Jays and I single-handedlyheld up the reputation of the eighth floor as a party floor.

I didn't want it to be that way; I wanted all thirty or so of our floormates to get shit-faced with me every weekend, but this was not the case. Maybe everyone was focusing on their studies now that graduation was at the end of next semester. Maybe they were tiring out now that their senior livers were old and crusty.

Aside from some random floormates of ours every so often contributing to the wild nights and embarrassing stories, we three were consistently the featured stars in the Snapchat videos and Close Friends stories that got bounced around the group chat. Riley was increasingly joining us, however, because ever since she dumped Phoenix she'd been needing more distraction than usual.

So, knowing how invested I was in the campus party scene, one could keenly feel my sense of rejection, pain and FOMO when Jake told me I couldn't come to the latest football team party.

And I'd already done my makeup!

"But why?" I giggled. My peach soju sloshed in my hand as I leaned closer to Jake and whispered, "It is WAGs only?"

WAGs: wives and girlfriends. The acronym was a quick yardstick to explain the exclusivity level of the sports teams parties that took place on campus. Open parties meant anyone could come. Closed parties meant you needed host approval. WAGs parties lay in between, so long as you arrived on the arm of a team member.

Jake's eyebrows furrowed. We were playing a quick game of Fortnite on the PlayStation while we waited for Jamie to come out of his room. In my intoxicated state, I couldn't really focus on the scenery and figures on the screen. I just twiddled the controls and pressed buttons hoping I shot something.

"No. I just want Jamie to really let loose tonight," Jake explained. "He failed a D.A. essay assignment, and I want him to cheer up."

I nodded soberly, though I was not. Sober, that is.

Jamie studied IT Management, so I didn't imagine he had many essays to write over the course of his degree. Perhaps that explained why, when one Data Analysis written assignment finally came up, he'd bombed it spectacularly. I only said it harshly like that because it was true—Jamie hadn't shared with me anything about the assignment or his grade, but his behaviour after the results came out said it all.

He'd been staying late on campus to study for his courses, only returning in time to catch the last ten minutes of the dinner service in the dining hall. That was the entire reason Jake and I were playing video games waiting for him to go to the party. Jamie had only just gotten back to the eighth floor since he left this morning, and it was already dark outside.

Jamie's unorthodox dedication to studying wasn't to say he usually flaked on his schoolwork. The twins weren't bad students. They knew they needed a certain GPA to maintain their place on the football team, and they did want a certain level of credibility on their resumes after graduation. But that didn't mean they were chasing A-plusses like they were oxygen. Cough, Krista.

They kept a healthy balance between their grades and social life, which in my book meant being as unhealthy as one could get away with. It was college, for Pete's sake. When else would we get to treat ourselves this badly again?

"That's exactly what I want! No-one parties harder than me," I said proudly, firing my gun brazenly in a wide arc.

Jake chuckled. "I know. He knows. We know."

"So..." I drawled inquisitively. "What's the big deal?"

"Nothing."

That certainly didn't sound like nothing. I wanted to sit and think about the tone of Jake's voice, but he wouldn't let me chicken out of the game, bearing down on me with a hailstorm of bullets. So I turned my avatar around and started running away from the action, into some digitised hills. Jake laughed at my random behaviour, but he must have pegged it to my drunkenness.

Nothing.

He sounded like I did when Aaron, my little brother, asked me about adult stuff and I said, "Nothing." Casual and opaque. Like a coat of white paint over black walls, except the paintbrush bristles were coarse and sparse, and the obsidian truth peeked through still.

"Is this to do with last week?"

Last Saturday, on the first Game Day of the year, I had apparently inadvertently ruined Jamie's night. Initially, I attempted to party away Riley's woes, but then I ended up partying my dignity down the damn river.

After the game finished—victory for the Halston Foxes—about eight of the floormates had gone to a bar. Not Topaz, because Krista hated us coming around to poke fun at her too often. And apparently, I'd blacked out. That seemingly had nothing to do with Jamie, until I was told on a very hungover Sunday morning that he'd left the bar early to take me home.

And then I'd—again, apparently—vomited on him on the elevator ride up. He'd shoved a chair between the doors to stop the elevator from leaving, made me shower, scrubbed up my sick himself to avoid another strike against the floor and then put me to bed.

Needless to say, it felt awful hearing that from other people. That's why I got him a full bottle of Tennessee whiskey to say sorry. All better.

Or so I thought.

Jake was looking intently at the computer-generated players which he sprayed down, laughing and whooping triumphantly with an inch too much gusto.

"So it is," I accused. Jake didn't reply, still fakely absorbed in the video game, but I saw his jaw tick. I sighed solemnly. "Well, I promise I'll handle myself properly tonight. No vomit to clean up. No need to help me walk. I'll be the textbook drunkard."

