issue for me.

I could force myself to zone into whatever tasks faced me, and the residual high from my four successful med school interviews seemed to promise endless motivation this week. But today, a glaring distraction sat right outside the glass study pod Krista, Riley and I occupied on the first floor of the dorm. The nuisance in question tried and failed to abide by the noise level restrictions in the communal study areas.

Jamie and Farrah.

I rolled my shoulders back and refocused on the digital lecture slides, willing the letters and electrocardiogram voltage graphs to wrap around my brain and insulate me from the study buddies giggling on the other side of the mezzanine.

But Farrah was a non-issue. I was the issue. I was just being irrational and possessive now that Jamie was doing what I had made him promise to do: moving on. He truly couldn't have found a better match. Whereas my feelings for him made me downright embarrassing—what with the mood swings and fake laughter and competitiveness—I could easily see the two of them having it...

Easy.

Natural as breathing, compared to the fighting and mind games and silent treatment that had existed between Jamie and me. He drove me crazy, and, perhaps, not healthily. Farrah seemed good for him. And if all the grief of the last few months proved anything, I was a bad habit, and it was time to quit.

I forced a pleasant smile onto my face and pushed my chair backwards, rising to my feet. "I'm just going to fill my water bottle up."

Riley's eyes widened. "Ooh, can you take mine?"

"Course."

I hung around the water fountain for a few minutes, calming my pulse and schooling my smile into confident perfection before returning to the pod.

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It was unfamiliar sitting next to Jamie as merely a friend.

I expected tension and awkwardness, but as I slid my dinner tray onto the table and slung my rain-splattered windbreaker on the back of my chair, I felt refreshingly light. Maybe it was the fact I had finally been honest with Jamie.

He knew I liked him, and he knew my reservations about dating. I didn't have to pretend now, unless Farrah was around. I suspected she was interested in Jamie, and I would not complicate the budding romance by dredging up the past.

"Hey, dude," I smirked. I waited for Jamie's lip to twitch downward. He didn't disappoint, but he also raised me one higher.

"Sup, dude." His eyes noted my athletic wear. "How was yoga?"

I sliced a boiled potato into quarters, making small talk as I did. "Very relaxing. How was your evening?"

Jamie worked his jaw, the tendon along his neck contracting. Exhaustion limned his exhale, and it was only the third week of classes. "Kind of stressful."

"Darn." I didn't know what else to say. It wasn't like I knew the intricacies of his life; ever since the football season ended, Jamie had somehow become busier.

So we ate for a few moments, me with my lamb and potatoes, Jamie with ravioli.

Minutes later, Jamie placed his fork down in the bowl, fixing me with an inquisitive stare. "Actually, I was hoping you could help me with that."

"Help you relieve your stress?" I dipped my head, teasingly scolding, "That's very inappropriate of you, Tanner."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know." I chuckled. "Lighten up. What's stressing you out?"

Jamie pursed his lips, sorting his thoughts. "So I'm doing this course, Innovating Philanthropy. And the final is project-based. Assessment is fifteen per cent essay, thirty-five per cent midterm and fifty per cent final project."

"Uh-huh."

"The final project makes us use programming to change the world, somehow. That's the brief, and they've given us resources, but I'm stuck."

I blinked, as uncertain as before he spoke. "You know I can't code, right?" I clarified slowly.

Jamie rolled his eyes, smiling charmingly. "But you want to change the world. I was interested in healthcare technologies, like an app. I just don't know what market exists, if any, for a healthcare app. I don't know a lot, actually."

"I still don't get what you're asking me to do."

"I need someone as a sounding board." Jamie rubbed the back of his neck, gaze now squarely trained on his pasta. "Someone to shoot down my terrible ideas. Someone to ask random medical questions."

I couldn't be sure, considering his lowered face, but was that a flush on his cheeks?

"I know you're busy, actually, with WISA and it's your last semester, too. Damn, I did not think that through—"

I took a bite of potato, muffling out, "I'll do it."

"Really?" The surprise in his forested eyes plucked at a heartstring of mine. Had I become so absorbed in our sexual relationship that helping a friend was unexpected?

If so, that would change. Starting today. I smiled comfortingly at Jamie, with no intent to seduce or tease. I just wanted him to calm down.

"Of course. Stop stressing and eat your food."

He loosed a relieved laugh and obeyed.

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Innovating Philanthropy, no offence to innovation or philanthropy—love them both—sounded like the wackiest course that existed at Halston University.

