Literature surrounding the topic of contemporary dating laments the failure of technology to aid positive romantic outcomes (Finkel et al., 2012; Adelman & Ahivia, 2009). Moreover, in some cases, it proposes that the digital age has increased the prevalence of negative outcomes (Lewis, 2014; Thompson, 2005). This paper contests that literature by, first, finding that the obligation to make the most of available data sets falls on the user. Second, it argu—

"Hey, girlie!"

My beaming blonde roommate bounced through our door, her sudden (and loud) entrance causing me to jump in my desk chair.

And completely lose my train of thought.

"Hey," I replied simply, turning back to my desk to confer my notes.

"Do you have class this afternoon?" She opened her closet doors noisily, throwing an array of obnoxiously pink clothes on her equally pink bed. Her silvery-blonde hair was long and straight, secured off her face with bright pink clips.

I forced down a deep breath. "No."

"Great! I'm helping out at this carwash thing for one of the clubs. They need an extra pair of hands and asked if I knew any hot girls who ... Ohh! What's this?"

She was hovering right beside me when I looked up again, gawking down at the large ring on my right hand.

"You never wear jewelry!"

"Oh, it..." I paused, shocked by the realization that she paid close enough attention to notice that I seldom wore jewelry. I, meanwhile, couldn't even remember her name. Kelsey? Keira? "It was my grandmother's."

"Was?" she pried.

I blinked up at her, but she didn't seem to get the message that her interrogation was less than welcome.

So I threw her a tight-lipped smile. "She died. One year to the day, actually."

"Oh."

The conversation lulled, but she didn't retreat from the swelling discomfort. She didn't seem to feel it at all. She merely leaned over me to peer at my laptop, scanning the page intently.

"So, whatcha doin'?"

I instantly readjusted my body so that it blocked most of the screen from view. I had no reason to think that she knew either Holly or Dex, but it was best to play it safe on the off chance that she did. Besides, didn't she have any concept of personal space?

"You wanted to ask me something?" I prodded her.

"Right!" She clasped her hands together, her ornate rings catching on the sunbeams spilling in through our window. "Yeah. The carwash. You in? They're offering gelato..."

My awkward smile was quickly turning to a grimace, my discomfort rising with every second that her eyes left mine to study something else. My rings. My laptop. My textbooks. It was like she was trying to absorb as much information as she could about me in that one conversation; not that there was much to absorb. I didn't have photos of friends or family on my desk. No notes from home. No trinkets. Clean. Sterile. A fresh start.

Granted, it was our longest one to date, through absolutely no lack of trying on her end. I didn't dislike her. The truth was, I just couldn't be bothered letting anyone in. Because it's not just men who hurt us. Friends lie and cheat and betray those they claim to love, too. And that pain might be even worse.

"Sorry..." I flittered my eyes over her waitressing name tag. Kara. Right. "Sorry, Kara. But I have a bunch of work to do."

"You're always studying," she accused, jumping up on my desk and crossing her long, tanned legs. Her lavender perfume was tickling my nose, practically begging me to sneeze as she lifted a hand to study her pink nails. "I mean, I get it. I respect it. But this is college." She grabbed a chunk of my dark blonde hair and threw it over my shoulder playfully, reminding me once again that personal boundaries weren't her strong suit. "Let your hair down, baby g—"

"I really have to get back to work," I told her sternly.

The corners of Kara's fuchsia smile faltered, her excitement clearly snuffed. I'd never been so close to her before, and I couldn't help but notice her striking resemblance to my childhood best friend, Lola. The straight, platinum hair, the high cheekbones and fox-like green eyes ... it was all so uncanny. Unnervingly so.

Kara covered her disappointment with a nod. She hopped off my desk, quickly sauntering back to her side of the room to grab an indecently bright sweater. "Okay, no problem. Text me if you change your mind."

I don't have your number. "Sure thing."

"See you around, Madi."

I didn't get the chance to correct her before she was gone. The door closed, and I slumped back in my seat. Why was social interaction so ... social?

Like the universe had read my mind, my phone lit with a text.

Madison? The latest message from Dex said. How long? Need you ...

I sighed, opening the thread.

It'd been a full week since the second group date with Holly and, as Kara had observed, I'd spent most of it with my nose buried in my laptop. As it turned out, writing about my lab rats, about what I wanted them to do and say, was so much easier than trying to maneuver them. Why couldn't getting people to do what I wanted be just as simple as typing words on a page?

Fortunately, after three full days of pushing and prodding—on both ends—I'd finally convinced Holly to invite Dex out on a group date of her own. Sort of. Her hometown best friend was coming to visit her on campus, and she was apparently very interested in the boy that had been liking all of Holly's Instagram posts.

