Back on Track

Chapter 1

Hi guys!

It's Leigh (leigh_) and Emma (winx1348) here, and we've got some exciting news! We were absolutely thrilled to be commissioned to write a short story for the Schick Quattro YOU™ campaign about two friends embarking on a road trip - and the best part? We're writing it together!

Long distance friendships require effort and time invested -- and we know this very well, living on either side of the Atlantic. We're so excited to be given the opportunity to write about two friends coming together for a much needed vacation.

We hope you enjoy Louisa and Kinsley's road trip!

***

Louisa's POV

Flying always made me nervous.

It was ironic, really, coming from a person who'd decided five years ago to flee the country and go to university thousands of miles away. Three thousand, four hundred and seventy miles, to be exact – the distance between my English hometown and New York. That kind of decision came with the literal and metaphorical baggage of making a transatlantic flight at least once a year, and I'd eaten enough airline food in that time to make anybody sick. And yet here, clipping my belt into place as the pilot told us to prepare for descent, I was still struck by the mild nauseous feeling that had settled on my first journey out.

I wasn't scared, as such. Louisa Young wasn't scared of anything. But nervous? Maybe just a little bit.

The trips were always worth it, of course. They came with either a reunion of family or American friends on the other side. Both were worth a bit of nausea, and today was no exception.

I hadn't seen Kinsley in over a year, which was the longest time we'd spent apart since that first day moving into the dorms at NYU. I'd been struggling to fit a semester's supply of British junk food under my bed, and she claimed later it was the loud accented swearing from across the hall that had drawn her in. As I learned later, there was something about a weird accent that just seemed to attract every other international student in earshot – perhaps it was a safety-in-numbers thing, and the hope that you wouldn't stick out so much if you were part of a pair. Either way, I'd been a magnet for the small, dark-haired Canadian in the opposite room – and the rest was history.

The plane jolted, throwing me slightly forward, and I realized after my heart's skipped beat that we were on the ground again. I was back on American turf after a whole year away.

Nausea gave way to excitement on the runway, and I found myself eagerly craning my neck out the window as the plane rolled closer to the jet bridge. Blue skies stretched overhead, dotted by only a few clouds, and as I thought of the miserable grey weather I'd left behind at Heathrow, it occurred to me exactly how far I'd come. Finally, the miles between Kinsley and I had disappeared... and now all we had left to contend with were the minutes.

Forty-five of them later, and I'd made it off the plane, dragging my carry-on behind me through the JFK terminal. On my way to baggage claim, I wondered if I should've reserved less concern for the plane journey and more for American border control. There was something about those suited officials that seemed to scare the living daylights out of everybody put before them, whether perfectly innocent or not. Still, my passport and hesitant answers to some pretty intense questioning appeared to convince them I was in fact the Louisa I claimed to be, and I was waved through with an aggressive date stamp and an accompanying sense of relief.

There was Wi-Fi in the airport – thank God – and I wasted no time in connecting my phone the moment I was inside. Seconds later, the missed notifications from various social media networks began popping up, but there was really only one that caught my eye.