by Gemma Crisp
‘Ye-e-es . . .’
‘You said red – which obviously means you’re taken. But . . .’ He paused, then continued in a rush, ‘did you just say that because you’re here for work and you don’t want anyone hitting on you?’
Nina stared at Adam. She knew what she should say – that it wasn’t an excuse and she actually wasn’t available – but despite the talking-to she’d just given herself, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to.
eighteen
The Eastern European techno music felt like it was piercing Nina’s brain. She realised Adam was holding her hand while he looked at her hopefully. She took a swig of champagne to give herself time to think, but it didn’t help. ‘What’s wrong with you, you idiot?’ she asked herself. ‘Remember Jeremy, the big red traffic light sitting at home? Just tell Adam and be done with it.’ Still, she hesitated. The DJ cued up a hardcore remix of Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’ and the dancefloor exploded. Before she could find the words, Adam pulled his hand away. ‘Forget I said anything,’ he said, giving her an apologetic smile. ‘I don’t know why I assumed you weren’t telling the truth . . . maybe it was just what I wanted to hear.’
‘No! Sorry, I mean . . . I don’t know what I mean,’ she finally confessed, almost melting over his emotional vulnerability. ‘It’s complicated, and not just because I’m here for work. There is someone at home, but things have been a bit wobbly lately which I haven’t really admitted to myself until now. So it wouldn’t be fair on either of us, right?’ Nina asked, trying to sound assertive but coming nowhere near it. As Rihanna belted out the chorus, they sat and stared at each other.
‘I seriously don’t think my liver can take anymore,’ Michaela groaned as she sat down next to Nina. It was the second-last day of the tour and everyone was feeling the effects of too many late nights followed by too many early starts. Not to mention the copious amounts of alcohol they were consuming each night – everything from beer and wine to vodka shots and the obligatory Jägerbombs – which had been a recipe for multiple hook-ups in the group over the past week.
True to Ash’s prediction, Gerrard had attempted to make a move on every female on the tour – even the ones who had their partners travelling with them. So it was no surprise when he’d crawled onto the bus the morning they were due to drive from Prague to Krakow sporting a pearler of a black eye and looking very sorry for himself. The whole bus soon found out that Jim, a Texan who was on the tour with his fiancée, Sally, hadn’t taken kindly to Gerrard’s attempts to feel Sally up under the table at the restaurant they’d been to the previous night, and had decided to take matters into his own hands – literally.
Things hadn’t got any better for Gerrard when the bus stopped at the border of Poland and the Czech Republic and passport control guards stepped on board to check everyone’s paperwork. They had eventually reached Gerrard, who was scrabbling around in his bag, desperately looking for his passport. The whole tour had glared at him in annoyance as Annie and the bus driver started pulling everyone’s luggage out from underneath the bus in an effort to locate Gerrard’s backpack, which hopefully contained his passport, while border security stood over them. Reeking of booze and looking like he’d recently been in a cage fight, he had eventually found his toothpaste-smeared passport stuffed in his toiletries bag, then started arguing with the guards as they flicked through it repeatedly. Watching from the bus window, the whole tour had been transfixed as Annie did her best to translate, while the officers shook their heads sternly and pointed in the direction the bus had just come from. After half an hour of negotiating, Gerrard had admitted defeat, hauled his backpack onto his hungover shoulders and trudged off to the security office with his newfound friends. Annie and the driver got back on board and soon they were driving through the border control into Poland – sans the South African.
‘What just happened there shows you how important it is to get the right visas,’ Annie had explained to the wide-eyed crowd over the PA system. ‘Gerrard’s travel agent should have told him that he needed a visa for Poland, but obviously didn’t, so Polish border control won’t let him in.’ A few people had started clapping – Gerrard wasn’t exactly the most popular person on the tour.
‘What’s he going to do?’ someone had asked.
‘He has to go back to Prague and apply for a visa at the Polish embassy. If he gets it, he’ll pay for a flight to Krakow and meet us for the last bit of the tour. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to South Africans on tours like this, so if you have any Saffa friends who are planning to travel through Eastern Europe, please warn them that they need to get the right visas, otherwise they’ll be refused entry.’
