Moving in Reverse (12 page)

No matter what we did, it seemed like
there were always secrets.

As if on cue, Blake clicked off his
call and headed back into the living room. “Sorry about that,” he
grinned. “We’re all set.”

“
Who was it?” I asked,
suddenly curious.

“
You’ll see,” Blake
grinned, and let’s face it: when Blake was happy, I was happy.
“Let’s go to the beach.”

“
Blake, I’m basically
naked,” I reminded him, gesturing down to my tee-shirt and bare
feet. “I don’t think I can really go out like this.”

Blake grinned. “Fair enough,” he said.
“Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be back with something for you to
wear.”

I sighed, but smiled. “Fine.
Go.”

“
Be right back,” he said,
slipping his phone into his pocket and stepping through the door,
into the driveway.

“
Hey,” I called to him,
just as he slid into the driver’s seat of his car, a silver BMW
convertible that seemed way too nice for a twenty year old to be
driving.

He turned around, the breeze already
catching his hair. I wished I could take a photo, to remember him
just like that. Happy, relaxed, ready for anything.

“
Thanks,” I said, and he
pulled the car out of the driveway. “I love you,” I added, after he
was gone.

Chapter
Sixteen

Blake was back in no time, carrying
with him a bag that didn’t look anywhere big enough to be a full
outfit for me.

“
What’s that?” I eyed it
nervously.

“
Your bikini,” Blake
winked. “Go try it on.”

I tried to give him a disapproving
look, but he was in too good a mood. And when I opened the bag, I
found a black bikini with little flecks of gold on the edges — no
g-strings or creepy cutouts in the fabric or anything that I would
have balked at. I actually really liked it.

And I liked that Blake knew me well
enough to get the right one. That, actually, was the thing I liked
the best.

“
Ok,” I stepped out of the
bedroom, modeling the swimsuit as I walked down the stairs. “You
did good.”

“
Well,” Blake corrected
me, and then raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to be an English
major, Casey?”

I took the last two stairs in a jump,
and punched Blake in the arm.

“
Please,” I said. “My
parents were, like, Lieutenants in the grammar police. I was trying
to be cute.”

“
See, that’s the thing
about you, Case,” Blake murmured, pretending to nurse the spot I’d
punched him in. “You don’t even have to try.”

I blushed, looking down. “Yeah, well,
then I guess I’m sorry I punched you,” I said. “Am I wearing
anything over the bikini?”

Blake shot me a mischievous grin. “Oh,
you’ll see. And you should probably leave your phone here,” he
added. “Wouldn’t want it to get wet.”

I smiled, excited and exasperated at
the same time, and set my purse down on his coffee tale.

“
Ok,” I held up my empty
hands. “Now where to?”

Blake only lived a few blocks from the
beach, so I was surprised when he led the way back out to his car.
I climbed into the passenger seat, buckling my seatbelt and leaning
my head against the warm leather. Blake punched in a code to open
the gate and turned right, away from the Santa Monica Pier and the
early morning runners on the boardwalk.

He only drove for a few minutes,
turning into a parking space and climbing out of the car, pulling
my door open a second later.

“
Where are we going?” I
asked, as Blake led the way toward the beach. He paused at a bench
that overlooked about a mile of open sand, and turned back to
me.

“
You’ll see. Wait
here.”

I shook my head, exasperated, but sat
down on the bench. The sun was up now, but it was still early
enough that the beach was basically empty. They say that New York
is the city that never sleeps, but the truth was that early
mornings are pretty peaceful wherever you are. I always liked the
streets best early in the morning, empty and grey in the first
light of the day.

But the ocean, that was something
else. There was something so ethereal about it, glinting in the
morning sun. I shivered, pulling my knees up to my
chest.

And then something neon blue dropped
into my lap. I looked down, uncomprehending, and felt the fabric
between my fingers.

“
A wet suit?”

I turned around to face Blake and a
total stranger. Both of whom were holding surfboards.

“
I, um,” I paused, feeling
‘I don’t know how to surf’ on the tip of my tongue. But I was in
California, with my boyfriend, who wanted to go surfing.

I swallowed it.

“
What the heck,” I said
with a smile, shaking the wetsuit out in front of me. “No sharks,
right?”

Blake grinned back. “Let’s
hope.”

I picked up one of the boards and
followed Blake toward the water. “You know I have absolutely no
idea how to do this, right?”

He looked over his shoulder at me, the
sun glinting off his hair like the ocean. “Don’t worry, Case. I
won’t let you fall.”

But Blake Parker was a big fat liar,
because we surfed for two hours and I fell. Every. Single.
Time.

My muscles were starting to turn to
jelly when Blake suggested we’d do one more and then call it a
day.

“
Pretend you’re on a
balance beam,” he suggested, trying to be helpful.

“
Trust me, that won’t
help,” I said sheepishly, thinking about the year or so of
gymnastics lessons that my parents had paid for before we’d all
realized that anything involving balance and coordination was never
going to be my strength.

“
Here we go,” Blake said,
eyeing a wave that was headed toward us. “Wait, and...
go.”

I paddled forward, feeling the wave
under me and jumping my feet onto the board the way Blake had
taught me. Taking a second to catch my balance, I kept my knees
bent, and slowly took my hands off the board.

You’ve got
this
, I thought, trying to psych myself
up. I kept my arms out for balance as I slowly tried to stand
up.

And then, for a second, I was surfing.
I was on the board, stable and standing on the surface of the ocean
as the wave started to slow down, reaching the shore. I let out a
whoop, unable to contain myself.

