Staying On Top (Whitman University)

by Payne, Lyla

  I left my eyes closed for a few seconds after my brain registered Sam’s request, until the situation in which I’d fallen asleep came back. It felt nice to wake up to a voice that sounded sorry to disturb me. Much better than the alarm clock on my phone that roused me for 8 a.m. classes. Not to mention what the huskiness and close proximity did to my heart.

  Sam Bradford possessed many, many assets that made girls around the world swoon in their tennis skirts—and climb out of them—but the rich quality of his voice, the way it gave me the ability to picture the look on his face, the expression in his eyes, ranked highest on my list.

  Of course, I hadn’t seen all of his assets.

  In that moment, in between the blessed nothingness of sleep and waking to the reality of this debacle, avoiding the inevitable seemed silly. The reaction between my legs at the mere thought of going to bed with him suggested that it wouldn’t be a disappointment.

  Shaking off sleep and, with it, pointless fantasizing, I opened my eyes and stretched the kinks out of my neck. My breath tasted like week-old anchovies. A package of mints in my purse helped, but I waited until the fuzziness of lust faded before trusting my voice. “Where are we?”

  “About three miles outside of Jesenice. Do you want to drive or give me directions?”

  A second later, I remembered this part of the con. Sheesh. Sleeping had erased half of my brain, it seemed, had made me think Sam and I were college kids on a tour of Europe with nothing to concern me but when we’d give in to the tension between us.

  The plan was to appear to be that couple on holiday, even though we weren’t that. One of us had to remember that fact, and since Sam had no idea what he’d actually signed up for, that person had to be me.

  “I don’t know exactly where we’re going.” A road sign that promised food at an upcoming turn caught my attention. “Let’s get some breakfast and I’ll work some contacts, see what I can find out.”

  “I’m not even going to ask what that means.”

  “That’s probably best.” I smiled, unsure why. Maybe because Sam did it first.

  He steered the car into the half-full parking lot of a restaurant. Jesenice was a small community nestled among mountains—beautiful and friendly enough, and more undiscovered than many places, at least as far as tourists were concerned. It made finding restaurants that didn’t give me the willies a little difficult. I’d spent perhaps a collective month here, a couple of two-week stays back when my mother had been alive. More than ten years had passed since she’d left me alone, since her attempts to keep me from my father’s life had been thwarted by cancer.

  It felt good to have my feet on solid ground, even if it was dusty gravel and the sunlight had done even less to dispel the chill in the air at the higher altitude. A Whitman hoodie helped warm me up. I noticed Sam pull a Nike jacket out of his pack and shook my head. “Nope. You’re recognizable enough as it is, and putting you in Nike will make things click in people’s heads.”

  He looked around at the mostly-empty parking lot, empty streets, and the ranges of hills surrounding us. “What people?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who got all excited about disguises.” I shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  I hid a smile as he tossed the jacket into the Jetta’s backseat, then turned and trudged inside the restaurant. The interior was rustic and a little rundown, the booths sporting worn patches and rips in the vinyl, paint graying and seeming to sag off the walls. The other patrons glanced at us without much curiosity, returning to their conversations and coffee after quick glances.

  Sam and I both ordered tea and breakfast, then stared at each other over steaming cups. My brain continued to feel sluggish, proof that the three hours of sleep in the past forty didn’t amount to nearly enough.

  My phone distracted me from staring at Sam, and I pretended to send e-mails and texts, to research maps, for the next twenty minutes. He stared off into space, then at me, then at the two other patrons in a lazy pattern until our breakfast of eggs and potatoes landed on the table in front of us. I dug in, realizing that I hadn’t eaten anything but airport food since the room service in Melbourne. We ate in silence, which would have been weird except it wasn’t. It hadn’t occurred to me before now, but Sam and I spent a lot of time not talking. The comfort level between us increased without words to get in the way.

  Of course, that might just be the discomfort of a girl who lied when she spoke.