Finally, he broke, looked over with his hazel green eyes and sighed at me. "That means I'll be peeling you off the sidewalk at three a.m."

"Okay, I won't be the perfect drunkard then. I'll be so bad at being drunk you'll think I'm sober."

"You're very funny." He rolled his eyes, but a small smile did make its way onto his face.

Yay! Leeway. I put on my best good girl face and pouted pleadingly at Jake. "So... can I come?"

"Fine. But give Jamie his space," Jake warned me gently.

For all their teasing and fighting, Jake was highly intuitive when it came to his twin. I wondered, despite the small difference in their ages, if he regarded Jamie like a younger brother, after all.

"I'm supposed to be babysitting tonight, not Jamie."

The morning after the football party, evidence would suggest I did not, like I promised, give Jamie his space that night.

And by evidence, I mean—

Exhibit A: we woke up in my bed together.

Exhibit B: naked.

Exhibit C: with a used condom in my paper bin—I checked—and a pleasant ache in my core.

It didn't take an expert in deductive reasoning to conclude that, much further than merely invading his space, Jamie had invaded my guts. It happened sometime between us leaving the party and now when I woke up with a killer headache.

Oops.

After I verified that the odd, pale thing in my bin was proof of protected sex, I laid my head back down on my pillow. A few persistent rays of morning sunlight wormed under the roller blinds, but the room was mostly dark and musty, with the scent of clementines permeating everything. I was laying on my side, with Jamie's warm, broad chest pressed to my back. His arm looped around my waist and held me securely against him.

Should I wake him? He probably needed to get to the gym, like the rest of the starting football players. Two hours of strength and conditioning, before classes, every weekday, like clockwork.

Suddenly Jamie's grip on me tightened. I could feel the hard length of him pressing into my backside, and my core instantly tightened in reciprocity. Maybe last night was hazy in my mind, but it seemed my body remembered and wanted a repeat.

But that wouldn't happen.

Whatever we did last night had been a mistake, because Jamie and I were friends—practically family. Repeated floor-cest would create a lot of unnecessary tension between the various parties involved. And plus, Jamie was so not my type. He didn't know anything about basic healthcare. Nor politics.

The tip of Jamie's nose traced a circle on my bare shoulder and his voice came deep and husky, "Viv..."

I steeled myself, expecting him to say something afterwards. But I realised he'd said my name whilst completely asleep. This wouldn't do. I needed to get this giant oaf out of my room because I had lectures to attend.

I spun around in Jamie's arms and smacked my fingers lightly against his cheek until he woke up. At first, he evaded my pesky touch by trying to get his head into the crook between my neck and shoulder, but I held him in place and kept at it.

Eventually, his emerald eyes tore themselves open with obvious discontent at being woken. They were unfocused and sleep-ridden, but they brightened the second they fell on my face.

I smiled wickedly. "Morning."

Jamie's brows furrowed. My voice was familiar to him, and my face was familiar to him, but I could tell he was having a hard time reconciling me with the unfamiliar bedroom he was in. Then complete shock struck his face, and he bolted upright to a sitting position.

"Whoa!" he exclaimed, dropping his head into his hands. I garnered that he had a throbbing headache from last night, and his quick movements only exacerbated it. From behind his hands, he asked, "What happened?"

As he sat up, he took the blanket with him. It was curled around his waist, lending me a perfect view of his muscled, scratched-up back. Another oops.

"Looks to me like we boinked," I drawled sarcastically.

"Oh, my God."

"What? There's a used condom in the bin which proves it."

"Viv!" Jamie balked, glancing shiftily to my wastepaper basket. He turned around with a frustrated expression, only to halt in his tracks when he saw my naked upper body. "You— um."

As I said, he'd taken the blanket with him.

I simply raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to finish his sentence. Surely he'd seen a pair of tits before. He was twenty-one, for Christ's sake. When he realised he'd taken to staring mutely at my chest, he coughed loudly and turned away.

"Be serious for once," he said. Then he clutched his temples and exhaled heavily, like the world was coming to an end. "Oh, my God," he said again.

I shrugged and got out of bed. He seemed to be having a hard time coming to terms with this.

Eventually, Jamie collected himself enough to ask severely, "How are you feeling?"

I turned to him in my bed. He did look hot like at, all rumpled and devastated. I tapped my chin thoughtfully.

"Bit dehydrated."

"I meant—" he began, a flash of ire crossing his eyes. Then he forcibly stopped. When Jamie spoke again, he was perfectly calm and he made sure to look nowhere but my face. "Are— are you alright?"

"Oh," I hummed lightly, drawing large gulps from my water bottle, "are you alright?"

"I'm... really surprised. But I'm not... hurt, or anything."

"That's good," I hummed absentmindedly. "Can you check the time for me?"

Jamie tapped the screen of his phone, resting on the bedside table. "Six twenty-four. I've still got time." He frowned, watching me casually slip into a pair of panties. "Are we... going to talk about what happened?"

