I couldn't even remember a time when words had hurt me before. My brother had no idea what happened, and he'd never had to come pick me up as a teary eyed wreck, ever, so he didn't really know how to handle the situation. During the drive to his apartment, he just gave me my space.

"You don't have to talk about it right now if you don't want to," he said. "Whenever you're ready." I was grateful.

When we arrived at my brother's apartment, I got really nervous because I remembered that Elsa lived in the same building. Thankfully we didn't run into her on our way up — if she'd seen me in the sniffling condition I was in, I would've died of shame.

My brother put on Star Wars and made us chocolate. Then we curled up together on the sofa beneath some warm blankets, safe from the Minnesota winter outside. It's how we used to spend the winters when we were little. Recently I had been too busy settling into university life and exploring it that I hadn't hung out with him for a while, but the rest of the week's lectures were suspended for both of us because of an approaching snowstorm, so I let myself just enjoy being together right then.

When Leia confessed her love for Han Solo my brother scoffed at the scene. "I never really thought about it before, but that guy has been a complete jerk to Leia for two whole movies. Why would she fall in love with him?"

"But isn't that kind of a cliché?" I argued. "The guy starts out as a jerk, and then the heroine discovers his heart of gold and she falls in love."

My brother chuckled. "You're right. That is a total cliché."

After we finished the movie, he asked, "Do you want to catch the weather report real quick? The snowstorm is supposed to hit tonight."

I said, "Nah, I don't plan on going outside anytime soon."

We fell silent for a moment, letting the credits roll. I gave my brother's arm a squeeze and said, "Kristoff." He turned toward me. "I broke up with Hans."

"Oh," was Kristoff's response. "Isn't it usually the other person who cries?" I knew he meant it as a joke, but I winced at him saying usually.

"He called me some stuff." Kristoff nodded for me to go on, so I took a deep breath and said, "He called me a slut."

"What a shithead." Kristoff pulled me closer.

"I'm not a slut, right?" I muttered, and despite my best efforts, my voice grew thick.

At once, my brother's arms were around me. "Of course not."

"Just kind of." The tears were coming back.

"Absolutely not, Anna. You date as many people as you want."

"It's just that I've been trying to find someone—"

He cut me off. "You don't need an excuse. Anna, you know you've done nothing wrong. What's the matter?"

"I found someone. A girl." Kristoff pulled away to let me talk. "She's the one I've been looking for. When she's sweet to me, I just feel so much. That's why I broke up with Hans. But then he called me all those things, and maybe she won't want me."

"What makes you think she won't want you?"

"She's very intense about everything she does. Meanwhile, I've been jumping from relationship to relationship, so she'll probably think I won't take her seriously at all." Then again, there was nobody she didn't think should be more serious. "Even though she was kind of a dick to me when we first met, we've both done our best to build a friendship. I just have no idea if she'd want anything more."

Looking at his face, I could tell that my brother was getting irritated at this crush of mine. He asked, "Who is she?"

"Her name is Elsa."

"Elsa from downstairs? Her family owns that car company, right?" His brow furrowed as he replayed any past interactions in his mind. "Yeah, she is kind of a dick."

"But she's trying not to be." At least she was trying when we were together. "We've come so far, and I don't want to mess it up."

"Anna, listen. If she doesn't like you because you do what you feel like, then you're better off without her. You should be with someone who respects you — everything about you." He squeezed his eyes shut as if he was reminded of something painful.

I had no clue what was going on with him. Worried, I rubbed his shoulders. "Kristoff?" To this day, I can't decide if I'm mad at my brother for what he did next. But I'm certain that, if it happened now, I would react the same way I did back then.

I flung myself to the other end of the sofa with a hand to my lips where he'd kissed me. Why had he kissed me so hard? "Kristoff? What's that supposed to mean?"

He held his head in his hands and said, "I'm sorry, Anna. This isn't normal." There wasn't much room for interpretation.

Having the situation turned around like this, I was a bit scared. Is that bad of me? "Kristoff, I don't feel that way about you. I can't."

He raised his head to look at me. "You can't?"

