Moving in Reverse (17 page)

He looked sad. “Something like
that.”

“
Who knows?” I gave him a
sympathetic smile. “That’s life, right? Nothing’s ever really over.
It comes full circle again and again.”

He took a deep breath, shaking his
head. “I like you, Snow, but you have absolutely no idea what
you’re talking about,” he took the Rolling Stones shirt and a pair
of jeans out of my hands. “Here, they’re on me.”

I stood in the back of the store until
Tanner finished paying for the clothes, and then put my sunglasses
back on to walk outside. By some miracle, there wasn’t a single
photographer in sight as we walked to Blake’s car and pulled out of
the shopping center.

“
Do you want me to drop
you somewhere?” I asked, looking over to the passenger seat, where
Tanner was checking his phone.

He looked over at me, an exaggerated
crestfallen look on his face. “Is our date over, then?”

“
Tanner, this wasn’t a
date.”

“
Really? We had lunch, I
took you shopping? All that’s missing is the kiss good-bye,” he
winked. “Or more than a kiss—I wouldn’t stop you.”

I rolled my eyes. “And to think, you
were just starting to grow on me.”

He grinned. “I live on Venice Beach.
It’s like 5 minutes away – kind of like Santa Monica for surfers
and hippies. Way cooler. If you turn here, you’ll hit my
street.”

We pulled into Tanner’s driveway a few
minutes later, a two-story house built right on the waterline for
the beach, with the back facing the walking paths and canals.
Looking up, I could see a glass balcony with a perfect view of
sunset over the ocean.

“
Not bad,” I
smiled.

“
It’s home,” he played
along. “Thanks for the ride, Snow.”

“
No problem.” I wanted to
say more, but I couldn’t think of the words. Tanner hesitated a
second, and then opened his door.

“
Wait— ” I said, a thought
suddenly coming to me. “Why did you want to talk to Blake before
joining Moving Neutral, anyway? Were you just rubbing it
in?”

He leaned his head back and sighed
deeply. “No, Snow, listen. I just felt like I had to tell him
myself. I thought it would be better, coming from me.”

“
But why?”

He sighed again. “Because Blake and I
have,” he paused. “Well, we have sort of a history, I guess. I
dunno.”

“
Why?” I asked, pressing
harder. “What aren’t you telling me?”

There was always something I didn’t
know. I was just getting better at recognizing when I didn’t know
it.

Tanner paused for a long time, and for
a second I thought he was just going to ignore my question and get
out of the car. But after a moment, he turned and looked me
straight in the eyes.

“
That girl I told you
about, that I dated in high school?” Tanner looked at me closely.
“That was Brooke.”

It took me a second to figure out who
he meant, and then I realized.

Brooke. Brooke Parker.

Blake’s sister.

“
You dated Blake’s
sister?”

“
A long time ago — in high
school, for Christ’s sake. I haven’t spoken to her in two years.
But yeah, I figured that I owed it to Blake to tell him face to
face.”

I nodded, trying to digest what he’d
told me. Finally I leaned my head back and started to laugh —
giggles that dissolved into snorts as I pressed my head against the
driver’s seat.

Tanner looked at me weirdly. “It’s
funny?”

I tried to catch my
breath, my body still shaking with laughter. “What’s
wrong
with you people?”
I finally gasped, shaking my head like I couldn’t believe the
words. “You know this country has, like, three hundred million
people? And the same seven of you have been in this incestual
dating clique for like, a decade?”

A hint of a smile flickered across
Tanner’s face. “Well, Taylor Swift didn’t go to my boarding
school.”

I took a deep breath. “Blake and
April, Blake and me, me and you — you and Blake’s sister. No wonder
everybody believes the tabloids — the truth is just as
insane.”

Tanner grinned, the tension between us
broken, and reached out to touch my jaw.

“
You drooled a little,” he
winked at me.

“
Shut up,” I slapped his
hand away, rubbing my face with the back of my hand. “I did
not.”

“
No,” he smiled in a way
that would have turned any other girl’s stomach into butterflies,
and I tried to ignore it. “You didn’t.”

We sat in silence for a second, and I
couldn’t help thinking to myself that despite everything, Tanner
was pretty fun to have around.

“
I should go,” I said,
half-reluctantly.

“
Unless you want the grand
tour,” Tanner said, gesturing up to his house.

“
I bet you say that to all
the girls.”

“
All the pretty
ones.”

“
Flattery doesn’t work on
me.”

Tanner snorted. “Flattery works on
everyone.”

I sighed. “I think I’ll stay in the
car. Wouldn’t want to make this any weirder.”

A beat, and then I added.

“
We probably shouldn’t see
each other much.”

“
Probably not,” Tanner
said softly, his voice flirtatious but a little sad.

He opened the door and stepped out of
the passenger seat, but just as he was about to close it behind
him, he paused.

“
You know,” he said, his
eyes glinting in the sun. “It’s a failing I have. I do a lot of
stuff that I probably shouldn’t.”

I shook my head, trying to hide a
smile. “See you round, Tanner Cole.”

“
See you, Casey
Snow.”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

I pulled into Blake’s driveway just as
the sun was starting to set, barely able to believe it had only
been a few hours since I’d left. California was so warm and
beautiful, it was funny to remember that it still got dark at 6 pm,
just like New York. On the bright side, when it got dark here, you
could go stargazing on the beach.

Or at Katsuya. Actually,
come to think of it, there weren’t many places in Los Angeles
you
couldn’t
stargaze. Just depending on the type of stars.

I slid Blake’s key into the lock and
found him strumming his guitar in the living room, almost exactly
how I’d left him.

