Maddison's POV

That laughter was coming from inside Tyler's room and cut into Maddison's chest, her arm froze, with her fist still wrapped in the air just above the door, and she wondered if she had come to the wrong door. All of the witty things that she had practiced telling him just disappeared, and then she was left with a chill, hollow fear. Her posture was rigid in her graduation robe as the diploma she held in her hand, her prize for five years of hardwork, was now heavy, and at this moment the only thing rightly in existence for Maddison was that sound...that laughter. It was a sound of someone who was comfortable Tyler's apartment that didn't belong there, especially not on a day like this.

Her mind spun with the other options. A sister, a cousin, or a friend's girlfriend waiting for him, but they didn't quite fit in her head, and that laugh sealed it. It sounded too comfortable in the room, like the person was supposed to be there.

She had an awful urge to know, even as she wanted to spin around and run. She needed to see for herself, to understand the truth behind the door, but her fingers were slow and numbed as if they belonged to someone else. She extended her hand and found the top of the door before she pushed. The door swung softly open, and then she was able to see more of Tyler's living room.

Her gaze took in the scene piece by piece. She saw things she was unaware of; two half-finished slices of pizza were left in a box on the coffee table, an open bottle of good whiskey, a brand he never drank, sat next to two glasses but one glass had red lipstick rimming it. And then she saw a green short dress spread over the arm of the couch. It was a woman's outfit, and it looked so refined in the messy, dull room, and it seemed so misplaced.

Tyler was reclining on a couch, relaxed, with his arm slung over the woman next to him but when she looked again, intently, she saw that the woman in that green dress was Brooke. It was the woman from his office. He had promised Maddison that Brooke was a friend, he even explained to her that her overbearing personality scared him, but tonight, huddled in next to him, she did not seem like someone scary. Tonight, she was standing tall, as if she had won and her head rested on his shoulder, her perfect blonde locks shining against his rumpled t-shirt.

Maddison's breath was caught in her throat, she stood still in the hallway as if she was invisible, then Tyler leaned forward and whispered softly but clearly in the still room.

"I'm telling to you, it's over," he said, speaking as though he were referring to work. "It was always going to end. She's a wonderful girl, truly. Just a sweet, simple girl, easy to figure out what she's thinking, but it was never going to work out. You are my future Brooke. All of it with her was just practice and getting ready to come meet you."

Sweet girl, Simple girl and Easy to know. They were little words, but they cut her so deeply. He used her name as if she was a thing he had finally gotten rid of, he made her deep love and trust seem like a weakness as to be ridiculed. Maddison held her fingers in a vise-like grip, and a sick sensation swept over her stomach.

Brooke moved and tilted her head to look at him, she had a radiant smile on her reddish lips. "What about her special day? The whole top student thing?" she said, and there was a mocking tone to her voice.

Tyler let out a short laugh; it was a sound Maddison had not heard him produce before, it was empty and callous. "I nearly sent a message this morning saying 'Not feeling well, sorry.' The best excuse but then again, she trusts me; she'd never question so I didn't send it." He shrugged, as though years of trust did not matter. And then he leaned in over to the messy side table and picked up a small, recognizable item.

Maddison's heart stopped because it was the little steel bridge piece that she had labored over more than 40 hours to create for their anniversary. She had carefully carved their initials and the date on the bottom because it was a symbol of her two loves, which were engineering and him.

He displayed it, turning it over between his fingers like trash. "Look what she gave me here," he taunted with a nasty little laugh. "She said that it represented our 'unbreakable bond.' Robust, solid, created to stand the test of time; can you believe it? She really thinks that life is like one of her blueprint designs that is all cleanlines and easy conclusions."

Brooke laughed again, and this time it destroyed the last piece of Maddison's control. Cheating was bad enough, but this...this happy wrecking of something so personal, was a nastier kind of betrayal, and for Brooke, it was not just about cheating; it was hate.

With her laughter fading, Brooke's black eyes moved in the direction of the door. For an instant, Maddison thought Brooke had not seen her, but then Brooke's eyes met hers. In shock, there was no horror, no guilt, but a cold glint of awareness, then a slow, sneering smile. It was a look that meant she had won.

