that lasted late into the night, there remained a heaviness, like a stone in her stomach, weighing her down. She did her best to ignore it, but it was always there.

Two years passed this way. They graduated, drove their belongings to another city to pursue their next degree, and moved into a tiny apartment together. Every day she expected him to propose, and the thought made her quake. She walked to and fro across the living room, the wood floor protesting beneath her stocking feet, mumbling to herself, “If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or do not marry, you will regret both.” 

Still they studied, and walked, and argued late into the night. They defended their dissertations and applied to PhD programs. The night before they were to be graduated and drive to another city for another degree, Neil gave her a single poppy and suggested they visit the courthouse.

She sat silently across the coffee table from him, worrying her hands. Restless, she stood and resumed her pacing.

At last she stopped, turned to him, and said, “Sartre.”

“Sartre?” he said.

“Well, Sartre and de Beauvoir.”

“What about them?”

She came to perch on the windowsill and looked out at the empty street.

“Oh,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Freedom. Love means giving up any desire to possess the person you love.”

“Love is inauthentic without freedom,” she said softly. In imagining this interaction, she hadn’t anticipated feeling as though her bones were made of lead and her skin wanted to melt away from her body.

The night continued with long stretches of silence peppered with an occasional comment or sniffle.

“You know,” he said, “philosophy can’t give us an answer to everything.”

“How dare you,” she whispered.

He breathed a laugh. “What I mean is that…I mean, philosophers have spent centuries—millennia—arguing over the biggest questions in the universe. Doesn’t that mean something? If there were any actual answers amidst this great mess, wouldn’t someone have found them already?”

“You know that’s not why we study philosophy.”

“No, but I think it’s an answer in itself. If there’s an ultimate answer, we can’t know it for sure in this lifetime. Love exists, that much we all agree on. Do the semantic differences really matter that much?”

She gave half a shrug. “Agree to disagree.”

The night was fading into a grey dawn when Neil finally let his head fall to his chest in surrender.

“I accept your terms.”

“What terms?”

“Freedom,” he said.

“Wait, what? Say more words, Neil. Why would you agree to that?”

“Agape,” he said simply.

She scratched her arm. “Agape,” she echoed. “Really? That’s it?”

He nodded.

“I’m about to refuse your proposal because of two people who used philosophical arguments partly to justify seducing their students, and all you have to say to me is agape?”

He shrugged, and if he felt any dismay at all, his face didn’t give it away.

“Well, that’s…” She stood only to collapse a moment later into a chair. “I suppose you mean to convey that you care for me in such a way that you would let me have my freedom, whatever the cost to your personal happiness, assuming it’s what I really want, and thereby prove that you do love me. Unconditionally and inarguably.”

He watched her silently.

“Well, are you going to bring up the nature of my love for you? Point to my inconsistencies, my grasping, the way I contradict myself by saying I expect freedom when, if you asked the same of me, you know I would be loath to give it? Will you make me eat my words like flower petals?”

He shook his head.

She frowned at the floor. Outside, the birds greeted the morning with a clamor. For a long moment, she watched the pink and orange light seep into the sky.

“Alright then,” she said softly.

He jerked out of a doze. “Alright?”

“Yes.”

He sat forward. “Could you—could you just—Em, it’s so late and I’m not sure what you’re—could you just specify—”

“Let’s get married.”

He blinked.

“Neil? Did you hear me?”

“Huh?” he said.

She smiled. “Do you wanna get married?”

“You mean, like…right now?”

She jumped up. “Yes.” She dashed to the fireplace and slid a cardboard packing box of books out of the way with her foot. “Come here! Stand right here. There. That’s perfect.”

Shaking his head, he took his place facing her by the mantle. She took his hands and looked into his eyes.

He gave a small cough. “Should we say something?”

She scrunched her eyes shut. “Hang on, I’m trying to remember it.” She hopped a little and then opened her eyes. “Got it. Ready?”

“We don’t have any rings.”

“Semantic details!” she shouted. “Are you ready, Neil?”

“I’m ready.”

“To misquote our good friend, Jean-Paul Sartre,” she said, “there may be more beautiful times, Neil. But this one is ours.”

“May our bodies fuse together that we may once again roam the earth as powerful and terrifying many-limbed creatures.”

“Like half of a giant spider,” she said.

“Like half of a giant spider,” he agreed.