Page 17 of Leave It to Us
“Why you got all these bags?”
Completely ignoring the bag-cart guy, Tami came to a stop on Lana’s other side and pushed her large-framed sunglasses up on top ofher head. Yvonne was right behind her, but of course she was looking over at the bag-cart guy.
“Are you paying him to carry your bags when the ticket counter is right over there?” Yvonne asked. She pursed her lips.
“No,” Lana replied to her sisters, and then turned her attention back to the bag-cart guy. “I’m good, sir.” This time she said it with finality, and he gave her aNo the hell you’re not, but if you say sonod before ambling away with his cart, which probably could’ve been useful.
Especially since her wrist was screaming from the way that strap had menacingly wrapped itself around it.
“You look like you’re leavin’ your husband,” Tami continued with a quizzical glare as she stepped closer.
Lana’s head snapped up, and she frowned. “I’ve got a one-way ticket to an island I usually only visit once a year and have no idea when I’m coming back. So excuse me if I tried to pack enough clothes. You know, I do like to wear a clean outfit daily.”
“You know there’s a laundry room with a washer and dryer in the summerhouse,” Yvonne clapped back before shaking her head.
Tami came closer and, thankfully, reached out to grab the strap from her wrist. Lana had to bring the suitcase she’d been holding on to with that hand to a standing position before she gladly allowed her sister to take the bag and slip it onto her shoulder instead.
“I packed shorts, tank tops, and sundresses,” Tami said as Lana started to readjust the rest of her things. “They’re all in my one suitcase. Then I just have my carry-on and my purse.”
Even with her signature annoyed look on her face, Yvonne stepped closer and signaled for Lana to release her hold on the other suitcase. Then she took Lana’s second duffel bag strap from around that handle.
“You still have one bag too many,” Yvonne said to Tami once she had Lana’s bag securely on her shoulder. “What’s in that carry-on?”
“Oh, these are my shoes,” Tami responded as the threesome began walking toward the ticket counter. “I always carry those on with me.I can buy underwear and clothes if my suitcase gets lost. But not my shoes. I gotta keep them with me in case there’s no Steve Madden store wherever I travel.”
Yvonne frowned. “You can’t keep a job longer than a year. How can you possibly afford a bag of Steve Madden shoes?”
“It’s calledbudgeting,” Tami replied. “I’m sure you know all about that, with your supersmart self. When I see a pair of shoes I want, I buy them and then spend the next month on a strict diet of ham-and-cheese sandwiches and canned soup.”
Yvonne didn’t even offer a response to that, and Lana was glad. She hated the thought of anyone overhearing their sarcastic banter as they trucked through the airport. To an outsider, she was certain the relationship between her and her sisters would be construed as dysfunctional at best and possibly toxic at worst, but in her mind it was neither. It was just ... them. Growing up in a three-bedroom row house with a demanding mother, an over-appeasing-until-he-was-gone father, and a slew of expectations that taught them how to stick together while simultaneously picking each other apart was no easy feat. And when they were finally able to get away from each other, they’d grown deeper into their personalities. Sometimes—mosttimes—those personalities didn’t mesh well. Lana prayed that wouldn’t make this trip even more stressful.
Moments later, after standing in the relatively short line to get to the ticket counter, Lana pulled her bags up first. Tami and Yvonne came right behind her since they each held one of her bags.
“Good morning,” she said to the passably attractive man, whose beard could have used a brush or some type of product to make it look a little more appealing. Not that she needed to be concerning herself with another man’s appearance. But her eye was always tuned in to details, like she was framing a picture in her mind.
“Hey,” was his reply. “ID, and you can put your bags up on the scale one at a time.”
Add that he wasn’t too cheerful, and her desire to speed this process along was upped a notch.
She hefted the first suitcase onto the scale and then reached into her purse to grab her wallet. She was just passing him her ID when he said, “Sixty-six pounds. That’s a seventy-five-dollar charge.”
Lana cursed.
“Oh, hell no,” Tami chirped, immediately moving around Lana to flip the overweight suitcase onto its side to unzip it. “We’re gonna put some of your stuff in this bag right here. Ain’t nobody givin’ y’all another seventy-five dollars.”
She dropped Lana’s duffel bag onto the floor and unzipped that too.
“Well, wait, let me figure out what to take out,” Lana said. She agreed with what her sister was doing, even if she thought Tami could’ve lowered her voice a bit.
Yvonne, who’d rolled her eyes the moment Tami had started talking, was most likely thinking the same thing.
“All we gotta do is take a stack of these,” Tami continued, snatching up an armful of clothes from the suitcase.
“No, let me just pick out what I want to transfer,” Lana argued, and leaned down to the suitcase.
“Girl, we ain’t got time for that. Yvonne’s head is gonna explode if we don’t get to that gate at least an hour before the plane even arrives,” Tami snapped.
Then Tami shifted to drop the clothes she was holding into the bag, but Lana wanted to see exactly which pieces were going where. So she reached over to take them out of Tami’s arms before they could fall into the bag. But Tami insisted she had it and pulled away with more force than was necessary. There was a brief tug-of-war when Lana grabbed her sister’s arm, and the next thing she knew, her clothes went up in the air like someone had tossed a fistful of confetti, falling all over the place. Including onto the computer, where her peach lace thong hung just inches away from Bad Beard Attendant, who stared with a lifted brow.