Somehow, I gathered enough focus to meet his gaze, and I didn't look away. "I don't."

Then everything happened in a blur. My brother stood from the sofa and headed for the door, grabbing his car keys on the way. Reluctantly, I got up after him. "Where are you going?" I asked.

Kristoff tugged his boots on as fast as he could. "I just need to think for a while. Maybe I'll go up to the cabin."

"You can't go up there with the storm coming! You'll be stuck for days!" Maybe it's a little embarrassing that I didn't try harder to stop him from going — given that he'd be alone in a mountain cabin for the rest of the week — but the kiss had been too much too suddenly for me, and I was actually relieved to get a moment to process everything by myself.

"I'm sorry," was the last thing he said before shutting the door.

Alone in the apartment, my mind ran at a hundred miles an hour. I managed to keep from hyperventilating — probably because of how unreal the whole thing felt. After some time, however, I realized that underneath all the stress his confession was causing me, I still loved my brother. I was confident that we could put this behind us.

It dawned on me that Kristoff was currently headed up a mountain with a major snowstorm on its way. Gripped by panic, I tried calling him, but he'd left his phone in the apartment. There was no way for me to reach him — I didn't have a car.

At first, Elsa looked genuinely happy to see me. So why did she have to school her features into her usual annoyed expression? "Anna? What are you doing here?"

I let out the breath I'd been holding and said, "Hi Elsa," barely keeping myself together. "I need to ask for a huge favour. It's kind of an emergency."

Elsa crossed her arms. I remembered her saying that people should deal with their own problems — probably because she'd never encountered a situation she couldn't handle. Despite the actual emergency on my hands, I found myself thinking that I was ruining her night by asking this.

Elsa just raised an eyebrow at me, so I went on. "My brother and I had a fight, and he took off toward our family's cabin in the mountains." From the exceptionally unimpressed look on her face, I saw that Elsa could already guess where this was going. "That storm is supposed to come tonight, so he won't be able to get back down until it clears and the snow plows make it up there."

Elsa sighed, feeling the uninvited urgency of the situation. "Shit, Anna. That really is an emergency."

Normally, I would've expected her to have turned me away already. Maybe she was making an exception for my sake, as a friend. Maybe there was a chance. "I'm really sorry! I just need to borrow your car for the night. I'll try to get it back here before the storm."

Another sigh, heavier this time. "No. I'll drive you there."

"What?"

"It's not my car — it's my dad's. I can't just hand it to anybody."

She got her coat and came with me to the parking lot. Among the cars there, Elsa's needlessly large SUV stood out like a silver coated thumb. I felt intimidated just stepping into the passenger seat, and I was somewhat relieved that I wouldn't have to drive.

Elsa pointed out that there was a GPS in the car, but by then I had already pulled up the navigator on my phone, so we used that instead. As we left the parking lot, I struggled to come up with something to say — we simply spent the first thirty minutes of the drive in silence. It had started to snow, and the sun had set hours ago. There was nothing outside my window but whirling snowflakes and a yellowish gallery of streetlights and houses.

My first instinct, overwhelmingly, was to apologize, but it only made her grimace. "Stop apologizing. You didn't even have to follow your idiot brother to that mountain."

She had no idea. After what happened between me and Kristoff — after something significant like that — I really worried about him, about what he might do while snowed in and alone for several days. But Elsa didn't know why Kristoff had left. Elsa must've thought he was an idiot for running away, and that I was an idiot for going after him. To her, it must've seemed like I pictured myself as a hero on a quest to save him.

Elsa could not stand people thinking too highly of themselves — she insisted that they know their every weakness, and she was often the one to point them out. However, I thought that she'd dropped her tendency to put people in their place around me. "You can't mean that he deserves to be stuck up there!" I said, scared that our progress had been lost so easily.

"Honestly, I do think he deserves it. We've known for days that the storm would hit tonight."

"He's just not in his right mind. Haven't you ever fought with someone you love? It fucking sucks!"

"Why are you making excuses for him?" Elsa sounded sincerely confused. "It's nothing against you."

"Are you serious? You called my brother an idiot! My brother!"