Innovation and philanthropy were such emotional, random, wild processes. I just couldn't see an academic curriculum moulding itself nicely to this area of the human experience. And I had even more trouble picturing the classes Jamie was describing—being shuffled into a new group every week simply to talk about innovative processes instead of... actually innovating?

"What do you even learn in Innovating Philanthropy?" I wondered aloud, climbing the stairways of Science 2. "How to be the next Elon Musk?"

"I want to say no, but yes. Pretty much."

Jamie faced me as we ascended, eyes peeled for a study space where I could consult with him about his innovation idea. Initially, I agreed to help Jamie just to stop him anxiously babbling at the dinner table, but when he explained more about the paper and the final project, I could see tangible benefits.

The paper was exactly the type of progressive project experience that employers looked for. The volunteer work I did as Jamie's 'industry consultant'—the fabricated label we'd decided on using—would at least result in the first prototype of an app, which I could promote as a self-driven contribution on LinkedIn to my heart's content. It was right up the alley of everything I'd been doing for the last four years: hustling.

Plus, Jamie only needed half an hour a week. Piece of cake.

"It's all about ideation and iteration and a bunch of I-words that make me want to fall asleep," Jamie complained, his long legs moving extra slowly so that he didn't outpace me.

Jamie's Innovating Philanthropy lecture had just let out from the ground floor, so he was brimming with fresh frustration directed at that class.

"Charity doesn't interest you?"

Jamie shot me a jocular glare as he rounded the third-floor landing. "Hey, I like charities. I just prefer hands-on stuff. Make me pick up trash. Or repaint a nursing home."

"What a good Samaritan." My quads burned already, but I would die before admitting it.

"Even coding," he glanced at the laptop he cradled under his left arm, "is preferable to 'defining a problem space' and 'articulating your problem' and writing pitches."

"Too many big words?" I pouted.

Jamie rolled with the jest. "So many big words. Hurts my brain."

He pushed open the door to the fourth-floor study spaces for me, the pair of us falling quiet as we stepped inside. The search for two empty spaces with power ports was protracted, but five minutes later, we sank gratefully into a corner by the printer and began unpacking our study materials.

Neither of us had classes for the rest of the day. The plan was to dedicate about half an hour to ideating—but certainly not the imminent half hour, since Jamie already expressed how much he craved a break from that class—and the rest of the afternoon on our other courses.

I glanced across the table when Jamie booted up his laptop. Considering I'd known his major—IT management—for years now, I'd seen very little of his work. Perhaps because every time we spoke, I'd been distracted...

"Do you like coding?"

"It's annoying but necessary," Jamie answered, eyes still fixed on the startup screen. I could see the laptop manufacturer logo reflected off his cornea, along with a bright gleam from the winter sunlight just beyond the window. "It's going to make me more employable. That's why I do it."

I appreciated that. Not everyone had to change the world, though I wanted to. Sometimes, I wondered if it would be easier to want less—just a warm home and a family to come home to every night. Less painful than chasing after justice that seemed imaginary.

I nodded, satisfied, and pulled out my own laptop, iPad, and textbook. The laptop for re-watching lectures, the iPad for notes, and the textbook for readings. An hour passed in comfortable, productive silence—if one ignored the rapid clicking of Jamie's keyboard—before I yawned and caved my spine over the back of the chair.

Sometimes I wish it was socially acceptable to just do yoga in public, but unless I dropped into a backbend on the worn carpet, I would have to settle for brief stretches. A vertebra clicked, and I slumped down, satisfied and relaxed.

I'd done enough of my Embryology homework. Study break time. "Who's the better programmer out of you and Krista?"

Jamie's eyes flickered to me, alight with amusement. "Depends on the language. Kris loves Python. She's definitely more familiar with it than I am."

"She's also learning C++," I recalled.

Jamie scoffed, mirroring my stretch as he folded his hands behind his head. "I'd code circles around her C++," he smirked, pure arrogance dripping from his grin.

And—

And it was probably the pearly afternoon light slipping through the windows, and the complete nerdiness of that sentence, on the mouth of Halston's starting linebacker, that hit me as if I'd just stepped into a fire-warmed house after a long day of chasing dreams. My heart thudded while my breath leaked slowly out of me.

Jamie's forehead crinkled. "What?"

I pulled that second nature confidence back onto my face. "Nothing. Keep studying, Tanner."

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Around five o'clock, Jamie deemed himself recovered enough to relay the basic tenets of innovation to me.

