Blackout ✓

11 | not feeling it

THERE WAS A METHOD TO 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.