Staying On Top(49)

“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.