Staying On Top(32)

I liked her. I had since we first met, and there didn’t seem to be much point in denying the fact to her or myself, but I had to remind myself to be careful. “Yes. My parents are from central Florida—the middle of the shithole, as it were—but we moved to Bradenton when I started training seriously.”

“Where do you live in the off-season? Melbourne?”

I hated that question. People asked it all the time—reporters, friends, nosy fans—because most players had that place they loved. Sometimes the home they were born into, sometimes one they had fallen in love with and adopted along the way, but not me. My six weeks off were spent wherever sounded good at the time. More of them had been spent in Melbourne than other places, because that’s where the new season began and it was nice to not have to rush, but that was the only reason. I had no more affection for Australia than anywhere else.

It didn’t take a shrink to know that it was because home had never been a place of solace for me. The road had given me a life. Refuge. Love. As much as I adored women, enjoyed being in relationships, they’d never had any chance of surviving. My family had cured me of a burning desire to create one of my own—what the tennis world gave me was enough.

*



I had dozed off with less than an hour to go before we arrived in Belgrade. A loud pop and Blair’s fingers squeezing my thigh startled me awake.

“What?”

Her hand flew from my leg to cover my mouth, but her sharp gaze stayed focused on the front of the bus. Mine followed, and a second later, cold fear froze my limbs.

The meth-head guy had a gun.

I pulled her hand off my face and squeezed it between my palms, then slumped down in the seat, tugging her with me so our heads were out of sight.

“What’s happening?” I whispered.

She shook her head, the faint, leftover smell of her shampoo tickling my nose. “He started yelling, then a lady screamed, then he fired the gun.”

“What’s he yelling about?”

“I don’t even know what language he’s speaking,” she said so softly it barely carried over the sound of the engine.

Great. I knew the two of us were going to be in trouble trying to traverse less-traveled European countries like normal people—ones who knew how to handle crises that might pop up—but being on a bus with a loaded gun was outside even my wild imaginings.

For her part, Blair looked unimpressed. The fact that she’d grabbed on to me so hard when it started proved that it frightened her, but now she appeared more annoyed than anything as she peered around the edge of the seat to get a better look.

Her fingers twitched between my palms but she didn’t pull away.

“What’s happening?”

“Shut up, I’m trying to listen,” she hissed back.

The man and woman continued to shriek at each other in what sounded like babble, and a moment later Blair slid back my direction. Her teeth worried her bottom lip, but other than that, she still didn’t seem too bothered by the fact that a maniac with a gun paced the aisle. “He thinks the woman he’s with is cheating on him. Maybe with his brother.”

“How do you figure?”

“A few Latin roots here and there, plus his hand gestures and the fact that she’s yelling back now.” She shook her head. “It’s the Maury Show. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

The bus swerved toward the shoulder of the uneven road, slamming our hips together. I let go of her hand and caught her around the shoulders, steadying us both against the window. My hands were shaking, and even though it was stupid, I hoped she didn’t notice.

More shouting erupted from up front, along with another gunshot that made us both duck on instinct, and the bus swerved back into the proper lane. I guessed the driver’s plan to pull over and deal with this crisis while not moving had failed.

“Fuck this shit,” Blair muttered, and stood up before I could stop her.

To her credit, she didn’t straighten all the way, leaving her chest and torso covered by the seat, but if you asked me she should have been more concerned about her head.

Then again, these seats weren’t stopping a bullet. If the asshole decided to spray the back of the bus, both of us were going to be Swiss cheese.

“Excuse me!”

Her voice rang over the shrieked argument, too loud, too confrontational. Awe over her balls warred with embarrassment over my cowering, with neither winning out over my worry.

“Is there any way you could put the gun away and sit your ass down? The rest of us would like to arrive in Belgrade alive, and we’re only, like, ten minutes from the station. You can just pick up where you left off there.” She paused, waiting for a response maybe, but the rest of the bus had a similar reaction to mine—stunned silence. “Hinsetzen? Schnauze? Ja?”