  The alarm I’d set on my phone went off, giving a single beep that mimicked the sound of my e-mail. I looked down to check the nonexistent message, then met Sam’s gaze. “I think we have the address.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Finding the addresses isn’t hard. I’ve taken care of communicating with our tax attorney ever since my mom died, so I just sent him an e-mail and asked for last year’s tax returns. The property tax deductions were listed with addresses. Only one in Slovenia.”

  “When did your mother die?”

  A little voice in the back of my head berated me for bringing her up. Too late now. “When I was eight. Cancer.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s hard—the knowing. The watching.”

  He spoke like someone who knew from experience, but commiserating had never helped. Sympathy grated on my patience and pity made me want to throw up. “It was less than six weeks, beginning to end. Not much waiting. Not as much pain as some. It was a long time ago.”

  Sam opened his mouth like he wanted to say more. In his eyes I glimpsed more than one of those hated, common responses, and in mine he must have seen my determination to be fine about the whole thing. He put tea in his mouth instead of letting words come out, and the gesture flooded me with equal parts relief and concern.

  It shouldn’t be so simple for him to read me. That ability could bring down this entire operation. “You ready?”

  He finished his tea and nodded, dropping euros on the table to pay the check before I could ask if he wanted to split it, then stood. We nodded at the waitress, who smiled and went to count her money. For all the languages Sam claimed to speak, Slovene didn’t rank, and neither did Croatian or Serbian, the second and third most common languages in the country. I didn’t speak any of them, either, and we’d ordered our breakfast by pointing.

  Sam seemed more comfortable than me with not being able to communicate. It made me feel unprepared; I rarely traveled places without knowing the language.

  I would have to get used to it, or at least pretend to, since I didn’t speak Serbian or Arabic, the primary languages in our next two red-herring stops. When we returned to the car I slid behind the wheel and steered onto the vaguely familiar path to one of my father’s mountain homes.

  “I’m surprised you don’t speak Serbian. Aren’t, like, half the ranked players on the pro tour from there right now? Including your most recent ex?”

  His knuckles were white where they gripped the seat belt. “Not half, no. And I thought you didn’t keep up with tennis.”

  “Are you nervous or something?” I responded, happy to change the subject. I loved tennis, and had watched the major tournaments and rankings since my mother had signed me up for lessons in second grade. But I had told Sam the opposite.

  Dammit, that was sloppy.

  “No, I’m totally comfortable riding in a stolen Jetta along mountain passes with a girl behind the wheel who spends more time in her own head than paying attention. No worries.”

  He had done it again—seen right through my exterior. The mountain scenery—all rocks and trees and bright blue sky—had barely registered while my mind worked ahead on the problems to come, such as whether or not my dad would have any security at the house.

  “I’m paying attention, doofus. It’s like with tennis—you never look where you’re going to put the ball, right?”

  “Says the girl with no interest in tennis.”

  “Okay, fine. I like tennis.”

  “And you play.”

  “And I play.”

  �
��Well enough to be my hitting partner while we’re away?”

  “Don’t push your luck, Bradford. I’ll drive us off this cliff right now.”

  “That is so not funny.”

  Chapter 7

  Luck had been on my side for what seemed like the first time since my dad had sent me to complete the swindle on Sam. No one had been watching the house in Jesenice. There must be a regular maid service, because the place smelled like lemons and the sheets on the bed were soft and clean.

  They tempted me; we could spend the day and night, get some good sleep, and move on tomorrow. But making Sam’s life more comfortable wasn’t going to get me what I wanted. Needed.

  Which was to get the fuck out of there before I lost control. It was the only thing I had.

  “This place is amazing. Seriously. I never want to leave.”

