my madness.

There was sound reasoning behind the many rules I used to govern my social life, hard-won through many failed relationships and many successful one night stands. I looked for a particular guy whenever I had a sexual itch to scratch: volunteers were selfless for the community—and pretty damn selfless in bed, too. Intelligent men wouldn't treat you like a notch in their belt after the fact.

And, above all, no matter which person I took home, I never did it again.

I didn't give second chances.

There was only one person who had that honour, and it was a complete cautionary tale.

Max was the first boy to cheat on me.

Max was also the first and last boy I stayed with after finding out.

He was my second-ever boyfriend, neatly slipping into the role Khan had played. After Max made his first drunken mistake, I took the chance of forgiving him because he was just that fervent. I was sixteen and impressionable and I still had so many second chances to give.

Surprisingly, our relationship opened and deepened. Max readily let me have his account passwords and always kept his location tracking on. I enjoyed a lot of freedom with my friends and extracurriculars. I moved past the pain of being cheated on.

But Max never moved past the shame of being a cheater. He refused to argue with me about anything. He kept himself perpetually in the doghouse because he carried the guilt with him. Any issues about our relationship that needed communication, he would let me make the decisions and swallow the results.

After a year, I saw how tormented he was. Complete obedience was no way to nurture a relationship. I ended things with Max the way I imagined animals were euthanised. Softly, but without looking into his eyes.

So whether it was infidelity or simply sunrise that spelt the end of an encounter, I'd learnt not to mess with that. Things ended for a reason.

But, fuck, if Jamie didn't test every single one of my rules.

I loved Jamie as a dear friend, but I never in all my life imagined we'd be anything more than that. He met exactly none of the standards I held for hookups. Zero.

I'd never heard him talk about healthcare, politics or feminism. His extracurriculars were concentrated on throwing a ball and tackling people. No volunteer work or activism in his life, at all. The most intelligent conversation we'd ever had was about our childhoods, and even that topic was piddly and unstimulating. I could talk about it in my sleep—which is pretty much how it went down.

But I was more disappointed in myself, to be honest.

Despite all the regimented procedures my mind had set up for healthy, no-strings-attached hookups, my body refused to listen. It went right ahead and fell into Jamie's arms with a skip and a sigh. Every cell in me felt his presence like a magnetic field.

The events of Wednesday made me almost apologetic that I didn't remember the first time we'd slept together, because it was phenomenal. We spent the whole day in bed. I missed lunch. I missed dinner. I had to order UberEats for the both of us once we'd belatedly realised the dining hall had stopped food service.

From my sizable collection of trysts, I had gained a lot of experience. For example, the way two people kissed didn't always match up, and someone usually had to compromise. Maybe I had to tilt my head at an uncomfortable angle, or he had to slow down his tongue to match mine. The same happened with more explicit movements—not that it was a bad, or even unexpected, thing. Honesty and conversation could fix these issues quick stat.

The thing about Jamie was...

I had no issues. I didn't even know why.

It just clicked when I was with him. He just knew, and I knew him. We could tell from the way the other sighed, the way their hips shifted, what they liked, what they needed more of, which direction we should go. From the moment he first kissed me, the heat between us had mounted and mounted until I felt battered and breathless while I tried to ride it out like a surfer tossed into a riptide.

Two days on, it left me weak in the knees just thinking about it.

Which wasn't supposed to happen! Bad Viv. The source of my disappointment was the fact that I had been unsuccessful in getting Jamie out of my system, even after hours of trying. Hours. There was no room in my high-intensity, fast-paced life for daydreaming like this. For pining after past lovers.

My weeks were busy enough without sneaking Jamie into my room for sex. I spent Wednesday holed up, under the sheets with him, which was a sunk day. I had two midterm tests on Thursday: Toxicology, which Krista and Jake did with me, and Biochemistry, which only Krista shared with me. Friday morning, I'd woken up early to attend a yoga class. Before lunch, I'd sat my Biophysics midterm. Then in the afternoon, I'd gone to a WISA board meeting before dashing back to the dorm, squeezing into a maxi dress and downing a bottle of soju.

Now the five people in our dorms friend group were walking towards Halston's singular convention centre for the Science Faculty Ball, which happened annually at the start of the fall break. Tomorrow, which was Saturday, Riley, Krista, Sophie and I would be going to a house party hosted by some dude all three of them knew. I had no clue who the host was, but I heard the words 'house' and 'party' and was immediately sold.

