Although, the longer he stood in silence, and the more Eve thought about the bed she’d moved and the lights she’d lowered, the more this seemed less like a friendship date and more like a clumsy, low-budget, actual date.

Which it absolutely was not meant to be.

And which he certainly would not want.

Oh, good great shit.

“It’s a bonding experience with clear perambulators,” she blurted out, because an explanation suddenly seemed quite urgent. “I mean—per—um—”

“I know what you meant,” he said.

She swallowed and waited for him to say more. He did not. Righto, then. “Because, you know, you weren’t sure how to officially become friends. So I thought . . .” Well, there hadn’t been very much thought involved. It was more instinct that had driven her to this. Or some weird, unexplainable desire to sit beside Jacob with no other distractions, and just . . . talk.

Oh dear.

“I thought,” she said finally, “that I could make a specific evening for you to say, Yep, only friends do that, that’s the moment we became friends, and then—”

“Well,” he cut in, “it’s working. Because I’m pretty sure only friends do something this nice to make their friends feel comfortable with calling them friends. Or—oh, for fuck’s sake, I don’t know. Only you, Eve. Only you.” He shut the door and rubbed a hand over his face, as if trying to hide his smile. Except he couldn’t hide it, because gosh, it was big. Big enough that Eve’s clammy palms started to calm down and her hammering heart became a much more respectable drumbeat.

She was relieved, obviously, that he hadn’t taken this the wrong way. She’d been silly to think he would take it the wrong way. Why would he possibly take it the wrong way?

“So,” Jacob said, walking toward her. His eyes slid over everything, everything, again and again, as if he was greedy to see it. And it occurred to her for the first time that Jacob, for all he seemed not to give a shit, might be just as pleased by the thought of being liked as she was.

He looked pleased. She’d made him pleased. The idea started a bloom of happiness in her chest that threatened to grow into a garden.

“So,” he said again. “We’re . . . sitting on your bed?”

“And listening to music and eating crap,” she said firmly. “Basically a teenage girl sleepover.”

“Ah.” He nodded gravely. “Because no one knows how to have fun better than a group of teenage girls.”

“Exactly.”

He started to sit down on the bed, which made Eve realize she wasn’t sitting down at all—just hovering awkwardly around the room like a nervous hostess at her first dinner party.

Arching an eyebrow, Jacob nudged the bed’s duvet slightly aside to look at the sheets beneath. “Nice corners.”

She flushed. Okay, yes, she’d been practicing her bed making on her own bed. She had to get good somehow. “Thanks.”