Moving in Reverse (26 page)

The guy with the case turned around,
facing me for the first time.

He had sandy blonde hair, green eyes.
He was about thirty-five years old.

He was most certainly not Blake
Parker.

I realized I’d been holding my breath,
and it all came rushing out of me like someone had kicked me in the
stomach.

I didn’t bother looking up as the rest
of the passengers boarded.

Blake Parker wasn’t getting on this
plane. No chance in hell.

No one sat in the seat next to me.
Alone, miserable, and fueled by two vodka tonics after the
stewardesses had conveniently forgotten to card me, I spent the
first half of the flight pretending to sleep, going over every
second of our trip to California in my head.

Why
had I agreed to that lunch with April?

Why had Blake been so quick to think I
was playing an angle?

Was he even coming back to New
York?

For a minute, I thought about the last
moment I had with him, before he walked out the door. That kiss,
taking me by surprise and seeming so real that I almost believed
things would be ok. And then, just as abruptly, he was
gone.

But mostly I thought about the song
that he’d played for me. The song that Blake had written without
knowing who would perform it, whether he’d have any part in
bringing it to life. The one that he couldn’t put words
to.

The one
he
couldn’t put words
to.

But maybe I could.

I took a deep breath. Fighting with
Blake had broken me, again and again. But maybe, by now, I had
something to write about. Blake’s songs were poetry set to music —
they were full of pain, full of everything that seemed like it was
right and went wrong anyway.

Exactly what I was feeling right
now.

Reaching into my bag, I didn’t have
much to write with, but I had a pen. I pulled out the back of a
receipt and started there, writing in the smallest letters I could
to conserve space.

I let the words flow out of me. As if
I was writing a letter to Blake. A love letter, for love that
couldn’t seem to find its footing.

So you knocked me off my
pedestal

Five foot girl, eight feet
tall

Take a look at me now, run your hands
down my back

You keep seeing wings that I’m not
hiding

And now that I’m skin and
bone

Blood and stone

We’re alone

Now that you’ve seen all of
me

And it wasn’t who you wanted me to
be

Where do we go from here?

I would have given you
anything

Given anything you wanted, anything
you asked

I just didn’t realize that in all that
giving

I’d end up holding you back

Love’s not enough when you can’t stop
hurting

Love’s not enough when you both shut
down

Love’s not enough when no one’s an
angel

Love’s not enough when it feels like a
curse

Love makes you feel like you’re
pushing forward

So you’re blind that you’re moving in
reverse.

I set the pen down, closed my eyes.
New York to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to New York. There wasn’t any
such thing as moving forward, not when you always had to go
back.

Chapter
Thirty-Nine

Madison must have been tracking my
flight online, because by the time we landed and I turned my cell
phone on, I already had two voicemails from her.

I called her back before I even got to
baggage claim.

“
He didn’t show,” I said
the moment she answered, not waiting for the question.

“
Do you think he’s coming
back?”

It was what I’d been asking myself the
entire plane ride. Blake had chosen Columbia partly for his
education, and partly for me. If I was out of the picture (I
shivered, steeling my stomach and promising myself it wasn’t true,
that I wouldn’t let it be true), there was no reason for him to go
back to New York.

“
I have no idea,” I
answered honestly, feeling lost. For the past week, I’d consoled
myself with thoughts of this flight, fantasies of sorting
everything out, of apologizing, of finally having everything go
back to normal.

But I was on my own.

I grabbed my suitcase from the
conveyor belt and stepped outside into the cab line, trying to pull
my light sweater around me as tight as I could. I was dressed for
Los Angeles, and New York City was perched solidly at the beginning
of a long, cold winter. At least it wasn’t snowing
anymore.

“
Do you want to sleep
here?” Madison offered, knowing that going home to Darby wasn’t
going to make my night any easier.

“
I’m okay,” I said, not
meaning it. “I just want to get a good night of sleep. I’ll know
what to do in the morning.”

I wouldn’t. But it couldn’t hurt to
pretend.

First thing in the morning, I walked
over to Blake’s dorm. Knocking on the door softly, I held my breath
until Ethan let me in.

“
Oh, um, hey,” he
stammered, not opening the door all the way. “Blake’s not
here.”

My concern deepened. “Can I come in
and wait?”

Ethan looked at me strangely, and I
felt my heart start to beat faster. “What is it?” I asked, trying
to keep the panic out of my voice.

“
I don’t think—” Ethan
started, and then looked at me closely. “Casey, he’s really not
here.”

He finally opened the door.

Blake’s side of the room was
completely empty.

My mouth fell open. My legs felt so
shaky that I thought they’d give out — Ethan must have had the same
idea, because he grabbed a chair and set it down behind me. Sinking
into it, I looked around the room.

“
When did…”

I couldn’t even finish the question.
Blake’s desk, shelves, closet, bed sheets — everything was gone. It
was like he’d disappeared.

“
I don’t know. It was like
this when I got back from break. I thought — I actually thought you
might know better than me.”

I blinked back tears, feeling my
breath start to go shaky.

“
He didn’t say anything?
No note?”

