Family Ties

“Yeah. My mom sent it to me a month ago, and I kept it on top of my dresser so I wouldn’t lose it.”

“You realize that anything is likely to disappear in your bedroom, don’t you? I mean, I’ve seen you pile clothes pretty much everywhere.”

“Ha ha. Very funny, Mr. Clean.”

“Hold on a sec… That’s the ticket your mom sent you? I thought you were going to trade it in and get one on the same flight as mine.”

“I forgot. We’ve been so busy and all.”

“I managed to—” I gritted my teeth. “Never mind. We’ll take care of it when we get to the airport.”

“Oh. Okay. So… no problem.”

Only it was a problem.

“I’m sorry, but this flight left four hours ago,” the ticket agent explained when we got there. “I can’t exchange it.”

“Can’t you do anything?” I insisted.

“No, I’m sorry. I can only refund a ticket before the time of departure.”

I took a firm grip on my frustration.

“Can’t I just buy a new one?” Christy asked.

“Of course. To San Diego via Atlanta?”

“Yes, please.”

The agent checked her terminal. “We have a flight that leaves in thirty minutes.”

“That one!” Christy said. She was actually excited.

I was borderline furious. First, that she’d forgotten to exchange her original ticket. But also because she’d have to pay for a new one. Last-minute tickets were insanely expensive, although the agent was able to refund the cost of the return ticket and apply it to the new ones. Still, Christy didn’t bat an eye when the agent told her how much it would cost.

“Can I write a check?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

“See?” Christy said to me. “Problem solved.”

I almost asked if she could afford it, but I didn’t want to give the agent any reason to call the bank to verify the funds. I certainly couldn’t afford to

pay for her ticket if her check wasn’t good. Not unless I wanted to use my credit card and then dip into savings to pay it off. So I kept my mouth shut and fingers crossed.

We spent another ten minutes getting the ticket printed and paid for, but the agent called the gate to tell them we were coming. We made it with ten minutes to spare. As far as I was concerned, that was nearly the same as watching the plane depart without us. Christy seemed unfazed and chattered about her family or something.

I wasn’t paying attention. Instead, I was wondering how crazy I was to want a relationship with her. She was my exact opposite in so many ways.

She didn’t know a thing about my lifestyle, either. And she seemed willfully oblivious to my moods.

The last wasn’t really true. She was acutely aware of my frustration and the reason for it. She simply didn’t know how to deal with it. Mindless chatter was her answer. I finally figured it out after she nervously glanced at me the fifth or sixth time.

I didn’t want to start an argument, especially when we were trapped in a plane, so I stopped her the only way I knew how: I kissed her.

“Relax,” I said. “Sorry I’m brooding. I’ll get over it. I just get frustrated when things don’t go like they’re supposed to.”

“I’m so sorry about the ticket. I completely forgot.”

“That’s okay. I just have to remind myself that you’re total chaos sometimes. I’m all about order.”

“You’re yin and I’m yang,” she said.

“Um… what?”

“You don’t know about yin and yang? Oh, it’s so cool. Nobu taught me.

It’s the idea that opposites are really part of the same whole. You can’t have one without the other. They’re the ‘cloudy side’ and the ‘sunny side.’ You’re the cloudy, by the way. And I’m the sunny, of course.” She beamed at me and then chattered away.

At least she wasn’t flustered anymore. That was something.

Christy’s ticket mix-up made life interesting at the other end of the trip as well. We arrived in San Diego and no one was there to pick us up, since we

hadn’t told them about the flight change. I had to take some of the blame, though, since I hadn’t even thought of calling them during our layover in Atlanta.

We found a pay phone. Christy glossed over the real cause and made it sound like we simply had to take a later flight.

“Don’t get upset,” she begged me after she hung up.

“But you totally just lied to your mom.”

“I didn’t lie. I just… left out a few details.”

“And how is that not a lie?”

“The same way you left out a few details about talking to Gina when I thought it was Sara.”

“Ouch! Touché. But I hate to break it to you, I was lying. A lie by omission is still a lie.”

“Whatever. I’ll tell them… eventually.”

“They’ll find out anyway when you tell them how much the new ticket cost. I mean, that was a pretty large check you wrote.”

“Oh, that?” She waved it away. “My dad’ll take care of it.”

My eyebrows shot up.

“He may yell a little, but he always fixes things.”

I decided not to have that argument either. Besides, it wasn’t really my problem. She had her own bank account and parents to keep it in the black.

But a niggling part of me remembered Trip and Wren’s Halloween argument about money. Once again, I reminded myself that it wasn’t my problem.

It didn’t occur to me that Trip had probably told himself the same thing.