What part of that chaotic schedule said I needed something else to concentrate my time on?

No part, that's what.

The current predicament facing our friend group was how to get Riley into SciBall. She was drunk, I was tipsy but composed, and there was security vetting people at the door. It might have been my lapse in judgment—giving her a full bottle of soju before we left the dorms—that landed us here.

So I was determined to be the one to fix this.

"Okay," I clapped my hands to draw everyone's attention before we entered the building. "Kris leads. Jake and Riley go next, with Riley on his right side, away from the security. Jamie and I will follow up. If we sandwich Little Miss Lightweight between two sober parties, hopefully, their perception of the group's overall sobriety goes up."

Everyone assumed the positions I'd instructed, and we stepped into the line to have our tickets checked. "Walk straight and try to act sober, okay?" Jake told Riley.

Poor thing. She was conscious and speaking coherently, but every so often she'd sway on her heels or loll her head in a manner that was markedly intoxicated. Riley was much more lightweight than I was, as evidenced by our starkly different conditions after consuming the same amount of alcohol in the same amount of time.

Riley got past the ticket check by keeping her head straight, avoiding eye contact and clinging to Jake's arm for stability. Halfway down the hallway to the ballroom, a group of Krista's adoring fans pulled her aside for pictures, which was a great opportunity to plop onto a couch and let Riley rest. The last gauntlet was the coat check room, into which I needed to check my neon pink purse. It matched my neon pink two-piece maxi dress, which hugged my chest and every inch of my legs.

Think Crayola but sexy.

Jamie shed his suit jacket. I almost wanted to tell him to keep it on; he looked so handsome in a suit. But the room was warmed and he planned to drink and dance tonight. No sense in overheating, I guess. I had only a few minutes to commit the sight of him to memory - the angular corners of the jacket shoulders emphasised how broad his chest was, while the heavy fabric rested stiffly on his firm biceps and pectorals.

Then the jacket came off, and I realised he looked just as good without it. His muscles were more pronounced now, but the thing that tempted me so much was the slightly dishevelled look to him. Images of him rolling up his sleeves, loosening his tie—which would make that tendon traversing the column of his neck flex—and my hands popping open each button filled my head.

Shit. I chanted, One and done, one and done, one and done...

Jamie's eyes wandered slowly over me—the band of bare skin around my midsection, the swell of my breasts under the strapless neckline—and his expression went dark behind the eyes. Ever since Wednesday, he'd developed a stupid, frustrating, cocky attitude. His confidence was running high, and it translated to him looking at me more brazenly, saying bolder things.

"I'm surprised you're attempting to walk in heels tonight," he whispered sideways to me. "After what happened Wednesday."

That was a reference to after. After hours of being bed-bound, I'd gotten up to use the bathroom and my rubbery knees had straight buckled under my weight. Jamie had been sitting on the edge of the mattress, and he'd caught me—quick as lightning—with one arm and pulled me onto his lap.

Made him arrogant to no end.

"That was over forty-eight hours ago, you narcissist," I hissed back. I cast a cursory glance in front of us, where Jake received a coat check tag for his jacket from the attendant. "And shut up. I don't want Jake overhearing you."

Jamie snickered and smirked at me, but he said no more.

Karma was an odd thing.

As I said, I had a one-and-done rule. Picking guys up at parties, leaving neither my number nor full name, helped to maintain a certain distance between my hookups and me after the fact.

But seeing as Jamie lived on my floor, distance was essentially unheard of. Knowing that I could have him in my room thirty seconds after messaging him, stripping him of his suit like I was unwrapping Christmas presents, was torture. And, relaxed by alcohol, I'd been resolved to do it, on the car ride back from SciBall.

Krista drove all of us home in Jamie's SUV because she was the designated, designated driver. More often than not she never drank on social nights now, ever since the tail end of our Pre-Med degrees began.

Anyways, I wanted to fuck Jamie. And the thing that stopped me was Riley leaning over and throwing up on the floor of his car, effectively ensuring that he would spend the rest of his night rinsing it out—which would never have happened if I hadn't given her a soju in the first place.

Past Viv ended up cockblocking Present Viv.

I was infuriated with myself. If I could time travel back to a few hours ago and wrench the bottle away from my best friend, I would have without a doubt.

On Saturday, the Jays spent the whole day scrubbing at the upholstery of Jamie's SUV with detergent and brushes and laying it out on the concrete to dry in the sun.

