Staying On Top (Whitman University) (17 page)

They worked better at disguising me than I would have thought, especially with the week-old scruff crawling over my jaw and lip. It itched something fierce, but when I’d said something about shaving Blair had nixed that idea right away. Itchy was better than her holding me down and bleaching my hair or something equally ridiculous. 

“I have to say, you pull off the sexy nerd look better than I would have guessed.” Her gaze found mine in the mirror, happy again and maybe even a little excited.

“You think I’m sexy?” I teased. 

“I would think you would be used to girls calling you sexy by now,” she tried to backpedal, holding out a knit cap that would be at home in any number of Abercrombie ads. She also cradled a pay-as-you-go phone and two pairs of rubber flip-flops.

I turned around and pinched the hat between two fingers, trying my best not to wrinkle my nose. “I’m not used to
you
saying I’m sexy. Or using your words when it comes to me at all.”

“Whatever. Yes, I think you’re hot, okay?”

I moved closer so no one who happened to speak English could overhear. “And you want me?”

“I think I made that clear last night.”

It annoyed me that she sounded embarrassed. “Being attracted to someone or asking for what you want isn’t anything to feel shameful about, Blair. I think it was pretty obvious that I wanted you, too, and you’re beautiful and sexy and maddening and perfect. Please don’t feel like you have to hide from me, or be anything other than what you are. Who you are.”

“What if you don’t like who I am?”

The weight of the moment fell around my shoulders like an iron cloak, heavy and uncomfortable and unfamiliar. My life off the court contained happy, carefree people and situations, because I dealt with enough pressure in the day-to-day life of my career. As much as I liked Blair, as much as I wanted her, this scared me.

Mostly because I didn’t know how to handle it.

“It doesn’t matter if I like it, you can’t be anyone else.” I tweaked her nose, trying to ignore the bare anguish in her dark eyes. “Besides, I already don’t like you, remember?”

It didn’t get me the kind of smile I wanted, but her effort was better than nothing.

“What’s with the rubber shoes?” I asked, leading her to the checkout counter. 

“Welllll, I’m thinking we’re about to experience our first hostel.”

I hoped she didn’t notice the hitch in my step. “So?”

“So they have communal bathrooms, like the dorms at Whitman. And everyone knows you wear flip-flops in the shower or risk some crazy foot fungus.”

Good Lord in heaven, I could not handle this. The mention of the word
fungus
in the same sentence with communal bathrooms made me itch from the soles of my feet all the way to my hairline. Not to mention the nausea burbling in my stomach.

This trip hadn’t been as bad as it could have been, at least not so far. Flying coach for almost three days and sitting in a stranger’s car had been uncomfortable, but Mari’s had been nice enough and even though this Passat was old, it was clean. I’d already blocked out the memory of that bus.

But hostels? I didn’t know if I could do it without breaking into hives, but I couldn’t tell Blair that. She’d thought from the beginning that I would bail on this whole trip because my life as a spoiled, pampered rich boy hadn’t prepared me for any hardships.

While that was true, my germophobia presented the real issue.

Calm down. Deep breaths. Cross that bridge when we got to it, chew sleeping pills if necessary.

“Awesome. Thanks for getting me pink ones, by the way.”

“They only had women’s. Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry,” I observed as we waited in line behind an old man with a twist in his spine that bent him nearly in half.

“Oh, I’m not. I can’t wait to see you wear them. Consider yourself lucky if a mysterious photo doesn’t end up on some show like TMZ.”

I flinched at the reference even though Blair had been kidding. No one who grew up with money and any kind of notoriety at all had patience for that paparazzi crap, but my aversion ran higher than normal after they got hold of that story about my credit card being declined.

The elderly gent finished his transaction and we paid cash for our few purchases, then Blair and I carried them out to the car. She got back behind the wheel and reentered the highway after a quick run through the drive-through at McDonald’s.

