When I woke up the next morning, it took a second for everything to sink in. And when it did, queasiness quickly followed. I stumbled to the bathroom, desperate to brush the bad taste out of my mouth. Last night’s whiplash was still fresh in my mind. The way everything had gone so wrong, so fast. Perfect summer with my best friends? Ha! Whatever we were now, whatever this was … it was the antithesis of perfect. But a little trick I’d learned after Elodie left was that baking would get my mind off things. I was usually an early riser, but today I woke even before the sun came up and made my way, bleary-eyed, to the kitchen. It was time to cookie.

Within minutes, my narrow galley kitchen was in disarray. Flour, sugar, and eggs lined the counter in bowls, and by the time the oven had preheated, my arm was sore from mixing. A few drops of vanilla and a handful of dark chocolate chunks later, I had my cookie batter ready. I laid out two dozen cookies on my baking trays, sprinkled them with sea salt and crushed pistachio, and then into the oven they went.

There was no time to rest, though. I still had the doughnuts to make. Using the same ingredients, I browned butter in a saucepan before mixing it with everything else, then poured the cake doughnut batter into molds. I popped them into the oven right as the cookies came out.

While I worked, I focused just on the task right in front of me. The tacky feel of the dough in my hands, the ache in my shoulder as I whisked. The aroma of warm sugar escaping when the oven opened, the crunch of the sweet and salty pistachio cookies when I bit into them.

It was only when the doughnuts came out that my flurry of activity came to a stop, and the world came rushing back. Penny. Chad. My perfect summer hanging in the balance of what could potentially turn into A Great Big Thing.

I sighed, leaning against my now-spotless counters. It had been such a mistake returning Chad’s kiss last night. It wasn’t a bad kiss, exactly, but it wasn’t a good one, either. If he’d been waiting for some magical moment full of fireworks and electricity, this wasn’t it. I thought of myself as a pretty good kisser, but the total lack of anything on his face had given it all away—this wasn’t the outcome he’d been expecting. Nostalgia wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. The kiss hadn’t meant anything to either of us.