I shouldn't have been surprised when he walked into the laundry room on a drizzly Saturday afternoon.

The heat from the dryers made it constantly cozy, which I hated last semester but I loved in mid-February. There lay the root of my surprise: this drizzly Saturday afternoon was the afternoon of Valentine's Day. And Jamie strolled in wearing his pyjama shirt, sweatpants and slides, earphones shoved in deep, like a man with no obligations in the world. What about Farrah?

He noticed me leaning against the wall, counting down the three minutes until my dryer load finished.

He said, "Hey, dude," by way of greeting.

The dude thing had become something of an inside joke. Well, it was an inside joke initially, my paltry attempt at being purely platonic, but now we'd moulded it into something comforting and familiar.

"Sup." I nodded with a mild smile, turning the iron on.

"Shit, are you using it?"

"Yep. Get in line."

I only ironed my fanciest clothes, which included two dress shirts, a pencil skirt and a pair of pressed trousers. Considering my med school interviews, then the schmoozy mixer the WISA executives attended last week in thanks for the funding, these items deserved careful attention before going back into the closet.

"Alright," Jamie sighed theatrically. In the laundry room was a steel workbench, inlaid with a deep sink for handwashing clothes. With his back to the ledge, he pressed himself up to sit on the metal.

My dryer load finished. As it beeped, I fished out my delicates and laid them on the steel bench, next to the ironing board. I unceremoniously dumped the rest of my clothing into my laundry hamper.

"Busy day?" I hummed, getting to work on the trousers.

Jamie yawned, scooping one earphone away and letting it dangle down his front. "Not at all."

It looked as much—which was interesting, considering he and Farrah had been angling towards romance during the last few weeks.

They now studied regularly at the dorm, yet not learning to keep their gleeful volume down. Even though Jamie could easily have smuggled Farrah some of the catered food for dinner, she consistently ordered sweet treats for the pair—doughnuts, churros, even cupcakes, at one point.

He wasn't shy about mentioning memes she'd shown him, or darting out of the room to call her, or announcing when she texted. Sometimes I even saw the notification before Jamie did, tamping down the slight sting in my chest each time.

"How are your courses coming along?"

I glanced up from my ironing at the sound of Jamie's husky voice. He cleared his throat casually. His dryer load finished shortly after mine, and he was currently arm-deep in the barrel, collecting his clothes.

"Midterm stress hasn't set in yet, so great." I folded the trousers and replaced them with the pencil skirt. "You? Are you still good for the IP catchup next week?"

For all his initial complaining, I suspected Jamie really loved Innovating Philanthropy. He approached the final project with attention and actual forethought. I didn't realise he had that discipline in him. If I had a project-based assessment, I'd absolutely stitch together some prettily wrapped bullshit in the last four days.

À la the funding pitch I delivered whilst hungover.

But I loved seeing Jamie chase those tangents he saw. His passion, his patience, his curiosity. I liked that there were people who didn't want to force their values on the world. Some could argue that I was one of them, one of a moral lobby with a conviction that their conception of the good life was the best one around.

That's exactly the type of circular debate Eric and I had in the Philosophy 101 elective class where we met. But sometimes philosophising only produced a headlock, and sometimes men who knew 'everything' were a pain in the ass because they refused to learn more.

It was refreshing to see someone admit they knew little. To argue nothing. To seek knowledge, to open their eyes and shut their mouths. Maybe not what I could ever be, and maybe not what anyone should forever be, but at this moment I appreciated it.

"I'm available," Jamie said. "Oh. It's okay that Farrah came along last time, right? She has a gap in her timetable on Thursdays so I said she could pass the time with me. She might swing by again. If you don't mind."

"Of course," I said truthfully. She'd brought communal doughnuts to that study session. Enough said.

I didn't mind, but I also didn't understand—not about Farrah, because I knew why he would want her around. She was smart, confident, but so approachable. While I had the former two down pat, I would always aspire to the latter.

