"I don't really keep food in my room."
"Jamie."
"The protein bar is fine. It broke in my bag. Nutritionally it’s still the same." Completely serious.
He watches until I take a bite. Only then does he seem satisfied.
"You're weird, you know that?"
Jamie shrugs. "Move over."
I scooch over and he sits against the headboard. It’s a single bed which means the situation is immediately closer. His shoulder against mine. His thigh alongside mine. Body completely pressed right there against mine and he doesn't comment on it, just settles in and looks at the ceiling like this is normal, like we’ve done it a hundred times.
Like my heart isn’t about to jump out of my chest.
The pull of him is maddening. Even now. Even like this — no act, no game, nothing between us except a small bed. I can still feel it. That low constant hum of being near Jamie Nash. Like standing next to something that never shuts off.
But it's different right now.
Right now it doesn't make me want to crawl out of my skin.
Right now it's the only thing keeping me in it.
Jamie is steady. Safe.
Campus sounds come through the window. Voices. Someone's music. A regular school day carrying on without us.
"You don't have to talk if you don’t want to," he says.
"I know."
"It's stupid," I say eventually. "To still let him take up this much space in my head."
"It's not stupid, he meant a lot to you at one point."
"He's not even doing anything. Isn’t even here. He just exists on our game schedule and I'm lying in your bed losing my mind about it."
Jamie doesn't answer right away. "The things that hurt us don't care how much time's passed," he says. Like he's thought about this, as if he knows it from somewhere personal. "They just sit there and wait until it’s easier to hurt us again, when we least expect it."
"That's not terrible," I say.
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm always surprised when you act like a real person."
The corner of his mouth lifts into what I privately call the Jamie barely smile. I shift onto my side to face him. He stays looking at the ceiling for a second and then turns too, so now it's just us on this narrow bed in the middle of the day, together, staring into each other’s eyes.
It just feels like him.
His eyes are very green in the afternoon light.
I've never been this close to him without something happening between us — without a fight or a charged moment or oneof us closing the distance. This is different. This is just him looking at me like he has nowhere else to be and nothing to hide and I don't know what to do with that version except lie here and feel and treasure it all.
Jamie Nash is soft right now and he doesn't even know it and I think if I said anything about it he'd disappear so I'm just going to lie here and look at him and memorize it. Just in case he takes it back.
"The worst part wasn't the end," I pause. "It was before all of that." He waits. "He set up this whole thing one night. Moved his furniture. Got a projector. Made the whole room look like it was underwater — this deep blue light everywhere. Fake candles all around the edges." I look at the ceiling. "Said it was symbolic. That when he wasn't with me he felt like he was drowning. Like I was the only thing that made it stop." A beat. "Told me he loved me. That we could make it work no matter what came next."
Jamie doesn't move, just absorbs the pain in my words.
