Moving in Reverse (19 page)

I wasn’t sure what I was begging for —
for him to listen, for him to forgive me, for him to just forget
about it and move back to what we’d had a few minutes
before.

Blake closed his eyes. When he opened
them, his body seemed more relaxed, and I took it for a good sign.
I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to break whatever goodwill I’d
managed to muster.

“
Friends,” he repeated my
word for a second, disbelief written all over his face.

For a moment, he looked at me straight
in the eyes, and then covered the distance between us in one quick,
fluid movement.

Wrapping his around me, he kissed me
hungrily, parting my lips with his tongue, his hands wrapped in my
hair, pulling me towards him. I felt myself burst with happiness,
kissing him back and trying to show him how sorry I was, how much I
loved him.

And then, abruptly, it was
over.

I was still sitting on the couch,
mouth half open, dazed, when Blake broke our kiss in an
instant.

He turned away from me and walked over
to the door.

“
Your ticket back to New
York is upstairs,” he said, his voice betraying no emotion. “Stay
here as long as you want, I’m going to get a hotel.”

And before I could even react, he was
through the door, closing it and locking it behind him.

I could still taste his lips on mine
when my body broke down into hopeless, heaving, uncontrollable
sobs.

Chapter
Twenty-Six

A day passed.

And then another.

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

He didn’t call.

I didn’t leave Blake’s house, thinking
that maybe he’d change his mind and come back, that there was
something he’d need here that he’d forgotten, that maybe I’d have
another chance.

I barely even left the couch, thinking
about how perfect that moment had been, how happy I was, how much I
loved him, and how for one second, everything had come
together.

And then irreversibly, without warning
or hesitation, it had all fallen apart.

I’d thought that things were better,
thought he’d forgiven me for last summer. But he was so quick to
believe that I’d lied to him — so quick to jump to the conclusion
that I was playing some angle, like he’d believed when I’d left Los
Angeles the first time. I’d thought we were over all that, but we
weren’t. Maybe it was always just lying in wait, beneath the
surface.

And... I
had
lied to him. And not
just about Tanner. I’d lied about meeting April. I’d lied about my
grades, about what had happened with Jeff and Darby and that awful
night on Halloween.

I’d promised never to lie to Blake
again.

And then I’d done it, over and over
and over.

Never even thinking that when I was
trying to make things better for him, trying to smooth over the
truth to fit the image of me I wanted him to see, that I was really
tightening the noose around my neck.

On the third day, I was done crying.
Maybe Blake was overreacting (wasn’t he?) but I’d dug this hole.
I’d find a way out.

I called Madison.

“
How’s the city of
angels?” was all she could get out before I burst into
tears.

So much for being done
crying.

“
Casey?” She whispered,
not sure how to comfort me when I couldn’t even stop sobbing long
enough to explain what had happened.

“
It’s Blake?” She guessed,
not exactly sounding surprised.

I took a deep breath. “He—” was all I
could choke out, trying to find the words. Scared that saying them
would make them even more real. “He — left.”

And then Madison said the last thing I
was expecting.

“
Because of Tanner
Cole?”

And I realized… I’d been hiding out in
Blake’s house for three days.

Just enough time for the tabloids to
come out.

I felt the phone slip from my ear,
trying to make myself form words. I took a deep breath. “What do
they say?” I whispered.

“
I don’t think—” Madison
started, and then broke off. I felt my stomach sinking — whatever
it was, it was worse than I thought.

My lips were cracked and dry from
crying, and I bit on my bottom one as I tried to figure out what to
do. My plane ticket back to New York wasn’t for another nine days.
I could try to change it, but I couldn’t really afford whatever
last-minute fee the airline would charge, and I didn’t want to ask
my parents.

“
Casey, you know I’d be
there in a minute if I could,” Madison breathed into the phone,
sounding serious, sounding scared. “Where are you,
anyways?”

“
At Blake’s
house.”

“
Still?” Madison couldn’t
keep the surprise out of her voice. “When did Blake
leave?”

I looked at the door, thinking any
second he was bound to come back through it. “Um...
Monday?”

“
Monday?” Her voice was an
octave higher as she repeated it back to me.

“
Well, Monday night,” I
threw in, not sure that really helped.

“
And what day is it now,
Case?”

“
You tell me,” I snapped
at her, sitting up straighter on the couch. “I’ve been a little
busy trying to come to terms with the fact that the love of my life
slept with me and disappeared for good, all within maybe forty five
minutes, so I haven’t exactly had my eye on the calendar,
ok?”

A pause. “He—” Madison said, trying to
find her voice. “You guys...”

She didn’t have to finish the
sentence.

“
Yeah,” I laughed
bitterly. “We did.”

Her voice was small. “Oh.”

I rested my head against the back of
the couch. “Not exactly how I pictured it, huh?”

Even over the phone, I could feel her
trying to muster a smile. “How was it?”

“
Are you trying to make me
cry again?” She let out a little laugh. “It was... good. Really
good.”

A pause. “Case, you’ve got to get out
of his house.”

I sighed. “And go where?
I’m in California for nine more days. Every person I know in this
whole city hates me, except Tanner, and he’s the one person
I
can’t
be seen
with.”

“
Is Brett—”

I cut her off. “Still at
school.”

“
You could go to his
parents.”

“
Please tell me you’re
joking.”

“
Well...
mostly.”

“
So my choices are, stay
here, stay here, or stay here?”

“
Casey, you’re famous.
Shouldn’t some hotel be willing to put you up, just for the
exposure?”

