Which was silly. Jack could date whomever he wanted, and did. Often.

“And anyway,” Aubrey went on, “that’s what batteries are for.”

Ali laughed along with Aubrey as they all continued to watch Jack, who’d gone back to the griddle. He was moving to his music again while flipping pancakes, much to the utter delight of the crowd.

“Woo-hoo!” Aubrey yelled at him, both she and Ali toasting him with their plastic cups filled with orange juice.

Jack grinned and took a bow.

“Hey,” Ali said, nudging Leah. “Go tip him.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?” Aubrey asked.

Leah rolled her eyes and stood up. “You’re both ridiculous. He’s dating some EMT flight nurse.”

Or at least he had been as of last week. She couldn’t keep up with Jack’s dating life. Okay, so she chose not to keep up. “We’re just…buddies.” They always had been, she and Jack, through thick and thin, and there’d been a lot of thin. “When you go to middle school with someone, you learn too much about him,” she went on, knowing damn well that she needed to just stop talking, something she couldn’t seem to do. “I mean, I couldn’t go out with the guy who stole all the condoms on Sex Education Day and then used them as water balloons to blast the track girls as we ran the four hundred.”

“I could,” Aubrey said.

Leah rolled her eyes, mostly to hide the fact that she’d left off the real reason she couldn’t date Jack.

“Where you going?” Ali asked when Leah stood up. “We haven’t gotten to talk about the latest episode of Sweet Wars. Now that you’re halfway through the season and down to the single eliminations, the whole town’s talking about it nonstop. Did you know that there’s a big crowd at the Love Shack on episode night?”

Yes, she’d known. At first she’d been pressured to go, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t watch herself if anyone else was in the room.

“You were awesome,” Ali said.

Maybe, but that had been the adrenaline high from being filmed. Leah had pulled it off by pretending she was Julia Child. Easy enough, since she’d been pretending that since she’d been a kid. After the first terrifying episode, she’d learned something about herself. Even as a kid who’d grown up with little to no self-esteem, there was something about being in front of a camera. It was pretend, so she’d been able to break out of her shell.

The shocking truth was, she’d loved it.

“And also, you looked great on TV,” Aubrey said. “Bitch. I know you were judged on originality, presentation, and taste, but you really should get brownie points for not looking fat. Do you look as good for the last three episodes?”