The sun started to set over Holden, leaving the town glowing orange. I stepped out of the ice cream parlor, calling goodbye to Lena and Jesse over my shoulder, and into the fresh air. It was still hot and humid enough to make me feel disgustingly sticky, but at least the ocean breeze was cool. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my loose jean shorts and started down the street in the general direction of Rachel's house. I still wasn't sure exactly how to get home from town, but I knew I'd find the house eventually.

As I walked, I found it increasingly hard not to think about Blake.

He had a rebound girl already.

Why hadn't I seen it coming? He'd ditched his cheating emotional wreck of an ex-girlfriend. He had every right to move on—I just hadn't anticipated it happening so soon. It was a harsh reminder that he had a life here in Holden that I knew very little about. I'm sure he knew tons of pretty, hilarious, academically gifted girls who he got along with. I don't know why I'd ever hoped that he might consider me—the weird girl from Alaska who cracked bad jokes and fought with him every time we spoke. 

Blake and I were the sun and the moon. Opposites. It never would've worked, anyway.

Just as I started to feel like I might do something dumb, like cry, a car horn honked.

I was so startled that I jumped nearly a foot into the air, then fell backward and landed right on my ass. The instant I landed on the sidewalk, I knew I was going to have a giant and very difficult to explain bruise. As I grimaced in pain, a silver sedan rolled up next to me. It was too dark for me to make out the person driving, but I recognized the car almost instantly.

"Hamilton," I hissed.

"Hey, Alaska," Blake's chipper voice replied from inside the car.

"It's rude to sneak up on people!" I practically shouted as I stood back up from the ground, resisting the urge to rub my aching tailbone. I couldn't see Blake's face, but I knew that he was probably grinning at my injury.

"I didn't mean to scare you," he told me in his deep voice. "C'mon. Let's go."

"Excuse me?"

"Get in the car," Blake told me.

I snorted. "Uh, no thanks."

Then, with as much dignity as I could manage with a bruised ass, I turned and began waddling down the street. Unfortunately for me, Blake decided he wasn't done just yet. His car rolled alongside me.

"You good?" he asked.

No, I was not good. I turned to glare at him. His face was all hard angles in the dim lights of his dashboard.

Suddenly, I was mad at him. And not just because he had snuck up on me and made me feel like an idiot with a sore rump, but also because he had already moved on from Alissa and seemed to be doing quite well. Okay, maybe I was just frustrated because Blake hadn't shown any interest in me. But still. He had broken up with Alissa and then, not twenty-four hours later, selected a rebound girl.

I mean, who does that?

"You're a dick," I snapped at him. It felt good to raise my voice.

"I was just going to offer you a ride home," Blake argued, one hand up in defense as the other kept the wheel steady. He was still smiling like he wanted to laugh, though. I marched on, muttering some very unladylike words under my breath as I went.

But Blake continued driving alongside me.

"Will you just leave?" I cried as we reached the end of the block. "You're being creepy!"

"I just want to make sure you get home safe."

For a moment, I felt that he might be genuinely concerned for my safety. My heart fluttered. But then I realized he had to be bullshitting me, because anyone who cares about someone else's safety would not sneak up on said person and honk their horn to make said person fall on his or her ass.

It's just common courtesy.

"Yeah, right," I grumbled and turned the corner.

"Waverly?" Blake called after me. "Where are you going?"

I could practically hear the smile in his voice, so I knew right away that I'd taken the wrong turn and was probably walking in the opposite direction of our houses. But my ego was far too fragile, so instead of admitting that I was going the wrong way, I just held up my chin and kept stomping forward.

"I know where I'm going!" I shouted over my shoulder.

Blake revved his engine.

"Fine!" he shouted back, sounding frustrated. "Have a nice walk!"

I heard him roll up his window and make a U-turn, but refused to look back and watch him drive off. I balled my hands into tight fists, suddenly wondering how satisfying it would feel to punch Blake Hamilton right in his cute, freckled nose.

I didn't need him.

I could find my own way home.

Holden was a pretty tiny town. How difficult could it be?

About half an hour later, I had the answer to that question.

Very.

There must have been three hundred different roads all within two square miles of each other, each of them tangled together like someone had thrown a clump of yarn onto a blank map to decide where to put the streets. I was hopelessly lost amongst pastel houses and palm trees.

And it was getting dark.

And my butt was really sore.

I waddled up and down the streets, praying every time I turned a corner that I'd see Rachel's house. Finally, when I realized I'd passed the same enormous, gaudy, purple house with a perfectly manicured front lawn, I gave up.

With a great big heaving sigh, I fell back onto the manicured front lawn. The grass was surprisingly soft, and within moments, I found it very difficult to keep my eyes open. I was exhausted. Would anyone really mind if I just slept out here?

I let my eyelids flutter closed.

And then, just as I felt like I would fall into welcome sleep, I was bathed in light. My eyes snapped back open and I rolled onto my side, propping myself up on one elbow as I squinted down the street. There was a car coming, and its headlights were blindingly bright.

I groaned and rolled back onto the lawn, grabbing two fistfuls of soft green grass. I closed my eyes and waited for the car to pass so I could sleep. But the car didn't keep going. Instead, it pulled up right along the sidewalk in front of me. I opened my eyes, suddenly worried that some masked man would jump out of the car and grab me. I mean, what kind of person drives their car around on suburban roads at like ten at night?

Murderers and psychopaths, that's who.