I guess I wasn't the only one proficient in the art of cyber sleuthing.

I know you're in your room. I know you're getting these, Dex wrote next. REPLY PLS.

I was about to do just that when he wrote, Wait ... are we playing the Texting Game?

I snorted. Caught myself.

That was way too close to a laugh.

I started typing out a response, indulging in a small smile. Usually, Dex's nagging was enough to make me groan loudly and unabashedly. At the beginning of our mission, it often was. But I couldn't deny that some part of me was drawn to him, a part of me that I'd tried so hard to repress. I told myself it was just the fact that I had something to gain from him, from his pursuit of Holly. That's why I was invested.

I couldn't escape the feeling that there might have been something more to it.

Still, I really did need to make some progress on the assignment front. I needed to take another step closer to proving that heartbreak was inevitable.

A bundle of anxiety knotted my stomach at the reminder. As more time passed since my meeting with Ivy and Devi, I was starting to have doubts about the new direction of our project. Maybe I got sucked in by the validation radiating from my esteemed professor, or maybe I was merely scared into submission by my lioness of a lab partner. Whatever the case, I was hitting a brick wall trying to re-work our experiment, and I was feeling more than a little lost without Devi and Ivy's guidance.

I sent off my reply to Dex and opened my thread with Ivy. I'd sent her a link to a study I'd thought we should check out before our next meeting with Devi, hoping she could at least annotate it while I worked on the seven others I'd found.

She'd left me on read. Which was basically becoming a character trait of hers at that point.

She really was taking the whole leaving assignments to the last minute thing to the next level. But ... Ivy was a senior. She knew what she was doing. Even if, so far, I was the one conducting the experiment and doing the research to bolster it. I was doing all of the work. Still, I knew I didn't have the energy to fight Ivy. She had so much fire, and all I had was the kind of exhaustion that follows weeks without proper sleep. And so I sighed, closing the thread.

James.

His name glared up at me like it was waging a staring contest.

Those knots in my stomach pulled tighter. Actually, James might have been rivaling Ivy as the worst texter of all time. At least he answered eventually, but he took his damn time doing so. Like that morning; he'd sent me a message asking what time I'd be coming to their room that night to help Dex get ready for his first solo date, and I'd instantly sent one back asking what time suited them. No response for forty-five minutes—despite the fact I knew he'd just been on his phone.

I supposed I was just low on his list of priorities.

My essay writing—okay, phone surfing—was interrupted by the faint sound of a hushed conversation outside my bedroom door. I distinctly recognized Kara's peppy voice, while the other was less clear through the thin walls. I could tell that it belonged to a male, though, and wrote it off as Kara's annoying boyfriend, who was practically my third dormmate at that point. If I wasn't such a firm believer in the whole snitches get stitchers movement, I'd surely have run to the dorm supervisor to complain about his midnight visits long ago. But a part of me was glad—that at least one of us was enjoying the college experience.

Even if it was bound to end badly.

Just as I was searching for a suitable synonym for 'heartbreak', the door of my dorm room burst open yet again.

With my back to the entrance, I let slip a simple, "Did you forget something?"

But it wasn't Kara who'd joined me.

"Baby?"

Shivers danced over my skin.

No.

No.

A nightmare. Please be a nightmare. Please wake up.

"Madi," Eli rasped.

And that sliver of hope shattered like glass.

Footsteps. Advancing. And with every thud, another shiver raced up my spine. My whole body tensed up. I turned slowly, dazed. Stunned.

He looked exactly the same.

He crouched down next to my chair, his mouth still parted in the shape of my name. Familiar hazel eyes peered up at me desperately through long, disheveled hair. Hair that I had run my hands through far too many times to count. Hair that smelled like the ocean, like late nights and home. How easy it would be to lean into that familiarity. To melt into his chest, throw my arms around his neck and feel whole.

Beautiful. Eli was so beautiful. He always had been. He was a portrait of sunlight that concealed so much darkness. I wanted to save him from it. Wanted to save us.

He sensed my longing. He was always too good at reading me. A small smile tugged at his full lips, and he reached out as if about to graze his fingers against my cheek. "God, you're beautiful."

He had to be joking. I'd barely bothered to put on a full face of makeup, and my hair was hanging in limp, tangled curls.

His hand was still edging towards me, undeterred by my stunned silence. I knew that electricity would swell under his touch, knew too well that it would cause me to crave the taste of his soft lips. I knew exactly where his hands fit on the arch of my back, exactly where mine fit best on him. We had perfected every little detail over the years we'd spent together, and everything with him had always been magical.