Nina now looked at Michaela, who was draining the last drops of her bottle of Black Doctor, aka Coca-Cola. ‘I contacted my cousin in Sydney after the second night and asked her to call the hospital and put me on the list for a liver transplant for when I get back,’ she joked. She tried to surreptitiously check where Adam was sitting – and with whom – without giving herself away to her new Kiwi friend. She needn’t have worried – Michaela had spied Nina’s iPad sticking out of her bag and was now busy logging on to her favourite rugby website to check for news about ‘her boys’, aka the All Blacks.
Craning her neck, Nina guiltily peered out of the corner of her eye to see if Adam was up the back of the bus, but after a few minutes of searching, she couldn’t see any sign of his blond head. It had been the same routine ever since that first night – Nina hating herself for it but always needing to know where he was, who he was with, what he was doing. It was like she had regressed to being an infatuated sixteen-year-old who constantly drives past her ex-boyfriend’s house to see if he’s at home. Not that Adam was her boyfriend, ex or otherwise, she quickly reminded herself.
Turning back to ask Michaela what Dan Carter had been up to since she had last checked, the words shrivelled on her tongue as she saw Adam board the bus, a giggling Lorena right behind him.
‘He didn’t,’ one half of her brain said, outraged.
‘Maybe he did sleep with her, maybe he didn’t,’ the other half sniped back. ‘What’s it to you, anyway? He can shag whoever he wants, remember? He’s probably shagged every green-light girl on the tour, and probably some of the amber ones, too. And you can’t blame him for hooking up with Lorena – most of the guys on this tour are panting after her.’
‘But he’s supposed to like me,’ the first half whined plaintively.
‘He does like you. But you knocked him back. So what’s a straight, red-blooded man supposed to do?’
‘But I also told him that although I was in a relationship, I was beginning to feel conflicted about a few things and wasn’t sure what would happen when I got back home.’
‘And he was a perfect gentleman who said that he didn’t want to be responsible for making you do anything you’d regret, so he’d leave you to it, but you knew where he was if you changed your mind.’
‘What if I do want to change my mind?’ half her brain whispered.
‘Then you’d better hurry up and get on with it,’ the other half said sharply. ‘It’s the last night of the tour, so it’s now or never. But you’d better be prepared for the consequences. Because what happens on Global Bus tours doesn’t always stay on Global Bus Tours . . .’
Watching Lorena follow Adam down the aisle of the bus, Nina’s eyes flicked between the two of them, trying to work out if it was sheer coincidence that they’d boarded the bus together, or if they’d come direct from having a long, hot shower after shagging each other senseless all night. Suddenly, she caught Adam’s gaze – he was looking straight at her and making no secret of it. Like Bambi in the headlights, she felt powerless to pull her eyes away. Without a word, they had what felt like an entire conversation as they stared at each other, before Lorena pushed him into the seat opposite Nina and Michaela’s, collapsing on top of him with a high-pitched giggle. Nina rested her head against the window, feeling like she was about to throw up.
After the bus trip into central Warsaw from the outer-suburban hotel they were staying in, Annie escorted them through the Old Town, then some groups splintered off to walk around the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto while others wandered down the Royal Route, and some of the girls took the opportunity to do a last-minute smash and grab in one of the many H&Ms dotted around the city.
Several hours later, they all met up at a traditional Polish restaurant for their ‘last supper’. As Nina strolled in, the first thing she saw was Adam standing at the bar, ordering a drink. Lorena was nowhere to be seen. ‘It’s now or never,’ she thought, making her way over to him, not bothering to say hello to anyone else.
‘Hey, stranger,’ she said, poking him in the ribs. He swung around, nearly covering her in beer.
‘Oops, that was close,’ he grinned, making no secret of how pleased he was to see her. He leant down and whispered urgently, ‘I’ve missed you.’
Although her heart was racing, Nina was determined to keep things light. ‘So, what does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?’ she asked innocently.
