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tinge of insecurity. Was he talking about them? Weird that they’d been making goo-goo eyes at each other? Weird that they were even hanging out like this at all? It was weird, wasn’t it? It was so out of nowhere. But Gaia had thought it was good weird. Didn’t Jake think it was good weird?
    â€œThis,” Jake said, shrugging. “Us. Here. Like this. Weird.”
    â€œWhat’s weird about it?” Gaia said, far too defensively. She felt her spine stiffen. “I don’t see anything weird about it—we’re just . . . I mean, whatever. You’re weird. . . . ”
    â€œWhoa.” Jake laughed, squeezing Gaia’s hand. “I meant good weird.”
    â€œOh.” She started to relax again. Maybe she had been burned by this boy-girl thing one too many times. Maybe—
    That thought was cut short by the sudden pang of complex emotions jabbing at her heart and pricking her spine. That was always the feeling she got upon spotting Ed Fargo.
    Ed and Kai were sitting across from each other at one of the smaller tables in the back of Starbucks, and Gaia’s eyes had just met Ed’s by accident. It was the kind of moment she and Ed both worked very hard to avoid in school.
    That was the standard now between Gaia and Ed. Distance. Distance and avoidance. Gaia still felt like such an extraterrestrial whenever she let herself think about it for too long. How could two people who had been so utterly and completely in love now be going out of their way to avoid anything more than a second’s worth of eye contact? She did her best to dump the little pangs of jealousy she was feeling about Ed and Kai, because it was such a ridiculously unfair double standard. Here she was, rushing to Starbucks for another rendezvous with Jake, so what right did she have to be even the least bit resentful of Ed and Kai? None. She had no right whatsoever. Because this was the deal now. This was how thingsworked. Ed and Kai over there and Gaia and Jake over here . . .
    Gaia and Jake . . . She ran the phrase through her head again. Gaia and Jake . . . Is it “Gaia and Jake” now? Is that what we call it?
    Gaia turned back to Jake and began to stare at him again, the rest of the world drifting off into space.
    â€œWhat?” Jake asked defensively, looking at her again. “What’s the problem?”
    â€œNo,” Gaia assured him. “No, nothing. I wasn’t—”
    â€œWhat was that look?”
    â€œI was just . . . ” Gaia found her hands reaching behind her head and fiddling with her hair. She readjusted her ponytail, but it only made the hair fall farther into her face. “Nothing, just . . . It’s not a bad look,” she explained. “I was . . . This is me happy, okay?” she announced. She practically slapped Jake in the face with the words, but at least she’d managed to get them out of her mouth. “I mean, this is what I look like when I’m . . . happy.”
    A grin began to spread across Jake’s face. A wide, pearly white, excessively hot, excessively confident grin.
    â€œStop it,” Gaia warned, trying to suppress the embarrassed smile that was about to pop up on her own face. This giddy lovesick child thing was going to give her a goddamn ulcer.
    â€œStop what?” Jake asked, his smile increasing as he tried to regain eye contact, which was difficult giventhe fact that Gaia’s hand was beginning to involuntarily mask her eyes.
    â€œStop it,” she muttered between clenched teeth, “or I swear to God, I will mash your face against this table and that grin will be forever altered.” Gaia collected herself and tried to look back in Jake’s eyes, but his smile had only grown larger.
    â€œYou have no queen, ” the blond chess player taunted his opponent across the room. Now even some adults had come over