Nobody knew me unless I allowed them to. It's not out of any particular need for anonymity. It's just because that's the way I am.

When I fight crime, they call me Reversal. Well, I called myself that--when I was younger, I cared a bit more about staying under the radar, and it dampens your dating life a little when men find out the petite, cute blonde they want to take home at the end of the night is actually a superhero who kicks ass and takes names during her lunch break. I guess it challenges their masculinity or something.

So I called myself Reversal and kept my power on low burn all the time. Anytime someone tried to get to know me, my power would force them the other way. In the end, those walls meant to protect me only succeeded in keeping out the good ones and letting the scumbags in.

When I finally figured out that those kinds of men aren't even worth my time, I gave up the ruse. I took off the mask. I updated my online dating profile with my superhero name in parentheses right there next to my real name. "Alicia Landrew, a.k.a. Reversal, accountant by trade and butt-kicking crime-fighter in my time off!"

The funny thing was, though, that no one believed me! For the longest time, they thought it was a joke! And admittedly, it took a while for me to fully dropkick that old habit of keeping my reversal powers on low burn out of my life, but even then, most of my friends just said, "Uh-huh, yeah, okay, sure, Li, you're a superhero."

"Yeah, Joan, my face is literally plastered over every news article!"

"Oh, right, I did get a push notification about that this morning. Cool, bro. Hey, are we still on for lunch later?"

I guess all we really see truly is nothing more than what we want to see.

I suppose that's why I agreed to meet up with Matthew. In the old days of masking my identity, I might have been very suspicious of getting a match with the one guy in the city who looked very, extremely, uncannily similar to the visor-clad supervillain Quantum Malice terrorizing the city in recent weeks. Surely, I once would have thought, this means he discovered my identity and is trying to get close to attack!

But I let my guard down. With the whole world basically responding with one gigantic shrug to my virtual unmasking, I didn't think very hard about the possibility of Quantum Malice attacking me through a dating app. He probably wouldn't believe I'm a superhero, either, right?

So I agreed to meet up for cakepops. Because, "I'll get you coffee, if you want, but I'm not a coffee fiend, myself." The way he had said it was just cute enough to intrigue me, plus I'd never been asked out for cakepops before, so I went. The city's greatest superhero, going on a date with the city's newest supervillain.

And later, its worst, most destructive, most notorious supervillain.

Matthew was a troubled soul.

And that's when I finally admitted to myself my sheer stupidity, the flaw with being a superhero in the dating game. Now, the villains I faced were not just villains. They were people.

It completely changed how I approached heroism. Because I could not just defeat Matthew in combat. I could not lay a hand on him. I loved him.

I loved him.

I absolutely, wholly, truly, wonderfully, loved my archnemesis.

And that's how I fought him. I loved him. Every date, every conversation, every late night sharing secrets, I loved him. Every part of him.

Did he know that I was Reversal? Of course--I never hid it. Did he believe it? I think so. I truly think so. And that drew me to him, too. He believed me. And I know he believed me because he chose me as his archnemesis. He, as Quantum Malice, rose up against me, as Reversal, at every turn.

And finally, people began to see. Once we gave them something to look at, they began to watch. Hero Reversal and Villain Quantum Malice, veritable gods eternally clashing in an endless dance of good versus evil!

He had to have known all along, he had to have believed me, because he would not have aided in giving me a name otherwise.

And he always, always, let me win.

That was how I knew he loved me. He stopped being a supervillain for just himself. He used it to support me, never hurt me. He loved me, and it made him a better person.

And I like to think he made me a better person, too, even if he did not know it. I no longer cared about whether everyone else believed I was a superhero. He knew, and he cared, and I realized that was all I wanted.

Did he know I knew he was actually the supervillain Quantum Malice? I highly doubt it. He would not have kept up the charade if he had. But that was okay.

Because the son of a bitch finally got his act together and proposed.