Free You Are Here by S. M. Lumetta

disagreed. “Drew has been asking almost daily when we’re having a kid.”
    “I have not!” He cleared his throat a few more times and still, his voice was scratchy. “You are just as impatient.”
    She laughed outright. “That is pure crap, love. I mean, I’m okay with whenever. I just don’t want to live in our cramped one-bedroom apartment with a baby. So I wish this preview came with an address,” she joked, winking at me. “Besides, practice is half the fun.”
    Drew’s eyes crinkled with his smile, but his embarrassment overpowered with a surprising display of red cheeks. He rallied with a quip. “I do like to practice. As often as possible.”
    Charlotte rewarded him with a kiss, her fingers lingering on his cheek longer than her lips on his. They shared a look and were instantly alone in the world.
    Turning back to face me, Charlotte zeroed in on me. “Boy or girl?” The question was delivered like a bullet.
    “I don’t know!” I lied.
    “Oh my God!” Drew burst, a bit spectacularly. “All that and you’re going to hold out on us?”
    Charlotte didn’t even turn to look at him, sitting tall and smiling triumphantly at me. “See?” she mouthed.
    “I have to piss,” he announced and stalked to the rear of the restaurant.
    She hadn’t moved, just waiting.
    I played along, staring back at her, but I caved. “Boy.” The single word was barely a breath, so if she heard it, I didn’t know.
    Either way, she understood and her eyes confirmed it, smiling before her mouth could follow suit. “I knew it.”
    While they did ask a couple of other questions about my ability, the majority of the evening was rather lighthearted. It was comforting to find we all got along really well even without the buffer of Vivi and Nash. They were funny and sweet people and I was glad to have met them. They seemed to genuinely like me for me, and I knew I would never in my life deserve the friends I’d made. They believed in me before I believed in myself. They cared for me while barely knowing me. And though my frame of reference was blocked, I imagined this must’ve been what real family was.
     

Chapter Eight
    Grey
    Erupt
     
     
     
    Normally, I would be precisely on time for any meet. However, at 7:13, I sat in a cab debating what in the hell I was doing. I gave the driver a twenty to shut the fuck up and let me sit for two seconds, staring at the looming Hancock Center. Horns blared outside, other cabs whizzing by.
    You owe him nothing. Leave.
    Before I could stop myself, I pushed the door open and closed it behind me. As I made my way into the restaurant, my ears seemed to shut down—I couldn’t hear a thing except my labored breathing.
    I sat on the sidelines of the wrestling match between my body and my fucked up logic. Rooted to the ground in the bustling waiting area, I swept my gaze left to right in anticipation of Nash and Vivien. I forced my way to the edge and stood against the wall as I anticipated every question he would have. Where the hell have you been? What about your dad? Why didn’t you answer my fucking letters?
    You are not who he remembers.
    Abruptly, a welcome clarity seared through the center of my head. A buzzing electricity ricocheted through my chest and my limbs. Just as the deafening chatter of patrons, the clanging of glasses and general rumble of the restaurant once again registered, my body reached a bargain with my mind. I had just shoved off the wall in preparation to run when an iron grip took my shoulder.
    “Grey!”
    Fuck.
    Our table was a booth, thankfully, but in the center of the action. My eyes darted all over the restaurant, checking for exits. I was so engrossed in this struggle between pain and protocol that Nash had to clap his hands directly in front of my face to snap me out of it.
    “Earth to Grey,” he said with a laugh. “You’re here, but you’re still not here.”
    You have no idea.
    I forced my attention back to the couple across from me. I could do