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I’m suddenly starving.
seventeen
Savage
I pull out my computer, ready to view the files that will detail the jet’s outlined journey. My screen lights up. I go to open a document called “Katie Paisley Bachman Trip Log.”
“Where are we off to for the next two weeks?”
“Hang on.” Paisley reaches out, closing my laptop.
This surprises me. I fold my hands over the laptop lid. “Alright. What’s up?”
“About the trip,” she says.
“Yes?”
She takes a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?” I think of Mrs. Bachman and the pink planner, iPad, and notebook that are always on her person. Surely, like mother, like daughter. “Didn’t you and your mom plan this trip down to the minute? Months ago?”
“Mom would be the one to make me plan it. She got a little busy with the party planning. Then, she focused on the Italy part of the trip. Those eight weeks are all organized and planned out.”
“But the next two weeks?” I ask.
She gives a delicate shrug of her shoulders. “I’m not good with this stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
I glance around the plane. Twenty-four men sit behind us. Two flight attendants stand at attention at the front of the plane, awaiting instruction. Just beyond them I can see the white uniformed shoulders of the pilot and co-pilot.
“Does no one here know where we are going?” I say.
She shakes her head. “The team in charge of booking the plane kept asking about my plans. Last week I kinda just told them to be ready to go today at five. That I would tell them where we were going then.”
My brows shoot to the sky. “But the pilots. They have to plan this stuff. Get clearance. Talk to the tower about what direction they’re taking off.”
“We’re Bachmans.” She scrunches her nose. “No one really pressed me for details. Our staff are used to last-minute trips.”
“Okay.” I run a hand over the back of my neck, processing. I’m a planner. Hell, I’m The Planner. I don’t do well with this last-minute crap. “You know, this seems pretty inconsiderate…”
I go to lecture her, but something in me tells me to stop. I glance over at her. She’s staring out the window at the tarmac. Biting her bottom lip. She looks as if she could cry. I can’t feel sorry for her. She’s got the world at her fingertips. Parents that adore her.
More money than God.
What does she have to be sad about?
Something pricks at the back of my mind. Something someone said to me a long time ago. When I lived in what now feels like a different world.
Money makes people happy. But only to a point.
Meaning, you must have money to be happy because you have to feel secure in order to be happy. Money puts food on the table. A roof over your head. It pays your medical bills, transports you from place to place. And yes, you need to have some fun now and then.
That’s security.
But after security is reached, money does not buy happiness. The perfect family doesn’t do it either. Finding your person. That’s what makes people happy. At least, that’s probably what girls think.
I put myself in her shoes. Here she is, staring out the window, about to take off to another country, going somewhere she’s never been, to another family, people she’s never met, to meet a man she’s never even seen face to face.