"What's there to talk about?" I asked as I opened my closet. "Yeah, we hooked up but neither of us remembers it or got hurt. It won't happen again, yeah? If we don't tell our friends, it'll be like it never happened."

"But I remember it."

"Oh." I swung open my closet and stared at my choice of pants. In the back of my mind, I knew I could have been more considerate about Jamie's turmoil. I could have taken his hand and talked him through the morning after logistics, clarifying that it was just a one-night stand, but it was too easy to mess with him.

"Was I good? How was it on a scale from one to ten?" I asked lightheartedly, almost hearing his frustrated intake of breath.

"Viv! Do you not care? About... doing that with me? And not remembering it? Doesn't it frighten you waking up with no memories?"

It didn't frighten me.

I didn't take the experiences of being a woman on a college campus lightly, but I wasn't going to let unnecessary fear dictate my life. I'd never had any harmful sexual experiences, though there certainly were disappointing ones.

The most pathetic of which belonged to Bryson, my ex-boyfriend before Eric. We only dated for two months, the summer before sophomore year. He was from central Boston, generous and laid-back, but the worst in bed—a flaw even communication didn't fix.

If Khan was my first love, Carey the one who got away, and Eric the cheating bastard, I'd call Bryson the two-pump chump. Because two pumps later, it was over.

Despite going above and beyond in all other areas, he took his own pleasure with no regard for mine—we're talking durations in the range of minutes. When he started complaining that condoms made him feel strangled, I ran. Hence the extremely short relationship.

So, while Jamie was worried about my lost memories, I was pretty neutral towards our hookup. For sure, it took me by surprise, and I wouldn't do it again. But I wasn't remorseful or hurt or ashamed of what had happened. It just happened.

I picked a pair of jeans and held them in front of my legs, surveying myself in the mirror. Nope.

"Jamie. You're one of my bestest buddies. You didn't hurt me," I rattled off pragmatically. "And we both know nothing is going to come from this. So why's it matter to you?"

"I was... just raised differently, I guessed."

"Ah, yes. Your Bible-thumping parents drilled gentlemanly charm and courtesy into you. Do you feel like you took advantage?" In the reflection of the mirror mounted on the interior of the closet door, I saw Jamie nod once. "Well, don't. I guess I was too drunk to consent, but so were you."

"But—"

"Wait, if neither parties consented, is it even sex?" I mused aimlessly. I found a cute pair of white palazzo pants and started sliding them on. "Or the inverse of sex? Converse? Philosophically, did it even really happen if it wasn't the normal us doing it? Does anyone on this earth really do anything—"

A warm pair of hands gripped my shoulders and spun me around.

Jamie pressed me back into the mirror, and a thrill ran through me at the sudden touch of cold glass to exposed skin. I hadn't even heard him get out of the bed, but now he was peering down with an unrelenting, searching stare. The smell of him, rich and citrusy, invaded my head, and all philosophical thoughts left.

"Viv," Jamie said humourlessly. I rolled my eyes at his theatrics, but he caught my chin in his hand and tipped my head up to his. His mouth was two inches from mine. "Look at me. Tell me you're alright."

I slowly let my eyes trail over his face, his full lips and high cheekbones, until I met his green eyes. Jamie had said he was alright, but he didn't look like it. In fact, he looked almost anguished. There was a desperation there that dripped like honey into my throat. I swallowed hard.

It occurred to me that while women were afraid of being harmed by a man, some men were afraid of ever becoming harmful—though the former was clearly worse. The guilt raged in him like a hurricane, and Jamie needed me to calm it.

He needed to hear it from me.

"I'm alright. Seriously." His gaze, earnest and searching, pored over mine, blunt and honest as always.

"Okay," he said, looking not okay still.

"I'm sorry for yammering. And I'm sorry for waving away your guilt. That was inconsiderate of me. But, really, this isn't a big deal to me." I joked lightly, trying to infuse the usual mirth back into our interactions, "You're not even my worst lay."

For a second I thought Jamie would chastise me again, but then his lips cracked open and sunlight fell into my heart, warm and comforting.

"You say that to my face, but who knows what you'll say when my back's turned," he smirked.

I scoffed. "Nothing at all. If it ever got out I slept with you, my brand would be tarnished."

He rolled his eyes. "We can't have that." Before he stepped away, Jamie gently brushed a lock of my hair behind my ear.

"What was that for?" I snorted, zipping up my palazzo pants.

Jamie grabbed his t-shirt from the floor and slid it on, his biceps flexing each time his arms shifted. When his face re-emerged he gave me a weak smile and a weaker excuse: "For being you."

I would have retorted, maybe drawled smooth and smirked a little, but under his lazy charm, somehow my tongue twisted right up.

Ugh. Numbnuts.

Long-ish chapter for you! Shit's getting heated now. ;)

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Aimee x