So this is what people like about
surfing, I thought as the board slowed down and I jumped into the
water — my own choice, this time.

Blake swam up behind me a moment
later.

“
You’re a natural,” he
grinned, splashing a little water at me. “Was it fun?”

“
So fun,” I murmured,
still out of breath.

We dragged our boards halfway up the
breach and laid them down, each of us sitting on one with our legs
to the side.

“
Did you go out like this
all the time when you lived here?” I asked, wistful. Maybe Blake
was right about California. I’d been the one who’d insisted on
living in a cold, grey, crowded city, when we could really have
been living on the ocean?

He
could
, a tiny voice in my head countered.
Blake could do all that. Blake could go back to California. Blake
could drop out of college and never go back.

But me?

Despite my very special boyfriend, I
was still just a regular college freshman.

“
I can’t believe you got
up on your first time out,” Blake said, rubbing the sand off his
feet. “It took me a week.”

“
I had a good teacher,” I
smiled at him playfully, and he ran one hand through his
hair.

“
That first time, though —
it’s like the whole ocean belongs to you,” he paused, looking down.
“It’s kind of like playing your first show.”

I grinned, getting excited. “Kind of
like—”

I caught myself, swallowing the
sentence and thinking fast. I’d wanted to say, ‘kind of like seeing
your favorite band,’ but I’d realized the mistake the moment the
words formed on my lips.

My favorite band was gone. I was never
going to see Moving Neutral again.

And it was all my fault.

Blake looked at me, oblivious. “Kind
of like what?”

I looked down for a second, catching
my breath, and then back up at Blake, the ocean behind him and the
clear California sky above it.

“
Like flying,” I said,
smiling at him. “Kind of like flying.”

After an hour on the beach, dozing
lazily, we returned the surfboards and walked back in the direction
of Blake’s car.

“
So what’s the plan?” I
asked, trying to figure out what the next few days would look like.
“You want to see friends? Go out? Just this?” I smiled, taking
Blake’s hand. “Cause that would be okay.”

Blake looked at me slyly, pulling me
to a stop and putting his arms around me, running one hand through
my hair.

“
Actually, Casey,” he
said, tucking a lock behind my ear. “I had something else in
mind.”

“
Care to tell me what it
is?” I smiled up at him. “Because if I need attire that’s somewhere
in between a Madonna costume and a bikini, we might have to do some
more shopping.”

Blake grinned. “I mean, I’d be fully
satisfied with the bikini, but I think that to meet my parents,
we’ll probably need to get you a dress.”

My breath caught. “Y—your parents?” I
squeaked out.

“
Why not, Case? It’s been
six months. Besides,” Blake grinned impishly. “You showed me yours,
so now it’s time to return the favor.”

“
Do they, um — do they
know about me?”

“
Mostly from the tabloid
covers,” Blake joked, hitting his keys to flash the car’s lights.
“They pretty much think you’re the harpy who came between me and
April and broke up the band.”

I paused in my tracks, glaring at
him.

When he turned around, his face was
full of laughter. “They know about you,” he said, gesturing over
his shoulder for me to follow him to the car. “Please, my dad’s
probably more excited to see you than he is to see me.”

“
Why?”

“
You’re a good influence.
You’re the reason I’m in college now,” Blake winked. “Turns out my
parents aren’t that different from yours after all.”

I smiled. “I’ll bet. Is your sister
going to be there?”

“
Maybe. I’m not sure,
actually. She’s at USC, so she’s close. I haven’t seen her
yet.”

“
Is she a freshman
too?”

“
Sophomore, actually. Year
younger, but now she’s a grade ahead. Sure I’ll never hear the end
of that,” he laughed.

Blake’s parents. I couldn’t even
imagine what they were like.

Blake slung an arm around me, and we
crossed the remaining distance to his car. Holding the passenger
door open, he looked at me with a devious expression. “And once
we’re done with that...” he whispered, leaning down next to my ear.
“Then maybe we’ll finally get some alone time.”

I shivered, feeling my whole body go
tense and excited. “I can’t wait,” I said, meaning it.

When we got back to Blake’s house, he
handed me his wallet.

“
Pick out some clothes and
they can courier them over within a few hours,” he grinned. “If it
were up to me, I’d never pick anything appropriate enough for you
to wear in front of my parents.”

I blushed. “Just . . . a
store?”

“
Come on, Case. We’re
going to be here for a while. Just pick out some stuff you like and
have them send it over.”

I smiled nervously. “Ok,” I said,
tapping my iPhone to look up phone numbers. “J. Crew?”

Blake snorted. “Case, that’s perfect
for meeting my parents, but we’re going to be going out this week.
Get some good stuff, come on.”

My allowance in high school had been
$20 a week, most of which went to gas and coffees with Madison.
Needless to say, my parents had veto power over every possible item
of clothing. At least until last summer, when Sophie had lent me
all these amazing designer outfits that she’d been sent for the
Moving Neutral tour.

“
I’m surprised there
aren’t designers sending you stuff, actually,” Blake said, looking
at me with a glint in his eyes. “April and Sophie used to make out
like bandits. I’m pretty sure April hired an assistant just to run
around picking up swag for her.”

“
April and Sophie were
actually famous,” I smiled, even though it wasn’t really funny. “I
was just the mystery girl ruining your life.”

Blake’s smile turned wistful. “You
didn’t ruin my life, Casey,” he took my hand and laced our fingers
together. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to
me.”

He leaned forward, and kissed me
gently on the lips. “Now come on,” he said. “Isn’t this every
girl’s fantasy? Free reign to go shopping for whatever you
want?”