Cutback

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Brussels, February 2015

Our summer started in a pub.

It was the night we were celebrating Amanda from Cincinnati's birthday. We didn't know her that well and for once Errol didn't feel like collecting new friends like Pokemon cards, so we sat at the edge of the group draining beer after beer and losing track of time like we'd done the night we met. The spring semester had started a few weeks before, and we started talking about what we wanted to do after the school year ended.

"I think I might travel," Errol said, thumbing the green rim of his bottle of Boon. "Just spend a few months seeing different countries. I mean, why not? I've always wanted to."

He painted me a picture of castles and cathedrals and pubs and clubs and meeting new people from around the world. I had some vague idea that I wanted to travel too, like everyone I guess, but in that moment an image flashed through my mind of trekking through Europe alone with Errol, every day for months, just the two of us, and my chest got tight because I'd never wanted anything so badly in my life. I lied and told him I was planning to do the same thing and started hinting around the edges until he connected the dots: We could go together.

"Yeah, that'd be cool, man," he said with just enough conviction to make me believe he was telling the truth.

During the next few weeks we talked about it from time to time. "Were you serious?" I asked when he was sober, searching his syrup pool eyes. He was. And when we were drunk, I was bold enough to press for specifics.

"Where to?" I asked one night when he came home tipsy from hanging with "the guys," which is what he called this group of German and American meatheads, who for all their cultural differences, could have been cloned from the same batch of over-testosteroned stem cells.

"Uhh, I think I want to see Paris?" Errol said. "But, yeah, Germany. I'm half German so I want to see like the Vaterland, you know?"—an awkward pause—"Wait, shoot, I didn't mean that—is that a Nazi thing?"

"Yes, Errol, it's straight out of Cabaret," I said, and we laughed because Errol's not a meathead and he always got my references. At least I think he did.

What he meant was that he wanted to trace his Saxon Teutonic roots across the continent, as if it would tell him something about himself other than that he was a spoiled American upper middle-class brat like me. I'm technically half German too, but I doubt I'd given it ten minutes of thought in my life.

Slowly it started to take shape. There were rules established. Big cities over small towns, travel by train and bus and no more than three days in any one place. I agreed to almost everything he said, afraid that if he sensed we had different objectives, he'd give up or find it easier to just go alone. Or worse, with someone else.

Recently, Errol had started spending a lot of time with Jess—the British girl of speculoos fame from theater class—alone, mostly. Though occasionally with me, when I'd run into her in the hallway coming out of the bathroom some mornings.

They were kind of a cute couple, to be fair. She was just tall enough to rest exactly under Errol's chin so that he could peck the top of her head or smell her blonde hair when holding her from behind. I heard them through the door one night, because, well, because I was standing outside listening, and what I caught of their pillow talk was detailed enough to alarm me. London came up a lot. So did New York. Yet I had already started planning everything out online. We'd start by taking the train to Luxembourg in May, snake our way across France, Switzerland, Germany and Austria, end up in Copenhagen in July and fly home. This was really a trip for two.

When we talked, Errol would chew it over in his mind, debating whether London with Jess would be easier or more fun. Thankfully our parents really, really did not want us to go on this trip, which meant we had no choice but to seriously consider it. Errol's parents said he could live at home and work as a tennis instructor, but that London might be good for his acting career. Since he had no intention of acting, the thought of London just made him feel guilty.

As for me, my mom told me to come home right after finals and get a summer job. Money was getting tight, she lied. "How will you pay for it?" she asked, ever the pragmatist, and said that after May she wouldn't be putting the $600 a month into my account that I had convinced her was necessary for life in Europe after she paid all my bills. "We'll manage," I said, not quite sure if I was lying. You can control kids and grownups with money, but rarely privileged college kids.

The thing is, we were hardly broke. Before arriving in Brussels, my parents helped me get a Visa card with a $1,500 limit for emergencies that I never touched. And there was often money left over at the end of the month since I purposely asked for more than I needed. Errol had a similar thing going with his parents and I figured if we stayed at €30 a night hostels and lived cheap enough we could just about make it work—€2,500 each for the lodging and train pass, which could go on my card, plus a thousand or so for food and sightseeing and getting drunk. Admittedly, it would be tight.

"Do we have to eat every day?" Errol asked when I showed him the plan, which I had written out like a ledger in one of my journals.

"Well, we have to drink every day," I said.

"Maybe we could shoplift," he joked. His humor was always a shade darker with me than anyone else.

"Maybe we could pimp you out," I replied, and as he laughed from his chest he knocked a heavy elbow into my side, which made every hair on my arm prick up at once.

"Yeah," he said, swatting my ear with his other hand. "How much are you paying for me?"

I glanced at the ledger in front of us and thought to myself, every penny I have.