the Jays' door before I knocked.

I had it on good authority—meaning Jake—that only Jamie was inside, probably a few feet away from where I waited. I heard his study playlist, low thumping bass and crooning vocals, and the clicking of his laptop keys emanating from within.

I tugged up the strap of my bra, made of black lace. It was one of the skimpiest things I owned—and that was saying something. The bottom piece, an arrangement of gauzy fabric, matched the top. Over the matching lingerie, I wore a sweater and sweatpants, intended to mislead, to surprise. A claw clip held my hair in place at the back of my head, almost like a bow on a gift.

Ready for unwrapping. Birthday cake, Sushmita had advised, every day of the week.

I knocked twice.

For a moment, I thought Jamie might not have heard me over the music. Several moments of anticipation buoyed between each thud of my heart. Then the song paused. I heard a chair squeaking on its axle and a turning door handle.

When Jamie saw who had visited, his eyes widened in recognition before narrowing. "Viv."

"Can I come in?"

Jamie flexed his jaw, considering my words. After a few seconds of my silent, plaintive expression, he stepped back and gestured his arm. I strolled into the bedroom and shut the door behind me. By the time I turned around, Jamie had retaken his seat.

He asked me, "What do you want?"

"You."

Jamie crossed his arms, the long-sleeved shirt he wore stretching over his biceps. His searching gaze pierced the heart of me.

"No, you don't," he concluded. "Not the way I want you."

"Maybe not," I shrugged helplessly, pleading for him to see things my way. "But I still want you, Jamie. Does it have to be your way?"

"The way you 'want' me," Jamie swivelled his chair around to face me fully, "makes me feel like a sentence on a page."

A blade of guilt struck my chest. That had never been my intention. It had been so long since I felt this way about anyone that I didn't even know how to talk about my feelings anymore. Eric, Bryson, Sung-seo, Johannes... my last several boyfriends had never been this complicated.

But they hadn't been this... special, either.

So what if it wasn't romance? Even without an expression of love, I let him share my bed, learn my secrets, and comfort me through my pain. My respect, trust and comfort were still precious things I could offer Jamie. Everything but my heart.

I sighed shakily and tried again. "I don't usually give boys a second night, but you got that and more. I tell you stuff I don't tell other people."

I knew that to someone like Jamie, whose heart was hopeful and unscarred, that what I was saying sounded frigid. Pathetic. Not good enough.

I didn't have a rosy, unblemished outlook to offer him. But the scant trust I could put in another person, well— it meant a lot. Anxiety clawed at my throat.

"That counts for something, in my book."

"Yet that's not enough to make you give me a chance," he reiterated.

"I—" My eyebrows furrowed, and I glanced at him pleadingly.

When Jamie continued staring expectantly, I huffed in defeat. What I wanted to say eluded me; everything I said just dug the divide between us deeper. And the language we spoke to each other had never been verbal, anyway.

I marched over to Jamie and dropped to my knees between his legs. His eyelids raised in surprise, but drooped lazily when I rubbed my hand over his length. Through the fabric of his sweatpants, I palmed him until he grew rock hard, neither of us saying a word. I didn't get a word of encouragement from him, but his hands fell to his sides and his hips shifted to help me as I slid him free of his pants.

"This is not fair," Jamie suddenly spoke, as if remembering the whole reason he walked away from me. "I'm so far gone for you. Yet you don't think of me unless you want to get off."

"That's not true," I protested sultrily. His length was warm and weighty in my hands. A hiss emerged from Jamie when I moved my hand up and down, experimentally.

"I thought of you over Christmas," I said, stroking him more steadily.

"I thought of the way you smell." I placed a soft kiss on the tip of him.

"That story you told me." An open-mouthed kiss.

"I think of you every night that I lie awake for hours." I ran my tongue up the length of him, earning a shattered moan from his gorgeous mouth. "I think of you more than I should."

"Careful," he muttered, tearing the clip from my head and fisting a clump of my hair. I smirked up at him, his green irises clouded with too many emotions to count. "That sounds a lot like emotion you're showing there."

My throat was thick with desire, watching him looming above me. The pull at the base of my scalp was gentle but secure, a simultaneous reminder of Jamie's strength and restraint. I wanted to break the latter. I wanted the former to break me.

"So?" I whispered.

Then I placed my lips against his tip and took him deep into my mouth.

"Oh, fuck."

Jamie writhed under my mouth as I worked him deeper and deeper, my hands wandering the planes of his taut body, up the sides of his hips, underneath to cup him.

"Viv."

