Moving in Reverse (21 page)

“
I don’t even know,” I
answered honestly. I wanted—” I paused, not wanting to go into why
I needed a hotel room when the last time Tanner had seen me, I’d
been happily living at Blake’s. “I returned a call from this PR
firm, and they had all this stuff they were talking about — like a
nightclub appearance, or something? And I guess they want to pay me
for it? I don’t know — I guess I’m just wondering, is it ok for me
to just take all this stuff? Like, what if I take a pair of jeans
and they send me a bill for, like, two hundred dollars?”

I paused to catch my breath, and heard
Tanner start to laugh on the other end of the phone.

“
Stop laughing,” I scolded
him, trying not to smile. “I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit
hole over here.”

I could hear the grin behind Tanner’s
voice. “Well, I see why you don’t want to ask Blake,” he
teased.

My mind was completely blank. He
obviously didn’t know, but why would—

“
He hates that stuff,
right? The swag? Appearances? Making money from just showing
up?”

I let out a deep breath. “Yeah,” I
sighed. “He does.” A little voice in my head asked me when I
stopped hating all that stuff too.

Maybe when my boyfriend left me alone
and friendless because of a stupid tabloid story, I reminded
myself.

“
And now Casey Snow has
had a taste of fame, and doesn’t mind the free clothes?” Tanner
teased me, his voice low and conspiratorial, flirty.

I played along. “I just want to know
what I’m doing,” I said. “I thought you might be able to
help.”

“
Of course, Snow,”
Tanner’s voice was deep and unmistakably sincere. “What do you
need?” For a moment I wondered if his supposed crush on me might
not be a joke after all.

I shoved the thought out of my head.
Tanner was a friend, and nothing more. I had two priorities: Get
through the next week in Los Angeles, and get Blake back. Not
necessarily in that order.

“
Can you come over?” I
whispered, and heard him take in a breath over the phone. “I mean,
um, I’m supposed to have this meeting, in Hollywood? Could you
maybe, like, coach me through it?”

Tanner exhaled, recovering quickly.
“Sure. No worries. I guess I still owe you one after ambushing you
at lunch the other day.”

“
Right,” I said, feeling
my lips creep into a smile. “And hey,” I added, holding the phone
closer to my ear. “Thanks. This means a lot.”

I’m
drowning
, I thought to myself.
And you’re the only lifeline I see.

Tanner’s voice was gentle as he said
goodbye. “Not a problem,” he smiled. “See you in an
hour.”

Chapter
Thirty-One

If Tanner was surprised that I wanted
to meet him in a hotel, it didn’t show on his face when he knocked
on my door.

“
Man, I thought I’d have
to take you on a real date before we started booking clandestine
hotel suites,” he grinned, whistling as he walked into the room and
took in the size. “But hey, I’m not looking a gift horse in the
mouth. Want to show me the bedroom?”

I rolled my eyes, trying not to smile.
After crying for days straight, it was a strange feeling, and not
entirely unwelcome.

Tanner walked over to the minibar and
fished out a tiny bottle of scotch, poured it into a
glass.

“
Don’t you think it’s a
little early for that?” I raised an eyebrow. I hadn’t even eaten
lunch yet.

“
Don’t worry, Snow,”
Tanner finished the glass in one gulp. “They’re not going to charge
you.”

I shook my head, smiling with
exasperation, and decided to let the subject drop. There were more
pressing matters to think about at this point.

I gestured to the table. On it was a
contract I’d printed out in the hotel’s business center, that had
been sent to my email a few minutes before. I held my breath as
Tanner looked it over.

He flipped through the pages and then
looked at me quizzically. “Why, exactly, am I reading this? Didn’t
you say your mom was a lawyer?”

I blinked, surprised he’d remember
that. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” I answered
honestly, my voice nervous. “It’s more money than I made all senior
year working at the coffee shop.”

Tanner snorted, laughing so hard his
shoulders shook. I glared at him until he managed to take some deep
breaths.

“
Casey, you should hear
yourself,” he covered his mouth with his hand. “Really? More money
than you made all senior year at the coffee shop? Snow, this is
chump change. Bloggers get paid more than this for appearances.
You’ve been on the cover of US Weekly four times.”

In some ways, Tanner kind of reminded
me of April, with the notable exception of him not seeming to hate
my guts. They’d probably make a great fake relationship, if she
decided she wanted it to look that way.

“
Stop it,” I
smiled.

“
Snow, listen. The
innocent schoolgirl thing might bring out Blake Parker’s inner
white knight, but Hollywood is going to eat you alive if you don’t
buy yourself a spine. Seriously, you’ve been in US Weekly how many
times and you don’t have a PR team yet?”

I blinked again. “Blake doesn’t have a
PR team,” I told him, my only frame of reference.

“
Right, and Blake has the
best public image of any celebrity you know, right?”

I thought about it. According to the
tabloids, Blake had supposedly cheated on April with me, supposedly
gotten into a fight in New Orleans (well, that part was basically
true), supposedly cheated on me with another girl who turned out to
be his lawyer, and then supposedly broken up Moving Neutral (again,
maybe not entirely false). All in all, though, he’d been pretty
much dragged through the mud in the gossip magazines for the last
six months.

“
Besides,” Tanner
continued, “Blake had access to the record label’s PR team if he
wanted it, which he didn’t. You don’t have a big name behind you
yet.”

“
I’m not sure ‘yet’ is the
right qualifier, Tanner,” I said.
I just
need to get through this week
, I thought
to myself.

And then. . . back to college, where
everything was so easy before I left? The reality of it hit me,
hard. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t even have the first step of a
plan. Even if I could get through this week, what then?