Annoyed, she told me to calm down. "I'm just being reasonable."

But I didn't want to be reasonable — I was too worried about Kristoff. I missed the Elsa who cared, who used to listen to me and understand me. Where was that Elsa? "Why do you always expect everybody to be reasonable? You always want to pretend that feelings don't exist!"

I was getting worked up, but then Elsa thundered, "I'm sorry, okay?" and it stopped me in my tracks immediately. For as long as I'd known her, that was the first time I'd ever heard Elsa raise her voice. It was also the first time I'd heard Elsa say she was sorry.

She kept driving for an agonizingly awkward couple of minutes before parking outside a pub. Without looking at me, she stormed out of the car and went inside. For a while, I just sat there, dumbstruck and half-expecting her to come back. But of course she didn't, so I got out of the car and started walking toward the dubious-looking pub.

We had made it to someplace in the suburbs I'd never been before, and I felt completely lost — between me and Elsa, I was the city kid. What would I do if I couldn't get Elsa out of that pub? There was no way I was going back home now, not when Kristoff needed me. The wind picked up around me, and I shuddered as I tried — though I regretted asking Elsa for help — to formulate an apology in my head.

The inside of the pub was warm. I scanned the crowded bar, and while most of the people seemed to be about my age, Elsa wasn't there. Instead, I spotted her sitting by herself in a corner. I quickly walked over to her, noticing her jaw clenching when she saw me approaching.

"Elsa," I said as I sat down across from her, but before I could launch into my maybe-less-than-sincere apology, there came a ruckus from the bar. Apparently, somebody had recognized Elsa.

We were joined at our table by a group of people all excitedly greeting her, and despite her sour mood, she responded with a reluctant smile. They seemed to be old friends of hers, which surprised me. Firstly, because it was hard to imagine Elsa being so close with this many people, and secondly, because this place was the polar opposite of Elsa. I would've never expected to find the neat-looking intellectual at the sort of bar that played The Clash. "Shows what I know," I said to myself, but I couldn't hear my own voice over the lively chatter.

Elsa's friends had been ignoring me completely, but then somebody said, "Elsa, who's your friend?" Elsa looked at me but didn't answer, so I told them my name.

Somebody else asked if I was Elsa's girl.

"What?" I yelped, but Elsa only shoved her friend jokingly while the others started teasing her. "We're not together," I tried to say. The girl next to me was probably the only one who heard.

She asked me, "Why not? You don't want some of that?" She whirled her finger in Elsa's direction. My face almost melted off my skull. The girl went on, saying, "She's bitchy, but she's not a for real snob. You know her family's got those car factories? She could've moved to California with her parents, but she stayed."

"Elsa's family lived here?"

"You didn't know? She went to high school with us — we used to come here all the time."

I caught Elsa listening to our conversation. She said, "We had to move because the business was doing badly. As soon as it recovered, my parents moved back while I decided to attend university here instead."

"Why didn't you go with them?" I asked her. I couldn't believe Elsa had passed up on a chance to get away from this place. "Nothing here seems to live up to your expectations."

Though I regretted saying this in front of her high school friends, they just laughed knowingly. "Elsa is all bark and no bite," said the girl beside me. "She still talks like big money and perfect grades, but she stayed here so she could get away from all that."

"Everybody is a work in progress," said Elsa when I looked to her for confirmation.

That made her friends laugh even more. "Yeah, you're just a real fixer-upper, aren't you?"

We sat together in Elsa's car, still parked outside her old high school hangout. After a long moment of silence, I found enough courage to say something. "You wanted to get away from your parents that bad?"

Elsa glanced at the rearview mirror absently. "They always expected me to be perfect, so I expected everybody else to be perfect too. It wasn't until we moved here that I realized how lonely it made me feel. The people you met in there, they are the ones who helped me see that." Elsa often looked unhappy, but now she looked sad — so sad. "I know I can be cruel, but you've been a great friend. I care about your opinion, so I got nervous about being together the entire night, and I lashed out. Can you forgive me?"

