It wasn’t hard to avoid Jae Monday morning, because he was busy avoiding me. But as luck would have it, it was our day for lunch duty together. I wondered if he had told CL what was going on, or if she instinctively circulated in the territory between the 2 of us. I thought we were hiding the tension between us really well, and then Lee Joon 76 asked, “You and Mr. Jae fighting, Goddess Coachie?”

Lee Joon asked the question the way he always asked something – loudly – and Jae heard it. He came over quickly. “Goddess Coachie is my friend,” he said. “We’re just busy working now, but when we’re not; we talk a lot and have a good time. We like a lot of the same things.”

Like Jessica, I thought.

“We went to see a baseball game this weekend,” Jae told him, resting his hand on my back.

“Yeah, it was fun,” I said.

We stood side by side, smiling at Lee Joon, as if we were prosing for a yearbook photo. Then Jessica walked in. She came straight toward us.

“Who’s the babe?” Lee Joon asked, knowing it was a question that usually got a reaction.

“She’s my friend Jessica,” I replied. “I’d like you to show her respect and not call her anything other than her real name,” I added. But I thought to myself – you’ve got that right, kid.

She was wearing her dance outfit, going to dance class, I guessed. Only I had never seen her wearing this kind of dance outfit before. It may seem like a small, unimportant fact, but it signaled to me how much things had changed between us.

“Hi, Dara. Hi, Jae.” Her voice kind of melted when she spoke of Jae’s name. Lee Joon eyed her, and then glanced at me.

She hooked onto Jae, and we stood there for a moment like the 3 musketeers. Jae slowly lifted his hand from my back.

“I just ran into Top,” she said to Jae. “He’s asking old friends and camping guys over tomorrow for a barbecue party.”

Camp guys – those are my guys, not yours, I thought. Don’t talk about Top and the other counselors as if they’re your pals.

“I told him we didn’t have plans yet,” she continued, “and answered yes for both of us.”

We. Both of us. I moved away from the happy couple.

Amber, my barrette girl, reached out a peanut-buttery hand. “Know where I’m going tomorrow night?”

“Where?” I asked.

To a parade. The one they have around here. My aunt’s bringing me on the bus.”

“Really! Aunts are pretty cool, aren’t they?” I said, and made up my mind that Bom and I would hit all the mall sales and come home loaded with stuff for corn-muncher.

At the end of lunch, when Top called me over, I had my excuse for tomorrow evening all ready. Top looked terribly disappointed.

“I guess it’s better not to ask Bommie then,” he said sadly. “She probably wouldn’t want to come without you.”

“Well, you never know.” Getting out would be good for Bom, I thought, and Top would watch out for her. “Why don’t you call and ask her?”

“Would you ask her for me, please?” he replied. “Tell her it’s in my house, but I’m the only one there this summer, and there’s a bathroom on the first floor, which will be clean by then, and just two steps into the house, and lots of old chairs to sit on, and I’ll fix her whatever she likes to eat.

I couldn’t help but smile. I have this feeling that Top likes Bommie a lot. She’s very lucky, I thought.

“I’ll tell her.”

I did later that afternoon while she was stirring pasta sauce and I was washing veggies.

“What time are people getting there?” Bom asked.

I was surprised that she didn’t immediately reject the idea. “6 pm. Top said you’ll be able to see some of the local fireworks from his yard.”

She stirred a couple more times, and then I saw her steal a sideway glance at herself in the toaster mirror. Then she took a bit of her food. “What are you wearing?” she asked.

“I’m not going, Bommie.”

“What? Why would I go if you’re not?”

“To have a good time,” I said.