Still locked onto Maddison, Brooke slid her hand along Tyler's neck, pulled him into her for a kiss with a slow, deliberate motion. Never looking away from Maddison down the corridor, she kissed him intensely, as if to signal that this was hers now, and at that moment, the message was very much clear.

Maddison's body eventually responded, and a squeaked, strangled sound came from her as she took a shaky step back, then her heel caught on the carpet before she stumbled backward. The door, pushed by her movement, swung shut with a clear click.

Maddison's POV

The door clicked shut. Outside in the deserted corridor, the sound was loud. So absolute, as if she were in prison, and for a very long time, Maddison was rooted to the spot. The soft yellow light above her seemed to get darker, then the walls felt like they were closing in on her and she couldn't breathe. The only thing she could hear was a deafening scream stuck in her head, the sight of Brooke smiling while kissing Tyler continually replaying in her mind, and it hurt to see.

Then, a coldness swept over her, like she had been dipped into freezing water; it started in her stomach and then spread. It made her arms and legs heavy and weak, and her fingers, still tightly clenched around her diploma, numbed. She looked down at the rolled paper as though it were someone else's, and the red ribbon, which had felt like verification of achievement, just felt like blood on white paper now. Valedictorian; the word now a joke. She reasoned, 'What is the value of a perfect plan if the most important part of my life is shattered?'

And then the chill feeling subsided but this time, it was replaced by a burning anger which started in her chest and spread all over her body. She was still holding the diploma clutched so firmly in her hand that her knuckles were white with the paper making a soft crackling sound in the quiet corridor.

Abruptly, she heard Tyler's quiet voice behind the delicate door, and then Brooke's soft laughter again, and upon hearing them, her rage was further fueled. Her calm of mind and good judgment ceased to exist. She imagined breaking down in the door, she imagined the door splintering under her heel and the stunned faces they would have, she imagined picking up the bottle of whiskey, slamming it on the flashy table, and screaming as glass and alcohol splattered everywhere. Her body stiffened at that moment as if it was in anticipation of a battle, so she stepped forward a little, and her hand was a fist. She thought she would scream at them, air her fury on them, and make them feel some of the pain she was bearing within.

Her eyes drifted down the corridor and then landed on a small, red fire extinguisher on the wall and the text on it was, 'Break Glass in Case of Emergency.' The thought flashed through her mind, wild and intense; this was an emergency. She could break in the glass, remove the pin, and blanket the apartment in white foam because she had a strong desire to destroy something.

But another idea pushed the anger away as she imagined Brooke's face in her mind. In her mind, Brooke was not scared or shocked, but instead she had a slow smile, happy that she had come out on top while Maddison stood there humiliated. She imagined Tyler looking at her with pity, the same vile kind of pity that he always had on things that he thought were below him.

No.

One thought stopped her. 'I will not let them see me like this,' she told herself. She would not be the crazy ex-girlfriend or the sobbing girl in the hallway because her pain was hers, and it was the only thing she had left and she would not give it away just so they could stare. Her pride, as terrible as it was, was still very much intact.

She knew what she had to do. It wasn't a choice, it was a must. FLEE. Maddison turned around so fast that her graduation gown was caught in her legs, and she almost fell over. Her neat hair became loose and fell around her face, but she didn't care. She stumbled along the corridor, away from the door, moving wildly and desperately as she allowed her hand to drag along the wall to keep herself balanced. She just wanted to get away. She had to breathe, had to run until her lungs burned and the memory of them together was gone.

When she hit the stairs, she almost fell down after the first one or two steps but grabbed the rough railing to stop herself. She then ran down the rest of them, running two or three steps at a time in her clumsy hurry with her shoes clomping loudly on the pavement. The sound was sudden and loud, much like the terrified thud of her own heart.

Her dark, flowing robe felt like a jail, and she remembered the neat and tidy life just hours before that had suited her but now was a tangled piece of cloth holding her.

