Page 19 of Reasons We Break

On her drive to the university, she glances at it in the passenger seat and feels the first seeds of doubt. She doesn’t actuallyknowwhat happened. Why is it so hard for her to accept Rajan might be in the wrong? Because of his card-decorating skills? She needs to get it together. Nine months could’ve changed him. After all, Simran feels like a different person now than she was a week ago. Maybe she’s the cliché she’s been warned against becoming: the inexperienced good girl getting played by a guy who knows his exact effect on her.

She shakes her head and crumples the paper in her fist.Next time,she tells herself. Next time, she won’t interfere.

As she speed-walks into the meeting half an hour late, the long table of undergraduate society members give her looks. Jassa Singh, who’s vice president, doesn’t even pause his spiel about leftover council tasks to be done before summer. Simran takes her seat and scans the agenda. As treasurer, all she cares about is the budget, which is the next item. She opens her laptop to retrieve her spreadsheet, but instead, her screen wakes to the email from Dr. Maxfield.

Okay, somaybeshe’s been thinking about it more than she should. But it won’t matter after today. There’s no harm in imagining.

“Simran.”

Simran jolts to find Jassa staring at her. “I—What?”

“The budget. That’s the next item.”

Although he’s clearly repeated this several times, he doesn’t sound annoyed. He never does; he’s just trying to run the meeting efficiently, as he always does when the president is absent. The least Simran can do is match it.

Quickly, she closes the tab and ends up on the last Google search she made: endometrial cancer. She switches it again to find an assignment due tonight that she completely forgot about. She switches the tab several more times, fully aware of Jassa’s eyebrows rising with every passing second, until she finds the spreadsheet. Clears her throat. “We’re in—”

“A deficit, I know. I saw the numbers, too. I just don’t understand why.”

A prickle of irritation goes through her. Here Jassa is again, violating her area of expertise. She feels the strong urge to one-up him. “It’s because we’re still missing a significant portion of member fees.”

A quiet. Jassa twiddles his pen casually, then speaks to the room. “If I remember correctly, we delegated who would collect those months ago. Anyone remember who that was?”

Everyoneremembers, given it’s the student services representative’s job, but before any of them can speak up, the offender shrugs. “Me.”

Simran sighs inwardly. Chandani Sharma lounges in her seat a few chairs away. Simran went to high school with her, but she was TJ’s friend. Now Chandani has glommed onto Simran. Mostly for help with classes. And, apparently, to apply for vacant student council positions only to dononeof the tasks she’s assigned.

“It’ll get done,” Chandani says now. “Stop riding my dick about it.”

Simran can practically see Jassa weighing the pros and cons of berating her. Chandani is infamously a drama queen. Simran kind of feels bad for him, so she clears her throat. “I have the list too, Chandani. I can send the emails.”

“Okay,” Chandani says, but Jassa cuts her off.

“No, Simran.” His voice is sharp. “Chandani can handle it.”

Chandani merely yawns, unimpressed, as Jassa abruptly switches topic to the next agenda item. Simran flattens her expression to hide her annoyance.

Maybe Jassa can tell anyway, because once the meeting is over and everyone’s filing out, he drops into the chair next to her. It’s too low for him, but he’s somehow graceful about it. “I didn’t mean to undermine you back there. I just didn’t want you to take on yet another thing.”

“I can handle it.”

Jassa arches one brow. “Can you? Because sometimes I think you seriously don’t know when to stop. You’re constantly behind. Like that assignment that—”

“That was an off day,” she interrupts, somewhat shaken that he’s noticed. “That’s not how I...normally am.”

He blinks at her. She stares back resolutely. She rarely does this, because the truth is, he’s uncomfortably handsome. But what unsettles her more than his sharp, scruffy jawline or long-lashed eyes is that she cannot figure out his intentions with this conversation.

He misinterprets her silence. “I’m not trying to boss you around. I just think we both need a reminder sometimes to take a breather. Feel free to do the same for me.”

“I’d rather watch you crash and burn,” Simran replies straight-faced, and he chuckles a little.

“Yeah,” he says. “I bet you would.”

And she has the feeling they’re both only half joking.

When Simran arrives home, she finds her dad and an uncle she knows well sitting on rocking chairs on the porch.

Toor Uncle lights up when she hops out of her truck. “There’s our little birdie!”