Page 44 of The Match

EVIE: What in the world was that????

JAKE: I thought you preferred them over words. That was me saying I’m leaving to come get you soon.

EVIE: Wait, why?! I can call an Uber.

JAKE: I know. But I want to come get you.

EVIE: Stop being so nice to me all the time.

JAKE: Just making up for calling you a car salesman.

CHAPTER 20

Evie

I’m sitting in Jake’s truck, feeling baseball-sized butterflies fill my stomach. It’s the day of the pool party, and in approximately ten minutes I will meet every member of Jake’s family. This still perplexes me. I honestly don’t know what I’m doing here. I do know that I’m holding a tin of extra-fudgy brownies in my lap . . . but only because I spent the evening at his house yesterday making them. Sam helped while Jake hovered and kept trying to stick his finger in the batter. I swatted him no less than three times, and the whole thing felt oddly domestic.

I want to love it. I want to let myself be ridiculously happy with what seems to be blooming between us. But I can’t seem to silence the loud voice in my head that won’t stop screaming, What the hell is blooming?!

What am I to Jake?

What is he to me?

We kissed once (granted it was a knock-your-socks-off kiss). But was that a fluke? Neither of us has brought it up, so the longer we go without mentioning it, the more it feels like it never happened.

“What’s going through your head over there?” Jake’s voice makes me jump.

“Huh? Oh. Nothing.”

“Not nothing. You look like you’re about to throw up in the car.”

I laugh, and it sounds silly and put-on like a theatrical dame on Broadway. Ha ha! Oh, Jake, you’re too funny! But yes, I’m totally going to throw up. Nerves are overtaking me. I’m about to meet Jake’s family. I almost chickened out this morning and said I was sick, but Jo texted me before I got the chance and basically forbade it.

JO: I better see photographic evidence of your cutie little bootie in a swimsuit poolside, or I will revoke your use of my washer and dryer.

Rude. She knows my weakness too well: clean underwear.

“I’m fine,” I say, but of course my voice wobbles.

“Are you nervous? My family’s going to love you.” Really? ’Cause mine doesn’t.

A few minutes later we are pulling into Jake’s driveway, and there are already five other cars parked outside, and I’m mentally reminding myself how much I love having clean underwear, otherwise I would be hightailing my ass out of there.

Jake gets out, and I stay put. I don’t mean to, but the superglue I poured on the seat before sitting down is really doing its job.

He looks at me through the window and grins. The door opens. He’s not just being chivalrous; he knows I’m not leaving if he doesn’t pry me out. “Come on, goose. They aren’t going to bite, I swear.”

I hand him the brownies and slide out. My cover-up drags against the seat, and a substantial amount of my leg is revealed in the process. Sure, I’m wearing a bathing suit under this cover-up, and it’s going to come off soon anyway. But in a driveway where Jake is still completely covered and there is not a drop of water in sight, it feels a little scandalous. Sexy.

Jake thinks so too, because he’s trying and failing to hide his wicked grin. His thoughts are all over his face. This is the distraction I needed, though.

I whack his arm. “Can you at least try to be a gentleman?”

“I could, but I don’t really want to.”

Charlie jumps out behind me, and I think he finds this flirting between Jake and me annoying, because he grunts and then sits down right beside us, staring up with the most unamused expression I’ve ever seen.

“All right, Charlie. We’re going.” I wasn’t the one to say that. It was Jake. Which means Jake is now interpreting Charlie’s facial expressions too, and wow, this thing is getting real. There’s no way it can be only in my head.

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