At the landing between the second and first floors, a young man was walking up. He was probably a student. He was holding two bags full of groceries and looked focused on getting up the stairs but Maddison did not slow down.

"Watch out!" he shouted, and he tried to shift to the side.

It was already too late as her shoulder had bumped into his shopping bag with the paper bag ripped open with a loud tear. Dozen shiny oranges tumbled out, and they rolled downstairs one by one. One of them hit her ankle, but she hardly felt it.

"Hey! What the..." the man cried out, struggling to save his second bag. He looked at the oranges that were spilt and then at the wild, tear streaked face of Maddison and, in a flash, his angry face changed to one of concern. "Whoa, are you okay? You hurt?"

Maddison looked down, she did have a tiny cut on her knee, she must have hit the railing but she hadn't even felt it.

"Sorry," she breathed. The word was insincere, and she did not slow or ask for help, she just shoved past him, stepped on a grape, and proceeded downstairs. She departed him alone in front of his ruined groceries. He yelled out, "Wait, do you need help?" but his voice was overwhelmed by the sound of her pounding feet.

She rushed into the quiet lobby, gasping harshly with the light overhead hurting her head. Maddison was almost out, almost free, but she grabbed the heavy door when her purse fell off her arm. Her phone spilled out and landed on the dirty floor.

She leaned forward to grab it, and with her fingers on the phone, the screen lit up and vibrated with a new message. For an instant, she had hoped it was him! perhaps he'd sent a message saying sorry, although it would be a lie she wished to believe.

But it was not.

In white block letters, a calendar reminder sat on the screen.

Our Anniversary Dinner - 8pm

Location: Isabella's on Elm

The text on the screen began to swim and run together. Before she even knew what was happening, a hot tear slipped out of her eye. It followed a discreet trail down her cheek and fell from her chin with a pft sound onto the screen, altering the cruel, cheerful text.

One tear came after, and then another, until they were streaming down her cheeks, silent and unstoppable . It was the first sound of her actual pain that she'd allowed herself to make, a choked guttural sob that ripped out of her throat. She blindly pushed the phone back into her purse, leaned against the weight of the door, and crashed out into the cold night.

Maddison's POV

The city air was wet and chilly, as if it was going to rain, the biting cold hurt on her hot flesh. It reeked of car exhausts and wet pavement. It was already very late in the evening and car horns were blaring, loud music sounded from the car driving by while the voices far away all blended together.

She didn't have anywhere to go, no plan and just felt this overwhelming compulsion to run and get as far away as she could from Brooke's shiny, proud smile so she just continued running in pain.

Her stilettos, which she wore during her graduation, pounded the ground hard on the streets, and they seemed as if they would break with each step. Maddison's graduation gown was supposed to be for walking gracefully across a stage, but now it was difficult to run and the hem of the gown caught at her ankles, tripping her up and making her stumble as she ran. Tears blurring her vision flowed from her eyes and made it difficult for her to see, and the familiar streets now became an unfamiliar and intimidating world.

She hurried right past a couple taking their tiny, yapping dog out for a walk that evening, and the man pulled his wife back as Maddison went past. "Hey, watch it!" he yelled, his voice cutting through the rest of the noise.

"My God, Frank, she's crying," the woman whispered. Maddison could still hear her words as she ran down the sidewalk. "Is that a graduation gown?"

Maddison's wild run took her around the next corner, just then, the warm smell of grilled onions and hot dogs filled the air. A dirty white-aproned man stood next to a metal cart draped with a big yellow umbrella, and he was carefully inserting a sausage into a bun when he looked up and spotted her.

He froze, his tongs suspended mid-air. The man looked worried, and Maddison nearly stumbled over by his cart and put out a hand to catch a lamppost to balance herself.

"Hello there, miss," the man said in a deep, soothing voice. "Are you alright? You look as though you've just seen a ghost."

Maddison's head lifted, and she looked at him, but it felt as if she was looking straight through him, and instead of the man, all she saw was a sofa, a green dress, and a victorious smile. The man was talking, but his voice sounded like a low humming noise.

