Percy Jackson was a man. A brave man (according to his mother). A handsome man (according to Goode High's female population). A bold man (according to himself).

He could do this.

Annabeth Chase was an enigma. Her blonde curls cascaded like a waterfall, her lithe, graceful figure danced through the halls, her smile lit the world on fire. Yet she stayed in the back of the classroom, keeping to herself, never talking to anyone except the maybe three friends she had.

That only made her all the brighter to him.

He took a deep breath, putting on his signature crooked smirk. "Hey, Annabeth."

She looked up from her (way too thick to be legal) book. "Can I help you?"

"Your eyes are a paradox to me. They're so beautiful, but you're not supposed to drown in beautiful things." He'd spent half of first period coming up with that-he was pretty proud of that line.

She donned a smirk to rival his own.

"That would be considered an oxymoron, moron. Thought you would recognise your own kind."

Percy took a second to process that, but like the idiot he was, decided to barge on ahead.

"Well, would you be willing to go out with an oxymoron like me?" He asked, putting on a charming smile.

She frowned. "No. Not until you learn what a proper paradox is."

"Well-"

"How about this," she cut him off. "I'll ask you a question. You have one chance to answer correctly. If you get it right, I'll go on a date with you. Just one, mind you, I don't want to sell my soul off too early. Deal? Deal. It's a yes-or-no question."

At this, Percy's confidence increased. "Go on."

"Am I lying right now?"

"No. A fantastic girl like you doesn't lie," he told her quite honestly.

Her eyes glimmered with appreciation, but she answered, "Wrong. Think: if I was telling the truth, what would that make my statement?"

"False..."

"Which would mean I was lying." Her voice was lined with obvious mirth, and she swept past him with her head held high. "Better luck tomorrow."

Percy was left dumbstruck. As he pondered, he thoughtfully took out a pen and a slightly wrinkled pack of sticky notes.

Annabeth continued to feed him paradoxes. She found it rather fun, actually, especially once she ran out of the ones she knew and had to start searching new ones up online. They ranged from the ridiculously easy ("Can a giraffe cross a tennis court if it always has to go halfway of the distance it has left first?" "'Course, though why it would try to cross the tennis court in the first place is a mystery..." "Wrong, Seaweed Brain.") to the outrageously philosophical ("If you remove a single grain of sand from a pile, it's still a pile, but at some point you remove the last grain of sand and it's not a pile anymore. So when does it become not-a-pile? Can a single grain make the difference?" "I...can't. Gimme another one." "Try again tomorrow, Kelp Head." "Shove off, Wise Girl.")

As she bantered, she found herself falling a little bit more every day. There was something about him that drew her in, in a way that no one had ever done before. A firm introvert, Annabeth had always been more of a stay-at-home-and-read type. Yet, she could talk so easily while staring into those sea green eyes. He told her her own eyes were like storms, but Percy's eyes were like hurricanes. If eyes were the window to the soul, his soul was messy, loud, chaotic, and strangely wonderful.

Which was actually a good description of what it was like to be around him.

Piper broke Annabeth out of her reverie. "Hey Annie-"

"Don't call me that."

"Annie, you have got to see this Instagram post! Some guy was all, Hey, if you want to be confused, take a look inside my locker, and posted this picture. It seems like the kinda thing you'd like."

Annabeth took a look. Then another. And another. She snatched the phone out of Piper's hand and carefully read through every one of the Post-It notes pictured stuck on a locker door, each time remembering the day she asked Percy that question.

If an apple was green, yellow, or red, does that support the conclusion that ravens are black?

Is heterological a heterological word?

And, of course, the day she forgot to search up a new one:

How do you spell triskaidekaphobia?

Without stopping to think, Annabeth rushed off to find Percy.

"Is it true that you wrote down all of the paradoxes and stuck them on your locker?" she demanded.

Percy blinked. "Yes..."

Annabeth grinned. "Correct. Tomorrow night at five-thirty. Demeter's All-Day Breakfast. Be there."

Percy blinked again.

Six Years Later

As Annabeth took her soon-to-be-husband's hands in her own, she said loudly, for the whole audience to hear, "I love you so much it hurts, and you take away all my pain just by being there."

Percy blinked.

Hey...

I love paradoxes, by the way, and I'm always up to hear a new one. I once spent an hour expounding upon "What I'm saying right now is a lie." It was epic.

Anyhow, I used Wikipedia for half of those puzzles. Thanks to Google and fellow paradox nerds! (Would you believe there's an actual Wiki page called "List of Paradoxes"?)

Thank you for taking the time to read this story.

Yours Sincerely,

L