“
Listen, Snow. Ask for
more money, that’s step one. But you need an agent or something,
you shouldn’t be doing this yourself. Do you want my guy’s
name?”

“
Your guy?” I repeated.
“What would I need an agent for?”

Tanner smiled at me, gently. “You
know, when I first heard about you, I really thought it was all an
act or something. April always did. But it’s just you, isn’t
it?”

I was so out of my league. Without
Blake around, it was like everyone else could suddenly see
it.

“
Six months ago, I was a
high school senior grounded for having half a beer at a party in
somebody’s basement,” I said, feeling defeated.

Tanner scrawled a phone number on a
piece of hotel stationary. “Buck up, Snow. That’s where everybody
starts, you know? Most of us just hide it better than you
do.”

He pushed the paper across the table.
“Give him a call,” he said. “Now, unless you really do want to show
me the bedroom, I guess I’m out?” He winked, and I felt myself
blush.

“
You never stop, do you?”
I rolled my eyes, my constant state when Tanner was
around.

He stood up, looking at me for a
second like there was something else he wanted to say. Finally he
seemed to get over his hesitation. “Are you sure—” he paused,
brushing some hair out of his eyes. “Listen, just — I’m glad you
called. If you feel like you’re in over your head…” He trailed off,
not finishing the sentence.

“
I’m okay,” I said, lying
again. I’d left ‘okay’ behind before we’d even left New York. “It’s
just been a crazy few days, you know? Thanks for coming
over.”

Chapter
Thirty-Two

When I jumped down the rabbit hole, I
went headfirst.

The next night, a hair and makeup team
showed up at the suite at four in the afternoon, a girl a little
older than me with shiny red hair pulled into a high bun to do my
makeup and a guy in his early twenties in harem pants to turn my
hair into something more fitting for a quasi-celebrity.

Lauren was there too, along with an
intern who looked like she might be in college or even high school.
Lauren introduced everyone and then sat down next to me while the
guy started spraying my hair with a water bottle so he could blow
it dry.

“
So, when we’re done here,
we’re just going to get a few shots of you by the pool in the
hotel, if that’s ok — or we can get you coming in the front with
some shopping bags, whatever you feel comfortable with. You’ll look
great, and we can place them in the magazines in little blurbs —
you know, show you doing something besides breaking up
relationships,” she giggled, and then apologized. “Too
soon?”

I tried to imagine a world in which
being in the tabloids was something funny. Maybe I just took things
too seriously?

“
Coming back from
shopping,” I said, my own reasons overshadowing any potential
magazine mentions. Getting some publicity out would, at the very
least, remind Blake that I existed. And let him know where to find
me.

“
Maybe Tanner could drop
you off?” Lauren pressed, even though we’d been through this
before. I’d told her Tanner was just a friend, but she didn’t quite
seem to believe me. In any event, getting photographed with Tanner
was the opposite of what I wanted Blake to see.

I shook my head firmly. “I need a
dress for tonight anyway,” I smiled. “Maybe I can just run out and
pick something up?”

Lauren laughed. “You’re not really
going shopping, you know that, right? I have six dresses in my car,
you can pick whatever you like best.”

I paused. “So I’m just going to put a
dress that you already have in a bag, walk outside and come
back?”

“
Well, when you put it
like that, it does seem a little strange,” Lauren smiled. “But, um,
exactly.”

The whole time, the guy working on my
hair had managed to transform my normally straight-ish hair to a
halo of loose, beach-y waves. Meanwhile, the makeup girl had
brought out my eyes with a light eyeliner, brushing powder onto my
cheeks and dabbing my eyelashes with mascara.

Looking into the mirror, I hardly
recognized myself. It was the best I’d ever looked.

Here goes
nothing
, I thought to myself.

Every time I’d been in the tabloids
before, it was either by accident or actively against my will. It
turned out, if you actually wanted to be in them, it happened a lot
faster.

By the time I booted up my computer on
Thursday morning, TMZ was already running photos of me leaving the
hotel, complete with shopping bags from a designer boutique that
was one of Lauren’s company’s fashion clients. They looked nothing
like the other photos I’d seen of myself in magazines, which
usually caught me in grubby clothes when I wasn’t expecting to be
photographed. In these I looked radiant, happy, smiling through doe
eyes as if I had no idea I was being photographed.

(That was a lie, of course. Lauren had
told me where the cameraman would be shooting from, so I could give
my best bashful smile, and then she and I had pored over the photos
before giving him the approval to send six carefully-selected shots
to the magazines. The hotel’s logo was clearly visible right behind
my head. Obviously.)

I ran a finger through my
still-perfect hair. It was like looking at someone else in these
photos, like someone had gone into my life and airbrushed me
over.

My cell phone buzzed, and then buzzed
again. I felt my breath catch as I looked down at the caller id,
but it wasn’t Blake.

I hit the button to answer.

“
Snow,” Tanner’s voice
filled my ear like he was in the room next to me. “You clean up
nice.”

“
You can’t be calling me
already,” I said, an involuntary smile forming. “I just saw you
yesterday.”

“
I’m insulted,” Tanner
said, trying his best to sound like he meant it. “I’m not playing
hard to get — I’m just calling to let you know you’re on People’s
‘Who Wore It Better?’ Against Gisele.”

“
Please tell me you’re
joking.”

“
Ha. I’m
joking.”

“
Seriously?”

“
Yes, seriously. You’re
against one of the Real Housewives, I think you’re
safe.”

“
Do you really wake up at
nine in the morning to read People Magazine’s website?”

“
For you I do.”

“
You’re awful. I’m hanging
up.”

We both paused, knowing I didn’t mean
it.

“
Have lunch with me,” he
breathed, and I felt my stomach knot.