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It didn’t mean anything. I’d wanted to talk to him that day too, and I’d had no agenda. And he was in love with someone else. That was literally why we were here. But it made my stomach do a little twisty thing anyway.

Maybe it twisted because for whatever reason, Jacob liked me. And being liked by Jacob meant something because he was so shy. It’s like when someone’s pet comes to sit with you instead of their person, and you feel like the chosen one. It made me feel a little special, like he saw something in me. Though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what that was.

“Okay,” I said. “Well, good. I wanted to talk to you too.”

The corner of his lip twitched and he looked down at his shoes. “Good night.”

“Yeah. Good night.”

I watched him get in his truck and drive off before I went inside.

“I thought you hated him,” Jessica said flatly.

We were sitting in the cafeteria at lunch the next day. She had a chicken salad and I was eating a Caesar wrap.

“I think it was just all the sexual tension?”

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Yeah, you know how thin the line is between love and hate? That whole thing? Turns out it’s true. Who knew.”

“I thought you said you’d never date a coworker.”

“That was more of a guideline than a rule.”

She pursed her lips and skewered a cherry tomato with her fork and chewed it slowly, eyeing me.

We’d made the official announcement this morning. Told Gibson, who seemed one part surprised by it and one part relieved, because even if he hadn’t slipped about the kidney thing, this now meant Jacob would have told me himself, being my boyfriend and all.

The only person in on the scheme was Zander, who I guess Jacob had talked to about his situation. So I asked Jacob if I could tell my best friend, which he agreed to, since it was only fair.

That was an interesting phone call.

Alexis said it sounded like a romcom and to let her know when I got to the Only One Bed scene.

Jacob’s whole family had sent me Instagram requests. We’d have to start posting pictures of us on there, now that we’d gone public with our “relationship.”

When I got home from work, I started in on the house. Jacob was coming over tomorrow to see my place. Honestly, there wasn’t much I could do about the way it looked. It wasn’t dirty, it was just freakin’ old.

But I could make some improvements on my room. For one, I didn’t need to sleep under the ratty bedspread Mom got me for my fifteenth birthday. The glow-in-the-dark stars could come off the ceiling. I also didn’t need all the Smallville posters hanging everywhere. I’d been seriously obsessed with Tom Welling and in a really creepy way.

I started by taking all those down. The teal paint I’d insisted on when I was fourteen had faded around them from twenty years of sun. All the spots looked horrible, but I didn’t have time to paint. I wanted to buy a new bedspread, but I didn’t have time for that either.

I stood back and looked at my pathetic room and realized how it would look to him. It was embarrassing. It was sad.

I tossed the posters in the trash and gave up.

My cell phone pinged as I flopped onto my bed.

Jacob: What’s the dinner plan for tomorrow night?

Me: I don’t know. We can just order DoorDash or something.

…Jacob is typing…

Jacob: I need more information than that.

I called him. He answered immediately.