It’s 5 a.m. and The Graduate and I are sound asleep in his bed. We had a good night. We ate dinner on his patio and sat cross-legged on his couch as we played card games and got silly tipsy as we sang along to our favorite songs. I sang wildly out of tune, of course.

We made a special playlist to commemorate the night—all of our mutually favorite songs to celebrate our first sleep-in date. (Yes, it’s saccharine sweet, cute-as-cupcakes annoying to anyone who loathes mushy-gushy dating stories. But I must admit, I loved it.)

The Graduate and I have had plenty of sleepovers. But work, alarm clocks and the thought of having to wade through rush-hour traffic forced us out of each other’s beds earlier than we’d prefer. We were ready for the inaugural lazy Sunday.

At 5:15, he rolled over and kissed my shoulder. I sighed and smiled.

Then it happened: His cell phone rang. He looked at it, grumbled and ignored it. Then the house phone rang—and rang and rang at least 20 times. His cell rang again.

“Who is it?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know. No one else would be this persistent. This was the work of a crazed girl. This was The Ex.

She called his cell phone a third time. I told him to just answer it. In his most gruff, “I’m not putting up with this crap” voice, he picked up and asked what she wanted. Apparently, she wanted to talk.

“It’s 5 a.m.,” he said. “I can’t talk to you now.”

And in an unusual display of super-bionic hearing, I caught what she said next: She was outside his front door, waiting to come in and talk. He refused. “I have a key,” she said.

I sat up in bed. This was bad. When I first met her, I thought she was nice and pretty—someone I could be friends with—and I told The Graduate as much. His response? “She’s like one of those animals who looks cute until you get close to her, and then she eats your face off.”

The Graduate had laughingly told me on several occasions that I was “the most sane” girl he’s ever dated. I didn’t realize how serious he was.

This girl was psychotic. We’re talking “Fatal Attraction,” boil the bunny crazy. Sure, this kind of stuff happened on bad soap operas and Lifetime movies, but this breed of crazy is something I don’t know how to deal with.

So there I was, in my favorite hot pink babydoll nighty with my mess of bed-head hair at its finest. Clearly, I was ill prepared for an early morning catfight. I can’t even recite the alphabet without a cup of coffee. And there she was, his former love, knocking on the door—presumably rabid and ready to devour my face. The Graduate’s past and present were about to collide, and I still hadn’t even rubbed the sleep out of my make-up smeared eyes yet.

To be continued…