Page 18 of Trip Me Up

7

SAM

I tuggedmy coat tighter against the damp January chill and trudged up the sloped driveway to Mother and Charles’s house. It seemed like a different Sam who’d spent her middle- and high-school years in the upstairs bedroom Mother still called mine.

The one time Mother had visited my studio apartment near the university, she’d asked me why I insisted on living in a hovel. Despite the cracks in the ceiling, the leaky bathroom faucet, and the occasional ghostly clang of the pipes, I loved it because it was mine, paid for by my stipend and not the company that had finally succeeded only after Dad worked himself to death over it.

I climbed the steps to the front door and gave myself a moment to suck it up. Blaming my work, I’d ditched brunch for months. But my dissertation was in Dr. Martell’s hands now, had been since right after the New Year. That’d been weeks ago. When I asked him about it, he said it was a fine first draft, but he wanted to see if we could get more “real-world results.” The sales had been good, according to Heidi, sinceMagician in the Machinehad released three months ago, but Heidi expected a “pop” from the tour.

As hard as I’d begged, Martell wouldn’t get me out of it. He saw the tour as a key part of the experiment, wanting to measure how people reacted to a book they thought had been written by a human and how that response changed when they found out it had been written by a machine. It was a valid point.

But he’d ignored the personal aspect for me. How awkward was the tour going to be after I’d failed to mention my pen name to Niall Flynn that time I’d stalked him at the campus library last summer? By now, Heidi or the publicist, Qiana, must have told him I was Sam Case. I hadn’t given him my number, so at least I didn’t have a string of accusatory texts from him. But meeting him at our first stop in Ohio in a couple of weeks was going to be a shitshow. Especially when I tried to read.

But before I could get to that nightmare, I had to get past this one: telling my family I was leaving town without breaking the NDA.

The door opened, and my friend Marlee stepped out.

“What are you doing here?” My mother didn’t consider Marlee, who worked for Jackson, part of the Sunday-brunch circle.

“Hello to you, too.” Marlee clutched her pink coat to her neck.

“Sorry, I—” I winced. “I was thinking about something else, and you surprised me.”

She grinned. “Don’t worry about it. Remember, I work for your brother. I know how you geniuses operate. I had to drop off some papers. From Weston.” She frowned.

“Nothing terrible, I hope?” Jackson had told me stories about his nemesis, the CEO of his company.

“No idea. It’s above my pay grade. Hey, I’ve missed you since your internship ended. We should get together for lunch. Maybe next week? No, not next week. Big deadline at work. The week after?”

The tour started that week. My stomach clenched tight every time I thought about it. “Sorry, I can’t. I’m going on a trip.”Please don’t ask about it.

“A trip? Tell me it’s somewhere warm and sunny so I can live vicariously through you. Well, until our honeymoon next summer. Did I tell you? We’re going to Hawaii!” She fluttered her hand, and her engagement ring sparkled.

“That sounds like fun. How’s Tyler?” If I could get her talking about her fiancé, I’d be safe from her questions.

“Fantastic.” She glanced behind me and waved. “He drove me here. And, actually, I should get going. We have, um…plans.” Her cheeks went red.

Normally, I’d have asked about their plans, but the easy escape from having to hide the book tour was too tempting.

She hugged me. “Call me after your trip?”

“Sure.” Maybe by then Heidi would have made the announcement and I could tell her about it. Marlee loved both books and computer science. She’d be interested in what CASE had done.

With a wave, she trotted down the walk to the driveway, where a blue Mustang idled.

When I turned back toward the door, Jackson grinned down at me. “You coming in, or are you going to stand out there all day?”

“B. Definitely the standing.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Wish I could’ve stayed outside, too, but Mother has grandchild radar these days. She can sense Alicia coming.”

I reached out and squeezed his hand. He had that wild look in his eyes again. “You’re going to be a great father, Jackson. Just like Dad.”

“Let’s hope I can stick around longer.” He tried to smile, but his lips wobbled.

“You’ve got a much better work-life balance than he did. And you and Alicia take care of each other.” Since he’d gotten together with Alicia, I’d seen the little checking-in touches they gave each other, the way Alicia tilted her head at him when he reached for that one-too-many drink, the way he rubbed away the tension in her shoulders.I almost envied him.

“We do.” He squeezed my hand and released it. “I just hope I don’t—”

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