I could have that again. I knew I could. The electricity, the warmth. The comfort. The love. I could be Madi again. His light could chase away my shadows, and I could try to tame his ...

I turned away just before his fingers met my skin, the fallen promise of his touch fracturing my heart all over again.

"What are you doing here?" I croaked, finding enough courage to speak. But my voice was low and shaky, a far cry from the voice of the girl who usually occupied my body.

I hated that.

I stood. Rose from my chair and backed up, leveraging distance as a soldier would a shield. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Elijah followed me with pleading eyes. "Madi, please. I just want to talk to you. You won't answer my calls—"

"Because I have nothing to say to you," I hissed, my heart beating with enough force to power a city. It bounced and clawed inside my chest, torn between its craving for the man opposite me and its desire to beat in his disgustingly beautiful face.

"Madi, please ..." His voice was thick with as much emotion as mine, dark bags I'd never seen under his eyes before telling me he'd been getting just as much sleep as I had been, too. He reached for my hands again as if touching me was routine, his soft gaze searching mine of steel.

I pulled my hands behind my back, still retreating across the room.

His gaze broke. His expression broke. "Baby—"

"Don't," I warned him. "Don't you dare. I'm not your baby."

He recoiled, stung by my words, his sweet smile falling to a frown. But his voice was still firm when he urged, "Of course you are, Madi."

There it was again. Madi.

Hearing him say it was so much worse than hearing Dex or James or Kara say it. It was the way Eli said my name that tortured me more than the word itself—like he was casting out a line into the sky in the hopes of catching a star. We both knew that it was impossible, but a part of me wanted him to catch it anyway. He was my best friend, and I wanted him to have everything he could ever dream of.

I wanted to give him the world, but he'd already taken so much.

"You need to go," I directed, trying once more to back away. My efforts resulted in me slamming my back against the wall. There was nowhere to go but forward, but I wouldn't allow myself the chance to consider it.

Eli mirrored my movements, desperation scratching at his throat. "Not until you talk to me. Please, Madi." He placed his arms on either side of my head, leaning close so that his familiar musk mixed with my new perfume. "Please just talk to me. I can explain everything—"

The door opened. "Are you alive, sunshine? Dex is going nuts in there. I'm starting to think Noah had a point with the whole getting him meds thing—"

Eli and I whipped our heads to the door. Another student peered back at us sheepishly, frozen mid-step into the room.

James.

He failed to mask his surprise at the scene playing out in front of him: me pressed against the wall, Eli's arms pinning me there. He regarded Eli for the longest, strangest moment. Went preternaturally still. Something other than shock or discomfort flashed in his eyes, but he regained his composure before I could figure out what it was.

His unexpected entrance had thrown a cloak of silence over the room. It was in the quiet that I realized that my heart was racing hard and fast, that my breathing had become shallow and staggered. And that my cheeks were home to a river of tears.

Not even a second after I noticed, James peered close enough to notice, too. He stepped out from behind the door, his brow knitted with worry.

"Madison." His gaze was firmly fixed on me, all of his attention and concern on me as though there wasn't a whole-ass-other boy pinning me to my bedroom wall. "Are you okay—"

"Who the hell is this?" Elijah growled. All traces of sweetness had thawed from his tone, replaced by what sounded like anger.

James' eyes swung back to him, his expression hardening. "James," he drawled tensely. "Who the hell are you?"

Eli wasn't ready to address him. His arms were tensing next to my face, his breath growing uncomfortably hot on my skin. "Do you let anyone come in here? Huh? Do you let any guy saunter in whenever they want?"

I couldn't meet his eye. He was spitting his words at me. He'd never spoken to me like that before, never looked at me with wrath distorting his sunkissed face.

James took another step. "Hey, buddy—"

Eli spun on his heel without missing a beat, shooting poisoned daggers out from his fiery stare. "You might want to back off, buddy." His hands were balled into fists, clenching more with every step he took.

But James was far from afraid. Fear wasn't in his nature. He scanned Eli from head to toe, folding his arms. My stomach might have flipped when his trademark grin—smug and amused—crept over his lips.

And it wasn't fear flipping it.

James arched a brow, his feet anchored on the floor. The portrait of comfort. He wasn't leaving.

Eli didn't like that. "Leave."

James shrugged. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me who you are."

Eli scoffed, throwing him an assured grin of his own. One far less charming.

"I," he hissed, "am Madi's boyfriend."

James' tilted grin cracked, his assuredness faltering with it. He held Eli's glare for a moment longer before his eyes moved away. Moved away to find mine.

There was that look again. The one that I couldn't figure out.

"So," Elijah continued haughtily. "Now that we've been introduced, why don't you fuc—"

"No," a shaky voice interjected.

