Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(50)

He pressed the heel of his hand against his cock, not for any particular reason. Just because.

JACOB: YOUR own home, is it?

EVE: Squatter’s rights.

He laughed—actually laughed out loud, and felt the accompanying spark of warmth that had become so familiar around her. He didn’t think he’d ever been this easy with someone so quickly, didn’t think he’d ever learned another person’s rhythms enough to joke around like this without months of observational research first. But she was so open, and so reliably kind, that he couldn’t help himself.

And since she’d called it friendship, he didn’t even have to worry that all this warmth might mean something else.

EVE: Am I being too loud? I didn’t mean to disturb you.

JACOB: You’re fine. Just making me curious. You’re not using my weights, are you?

EVE: Is that not allowed?

JACOB: It’s allowed. I just don’t want you to break your own foot.

EVE: Because it would increase your precious insurance. But it would also be payback for the wrist, so . . .

Truthfully, he’d been thinking less about insurance and more about keeping Eve safe and uninjured. If she hurt herself, she might cry, and if she cried, he might die.

Or something.

At the hospital, they’d told Jacob his concussion was mild. But after a week of thinking increasingly strange thoughts about his chef, he was beginning to suspect they’d misdiagnosed him.

JACOB: Making you change a thousand beds this week was payback for my wrist. So no foot-breaking please. What are you doing?

EVE: It’s a surprise.

A surprise? Jacob turned those words this way and that, examining them from every angle, before deciding that—yep. They kind of suggested she was doing something for him. Or something that would impact him. Maybe she was painting his original antique end table a hideous shade of orange.

Or maybe . . .

EVE: It’s a friendship thing. Are you free this evening? For a friendship thing?

Or maybe that. Maybe that.

*

Eve was, not to put too fine a point on things, bricking it.

She stood, arms outstretched, in the center of the sitting room (as if her body could hide the “surprise” directly behind her) and waited for Jacob to come. He hadn’t texted her back, but she could hear him shifting around next door, could hear the springs of his bed creaking as he got up.

Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she looked quickly at the screen. She had five unread messages from Flo—Pinterest links and theme ideas and various other party-related things that, for some reason, made Eve’s stomach drop. She didn’t want to think about why, so she ignored Flo completely and checked the sisterly group chat instead.

You can’t ignore Florence forever. You can’t ignore your future forever.

No, not forever. Just . . . for now. While she was here, waiting for Jacob. Just for now.

DANI: Who’s up for a phone call tonight? I just finished a horrifically limited essay about the future of feminism and require a palate cleanser.

CHLOE: This is Red. Chloe says she can’t talk right now because she’s playing comp. But I reckon she’ll be done in fifteen.

Eve tapped out her own answer in a rush as she heard Jacob’s bedroom door open.

EVE: Can’t, about to have a meeting w my boss.

DANI: At eight o’clock in the evening?!

EVE: Could last all night, he’s a sticker for details.

And she was looking forward to hearing him nitpick.

A gentle knock sounded at the door. Eve threw her phone onto the nearby weight bench and called, “Come in.”

The door swung open to reveal Jacob in the jeans and shirt he considered casual, his expression uncertain. But there was a relaxation about his mouth, a smile about his eyes, that had developed over the last few days of cooking and bickering and scrubbing bathrooms together. She liked that relaxation. She liked that smile.

Because they were friends, obviously. As she was about to prove.

“Ta-dah,” she said, giving him jazz hands as he looked around the room she’d rearranged. “Friend stuff.”

Jacob didn’t reply. He just . . . stared, in that very sharp and precise way he had, his gaze flicking about the space to catalog it all. She wondered what he saw.

Well—she knew what he saw: his various exercise apparatus pushed to the edge of the space, and the cursed sofa bed she’d been sleeping on—or rather, tortured by—dragged until it sat in front of the window. The curtains spread wide open, revealing the hot, drunken retreat of the sun, which lit up the mountains of pillows she’d stolen from the storeroom. Because Jacob, she remembered from their first strange night—the night he didn’t remember at all—liked nests.

So she’d made him a nest. Not to sleep in, obviously. No, they were just going to sit here and watch the sun set and listen to music because she’d noticed that every song she sang, he seemed to know, and she wanted to test him and show him things he might like and maybe learn new songs she might like. And there were snacks, too, because every friendship date needed snacks.

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.