Slipstream

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

My phone rings at 4:45 a.m. I had an alarm set, so I’m awake, thankfully; I snatch it and flip it to silent before Sarah startles from her eye-mask slumber. Arthur Bianco—Personal stares back up at me, and I pop into the bathroom, shut the door, and whirl around to face myself in the brightly lit mirror.

“Hello, Lilah,” Arthur says.

Him using my first name captures my full attention, and with that one word, it’s just me and his voice, deep and breathy.

“Hello, Arthur . What’s up?”

“Well, I’m on the roof, and I was wondering if you were going to get here in time.”

I look over my shoulder at the shut door. “In time for what? You said five a.m. I was just about to leave.”

“I did,” he replies, entertained by something. “And let me guess… you don’t like being late.”

“Way too easy of a guess,” I say, smoothing the bottom of my washed-out band T-shirt over my jean shorts. During the day, temperatures in Budapest have been flirting with mid-eighty degrees. “How does one get onto a roof, anyway?”

“That’s why I called.” Arthur pauses. “I was thinking we could play a game. You get to the roof by five and you get your surprise.”

Deep inside my chest, underneath bones and barbed wire, my heart perks up. I shove my hand against it and tell it to heel. “You do realize that I asked you to talk, and you’re making this into hide-and-seek?”

“Do you not want to play?”

I know he’s serious. With all the ways we’ve pushed each other, challenged and prodded, he has this one tone of voice that’s never a lie. His I dare you to try and keep up voice. It’s… annoying. Not cute. He has to know that I wanted to discuss our plan, so why is he turning this into a joke?

“Fine.” I slide out the bathroom door, then into the hotel hallway. “But let the record show that I didn’t ask for this.”

“Done and done.”

“Are you going to call me back if I hang up on you?”

“Try it and find out.”

I snort. “You thought I wasn’t going to show.”

“It is early.”

In the dark hallway, there’s a neon-lit sign marked plaza hanging over one door, the other completely unmarked. Plaza sounds like roof. I shoulder through it as I say, “I’ve been filming you since June. Our sleep schedules are in sync.”

There’s a weird noise, like static or someone choking. “Right,” he says. “Did you find the plaza?”

“If I don’t get any hints, you don’t, either.”

He laughs, and the sound hits my sternum like a shot of Pulp Fiction adrenaline. “That’s fair.”

I squeeze through another door. This side of the hotel smells like somewhere I can’t afford to be, clean and fruity; it’s figs, or black currants. Jammy. Once I get to the long wall of golden doors, I find a mirrored elevator. Elevators go up. Up equals roof.

“Still alive?” Arthur murmurs, jolting me back to reality. I hadn’t realized I’d been zoning out, and once I’m back on planet Earth, I notice how quickly my pulse is racing.

“Still alive.” There’s a final ding, the elevator glides to a rest, and the doors slide open. “You better actually be out there. Or are you going to throw me off the roof?”

“You think I’d do that.”

“No witnesses.”

“Many witnesses. Plenty of early risers in Pest.”

“I’m not hearing a no.”

“From me? Never,” Arthur says with a hint of something—pleasure. He’s happy. I ignore how that makes me feel as I head down the long portrait-lined hall to a set of large white doors. A plaque hangs above them that reads rooftop access in multiple languages.

“So what do I win when I find you?” I say, only half kidding.

I push through the doors right as Arthur says, “This,” though I barely register his voice, my eyes and mind consumed by the gold light filling the sky. A hundred silhouetted birds fly right over the roof, and the sun peeks out over rows and rows of domino buildings across the streets, white and black, brown and brick, every stretched-cotton cloud tilting toward the liquid gold sunrise. The angle is just right, the light flooding the roof, me, Arthur. He’s facing the door, his phone still pressed to his ear, and I hear his smile more than I see it. But I do see it. I see every inch of him that his smile fills, how his eyes light up and his mouth parts, exhaling uncontainable joy.

I wish I had a camera. I’d settle for any lens right now, film, digital. Anything that could capture Arthur just like this with the sky behind him, a memory I could keep once night falls.

“Best view in Budapest,” he says as he pushes away from the low wall fencing in the roof. He walks over to me, past the bistro-sized metal table and chairs set up near the edge, twin to-go coffees and plated pastries on either side, pinstriped tablecloth ruffling in the breeze. “I thought we could do a breakfast meeting, since we’re traveling later. Eat croissants, watch the birds.”

My heart hurts. It’s trying to claw its way out of my chest, ribs first. What is he doing? He didn’t talk to me about what happened between us, and this is… whatever the opposite of not talking is. This is a full-blown conversation.

“Is this you apologizing?” I ask.