Farrah and Jamie weren't a couple yet, at least if the lack of titles, PDA, and social media captions proved anything. They were taking it slowly, carefully. I just didn't understand why Jamie couldn't have gone slowly for me.

If he claimed to like me as much as he did, then what was wrong about staying just left of friendship for a little while longer? Keeping things casual and tentative and private the way he was doing now? Obviously, I didn't run to chase him as fast as I could've. I was the one to push him back, but only because he'd never slowed down for me.

Which, using logical deduction, yielded the conclusion: Jamie didn't like me as much as he'd claimed. Or he'd gotten to know me better, underneath my face and my clothes and the perfectible exterior. He saw the things I couldn't change. And I guess the current situation said it all.

A strange sentence yanked me out of my rumination. "You remember Europe poo day?"

I smiled. How could I forget? I'd seared it into my memory as one of the most awkward, yet endearing moments in our odd, messy relationship.

Jamie's eyes were glassy with nostalgia when I looked away from the ironing board. His demeanour was feline, lounging on the bench while he waited for his turn, lazily seeking entertainment from me.

"I remember you embarrassing yourself in this very room," I quipped.

"Funny," he laughed once, dry as hay. "I remember you collapsing in laughter on the elevator ride up."

I rolled my eyes. "Anyone can get laughs with a shit joke. Literally."

"Oh, come on. Do better, then."

I didn't iron or excel at domesticity enough to trust myself to look away for too long, especially now that I was onto the last shirt. The sleeves were so hard to flatten compared to a skirt or trousers. But even without seeing, I felt the smirk in his words.

"Well, no. It's unfair because you don't get my humour."

"I get your humour."

"Oh, yeah?" I chuckled.

"It's sarcastic and snarky and completely random," Jamie teased. "And, I quite like your humour. Everyone needs a bit of sourness in their life."

"So I'm a comedic palette cleanser?"

"See? Comedic palette cleanser. What is that? Who would think of that phrase, and who would make it work, but you?"

I levelled a flat stare in Jamie's direction, convinced he was mocking me. He matched my scornful expression with a daring arch of his brows, facing me down with unending silence. I nearly broke, nearly laughed then and there, for no reason I could articulate. Something about him just felt like making memories, like sunshine.

"Fine," I relented.

I hunted through my limited collection of jokes. I tried not to memorise any. Jamie was right; my best work was spontaneous. I considered myself funny in the moment. But funny in hindsight? No. Funny on command? Heck no.

But eventually, I landed on a good one.

"I think the Rainforest Café is taking their theme too far," I complained, "This one time I was sitting there sipping a latte, and they bulldozed half the building."

It took Jamie a split second, and he only let loose some amused chortles. "That's morbid. Seven out of ten."

"Who asked you?" I shot back. Jamie stuck his tongue out at me.

I would have thrown the nearest object at him, but the nearest object either was my painstakingly pressed pile of clothes or the iron itself. My laundry was too precious to fling the former, and Jamie was too precious to fling the latter. Not to mention the second strike we'd get if we were on the scene of yet another hole-in-the-wall incident in the same building.

Instead, we swapped places—he took the iron—and I said, "Your turn, asshole."

Jamie didn't even blink. "How is updog going?"

"Come again?" I said blankly.

"How is updog going?" he repeated.

"What's updog?"

"Not much," Jamie shrugged. "How about you, homie?"

My head was shaking before he even finished the punchline. "That sucked. No." Jamie had already dissolved into laughter, and I fought to quell mine. "No. Four out of ten."

"Are you kidding me? That's a ten out of ten."

My lip twitched upward before I bit into it and lowered my face.

"I saw that." Jamie pointed his left index finger at me, at my smile. "There." A chuckle squeezed out of me. "You love that joke, don't you? It's okay," he said arrogantly. "You can use it at all the parties you like."