It was a last ditch effort, it sounded
pathetic even to my ears.

Blake Parker didn’t belong here in the
first place. He never had.

And now he was gone.

Chapter Forty

There’s nothing but emptiness after
your life falls apart.

Or at least it feels that
way.

You keep moving through the world, one
foot in front of the other, your hair and skin and clothes looking
exactly the same to everyone around you.

They don’t realize that there’s
nothing inside. That you’re a machine, crossing the street, paying
for a cup of coffee, answering the phone, writing papers on
time.

But inside, you’re like a
zombie.

You’re the walking dead.

Because that’s what a broken heart
feels like.

And yet you keep walking. Keep
crossing, keep paying, keep answering, keep writing.

And time passes.

Chapter
Forty-One

It was actually easier, the first time
Blake Parker broke my heart.

That whole summer, I’d always known it
had to end. No matter how much I hoped and wished, I’d known that
we were living on borrowed time. That there was a day it would all
come to an end.

My first night with Darby went about
the way I’d expected it to.

“
Looks like you had a good
break,” she’d chirped sarcastically, eyeing a stack of magazines
she’d saved by the bed. “My roommate the celebrity. Everyone at
home kept asking about you.”

It was politeness with something
boiling underneath. Southern charm mixed with bile.

“
I’m not joining the
sorority.”

“
I figured.”

I closed my eyes, breathing out. “I’m
going to go to bed early.”

Nine o’clock. Every night. I’d shut
off the lights and lay there in bed, eyes open, staring at the
waffle grating on our ceiling.

Every morning I had a missed call from
Tanner. I didn’t answer those either. It was easier to just keep
sleeping.

Chapter
Forty-Two

A week passed.

I did everything I could think of to
try to find him, but Blake Parker was good at
disappearing.

I spent a few days hanging around
casually by his dorm room, trying to figure out if the light on his
side of the bedroom was ever on.

No luck. Not much of a
surprise.

The registrar was no help
either—Tanner had been right, they didn’t release any information
about where students lived, and certainly not for rock-star,
potentially-ex-students who were no longer living in their dorm
rooms.

I logged into our alumni directory
online, hoping that maybe some over-enthusiastic fundraiser had
thought to include Blake’s new address. Not a chance.

I didn’t call him, though, or email,
or text. The ball was squarely in Blake’s court, and I’d already
said everything I could say.

But I couldn’t help thinking that
maybe if he saw me, maybe if we sat down face to face, something
might change.

I figured my best shot was our modern
literature lecture, the class we took together that I’d been
struggling in before break. I showed up early for the lecture and
took a seat in the back, scanning the hundred-person room for Blake
the entire time.

He didn’t show. I took
notes-haphazardly, distracted by the door every time a student went
to the bathroom.

After a few days, it was painfully
clear: Blake wasn’t at Columbia anymore. He’d come back from fall
break, packed his things, and left his classes behind.

Left me behind.

And somehow it didn’t even come as a
surprise. Being here was wrong for him. It was wrong for us. Ever
since the first day, our college experience had been this spiral of
terrible roommates and miserable parties and missed deadlines and
stupid fights, and the beginning of a long, freezing
winter.

Blake loved me—or at one point he
did—but maybe not as much as he hated all the rest of
it.

But one thing still nagged me. Blake
wasn’t struggling in school. Blake didn’t have a whole sorority
treat him like a walking joke. Blake was doing just fine at
Columbia, and he’d left anyways.

Because of me.

He didn’t have a band to go back to.
And now he didn’t have college, either. All because of
me.

If I thought I’d ruined his life
before, this was the nail in the coffin.

My stomach clenched with stabbing pain
at the thought, but I knew I was right.

I loved Blake so much.

So much that I wished he’d never even
met me.

Chapter
Forty-Three

On Saturday, Madison showed up at my
dorm, eyes determined in a way that I’d seen before.

“
Whatever it is, I don’t
want to go.”

“
Of course you don’t,” she
said, looking determined. “You’re basically clinically depressed at
this point. But that’s exactly why you’re going.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t want
to.”

She smiled sadly. “I know, Case. But
it’s for your own good.”

I hesitated a moment, and then sighed.
At least Madison wouldn’t dress me in debutante pastels.

“
Okay,” I said, too tired
to put up a fight. “It’s your loss. I’m not exactly good
company.”

Darby was out at some frat party, so
at least we had the room to ourselves. Madison sat me in my desk
chair and immediately started pulling out makeup, laying it out on
my desk.

“
Oh—” She said,
remembering something and reaching into her purse. “I brought
refreshments.”

She pulled out a flask and two shot
glasses, and set them down next to her makeup brushes.

“
I don’t think there’s
enough alcohol in the world to help me right now.”

“
Oh, Case,” Madison
grinned at me, purposefully cheerful. “You’re just saying that
cause you haven’t had any yet. Trust me, you’ll feel a lot
better.”

I glared at her. “You’re, like, the
worst peer pressure-er in the world.”

She looked at me for two full seconds,
and we both burst out giggling.

“
I’ll put that on my
resume,” she said, swiping pink lipstick onto my lips.