I understood everything well enough because every single term he threw at me was a buzzword I'd read umpteen times before. I clarified, "So the primary problem space is healthcare."

"Too broad," Jamie responded. "We need to narrow it down."

"So narrow it."

The flash of trepidation across his face bothered me; he had the concepts locked down, but I noticed how he tiptoed around saying anything profound or overtly political.

I reminded him gently, "This is your baby, Jamie. I won't put the ideas into your mouth."

"Alright." He took a breath. "There are three routes I thought of. Accessibility, misinformation or inequality." He paused again, but I raised my brows and ushered him to continue. "I want to look at healthcare inequality."

I nodded, pleased with his growing confidence. "Then what's next in the innovation process, Mr. Musk?"

"Brainstorming." I didn't miss the irritated eye roll. "My lecturer encouraged us to do stream-of-consciousness reflection to fill the problem space."

Stream-of-consciousness, the best joke I ever heard. Riley loved starting poetry that way, but only because her thoughts were coherent. If I truly wrote the random flashes that occurred in my head...

But I obliged Jamie. He ripped a new page of refill paper while I opened a fresh document on the iPad, the both of us jotting down as many problems and concepts we could trace to healthcare inequality. It was likely I even skimped on the writing, since I had so many ideas ingrained in my head from years of experience and years of study. I was a veteran critic of the system, but Jamie was finding his feet here. I readily let him do the discovering.

Around my laughter, I choked out, "Which faculty is this course under again?"

"It's Science," he said absentmindedly, hand scrawling rapidly on his page. "A new course, but still."

"Darn. It sounds a lot like Phi—"

"Philosophy?" Jamie quipped.

"Yeah."

He exhaled a chuckle, falling silent, engrossed in his writing. Two minutes later, he dropped the pen with a clatter. "Okay. Let's share our answers."

I slid my iPad to him, and took his page, printed with lines of his bold, sloppy handwriting.

Gender—differential outcomes based on gender

Income — "

Race "

Ability — accessibility hindered by ableism

Language barrier —can't say problems

Location/transport —not near doctor

Pollution —higher illness risk

Technology access —cannot research care or self-diagnose or make appointments

The presentation was lacking, the vocabulary sparse, but the heart was all there. I grinned up at Jamie, only to find him watching me expectantly, nervously.

"When did you learn all this?"

Jamie dipped his chin and rubbed the back of his neck. "I've been doing my research."

"And you said you needed help."

"I do," he insisted. "I'm not incompetent, but the course is Innovating Philanthropy. I can't make technology fit with these problems, especially when most of them can't be fixed with an app."

"I get where you're coming from, and I got no ideas." Jamie's face fell. "But, I do have an observation. These issues are all demand-side."

"Huh?" Jamie's brows furrowed.

"Supply and demand. All the problem spaces you considered lie on the demand side of healthcare. The demand is obstructed by these systemic flaws."

"So... Should I be looking at the supply side? Healthcare providers? I don't get it."

I shrugged. It wasn't like I had any more clue how to fix the healthcare system. There were challenges everywhere I looked. But I could share my observations and let Jamie choose his own path.

Then I saw it. A eureka moment. Jamie's eyes lit up like twin green fireworks, and even after his high spirits faded, nothing could remove the tenacity I recognised in him.

He resumed brainstorming with fresh passion, so absorbed that he didn't even notice his phone screen illuminating with a new notification. But I did—

A message from Farrah. How's Viv?

My eyes widened. She knew where he was. That they were close enough to exchange their current locations shouldn't have surprised me. I'd only encountered Farrah again at the start of the spring semester, but nothing said they hadn't been friends ever since I pushed Jamie into her arms.

Nothing said they wouldn't become more, either. I had no idea how close they truly were, and no right to ask. Thankfully, Jamie's newfound inspiration prevented him from noticing my lasting quiet, even as I stared at a textbook page without fully comprehending its contents.

When my stomach rumbled, Jamie and I took that as the cue to return to the dorm for dinner. I checked up on his progress, "How goes it?"

"My head hurts," he admitted, pressing two fingers to his temple. "I am going to sleep so well tonight."

Instead of his laptop tucked under his arm as we descended the stairs, it was the handful of pages he'd filled this afternoon. When I reached for them, Jamie angled his body away from me and tutted. "Ah, ah. It's not ready yet."

"Fine," I drawled, "keep your secrets."

Jamie tapped the side of his nose cheekily. "I already do."

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Lorde's new song came out and it can heal wounds. That is all.

Aimee x