“
Do you ever move?” I
grinned, slipping past him to open the curtains, catching a glimpse
of the ocean through his window.

“
I figured I’d get some
work done,” he said, and then seemed to bite the words back. “Or is
this work? Maybe I should go write a paper on the symbolism of
blood in Margaret Atwood.”

“
Blake Parker, future
Women’s Studies major. I like it.”

He smiled.

“
Seriously, though—” I
shot a glance at him. “You do know that paper was due before we
left, right?”

He shook his head at me, smiling.
“Yes, Case. I turned it in. Don’t worry, now that I’m stuck in
college, I’m at least going to avoid failing out.”

His tone was light, but
the words weren’t. I didn’t have anything
but
college, and I felt like I
actually
might
fail out of I didn’t stop doing insane things like taking a
week off from classes to fly to California with Blake.

Blake looked at me oddly. “What’s in
your head right now?”

A hundred things. In our
conversations, I was always playing catch-up, trying to understand
everything that was in front of me. Never able to quite tell him
everything I needed to.

I picked the easiest one. “You think
you’re stuck in college?”

He sighed, brushing a hand through his
hair in a way that made me want to run over to the couch and jump
into his arms. “No, not stuck, exactly. I just,” he paused. “I just
don’t know where I’m going next, you know?”

I smiled, walking over to the couch
and sitting down next to him. “I think that’s kind of the point of
college, isn’t it?”

He stopped picking at the guitar, and
tipped his head down to me. His blue eyes fixed on mine. “Somehow I
never thought about it that way.”

I grinned, leaning in for a quick kiss
on his lips. “See? I’m good for something after all. Besides
spending all your money on my new L.A. wardrobe, that
is.”

“
Please tell me
Frederick’s of Hollywood was involved.”

I grinned. “You never know,” I paused.
“Although, I will say, it was sort of remarkable that stores just
accepted your credit card without a blink.”

Blake ruffled my hair. “Yeah, they’re
more likely to think you’re a kept woman than an identity
thief.”

I stiffened, and Blake felt
it.

“
I’m not a kept woman,” I
said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

“
Oh, I’m sorry?” Blake’s
voice was light and teasing, trying to diffuse me. “Did you want to
start paying rent on this place? Reimburse me for the plane
tickets?”

It didn’t work.

“
You know I would if I
could,” I said, suddenly sad. I didn’t want to be a drain on Blake
— I was sure he’d had enough of those over the years.

“
I know,” he abandoned the
sarcasm and looked at me tenderly, pushing some hair off my
shoulder. “And that’s why there’s a difference.”

“
I didn’t get anything
from Frederick’s.”

He kissed me, long and slow, sliding
his hands around my arms and up my back. “How many times do I have
to say this, Case? You don’t need any of that stuff. You’re sitting
here in flip flops, and you’re the sexiest girl I’ve ever
seen.”

I wanted to tell Blake about Tanner,
about the lunch, about the fact that I was probably going to end up
as a character on his arch-enemy’s reality show.

But then I felt his lips on my neck
and suddenly... forgot.

So I did what I’d promised to never do
again — I kept a secret from Blake Parker. It was like jumping off
a mountain without a parachute — for a while you fly, knowing all
the time you’re going to eventually hit the ground.

“
I love you,” I whispered,
wishing there were more words I could say, more ways I could show
him that he was everything to me, that he’d changed my life in a
million ways that I could never go back from. That I was his, and
I’d never stop being his, no matter how many times I messed
everything up or he pushed me away. I was his, and there was
nothing else.

“
Maybe I am a kept woman,”
I whispered, and Blake stopped mid-kiss to look into my eyes.
“You’ve got me. Keep me for as long as you want.”

His eyes shone with tenderness and
then darkened as his kisses became more insistent, urging. He
pushed me back onto the couch, setting his guitar down beside us in
one fluid motion. He slipped an arm underneath my back and I arched
up instinctively, meeting his kiss.

His fingers paused at the hem of my
tank top, hovering on top of the fabric but not reaching in. I
heard myself groan in a way that sounded like someone else.
“Blake,” I rasped, my voice breaking.

“
Are we really doing
this?” Blake whispered, his breath hot in my ear.

“
Finally,” I whispered
back, a trace of a smile flickering across my face. I didn’t want
the wrong words to break the spell, to interrupt us yet again. Even
if it all fell apart, even if neither of us knew what the future
was going to hold, I wanted this. With Blake. Now.

“
I love you,” I whispered
again, and I felt whatever was holding Blake back snap, and his
kisses turned forceful, heading in one direction. I closed my eyes,
as happy as I’d ever been, kicking off my flip flops and letting
Blake do the rest.

I fumbled with the buttons on his
shirt, fingers shaking, trying not to show my nerves, feeling my
breath coming in short gasps as I tried to keep calm. But then the
shirt was off and his skin was smooth and warm against my skin and
I could have stayed like that for the whole rest of the week,
perfectly content. Blake ran his fingers through my hair, breaking
contact for a minute to lift himself up, run his eyes over
me.

“
You’re so beautiful,” he
said, still whispering, as if we were both afraid that none of this
was real, that we were dreaming and about to wake up.

I pressed my body up to his, kissing
him tenderly and guiding his hands around me.

Last summer, I hadn’t wanted to have
sex with Blake because it all felt like it could end any second.
This fall, even being together, I hadn’t really shaken that
feeling. That it was too scary to give this to someone when you
didn’t know how long you’d have them for.

But that was the thing, with love. I
loved Blake with all my heart, I had even before we’d met. Even if
it ended tomorrow, I wanted this. I wanted him. I wanted him every
way I could have him, especially this one.