Kissing Jake is completely different from kissing Teddy, she realizes instantly. Jake's mouth is gentler and sweeter and makes her heart beat with joy, not nervousness. Part of it is due to how she feels about him, she's sure-but also, based on technique alone, Jake is a better kisser than Teddy. It feels like he knows what he's doing.

That thought sets off a train of far less pleasant ones-namely, if Jake knows what he's doing, where did he learn it? Probably his girlfriend. Who would no doubt be very upset to learn that he's currently using the skills she helped hone on another girl.

Amy pulls away from the kiss. "Jake! Stop!"

He immediately does, taking a step back for good measure. (Her instinct is to start towards him again, to repossess their closeness, but she forces herself to keep her distance.) "What's wrong?" he asks, worried. "Did you not...should I have asked? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought maybe you wanted...I'll go now."

"No, no," she says quickly. "No, I, uh, I wanted that. I just remembered...Jake, you have a girlfriend. What are you doing cheating on Bernice?"

Jake's worried grimace becomes a grin. "Heh. Uh. Well, I wouldn't tell you this if Bernice didn't want me to, but as of today, actually, she said she's okay with it, with people knowing, I mean, she was always okay with the thing itself...the thing being that she's a lesbian. Bernice, I mean. She likes girls."

"What?"

"Yeah. I was her beard. I Easy-A'd her. You know, like when Emma Stone pretended to sleep with her gay friend? Same thing. She came out to me, like, the first day she started here. She said that was why she transferred away from her other school-she was getting bullied so bad she couldn't deal with it, so when she came here, she was gonna be closeted for a while, suss out the situation. So she asked me to pretend to be her boyfriend, and, well, you'd made it clear you weren't interested, so I figured, it's not like I was going to get a real girlfriend, I might as well have a fake one. It making you jealous was just an added bonus." He pauses and looks into her eyes. "It did make you jealous, right?"
"Completely," Amy admits. "So all the PDA was just smokescreen?"

"Exactly. But, now that Bernice has been here a few months, now that she's seen that we're all totally cool with Holt and that Schur High doesn't really do the whole bullying thing...she told me that she wants to come out, which means breaking up with me. Actually, don't tell anyone, but I think she might like Rosa."

"Hmm. I wouldn't be surprised if that could actually work out."

"Anyway," says Jake, "if you're satisfied Bernice-wise...would it possibly be okay if I kissed you again? Like, indefinitely?"

"Nope," says Amy, "you can't kiss me again."

"Oh." All the joy disappears from his face in what is, to Amy, an extremely flattering change of mood. "Can I ask why?"

"You can ask why." Pedantic of her, perhaps, but he knew what he was getting himself into.

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to kiss you instead." Which she does, and this kiss is even better than the last-freed of all worries that she's the Other Woman, knowing that Jake never stopped liking-no, loving, he'd said loving-her, she can give into it entirely, allow herself to feel only the joy of requited emotion and passion.

It feels pretty damn great.

So they keep kissing, out there in the forest, for God knows how long, until a shiver running through Amy's body reminds her that it's early April after sundown in the northeastern United States, which is to say, it's cold.

"It's getting late," she says reluctantly, and Jake nods with equal reluctance.

"There's going to be a campfire at nine," he offers. "You want to grab a couple coats and head over?"

"Absolutely."

The campfire has only a few people huddled around, maybe nine or ten, by the time they get there. To Amy's surprise, two of those people are Holt and his husband, who are discreetly holding hands while sitting a PG-appropriate distance apart from each other on a log.

Some kid Amy doesn't recognize has an acoustic guitar, and is stumbling his way through Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" while Gina, who's sitting next to him, chimes in on the "ly-lah-ly" parts of the chorus.

Jake and Amy, now appropriately bundled up, sit next to each other, a bit closer than the Holts (because it's cold, Amy rationalizes to herself, then remembers that she doesn't have to rationalize wanting to be close to Jake anymore).

Gina finishes singing and comes over to join them. "Hey, Uptight One, what was with running out on us during dinner? You totally left me and Rosa to clean up after you. Not good form."

"I'm sorry," says Amy. "I wasn't feeling well."

"She totally puked all over the place," Jake said. "I saw it."

Amy shoots him the dirtiest of dirty looks, hoping he can see it even in the dark. And she realizes that it's been a long time since she shot Jake a dirty look with no other motivation than to punish him for teasing her. It feels normal and right, and it's astounding to her that this rhythm is so comfortable, even after everything that's happened, after stood-up formal dates and miscommunications and dating other people and kissing in the woods (the last of which was less than an hour ago, which she can hardly believe, and she feels it's impossible for anyone looking at her not to know how incandescently happy she's been for the last forty-five minutes, though Gina still seems not yet clued in): after all of that, they're still talking the same way they did back in September when Jake made fun of her for bringing Holt an apple-shaped pencil sharpener.

"Really? Gross," says Gina, about the fictional puking, and shuffles a little bit away from them. Which is fine by Amy, actually, because it makes her feel more like she's alone with Jake, which, how far gone is she that she's thinking things so ridiculously sentimental as that?

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" Jake asks, poking her in the shoulder.

"Nothing," says Amy, because, as she realizes at that moment, Jake's told her he loves her but she's said nothing of the sort in return (although she's thought it, definitely, she's been thinking it for months), and as nice and cozy as this campfire is, she kind of wants to be alone with him for real when she tells him, not in front of Gina and their English teacher and Acoustic Guitar Guy.

"All right," says Jake, and tentatively reaches out to put his arm around her. She nods enthusiastically in response, and he hugs her closer to him, her head resting on his shoulder, and she grabs hold of his hand and closes her eyes and lets the music fade into her.

