quickly and too slowly.

The hiatus in classes flew by before I had even made a dent in the mountain of pre-lecture readings for the semester. Yet the days dragged each morning I woke up, alone on the floor and out of my mind with boredom and loneliness. Every one of my friends left but me.

The Jays and Sophie stayed with Sophie's mom and little brother. Riley drove the short distance to Carsonville, too. Krista took a Greyhound to her humble, quaint hometown—New York City— three days after Callum's party. And the day they returned, I jumped up from the common room couch—where I had been binging the newest episodes of my animes—and exclaimed with glee.

Maybe the fall break had been so insufferable because it felt like things between Jamie and me had been left on an ellipsis. A dot-dot-dot. Logic demanded that I stick to my one-and-done rule, but I had never been great at adhering to logic. I only knew I wanted him again. Badly.

Jamie clearly felt the same because on his first night back in Halston, he visited my room. Somehow I knew without asking aloud that the two insistent knocks had come from his hand. No-one else could say so much in such silence. I let him in, with bated breath.

Without a word, Jamie swept in, locked the door behind himself and pressed me against it.

Our lips found each other like polar molecules, pressing together uncertainly, and then less and less uncertain. More and more craving. Jamie caught the right angle, pulling gently on my hair to tilt my face. The right pressure as he drew my tongue into his mouth. Even when I nipped at his bottom lip, he'd responded perfectly by deepening the kiss and holding me harder to his chest.

It felt like coming home.

Then we'd tumbled onto the bed, and I'd tried to ride him until my thighs gave out. But he conveniently got lost between my legs, keeping my thighs pried open while he tasted me, until I essentially begged him to move up my body and take me. He'd been right, all those months—nearly a year—ago.

He was not a selfish lover.

While I rolled my hips on top of him, Jamie's hands stroked my legs and breasts. He looked ridiculously sexy like that, staring up at me with a heady combination of awe, lust and something... fragile in his eyes. I looked away, throwing my head back to the ceiling as my hands worked at myself below.

So, now, the one-and-done rule was broken. Technically, the first time didn't count because I had been drunk. Functionally, the second time was justified because it was the singular time we both consented. Now, technically, functionally, practically—whatever way I spun it—I had officially crossed the threshold. I had ventured into unknown territory with Jamie.

But I couldn't stop.

"Do you want me to stay?" Jamie murmured, lying on his side in my bed.

I threw a sidelong glance his way. Sweat glistened on his brow, his collarbones, his shoulders. "No. I've got readings to do."

His expression stilled, and then he exhaled leisurely. "Alright. Are we doing this again? Is this a thing now?"

"I know it's a bad idea. I know we shouldn't," I chuckled remorsefully. "But, honestly? It's definitely happening again."

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When the semester resumed, I initially tried to stay away from Jamie. Just for clarity.

We both had a bunch of assignments to submit, and the usual bustle of campus life tore us away from my bed. His time was split between coursework and football, mine between coursework and WISA and the undergraduate tutoring centre and the gym.

Surprisingly—or maybe not—I was the one to cave first. One night, after chipping away at a dense journal article, I sent Jamie a simple two-word message, exactly as I had that Wednesday before fall break. Come over. The same two knocks at my door. The same coveted distraction.

It was just addicting having Jamie so close, so willing and ready to satisfy whenever I asked him. I offered the same eagerness to him, which was, I think, an important step to reassure him that this was something I truly wanted. That he wasn't just a long-running drunken mistake.

Once Jamie realised that I wouldn't tire of him, nor him of me, I spent nearly every night—except the Tuesdays and Fridays when I went out to party—muffling my cries into my pillow under his powerful strokes behind me.

Fuck me.

A week later, I considered my next options.

Firstly, I reminded myself that I still found Jamie utterly immature and dull during the daytime with tangible examples. He often switched Krista's documentaries or Riley's news channel over to the cartoon network. He didn't clean up his bowls or cutlery, habitually falling back on the fact that Jake, whom he really did regard as an older brother sometimes, was always nearby and willing to clean up after him.

He'd tried once to listen in on Krista, Jake and me discussing a Toxicology assignment, which focused on anaphylaxis. He'd joked that 'what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger' was the perfect response to all the questions. I wouldn't associate with Jamie if we hadn't been living together—and I knew it was the same for him.

He had more than enough qualms about me to match, like my getting blackout drunk, blasphemy and cynicism. We would never like each other in that way. And yet, we really couldn't keep our hand off each other. If only we could maintain our comfortable, arms' length friendship during the day, and wring the pleasure out of each other's bodies during the night.

