Free Lucy in the Sky by Anonymous

than a daytime hiking trip?
    August 9
    Cam can’t go hiking with us because he has to clean pools all day. He’s bummed. And I am too, a little. Blake keeps texting me about how much fun this hike is going to be. It’s weird, but I never thought of Blake as much of an outdoors guy. Maybe this has to do with the big SURPRISE that Lauren keeps talking about. It’s making me nervous. I wish she’d just tell me already, but she says that it would no longer then (by definition) be a surprise.
    August 12
    Lauren is spending the night so that we can get up first thing in the morning and get on the road to Blake’s place up the coast, then get on the road to his uncle’s ranch. It’s about an hour’s drive past his place, according to Lauren. I told her that we were NOT going to talk about Blake to my Mom and she gets it.
    Mom is THRILLED that we are going hiking with Ian and Ross. Lauren told her that the ranch we’re going to is owned by a friend of her dad’s, which is sort of half true. I mean, technically, her dad DOES know who Blake’s dad is, and knows that the ranch is in Blake’s family. Anyway, Mom has packed us a cooler of sandwiches and cans of Diet Coke, and bottles of water, and made us promise to take lots of pictures, and call when we’re headed back.
    Cam is all mopey that he can’t come. I told him he should just call in sick tomorrow, but Cam is very conscientious and says he needs the money.
    August 13
    Wow.
    W-O-W.
    I’m not even sure where to start.
    When Lauren and I got to Blake’s house, Ian and Ross were already there. I guess they’d spent the night there. I’d been chattering nonstop to Lauren all the way there about how crazy nervous I was about seeing Blake again, and what if this was all in my head, and Blake didn’t really like me at all. She just rolled her eyes and said that I was very good at inventing reasons to be worried.
    The minute he opened the door, Blake wrapped both armsaround me and kissed me on the lips really gently. He smiled and said, Finally. Then he sort of danced me into the kitchen so he could grab some water bottles. Lauren giggled and yelled TOLD YOU as she ran upstairs to get Ross and Ian. In the kitchen, Blake leaned me up against the island and kissed me so firmly that my knees went a little bit weak, and I was glad that I was leaning against something solid. He pressed his whole body into mine, and I could smell his skin, and the body wash he must’ve used, and the product in his hair that smelled like eucalyptus.
    All of the worries I’d had about him melted inside of me. It raced out of me from every direction, through a buzz under my skin that came shooting out of my fingers and toes and the hair at the top of my head. What was left after all of the doubts were gone was the sound of my heart pounding in my ears and the heat of Blake’s breath on my skin.
    In that moment I just didn’t care whether he wanted to date me or not; I knew that he liked me totally and completely, and I wanted to just stay right there with him all day long, kissing in the kitchen.
    When we heard Lauren and the boys coming down the stairs, he grabbed my hand and dragged me out to the driveway with him. We all piled into Ian’s SUV, then headed north up the coast to the ranch. When I took the cooler out of Lauren’s car,Ian asked me what it was, and I told him it was food and drinks for the trip. Ian laughed, and Blake said, We probably won’t need any food today, but the drinks will come in handy.
    I didn’t understand what they meant right away, but once we got to the ranch and Blake jumped out to open the gate at the end of the gravel road we’d taken off of the highway, Ian turned around and said, Okay everybody! Time for the hiking surprise!
    He pulled a Ziploc bag out of his pocket and handed it to Ross. We parked the SUV under a tree at the edge of a giant meadow that had a