The more I sucked, the easier it became. He grew slick and hot in my mouth, and the knowledge I was making him crumble pooled as desire in my panties. The hand in my hair set the rhythm, guiding my face up and down. Just when I sensed the nearing of his release, he tore my head off of him.

Strong arms lifted me from the floor and pushed me backwards until I fell onto his mattress. I lifted my head to watch him, only to observe the lightning-quick removal of my clothing. Jamie's mouth slackened when he saw the soaked underwear.

"Jesus Christ."

I knew how I looked. My dark hair fanning on the pillow, the black bits of lace barely protecting my decency. I could have arched my back and my breasts would have fallen out of the flimsy cups, but I didn't. That delight was reserved for the man in front of me.

"You're taking the Lord's name in vain," I mocked.

"You'll be saying much worse in a few minutes," he warned darkly, slipping his fingers under the straps of my panties.

I cracked a grin. "Will I?"

As Jamie slowly slid down my body, peppering ardent kisses on my skin, he took the garment with him. He hooked my knees over his shoulders, pausing for several moments. I could barely form coherent sentences through the knot in the back of my throat. Every inch of me craned for him, for what was coming next...

What is he waiting for?

"Jamie—" My question died in my throat when his lips locked on my core, tasting the wetness that had formed between my legs. "Oh."

He hummed quizzically. "Hm?"

"Ah," I moaned loud as two fingers slid into me. I was more than ready for it, but nonetheless, the stretching sensation was deep, full and disorienting. "Oh, God."

All thoughts of making things up to Jamie fled my head. By this point he knew my body like someone knew the hallways of home in the dark. His fingers rhythmically pressed against the sweet spot inside me, while his tongue suckled and twirled my nub in his mouth.

"Fucking hell," I cursed, mind blank with pleasure.

Minutes later, my hips canted violently against his face, and my fingers twisted helplessly in his hair.

His mouth pulled away briefly. "You're too fucking sexy," he said hoarsely, gently biting my inner thigh.

"Jamie," I gritted, "Get your mouth back on me."

When the warm, wet suction returned to my most sensitive point, the sensation—coupled with a well-timed thrust of his fingers and the blissful, throbbing remnants of his teeth on my skin—I unwound for him.

"Oh, damn it! Jesus fucking Christ. Fuck."

Jamie crawled up my supine body, silencing my ecstatic cries while his hand pumped below, prolonging my release. I tasted myself on his lips and shuddered. I sighed happily into the kiss, feeling at home for the first time in weeks.

Even after the most intense waves of pleasure passed and clear thought returned to my head, we kissed for several more minutes. The first times we ever kissed, it was all desperation, frenzy, passion. Like starved souls drinking water. Like we'd never get another chance to do it.

Now our lips swept across each other's languidly, with all the familiarity of close lovers. His fingers curled inside me, and my hands slid into his hair to pull him in closer. We kissed as if there'd always be a next time. At least, I hoped there would be.

Then the moment shattered.

Jamie slipped his fingers out of me, dismounting the bed while my head spun from heady amounts of both lust and confusion. He was pulling on his pants and heading for the door before I could even say a word. The slam coincided with a sudden chill claiming my heart, like I had dropped it into a bucket of ice.

He... left?

When Jamie returned, his hands were clean and his hair perfectly in place. Like I'd never happened. He dropped into his desk chair and pulled his laptop in front of him.

I stammered, "Why— why didn't you..."

"My deal still stands," he explained emotionlessly, looking down at the screen. "All or nothing. The next girl I fuck will be my girlfriend."

My throat tightened. My chest ached.

It wasn't like he'd left me unsatisfied. In fact, he was the one who never finished. But being so rapidly ignored after being intimate... gave me whiplash. The clinical and unceremonious way he'd gotten me off and then thrown me aside—

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I swore, pushing myself onto my knees. The bra hadn't even come off. "Was that supposed to be a taste of my own medicine?"

Jamie obstinately kept typing on his laptop, like I'd said nothing.

Well, fuck, fine! So maybe I had written a contract, but that was to safeguard some necessary boundaries. It didn't detract from everything we shared in bed together, unlike his cold, abrupt withdrawal from me. The person studying in front of me, back tensed and eyes averted, didn't even seem like Jamie.

"Real mature," I scoffed, picking up my underwear from the floor. He was back to ignoring me. "At least I wasn't playing games with you when we hooked up. Maybe before scolding me for not dating you, look at yourself. Not exactly boyfriend material."

I dressed in an enraged fury, coming down from the orgasm and reeling from the rejection.

Jamie flicked me a lazy, lifeless smirk. "And Eric is?"

My fingers paused on the drawstring of my sweatpants. "What?"