What to do, what to do?

Jamie was a simple man with simple motivations. I was sure he could handle the friends with benefits arrangement, but only with obvious, colour-coded boundaries. He had already been getting mischievous with his flirting around me, like at SciBall and in the common room.

The next time Jamie came to my room, I smacked a list of terms, more like a contract, down in front of him. He stared at the couple of papers on the bed, and then pouted at me.

"Here's the deal. Firstly, we'll each get tested for STIs before the next time we sleep together."

If I was going to be sleeping with him on a regular basis, best to set the record straight from the get. That way there would be no unfortunate surprises down the road. I might have sounded really clinical and paranoid to Jamie, but Pre-Med had shown me gnarly, unforgettable images of STIs. That taught me that they were very common, and no-one should think themselves infallible or morally superior.

I put up another finger, "Secondly, our friends can't know. It'll make things awkward, and I don't want them thinking I enjoy your company more than I do."

Jamie rolled his eyes, but nodded.

"Thirdly, it's non-exclusive. We aren't obligated to be monogamous, and we should not have to update each other on our sex lives," I told him. "As a courtesy, we should inform the other if we start having sex with someone else and wait for another STI test in the interim."

"You're big on sexual health," he noted wryly.

"Yeah, I am. Pre-Med major speaking, and I've got endo. It's hell, so I don't want anything inflaming it."

"Okay," Jamie agreed dutifully.

"Fourthly, we must always use some form of protection," I looked him straight in the eyes. "I'm on the pill long-term, but we must use condoms till both our tests come back."

Jamie nodded his acquiescence. I continued, "Fifthly, our friendship comes first. If anything happens that would jeopardise it, the plug gets pulled. These are the five biggies, but there are more articles which I've taken the liberty to stipulate in this contract," I pointed to the papers on my bed. "You'll be referred to FWB 2 in the document."

Jamie picked up the contract and dragged his thumb across the staple in the corner. His eyebrows furrowed. "Why are you number one?"

"'Cause I'm the shit," I shrugged simply.

"Says who?"

"Isn't it common knowledge?" I smiled cheekily. "Besides, I'm the one who wrote the damn contract. If you want to draft your counter-contract and call yourself FWB 1, be my guest."

"I thought you were Pre-Med, not Pre-Law."

"I'm a girl of many talents," I declared dramatically. "Seriously, though, friends-with-benefits arrangements get messy. You ever done it before?"

Jamie shook his head.

"Friendships are messy and sex is messy, therefore their product is bound to get complicated—unless we're clear on boundaries. That's what the contract is for."

Jamie set the contract down and looked up at me somberly. "Is it legally-binding?"

"It's morally-binding. Satan will drag your ass across poison-tipped barbed wire for all eternity if you renege on the terms thus enclosed—"

"—that's not really how Hell works—"

"—but you won't renege. So you'll be fine."

"Fine," Jamie agreed, extending his arms to encircle my waist and pull me into his lap. I ground down against his length of habit, though I knew we weren't ready for sex right now. He laid an open-mouthed kiss on my neck, then murmured, "Where do I sign?"

"Nuh-uh," I pushed his mouth from my skin. Picking up the contract, I pressed it firmly into Jamie's chest. "Go to your room and read every clause of this. Then we both need to get tested. Then after we get our results back, I'll see what I can do."

Jamie smirked and shook his head. "You're really sucking the fun out of this."

"I'll more than make up for it," I whispered into his ear. "You know I will."

Jamie's hands settled on my waist when I pulled back. He made no move to leave the room, instead holding me while I straddled him. A bashful expression crossed his bright green eyes. "Viv?"

"Yeah?" My fingers wandered around his neck, to the short curls at the base of his head, intertwining absentmindedly as I watched him.

"Can you come to the clinic with me?" he pleaded. "I haven't been before... and I'm nervous."

The sight of him—this tall, brawny football player peering worriedly up at me—warmed my heart. It was so at odds to the sides I'd seen of him before—goofy, rough, but never unsure—that I knew at once I wanted to put his mind at ease.

"Fine, you big baby."

"Viv?" Jamie asked, pulling back to look at me bashfully again.

"What?"

"About our friends not knowing..." Jamie began. "I think Kris knows. And Riley. And Sophie."

"What the fuck?" I baulked. "How could they know already?" I'd never let any change in our relationship show on the surface.

"That day we skipped classes, I walked into the common room and Kris saw what you did to my neck," Jamie leaned forward to kiss my neck again, in a mockery of what I'd done to him about a month ago. "So it's really your fault."