I still couldn't quite make out the car because I was still a little blinded from staring straight into the car's headlights, but I heard a car door pop open. Oh, God. Someone was getting out of the car. I was going to get kidnapped, and they'd feature me on one of those creepy television shows about murder mysteries that never got solved.

Maybe I should play dead.

I closed my eyes and let my tongue loll. 

"Waverly?"

My eyes snapped open. I had to blink a few times before I was able to make out the tall, dark, familiar figure standing over me.

Nope, not a murderer. Just a douche.

"Blake?" I asked in disbelief. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing?" he asked, his eyebrows shooting up. "You're the one sitting on Alissa's front lawn."

Alissa's lawn? I turned to look over my shoulder at the ostentatiously hideous house behind me. It seemed at least three times as large as Rachel's house and looked like the residence of a Miami gangster.

"I thought you were going home," Blake said.

My cheeks warmed in embarrassment.

"I got lost," I admitted in a mumble.

"What?"

He was going to make me say it again. The bastard.

"I got lost, okay? Happy?"

Blake clenched his teeth together, his square jaw flexing as he did so, and glanced up at the dark night sky above us. I looked back down at my feet, waiting for him to say something. To rub it all in my face.

Instead, he sighed and said, "C'mon. I'll drive you home."

What, no joke? No rude remarks?

I didn't waste time questioning it. I jumped up to my feet, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in my buttocks, and jogged towards the car. I slipped into the passenger's seat and clicked my seatbelt over my chest before Blake had even reached the driver's side door. Despite the fact that he was wearing a sweatshirt, and that this must be what he considered cold weather now that the sun was down, Blake turned on the air conditioning.

"Aren't you cold?" I blurted.

Here we go again. Why did I always speak so impulsively around Blake?

"I'm fine," Blake shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road as he pulled away from the sidewalk in front of Alissa Hastings' big purple house. "I just thought you might be warm. You practically live in the snow, right?"

Blake was being considerate.

Maybe I had really fallen asleep on the lawn and this was all a dream.

"Right," I mumbled.

For a few painfully long moments, it was quiet in the car except for the occasional clicking of Blake's turn signal and the rattle of a few unidentified objects in the trunk.

"Sorry about your... er, butt," Blake said suddenly, breaking the silence.

"My what? Oh! It's fine. I'm fine."

Blake nodded and said nothing further.

In the faint glow of the lights on the dashboard, I thought I saw his cheeks go pink. But I was probably just seeing things. Just as I decided it would be safe for me to let my eyes roam over Blake's face, he turned to look at me.

I turned my head, trying to hide my imminent blushing and pretend to be looking out through the car window. But it was dark outside. I couldn't see anything. I looked like an idiot. I dropped my gaze down at my hands, fiddling with my thumbs as I resisted the urge to look back up and see if Blake was still watching me.

"Looks like the awkward fairy decided to grace us with her presence today," I mumbled under my breath.

I hadn't meant for Blake to hear me, but he did.

And he let out a laugh.

It was a harmonious sound, and it seemed to make both of us slouch back in our car seats with relief. I hadn't noticed how tense both of us were until I was able to unclench my fists and lean my head back against the cool leather headrest.

"Thanks, by the way," he said.

"For what?" I asked, trying to remember if I had done him any favors recently.

Or, for that matter, ever.

"For not telling Lena and Jesse about me going over to Alissa's house."

I was about to mention that I had only kept my mouth shut because he was holding the fact that I couldn't swim against me, but instead I decided to bring up something else.

"Alissa told Lena anyways," I said.

"She what?" Blake asked, gripping the steering wheel a little bit tighter.

"Well," I continued, unable to shut my big mouth, "Alissa came by after you left and told Lena that you wouldn't take her back. And then she said you had a rebound girl already. And then she tried to call Ethan."

Oh, God.

It was like word vomit that I couldn't stop spewing.

"She told you I had a rebound girl?"

I had no right to go rubbing my nose into his business. It shouldn't matter to me if Blake had decided to start dating another girl. Why did I have to have such a big mouth? This never happened to me. Only around Blake did I find myself talking so much.

"Did she tell you a name?" he pressed.

Blake's knuckles were practically white on the steering wheel.

"No," I told him truthfully, resisting the urge to press further and ask the name of this mysterious rebound girl, and where she lived, and how mad on a scale of one to ten he would be if I punched his new girlfriend in the face.

Blake seemed to relax a little at this, but his dark eyebrows were still pinched. Neither of us spoke another word to each other. After several minutes, we finally pulled up in front of our houses. I wasn't sure whether I should thank Blake for the ride or not, so I just sat there for a moment silently debating.

"We're here," he said.

"Right. Um, thanks for the ride."

"No problem."

I jumped out of the car before it could get any more awkward. I heard Blake get out of his car right as I started waddling up the steps.

"Hey, Waverly!"

I turned. He was already halfway to his porch. "Yeah?"

"Be at the public pool tomorrow afternoon. Three o'clock. I'm teaching you how to tread," Blake informed me. Before I could argue, he pushed open the front door and slipped inside his house, leaving me to stare after him with my mouth agape.

He couldn't be serious.

Could he?

I turned and was about to start climbing the porch steps again when the front door flew open. I let out a little gasp as I spotted Rachel standing in the doorway, her lips pursed and her hands on her hips. Her tangled brown hair was pulled up into a knot and she was wearing pajamas. She also looked pissed, which meant that I was so dead.

"Where have you been?" Rachel demanded. The bun on top of her head bounced as she spoke.

"I can explain," I told her. "But first, I'm going to need some ice. I think I sprained my butt."