“Half the internet is seeing a ton of press about us.”

“And thinks we’re jerks,” I emphasized. “Which we are.”

“For defending ourselves?”

“If we’d just let it go, it would have been like—like a baby bird trying to attack a mountain. But now it’s a thing, and it’s a thing because we made it one, not them. The further we take this, the worse we look.”

“I’m the CEO. I’m the one who built this place up—the one who turned this operation from a backyard grill to the force it is today—”

She stopped, then, because the tears sprang into my eyes so fast it stunned us both.

“Pepper.”

I blinked them back. “I miss that backyard grill.”

There were a few beats of silence, then, when one of us was clearly going to wave the white flag. I knew if I waited, it would be her. I knew it could just as easily be me.

Instead, I said, “We had integrity, then.”

My mom thinned her lips, glaring down at the angel cake. “I didn’t steal anything from that deli.”

“Then why won’t you let this go? We’re going to be the laughingstock of—”

“Go to your room.”

It was the first time anybody had said that to me since elementary school. I almost laughed.

And maybe it was funny. I’d spent my whole life in constant fear of rocking the boat, of making anybody angry. Jack had probably forgotten the Pepper People-Pleaser moniker he’d briefly given me sophomore year, but it applied then and certainly had up until now.

But nothing terrible happened. The earth didn’t pull out from under my feet.

I didn’t feel good, exactly, but I didn’t feel bad either.

And it was in this weirdly grounded mindset that Jack texted me out of the blue, and I found myself being more forthright with him than I ever would have been even a few weeks ago. It was in that same mindset that, not too long after, Wolf chatted me on the Weazel app and asked if we should finally meet.

It seemed stupid not to say yes. Especially since I would be out with Landon and the other seniors anyway. Now, hopefully, we could do it with all the air cleared between us. It would be different, then—Landon would snap back into the self he is with me, the self he is when everybody isn’t watching, and it would all make sense. I had to believe that.

So I said yes.

And it’s all I’ve thought about since—through the frosty breakfast with my mom the next morning, when we barely spoke to each other even though she was on her way out the door for a business trip; through my study date with Pooja, where we split a sandwich and a salad at Panera; through the phone call I had with my dad that night, when he near bored me to tears recounting something Carrie Underwood’s husband did in a hockey game.

All I’ve thought about until suddenly there was a much, much larger thing to think about in my immediate line of sight: the article that Hub Seed published about us.

And I mean us. Not us as in Girl Cheesing and Big League Burger—us as in me and Jack.

Pepper

It happens the moment homeroom lets out on Monday. Jack and I link eyes and open our mouths like we’re poised to rib each other like we normally do, but there’s nothing really to say—we’ve both stayed off each other’s respective Twitter feeds since our run-in on Saturday. Instead, we blow out the same breath and smile sheepishly at each other.

“So,” he says, walking up and drumming his knuckles on my desk.

I expect him to brag about the fact Ethan and his grilled cheese have racked up at least five thousand more retweets than we have, but somehow I know from the shape of the half grin that he isn’t.

“So,” I say back.

He huffs out a laugh. “Well—now that this is all winding down—we should probably … I don’t know. Actually do our captaining duties?”

I finish shoving my books into my bag. “Oh, those?”

“Let me guess. You already did everything and then some.”

“No, no.” Truth is, outside of talking to Jack and going to actual practice, I’ve barely had the time to do anything. “I wanted to save all the dirty work for you.”

“Well, in that case, we should probably figure out what we’re doing for fundraising. Since the bajillion dollars they bleed out of us for tuition isn’t enough.”

This time his tone isn’t bitter, but knowing—an acknowledgment that I get it. That I come from a background like his, even if I’m well displaced from it now. Like at the end of all of these shenanigans, we’ve finally landed on common ground.

“Actually … I was thinking maybe a bake sale.”

Jack’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “How old school of you.”

I shrug. “Between your deli and my baking prowess, we might actually make it, y’know, not suck.”

Jack considers this. “Huh. That isn’t a terrible idea.”

“I have a good one every now and then.”

“You should actually come to the deli.”

He made the offer last night, but only in person can I tell he’s actually serious about it.

“You guys are in the East Village, right?”

I must sound nervous because Jack pats me on the back. “It’s a straight shot down on the 6 train.”