Blackout ✓

08 | bottled machismo

TWO WEEKS LATER, IT WAS obvious to even Toph Beifong that Jamie was not 'fine' like he claimed.

Before we slept together, we'd been close during the days and distant during the nights.

The common room was always alive with residents coming and going. This semester, I shared a Toxicology paper with Krista and Jake, so we'd study at the coffee table in the afternoons before dinner. Jamie would usually sit nearby, working on his techy assignments or playing a video game. As for the distance during parties, everyone had implicitly known to give me appropriate space to look for prospective lays.

Now it was like our relationship had done a complete one-eighty.

Jamie was distant during the days and shadowed me at parties like a mosquito—if mosquitos were six-foot-tall. Ugh. Disturbing image.

Anyways, now Jamie was only ever around the dormitory for dinner. He and Jake were long gone before sunrise for their conditioning sessions, though while the latter came back to the dorm for lunch service, the former simply took a packed meal with him.

Each day Jamie studied somewhere on campus, went to football practices and arrived home drained amd taciturn. I knew he had friends and commitments outside of our main accommodation group, but he'd never been so detached last semester. Despite living in the same place, it felt like I barely saw him.

The Jays and I still partied with our usual frequency, but Jamie never tested his limits anymore. Once I could have counted on him to clear all the alcohol in the room, but now he refrained and lingered around the floormates with annoying lucidity. Like he was watching over us. Or watching over me.

Maybe it wasn't our drunken hookup that had warranted this change of tack, but nonetheless, it was frustrating.

I hoped Jamie wasn't harbouring any unsaid feelings.

I hoped we'd said everything we'd needed the morning after.

I hoped this wouldn't come to a head sometime later, and ruin my peaceful senior year.

Tonight, I had two reasons to celebrate. I'd completed two interviews for med school with Tufts and Boston University over the last two weeks, which meant two road trips away from and back to Halston. Then again, long car rides with Mom yapping in my ear about interview technique weren't my usual definition of a road trip.

I had yet to hear back from about half of the medical programmes that received my secondary applications, but I tried not to dwell on the length of time it was taking. Everyone said the application and interview process was unpredictable so there was no point stressing about knowing until you knew.

The majority of the schools I applied to were east of—and including—Chicago but I really hoped I would get into specific acclaimed ones. Sadly, Harvard, John Hopkins and Columbia were all mute at this point. I'd heard nothing from them. But my two interviews had done well, and now it was a matter of waiting—and filling that time with alcohol.

The second reason I had to party was that the Halston Foxes had just won their most recent away game, and the campus was raving in celebration. Granted, I didn't give a shit about football, but victories were victories, and an excuse to drink was an excuse to drink.

The Foxhole, Halston's student bar in the Quad, was throbbing with high spirits and drunken fervour by the time midnight rolled around.

"—was completely revolutionary! His positioning of the audience's eye drew attention to our usual complicity in the male gaze, except now we were all aware of it," a tall, handsome Applied Arts major told me excitedly. "The whole exhibition was confronting, to be honest."