Frustrated, I smudged the latest attempt with my thumb, and left it that way, like her face was cast in shadow.
I sighed. I didn’t feel much better, but at least I wasn’t a shaky mess anymore. I threw my sketchbook back into my bag and dragged myself to my feet. I powered up the GPS app on my phone to check that Kelsey had made it home okay, determined to focus back on the task at hand.
When I saw her location, I groaned.
I wasn’t sure if she’d ever made it back to her hostel, but she definitely wasn’t there now.
5
DRESSED IN SWEATS and tennis shoes, I jogged the paths of the botanical gardens until I found her. Up on a hill overlooking the rest of the gardens, with purple flowers blooming on my left and the monastery spires rising up in the sky on my right, I almost missed her. She was sprawled out in the grass, facing the monastery. I ran past her, down the hill, and then stopped when I got near the bottom. I turned and walked back up, my hands on my head, pretending to cool down.
Kelsey was laid out on her side, and I might have thought she was sleeping if I didn’t see her fingers picking at the grass. The rising sun glinted off the domes of the monastery, and when I reached the top of the hill, I walked another hundred feet or so past her before settling down on the trail. I leaned my back against a stone ledge just below the purple flowers, the blossoms nearly brushing the top of my head. I laid my elbows on my knees and sucked in a breath of crisp morning air.
Kelsey wore the same outfit as the night before. Her creamy lace skirt was short, showing off those familiar long legs. It was probably now covered in grass stains, but Kelsey didn’t seem concerned. Probably the alcohol. She’d be pissed later. That peek of shoulder was catching the early morning sunlight, and I found myself dying to know what had happened between now and when I left her.
I grabbed my sketchbook again, and started with the monastery. With just a pencil, I had no way to capture the vivid colors, but I did my best to show the way the sunlight glinted off the gold spires and accents on the building. I worked on the sky and the flowers in the foreground before moving on to Kelsey.
At least this time, I didn’t have to attempt to draw her face, only her silhouette. I couldn’t have orchestrated a better pose for her if I’d tried. Lying on her side, she lined up with the horizon. Past the monastery, I could see the river, bridges, and the center of Kiev. It was almost as if those things bled out of the curves of her body.
I couldn’t make up my mind who Kelsey Summers was. With how much she’d had to drink last night, I would have thought she’d be crashed out for half the day. But instead, we were here watching the sunrise.
As my pencil dipped to draw the curve of her waist, flaring out into her hips, I was reminded of an hourglass. Not just because of her perfect body. On its side, like Kelsey lay, an hourglass was stuck, moving neither forward nor backward, frozen in time. I’d been in that place before. Stagnant and lost, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn Kelsey felt the same.
Maybe she’d found the magical balance that I’d never been able to obtain. Maybe she could drink and party all night without getting sucked into the darkness that came with that lifestyle.
I wanted to believe that. But that could have been the addict in me, eager to insist that I could find that balance, too.
But I couldn’t. And I didn’t think Kelsey could either.
No one retreats to the bottle every single night unless they’re running from something. And when you’re running, you don’t realize that to drown your troubles, you have to drown yourself, too.
AFTER KIEV CAME Bucharest, which passed in a blur of nightclubs.
She’s stuck, I found myself thinking again as we repeated the same patterns.
More people spoke English, which made keeping up with Kelsey a little easier. But there were more pickpockets and con artists, which left me in a constant state of agitation, imagining all the ways Kelsey could get into trouble.
Tonight, at least, we ended up at a place with live music. That gave me something to focus on besides alcohol. Granted the music wasn’t in English, but the beat was good. The guy on drums definitely had skill.
I turned my back on Kelsey, who was getting cozy in a corner booth with some guy she’d met at the hostel.
I rolled my eyes and settled in for a long night. Since arriving in Bucharest, we’d seen very little of the city. I’d bought another guidebook, hoping Kelsey might do some real traveling this time around. So far, though, I’d had nothing but a few glimpses of landmarks as I followed Kelsey around. Needless to say, it was beginning to get old.
“You understand this?”
A little brunette in an even littler black dress sidled up next to me.
“Not a word,” I replied.
“Didn’t think so.”
I smiled. “What gave me away?”
“I might have seen you earlier. I think we’re staying in the same hostel.”
“Oh?”
Damn. I’d taken a chance and gotten a bed in the same hostel as Kelsey. The place was huge, and I figured I could stay under the radar. But if this girl recognized me, then I wasn’t doing a very good job.
“Is that creepy?” she asked. I wasn’t exactly qualified to talk about what was and wasn’t creepy in that moment. “Sorry. It’s just . . . my friends and I were looking for a place to sit. I thought maybe we could join you.”
I looked back in the direction she had, toward the bar, and saw two other girls. That was certainly one way of occupying myself. It would keep me from contemplating the dangerous mystery that was Kelsey Summers. And the known danger of the bar.
“Sure. That’d be fine.”
She waved at her friends, and then I was surrounded by significantly more estrogen. She slid onto the seat closest to me, and I caught a whiff of sweet perfume.
“I’m Sarah. This is Johana and that’s Christine.”
Sarah reminded me a bit a doll—small, almost porcelain-like.
“I’m Hunt. It’s nice to meet you all.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow at my name, but didn’t comment. I was used to that. And yeah, it would probably be less hassle to go by my first name, but Jackson felt like a different version of me, a version that I needed to maintain distance from if I were going to survive this job. Hunt was the version of me that had gotten his life together, and that’s who I needed to be.
“Where are you from, Hunt?”
“Texas. Mostly. What about you?”
“New York.”
“All of you?”
It was Johana who answered this time, the slight curl of an accent at the ends of her words. “Well, we all go to NYU. I’m originally from Paraguay.”
The third girl, Christine, shrugged. “Kansas.”
Sarah chimed in. “We’re all studying abroad in the Netherlands. We’re just visiting for the weekend. What about you? Studying abroad?”
I laughed and scratched the back of my neck. “No. I’m, uh, just traveling.”
I’d never gone to college at all, let alone in another country, a fact that my father was quite fond of bringing up.
“That’s cool,” Sarah said. “So what have you done in Bucharest so far? Anything you recommend?”
I racked my brain for locations from the guidebook. “Uh, you know. The usual. A few museums, a church or two, Victory Avenue. There’s the Dracula castle, too. But that’s outside the city.”
That wasn’t too bad. Better than telling her what I was actually doing here in Bucharest. She directed her eyes toward the table, tapping glossy fingernails against the surface.