A few minutes later, when Nina was clutching her own overflowing glass of Tyskie, they went to find a seat at the huge table that belonged to the Global Bus group. Already rowdy, the crew got looser as the beers kept on coming, together with the heaped platters of kielbasa sausages and pierogi dumplings. As they toasted Annie and their driver with endless rounds of vodka, the crowd reminisced about the trip, promising to keep in touch when they’d returned home to all four corners of the globe. Underneath the table, Adam’s hand found Nina’s; he threaded his fingers through hers and held on tight.
After they staggered out of the restaurant, it was time to hit Warsaw’s bar scene. Following the crowd in front of them, Nina and Adam walked along the cobblestones hand in hand. Heading downstairs to an underground bar, they found a series of tiny rooms, filled with people drinking and dancing. Getting separated as others in the tour group stopped to talk to them, Nina found herself chatting with Annie, the tour leader, as well as Ash, Michaela and Carly, a quiet Aussie girl who Nina had barely noticed before – she’d always been on the first bus back to their hotel after the group dinners and hadn’t really made a lot of friends on the tour. After half an hour, with yet more vodka shots under her belt, Nina was wondering how to press the eject button on the conversation so she could hunt down Adam, when Annie put her inebriated foot in it.
‘So, Nina, can you send me a copy when the article comes out?’
Nina frowned and quickly shook her head as a warning, hoping the others hadn’t heard. She had thought Annie didn’t know she was a journalist, but figured the Global Bus PR manager must have told her without informing Nina.
‘What article?’ Carly piped up.
Before Nina could stop her, Annie blurted out, ‘Nina’s writing an article on the tour for a magazine back in Australia. We’re going to be famous! So, do you know which issue it’ll be in?’
Nina felt three pairs of eyes staring at her. ‘Uh, no, not yet.’
‘You’re a journalist?’ Ash said. ‘I thought you said you were a project manager?’
‘I kinda am, in a way – but on a magazine. I’m the features editor of Lulu, a women’s lifestyle title back in Sydney,’ she admitted.
‘Cool,’ said Ash, swaying slightly. ‘Does anyone know where the bathroom is?’
As Michaela escorted Ash to the bathroom, Nina was left to face a ropeable Carly.
‘So all this time you’ve been pretending to be something you’re not, while sneaking around and making notes on all of us to print in your magazine?’ she accused drunkenly.
Nina took a step back – it seemed vodka had helped shy, quiet Carly to find her voice and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
‘It’s not like that, Carly,’ Nina explained. ‘The article is more about the tour itself, not the people on it.’ Carly would need to be a whole lot more interesting if she wanted to be included in the travel feature, she thought to herself.
‘How do we know that? We should have been told there was a bloody journalist on this tour,’ she told Annie indignantly, her voice getting louder and louder. ‘We should have been able to choose whether we wanted to go on a tour with a journo present instead of it being kept a secret from us until it was too late! This is un-fucking-believable! If I see my name or photo printed anywhere in that piece of shit you call a magazine, I will sue your arse to high heaven.’ She stalked off.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Annie apologised. ‘I had no idea they didn’t know.’
‘It’s okay,’ Nina reassured her, trying to hide how shaken she felt. ‘I thought it was best to keep it on the downlow in case people didn’t feel they could be themselves around me. But I guess that backfired.’
‘I can go talk to her if you like?’
‘It’s okay, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault she has her knickers in a knot. She probably won’t remember it tomorrow anyway.’
As Annie gave her a hug, Nina fought back tears. She hadn’t been yelled at so aggressively since her days at the Bickford. ‘I’m out of practice,’ she thought, as she wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
‘Well, that’s just charming,’ a Canadian accent murmured in her ear. ‘Don’t they teach you manners Down Under?’ Adam’s smile quickly disappeared as he noticed her watery eyes.
‘Aw, honey, what happened?’ he asked, pulling her into a hug.
‘It’s nothing,’ Nina sniffled. ‘Annie accidentally let slip that I’m writing a story about the tour in front of some of the girls, and one of them went absolutely ballistic about it. She acted like I was some sort of psychopath who’s a danger to society,’ she choked out.