The next morning, at breakfast, Jake passes her a note. She gives him a weird look in response, because it's not like they're in class. It's mealtime. On the weekend. They're allowed to talk.

She opens it anyway, though, and immediately sees why he didn't want to say its contents out loud; it's the most juvenile and ridiculous note she's ever received.

In careful block capitals, the note reads: "SKIP MORNING ACTIVITY AND COME MAKE OUT WITH ME IN MY CABIN. SINCERELY YOURS, JAKE."

Amy kinda loves it.

Jake's looking across the table at her, waiting for a response, and she nods, because what the heck, morning activity (birdwatching with Holt) can go on without her.

When Amy gets to Jake's cabin (he's sharing with Charles and Terry), she's surprised to find that it's somehow already a disaster zone of messiness, despite the fact that they've only been there one night.

"Ew," she says, stepping gingerly over the dirty sock which adorns the threshold. "How can you live like this?"

Jake shrugs. "Easily?"

"Well, I am absolutely not kissing you on that bed. It's disgusting."

Jake looks over at his bed, which is covered in clothing and crumbs (and is just a sleeping bag on top of a mattress, because it's not like the camp provides bedding for them), and nods in agreement. "Yeah, I see where you're coming from on that one. Your place?"

"No!" says Amy quickly, and, to quell Jake's hurt expression, adds, "It's just that Gina's morning activity is charades, and you just know she's going to insist on using props, and all of her stuff is in our cabin, so she might be running in and out of the room, and she might see us…"

"She saw us at the campfire last night, and you didn't seem to mind that."

"We weren't making out at the campfire last night," Amy explains. "I...it's not that I'm ashamed of liking you, or whatever. I'm not! At all! But as of two days ago everyone thought that you were with Bernice and I was with Teddy, and I don't want to be judged for jumping from guy to guy so soon. And I don't want everyone knowing about us. Not yet. This feels different, you know? Like it's a bigger deal than any other relationship either of us has ever had. I kind of like the idea of it just being between us for a little while."

Jake frowns for a moment. "Why do you care if people judge you? Your actual friends won't."

"I don't know," says Amy. "Maybe it's different because I'm a girl. People are harsher."

"Well, if it matters to you, I'm fine with keeping it a secret," he tells her, and her heart melts. "Plus, secret relationship? Way sexy. I am on board."

"You're impossible," she tells him, shaking her head.

"And you love it," he retorts.

Yeah, she definitely does.

They end up deciding to go back to Amy's cabin, but to stay in the (empty) closet, to prevent anyone coming in and catching them in flagrante.

The closet's cramped and dark and has a weird smell, but after about two seconds of Jake's mouth on hers, Amy stops caring. Because his hands on her hips are warm, and she can feel them even through her jeans, the heat of them, and she's sandwiched between his body and the wall, so that his touch and smell and taste are the only things she can feel, and as far as she can see anything his body is all she can see, and all she wants to hear are the soft sounds of their bodies readjusting as they move together, kissing each other like they were born to it.

Unfortunately, that's not all she hears. She also hears the unmistakable sound of Gina's voice floating into the room, complaining about the insufficiently objective set of standards for charades.

"Shh," she whispers to Jake, who reluctantly backs away from her (and she immediately mourns the loss of his warmth) and listens to Gina's rambling.

"It'll be okay," he reassures her quietly, putting a comforting hand on her tense shoulder. "She'll be in and out in no time. We're not going to get caught."

Amy nods, glad he knows what to say to calm her down.

But then another voice joins Gina's, raised not in complaint but in thought. "Do you think it'll be all right if we use onion powder instead of fresh onions in the chicken tonight? I told Terry that it's not even close to the same thing, but apparently fifty fresh Vidalia onions weren't in the school's budget, so we're stuck with powder. I'm really very worried about how this will impact the overall texture of the dish…"

"What is Charles doing in your cabin?" Jake hisses.

"Maybe he came to help Gina carry something?" Amy whispers back.

"Oh my god, shut up and mack on me already!" says Gina, and the full horror of the situation dawns upon Amy in a moment of terrible clarity.

"They're hooking up!" she whispers to Jake frantically. "They're hooking up!"
"Shit," says Jake, so loudly that Amy slaps a hand over his mouth in fright, then mentally scolds herself for the fact that the slap was just as loud as his exclamation.

Fortunately, Charles and Gina don't seem to hear anything. Unfortunately, this seems to be because they're so busy making out they don't have any attention to spare for anything else.

"What do we do?"

"Wait it out until they leave?" Jake suggests.

Amy waits for a moment, until the smacking and soft sighing from outside the closet become too much. "Ugh. Nope. Can't. Need a distraction."

"Oh, really?" says Jake, and even though it's dark in the closet she can still see the spark in his eye. "I have an idea."

He moves in towards her and she jerks away. "What are you doing?"
"Distracting you," he says, and his whisper is sexy-raspy enough that she almost goes with it, until a particularly wet-sounding noise from outside reminds her what's going on.

"I am not making out with you in the same room as Gina and Charles. Nope. Nope nope nope."

"Fine," says Jake, and slides his body down the closet wall until he's sitting on the floor. Amy slides down to join him, and he covers her ears with his hands in an act of what she can only assume is charity. In thanks, she lightly strokes his cheek with her thumb, and he smiles.

They stay like that, hunched against the wall, completely silent, until Gina and Charles realize it's almost lunchtime and leave.

Jake thrusts open the closet door and stumbles out. "I wonder if this is what inmates feel like when they get out of prison," he says, and Amy rolls her eyes.

But all she says is, "Come on. We're going to be late for lunch."