I glared, "Excuse me—"

"—if you didn't want to incriminate yourself, you shouldn't have left fingerprints," he whispered haughtily, shifting his mouth lower and sucking harder. A tingle of electricity raced to my core.

"You weren't complaining then, you bumbling, moronic oaf," I grizzled.

"You're right. I'll be more careful next time." I felt the curve of his lips against my skin as he threw my own words back at me, "And I'll more than make up for it. You know I will."

I rolled my eyes.

It was somewhat a relief to know all our friends and then some knew about us—perhaps not the whole truth of the arrangement, but at least that there was some sort of arrangement. Because I hadn't noticed anything different, which meant that they could successfully respect our privacy and keep their noses out of our business if things went awry.

"Viv?" Jamie asked once more, his fingers wandering up and down my back.

I had never told him I liked my back being tickled, but somehow he'd taken to doing it just now. I sighed, more out of satisfaction than annoyance. "Yes?"

"What's endo?"

I blinked at him. I'd talked about it with countless women before, but never a man. Not even my Dad, who palmed all the menstrual health-related issues off to Mom.

"You really want to know?"

He nodded. "I really do."

"Alright. The clinical term is endometriosis," I began, my Pre-Med habits taking over instantly.

My voice adopted the steady, impassioned tone I used around my students, and my hands started gesturing of their own volition. Except I had no anatomical model with me, so I pointed to the centre of Jamie's abdomen.

"Usually, when a woman gets her period, the endometrium—which is the inner lining of the uterus—thickens, sheds and then bleeds out of her." I shifted my fingers wider, curving around his oblique muscles.

"If you have endo, that process might happen to tissues outside of the uterus. In that case, there's nowhere for it to exit the body. It just stays there, and it can form scar tissue. Depending on the stage, endo can make menstruation, sex, urination and excretion fucking painful. Like, imagine knives slicing down your guts."

Jamie's eyebrows jerked together instinctively, a visceral reaction to my metaphor. I used pretty colourful imagery when I tutored, and it seemed no less effective now. "I have a mild form, so I'm unlikely to experience the real bad side effects like infertility or cysts. But every period is hell for me."

"Is there a cure?" Jamie asked curiously. His eyes were swimming with fascination and sympathy.

"No, but it's easily treated, if you can get diagnosed," I answered. "I was diagnosed when I was seventeen, and I've been taking birth control to lighten my periods ever since."

"Were you diagnosed soon after you noticed something was wrong?"

I shook my head. I wasn't. "I had incredible pain from my very first period when I was twelve, but I thought it was normal. Every girl I knew complained about cramping and fatigue, so I thought we were all in the same boat."

Jamie's hands tightened on my hips, drawing me closer. The gesture was almost protective, but a glance at his outraged expression told me he hadn't even realised he'd done it. "So, you just went five years gritting your teeth and bearing it?"

I laughed bitterly. "What else could I do?"

Jamie caught himself. I could tell this made him slightly uncomfortable—but overall he bore it way better than I had expected. He understood my explanation, and now it seemed he was trying to articulate the questions that were visibly running through his head.

"That's part of why I want to become an OB-GYN. How long it took me to be diagnosed, I mean—which is even better than the eight-year average," I added, after many beats of silence.

I was surprised at myself. Why had I shared this with him?

He didn't interrupt, raising an eyebrow to make me continue.

My frustration burst to the fore: "Healthcare doesn't take women seriously enough. Young girls need better resources to inform them about how periods work, because I never knew what I was feeling was abnormal until I started bleeding in between my periods. And we need doctors that will listen to women that are hurting, instead of writing them off as overdramatic or psychologically distressed."

I felt lighter after I voiced all the anger I had. Anger at the sexual education curriculum, the healthcare industry. Just the attitude around believing a woman's pain in general.

It didn't matter if it was Jamie or someone else listening to me. I realised that, over the years, my anger had cooled, tempered and sharpened. I wasn't searching for answers and relief anymore. I wanted change, and I wanted it by my own hands.

My features relaxed when I noticed Jamie's wide-eyed stare.

"Sorry. This must give you the heebie-jeebies," I remarked apologetically.

"I love your cartoon vocabulary," Jamie said instead, shaking his head. He had a mirthful smile on his face. "And I like learning about this stuff. I'm glad I have you to teach me. I just feel bad that I never thought about it before."

"You've never had a reason to," I assured him gently. I hadn't had a reason to learn about it either, before it became my reality.

"I guess not. Till now."

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My heart goes out to anyone who's felt like they had to fight against the healthcare system to be heard and taken seriously. We all deserve better!

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Aimee x