Page 1 of Breakaway Hearts

Chapter One

Madison

Every rule has an exception

Iwalk into The Commons, an all-ages club right off campus, and scan the room for Jason, my best friend and roommate.

Me

Just got here. Where are you?

Jason

Still at the welcome cocktail. How did yours go?

Me

My advisor thinks I need extracurriculars and to smile more if I want a chance at the internship. So super great.

Jason

They’ll take you because you’re amazing and the smartest person I know.

Me

Are you buttering me up because you won’t make it?

Jason

I’m telling it like I see it.

But I’ll be at least another 20

I’m debating if I should just wait for him at home when Angela and Christine, two girls from my program, wave me over to their table.

“Madison!”

Their smiles drop when they realize Jason isn’t with me, but they recover quickly.

“How was your summer? Did you go anywhere fun?” Christine smiles brightly at me, tan from a Mediterranean cruise I followed through her social media.

“Stayed in Vermont,” I admit, then add, “We went camping for a weekend, which was fun.”

“Glamping, or the dirty kind?”

Angela probably means camping on the dirt rather than on a raised platform with an actual bed. She’s not necessarily calling me dirty. But I’m not sure she isn’t.

“The dirty kind.” I grimace, then look to the door, as if Jason will magically appear rather than text me a play-by-play of his making his way over, recounting everything that happened with his advisor and the other students in his program.

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it.” Angela brings her hand to her heart, as if she feels bad, then laughs like it’s a silly misunderstanding.

“Of course not. I was just on my way to the washroom…”

“Ooh, get me another mojito on your way back,” Angela exclaims. “Just tell him it’s for me.” She winks at the bartender, gnawing on her straw.

I open my mouth to argue, because that was my attempt at an excuse to find a table in the back and wait for Jason on my own, but “Shirley Temple, please and thank you,” Christine adds before they drop back into whatever they’d been talking about before I arrived.

Most of the people I hang out with tolerate me because of Jason. He’s the social one who needs less than five minutes to become best friends with whoever sits beside him, whereas I’d rather sit alone.