Free Moving in Reverse by Katy Atlas

leaned down to kiss me.
    I wanted to press further, but it
didn’t seem to be the right time — and when Blake kissed me,
everything else I was thinking about suddenly seemed to lose its
urgency. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and let him pull me
closer.
    “ You want me to put a sock
on the door?” he whispered, and I let out a quick laugh, my body
still shaky from the kiss.
    “ Har har,” I said
sarcastically, and pulled away from him. “Maybe next year you could
get a single.”
    Something flickered across Blake’s
face as I said it, and I immediately regretted my words without
knowing why. I slid out of his arms and sat down on his bed,
pulling my knees to my chest.
    “ What’s wrong?” I said,
reality coming back to me. “There’s something, isn’t
there?”
    He sighed, sitting down next to me
without answering my question. There was silence for a moment, and
then his face brightened.
    “ Let’s get out of here,”
he said, looking at me excitedly.
    “ Okay,” I said, feeling
like I was a step behind him. “Where to? Are you hungry?” I’d
barely picked at my dinner, worrying the whole time about why Blake
hadn’t written me back.
    “ No, I mean really out of here,”
Blake said, his eyes glinting in the fluorescent dorm room light.
“Let’s go to L.A.”
    I blinked, looking at him to see if he
was serious. He grinned at me, looking as happy as I’d seen him all
day.
    “ Come on,” he said. “It’s
ugly here. It’s cold. People are on top of us all the time. Let’s
take a little break — this time tomorrow, we could be on the
beach.”
    I looked at him skeptically. “What
about Monday? You want to fly to California for 24
hours?”
    He shook his head,
dismissing the thought. “What about Monday?” He said it reflexively, not expecting an
answer. “I think Columbia could function without us for a week or
two.”
    “ A week or two ?” I didn’t want
to sound like a killjoy, but I was already close to a C in our
English class. Blake might be able to coast his way through
freshman year, but I was on thin ice.
    “ Why not? Come on, Casey,”
he paused for a second. “What are we even doing here
anyway?”
    I heard a tinge of something else in
Blake’s voice, and for a moment I wondered if he’d asked himself
that question more than once this semester.
    It wasn’t like I hadn’t wondered it
too.
    “ Blake, I can’t just miss
a week of classes.” I wanted to be the impulsive, carefree girl
who’d followed him across the country on a whim this summer, but
this was real life. We weren’t leaving behind a few weeks of
helping out at my mom’s office and babysitting my brother — this
was our freshman year of college.
    Disappointment flashed across his
face, and he turned away from me for a second. “Fine,” he said. “No
big deal. Whatever.”
    “ Blake, I’m sorry—” I
brushed my hand against his, trying to cheer him up. “You wouldn’t
want to miss Halloween, would you?”
    It didn’t cheer him up. “Right,” he
said, still obviously annoyed. “Wouldn’t want to miss Halloween
frat parties, obviously.”
    We sat in silence for a
second.
    “ I guess I’ll get going,”
I said, wanting him to stop me.
    “ I guess,” he flipped on
his phone and checked the time.
    I lingered before walking to the door,
and a thought occurred to me.
    “ Wait,” I said, turning
back to Blake. “What about fall break?”
    Columbia had a week-long break in
early November, midway through the semester. I’d been planning to
go home to Rockland, but my parents could always come into the city
in between, or just wait another few weeks till
Thanksgiving.
    Blake looked at me with a small smile.
“When does it start?”
    I met his eyes helplessly. “I don’t
know,” I giggled. “I’ve lost track of what month it is at this
point. Darby had to remind me that tomorrow was Halloween. Soon,
though. It’s a whole week.”
    A smile spread across his face, the
tension starting to