"You know, I thought you followed your no-dating rule to preserve your grades," Jamie said confidently. "But that's not it, is it? You've dated in college before— no, you've even dated scumbags before. But I'm where you'll draw the line? I'm that bad?"

It was ludicrous that Eric, who was as insignificant to me as a mosquito, would be the reason that I wouldn't date Jamie. But Jamie still seemed oddly defensive about it.

How did he even know about Eric in the first place?

I knew Krista and Riley would never divulge that information. And Jamie and I had never spoken about him, or any of my exes, because the cheating bastard had hardly crossed my mind for the last year. A year ago, I relished in him grovelling and crawling back to me, but now I couldn't care less what he did or didn't do. Utter apathy was all I felt.

"How do you know about Eric?" I accused Jamie. There was that random time Eric called me on what would have been our first anniversary. And then, at the party the eighth floor threw to welcome everyone back from winter break—

"What happened that night? The welcome back party?" That explained why Jamie had been so cold as of late.

"I said something to you." I knew that without a doubt, but I just didn't remember what.

Jamie didn't answer me. He raised his brows, eyes alight with defiance. "Don't remember?"

"Tell me."

"Why?" He observed methodically, as if he was talking about computer programming, "Nothing matters to Vivian Sok, so long as you have your grades and your alcohol."

I knew he was just baiting me, punishing me for whatever I said or did to hurt him, but it still rankled. "I care about my friends and my family and my future. I care about you, too, if you'd just stop fixating on the relationship thing!"

"I can't."

"Why not?" I spat out.

"Because I—" Jamie exhaled heavily through his nostrils. "I... fuck this." Then he attempted to turn his chair around and resume his work, which I observed to be lines of code on a dark screen.

He would not ignore me again. Post-orgasm and endlessly confused, something in me just snapped. And all the will to fight trickled away.

What were we doing to each other? Emotionally, I pushed, and he pulled. Physically, I pulled, and he pushed. It was just a game of tug-of-war. Jamie wanted serious. I wanted everything but.

It was ruining us, ruining the jokes and the comfort and the stress relief—everything that I sought to get back, coming here today. But now I knew I couldn't retrieve the peace between us by constantly going to bed with Jamie.

I marched up to Jamie and yanked his shoulder, forcing him to face me. "What are we even doing?"

Jamie matched my stare, but where I looked tired and beseeching, he was simply stone. "I ask myself that all the time."

"We were friends before this, and now, we're always either fucking or fighting." I collected all the frustration, confusion and irritation from the last few weeks and tried to dissipate them into thin air. This was, perhaps, the first mature step I'd taken in a while. I needed to remain calm. "I don't want to lose you, Jamie," I said truthfully.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "And yet you're speaking like you are."

"I just think..." I shook my head. Clause 5: our friendship came first. "I think we have to go back to being friends."

"We are friends," Jamie drawled sarcastically. "Friends with benefits. Clauses, contract and all."

I bit my lower lip, feeling the guilt rise in me again. I'd done this to us. Damn, if each of my exes had imparted a life lesson, then this was another: never fuck your friends.

"That was my mistake. I thought it would be simpler than this," I admitted. I placed a hand on Jamie's shoulder, levelling with him. "Look, I like you. I won't lie about that anymore. But if we keep going this way, we are going to fall apart. All or nothing, as you said. Except, it will literally be nothing to do with each other."

We could both see it happening before our very eyes. Even Jamie couldn't dispute that. He hung his head, and I quickly withdrew my hand when I realised how long I'd been touching him. No more of that.

My throat ached. But I had to do this. "So can we... can we rewind?" My voice had never sounded shakier. "I promise I won't try to tempt you. Can you promise not to shut me out?"

Silence. I fisted my hands in the hem of my sweater. When Jamie finally looked up at me, his eyes were infinitely bittersweet. Sad and concerned and still so compassionate. It was those eyes I'd gotten used to.

There you are. I've missed you.

"You're going to have to get ten times uglier if you don't want to tempt me," he quipped weakly.

I smiled softly. "I'll do my best, dude."

That last word was a purposeful addition; a lexical push back into friendship, into being platonic. Jamie immediately hated it, his lip twitching downward.

But I charged forward, taking a deep breath and raising my pinky finger. "Promise?"

He regarded my finger as he would poison. But, like before, like all the months I'd known him, he didn't say no to me. I knew he couldn't. I was his biggest vice.

Jamie looped his pinky around mine and squeezed. "Promise."

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Man, the emotional whiplash I got from writing the sex scene and then the Break Up (in terms of romance novel beats, not literally) probably rivals what Viv felt.

Thoughts?

Predictions?

Vote, comment, follow!

Aimee x