‘Which one was it? I’ll go talk to her,’ he said, rubbing her back.
‘It was Carly – another Australian chick. It’s probably my fault; I should have been upfront with everyone from the start.’
‘Carly?’ Adam said incredulously. ‘The girl who’s barely said a word to anyone for the entire time? What the hell is she worried about? That you’ll tell your readers how boring she is?’
Nina managed a wobbly smile. ‘Don’t be nasty,’ she chided, even though she’d thought the exact same thing. ‘I guess she has a thing against journalists.’
‘Or she’s jealous – maybe she’s a frustrated writer who is desperate to get into magazines?’
‘Maybe.’ Nina shrugged, feeling deflated. ‘It doesn’t really matter. It was just a bit of a shock because I didn’t see it coming. Especially from her.’
‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ Adam said suddenly, leading her out of the bar and back up the stairs to street level.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, as he led the way along Warsaw’s streets with his arm firmly around her shoulders.
‘Here,’ he said, rounding a corner and leading her up the stairs of an ornate building and into the lobby. ‘It’s the Polonia Palace, a famous Warsaw hotel that somehow managed to escape any damage in the Second World War,’ he explained. ‘I’ve heard it has a decent jazz bar that has views of the Palace of Culture and Science.’
Seated at the bar with extra dirty martinis in front of them, Nina and Adam chatted about everything and nothing – everything, except the fact it was their last night together and Nina would be flying back home to her long-term boyfriend the next day. When Adam leant over, hesitated slightly, then kissed her, Nina didn’t try to stop him. Her brain was marinated in a hefty amount of booze, and all thoughts of Jeremy were buried way down below the layers of beer and vodka. All she could process was how good it felt to finally be kissing Adam. She’d thought about what it would be like constantly since the first night in Budapest, but it was better than she’d expected – so much better. After the kiss broke off and they were left staring at each other, she could feel electric currents of pure lust uncurling themselves deep in her stomach. Nina bit her lip as she realised she wanted more – much more.
‘Are you thi
nking what I’m thinking?’ he whispered.
Nina looked at him silently, not trusting herself to speak.
‘I want you so badly,’ Adam continued. ‘I have since the very first day we met. It’s been torture having to stay away from you, Nina, but I promised myself I’d give you space after what you told me in the bar in Budapest. But you’re here, I’m here and it’s our last night together. Babe, I need to know – have you changed your mind?’
Like a puppet controlled by unseen hands, Nina found herself nodding. Adam was now brushing his fingers lightly up and down her inner thigh, driving her crazy, while he pulled her in for another kiss. ‘Let’s get a room,’ Adam whispered urgently in her ear, pulling her off her bar stool.
In a lust-fuelled trance, Nina followed him to the reception desk, where he quickly registered for a one-night stay. As soon as the door to their hotel room closed, he pinned her to the wall, kissing her so deeply it was like she was his only source of oxygen. She could feel exactly how turned on he was as he grabbed her butt and pulled her up against him. Biting his earlobe as he kissed her neck, they fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs. Soon Nina had stripped down to her underwear and Adam was shedding the rest of his clothes at a speed that would make Road Runner jealous.
Nina was about to unhook her bra and pounce on him, when she caught sight of his boxer shorts. Navy blue Calvin Kleins – exactly the same as Jeremy’s favourites. In an instant, the lust in her stomach dissipated and nausea prickled at the back of her throat. What the hell was she doing in a random hotel room in Warsaw about to have sex with a guy she’d known for less than two weeks? As Adam reached for the waistband of his shorts, Nina felt like she’d had a bucket of cold water thrown over her.
‘Adam, stop,’ she whispered. His hands paused as he looked up. She couldn’t meet his gaze, so stared at the floor, hating herself for ending up in this situation. ‘I’m sorry,’ she choked out. ‘I thought I could do this, but I can’t.’ As disbelief registered on his face, Nina scrambled for her clothes then fled into the bathroom and locked the door behind her before she could change her mind.