I tried not to eat that shit after stumbling across the YouTube video that explained the way meat products not fit for human consumption were cleaned with chemicals—the pink slime thing—but there was something comforting about being able to grab delicious fries and a Coke almost anywhere in the world. Blair ordered the same thing, plus a cup of coffee.

The sound of the wheels on the pavement tried to lull me to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes all I could see was moldy walls trapping the stink of homeless kids sweating on sagging mattresses, and laying awake listening to cockroaches and rats wage epic battles through the filth on the floors. My image of the disgusting hovel where she expected me to sleep tonight could be worse than the real thing. Could be. “So, where is this hostel going to be? Do we need reservations?”

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea. It’s too far to drive all the way to Santorini in one day, unless you want to take turns and sleep in the car, so maybe we should stop halfway. Somewhere in Macedonia? Do you want to check?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say we’d drive it straight through, but she’d want to know why. Not to mention that, even though we’d had a decent night’s sleep in an actual bed last night, there were circles under her eyes that said Blair hadn’t rested all that well. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to drive through the night if we didn’t have to, and even though some of my exes might accuse me of selfishness, I was worried about her.

Her fatigue had to be more than the will-they-won’t-they saga the two of us had going on at the moment. She’d had a strange childhood, and even though her father’s influence on her life now remained a bit cloudy to me, it had to be more than she wanted. If she could get him arrested, put behind bars, maybe she could start to build the kind of life she wanted, not the one that he’d forced on her.

Christ, maybe
I
was fucking overtired. It was the only viable excuse for having such sentimental thoughts about a girl I barely knew. One that had, at least in a peripheral sense, turned my life upside down.

Looking up the halfway point between Belgrade and Santorini took my mind off the fact that I was losing my shit. “What about this place called Skopje in Macedonia? Looks fairly good-sized, and there are a few hostel Web sites.”

“Do any of them have reviews or anything?”

The way she said it set off warning bells in my mind. “You say that like you don’t know any more about finding a hostel in a foreign country than I do.”

She cast me an incredulous look. “Do I look like I’ve led the kind of life where I’ve stayed in hostels? My father has houses all over the world. He stole millions of dollars from you, and you’re nowhere close to his first success story. I went to prep school with the kids of actors and musicians and politicians. Trust me, I
don’t
know any more about staying in hostels than you do.”

“Oh.”

“But I
do
know about this little thing called the Internet. And I know you can find reviews and recommendations for just about anything, so if there’s nothing about any hostels in Skopje, then we don’t want to stay there.”

It made sense. I felt like a moron for not thinking of that myself.

“It looks like there are several that have decent ratings and more than a few reviews.” I scrolled through the top recommendations, my hope that this wouldn’t be the death of me flickering back to life. “This one doesn’t look bad, actually. Even clean.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you can make pretty much anything look clean in a photograph, Sam.”

Chapter 12

The Unity hostel in Skopje should have looked better, considering how hard it was to hold my eyes open even though it wasn’t even 6 p.m. We’d had a long day, between the almost-sex in the bathroom, almost getting arrested for breaking and entering, jumping sixty feet into a freezing cold river, and then racing out of town.

My stomach had started rumbling an hour ago, but if I’d seen a bed that looked clean enough, I could have been convinced to forgo dinner and go straight to sleep.

While the community bedrooms didn’t look
un
clean, exactly, they left me with a wary feeling that did nothing to encourage sleep. The rooms looked as though they had been decorated by a fifteen-year-old girl who had been fan-girling over her favorite boybands. There were ten or twelve beds in each room, singles mostly, and each bed came complete with a curtain that could be pulled for privacy. The curtains and bedding were an alternating mint green, hot pink, aqua blue, and a bunch of other colors that shouldn’t be in the same room. The prints ranged from polka dots to sparkly circles, with a few paisleys and stripes thrown in for good measure.

Alcohol was the only answer.

“Are you hungry?”

Blair tore her eyes away from the perky neon oasis. “What?”

“Are you hungry? More specifically, would you like to find somewhere within walking distance and get plastered enough to be able to sleep here tonight?”