  Sam wandered the front room of the house, which ran a little cold to my tastes, but was inarguable impressive. Ceramic tiles stretched out under our feet, meeting a wall of windows that overlooked a mountain pass. The sharp drop had freaked me out a bit as a girl, due to my fear of heights—I couldn’t even read the chapters in A Game of Thrones that took place in the open-air jail cells at the Eyrie without my palms sweating. Large ceiling fans stirred the comfortable air above our heads and the off-white, overstuffed furniture lent an atmosphere of comfort that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  But Sam looked at home in this room, surrounded by these things that had been bought with other people’s money. Standing with his back to me, hands in his pockets, staring into the abyss, I was hard-pressed to recall anything that had looked so … handsome. Desirable. Male.

  The boys I had dated at Whitman and before, even Flynn, were just that—boys. Cute, or hot, or sexy, but not handsome. Not comfortable in their own skin. I had a feeling that Sam looked exactly as he did now in every single room he ever walked into, and it made me jealous. I had spent my life pretending and it appeared this guy never did.

  It made me hate him as much as I wanted him.

  “Well, we’re going to have to leave. Dad’s not here and I need to get back to school, so on to the next option.” I picked up my bag, avoiding his gaze. The scent of my body inside two-day worn clothes made me squirm, but hot showers were a comfort, so they were off the list, at least as long as he would let me get away with it.

  “Where are we going next? Croatia? Serbia? Maybe some scary Arab country?”

  The suggestions stopped me. “What made you guess those places?”

  “Nothing. Let’s go.” He shouldered his pack. “Can I take that bottle of Germ-X from the kitchen?”

  “Sure, I don’t care. But answer my question.”

  He paused, glancing back out the window as though he thought jumping might be preferable, then sighed. “I keep a list of nonextradition countries taped inside my passport.”

  “What in the hell for? You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s going to need to seek international asylum.”

  “It’s part of my zombie-apocalypse plan.”

  “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so.”

  “That’s the reason. I’m prepared, that’s all.”

  “Prepared like you have a blanket and flashlight in the trunk of your car, or prepared like you hired someone to build you a fully stocked underground bunker in your backyard?”

  “I don’t drive my own car, nor do I have a backyard.”

  “Those are examples. I’m trying to gauge your level of doomsdayishness.”

  “That’s not a word.”

  “Okay, but seriously, zombies? Out of all the things to be afraid of in this world—terrorists, North Korea, global warming, thieving accountants … you’re prepared for zombies?”

  Sam didn’t reply. He grabbed the bottle of hand sanitizer from the kitchen on our way out through the garage, then climbed into the Jetta’s passenger seat. I wasn’t looking forward to more driving, but it appeared I didn’t have a choice.

  The engine turned over and I told myself it didn’t matter why Sam had a list of nonextradition countries stored in his brain.

  Except it might.

  Discomfort tightened in a knot between my shoulders. Everything my dad had ever taught me, all the tricks I’d learned when forced to react in the middle of a con … they all boiled down to one thing: get to know your mark. Know their hopes, their fears, the desires that drove them, and eventually, one of those things would lead you to the answer of how to fool them.

  But every last molecule in my body warned me that getting too close to Sam was dangerous. We already shared some kind of weird sexual charge, a fact that had made it way harder than it should have been to turn him down in St. Moritz and again last spring. The bottom line was that I didn’t trust myself with him, and that made me feel as though bugs crawled over my skin.

  My self-control, my ability to not get emotionally involved, helped me survive.

  “So, did I guess right? Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to Serbia, so yes.”

  “You want me to get us a car there that we don’t have to steal?”

  “Borrow. We borrowed this one, and yes, if you can find one we can borrow there, that would be preferable. As long as we don’t have to go too far out of our way to pick it up and it can’t be traced back to you.” I risked a glance his direction, noticing that his hands weren’t clutching the seat belt quite as tightly as they did on the way up to the house. Progress. “We’re taking the train to Ljubljana.”

  “My middle-European geography isn’t the best, but I’m pretty sure that’s not in Serbia.”

  “It’s not. The train goes there from Jesenice. From there we take the bus to Belgrade.”