There was nothing I wanted more. I told her yes, and pointed out the difference between the way we spoke to each other in the beginning and the way we were now. "I think you've been really wonderful too." Elsa chuckled nervously, but she seemed pleased. "Sorry for blowing up on you before. Even though you reverted for a minute, you did still agree to spend the whole night helping me find Kristoff. If it wasn't for the stress from what happened with him, I never would've gotten so out of control."

"What was your fight about?"

I braced myself for her reaction. "He confessed to me. Elsa, my brother is in love with me."

As I feared, this appalled her. "And you still want to find him?"

"Kristoff has always been there for me," I explained. "When I was little, I used to wish I had a sister instead, but I wouldn't trade Kristoff for anybody. If he can forgive himself, then I can forgive him too."

"But how do you move on from something like that?"

"I don't know, but we've carried each other through a lot. We can move past this too."

For a while, Elsa stared at me — and I stared back, trying to convey how much I believed in her. Finally, she laughed and said, "You make it seem easy to forgive." She agreed to take me the rest of the way.

"Are you sure? We've taken so long already that we probably won't make it back home after we get there."

Elsa nodded. "Yes, it's fine. It'll be worth it, I think."

As soon as the cabin came into view, I hopped out of the car. My phone — which we'd been using as a GPS — I simply left. The front door to the house was locked, and my fingers were so stiff it took me forever to find the right key. When I fumbled and dropped the keychain on the ground, I cursed so loudly that it startled Elsa.

Despite dreading what state I might find my brother in, I threw open the door and shouted, "Kristoff! Are you here?" But there was no response, and that scared me even more. "No no no no, Kristoff, please be okay," I muttered as me and Elsa went from room to room. Kristoff was nowhere to be found.

I ran to a window, and it was snowing so heavily that I could barely make out Elsa's car outside, but where was Kristoff's car? Had he headed back home? He would never make it — he'd be caught in the snowstorm. Realizing this, I slumped to the floor. It hurt so much, but I couldn't help thinking that if only I had reacted to his feelings differently, maybe I could've kept him from leaving in the first place.

Then I heard Elsa in the other room, saying, "Hi, is this Kristoff? Anna is fine. I'm Elsa, Anna's friend from school." I rushed toward the sound of her voice and found Elsa with my phone to her ear. "Why aren't you at your house in the mountains?"

I grabbed the phone from her. "Kristoff?"

"My god, Anna! Are you at the cabin?" Hearing my brother speak almost made me cry.

"Where are you?" I yelled.

"Back home. I just drove around the block a couple of hours to calm down. Please tell me you didn't think I'd be crazy enough to really drive up to that mountain, Anna."

"Fuck you, Kristoff! You scared the shit out of me!" I yelled at him until I was too exhausted to be angry anymore. "I thought you were dead."

"I'm fine. Everything is fine." He swallowed hard. "We're going to be fine, right?"

"Of course, Kristoff. We'll make it through this. Let's talk when I get back, okay? We'll talk about everything then."

"Oh, right. Now it's you guys who're stuck up there," said Kristoff as I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. It was empty. "Is there enough food for both you and Elsa?"

I checked the cupboards and wrinkled my nose at what I found. "Yeah, there is — I hope she likes canned soup." Me and Elsa had just become closer than we'd ever been, but now I had to tell her that we came all the way here for nothing. If it wasn't for the relief of Kristoff being safe, I don't know if I would've been able to.

After saying goodbye to my brother, I wandered the house looking for Elsa. I found her in the guest bedroom picking linen out of the closet.

"Elsa," I said carefully.

"It seems like no one in particular lives in this room. Is it okay if I sleep here?" she asked.

I tried to play off how unnerved I was by her calmness. "Yeah, no problem. So, uh, you figure we'll be here for a while?"

"Until Monday, at least. Maybe longer. But that's okay — I can't think of anything further from my family's house. It'll be fun." She looked at me and said, "This place is nice," and I don't think she just meant the place, because she reached for my hand and just held it. As far as I know, that was the first time she actually flirted with me.

The warmth from holding her hand, the butterflies in my stomach — this was the feeling I had been searching for. "So how do you feel about canned soup?"