“For?”

“You made a scene,” I start.

“I finished a scene,” he replies.

“ And you hit Max.”

“He hit you first.”

“And you…” Touched me like you wanted me. Didn’t realize it would hurt me. Though if I’m being fair, I hadn’t thought through the repercussions before asking him to dance, either. But I’m feeling so many of them now—tingly traces of his hands on my ribs and how he moved my body like it was as natural as breathing. He hadn’t needed to take things that far, to the exhilarating edge of my experience and what must be just the tip of his. Because if he did want me, he’d be acting on it. This is Arthur. He chases.

We don’t have that much time left together.

Arthur slips his hands into his pockets and tilts his head all the way over to one side, jaw tightening then relaxing. “You don’t have another guess?”

“I…” I worry my lip. He was supposed to let that go.

He takes a step toward me. “Come on, Graywood. Why would I do this?”

I’ve been kissed before. Quite a few times, actually. There was a boy in sixth grade who was obsessed with my blunt humor and Sonic the Hedgehog drawing skills; he’d managed to sneak one without any recess monitors noticing. Then, after occasional high school fumblings and a girl I’d really wanted to love my freshman year of college, there’d been Max, and even if I’d have preferred staying friends with him, at least crawling into bed with him had been comfortable. Like doing what was expected of me.

But right now, there’s nothing comfortable about the way Arthur is looking at me. It’s exhilarating. Bright and overexposed, with all the promise of what comes once the sky goes dark and the gold is gone.

And I think… I think he wants to kiss me.

No. I think I want him to.

Oh, fuck. No , no, no—

I’m attracted to Arthur Bianco because I like him .

“I don’t know! Sorry,” I say too loudly and push my glasses up my nose with shaky fingers, and whatever momentary trick of the light just happened splits in two. Arthur clears his throat and I brush past him, going to the low barrier wall and settling my palms against the brickwork. Good, reliable bricks. Solid things to cling to in my time of need.

Okay. So I’m not just randomly, one-off attracted to a professional athlete who regularly wows the general public with his motorsport skills and death-defying confidence. I have a crush. I enjoy his personality. I like being around him . This is extremely bad. This is Arthur. Documentary subject. Sports superstar I’ll only know for another month and a half, tops.

I can fix this. I can… I will…

I’ll ignore it.

Searching for a conversational topic that might make it less obvious that I was just staring at his mouth, I look around at the sunrise and blurt out, “It’s the golden hour. Do you know what that is?”

Arthur’s footsteps thump behind me, and my throat squeezes as my body becomes aware that he’s beside me. So close that my arm tingles with his energy, though we aren’t touching at all.

“I’m not sure.” His voice is quiet. “Some movie thing?”

“Yeah, it’s when the light is gold like this as the sun’s rising or setting. The light levels between the sun and man-made lights are more balanced, and the sunlight itself is indirect, so everything feels kind of cinematic. Like magic.”

“I’ve heard the term before, when I was sick once. L’ora d’oro.” Arthur exhales quietly, then laughs. “Our coffee is getting cold.”

He’s changing the topic. Like always, I realize. Whenever one of us gets close to being too real, we spring away from the edge.

I follow him to the table and sit across from him. Arthur’s hair is messier than usual, the longer strands swept back from his forehead, and when he passes me the tiny sugar cube plate, I get this inexplicable urge to ask him if he slept okay. Why? Why is this happening to me with him ? You should be able to switch off your attraction to a person. Twist a knob and get through a conversation with them without losing your breath.

Scowling, I tear the apple strudel on my plate into two clean pieces.

“You had something you wanted to talk to me about?” Arthur says, watching me dust crumbs off my fingers.

“I can text you about it.”

“Now I’m curious.”

“It’s just—details. Fine-tuning our deal.”

“We have an hour until we need to leave,” he points out.

“Isn’t your coffee getting cold?”

I’m attempting to hurry our breakfast up, though my subtle and careful hints are not landing with Arthur. He leans his elbows on the table and sets his chin in his hand, lips curling as he attempts to wait me out.

I set my strudel down and glare back. “I wanted to talk to you about Sarah. She and Max broke up.”

His eyes narrow further. “They did.”

“Yeah, and she’s pretty mad at him. And… I think she would help us with our plan. I want to offer her the chance. But if she doesn’t take it, or she says we should stop, then I don’t know if we should keep going. I’ve already done enough to her.”

Arthur’s mouth has zipped shut, an emotion I can’t read running across his face like it’s being pulled by a string: tight lips, set jaw, a single wrinkle between his eyebrows. When he leans back, folding his arms over his broad chest, his expression reminds me of the way people sit for hours on those benches in the middle of museums, surrounded by art, attempting to decode the shapes and swirls in front of them. I have this feeling that Arthur would gladly, if given the chance, stand me up in a silent room and stare until he understood how I work.

