Mika Abdalla and Josh Heuston’s Dating Story Has More Plot Twists Than Off Campus
The funny thing about the Mika Abdalla and Josh Heuston dating story is that it started with two people who were not even supposed to be the couple everyone was watching. On Off Campus, Mika plays Allie Hayes, whose real love story belongs with Dean Di Laurentis, played by Stephen Kalyn. Josh plays Justin Kohl, the musician who briefly complicates Hannah and Garrett’s relationship in season one. Completely different storylines. Completely different romantic interests. And yet, somewhere during the Off Campus press tour, fans started paying attention to Mika and Josh instead.
They kept appearing together in interviews, cast videos and social media posts. Nothing particularly dramatic happened. There was no kiss caught on camera, no suspicious declaration, no obvious confirmation. Just enough little moments for the internet to start wondering if there was something happening when the cameras stopped rolling. Normally, that would have been harmless celebrity speculation.
Except Mika had been in a relationship with actor Jake Short for roughly five years. The two met while filming Sex Appeal in 2021, and at some point during their relationship, they became engaged. They never made a big public announcement about it, but Jake’s manager acknowledged the engagement in 2025. So while fans were making edits of Mika and Josh and analysing their press tour interactions, there was one fairly important complication. As far as the public knew, Mika was still with someone else.
Then, on June 1, 2026, everything shifted. Mika’s representative confirmed that she and Jake had separated. The statement said they remained supportive friends, but the breakup immediately changed the way people looked at those earlier interactions between Mika and Josh. Suddenly, old clips were being replayed. Interviews were being analysed. Every glance apparently required a committee investigation.
And then things became genuinely messy:
→ An old podcast clip featuring Mika and Jake resurfaced online and started spreading.
→ Jake later apologised for what he described as a disrespectful joke.
→ Mika and Jake released a joint statement asking people not to turn playful moments from their relationship into something harmful.
The conversation became so intense that the official Off Campus account stepped in and warned fans against targeted harassment. And this is worth saying clearly: despite all the theories online, there has been no reliable evidence that Josh caused Mika and Jake’s breakup or that the two relationships overlapped.
At that point, the entire thing could still have disappeared as another press tour rumour. It did not. On June 16, an Australian radio programme claimed that someone connected to a person close to Josh had privately confirmed that Mika and Josh were dating. Yes, the source chain was basically a friend of a friend of a friend. Naturally, the internet took this information very calmly. For approximately six days. Then Paris happened.
Fan photographs appeared to show Mika and Josh together during a convenience store stop. Mika was holding his arm. Josh had his hand behind her head. It was the kind of sighting that immediately sends people back through months of interviews thinking, wait... were we watching this happen the entire time? And on the very same day, Josh posted a carousel of photos with the Off Campus cast. Buried inside it was a picture of himself and Mika sitting together on a flight.
By this point, what had started as fans noticing two co stars spending a lot of time together had turned into a full internet investigation. But there was still one important thing missing. Mika and Josh themselves had not publicly confirmed anything. They had not explained when the relationship began. They had not addressed the timeline. Their representatives did not comment when approached.
Which brings us to the final, slightly ridiculous twist. Mika is about to become one of the central faces of Off Campus season two. Josh will not be in it. Season two shifts the story toward Allie and Dean, meaning Mika will return alongside Stephen Kalyn while Josh’s character, Justin Kohl, disappears from the series for now. Showrunner Louisa Levy has said she would consider bringing Justin back in the future, possibly to explore his romance with Stella from the books. But until that happens, Mika and Josh’s reported relationship will exist almost entirely outside the show that brought them into the same orbit.
So no, this is not the neat little story of two actors playing lovers, falling in love on set, and eventually confirming what everyone already suspected. It is a five year relationship ending, a press tour that suddenly looked different in hindsight, an old podcast clip resurfacing at the worst possible moment, a third hand radio whisper, one extremely convincing convenience store trip in Paris and two actors who still have not publicly explained the story everyone else is trying to piece together for them. And perhaps the funniest part of all? While the internet waits for Mika and Josh to tell us what actually happened, season two will arrive with Mika falling in love with someone else on screen. Very inconvenient for the script. Excellent for the internet.