“Then why don’t we up the stakes?”

“What, you want this war to bleed into Instagram?”

Pepper snorts. “Please. I have no interest in embarrassing you that thoroughly.”

“Embarrassing me, huh?”

Somehow in this back-and-forth snark we’ve gravitated so close to each other that my shoulder is grazing hers. Her eyes flicker to it for a moment, but neither of us moves.

“My staged food pictures put Martha Stewart to shame.”

“Yeah? Well, people are too busy actually eating our food to ’gram it, so.”

She responds with another slow slurp of milkshake, not breaking eye contact.

“Okay, fine. How do we up the stakes?”

I hear the smirk in her voice before it fully curls on her face. “Sudden death. Retweet war. We both tweet pictures of our grilled cheeses at the same time, and whoever has more retweets by the end of the week wins.”

I’m dismissing this before she even finishes the sentence. “You have way more followers than we do.”

“And you have way more engagement per follower than we do,” says Pepper, with the bored air of someone who is anticipating this argument, of someone who has done their research and then some. “But I have a solution. We get a neutral third party involved.”

“Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t have an opinion on our grilled cheeses right now?”

“Unlikely. Which is why I think we should approach an outlet. Isn’t one of the cofounders of Hub Seed a Stone Hall alum?”

“You think you can get the Hub involved in this?”

Pepper shrugs. “They’ve already reached out to Taffy about writing an article on the Twitter spat between the brands. I’m guessing if your parents have checked the deli’s email lately, they’ve gotten one too.”

It’s a true testament to how deep we’ve sunk into this that I not only know who Taffy is, but that she and her dog have been popping into my “suggest following” so much on Twitter, I know which sparkly outfit she dressed Snuffles in yesterday.

“So … what? We ask them to tweet images of both of our grilled cheeses?”

She nods. But she’s dreaming. The Hub might be interested in our shenanigans for a quick one-off story, but they’ve got over five million followers on Twitter. That’s the kind of social media real estate you don’t waste on two teens in a grilled cheese fight.

“I’ll propose it to them over email. They’ll send a tweet explaining the stakes and tweet two pictures: yours and mine.” She pauses for a moment, raising her brows. “And to really make it fair—we’ll ask them not to say which grilled cheese is which.”

“Won’t it be obvious when yours looks like flash-frozen garbage someone stuck in the microwave?”

Pepper doesn’t bat an eye. “So, are you in or what?”

I slump back farther on the wall, making myself her height so our eyes are level. Up this close, I can see the faint spray of freckles on her nose that must be more visible in the summer.

“Depends. What happens if I win?”

As usual, Pepper is all too prepared with an answer. “Loser concedes to the other from their account. A humble tweet of acknowledgment, once the people have spoken.”

“You seem eerily confident for someone who’s about to go down.”

“So you’re game?”

I consider her for a moment, with her tangled, wet bangs fringing her face and her eyes so steady on mine, and suddenly I can’t resist.

“Let’s sweeten the deal.”

“What are you thinking?”

“If you lose, you have to jump off the high dive.”

I’m expecting Pepper to freeze, or at least have a reaction half as visceral as the last time I brought up that little incident in freshman year when she scrambled off the high dive so fast her butt might have been on fire. Instead, she doesn’t break eye contact with me for even a millisecond as she gives me a nonchalant shrug.

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“But if you lose, you have to do that hundred-yard butterfly you skipped out on the other day.” She pauses. “And give back the dive team’s time in the lanes.”

The idea of losing with Grandma Belly’s grilled cheese on full display is so unfathomable I don’t even hesitate. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

This time, I’m the one who extends my hand out to shake. Pepper smirks, and when she takes it, she squeezes my fingers hard enough I’m half expecting them to be stuck together when she pulls away. Instead, there’s this strange tingle, like we’ve forged something, made a pact in this second with more weight to it than anything we could put on paper.

Then suddenly she’s laughing at me. I don’t even realize it’s because I’ve started drinking her stupid milkshake until something unfamiliar hits my tongue.

“This isn’t cookies and cream. You did something to this.”

Pepper takes another slurp of hers. “Salted caramel sauce,” she says.

I take another sip against my will, which has apparently disintegrated in the few seconds between the first sip and right now. Jesus, this is good. It feels like my taste buds just woke up from a long nap.

“That’s not even on the BLB menu,” I protest. I would know—I’ve been researching it with an absurd amount of dedication, to find things to mock on Twitter when the time is right.