“Okay,” he says, “sure.”

“Okay?” I repeat. “Sure?”

“We can tell my marketing manager that we’re pretending to fall in love. If you want.”

Oh, so now we’re falling in love. I’d make this joke if him saying in love didn’t turn me into a malfunctioning robot, moments before its final computation. “What’s the catch?”

“Well, since you asked.” Arthur smirks. “I want to tell Cameron, too.”

“Cameron?” I’m stuck on repeat. I have to stop echoing him. “Why?” Better. Small steps.

“I tell him everything. Used to, anyway. Plus, wouldn’t be fair if you got to team up with Sarah and go two against one.”

“We aren’t going to team up.”

“Says you.”

“We would all work together.”

“Cameron is a great worker. The best.”

“Okay, but if we tell Cameron, we have to tell Delaney.”

He blinks. “My personal manager. The woman who controls my life. She isn’t going to want me to go to Leone.”

That kind of makes two of us. “Then you need to have that conversation with her now.”

Arthur’s cheek bows. “Anyone else?”

That’s five. Me and Arthur, doing the scheme. Sarah, ensuring that we don’t accidentally toss her a grenade. Cameron, for male bonding. And Delaney, who’s smarter than all of us. “That’s all. You, me, and three people who would already follow you to your next team. What do you think?”

Arthur doesn’t reply. He’s still looking at me, focusing, and I’m vaguely worried there’s something on my face, though I haven’t taken a bite of my strudel. Alternatively, my mouth could have transformed into a roadside sign advertising I think you are really pretty and I wish I didn’t. Which, also, he can’t read that on me—right? That I like him. He doesn’t know that. Sure, I’m constantly thrown off by his observational skills, and we spend a lot of time together, probably more than we need to. But Arthur has famously enjoyed the company of many women, to put it lightly. Me thinking about his mouth must be cute in comparison, if it even pings his radar. Like scattered thunderstorms; slightly interesting, mildly annoying, but altogether, another day in July.

“Five it is,” Arthur says. “Can we wait to tell our big news ’til we’re back in the States? Might be a tense plane ride otherwise.”

“Yeah. And thank you. Really.”

“None needed. But if I’d known you were going to make this such a party, I would’ve told you to pick out a wedding dress. Really go all out with it.”

“Ha-ha-ha. You are so funny.”

He frowns. “Who says I’m joking?”

“You’re always joking.”

“You take everything seriously except for me,” he says, his fingers tapping once against the table, then stilling. There’s a flash in his eyes, a secret something , like he isn’t kidding around—and he’s hurt. If I hadn’t already figured out his bone-dry sense of humor and his preference for wearing his own mask, I’d be fooled.

“Sure. Yes. Let’s get married. That will solve everything.” Fight teasing with teasing. This always works. “Where should we live? D.C. or on the road?”

“Is that even a question?” he volleys back seamlessly. “You’d travel with me.”

“Uh-huh. And do what?”

“Anything.”

“With what money?”

“Mine.”

I learned long ago not to bother explaining to men that Arthur’s exact offer—a float tank of meaningless wealth, tethered only by a husband—isn’t appealing. So, I surprise myself when I say, “I wouldn’t like it.”

There’s that flash again. “Why not?”

“Even if I couldn’t do documentaries traveling with you, I’d need to be working on something.”

His face tilts down, as if he’s weighing this offer, as if I am offering him something instead of exploring a hypothetical while the sun rises. “I meant what I said. You could have a career in Formula 1, too.” He pauses. “There are openings for videographers all the time, and on-camera talent. You wouldn’t even need to work with a team, just the sport’s commercial owners.”

Arthur’s tone makes it sound like he’s trawled the job board with my stardom in mind, which is an absurd idea if he’s spent more than five minutes with me. Plus, the idea of going from Max’s hostile LLC takeover to getting pity-hired by the sports overlords because I’m someone’s wife makes my skin crawl. “I’m, um, really not on-camera material. And how would we find the time to see each other then?”

He considers this. “You’d travel with F1, I’d travel with F1. We’d work when we had to, like most people do, and see each other when we can.”

“How diplomatic,” I laugh.

“Sure. We would be married.” He lowers his voice as he leans forward, and is it just me, or is the sunrise making it hard to see? “What about kids?”

“Oh,” I say, suddenly dying. It’s way too hot. Scorching, and not in a good way. “Yes, kids. I—really want kids. And wow, we need to finish up so we can head back down.”

