Eva didn't really notice the rapping of his fingers on the table. Jake's nervous, or over-energized, ticks and jittery movements had become like white noise - it was just something that was there in the background, and she actually had to focus on it to notice it was there. And if Jake had pointed out that his control was less control and more adaptation, Eva would have noted that, that was just as good. She had more control than Jake did over her powers, but if she got drenched walking home from Sam's, she couldn't will her scales to stay hidden because it was inconvenient for them to come out. Same with the hydrokinesis - her body automatically called water to it when it felt endangered. She had to learn to regulate her emotions because controlling the water was more difficult. Of course, when she wasn't in danger, she had a lot more control. She could do all sorts of neat things - even cut stone with it. She was kind of becoming a badass.
"How about Mexico? They have big, wide open plains where we can hang. And since it's like, a desert, there aren't many people around." Honestly, big, flat places were harder to bike. She liked it when they went to the mountains because she could pretty much just coast all the way down. And go a lot faster. She was willing to meet him halfway - speed up to make it less difficult for him. But still, her fastest was nowhere near half-speed for him, and she knew it.
For her part, Eva was still picking at her pasta bowl. She actually didn't eat a lot of the pasta. She usually picked out the veggies she threw into the sauce, but it was just weird to eat pasta sauce without the pasta. She didn't notice Jake's frown.