I snap them open and find him looking at me with a totally different but equally hard-to-read expression. He sighs. “We don’t need to figure it out tonight. It’s okay.”

“It’s not. We don’t kiss each other.” I hate how plaintive I sound, how small and unsure, when I always prefer to be brassy and bossy with Jacob to make up for the age and experience gap between us. “And if we start doing that, then I just don’t know—”

As if what I just said doesn’t mean anything to him at all, he kisses me again. More tongue this time, harder and more demanding, and it’s very hard for my brain to remember why it’s not okay when his lips are playing against mine in that brain-scrambling, better-than-fantasies delicious way. “Yes,” he whispers against my mouth when he finally lets go of my lower lip with a pop. “Look at that. You survived kissing me again. Now let’s go downstairs and have dinner, and then make gingerbread cookies or whatever you were about to do before I arrived.”

I can’t remember anything from before he arrived. “And we’ll just pretend that you’re my boyfriend?”

His gaze drops to my mouth and stays there as he nods slowly. “Think you can manage that?”

I blink away from him, knowing the answer is yes. Yes, I can pretend to be in love with him for a few days. Easiest thing I’d ever do. But what do we do about the single bed in the corner of the room?

Would anyone notice if I grabbed extra blankets and pillows to sleep on the floor?

As if Jacob—Jake—can read my mind, he grips my chin and drags my attention back to his face. “One thing at a time.”

I nod.

* * *

Downstairs, they’re still bustling around, getting dishes on the table, and nobody notices that I’m clearly shellshocked. Nobody except Jacob—Jake, oh God, I need to remember that—who sticks right by my side, cool as a cucumber.

We couldn’t be more opposite in this moment, and I’ve spent the last two years noticing all the ways we aren’t the same. I’m fire, he’s ice. He’s mature and I’m a girl playing dress-up as an adult. I’m impulsive and he thinks everything through with careful precision.

I throw this “pretend to be my boyfriend” plan in his lap and then panic. He picks it up and carefully manages the chaos I’ve created.

Once we sit to eat, he handles the conversation so deftly, my parents don’t even realize he’s not really answering their questions about our relationship.

He uses all of his lawyer tricks to spin stories and take control of the conversation, steering it as close to the truth as possible without revealing my deceptions.