  This time my peek caught a poorly hidden expression of horror, along with an actual shudder that worked its way down his spine. “The bus? Do you know how long that’s going to take? Have you ever been on a bus?”

  I shrugged, trying my damnedest to hide a smile. We could fly or even drive in half the time, but that would be too easy, and it didn’t fit with the image I’d painted of my dad. I’d never been on a bus, but Sam didn’t know that and he didn’t need to. It couldn’t be that bad. “About ten hours total, according to my phone’s calculations. We take the bus through Croatia, then across the Serbian border to Belgrade. The towns where our passports are stamped are small and probably aren’t digital. It’s a good plan.”

  In the lengthy pause that followed, I could almost hear his stubborn will crumbling. That this—a ten-hour train and bus ride in countries that were more than a little behind the rest of the world when it came to comfort and hygiene—would be the thing that made Sam flee for a first class ticket on the soonest international flight.

  It only served to pique the curiosity I didn’t want to admit to. What kind of person rationalized stealing a car but balked at taking a bus for half a day?

  It appeared I would never find out, because a few breaths later, Sam agreed.

  “Okay, fine. The bus it is, and never let it be said that Sam Bradford isn’t up for adventure.” He reached out a hand toward the back of my neck, but stopped short the second before his fingertips brushed my skin.

  I felt the heat of them, the rub of his hard-earned callouses, and fought the instinct to lean into his touch. He pulled his hand back and settled it in his lap. I told myself I wasn’t sorry.

  “Sorry. I almost forgot about our deal.”

  “What deal?” I asked, feeling out of sorts. What did it mean, that he could make my brain fuzzy by almost touching me?

  “That I wouldn’t touch you again until you asked.” He paused. “Are you asking?”

  I shook my head, unwilling to trust my voice not to sound as shaky as my insides felt.

  “Noted.” The way he said it made me think he’d noted a few other things, too. “Belgrade is perfect, actually. My friend Marija still spends most of her off-season there.”

  An image of the tall, shapely girl with shiny black hair a
nd a smile that had landed her more modeling contracts than tennis titles appeared in my head. I gritted my teeth. “She really goes back to Serbia? Don’t most of you guys live in, like, Monaco or Majorca during your six weeks off?”

  “Again, a strange amount of tennis-world knowledge for a girl who ‘doesn’t keep up.’ But you’re right. Marija is involved in funding orphanages in Serbia, and since she spends so much time away during the season with her commitments, she goes home for the holiday.”

  “How nice.” That sounded snotty even to me. Jesus. Was I really bashing a girl who went home to a country still struggling in many ways to shake off a war to work with orphans?

  “It is nice. She’s nice, and I’m sure we’ll be able to borrow a car.”

  “Hopefully it’s not too flashy and doesn’t come with a driver.”

  “She has a big family, I’m sure we can scare up something appropriate. I’ll call her. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. Don’t use your phone. We’ll use one at the train station.”

  “Can I send her a Facebook message so she’ll answer the call? Girls like Marija don’t answer calls from unfamiliar numbers.”

  “Dude, no girls answer calls from unfamiliar numbers.” I took a deep breath, telling myself to chill the fuck out. So, we were going to borrow a car from Marija Peronovic. No big deal. Maybe she would give me her autograph. I’m sure my dad could put her signature to good use. “Go ahead and message her.”

  “Good thing I have a permanent international data plan.” He got out his phone and started typing. “Speaking of cars, what are we going to do with this one?”

  “Leave it at the train station. Once we’re somewhere we can rest, I’ll use a public Internet café to e-mail the police back in Vienna with the location.” I flashed him a smile. “See? Borrowed. We’ll even fill it up with gas first. No harm.”

  “You really are a strange girl, Blair Paddington. I think it’s one reason I liked you right off the bat in Switzerland.”

  I swallowed, ignoring the little leap-and-flip my heart did in my chest. “Or you were trying to sleep with every girl you came across and I was ruining your goal.”