Mine.

I pushed myself off that wall, free from whatever shackles had been holding me back. Adrenaline was surging through my body, overriding my anxiety and propelling me towards him—towards the boy who owned so much of me, who'd somehow come to claim more than just my heart.

Enough.

"I told you, Eli." I swallowed, leveling my chin. "You're not my boyfriend anymore. I'm not your girlfriend. We're ... done."

Done.

I'd said it. Out loud. And the word hurt. It clanged through me. It made everything real. But ...

But we were done. Everything we'd been, everything we ever could be ... Done.

It was time to accept that. To stop running.

I expected Eli's scowl to soften once he turned to me. For the demeanor I recognized and loved to return, for his pleading to resume, for my resolve to be tested.

Instead, Elijah smirked.

My blood ran cold. I felt the strangest urge to shrink.

"We're done?" he repeated. He shook his head. His voice was hushed. Eerily calm. "No, Madi. We're not done. Of course we're not done. I'm yours. You're mine. That's how it's always been—"

"No, it hasn't," I challenged him. As much as I hated to admit it, having James there allowed me to speak more freely than I'd been comfortable to before. I tilted my head, fighting the tears that pricked my eyes. "I was once yours, sure. But you've never been just mine, Eli."

He shook his head again, fervently that time, turning from James to face me. "I've always been yours, Madi. Despite what you think, or what you've heard. That's why we need to talk—"

"I don't think she wants to talk to you," James interjected simply.

All I could do was watch while Eli's hazel eyes clouded over, a fresh wave of anger rolling in as he swiveled to face James. James, who crossed his arms over his chest and lounged back against Kara's dresser, the picture of reclining royalty.

It was like he'd waved a red flag in front of a bull. I felt the rage rippling off Eli. I didn't like it.

Not one bit.

"This is none of your goddamn business," he roared, storming forward, his hands curled into fists with lethal intent. "Stop thinking with your dick and get the fuck ou—"

The world slowed right down. I was moving whip-fast.

As if from a scene in a film, everything stilled, playing at half-speed. Eli, seconds before moving quickly and heatedly, fumbled on his unsteady footing. He staggered backward, grimacing as if in pain, then crouched on the floor, his hands flying up to catch the drops of blood that fell from his wounded nose.

My fist hung in the air, a scorching fire like I'd never felt raging through my bones.

And then, pain.

Piercing, burning pain.

I groaned, cupping my right hand in my left. "Shoot."

James sprung towards me instantly, stepping over the boy on the floor as if he was nothing. He took my throbbing hand in his, the coolness of his touch unmistakable on the heat raging through my fist. "Are you okay?"

"Is she okay?" Elijah cried incredulously, moving slowly to regain his footing. "She punched my fucking nose—"

"And I'll break it if you take one more step," James vowed.

"Like hell you will."

James scrunched his face in disgust, but he refrained from engaging further. He turned back to appraise my tender hand. "Let's go to the nurse—"

"No," I outright refused.

"Madison, if you did that to his nose, your hand must be—"

"It was just my ring," I explained, fidgeting with my grandmother's solid gold heirloom. Even in death, that brazen firecracker was looking out for me.

"Madison—"

"I can't afford an incident report, okay?"

I hated that I had to admit that to him. I could see in his stubborn blue eyes that he didn't find it a reasonable enough excuse. Of course he didn't. Someone like him could never understand.

But, unlike my ex-boyfriend, James knew better than to argue. "Some ice, then." His thumb whispered over my skin, and the anger inside me banked at the soft touch. "Come on."

I didn't need to be told twice.

Eli reached for my hand. "Baby—"

"Enough." I whirled, trying—and failing—to rein in the tear that slid down my cheek. Eli's eyes widened when he saw it. He pulled back his hand.

I swallowed thickly, and pleaded, "Enough, Elijah."

He blinked up at me. My heart, bleeding and kneeling on my bedroom floor, begging to burrow back into my chest ...

Part of me still wanted him. Wanted so desperately for all of this to be a nightmare. But I didn't need him anymore. I couldn't.

"Madison?" James urged gently.

I aimed for the door, and James guided me there, still holding my throbbing hand. He threw Elijah one last look, his face a study of near-comic disinterest.

"You'll want to be gone before she gets back," he said, his voice a firm warning. "I'm sure campus security won't be pleased to hear about a visitor forcing his way into one of their student's rooms."

"Screw you," Elijah said as he stood, breathing heavily through the fluid trickling from his nose.

"And clean the blood from the carpet," James added, slamming the door behind us.

Well, we met Eli. Did he meet your expectations?

What are your predictions for the next chapter?? —>

With love,

Danielle x