Then I gave in, letting the laughter well out of me and join Jamie's. Okay, maybe he was a bit funny. When a charred aroma wafted by me, I wheezed, "You're burning your shirt."

"Nice try—" Jamie whipped his head to his ironing. "Oh, shit."

And if this is what happened around Farrah, maybe I could understand why they had such a hard time keeping quiet.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Farrah, Jamie and I claimed a long worktable in Science 2 and buried it under our study materials.

Awkward as it was to be around the lovebirds, Jamie still requested my help for his Innovating Philanthropy project, and I couldn't leave my friend in the lurch. It wasn't even every Thursday we met up now—because Jamie's time was clearly occupied—just when he needed a sounding board.

Earphones on, Farrah was deaf to the world as she studied. Next to her, Jamie stretched and cleared his throat.

"I'm thinking about constraints now," he told me, whispering so as not to disturb the quiet of the study floor.

The stress in the air was palpable because midterms were creeping up on everyone. For our dorm friend group, the tantalising promise of spring break in Panama City Beach lay on the other side of the gauntlet.

Jamie's current idea for his final project was an app called Entern. It targeted the inaccessibility of learning to be a healthcare professional. Entern would have two modes, one for interns and one for medical institutions. The institutional mode of Entern allowed medical institutions to load training and teaching modules onto the app.

Then using connected VR equipment, like headsets and consoles, in intern mode, people could attend virtual classes, programs and placements at schools and hospitals miles away. Students could train on virtual surgery programs with the consoles or watch lectures on ethics and best practice. Entern would provide cheaper medical training to underprivileged students who might not have the means to travel or pay for their tuition.

The first time Jamie pitched the concept to me, I'd felt my chest grow tight with pride. It was ambitious and profound and impactful—he was ambitious and profound and impactful.

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. "Shoot."

Jamie tapped the notebook in front of him, littered with handwriting. "First problem I can see is applicability. We'd need communities to have the infrastructure in place to support internet connection."

"You know, we're finding that many developing communities have the internet but not steady access to food, healthcare and education."

Jamie's shoulders sagged. "Oh. Damn."

"It's okay. Maybe you're going to have to limit Entern's scope. We can still apply it to poorer and rural places all around the world—like in the United States."

At the pesky frown lines framing his lips, I chuckled under my breath. "You can't make the entire world perfect, dude. Only better. And that's still enough, yeah?"

"Yeah. Okay," Jamie nodded, exhaling softly. "Then I was also worried about the content. From a technical standpoint, Entern is going to have limited storage capabilities. I don't even think it can replace textbooks and old-fashioned lectures. What happens if there's no market for Entern?"

"There is a market. Surgeons are training using simulators more often these days. But I agree, it probably wouldn't work for undergrads. I think you should focus just on graduate programmes."

"But that means there are a fraction of people who finished high school but can't go on to further study. They'll fall through the cracks."

I shot Jamie a look of sympathy. "I know. But there's too much rote learning to do for undergrad. If you can't send out the textbooks, paper and lab equipment it takes to teach it, you should concentrate on the areas that you can change. Med school gets to be more practical and tactile."

"That's mostly what I want to train with the headset-console combination."

"So focus on the postgrad level. Maybe make Entern a supplement to existing programmes, to make med school more accessible. I know a lot of women who have to juggle care responsibilities that might just stop pursuing medicine because family comes first."

"I don't want Entern to be subsumed by universities," Jamie murmured. "It's not just online training for med students. It needs to stay independent."

I pursed my lips. "Without programmes using it, how would it get funding? Legitimacy?"

"That's where philanthropic investment might come in, maybe to support the research and development of real-time or pre-recorded VR applications. And I definitely need universities and med schools to help provide the content, but it shouldn't just be accessible to their own students."

My eyebrows furrowed. "I don't get it. Universities would never make their courses open source. The scourge of capitalism."

"So philanthropists pay them to give it up," Jamie whispered adamantly. His eyes blazed with determination, until a soft call dragged his head to the side.

