"I'm tellin' you Hobbes, I think I might be in love with Susie." Calvin said to the tiger sitting in his dorm room.

"I thought we already had this talk when you were 13, you just miss her is all…well in this case you MISSED her, it'll pass trust me." Hobbes said stretching out on the floor like he had done so many years before.

"I don't think so, it's different this time."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well for one I'm not going through puberty anymore, my hormones are in check." Calvin was getting annoyed and yet was feeling happily nostalgic, he hasn't spoken to Hobbes in years and was missing it.

"Please, like you know anything about hormones." Hobbes said condescendingly

"I do so! I took a health class in high school."

"I may have been in a box at that point but I can already tell you slept through it and only barely passed." Hobbes always knew what Calvin was thinking, it was like a superpower. His parents always said that it was because Hobbes was in his imagination but Calvin knew that there was something more to it, something deeper.

"Not the point Hobbes! Besides, this isn't the first time I've thought about her since then."

"What?"

"You were in the basement at the time, I couldn't sleep. I had had a rough day at school I failed a healt-," Calvin stopped himself before Hobbes was proven right "I mean, a MATH test and Dad told me that when he was my age, a bad day could be solved by thinking about what made you happy. I was a Junior in high school so naturally my mind went to material items; video games, the internet, my cell phone, etc. But after a while, I began thinking about deeper things. Obviously my family's love and respect, my friends, writing (oh yeah, in high school I took creative writing, lots of fun, the school paper published a weekly comic strip I wrote about me about me when I was six."

"Was I in it?" Hobbes asked hopefully

"Of course buddy! Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah! So then I thought about Susie. It began as no more than a passing thought, but my mind would keep going back to her like a moth to a campsite lantern. Each time she returned to my thoughts I would think about her longer and longer until finally she was all I could think about…all I would think about. I remembered how she was the only girl who ever actually wanted to spend time with me, the only KID for that matter, you may not have realized this Hobbes, but I wasn't cool when I was younger." Hobbes didn't say anything, he just gave Calvin a look that said 'you don't say'. Calvin couldn't help but chuckle a little. "I thought about her so long that by the time I was about to actually go to sleep my alarm began ringing. I had come to the conclusion that I was in love with her."

"Oh my god!" Hobbes exclaimed.

"I know right?"

"Not that, you thought about what made you happy and I didn't make the list!" that was Hobbes for you, always had his priorities straight. "But aside from that, let's have a chat about Susie. You see Calvin, when a boy loves a girl very much he-"

"I'm gonna stop you right there, I already had this chat with my dad years ago."

"Did he get to the part with the iron lung?" The next few seconds were spent with Calvin looking at Hobbes and trying to figure out what an iron lung had to do with sex. The next two things that came out of Hobbes' mouth were probably the wisest things Calvin had ever heard from him. "Well then I'll skip ahead, Calvin, I've been around the block a couple times, and I've come to know a thing or two about love. 1. If you feel it for more than a month it's probably true, 2. It works best with people you've known for years, and 3. Never trust a Raggedy Ann who promises to love you forever and then leave after three weeks with an old beanie baby that you just KNOW won't work but just sit idly by and watch it bloom into a beautiful romance in spite of the fact that there is far too big a height difference, but that's a different story." The third thing that came out of his mouth was not that wise, but the first two are still solid advice.

" You were in that basement far too long my friend…far too long." Calvin hugged his old friend and quietly said 'I missed you' and then put him away in the closet. Calvin laid down on his bed and was about to go to sleep when a thought entered his head. This thought was so jarring that he shot up and said it aloud. "Where is Chad?"