I used to think hatred was a clean, simple emotion—sharp like a blade, predictable like the hiss of a boiling kettle. And if you'd asked me in high school who I hated most, I wouldn't even have needed to think. It was Daniel.
He wasn't a villain, not in the dramatic sense. He wasn't cruel or violent or mean for sport. In some ways, that made disliking him even more irritating. He was effortlessly good at everything—grades, sports, popularity, even that annoyingly perfect handwriting teachers kept putting on the notice board. And me? I was perfectly average and perfectly tired of him making it look easy.
Our feud started with something stupid. I'd spent an entire weekend building a model volcano for a science project—painted ridges, tiny cardboard trees, a valley carved with toothpicks. I was proud of it. Then Daniel walked in Monday morning with a solar-powered rotating model of the earth's layers that he'd "thrown together last night." Everyone flocked to his table. Mine suddenly looked like prehistoric artwork. I'd glared at him so hard that day I swear the sun shifted to avoid the tension.
And because fate loves humor, we ended up sitting next to each other in chemistry. Assigned seating. Unavoidable. Torture.
He'd hum under his breath—always off-key. He'd tap his pen, scribble messy notes, borrow my ruler without asking, smile that easy smile that made half the class melt. It all drove me wild.
But then something odd happened. One afternoon, during a particularly brutal lab, my experiment went wrong. Smoke. A loud pop. I stepped back, coughing, certain I had ruined yet another practical. Daniel slid over instantly, fanning away the fumes, switching off the burner, talking me through what to do without a hint of mockery.
"You're not useless," he said, wiping condensation off my goggles. "You just overthink everything."
It was such a small moment, but it cracked something in me. Hatred didn't vanish—it shifted, softened, confused itself into silence.
Over the next weeks, we talked more. At first, sarcastically. Then cautiously. Then openly. I learned that his perfect handwriting came from years of his father making him rewrite entire pages. That he didn't "throw things together"—he stayed up late, worrying himself sick because he didn't want to disappoint anyone. That his hum wasn't random; it was the only way he could focus when anxious.
The more I learned, the more the edges of him rounded, became human—beautifully, messy human.
The day it changed completely was after a football match. He was sweaty, exhausted, grinning like he'd swallowed the sun. When he saw me waiting by the field, he jogged over breathlessly.
"I think," he said, chest rising and falling, "I only play this hard because you're watching."
And just like that, the hatred I'd nursed for years finally died—quietly, almost gratefully—making way for something frightening, unexpected, and warm.
I didn't meet my lover at first sight. I met him in the slow, reluctant unraveling of dislike, the kind that reveals what was there all along: connection disguised as conflict, affection hiding beneath irritation.
I met him in the exact moment I realized I didn't hate him at all.