“Mmm,” I say, inhaling the scent of the cookie dough. “What’s the occasion?” I think I’ve made cookies maybe, like, once in my life. It was last year when the basketball team had a bake sale and this girl Katie who was going out with Corey’s best friend Rob said she was going to make three hundred pecan somethings and then Rob said, “Oh, Katie, you’re the best girlfriend.” Corey gave me this pointed look, so I felt like I had to contribute something. I made the Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies from the recipe on the chocolate chip bag. Being domestic is so overrated. Nobody needs a girl that can cook anymore. That’s why there are so many good takeout places.

“She’s making them for James,” Jasmine reports. She’s wearing a light yellow apron with pink and purple butterflies splashed all over it. Her hair is tied back messily, and she’s barefoot. She looks effortlessly beautiful, and I wonder how it is that she doesn’t have a boyfriend and how she can be wasting her time working at Hooters. She could be a real model.

“How sweet,” I say, not sure if baking cookies for James is going to work. Since we’ve been here, James has hardly ever been home, preferring to stay out partying and using his fake ID to get into bars. During the little time he is at the house, I’ve seen him with no less than three different girls.

It doesn’t seem like his stomach would be the way to his heart. Some marijuana might work. Or a new set of rims. Unless they’re pot brownies. I sniff the air experimentally and scan the counter for empty Baggies. Nothing.

Jasmine wipes her hands on her apron and starts to grease a cookie sheet. “Now, the secret to a good cookie is in the way you flour the cookie sheet,” she says. “It’s all in the flour.”

“Is that your apron?” I ask her.

She looks down at it. “Well, I’m wearing it, so . . . yeah, I guess it would be mine.”

“No, I mean, did you bring it from home?”

“Of course I brought it from home. What did you think, the show just provides butterflied aprons for us to use at our leisure?”

I giggle. “How was your lunch?” I ask her.

“Good,” she says, grabbing a paper towel and wiping up some flour that spilled onto the counter. “He had to get back to work, though, so we’re having dinner later.”

“Oooh, twice in one day,” I say. “Interesting.” I reach over the mixing bowls and grab a handful of chocolate chips out of the bag.

“Yeah,” Simone says. “What happened to ‘if not him then someone else.’”

“Yeah,” I say, raising my eyebrows. I settle into one of the stools near the counter and kick off my shoes. “What happened to that?”

“Knock it off!” Jasmine says. “It’s not like that. It’s more like, if not lunch, then why not dinner? And he just happened to be offering. Like I’m going to say no to a free meal.”