I didn't get time to speak to Jamie all day, and he wouldn't have time to see me before the girls left for the house party.

I would say karma was a bitch, but it was really me. I was the bitch. Sigh.

One thing that lifted my mood was Callum, the host of the party. He, Sophie and Riley had all gone to the same high school. It was sweet that they'd stayed in touch four years later since it was all too common that people drifted apart after graduation. Maybe it helped that Halston was only an hour's drive from Carsonville, so they'd never drifted far.

Callum partied hard.

He opened the door already hammered, in a state of disarray, shirtless and without a shoe. It was only later I discovered that he'd taken my beloved beer pong and raised the stakes—strip beer pong. Each ball landed meant the opponent had to drink and remove an article of clothing. It was mad, intense, rife with danger.

I loved it.

I put myself in the game at the first opportunity. Callum was my opponent. When I levelled a challenging smirk at him from the opposite end of the table, he bolted. That made me laugh with genuine humour. He had the mannerisms of a comedian, Callum. He talked loud, gesticulated wildly and used his physicality to make people relaxed and welcome. He came down the stairs with multiple pairs of boxers and shirts and proceeded to squeeze them over his jeans and chest.

My skills didn't fail me. Even though I was relatively armourless, clothing-wise, as soon as I picked up the ball I felt my mind settle into a familiar calculating mindset. All I thought about was angles, projectile motion, air resistance. Real nerdy physics stuff.

Krista would have appreciated that if she had actually been concentrating on the game. At present, she sat on the receiving end of what looked like whispered sweet nothings. Quentin was the whisperer in question, Krista's short-time but life-changing crush. I swear, I'd never seen someone get so smitten so quickly.

When I first learned of Quentin and got the chance to scope him out, I thought it would never work out between them. He seemed so mild and accommodating, so as to be incapable of challenging and balancing Krista out—who I thought needed a hot, wild, impulsive thing. They were too similar.

But my mind had since changed, watching them at SciBall and at Callum's party. They were clearly happiest if they were together, and that was enough for anyone to be convinced. Even me.

Strip beer pong operated on a losers-leave basis. But after I'd thrashed my fifth competitor of the night, I humbly abdicated my throne to let others play. I'd only lost my shoes and socks, but there was no sense in playing further when I only had on a tulip skirt and crop top. And my vision was starting to blur.

When I settled into a chair to watch the next match, I zoned into a boy talking to me. I turned my head to see light brown eyes and dark shaggy hair. He was cute, at an objective level, but I had no reaction to him.

"—game you played there. What's your name?"

"Vivian."

He smiled and struck up again, "So, Viv, do—"

I interjected smoothly, taking the last sip of my vodka coke, "It's Vivian."

If the guy seemed taken aback, his recovery time was impressive. "Right," he stammered. The next second he was complimenting me on my beer pong skill, asking if I went to Halston, how I knew Callum. Dangling all sorts of conversation starters in the water and hoping I'd take a bite of one.

I realised something strange then. I'd written him off before getting to know him.

Admittedly, it wasn't the writing-him-off part that was odd. I had abundant reasons to write a guy off.

I wrote Callum off before I even knew him because we had mutual friends. I had a rule against that.

I wrote Jamie off the first time I met him because he was a football player—an unshakeable prejudice of mine, yet it couldn't be helped.

I wrote people off if they were politically opposed to me, and if they claimed to be 'apolitical.' My grandparents had survived genocide, so I'd grown up never standing for any bubble-wrapped, out-of-touch ignorance in my life.

See, I wrote off hordes of guys who didn't meet my rules. But I always at least felt them out first, to verify for myself that they weren't up to par. This guy was adequately attractive and friendly, yet I didn't even feel a need to size him up.

An arm fell around my shoulder and squeezed me into a familiar, fragrant body. "Are you coming home with us, or seeking someone out?" Riley asked slyly.

I glanced around the party and noticed for the first time in two hours that there wasn't a lack of attractive men around. Practically every cluster had a really good-looking person, and I hadn't even surveyed the room till now.

I brought my cup to my lips, cursing internally when a tiny drop fell onto my tongue. I'd finished all of my drink. "Going home with you, I think."

"Oh," she exclaimed, honey-brown eyes wide, looking as surprised as I felt. "Not feeling the prospects?"

I nodded grimly. "Not feeling it."

Uni is killing me, but that's nothing new. What's new (or not) in your life?

Aimee x