Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3) - Talia Hibbert Page 0,58

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.

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.”

He grinned that wolfish grin and finally sat. Eve swallowed. The sofa bed had seemed a perfectly reasonable place for them both to sit, until Jacob had actually done so. Now it looked like a den of lascivious temptation. Possibly because he looked like a lascivious temptation.

He lounged comfortably among the blankets and pillows like a prince, his long, lean body taking up space unapologetically, spread out as if on display. The breadth of his chest was emphasized by that neatly buttoned shirt, the one she’d ironed for him because she’d caught him trying to do it himself