Free Between You and Me by Emma McLaughlin

that Andy let you get a tattoo.”
    “I did it with Eric. They trusted him to keep an eye on me.” She picks up a cracked shell and makes an arc in the sand. “Don’t tell anyone. Some blogger guessed it’s a teddy bear, but that’s as close as people have gotten.”
    “No, sure. Why the Velveteen Rabbit?”
    “You’ll just have to read it to your child someday to find out.”
    “That’s far off.”
    “I hope not.” She adjusts the blanket. “I want a family so badly. That thing, you know.” Blissed-out, she stares at the encroaching tide. “That guy, that love. It’s all I think about.”
    “For the record”—I dare to revisit yesterday’s conversation—“I believe you’re going to find that.”
    “Back at ya.” She rests her head on her knee. “I think I could actually sleep.”
    “I’m not sure I have time to.”
    She turns her face to the surf, and we watch the seagulls dive for their breakfast. “I want to share this with you.”
    “We could stay in touch now, Kel.”
    “No.” She shakes her head. “You’re the person.”
    “Person?”
    “Do this with me, Logan. Take her job. I know you’d be amazing.” She looks at me searchingly. “It’s time.”
    I run a quick inventory of what I’ve acquired since she last made this offer: a job more demanding than fulfilling, an apartment more habitat than home, a guy more sex than substance, and a group of friends who’ve somehow found all of those dream things and are intently moving on. Somehow the life I’ve spent the last decade building is losing relevance, the veneer I’ve spun frantic circles to secure showing its cracks.
    I feel myself nodding yes. A jogger puffs box office numbers into his cell as he approaches, oblivious.
    I wrap my arm around her cool shoulders, unsurprised at the ease with which we fit, and realize how weird it’s been to be with her these days and barely touch. She drops her head into my lap, turning on her side as I pull the wet strands from her cheek. And then she closes her eyes. I lean back, wriggling my fingers beneath the warming sand as Kelsey’s breath slows until she’s asleep.

Chapter Four

    Once again, I wake in my berth as soon as the tour bus’s engine cuts. I stop the Berlitz app, and check the time—three-fifteen AM , not bad. If I was in New York right now, it’d be after nine, and I’d still be in the office, eating cold takeout. Instead, we just made it from Budapest to Vienna in less than four hours. When I first saw the crammed schedule, I thought—well, I thought a lot of things, one of them being that there was logistically no way we’d be able to hop from country to country like this, a show every day or every other, each for a different nationality. But with three weeks and sixteen cities notched in my belt, I’ve learned that Europe is actually very small, and connected by a network of superhighways that we only traverse after midnight.
    Hearing Andy heaving Kelsey’s wheelie to the aisle with a grunt, I fling back the curtain, knowing we can’t afford a repeat of Athens. “Hi!” I say brightly, swinging my flats to the metal treads. “Welcome to Vienna! Willkommen! ” I call to everyone in the surrounding berths. I hop down the bus steps into the hotel’s underground parking lot and sprint to the elevator bank. In the silent lobby, a dour-looking matron mans the desk, her pin curls locked in place. I arm myself with an Austro-Hungarian-size smile, bigger than German but way smaller than Oklahoman. “Guten morgen!” I say chipperly. “Wir sind mit der Gruppe Namens Wade. Viden dank.”
    “Wade?” she asks, pronouncing it “Vade” with obvious displeasure, even though I called, at Andy’s urging, to confirm our pending arrival somewhere outside Bratislava.
    “Ja.” I nod, nearly at the end of my Berlitz.
    “One moment.” She leaves the console to rouse her colleagues, as, with three people going top speed, it will still take more than anhour to check in