“You’re smart. This is a terrible habit. Imagine what the people at Yoga for Life! would think if they saw me smoking.”

“I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me for eating one of those chemical-filled frozen burritos at work tonight.”

“I love that kind of shit,” Sophia said. “I’d eat them every day if I could.”

Sophia held the cigarette between the first two fingers on her right hand. The wind blew a strand of hair across her face, and she shook it away, the gesture effortless. Like everything Sophia did.

“You’re here with Zach?”

“And some friends. He ran into some guys he knows. He didn’t want to come. He’s kind of a homebody. And there’s a baseball game on or something. But I wanted to go out. A long week of work. Who wants to sit home?”

“Right. I agree. That’s why I’m here. I just wanted to get out and be around other people and listen to good music.”

“I hear you. Are things better with your mom?”

Madeline looked at the ground, kicked a shard of glass from a broken beer bottle away with the toe of her boot. Her hand went up for her eyebrow, got all the way there before she stopped it. “I haven’t heard much this week. When she has a new boyfriend—and she always has a new boyfriend—I don’t get as many calls. She reaches out only after the boyfriend is gone, and she’s alone. I’m her therapist.”

“Kind of like I am for you, right?”

The remark stung a little. Madeline felt her face flush.

“Hey, I’m just fucking around,” Sophia said. “I like talking to you. I’m living vicariously through you. It makes me feel like I’m a college kid again and not an old lady.”

“An old lady of twenty-seven?”

“That sounds old.”

“Well, my mom must be fine because I’m not hearing from her,” Madeline said. “I always swore I’d never be like her, never depend so much on a man to make me feel good. I want to stay focused on me. On school and writing.”

“That’s the spirit.” Sophia dropped the cigarette on the ground and crushed it beneath her sneaker. “It sounds like you’re doing well in school. And writing a thesis.”

“Can I tell you something strange?” Madeline asked. “I hope you don’t think I’m a freak.”