Read Crush du Jour for Free Online

her, tapping the tabletop authoritatively. “Love is on the back burner. For now.”
    “Maybe it shouldn’t be,” she offered. Unlike me, Anna was a serial monogamist. She rarely went more than a few weeks between boyfriends, which meant she was due for a new one any day now.
    “Romance is a good thing, you know. Or it can be.”
    “So should I ask Seth to dance by the dry-goods pantry?”
    “Funny. Look, you keep saying that you don’t want to crush on Seth, and that’s fine, I get that. But what if you actually had an actual relationship? Unlike crushes, relationships can be less distracting and more supportive.”
    I raised an eyebrow at her. “If I wanted more support, I’d buy a new sports bra. You’re all the support I need for right now.”
    She snorted. “We’ll see.” She waggled a finger at me knowingly. “Just keep in mind, some hotties have a shelf life. If you spend your summer slaving in the kitchen, when you’re finally ready to flirt again … Seth may be off the menu.”
    According to Mom, Hype was, in fact, mostly hype, though she still had two more visits to go before she’d write her review. As for my cooking class, we were chopping away fiendishly, but as for actual cooking? Not so much.
    I couldn’t believe how much my painstakingly rendered lesson plans were being changed. I’d been so enthusiastic about jazzing up simple basics, but the reality was that the students? Not so much. They weren’t interested in subbing fondue for grilled cheese or prosciutto with melon for bologna sandwiches. They were, well, just kids, when it came down to it. And they may have loved me, but they also loved Seth’s cooking.
    It was so strange. We were like those oldcommercials for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: “Two great tastes that taste great together.” I was the peanut butter; I had the rapport and the experience with kids. Seth was the chocolate; he could barely make eye contact with the kids, but he knew what they liked. And it wasn’t fondue or fancy salami.
    Obviously, I knew that we were supposed to cater to the kids on their own level; after all, this class was really about giving them the tools they needed to feed themselves well, safely, and healthily while their parents were at work. But did that really mean we had to resort to things like prepackaged sponge cake and canned fruit salad? I just wanted to inject some imagination or sophistication into these dishes— but no one else was having it.
    While I stood in the corner silently fretting, Seth and the rest of the class were draining and rinsing canned beans for a vegetarian three-bean chili. I had lobbied for soy crumbles in the mix, but I’d been outvoted. Apparently, some kids are grossed out by soy. Who knew?
    Rinsing beans is a soggier business than most people realize. Droplets of bean juice ran out of the sink and onto the tiled floor.
    Seth inched over to my workspace and poked me in the ribs. “Do you think we should put a stop to that?” He jerked his head in the direction of Pete and Barrie, who were the sous-chefs involved in primary bean drainage. Barrie grappled with the electric can opener while Pete struggled to get the faucet sprayer under control. The little hose had been turned to maximum output and was now waving about like the tentacles on an octopus. Pete looked like he was rehearsing the upside-down kiss in Spider-Man —his hair was drenched and plastered to his cheeks.
    I shrugged. “They’re standing on the paper.” We laid paper out before the class and tossed it in the garbage at the end of the day.
    “But we’re the ones who have to clean up the paper, ultimately,” Seth pointed out.
    It was annoying when someone so cute could be so reasonable. The last five minutes of every class were dedicated to clean-up time, but it wasn’t the kids’ top skill. That was okay with me, though, because I had a secret: I liked staying behind afterward, tidying up with Seth.
    That was cool, wasn’t it? It