Colliding Stars |✔️

24. Balloons

"That's the worst cooking advice ever," Jada said, bluntly.

Everett was about to say something but shut his mouth and his jaw dropped instead when he saw the dough Jada was struggling with. He moved towards her and poked the dough that was almost harder than stone with his forefinger.

He looked terrified as he raised his gaze to Jada. "What did you put in this?"

She shrugged and gestured to the cookbook. "I followed the recipe."

He stared at her in disbelief. She stared back, blankly.

He then glanced at me. "Lana. I thought you said you guys could cook?"

I licked my fingers covered in cookie dough. "Not really. I never said that."

When the realization hit him, Everett covered his face with his hands. "Shit. We're screwed."

Isha, however, jumped to his side and tossed an arm around his shoulder, pulling him down to the level of her height. She then dragged him over to the trays of baked cookies. "Relax, Prez. We have four trays here and my dough is way better. Yes, we burnt two batches but we still have more dough to work with. So just give us an hour and we'll have more than enough freshly baked cookies ready for the middle schoolers and their parents."

"Okay, fine. Just...please call me if you need anything." As the panic and worry eased across his face, he glanced at me and with a softer tone said, "Just text me on Messenger. Either in the group chat or privately. I'll come help, okay?"

Watching his softened face for a moment, I nodded. He gave me a small smile and before I could even think about returning it, he pulled out his phone as it started ringing and brought it to his ear while leaving the kitchen.

"Well. That didn't go so bad. Let's just avoid burning the rest of them so we can avoid him getting an actual heart attack," Isha said, stealing a cookie from one of the trays.

Carmen sighed. "Never thought we, The Sirens, would be on the school grounds after 2 P.M. It's legit 4 P.M. now."

"And who's fault is it?" Isha said, raising her brows and sticking her tongue out at me.

"You've could've said no," I murmured, licking my sticky fingers.

"You know we don't do that to you," she said sweetly, moving over to me and wrapping her arms around my waist before nuzzling her face against my stomach. I rested my chin on her warm little head and let her hair tickle my skin.

Jada started dusting off the splotches of flour on her frizzy curls. "It's all on Weston. That guy is on a roll these days. I can't believe he's making changes around here. I don't know if it's because he's good at that stuff or because people just don't give a shit anymore that a random white guy suddenly shows up and tries to change everything around here."

She then added, "Honestly, I'm surprised he's still here. Like, why even move here? Especially when they're loaded."

"Beats me. He probably has a reason even though I can't think of a single one."

His sister.

Because of his sister. He moved here with his parents for a fresh start and they chose this town because his mom had grown up here. I didn't say that out loud though because I didn't have anything to do with it. I just happened to get slightly drunk that night and spilled some of my secrets so he spilled some of his own. And that was never happening again.