Blackout ✓

23 | valentine's day

CONSIDERING JAMIE LIVED HERE, TOO, I shouldn't have been surprised when he walked into the laundry room on a drizzly Monday afternoon.

The heat from the dryers made it constantly cozy, which I hated last semester but I loved in mid-February. There lay the root of my surprise: this drizzly Monday afternoon was the afternoon of Valentine's Day. And Jamie strolled in wearing his pyjama shirt, sweatpants and slides, earphones shoved in deep, like a man with no obligations in the world. What about Farrah?

He noticed me leaning against the wall, counting down the three minutes until my dryer load finished.

He said, "Hey, dude," by way of greeting.

The dude thing had become something of an inside joke. Well, it was an inside joke initially, my paltry attempt at being purely platonic, but now we'd moulded it into something comforting and familiar.

"Sup." I nodded with a mild smile, turning the iron on.

"Shit, are you using it?"

"Yep. Get in line."

I only ironed my fanciest clothes, which included two dress shirts, a pencil skirt and a pair of pressed trousers. Considering my med school interviews, then the schmoozy mixer the WISA executives attended last week in thanks for the funding, these items deserved careful attention before going back into the closet.

"Alright," Jamie sighed theatrically. In the laundry room was a steel workbench, inlaid with a deep sink for handwashing clothes. With his back to the ledge, he pressed himself up to sit on the metal.

My dryer load finished. As it beeped, I fished out my delicates and laid them on the steel bench, next to the ironing board. I unceremoniously dumped the rest of my clothing into my laundry hamper.

"Busy day?" I hummed, getting to work on the trousers.

Jamie yawned, scooping one earphone away and letting it dangle down his front. "Not at all."

It looked as much—which was interesting, considering he and Farrah had been angling towards romance during the last few weeks.

They now studied regularly at the dorm, yet not learning to keep their gleeful volume down. Even though Jamie could easily have smuggled Farrah some of the catered food for dinner, she consistently ordered sweet treats for the pair—doughnuts, churros, even cupcakes, at one point.

He wasn't shy about mentioning memes she'd shown him, or darting out of the room to call her, or announcing when she texted. Sometimes I even saw the notification before Jamie did, tamping down the slight sting in my chest each time.

"How are your courses coming along?"

I glanced up from my ironing at the sound of Jamie's husky voice. He cleared his throat casually. His dryer load finished shortly after mine, and he was currently arm-deep in the barrel, collecting his clothes.

"Midterm stress hasn't set in yet, so great." I folded the trousers and replaced them with the pencil skirt. "You? Are you still good for the IP catchup next week?"

For all his initial complaining, I suspected Jamie really loved Innovating Philanthropy. He approached the final project with attention and actual forethought. I didn't realise he had that discipline in him. If I had a project-based assessment, I'd absolutely stitch together some prettily wrapped bullshit in the last four days.

À la the funding pitch I delivered whilst hungover.

But I loved seeing Jamie chase those tangents he saw. His passion, his patience, his curiosity. I liked that there were people who didn't want to force their values on the world. Some could argue that I was one of them, one of a moral lobby with a conviction that their conception of the good life was the best one around.