“
I’m not famous,” I said
without hesitating.

“
Casey Snow, you’ve been
on the cover of US Weekly four times. You’re more famous than
Kourtney Kardashian’s baby.”

“
The boy or the
girl?”

“
The girl, obviously. The
boy’s pretty famous by now.”

I let out an involuntary laugh.
“Right,” I said, wishing I’d called Madison days ago. No matter how
bad things got, at least I could count on her.

“
Seriously, Case. There
are people out there who could help you. They probably just don’t
know how to find you. It’s not like you have an agent or
anything.”

“
Because I’m—” I caught
myself before ‘not famous’ could come out of my mouth
again.

“
Seriously, Case. Fame is
currency. Hell, it’s more than currency. I knew a girl who did a
season of Gossip Girl, went on two dates with James Franco, and
wound up with a six-figure perfume deal. If she can do that, you
can wrangle up a hotel room.”

“
Wrangle?” I cracked a
smile.

“
That’s not the point,” I
heard her grin. “People will be throwing stuff at you. You don’t
need to sit around like a shut-in in your ex-boyfriend’s house just
because you don’t have any other options. Get out of there. Get a
hotel suite, get your hair blown out, slip the line at a club.
Enjoy eight more days in California, and maybe Blake’ll be at the
airport when you fly home. It’s not like he’d go back to New York
early, right?”

I considered it. Maybe she had a
point. “I guess not.”

“
Case, I know you probably
hurt him, but he hurt you, too. You can’t just sit around hoping
he’ll come back.”

I took a deep breath. “Ok,” I said.
“I’ll think about it.”

“
Don’t think,
Casey.
Do it
.”
Madison laughed for a second. “I mean, you might have landed the
famous rock star, but we both still agree that when it comes to
boys, your instincts are pretty much shit, right?”

I snorted, feeling a smile creep onto
my lips. “Yeah,” I admitted.

We sat in silence for a minute. I
breathed in and out, trying to convince myself that this was the
best thing. That sitting in Blake’s house, surrounded by him,
wasn’t the way to get through this.

That if I couldn’t go back, then there
was nothing else to do but start moving forward.

Madison spoke first.

“
Are you going to be
ok?

I tried to keep my voice from
breaking. “Yeah,” I said, trying to convince myself. “Yeah. I’m
going to be fine.”

Chapter
Twenty-Eight

The tabloids had been out for a day or
two, so I figured that was where I should start.

I found Blake’s laptop in his bedroom
and booted it up. Holding my breath, I went to the TMZ homepage. If
this was what I was supposed to cash in on, I figured I might as
well know what it said.

Not surprisingly, most of it was about
Tanner and Blake. I quickly skimmed the article headings, until I
found one titled “Hot Pics.” Clicking on the link, I found a
snap-by-snap slideshow of me falling outside the restaurant, and
Tanner scooping me up. Except from the angle they’d taken the
photos from, it didn’t actually look like I’d tripped — it just
looked like I’d basically thrown myself into Tanner’s arms. The
last shot was of the two of us getting into Blake’s car, me with my
hands over my eyes to shield my face from the cameras.

“
Blake’s Girlfriend
Spotted With Tanner Cole,” the caption read, just below the
pictures, the article went on: “Just before the announcement that
Tanner Cole would take Blake Parker’s role as lead guitarist for
Moving Neutral, Tanner was spotted with Blake’s girlfriend of seven
months, Casey Snow, who was rumored to be the reason for his
departure from Moving Neutral in August. Is Tanner stealing more
than Blake’s band? These pictures show Tanner and Casey leaving a
romantic lunch at the Ivy, where sources say they shot a scene for
Moving Neutral’s reality show, set for release at the end of
November. Stay tuned!”

I felt a familiar wave of nausea roll
over me as I imagined Blake reading the article, imagining
everything was even worse than it really had been. He’d left before
I could even explain.

I shut the computer
down.
There, that was the worst
part
, I told myself. Now I just had to
figure out what to do next.

Madison was right, I
thought. There probably
were
people out there trying to get in touch with me,
but how?

My cell phone hadn’t rung, but that
wasn’t exactly surprising — it wasn’t publicly listed anywhere, and
neither was my personal email.

Columbia didn’t release its students’
contact information to anyone (a little snippet of knowledge I’d
gathered from Blake at the beginning of the school year), and our
email handles were our initials and then a random set of numbers,
so no one was going to figure that out either. I wondered what this
fall would have been like if people had been able to email
[email protected] — a lot less private, at the very
least.

So no one would have my email or my
phone number, and even if they did, I definitely wasn’t going to
call up Darby and ask her if there’d been any messages for
me.

That left one option.

I already knew that the paparazzi
could find my parents’ address in Rockland, Connecticut, because
they’d basically camped out on our doorstep for a week after I’d
gotten back from Los Angeles this summer. Before they’d realized
that Blake had dumped me, at least.

They knew I wasn’t living there, but
my parents were still in the phone book. If someone was looking for
me, that was the best and only lead they’d have.

I took out my cell phone and dialed my
parents’ number, sinking down onto Blake’s bed and trying not to
feel nervous. If this didn’t work out, I could just stay
here.

But even as I tried to reassure
myself, I could feel that I didn’t mean it. Staying in Blake’s
house was like living with a ghost — his smell everywhere, his
clothes and guitars and all the memories, especially one, that I
just couldn’t shake. Wondering every second if he was about to walk
back in the door, tell me he’d changed his mind, scoop me into his
arms like he had last summer.