Jack & Lucy

Lucy

"Is Ariana Townsend one of Jack's lake rats now?" Stella asks me in between bites of her Cobb salad. She's sprawled out on the futon while I sit at the tiny wooden IKEA table serving as my desk. She was determined to make sure the studio I was staying in wasn't some sort of dungeon, so I invited her in to eat while I logged onto class.

"Ariana? From the bar?" I ask and she nods before spinning her phone around to show me what prompted her question. Jack was tagged in a picture with her and Fischer at Lake Pleasant an hour ago.

"Weird. She's another one who tried to snag Jack. Hannah wouldn't have let that happen though. Maybe now that she doesn't work there, she'll try again," I tell Stella and it's impossible to ignore the way my stomach waves at the thought of Ariana hanging with Jack today. For all I know, Jack could have slept with both of them while I was gone. I am no longer privy to his sexual exploits. 

"Are you worried?" Stella asks as she spins her phone back to her and I shake my head, "No. I don't think so. Jack always avoided her at work. He wasn't a fan." I say I'm not worried, but I can't shake my annoyance that he hung out with her. She was always obvious in her attraction to him.

"Looks like she ended the day with Fischer though. Jack is only in that one photo and the rest are of her with Fischer and Taylor Hill's crowd," she informs me as her finger swipes through the photos. "Fischer still looks good." 

Stella was attracted to Fischer for about forty-five seconds. She liked that he was Filipino and traveled to the Philippians to be with his extended family multiple times a year. Then he mentioned he was an "entrepreneur" and she took that to mean unable to keep a long-term job. She dated one guy who bounced around from start-up to start-up and now she's wary of men with ambiguous job titles.

"That whole group always looks good and that's why it's a cesspool. They all just sleep around with each other, it's gross." I tell her as I skim my assignment. "They are always tan and toned with all their little lake toys. The lake rats are just as flawless. I absolutely hate the new thong bikini trend," I mutter to her as I read over my assignment again, realizing I am absorbing nothing. I have calculus today and I have been struggling since I have had to start taking it online. I was always terrible at math and trying to do it from a book with little teacher interaction is nearly impossible. If I fail the class again, I won't graduate on time and I really can't afford to take it a third time. Financially or mentally.

"Well since you aren't hanging with Jack anymore, you won't really have a reason to be around them. I get you all to myself," she coos and then goes back to munching on her salad. I slide my hummus wrap box into the trashcan before grabbing my grid paper to start on my homework. I struggle immediately.

I continue to stress and erase for another hour while Stella wanders around the small space, picking through my few boxes and unpacking my bathroom stuff for me. She maneuvers around my large boxes containing my baking supplies and I tell her to keep them boxed up. I don't even want to look at cookie sheets.

"You can't let your audience down, Luce. You know you need to keep posting to stay relevant and start bringing in those Youtube dollars again," Stella says after I glare at the box my ring light is in. 

"I told you, my heart isn't in it at the moment. Making videos feels so tedious and I just need to focus on school at the moment," I tell her. The little voice inside my head has been nagging me to post more icing videos. I find coloring sugar cookies with icing soothing, and I know people tune into them because they relax them too. It's a great way to build my TikTok views, but I just can't bring myself to pull out my mixer. 

"You are going to school so you can run your own business. You won't have a business to run if you have nothing to sell," she tells me with a raised eyebrow. "Get to baking. I am already working on your website and we need to decide what is going to be on it."