Arthur hesitates, staring as I pluck up my espresso and take a large, bitter gulp. Then he mirrors me, going for his coffee. I can’t tell from his lingering gaze if he’s concerned or curious about my reaction, or maybe let down he couldn’t dissect my emotions around family and children like I ripped apart the pastry on my plate.

I do try to figure out one thing, though, as Arthur tears into his croissant: What is the magic behind the golden hour? Why do beautiful things transcend logic and affect us so deeply when we know they’re going to end? The sun is everywhere, light dripping and running over the man in front of me, and seeing Arthur suspended in this ambient bliss, far away from the world, makes one part click; the sunrise is bright and overwhelming, just like him. He’s a golden person. Even if you only get to be around them for a moment, an hour, one summer, it’s stunning.

And at least I know what I like now. When nobody else is telling me what to like—when they’re actively saying I shouldn’t—I like Arthur.

I try to hold on to that sliver of progress when I get back to my hotel room and find Sarah curled in the armchair, knees under her chin, eyes glued to her phone. Her hair is thrown back into a tight topknot, and that’s how I know something is wrong. Sarah in a bun. The world is ending.

She starts to stand as I shut the door, then she stops, sitting again with a leg folded under her. “Hi. Hey.” She runs a hand over her mouth. “There are a few articles.”

I pause where I’m at, one shoe off, the other on. “About?”

“You and Arthur.”

I brace my hand against the wall. “Me and him…?”

“Nothing big. Just photos from the club on some online forums. Like weird Reddit things nobody pays attention to, wondering who you are. Your name has been mentioned, but just once.”

It’s ironic, kind of, that I avoided throwing Sarah a truth bomb for as long as I did, and here she is, carefully setting one down on my shoulders and holding my hand as it detonates. I float to the foot of the bed and sit, nodding. “Okay.”

“Don’t worry,” she adds, teetering on the brink of controlled chaos. “I’ve got a call with the team in an hour. They hadn’t wanted us to announce the documentary yet, since rumors already leaked about the circuit plan, but it seems like the safest option to kill the story before it runs away from us. It explains why you’d be out dancing with him.”

Second bomb. I close my eyes. “The photos are of us dancing.”

“We can handle this,” she says. “I can handle this. I’m really freaking good at my job.”

I don’t doubt that at all. If given the chance, I think Sarah, when equipped with enough caffeine and day planners, could prevent the next ice age. “Can you give me a second?”

Sarah nods, and my shaky fingers find my phone. Many missed texts from Arthur, the first reading, Fuck, just saw. I’m sorry. How do we get them to not announce the film? One missed text from Max: Sarah says she can make this go away. I run an internet search for “Lilah Graywood” with quotation marks—and there it is, a single, sketchy news article with some blurry photos of what could be Arthur and me, but could be black-and-white film grain, but nevertheless lists me by full name.

Arthur Bianco, 29, Ignition driver on a hot streak, spotted with Lilah Prestel Graywood, 24-year-old documentarian known for…

I almost drop my phone.

Prestel.

They have my old name.

How? And— why ? And then I’m taking that name and plugging it into the search bar. Lilah Prestel. Almost nothing new appears, only some dead links on my high school’s theater page. I try another spelling, all the spellings. Lila Prestel. Lilah Pressel.

Then, because I’m caught in the vortex of this spiral, I run a search I haven’t in years, to see if there’s a connection between us, one thread that hasn’t been cut, surfaced during this reality shift. She could’ve seen the news. Maybe she’s online, somewhere, defending my honor, waiting for me to find her .

I look up Delilah Prestel, my birth mom’s name.

My phone screen blinks white, then fills with the top hit: a webpage that wasn’t there before. I would know; she didn’t have social media for years, no digital footprint, forever running from what she left behind. My thumb goes cold as it clicks the link, moving completely on its own, and my vision swims with a last-ditch effort to send my consciousness far away from here. But the page loads before I can dissociate, a purple background with looping pink letters spelling Scents of Peace by Delilah Prestel , and I read the block of text beneath it. I have to.

Hi and welcome to my online candle shop. Please stay a moment and make yourself at home! These natural soy wax candles are inspired by my love of nature, my hometown, and my beautiful family. After getting married to the love of my life two years ago, I was blessed to become a stepmother and adoptive mommy to his children and fill their lives with a “scents of peace” the way only a mother can.

I read the paragraph again. Just to hurt myself. One time would’ve been enough to have these words scorched into my memory.

She’s married. She’s a stepmother.

She adopted.

She got her happy ending.

The way only a mother can.

“Sarah?” I say, then swallow to keep my voice intact. “I need to tell you something about Arthur and me.”