She nodded, slowly at first but picking up speed. “Yes.”

The teenage guy at the front desk, who had green spiked hair and so many holes in his face it was hard to know where to look without being rude, directed us a few blocks away to a strip of restaurants and bars.

It surprised me sometimes, how similar things could be in the world while still being so different. Jesenice had been different from Belgrade, and they were both different from Skopje, but there were still couples strolling in the streets, places to eat, and college-aged kids shoving one another in front of a club called Ballet. 

The trek from Unity at dusk felt surreal and glowing, so different from the cosmopolitan Belgrade that it was like falling backward in time. My fingers twitched with the desire to reach out and take Blair’s hand, and after stopping myself half a dozen times, I gave in.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, looking as disoriented as I felt.

“You said we needed to act more like a couple, right? If you were my girlfriend and we were here, I would hold your hand.” I gestured to our surroundings. “It’s romantic, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.” She grimaced as though the idea of romance didn’t appeal to her, but a half smile drifted across her lips.

I wanted to kiss them, so I stopped and pulled her toward me, then pressed my mouth against hers.

Kissing Blair surprised me every time—for all of her prickliness in our other interactions, as soon as our lips met she melted into me as though her body wanted nothing more than to be part of mine. This time was less hurried than our previous kisses at first, but when she sighed into me, I stroked her tongue with mine, reveling in the taste of her, the way she was soft but demanding, shy but filled with our shared craving.

Her arms went around my neck and my fingers dug into her back; we might have stood on that street in Macedonia kissing for an hour or a minute. When she pulled away, breathing heavy and staring at me with stars in her eyes, all of the sudden that hostel didn’t sound like such a terrible idea after all.

If Blair could make me want to get naked in sheets that had belonged to someone else last night, I might never let her go. 

Instead of voicing yet another ridiculous thought, I tugged her down the last couple of blocks to a place called Kapan Han, a pub recommended by my phone as a fun place with authentic Macedonian cuisine, whatever that meant. It sat on the ground floor of an area called the Old Bazaar; between the ancient, uneven stone streets and buildings that looked as though they’d been there since Alexander cut his first tooth, the name fit it perfectly.

 I ordered a beer and so did Blair, and we drank them before the waitress returned to take our order. By the time we’d eaten—I couldn’t pronounce the names of any of the food, but it was all pretty good, if heavy on beans and olives—we’d killed a six-pack and my fatigue had eased into a desire to explore.

“How do you do it?” I asked, feeling warm all over as I watched Blair sip the last couple drops of her porter.

“Do what?” 

“You’re at home everywhere. I mean, I don’t really have a home, either, but I’m definitely out of my element in the places we’ve visited. Not speaking the language, or one that can be understood, makes me nervous.”

In most of the places we visited on the tennis tour, knowing English, Spanish, Russian, and German, French, and Italian worked well enough. Every place Blair and I had been in central Europe, the people spoke their own languages that were nothing close to what I understood.

“I don’t know. I mean . . .  I’m not as comfortable as you think. I’m good at faking it, more than anything.”

“Fake it till you make it?” The confession made me look at her in a different way, but my brain was too relaxed from the beer to figure out why it bothered me.

“That’s how it’s done, son.”

I leaned across the table, setting my hand over hers and stroking my thumb across the pulse in her wrist. “You don’t have to fake it with me.”

“We’ll see about that,” she purred, winking at me over the rim of her mug.

The comment caught me off guard, shooting lust and affection through me in equal measure. The drinks and the flirting had woken me up, which was the opposite of what the plan had been, and I knew I needed to be way tipsier before trying to sleep. We paid the tab and wandered outside, her fingers tickling my palm.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“You’re not tired?” she asked, her eyelids drooping.

“Not tired enough to forget that someone else probably had sex on my sheets last night.”

A lengthy pause reigned while she stared at me, her eyes sharp and the wheels in her brain turning so fast they were almost audible, sank my stomach. Fooling Blair was no easy task. Not for long, anyway.