"Jay," Farrah slid gracefully out of her chair and picked up her wallet. She shot him a smile. "I'm going to get a coffee. Do you want anything?"

Jamie grinned. "Americano, pretty please."

"Of course." Farrah turned to me, her eyes warm and welcoming. "Would you like a drink, Viv?"

I gestured with my water bottle. "I'm good, but thank you."

Then she weaved silently through the rows of diligent students and out of the study room.

My heart grew simultaneously lighter and heavier. I was so happy Jamie had found someone like Farrah. She was comfortable with his female friends and left him to his own commitments, hobbies, and conversations when it was necessary.

They had the quiet confidence of a couple that didn't need to showboat or stake a claim to each other, because there was no doubt about their feelings. Small gestures like buying Jamie a coffee alongside her own, revising her own schoolwork next to him, visiting the dorm between her own classes, exemplified the kind of relationship I wanted.

Independent, together.

I mollified the bitterness in my mouth with a promise that I would find that, too, one day. Though my feelings for Jamie were taking their sweet ass time dissipating, I had no doubt they would, eventually. I'd moved on from so many men so many times before. This was nothing different.

I realised I'd been frowning when Jamie caught my eye and cocked an inquisitive brow. He seemed oddly... understanding, like he knew my thoughts and pitied me for them. I hated being under that sympathetic gaze.

When his lips parted in question, I immediately cleared my throat and barrelled on. "If you're going to be asking for donations to fund Entern, why not just use that money to send the students to a med school?"

Jamie paused, searching my face. I kept my features carefully pleasant. He bought it. "I don't want to take students away from the communities they came from, the communities that need them. If they can stay immersed in the problems and culture of their own homes while studying medicine, that's the ideal scenario," he explained emphatically. "It's not always a good thing to teach a bunch of underprivileged kids medicine if they go to the West and never return. Send the ladder back, you know?"

Wow.

It made perfect sense, hearing it aloud, and yet I'd never considered it like that before. Here I thought I'd be teaching Jamie things over the semester... but maybe we could both learn from each other.

"My whole point is to find the smart kids who never got to go to med school and give them a way to go to med school without abandoning the communities that need them. VR and AR are honing in on duplicating reality, so I'm sure Entern can train them to a high enough level. I'm hoping—"

Jamie fell abruptly silent when he realised how loud he'd become. No-one in the vicinity seemed bothered, but I caught the slight flush on his face when he lowered his voice and lowered his enthusiasm.

"Plus, all my professor needs from me is the initial prototype," he waved dismissively. "Maybe I get an A and lay this to rest after I graduate."

Bullshit.

You didn't do this much research and planning if you were apathetic. You wouldn't rope your Pre-Med friend into helping you if you didn't absolutely want to get it right. To do it justice. And you didn't speak about something like a surety unless you really loved it.

I shook my head wryly and asked gently, "You love this project, don't you?"

Jamie exhaled through his nose, humility drawing his eyes downward. "A little bit."

Surprise flickered up my spine. Two years ago, when we first met, I didn't see in Jamie passion for anything but football and fucking. And even last semester, he was nervously, innocently asking me to explain patriarchal healthcare to him. But now...

"I thought you didn't want to change the world."

"Well, I've been inspired."

"By what?"

Puzzlement crossed his eyes, like the answer was obvious.

Jamie spun his pen around his fingers once, and stated simply, "By you."

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Jamie's character developement is just... S tier. I'm excited.

I think I've finally accepted I can't write those alpha, possessive and dominating romance leads because I hate them IRL - I can totally appreciate them from a fictional perspective, and there are countless authors who execute it wonderfully.

But for me, it's like SpongeBob when he tried to cook something other than a Krabby Patty. Just doesn't work.

So yes, you're getting shy quarterbacks, big-hearted linebackers, flute-playing soft bois and sunshine-puppy drummers. Eat up.

Aimee x