Page 111 of Trip Me Up

39

NIALL

I sloshedthrough the revolving door and paused to wring out my shirt tail on the hotel lobby’s carpet. A sneeze exploded out of me. Great. Some bug had finally gotten through my barriers of handwashing and sanitizer, like the pounding Seattle rain through my water-resistant jacket.

“You said Seattle wasn’t rainy in May,” I grumbled, peeling off the fair-weather jacket. I grimaced. I’d just blamed the weather on Gabi. What was next, homelessness and climate change?

Gabi gritted her teeth. “Let’s check in, then we can warm up the way the locals do, with a nice, hot cup of coffee.”

“What are you, Mary Poppins?” I snarled. I didn’t want coffee. I wanted a shower, dry clothes, and a warm bed. And for my heart to stop aching. I definitely didn’t want Gabi, with her false cheer and concerned looks. “I don’t need a nanny, you know.”

She scanned me from the damp hair dripping in my eyes to my wrinkled plaid shirt to my squishy lace-ups, and when she met my gaze again, a chill ran through me. “A babysitter is exactly what you need. You’re stuck with me until you can admit how messed-up you are.”

“Me, messed up?” I plodded past her, dragging my rain-spattered suitcase to the end of the line at the hotel desk.“I’m a fucking Tower Prize winner on his goddamned victory tour.”

“She’s not worth it.” Gabi’s hair was already puffing up as it dried. “She’s not worth your misery.”

I lurched forward in the line. “I’m not miserable. Can’t you tell I’m angry?”

One corner of her mouth turned up. “Is that what this is? The moping around, the hiding in your hotel room at night, the sighs whenever we pass a copy ofMagician in the Machine?”

“I don’t do that,” I snapped. I hadn’t felt particularly sociable after all the book events. But I didn’t sigh when I saw her book—thatcomputer’sbook. That made my blood boil.

Gabi glanced at the top of my head. “You’re steaming.”

“I’m soaked. And it’s warm in here.” I tugged at my collar.

“Did you knowMagician in the Machinefinally made the bestseller list this week? Seems people want to read a book written by a computer. That or they want to see what all the fuss is about.”

“Great. That’s fucking fantastic. Why am I even bothering to write a third book? Might as well just ask S—that machineto—to spit one out for me.”

“Might as well,” Gabi said, her tone infuriatingly mild. “Hey, the university in San Francisco asked if we could swing by there for a talk. The one where you spoke last summer.”

It was like plunging into the ice-cold pool at the quarry. I shivered in my damp clothes. “A talk? In San Francisco? At the university that funded that—that monstrosity? Where S-Sam is?”

“Day after tomorrow. No big deal, right? We’ll take their olive branch and show them who owns literary San Francisco. Hint: not them. Not her. Am I right?”

She might not even be there. She might be in New York, hooking up her A.I. at the publishers’ offices. Replacing me and every other artist who hoped to publish a book. I spoke with more confidence than I felt. “Right.”

“So I’ll tell them yes?”

“Yeah, why not?” That skip in my heartbeat was excitement about the opportunity to sell more books. Or a heart palpitation from the potentially deadly illness I’d caught. Not nervousness about seeing Sam again. And certainly not hope.

After we checked in, we rode up together in the elevator. When Gabi stopped at her door, she pulled a phone out of her purse.

“Want to call home tonight?”

At the start of the new tour, I’d stayed up all night, cradling the phone and obsessively reading every news article I could find on Sam. And then I’d pulled up my texts. I’d read the last one from Sam so many times I’d memorized it:

Sam: I can’t tell you how much I regret what I did with CASE. Can you forgive me?

After dragging through the following day’s events with icy anger knifing through my belly, I’d asked Gabi to hold on to the phone for me. Indefinitely.

As much as I could’ve used comfort from Mom or Grandpa, I couldn’t trust myself with the technology. Not when we’d be in her hometown in two days.

“No, I’m good.”

“Want to meet me in fifteen for that cup of coffee?”

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