“Me too!” Syd snorts, still in a giggle fit on the couch.
“Enough from you, Sydney!” I pipe up “Let us work! I’m going first. I will back this girl one hundred and ten percent. Her name is Lena.”
“She looks familiar,” Bren says, squinting at the photo attached to the application.
“Bren, I’ve known you for over twenty-one years. You’ve said that about stock photos in picture frames before,” I reply.
“True.” She sighs into her coffee. “Carry on.”
I start to run through the details. “Lena ran the social media account for her high school’s hockey and soccer teams.”
“I love the sample content she provided,” Bren interjects. “It’s witty and really engaging. She’d be the content queen for the team.”
“Right? That’s what I was thinking!” I beam. “She even has experience coordinating the soccer team’s charity gala every year. Major points for that. We need some new fundraising ideas.”
Truthfully, I’m hoping for something unique and original since the Bellinger special edition jerseys were such a success this year. Lena is an incoming freshman, which is great since she would stay longer term. She’s the perfect candidate.
Within a few hours, we have three more applications to review and a handful more spots to fill for interviews. The “maybe” pile is rather massive, so we broke it into a “maybe yes” and a “maybe-probably not” pile. A better system would be ideal, but for now we are just rolling with the punches.
“I’m on the fence about the next girl,” Libby begins to explain as a few guys walk into the kitchen, interrupting her train of thought.
“On the fence about who?” Blaine asks.
“We can’t disclose information until the interviews are done. Blaine, get out of here.” Libby huffs at him with irritation.
“You’ve been gone a long time. We got a lot done!” I tell Lucas as he comes to greet me.
Lucas kisses me on the cheek, sweat dripping from his forehead and almost landing on my face. “We played some basketball after the gym.”
“Which Donato sucks at, by the way.” Ryder chuckles, dropping his bag in the living room.
“He’s much better on skates.” Tyler raids the fridge, looking for something to snack on and settling on some string cheese.
“Fuck off,” Lucas jokes, snagging Tyler’s unopened string cheese. “We’re going to chill in the pool for a little bit before we mess around with my old hockey equipment. Any ideas on dinner?”
“What about a friendly competition for dinner? Then shooting drills after?” Ryder smirks.
“What did you have in mind?” Lucas raises an eyebrow.
“Have you heard of the showChopped?”Ryder asks.
An uncharacteristic squeal slips past my lips. “My mom and I love that show!!”
Ryder explains in depth how his mom is obsessed with the cooking TV show that I have seen probably every episode of. There is a secretingredient that all teams need to add somewhere into their meals, which includes a main dish and at least one side, but they don’t know until after they get all of their other ingredients. He suggests we set a budget and have teams shop for ingredients for dinner not knowing what the mystery ingredient will be.
“The girls would be the judges then?” Blaine questions. “We would need to make sure they don’t know who made what, so it’s not biased.”
“No offense, Laur, but we know you’d vote for Lucas,” Tyler jests. “Some of the guys could be judges too. What if we just do three teams of two.”
“I do love a man who can cook . . .” I remark, batting my baby blues in Lucas’ direction.
Lucas eyes narrow, putting his steely game face on, so serious about this little competition now. “What if we go to the store in about an hour?” he asks, and I nod my head in response.
“That should give us enough time to wrap up what we need to for the PR and marketing team,” I confirm.
“Great.” Lucas smiles. “I promise you we don’t want Keith cooking. He can get the secret ingredient with whoever else isn’t cooking.”
Eagerly, they rush into the backyard. They shout and divulge the details to the rest of our friends. Ryder bounces with a gleeful grin, his arms flailing with enthusiasm as he explains the rules. It reminds me of a little kid sharing a story. Who knew they would get this ecstatic about a cooking competition.