"Hello," he said again, louder and more worried-sounding before he put down the tongs on his cart with a clinking metallic sound. "Are you in trouble? Do you need the police called?" He moved forward to look at her better. "You're hurt."

She looked down at her extended hand, the one not wrapped around her rumpled diploma. A bright red scrape ran along her knuckles where she'd hit the wall in the stairwell, and a drop of blood well up and roll down her finger. She looked at it as though it weren't even her hand, like it was just something else peculiar happening in some sort of world that didn't seem real.

"No," she finally breathed. Her voice sounded harsh. She shook her head, not at him, but trying to shake away her own cloudy mind. "No, I just... I have to leave."

Not even looking back, she shoved away from the lamppost and kept running, stumbling and panicked.

The guy just stared after her, baffled. He picked up his tongs, slowly shook his head, and headed back to his grill. "Some evenings in this town," he muttered to himself as he flipped the sausages over, but he caught only a glimpse of part of her tragic story as she ran away.

Maddison charged into the crowd. The man's words were forgotten immediately, lost in the noise of her own pain.

She arrived at a busy street intersection. The walk signal was a red hand that told her to stop and although her head knew that she should stop, her feet kept going. A shiny new silver vehicle gave a loud angry blast on the horn as it swerved to avoid hitting her but Maddison never even registered it. She just kept on running and jumped off the curb onto the road.

Her degree was still held in her right hand, the single item she had retained from her old life, one where hard work and loyalty were supposed to mean something. Her mind considered Grant Harrison's face and his pitiful expression. She had refused him proudly when he had held out the possibility of a job but now, how was she supposed to know then that her life was going to be completely devastated?

She made it to the other side of the road, taking brief, painful breaths. She sped past an outside café, where people stopped and stared. They gazed as the woman in a graduation gown frantically sprinted down the city. Maddison could feel them staring at her, but she was in too much pain to care, and it was as if she was a ghost that they could see but were unable to hear her suffering.

At another corner ahead of her, the traffic light was green for cars but she never stopped or even glanced, she just ran with all her might and did not care about anything else but escaping the pain inside.

She ran into the intersection, right into the path of incoming cars and from her left side, she saw a flash of bright light in her side view, then a quick, scared cry.

"Hey! WATCH OUT!"

The voice was young and sounded really scared, so Maddison turned her head quickly. A bike delivery man was moving directly towards her, moving very quickly, he seemed startled under his helmet, the man leaned back as hard as he could, trying to brake. His brakes screeched as the wheels skidded across the wet sidewalk but for a moment, everything occurred in slow motion. Maddison saw the terror in his eyes and the sweat on his brow as he was grabbing the brakes, but it was too late.

Then they smashed into one another.

It was a solid hit of his bike into her body. The bike's front wheel hit her hip with a muted thud, and it launched her off the ground as her diploma fell from her hand and flew through the air. The world spun around her in a mad whirl of streetlights, dark sky, and the scared face of the bike rider.

She was weightless for a second, and then she hit the unyielding concrete street. The impact was harsh; her hip landed on the pavement with a dull thud, and she saw a flash of light. There was a burning pain that shot through her body, but then it quickly turned into a strange numbness.

When she could see again, everything was fuzzy. She was lying on her back, with her cheek on the cold, gritty pavement. She looked up and saw the face of the bikeman looking down at her, his helmet crooked, and his eyes wide with terror.

"Oh my God," he cried out, his voice shaking. "Oh God, I'm so sorry! Are you okay? Miss?" He looked around, growing more frantic. "Someone call 911! Please!"

Maddison tried to speak, to tell him it wasn't his fault, but she couldn't say anything, and her vision started to blur at the edges. She saw her diploma on the ground in a dirty puddle near her. The rider's scared voice and the voices of other individuals who were now surrounding her became less distinct, until she could only hear a ringing in her ears.

There was a thick darkness that covered everything, and one last, clear thought came to her before she fainted. Not of her boyfriend's deception, nor of her pain, nor of her broken life, but of the voice of some other guy, deep and confident, at the reception at her graduation ceremony.

Then, there was total darkness.