Unwrapping her butter, she spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “What say you to an alliance?”
An alliance? “And how would that work?”
“I don’t know. You put your cake on top of mine or vice versa. The end result:super cake.We’d have this competition in the bag.”
I burst into laughter, and she dramatically shushed me. “And who gets the point for winning?” I whispered back.
“Well, obviously that would be me. You already have a point for stomping on Jack at flag football. Great job, by the way.” She raised and lowered her eyebrows several times, I assumed as a way to show she was impressed. What it ended up looking like was a woman trying to regain the feeling in her face.
“Don’t think complimenting me will be enough for me to forget that you’re the only one coming out on top in this scenario.”
Emerson waved me off. “That’s not what matters. What matters is that we’re a team. And teamwork makes the dreamwork.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You love me,” she said with a smile that made her mischievous dimple I’d never noticed before pop adorably. These people were such weirdos.
I turned to find Jack shaking his head with a smile at Emerson’s antics. At least he wasn’t jumping down my throat over this fake alliance offering.
He looked so good when he smiled. But I ignored the warmth in my cheeks as I thought of him and got back to work, measuring powdered sugar for my frosting.
Time was called just as I pulled my cake from the oven, and I wasn’t surprised to see that most people were at a similar place. I was surprised that Jack’s cake looked perfectly cooked. But that didn’t mean it tasted good.
I turned away from Bobby and bumped right into Jack. He let out anumphbefore dusting himself off. Even stunned Jack was hot.
“You’ve got something right there.” I pointed at his cheekbone, which had a bit of batter on it. He wiped flour off his hands onto the same spot, almost purposely, which made me smile. Not because it was cute. Definitely not that. He then proceeded to brush it into a dangling lock of hair, which had me laughing. Was this the feeling people got when he was being playful with them? I wanted to eat it up with a spoon.
“To allow time for our cakes to cool, we’re going to break for lunch.” Bobby’s interruption was both welcome and unappreciated, because I wanted this moment to go on, even if I shouldn’t.
I cleaned my area up before going to the other side of the mess hall to a sandwich-making station. The staff didn’t cook for us on our days off, but they were nice enough to do this for us today, which was much appreciated. I was starving.
I made my way to the table everyone was sharing and found my spot between Autumn and Jack. Really, universe? Jack waskind enough to scoot over for me to sit down, an uncharacteristic move, but maybe he was just trying to keep space between us.
The whole group was ravenous.
Felicia broke the silence. “Where are Hazel and Leo?”
Eyes met as we questioned the same thing. Leo would be excited about eating whatever we ended up making, but he was a garbage disposal. Last year, he told me he was a judge for the town’s tuna melt competition, which sounded disgusting.
Autumn gave a long sigh. “The director for Sunlight was fired.”
Murmurs came from the group. Hazel hadn’t been specific as to why she bailed in our text message, but obviously, it was a big deal.
“They looked for that person for months,” a resigned Jack said. “What the hell happened?”
“Apparently, they were arrested for embezzling money from their child’s PTA. Luckily, they weren’t in charge of the finances for Sunlight yet.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Lamar’s shocked expression matched everyone else’s. “Who steals money from kids?”
There were murmurs of agreement and outrage.
“So what are they going to do?” I asked. Autumn was always in the know, but this new development likely had no solution yet.
“They don’t know. Leo mentioned that the assistant director was incredibly qualified for their position, so it’s possible they’ll move them up and then look for their replacement. Until then, it looks like it’ll be just me running things here.”
“I can help with whatever you need,” I offered. “Especially when it comes to communications.” It didn’t go without my noticing that Jack’s gaze was on me. I turned, prepared to defend myself from I didn’t know what, but his stare wassomething more like awe. There was no way. I could only do wrong in his eyes.
Felicia offered to separate and distribute the mail to campers, and Lamar said he would coordinate with the cleaning crew on his day off. Sawyer, Emerson, and Azalea offered up similar projects they could help out on.
