“You’re the best,” she said with real feeling, raising up on her toes to give him a quick kiss on the cheek and then skipping off to the ticketing line. She hadn’t missed his look of horror at her comment, but didn’t particularly pay it much mind. Thanksgiving was a family holiday, and she had no family. That was how she liked it. For the last three years she’d spent Thanksgiving dancing for the loneliest of the lonely, and her take had been triple that of a normal working night. She wasn’t about to tell Gabe what a wrench it was giving up that shift for him. She wasn’t afraid to emotionally blackmail him, obviously, but that went a bit too far. Besides, it placed the value of her time in her hands, rather than his, and she didn’t like letting him know he mattered that much to her. She didn’t like admitting it to herself, let alone him.
She took his comment to heart. She knew flying would most likely be a trial for him but she hoped, this late at night, that the flight might be relatively empty. Either way, she was booking them in first class so that would hopefully keep things to a minimum. She was already running through a mental checklist of ways to keep him boosted. If she still did the hard drugs, she would have considering popping some Ex, but she’d given those all up when she’d started giving blood. She was not, however, above asking for a blanket and masturbating if things got too dicey for him up there. He wouldn’t approve. She knew that. And that was part of what made it so hilarious, particularly since she knew for a fact that riding that high would make him feel about 1000% better.
Arriving at the counter, it suddenly came to her where they were going, and a Cheshire grin spread across her face she ordered their tickets. The ticketing agent gave her a bit of a glare at using someone else’s credit card, but Ricky merely pointed over to where Gabe was standing, looking so clean cut and wholesome, and gave the elderly woman a wink.
“My fella,” she said, proprietorially, amused with her own inside joke. Trotting back towards him, she fanned the boarding passes out, an open mouthed grin on her face.
“We’re going to Istanbul,” she said proudly, not even caring that the tickets had cost a fortune. “Get it?” she asked with a bark of laughter. “We’re going to Turkey.”
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He heard his cue and waved, the appropriate annoyed smile on his face, the sort that warned the ticketing agent that if he had to come over there and settle the account himself she was going to have a massive problem. Either the agent was too busy to deal with any sort of problem or the identification in his wallet had been enough to satisfy the requirements.
Her declaration made him laugh. Ricky was just too strange sometimes, but the ways she surprised him were always for the best. Here he had offered her a trip anywhere and she had chosen Turkey. Now he wouldn’t believe, couldn’t, that the hottest little desire in her heart was to go to Turkey. No, it was the gag, the perfect location for the time. Gabe understood that, and it left him smiling. Turkey day in Turkey and for a person who didn’t have a family and couldn’t enjoy the large family meal it was especially poetic. He was pleased for other reasons as well, she couldn’t have picked a more obscure flight, so perhaps this wouldn’t be a nightmare after all.